Shibuya crossing. ridiculous! this is when the light is on walk....
this is when the light is red... see the difference? wow. trying to walk through that was insane.
3/29/09
okay so the language barrier is really hard.
i knew that choosing to come to Tokyo obviously meant that i would struggle communicating, but i kind of thought people would understand sooommeee English. my houseing manager doesn't speak a word of English, which is frusterating because I can't ask him questions, notices and information are posted in Japanese and when I need help with something, he can't really help me. I feel bad because I know that this is frusterating for him as well, but its super hard for me. We had our housing oritation, and all of the international students came downstairs into the cafeteria. I discovered that I am the only person in my building who only speaks English and who does not understand Japanese. Its really difficult because everyone just converses with each other in Japanese, and since the Japanese are so shy, they get nervous when I approach them and introduce myself in English.
I know that I will learn, I will adapt, I will get used to it- but right now its pretty tough.
Yesterday I decided to get out of my residence and I went to Shibuya (very famous in Japan). I went with my friend Ning, who is from China, and another international student that I met on the main campus Mita- his name is Riccardo and he's from Italy.
Shibuya is crazy. Absolute madness. The buildings are huge and covered in advertisments, the amount of people makes it literally difficult to walk down the sidewalk. there is music playing, people screaming from stores to "COME IN, KUDASAI!". i went into this shopping building called 109 which had probably 14 floors of just crazy fashion and was filled with even crazier people.
its almost like the girls here have to wear costumes in order to stand out. there are girls dressed like hard core punks, there are flousy little hippies, there are hoochies GALORE and then the classic harajuku style of colour colour and more colour. Everyone has their hair done up perfectly and tons of make up on. I also noticed that every single girl wears at least 3 in heels at all times. (the shoes here are technicolour and fabulous!). needless to say i loved it, was completely in awe and wandering around the streets with my mouth gaping.
i went into a disney themed store and almost died. EVERYTHING was straight out of the disney movies. there was mickey mouses and minnie mouses everywhere, as well as the disney films playing everywhere and the store clerks dressed in fantastical outfits shuffling around tidding up after kids everywhere. it was awesome.
I am going to go and see the cherry tree flowers today. there is a park a little ways away from my dorm that i can go to on the trains and i'm pretty excited. then my friend Joanna from Hong Kong wants me to take her to the shopping center i went to because of all the different stores i told her about.
I might go to shinjuku tomorrow, and i want to get to osaka too. there is so much to see here and I still have a week before classes actually start!
I am going to be taking some Japanese classes while i am here... i am SO excited to learn, but I am starting from absolutely nothing. Its going to be ahuge challenge, but while i am here, completely submerged in the culture and language i figure there is no time like the present.
its freaking hard to live here, but its also beautiful. i just need to meet a few more international students (or people who speak english!) and i'm sure my comfort level will rise.
i miss my housemates lots. eva would love all the kick ass shoes here. you have never seen kicks like this before eva. i am in amazement. paloma, you would love all the jewelry and the upper class fashion here, its is beautiful and makes me think of you. morris there are business men everywhere adorned in their best suits that i know you would love, justin the art here is CRAZY and cecilia i saw a bagel shop and thought of you- woo common ground!)
i knew that choosing to come to Tokyo obviously meant that i would struggle communicating, but i kind of thought people would understand sooommeee English. my houseing manager doesn't speak a word of English, which is frusterating because I can't ask him questions, notices and information are posted in Japanese and when I need help with something, he can't really help me. I feel bad because I know that this is frusterating for him as well, but its super hard for me. We had our housing oritation, and all of the international students came downstairs into the cafeteria. I discovered that I am the only person in my building who only speaks English and who does not understand Japanese. Its really difficult because everyone just converses with each other in Japanese, and since the Japanese are so shy, they get nervous when I approach them and introduce myself in English.
I know that I will learn, I will adapt, I will get used to it- but right now its pretty tough.
Yesterday I decided to get out of my residence and I went to Shibuya (very famous in Japan). I went with my friend Ning, who is from China, and another international student that I met on the main campus Mita- his name is Riccardo and he's from Italy.
Shibuya is crazy. Absolute madness. The buildings are huge and covered in advertisments, the amount of people makes it literally difficult to walk down the sidewalk. there is music playing, people screaming from stores to "COME IN, KUDASAI!". i went into this shopping building called 109 which had probably 14 floors of just crazy fashion and was filled with even crazier people.
its almost like the girls here have to wear costumes in order to stand out. there are girls dressed like hard core punks, there are flousy little hippies, there are hoochies GALORE and then the classic harajuku style of colour colour and more colour. Everyone has their hair done up perfectly and tons of make up on. I also noticed that every single girl wears at least 3 in heels at all times. (the shoes here are technicolour and fabulous!). needless to say i loved it, was completely in awe and wandering around the streets with my mouth gaping.
i went into a disney themed store and almost died. EVERYTHING was straight out of the disney movies. there was mickey mouses and minnie mouses everywhere, as well as the disney films playing everywhere and the store clerks dressed in fantastical outfits shuffling around tidding up after kids everywhere. it was awesome.
I am going to go and see the cherry tree flowers today. there is a park a little ways away from my dorm that i can go to on the trains and i'm pretty excited. then my friend Joanna from Hong Kong wants me to take her to the shopping center i went to because of all the different stores i told her about.
I might go to shinjuku tomorrow, and i want to get to osaka too. there is so much to see here and I still have a week before classes actually start!
I am going to be taking some Japanese classes while i am here... i am SO excited to learn, but I am starting from absolutely nothing. Its going to be ahuge challenge, but while i am here, completely submerged in the culture and language i figure there is no time like the present.
its freaking hard to live here, but its also beautiful. i just need to meet a few more international students (or people who speak english!) and i'm sure my comfort level will rise.
i miss my housemates lots. eva would love all the kick ass shoes here. you have never seen kicks like this before eva. i am in amazement. paloma, you would love all the jewelry and the upper class fashion here, its is beautiful and makes me think of you. morris there are business men everywhere adorned in their best suits that i know you would love, justin the art here is CRAZY and cecilia i saw a bagel shop and thought of you- woo common ground!)
3/25/09
i think the best way to describe the city where i live is "efficient". obviously, that's kind of what you think of when you imagine Tokyo. but its pretty astonishing when you are looking at it in person. there are neon signs everywhere, cartoons with Japanese characters everywhere, and today i saw a geisha walk casually by me. there are little alleys that are roofed over, and inside of them are bustling stores (hyaku en stores are the best! hyaku means 100, and en means yen. everything in this store is 100 yen! you could literally furnish your apartment here..) there are cell phone booths everywhere, people handing out leaflets, random stores everywhere selling god knows what and music playing in every one. its so overwhelming, but every person that i have interacted with has gone out of their way to help me/communicate with me/be kind to me. i didn't really think that me being Caucasian would be unusual here- they are exposed to a lot of western culture, but today i had a little Japanese man stop and stare at me. i smiled and bowed to him to show respect, but he just continued to gawk at me. another young man commented how he was jealous of my eyes and loved the way English sounded, its bizarre.
that is a picture of the main station where i live. its incredible!
I made some new friends today. one girl is from hong kong, her name is Joanna, and another girl from Taiwan named Pai-ii. they are both 24 and are so helpful and kind. i wouldn't be able to function in the city without them! today we (Naomi, Joanna pai-ii and i) all went exploring our city, and we went out for dinner and purchased cell phones. dinner was great, i splurged and bought beer, and had amazing rice and a salad. the food here is crazy so i am taking baby steps with what i try. i made a promise to myself that i would try everything i can and that i wouldn't hold back though! so i have to warm up to the cuisine pretty quickly!
buying a cell phone was quite the experience. the man who was helping us out was by far and away the cutest Japanese man I've ever met! he kept giggling at my attempts to speak Japanese, and would high five me when i got a word right. he was SO helpful, and spend a long time with Naomi and i trying to explain our plan, our cell phones etc. its weird here because no one uses their cell phones to call, they email from phone to phone. there is no SMS texting here, so when you purchase a phone you are given an email address. if you feel so inclined, my address is jes.halll888@ezweb.ne.jp i will receive the email like a text and be able to fire you back one instantly! all those of you with blackberries, hit me up!
this has been such an amazing day. i don't think that i will ever just walk down a street here without an amazed look on my face. this place is going to be awesome!
3/24/09
wow.
after the painfully long wait i had, i finally find myself in tokyo!
the journey here is a story in and of itself, the stars seemed to align for me because luck was on my side! you see, i was scheduled to fly into "narita airport" which is about an hour and a half to two hours away from where i needed to be. what i had to do from narita airport is get on the bullet train from narita to tokyo station, one of the largest train stations in the city. from there i would have to maneouver my bags totaling almost 90 lbs around the station in order to find the blue line, called the keihin-tohoku line. from there i was going to have to figure out where to get off, and then find a cab, then pay around 50 bucks to get to my residence. problem: i was scheduled to land in narita around 3:20, and my residence building closed at 6. it was going to be a race against time for me to get to my dorm (called Omori).
i had been panicking about how i was going to get around the stations, and understand where i was supposed to go, worried about trying to communicate with people and read signs, and to top it all off i would have three big bags with me. when i borded the plane from victoria to vancouver, this was all i could think about. suddenly i looked up and one of my high school teachers walked onto the tiny plane and sat down right beside me! john allpress is his name, and he was just as shocked as i was to see him on the airline. we got to talking and i told him how i was travelling to tokyo today, to start my epic journey, but that i was very worried about actually finding my way to my dormitory. he was in the middle of giving me some contacts in tokyo when the man sitting infront of us turned around and introduced himself. it turns out he was a Keio graduate (the university i am going to) and spoke fluent japanese. he was also on the same flight as me to tokyo, and said that he could help me figure out some sort of transportation once i got there. you can understand my excitment.
the man i met on the plane, ken carnes, lives in victoria, but goes to japan all the time. he was fairly familiar with all of the train lines and places, but when i told him where i was living he was drawing a blank. once in the vancouver airport, ken took me into the business lounge with me, and he talked to some japanese women and asked them if they knew where omori was. they could help us a little bit, but the journey i had ahead of me was still riddled with obstacles. ken was worried for me, and wanted to help me out (thank god, lord knows i needed the help!)
just before we boarded the plane, i heard my name called over the intercom, "JESS HALL PLEASE IDENTIFY YOURSELF" nervously i walked to the front of the line only to find a very familiar face smiling at me. one of my familys closest friends Pat Hurlbert was piloting my plane! i was so excited, and to top it all off he handed me a first class ticket, and told me that my seat had been switched. ahhhh. during take off i was feeling on top of the world, sipping champaign in a recliner seat.
i took a gravol and passed out for about 6 hours, and when i woke up i heard pat on the intercom once again. there had been an airplane crash at the narita airport, and the place was now virtually shut down. we had to change where we were headed and started off for Haneda airport, which is right downtown tokyo. i turned around to face ken (who was sitting a mere 4 seats behind me) and smiled. the haneda airport was at most half an hour away from my residence, and instead of battling the crowds in complicated train stations, i could just jump into a cab and direct them to 7-4-27 ormori nishi ota-ku, tokyo japan. i still cannot believe my luck. first of all meeting john allpress on the plane, behing overheard by ken, then having the plane have to land in haneda! it all lined up perfectly.
when i got to my res 5,000 yen later i was exhausted, starving and lonely. i tried to communicate with the building manager, but he hardly spoke any english and it made things very difficult. he showed me to my room, which is very nice, and closed the door after playing charades for quite some time trying to explain the rules of the building. when the door closed, my stomach just dropped. i was actually here, i couldn't speak to anyone, and i didn't know anyone in tokyo. sometimes i question my judgment....
i looked around my room to discover that there was no mattress on my bed, and that i didn't know how to dial out of my room in order to call home. i went back down to the first floor to ask the manager to help me out. he said that futons weren't scheduled to arrive until tomorrow and that i might have to stay in a hotel. this was getting super frusterating for me, becuase i had already spend so much money on a cab, and who knows how much a hotel would cost me in the middle of tokyo. luckily he took pity on me and called the futon suppliers and asked if they could drop some off a bit early. what i recieved looked like a large, flat body pillow to sleep on with a bean bag for a pillow and some blankets. i'm trying to be optomistic about my bed... but its a pretty shitty sleep thats for sure. i woke up with bruises on my hip bones from the wood pressing into me.
when i woke up i had the pleasure of working the toilet. there was an entire remote control instructing me how to flush. everything was in japanese and i was pretty confused, it was quite the little adventure which ended with me soaking wet all over. i learned that button three means water spray.
anyways, this is a long enough post. i have more adventures to share at a latter date.
i miss you all
after the painfully long wait i had, i finally find myself in tokyo!
the journey here is a story in and of itself, the stars seemed to align for me because luck was on my side! you see, i was scheduled to fly into "narita airport" which is about an hour and a half to two hours away from where i needed to be. what i had to do from narita airport is get on the bullet train from narita to tokyo station, one of the largest train stations in the city. from there i would have to maneouver my bags totaling almost 90 lbs around the station in order to find the blue line, called the keihin-tohoku line. from there i was going to have to figure out where to get off, and then find a cab, then pay around 50 bucks to get to my residence. problem: i was scheduled to land in narita around 3:20, and my residence building closed at 6. it was going to be a race against time for me to get to my dorm (called Omori).
i had been panicking about how i was going to get around the stations, and understand where i was supposed to go, worried about trying to communicate with people and read signs, and to top it all off i would have three big bags with me. when i borded the plane from victoria to vancouver, this was all i could think about. suddenly i looked up and one of my high school teachers walked onto the tiny plane and sat down right beside me! john allpress is his name, and he was just as shocked as i was to see him on the airline. we got to talking and i told him how i was travelling to tokyo today, to start my epic journey, but that i was very worried about actually finding my way to my dormitory. he was in the middle of giving me some contacts in tokyo when the man sitting infront of us turned around and introduced himself. it turns out he was a Keio graduate (the university i am going to) and spoke fluent japanese. he was also on the same flight as me to tokyo, and said that he could help me figure out some sort of transportation once i got there. you can understand my excitment.
the man i met on the plane, ken carnes, lives in victoria, but goes to japan all the time. he was fairly familiar with all of the train lines and places, but when i told him where i was living he was drawing a blank. once in the vancouver airport, ken took me into the business lounge with me, and he talked to some japanese women and asked them if they knew where omori was. they could help us a little bit, but the journey i had ahead of me was still riddled with obstacles. ken was worried for me, and wanted to help me out (thank god, lord knows i needed the help!)
just before we boarded the plane, i heard my name called over the intercom, "JESS HALL PLEASE IDENTIFY YOURSELF" nervously i walked to the front of the line only to find a very familiar face smiling at me. one of my familys closest friends Pat Hurlbert was piloting my plane! i was so excited, and to top it all off he handed me a first class ticket, and told me that my seat had been switched. ahhhh. during take off i was feeling on top of the world, sipping champaign in a recliner seat.
i took a gravol and passed out for about 6 hours, and when i woke up i heard pat on the intercom once again. there had been an airplane crash at the narita airport, and the place was now virtually shut down. we had to change where we were headed and started off for Haneda airport, which is right downtown tokyo. i turned around to face ken (who was sitting a mere 4 seats behind me) and smiled. the haneda airport was at most half an hour away from my residence, and instead of battling the crowds in complicated train stations, i could just jump into a cab and direct them to 7-4-27 ormori nishi ota-ku, tokyo japan. i still cannot believe my luck. first of all meeting john allpress on the plane, behing overheard by ken, then having the plane have to land in haneda! it all lined up perfectly.
when i got to my res 5,000 yen later i was exhausted, starving and lonely. i tried to communicate with the building manager, but he hardly spoke any english and it made things very difficult. he showed me to my room, which is very nice, and closed the door after playing charades for quite some time trying to explain the rules of the building. when the door closed, my stomach just dropped. i was actually here, i couldn't speak to anyone, and i didn't know anyone in tokyo. sometimes i question my judgment....
i looked around my room to discover that there was no mattress on my bed, and that i didn't know how to dial out of my room in order to call home. i went back down to the first floor to ask the manager to help me out. he said that futons weren't scheduled to arrive until tomorrow and that i might have to stay in a hotel. this was getting super frusterating for me, becuase i had already spend so much money on a cab, and who knows how much a hotel would cost me in the middle of tokyo. luckily he took pity on me and called the futon suppliers and asked if they could drop some off a bit early. what i recieved looked like a large, flat body pillow to sleep on with a bean bag for a pillow and some blankets. i'm trying to be optomistic about my bed... but its a pretty shitty sleep thats for sure. i woke up with bruises on my hip bones from the wood pressing into me.
when i woke up i had the pleasure of working the toilet. there was an entire remote control instructing me how to flush. everything was in japanese and i was pretty confused, it was quite the little adventure which ended with me soaking wet all over. i learned that button three means water spray.
anyways, this is a long enough post. i have more adventures to share at a latter date.
i miss you all
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
