Japan 1

So I’ve been in Japan for a solid 2 days.... and it already feels like a week... long enough to be comfortable with my surroundings but not long enough to have any clue as to what the locals are saying or what the cryptic signs around me mean. I feel like this will still be true after being here for a month. So I guess I just won’t magically pick the Japanese language up afterall.... thank God for my phrasebooks and Huy’s dvd! Even the phrasebooks are useless when trying to figure out what is being said to you. Nowhere does it tell you how to ask the person to slowly repeat what they are saying so that you can look up each word. I find smiling, nodding, and backing away works just as well, just make sure you pay for whatever it is before you back away. Japanese prison won’t be any less confusing than their streets. Lets start from the beginning.

The first night here was interesting enough. I went to the grocery store with Joe, my new friend from Oregon who has been to Japan a few times before and possess the most basic communication skills that I’m struggling with (never thought I’d be so relieved to meet another Joe!). I walked around and settled for bananas, grapefruit juice, and some Japanese corn chips which ended up tasting exactly like cheetos! The fluffy kind though :( He pointed some stuff out that I probably wanted to avoid such as natto.... this fermented red bean paste that he said tasted like fermented garbage smelled. Notta eating the natto! They also had the biggest assortment of fish anything and everything... do I look Portuguese, really? When it came time to check out, his interaction went off without a hitch while mine abruptly came to a halt when I tried to pay with what would be more than a $100 Canadian bill (10,000 JPY). My bill was about $6 Canadian.... ya. Apparently they don’t carry that much change. Joe was nice enough to lend me a modest 1,000 JPY while I tucked away my new wallet (thanks Jera) which contained close to $300 Canadian. I clearly grossly overestimated how much groceries would cost me or more accurately, what the conversion was. Ballin at the grocery store is just how we do in Japan clearly. 

We walked back to the apartment and said good night. I walked around the apartment a bit trying to take it all in before deciding to take a shower. My roommate, Laura was slated to be picked up at the airport at around 10pm and it took about 30 mins to get to the building. That gave me enough time... or so I thought. I proceeded to undress and throw my towel just outside the shower door on the washer. Just as I was about to step in I remembered that there wasn’t any toilet paper in the toilet room which is actually in a separate room. I packed some and thought Laura may need to use the bathroom when she got in. I ran back in my room butt naked and grabbed it out of my luggage. I dashed back to the toilet room and proceeded to change it when I heard a knock at the door. I froze as I decided if I had enough time to run back to the next room and hop in the shower. Before I could decide, the door was being unlocked by the guy that had picked Laura up from the airport. Kill me now. I shut the door and proceeded to flush the toilet so it seemed like I had just used it (not sure why). The toilet is pretty weird in that it has what looks like a sink at the top of it. Water kept pouring out of the top and I fiddled with the knob convinced that I had broken it. When the water finally stopped and I could hear myself think (sounds like Niagara Falls everytime you flush) I called out to Laura and asked her to bring me my towel. She must have thought I was a freak. Her perpetually naked roommate. I proceeded to try and make conversation in my towel before finally escaping to the shower. What an awkward first meeting. Who the hell goes to the toilet room butt naked? Really? Thankfully, she didn’t seem to be anywhere nearly as weirded out as I was or as judgmental as I made her out to be. After dressing, I found out she was from BC, a begitarian (vegetarian in Japanese), and super laid back and pretty cool. We called it a night as both of us had been traveling for the equivalent of forever.