THOUGhTS, FUN, AND WALKING AROUND THROUGH THE FIRST WEEK
Due to procrastination, this post is brought to you later than expected.
Well, it's been a little over a week since I landed. I've done a lot of walking in that time, and thankfully got acclimated from the jet lag within that time. Here's some pictures if you want the short, visual version of whatever I'm about to say:
Japan - My New JourneyJapan - The Exploring Begins
Jet Lag
It was really a bitch this time around, and I did not expect it to be so bad.
I had a fairly normal flight plan. I landed at 3:30pm, and didn't get to my house until around 8pm, so I did a little bit of packing and then went to bed. But even with an attempt at a normal sleep schedule right off the bat, things went haywire. It wasn't until Thursday that I wasn't waking up at 3am and constantly on the verge of falling face down on my desk and snoring at work from lunch on to the end of the day.
I honestly think the humidity might have played a role in it. I don't know why, but this humidity is tearing at my inner being. I lived in the midwest for 5 years, and that's got some bad humidity. But either I haven't experienced it for so long or it's just been that ridiculously humid. Either way, it has been a rough adjustment. But long story short, my body feels like it's finally achieved some kind of normal.
PNW feel in the Wrong Place
So today was the first time I saw the sun since I got to Japan. I looked like an idiot as I clapped like a 1-year-old at my desk and then walked over to the window to look outside for a minute before the clouds rolled right back in and shrouded us in a further grey.
I should be completely used to not having the sun around, that's what winters in the PNW were like. Grey, cloudy, a light, almost constant mist, and then you see the sun sometime around April or May. That's what I grew up with.
But for some reason, having that in the fall and with a bunch of hot heat and humidity is making me not like it. Oh PNW, how I miss you.
Weekend
As I said, I've done a lot of walking so far here in Tokyo, the majority of which was done on Saturday and Sunday. Friday we went to an All-You-Can-Drink thing (apparently it's quite the rage, something I am quite ok with) with a bunch of younger folks at work and had a good time. No karaoke, at least not yet though.
Saturday I awoke lazily and went for a stroll around my neighborhood. Instead of going the normal way to work, I turned the other way and just started going. Not 5 minutes away did I stumble upon a shrine. I gotta say, it was beautiful. A peaceful, harmonious feeling emanated throughout the shrine, and despite but also because of the grey and rainy weather, I found it extremely calming. The deep red hand rails and pillars, the greenery of the trees and shrubs, the carved kanji in stone, the empty meditation (I assume) room, and the water cleansing station at the entrance. This picture is my favorite. Subtle but pretty.
I kept walking around, got some delicious food (more on that later), did some errands, then headed home before meeting up with a friend, Zena, another CAReer Trainee. We met up at Harajuku, and started walking around. First, we headed to the Meiji Shrine and the gardens/forest surrounding it.
Where we started, there was a giant dance competition going on. Teams of roughly 50 people would jump on stage and dance to the tune of music and people yelling in really high-pitched, shrilly voices. It was unlike any other dance competition I'd seen before, and it was quite entertaining.
The highlight of this was not something I saw but something I did. Zena and I were standing and watching one of the teams go and then the transition to the next team came. Before they started, this squat old Japanese lady poked me and pushed her phone in my direction. After so hand communication and pointing at the stage, I figured out she wanted me to record the dance of the next team, likely her grandchild was part of the team. So, for the following 5 minutes, I stood above the rest of the crowd, with my arms and the camera even higher, recording the routine. The lady was super thankful, and I quite enjoyed being able to put my height to use to give this woman and her family something to look back on.
Well, we walked around the shrine, admired the absolutely pristine woodwork of the buildings (ok, that was just me, but it was absolutely awesome), then meandered around the green forest in the park. We saw turtles, big fish, a fair amount of people, and a relaxing atmosphere amongst the trees.
Next we made our way to Omotesando, a popular street with some high end stores and a ton of trees lining the boulevard. We did some walking around there, but also dove into the surrounding alleyways, which ended up being much cooler. I found a ton of cool bikes in these alleyways. For some reason that's the place to put cool bikes against cool backgrounds. I dug it.
The rest of the weekend had more walking around (central Tokyo, the Imperial Palace, Ginza), good food, frisbee, and still more grey skies and rain. It was a great first full weekend in Tokyo, but only the tip of the iceberg for fun stuff to do and explore.
Vending Machines
Vending machines are everywhere here in Japan. On every street (even dark back alleys), on every floor, in a lot of restaurants, and essentially everywhere in between. Even Mt. Fuji has one ready to serve you something good at the tallest place in Japan, which, coincidentally, is the highest located vending machine in the world.
One way they use vending machines in a non-traditional way is in some fast-food restaurants. How, you ask? Well they traded out waiters and waitresses and brought in a vending machine. No joke.
Rather than being seated by someone, slowly looking over a menu and ordering, and having this waiter be your transaction interface, 90% of that is shifted to a vending machine. Whether it have a touchscreen with pretty pictures and sometimes English, or just a series of buttons with words and a price on them, it's an ingenious system. You select what you want to eat (be it as much, as little, or a total guess of what you want), pay for what you've ordered, and then take the tickets you get to the counter. Then they make your food and boom, nomnoms.
It's a novel concept, and despite its removal of a large portion of the human interaction in the realm of a restaurant, I think it's absolutely awesome. Also, some delicious food (namely the Bibim Bowl from a place down the street) gets cooked up there.
From my observatory-level knowledge of stuff here, it seems like it's a common occurrence that people just grab something quick and easy on their way home from work, be it sushi at a 7-Eleven, or at one of these places for a warm meal. A lot of them have just a bar setting, so it's conducive for people to come, eat, and leave, and not have to worry about the cordiality normally due a waiter. They cut the fat in the process and get some delicious food in a quick turnaround.
Overall: A+, will definitely partake a lot over the next few months.
Train Station Jungle
Shinjuku Station, the station I go through to start my commute every morning, is the busiest train station in Japan. Yes, it's crazy, hot, stuffy, and full of people. But those few minutes where I go down under the street and have to weave my way through the thousands of people living their own life and going every single possible direction, it's like a game, and I love it.
When I'm going through there, I'm on a mission. Efficiency, speed, and fluidity. That's my aim. I'm looking to weave as best as I can through the human jungle as quickly as I can and get to my platform.
Every step you take brings in 20 more people to your immediate vicinity. Your eyes must take each and every one of them in with their intended direction, speed, and possible sudden jolt to a different location. Slowly you're able to paint a moving picture of where your openings are, where you can squeeze in between this lady coming from your right 5 paces out and the guy coming straight at you looking towards your right ready to cut across. It's a brief window, but you've got to match and project your speed and trajectory to snatch that brief opportunity.
I normally consider myself quite good at getting through large swaths of people. Being able to do this every morning, I feel like I'm in a special element, able to hone these skills and feel like I'm super awesome conquering this maze of bodies in record time every day. Long story short - it's hectic, it's awesome, and I love it.
Masks Everywhere
So is everyone familiar with that classic image - people walking around in public places with dental masks on to protect themselves from all the contaminants in the air? I think it really became well known around the time SARS came about, but since then, it's stayed around a bit. In Japan, it's definitely still prevalent, but maybe not for the reason you'd think.
I've always thought that people do that because they think everything and everyone else is a germ-carrying bastion of death and contamination. For some, this could still be the case. But as I've learned, a lot of people do it to protect others from them.
Japan is worse than the U.S. when it comes to sick days; even if you're coughing up a lung, you're pretty much expected to show up to work like normal. Because of this, people don the mask to protect others in their vicinity from the sickness they have. If you've got to come to work, the only thing worse than that is getting everyone else sick in the process.
Original Publish Date: September 9th, 2015