Week 1
After saying goodbye to my family, my amazingly supportive partner Sarah drove me to the Edmonton international airport on Saturday April 22nd. On me I had my Japanese Visa, passport, tickets, and my Wii and a bunch of clothes. I didn't have any keys because I wouldn't need them in Tokyo but honestly I felt kinda naked without them, like someone messed with my inventory system. Anyway, I checked a bag, went through security, and kinda just chilled out and read Hitchhikers guide (I'm on the 5th book and loving it). I boarded my plane for Vancouver and chose to watch the new sci-fi flick "Arrival". Arrival is an amazing movie and I really enjoyed the first 75 minutes of it before we landed in Vancouver. I was too disappointed to even ask if they'd let me finish it, knowing full well they wouldn't.
The Vancouver airport has many pieces of aboriginal art and together with its spectacular view of the mountains provides a welcoming arrival for newcomers as well as a comforting send off for me.
At about 1pm on Saturday I boarded a 787 for Tokyo. They are huge planes and have 3 columns of 3 seats each and they also come with the same programming as my Vancouver flight so I was able to finish "Arrival". Around this time, the drink cart came by and as I was unsure if I would get a the Canadian ceasar while in Tokyo, I ordered one. This involved giving me a small 162ml can of ceaser and a 50ml bottle of vodka.
I couldn't sleep on the flight, so I watched all of the sci-fi movies that they had. I was able to get through Independence Day 2, Passengers, and Star Trek: Beyond. I was really tired when I watched them so they all kinda run together in my head and the resulting mishmash has a better plot than all of them in my opinion.
I landed at the Narita Airport in Tokyo at 3:30pm on Sunday. I then had to stand in a giant line up of people (~300) who had foreign passports but was able to get through quickly because the airport had like 20 some kiosks. Also, there were signs which said that being on a phone was not permitted but this only refers to taking a call, not silently texting.
After getting through security and customs, I boarded a bus heading to the hotel I'd be staying at for my first night. For some reason I thought the bus ride was only going to be 15 minutes and I was hoping it was as by this point I had been up for 20 hours. I was wrong and it was a beautiful 90 minutes of rice fields, cherry blossoms, and Japanese architecture, most of which was lost on me as I was deliriously exhausted.
I finally arrived at my hotel, checked in, found my room and I was greeted by the smallest hotel room I had ever been in, then collapsed.
Although small, this room had many luxuries such as a desk, free wifi, and a complementary tooth brush with the cutest tube of tooth paste ever created.
In the morning, now Monday April 24th, I was met by an HR representative from Sony and took a cab to my apartment where I would be living for the summer.
It is a quaint little place with a bathtub, a toilet, a washing machine, and a combined bedroom/living room/kitchen/office as seen below. I dropped off my luggage and then followed the HR rep to Sony which was about a 10 minute walk away.
The Sony building I am working in is a large grayish-black building with an intimidating amount of chrome.
After working there for the day, I noted that although I was now across the world, the Sony building did offer something that I greatly associated with home.
Noting that I had little in my apartment that constituted as food. I stopped by a convenience store and bought some crab meat and it was delicious.
When I got home I took a cold shower because I had no idea how to turn on the hot water. Turns out, it requires using a the hot water thermostat which is located in my kitchen. I was relieved when I found that out a day later.
The next few days consisted mostly of me recovering from jetlag while working at Sony. In that time I was able to go shopping and find some, instant ramen, which honestly, isn't as good as Ichiban instant ramen which is available in Canada.
The flavoring is a packet of thick concentrated spices and is disappointing.
On my way back home from work on Wednesday, I took a different route and saw a peculiar garden gnome. It was peculiar because it was about 40ft tall and had a hat that twisted like hats shouldn't.
When I got home I set up my Wii and played some Super Mario World and it somehow felt very appropriate to play Mario in Japan about a 2hr walk from where he was created.
On Thursday, someone from Sony met me outside my apartment to go to the Shinagawa municipal office so I could register as a long term resident (over 3 months). While I was there, I saw the characters for the area I was staying, Shinagawa: 品川. The first character (Shina) 品, means "goods" and the second character (Kawa) 川 means "river". These two combined with with the character for "ward", (ku) 区, gives the characters for Shinagawa-ku or the "goods river ward". This is because Shinagawa includes ports to receive goods and has rivers which were used to transport them.
With plans to play some video games with Sarah on Saturday, and with no real chairs in my apartment (see pillow). I gave myself an hour to find a chair. Since I am about a 8 minute walk from a mall, I thought I had reasonable odds of finding a chair within an hour. It turns out that almost everything is closed in the mornings on weekends except for a Starbucks which was selling American Cherry Pie drinks, so I bought one while continuing my search. In the end I couldn't find a close enough store (there was an Ikea over 2 hours away) and gave up until I saw a bin in the garbage. It was made of solid plastic like milk cartons and could easily support my weight. I took it back to my apartment, washed it in the shower, dried it, placed a pillow on top, and got a free stool with the right height for my makeshift desk.
With no plans in the afternoon on Saturday, I followed some coworkers' advice and went to Hamarikyu Park. This forced me to try the transit system which I had been nervous to try because of its complexity.
The transit system in Tokyo is very complex but how one actually rides it is fairly simple: The price for riding is based on the distance one would have to travel using the transit. Once you find out how much it would cost to get to the place you want to go, you select that amount, pay it, and receive a ticket. You then put the ticket into a slot which opens a gate for you to enter the station and pick up your ticket on the other side of the gate. Hypothetically, one could ride the transit all around the city but in order for you to get out of the transit system, you have to insert your ticket into a gate to open the exit doors which only works at stations which you have paid to go to.
So after purchasing my ticket, I trained over to the station which was closest to Hamarikyu Park (after switching trains because I was going the wrong way).
I got off the train at about 5:30 pm and headed towards the park and saw that it was surrounded by a moat. I walked along the moat hoping to find a bridge and was met with a sign.
Although I could have sprinted and entered the park for about 20 minutes, I decided to walk through the park on Sunday and make a day of it. As I still had much of the day to wander around, I became determined to see the ocean as I knew it was close by. I started along a street and saw what looked like the mast of a ship at the end. Curious, I approached it and saw that it was a mast and that there was currently a naval graduation ceremony with young sailors cheering and their parents applauding. I had found New Pier Takeshiba, which has an amazing view of the port and much of the city.
After scanning the horizon, I noticed something I had heard about but hadn't seen yet. Faint against the darkening sky was a Ferris wheel, and I thought to myself "I'm gonna ride that".
On Sunday, I headed out once more to see the park. I paid about $3 to get in and saw a old trees, gorgeous flowers, and duck ponds all meticulously taken care of.
The garden also had some old buildings which used to be part of a Kamoba, a duck hunting ground. Essentially there was a pond with some inlets shoveled out around the pond. On either side of the inlets, tall bamboo and other plants were planted to give good camouflage. Decoy ducks were trained to swim down an inlet following the sound of a hammer hitting wood and were then kept in the lake. After wild ducks landed in the pond, people would hide in the tall bamboo with other trained attack birds and nets. Then someone would hit the hammer against the wood and the trained ducks would swim down the inlet towards the trap leading the wild ducks. The wild ducks were then attacked by the attack birds and captured by the nets.
Since this was eventually deemed a cruel way to hunt birds, a memorial was put up to remember all of the ducks that died. I bet you thought I was kidding.
This past week has been a wild ride of jetlag recovery, bad instant ramen, interesting work, and friendly people. Also next weekend is Golden Week which means that it is a 2 day work week with a 5 day weekend. I'm excited to see where that much time off takes me.