Metamorphosis

I've been extremely busy the last two or so weeks, getting home at around 10 PM on average. Keeping true to my mantra of only using the dorm to sleep and eat. I finally joined a gym. It's on the pricey side, compared with gyms in Canada, (and I've got to stop comparing things with Canada because it just doesn't make sense sometimes) but like all things Japanese, the service is excellent and you're treated like royalty. I hang out a lot with the other two co-ops, Alex and Andrew. We've also made lots of friends. The ones with children tend to want us to teach their children English. I found a group of guys that play basketball twice a week; I'm trying to find a way to fit in karate classes twice a week; there's the Japanese lessons, both on-the-job and outside; various excursions like climbing Mt. Fuji, seeing fireworks, and most recently, a welcome party for Andrew and I. This 歓迎会 (kangeikai) was one of the more interesting experiences in Japan so far. First, was 居酒屋 (izakaya) to drink and eat. Aside from the fact that I'm starting to get used to beer, this went as expected - including my screwing up my welcome speech. After this, our closer group of friends decided to take us to this club called Club Japan. You may have heard of these "clubs" in Japan, called キャバレー (cabaret). This is basically a red-light district disguised as a club. You can pay ridiculously high hourly rates to be given the opportunity to have drinks and flirt with exceptionally gorgeous women and have them pretend-flirt back, but it doesn't stop there - you can ask for their 名刺 (business card) so you can contact them for some real action later. I'm keeping the cards as mementos. Only.

Two days ago was pay day, so I went pretty nuts with shopping. Andrew and I ordered one Canon Wordtank V80 electronic dictionary each off the Japanese Amazon site, with, get this, cash on delivery! (They're about $300 Canadian each) Yet more proof of how trusting the Japanese are: only in Japan would such a concept exist. Needless to say, the Japanese Amazon is just as quick and reliable as the Canadian and American versions. The dictionary is currently Canon's top-of-the-line model. It's the only dictionary with a stylus and touch sensitive screen. Allows you to input kanji by directly drawing on the screen those characters you don't know or forgot the readings of. An unbelievable stress-saver. I didn't spend as extravagantly on my keitai (cell phone) though. I choose a certain free phone only because it has an integrated FM tuner.

Ok so I realized I was totally approaching things from the wrong angle. It was pretty selfish and naive actually. I always thought my coming here was about me, me, me, me and me learning Japanese. But of course, it's more than that. I'm here as an ambassador to Canada and, in a way, the rest of the English-speaking world.

So to right my wrongs I've lightened up a bit and with those that speak English with me, I speak English back and teach them as much as possible. It's a rare opportunity for them to converse with a native English speaker, but I have the opportunity to speak with a native Japanese almost every moment of the day. And even though I'm not speaking Japanese with everyone, and those I do speak in Japanese with is only for a few minutes a day, I'm finally starting to notice an improvement. It was really crazy when I started to watch Beautiful Life again for the first time since on the plane ride and I swear to god, it felt like they were speaking slower. I was like "why the hell are they speaking so slowly this episode?? They never speak this slowly!" But then I was like, "idiot, it just means my hearing is getting better."

There was nothing to worry about - believe it or not we have SEVEN hours of Japanese instruction per week lined up. That is, once, the obon holiday season is over next week. 3 hours per week with company-provided lessons; and 2 hours each at two different volunteer-staffed Japanese classes throughout the city.

The company-provided lessons started today. I took a placement test so they could gauge my level of Japanese proficiency, but I don't think the test did a good job of it. The entire test was at the Japan 101 level. Barely skimming the surface of what I know. Hopefully she got a good idea of my ability from my speech.

Things like cell phone payments, gym membership dues and internet fees can be paid directly from your bank account. In fact, I think having a valid bank account to make automatic payments from might be a prerequisite to signing up. That's great and all, except for the fact that signing up for a Japanese bank account has to be one of the most insanely complicated endeavours I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing. And this is even with the full help of Epson.

First day of work, the three of us co-ops (Andrew and Alex and I) are put in a room with four nice girls (Better than 1:1 ratio - this is how much manpower these things require) and we spent the entire morning, each of us paired with one girl, filling out a seemingly endless wave of application forms. A few days later, a few of them are rejected for being too messily filled out. We rewrite them and a few days later, which was today, they were rejected again, because we didn't fill in the forms entirely on our own. What? They don't think I can write kanji that nicely? Yup - they're right.

So long story short, I have to wait at least another week to join a gym. Which will make it three weeks without a real workout with real weights. I'm turning into a shrimp. And yeah, no keitai cell phone, or internet or pictures till then either.

Oh wait, I'm suppposed to be talking about the good stuff right? Well, everything you heard is true: the transportation system absolutely rocks, as does the food, the politeness and the cleanliness. People say Canadians are polite and friendly, but try walking into any Japanese store and it's on a whole different level of politeness. Someone will always welcome you into the store, every employee you walk into in the store will greet you. At first I thought it was kind of annoying, but I've gotten used to it and honestly, now I think it's pretty damn rude not to see someone bow and say "irasshaimase" when I into a store. Well, I can already tell, the reserve culture shock is going to hit pretty damn hard when I return in a year.

As you likely already know, the transportation system is awesome. Trains are extremely punctual, if you're late even ten seconds you can kiss your ride goodbye. Which means, I should kiss this post goodbye!

Hey everyone!! This is the first report back from Japan. I'm wrapping up the first week of work now. It's been extremely difficult to find internet access. Even here, at work, the proxy servers are extremely tight.

So I've been here for only less than two weeks, but it feels like I've been here forever. The first week was spent moving into my dorm and visiting Kyoto (a 3 hour bus ride away) Thanks Amika, Shogo, Yosuke and Mamo-chan for the sightseeing and the food! This second week work started, as I try to get into some sort of rhythm.

It's hard. Although I want to maintain some of the lifestyle habits I enjoyed in Canada, things are so different here. I can't eat half of the same amount of fruit I used to eat without going broke; I love morning workouts but none of the gyms are open before 10:00 AM; skim milk,whole wheat bread, any kind of bagel and cereal are a rarity.

My Japanese is steadily improving. It was extremely fun the first few days as I put to use all the grammar I had learned for the past year, but then I soon plateaued and got pretty sick of repeating the same simple sentence structures over and over. I'm waiting for classes to start next week to learn new grammar. It's slightly annoying that since almost everyone wants to practice their English on me there is a clash of interests of sorts when communicating; i.e., I'll talk in Japanese and the other party will respond in English. My listening is not improving as fast as I would like as a result. (Neither is their's...)

Don't read too much into my post - I'm loving it here. There's so many cool and interesting things about this country too. I'll write more about that later. Later.