Yan-San

I bought some tissues with a cat on, see:

Now on with the show.

Somehow the fear returned, it was mid afternoon on Friday the 29^th of March, my second full day of being here. I was afraid to go out of my room to the kitchen or the communal area because that involved talking and meeting people. I knew it was a stupid thing to be afraid of, everyone I had met was nice and really I was just being lazy. It was a bit like being in bed and not wanting to get up, or not wanting to get out of the swimming pool because you know it’s going to be cold. But eventually I went.

In the kitchen was a Korean girl that I had met briefly the day before when she had shown me which bin to put my rubbish in; in Japan they sort the rubbish out into burnable and non-burnable. I had to ask her again which bin to use and she politely told me and then explained that it was not that hard. Afterwards she seemed quite eager to talk to me and what she said was nothing short of wonderful. It was as if she had looked into my head and seen my biggest worries and problems and was there to provide a solution. She told me that I need not worry about meeting people and coming out of my room, that everyone was friendly and quite a few people living there have fluent English. This was good advice, but then she gave me the tip off which would have such an effect on my feeling of security and comfortableness in this country. Yan.

Now Yan was the Korean guy I had met yesterday and at that moment he was sitting on the sofa watching television. The Korean girl told me that he was studying English by himself and had been hoping to have a conversation with me. And that was all I needed. She left, I made a sandwich and then sat down next to Yan and started a conversation by saying “good afternoon” in Japanese.

It was hard going at first, for example at one point I pointed at my slipper and asked, “Is this a slipper?” in Japanese, to which he said, “yes”. We struggled through conversations like this, trying to learn each other’s language by sharing what we knew. The television was on at the same time and a news program started talking about the British Japanese teacher who had been murdered by one of her students. You may have heard the story, if not then read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6501991.stm. She was 22, like me, and working for NOVA – a huge language company here. The reporter then started talking from outside Minami Gyotoku station, which is my station so she must have lived very near here too. Rather unnervingly the killer is still on the loose. After the report though they started showing pictures of the murdered girl against very sombre music, which I was totally unprepared for. In the news programmes I am used to when some innocent person gets murdered the news anchors just report the story with frowns and knitted eyebrows but then move on. In Japan, it seems, they spend a whole minute broadcasting a powerpoint presentation of woe. I do have a slightly morbid sense of humour but I think if you had seen it too you also would have wanted to laugh. I managed to restrain myself though, as laughing at a murdered girl is probably the second worse thing you can do in front of someone you have just met. The first worst being trying to eat their hair or something, you can probably think of worse things, why not leave a comment.

After a while he said, “One minute please,” and left. On his return he was holding two books. One was a comic called One-Piece which is about a pirate and I knew about from the anime society at Warwick. From that we had a conversation about Japanese animation and it turned out that he knew another comic called Azumanga. Now, I am happy whenever anyone has seen, and especially likes, Azumanga but when it is someone from a different culture speaking a different language and you realise that you actually have something in common, that is a much more special thing than learning the word for slipper.

His second book was an English story featuring two central protagonists, one by the name of Frog, and the other Toad, you may be familiar with it. He asked me to read it out, so I did, line by line with him repeating and I correcting his pronunciation. Hours passed of little language exercises like this; he even informed me that all the verbs I knew were polite forms not appropriate to talking to friends and peers, then he attempted to teach me the correct forms which involved lots of pen and paper.

I think we both knew when it was time to stop. I went out to buy a frying pan and he started having dinner. But those last few hours had made a tremendous difference to how I felt being here. It was the lack of human company and not talking to people that kept me trapped in my room, but now there was a possible escape from that state of being and I was ever so grateful.

Meeting my neighbours

In the words of Nigella Lawson, “You don’t stand a chance against my revolver.”

But that isn’t important right now.

When I went to university I moved into my room, said goodbye to my parents, unpacked lots of my things, put my computer together, commandeered a shelf in the fridge and hung around for a few hours all before I met anyone else. I sat in my room with the door wide open because some advice somewhere told me it was a good way of meeting people when you first move in. It wasn’t working for me; there was no one around to meet. At some point in the late afternoon however I heard the door to the corridor open and close. I listened like a bat and could tell there was now someone in the kitchen. With a nervous dread of excitement (I know that doesn’t make sense), I went into the kitchen and saw a man on a table. I spluttered out to him, “Hi, I’m Nick,” in as friendly a tone as I could muster. He replied, “Hello, my name is Joe, I’m the maintenance man,” which did perfectly explain why he was both standing on a table and holding a light bulb.

In my present situation though the people are here already and it is I who has been delaying meeting them. At 9:30 in the evening though on my first full day in the country, I went into the kitchen to wash stuff. The kitchen here is next to the large communal lounge, home to sofas, a computer, a television and at that time a head poking up from behind one of the sofas. I washed my things in the kitchen and kept looking through the handy window to see if the head had moved in reaction to me, it hadn’t. I could tell she was a girl but was not sure if she was asleep or just ignoring me. In hindsight though it was the least scary way for me to meet someone, in fact I had to think about how not to scare her with my approach.

I said “hello” from a few feet away, she sat up a bit startled. She was a Japanese girl with a big smile, she said “hello,” back to me and it was then that we both realised that there was a Massive Language Barrier. We struggled through asking each other for names, I have forgotten hers I am ashamed to say no offence to her. We talked about something else and then a guy came in who she immediately spoke to instead, but about me. I heard the Japanese word for American from him, but she corrected by saying that I was English, there was a look of surprise, they don’t get many English around here. The three of us attempted to converse, we talked about the time and Harry Potter. His name is Yan and he is from Korea, we each tried pronouncing “Harry Potter” in Korean, Japanese and English accents.

Three became four when another girl entered who shall remain nameless until I figure out her name. Her English is fluent, she is Japanese but lived in America for 12 years in the hope of getting into film production. She is now working in Tokyo as a web developer and, as with most Japanese people trying to forge their careers, she was working late; she didn’t get home till gone 10pm. She helped me with how to cook my instant noodles (yep it’s the same as everywhere else, pour in boiling water, but you never know) which was Miso flavoured but had bits of meat in that I tried my best to avoid (I am a vegetarian). I spoke to her for quite a while and then she left and I snuck away intending to go back but never did, still it was a good start and it paid off the next day…

My First Day in Japan

I know I have been going on about toilets a lot, urinals especially, but there is still more I have to say. The first Japanese toilet I used was at the airport where I ventured into the first free cubicle of the men’s. On the outside of the door was a neat little sign that managed to quaintly denote a person’s behind having water sprayed on to it. I didn’t let that dissuade me and I carried on as normal. All went well (thanks for asking) until I came to the flushing part. There was an array of buttons on the left hand side of the toilet that seemed to allow you to start a bidet type flow of water and adjust the temperature and flow. There was no leaver where you would expect one and no button on the top of the toilet. Summing up the available evidence I concluded that this wasn’t actually a toilet at all but some kind of personal washing device that I had just violated. Then I twigged to look behind the toilet seat and found the tinniest of flush levers so thankfully I didn’t have to leave the country.

Today was my first full day in Japan and I had to go to Shinjuku to sign the contract for my room. Shinjuku station is so large that it has over 60 exits, but thankfully I had to go next-door to Shinjuku Chome station instead which has a mere 10. In the airport the day before the woman on the phone had asked me what time I would come to see them the next day, I told her 2pm. I left my room at 12 and headed for the station and what followed was not a story of getting lost and confused on but a gratifyingly easy and straightforward trip. There are lots of signs with the English names of the stations, the ticket machines are in English it’s efficient and smooth and that’s why I was an hour early.

When I got out of the station I found myself in a busy little side street to the side of a large main road littered with massive buildings, crowds of people standing on the pavements waiting to cross, huge adverts hanging off buildings and hundreds of flashing lights. CJ we’re not in Stroud anymore.

Oddly enough I was mostly thinking about my shorts. You see it was hot that day and I had decided to wear shorts, but looking around at the multitudes of people, and their accompanying legs, no one had made the same decision. This made me worry that shorts might be frowned upon in Japan; I wondered if my legs could well be offending everyone I was walking past. These thoughts plagued my mind until I saw another person wearing shorts, a westerner admittedly, but their legs made me feel better.

I was also thinking at the time just how alone I was. I didn’t have the courage to go into a department store, or even an arcade. I thought about the different people who could have come with me and I missed them all.

I met Satoshi at 1:55pm. As I entered the office of J&F Plaza accommodation I was suddenly jerked backwards, not by an invisible force, but by my rucksack strap, which had got caught in the door handle. On seeing me all four members of staff wished me good afternoon in Japanese and I told them I had an appointment, while trying to free myself from their door and maintain my dignity. Satoshi and I sat down at a table with a mug of green tea, two pens and lots of pieces of paper. He explained that we were there to draw up a contract and it would be “weird,” I agreed with the last part straight away because I had already moved in and paid a month’s rent.

Satoshi’s style was to go through the contract line by line, which included all the things you can and cannot do. For example, you cannot use your room for business purposes, you must turn off lights and things when you don’t need them, if you leave your kitchen utensils in the kitchen they will be thrown away etc. At the word utensil Satoshi paused, he sounded it out wrongly, apologised for his English and then tried again. This marked the start of the meeting feeling like an English lesson; his head was right down near the page reading slowly and I was sitting there saying, “yes” regularly to reassure him. I didn’t know whether I should have been correcting some of his pronunciation, it didn’t seem like the right thing to do since he was the one in charge so I just waited.

On the way home I did get lost. It was from the station back to my room, though in getting lost I discovered another 99yen shop, this one more specialising in food. I bought a bowel, a fork, knife and a spoon – just the right combination to make a nice clinking noise in my bag as I walked. Getting lost is easy in Japan because they don’t really have street names but they do have lots of identical looking streets. I had walked far enough to be home and was probably just one or two streets away, though I didn’t know which. I ended up walking right back to the station and starting again and have a big circular thing on my heal to show for it, don’t worry I won’t.

My Room

Once I arrived a nice lady called Masako gave me a room, a small guided tour and then charged me 60,000 yen. This is a month’s rent and is about £260 - frankly a bargain. This is my room.

So going clockwise I have a small desk and a wheely chair. There’s an internet port at the end of that blue wire. Then we have the window, which looks out onto some kind of playground for a massive block of flats opposite. Then there is the bed and below it a small fridge. Also note the slippers which come with the room (I’m not joking) I also have a tray in the kitchen to put my things and a shoe cupboard near the front door.

Here is my room from the other side.

Yep, a big blurry wardrobe. You might have thought it was just my camera but no it actually looks like that. Thinking about it now it’s an alarmingly similar wardrobe to the scary one in The Grudge which was set somewhere in Japan. God that’s my wardrobe and the return of Godzilla to worry about.

Also on the tour, though no pictures because I am too scared to leave my room, there is the bathroom. It contains two cubicles, two urinals, one sink and is unisex. In Japan it seems they have this set up; women are supposed to walk past men using the urinals pretending they don’t notice, which is coincidentally the same as how men are supposed to react to other men using urinals.

Up next is the room with two washing machines (not free), a dryer, 2 sinks and 3 showers. Then there is a communal area with sofas, a kitchen and a rather nice television.

On arrival in my room I unpacked what I could, then braved a shower. I have marks from my rucksack strap on my shoulders, I would take a picture to illustrate but I don’t want mum to worry (Hi mum if you are reading this, weldone on finding my blog, hope you had a nice time in Athens and the pheasants are ok, could you check my post please I should be expecting something from the bank, thanks.)

Fooling my tiredness I took a short nap, then went out into the night (7pm) looking for food, kitchen utensils and shaving foam. Right opposite where I am living is a 7/11 convenience store where I nearly bought a box of tissues with a cat on but then thought I might be able to survive on free tissues if I kept using the subway. A long way down the street I found a place called Shop 99 and I can’t actually believe how long it took me to realise that everything in the shop cost 99yen. I have long been a fan of the 99p shop but this was like a 43p shop! Can you imagine? So what did I buy, well here is my receipt.

Yep, so a set of 5 coathangers, 6 chopsticks, a plate, a glass and some water. Next I went to a pharmacy and got some shaving foam and that’s about it. I got home and went to sleep around 9pm. I woke up at 3AM looking at an orangey condom that had been pushed into the blanket and had escaped my vision before I went to bed. Turned out not to exist though, it was just the big flower pattern on the material.

With David Mitchell in hand I went back to sleep and woke up at 10:30 to the sound of my alarm clock and a bird outside that I’ve never heard before. The sun was shining, it was 22C and I had to go to Shinjuku, but that is another story.

Getting to the Gaijin House

So I had to catch a train from Narita to Keisei Funabashi, then walk to Funapashi station and catch a subway train to Nishi Funopashi then another one to Minami Gyotoku. In other words, ie a picture....

So off I set down the stairs to the train platform where I used my instructions to ask for a ticket. About 10 minutes later I was on a train and going through dark tunnels. It didn’t take long before those tunnels gave way to grassy banks on both sides of the track and then a moment later there was actual landscape. The windows showed me small fields and scattered trees, roads and powerlines. Then the buildings came; scarce at first but then forming towns and suburbs.

Looking inside the train however made me feel nervous, I think it was the sour faces of the commuters and the mass of confusing kanji on the posters hanging from the ceiling. I felt very tired and very alone. Then (yes something dramatic happened) I heard a noise, kind of like an electronic bell warning of our approaching train to the outside world. It is a noise unique to Japan but one I have heard countless times before in anime and Japanese films. Hearing it made me enormously happy because for the first time during my trip so far I felt that it was worth coming, that noise alone helped me conquer my fear - for a few minutes at least. Mostly my thoughts were “God I’m tired, must keep going though.”

At Keisie Funabashi station I got off the train and looked left and right for some sign of where I was meant to go. People were going down the escalators so I decided to follow them. At the bottom were 3 different unappealing directions to choose from. I stood between them fumbling in my bag for something to help me, I can’t think what now. Credit to the Japanese people I had only been standing like a lost tourist for less than 20 seconds before a young Japanese couple came asked me if they could help.

My God could they help, they walked me to the next station, took the next train with me (it was on their way, or so they said), they showed me how to use the ticket vending machines and before we parted wrote down which platform, time and how many stations before I had to get off till I reached my destination. She was called Mana (or something like that) and was a photography assistant, I cannot recall his name but he had just come back from backpacking in Mexico. When I thanked him in Japanese he said something like “Yeah, yeah, whatever, we Japanese like to help,” as if my thanks were meaningless as well as unnecessary. When I had a second I sneakily placed two Ferrero rocher chocolates I happened to have on top of one of their bags. I think he knew I was doing it but didn’t say anything, when we said goodbye I had to rush through the barrier. When I turned to wave to them they were standing together like parents waving off their child; her hand on his shoulder and his right hand holding two gold wrapped chocolates.

I got off at Gyotoku then immediately back on when I figured out it was the next station I needed. I got off at Minami Gyotoku (see my confusion?) and walked out the exit and down some stairs. My reward for this was a free packet of tissues given to me by somebody giving out free packets of tissues for a promotional reason I will never understand (it’s all in Japanese). I pulled out my map and walked and walked and walked. With a little help from another Japanese stranger, I finally found where I was staying, hallelujah.

My trip to Japan

So it all began on the 27th of March when I woke up at 4:15AM remembering that I had something to do today.

6 hours, 1 sandwich, half a packet of chocolate buttons and 3 emotional goodbyes later I was sitting on a plane bound for Copenhagen. I got a window seat sitting next to no one, who themselves was sitting next to a large man with an earing who didn't move throughout the whole journey. That flight was great; I had lots of legroom and managed to sleep. Touching down in Copenhagen it emerged that the connecting flight was going to be 3 hours late because of an "illegal dispute" (though I think she meant to say "a legal") between fuel companies. So I had to hang around in Copenhagen airport, which had a glistening array of shops, which I couldn’t get to because I was on a connecting flight. There was, to keep me entertained, several chairs and Number 9 Dream by David Mitchell. I did also have a phone card which I tried to use in the public telephone but when I looked down the list of countries to call from I realised that I actually didn’t know where Copenhagen was, which meant I didn’t really know where I was. The answer, as you probably know, is Denmark.

The flight from Copenhagen to Tokyo takes 10 hours and 50 minutes, I was hoping it might be quicker since the plane was late and the pilot might know a shortcut to make up for lost time. No such luck. This time I was sitting next to an oldish Japanese man who kept nudging me when he was asleep and was so short that he had to stand on his chair’s armrest to reach the overhead lockers. To my right was another Japanese man who had been studying for his PHD in Manchester for a few years; it was on polymers or something. He was the kind of guy who had lots to say about himself and that was it. He was a bit nervous because he hadn’t been back home in 4 years, I who was travelling on my own to a country I had never been before and didn’t speak the language had little sympathy, well a bit. I watched the end of The Prestige, the middle of Stranger than Fiction and most of The Truman Show which is a great film but there’s a bit where he is in a travel agents and there is a large poster warning of the dangers of flying by plane. It shows a plane being struck by lightning and says boldly “It could happen to you,” slightly unsettling that was.

I managed to sleep for about two hours, but I find it so hard on planes; they should give out tranquillisers along with grape juice. Oh wait they do, it’s called wine.

‘If you have ever landed at Narita airport as a foreigner you’ll have noticed a very long line for immigration. At the end of the line is a Japanese teenager sitting behind a desk who told me that I was only allowed to stay for 3 months, I didn’t want to argue that I was sure it was 6 months, could be a bit of a problem that. But on the plus side I have another stamp in my passport J

Once I was free and reunited with my big red rucksack which is so ugly that no one would ever steal it, I had to work out how to get to the Gaijin House (accommodation for foreigners) that I was staying in. I knew that it was in Matsudo and that there was an airport bus called a limousine service. I found the desk that said airport limousine and asked them, they said go to the next counter. At the next counter they sold me a ticket, told me where and when it would come and smiled politely. Next I had to phone the people at the house to tell them that I had arrived. This meant using the phone card again and though I knew which country I was in this time I couldn’t get the number right. I found the tourist info desk and a friendly lady with wonderful teeth told me to try without one of the zeros, and she was right. I dialled the number and spoke to whoever it was that answered, I told her that I had arrived and bought a bus ticket to Matsudo, to which she replied “Why? You are staying in Minami Gyotuku.”

I went back to the woman with wonderful teeth and told her my problem. She looked alarmed when I said where I was actually staying and had to reach for a special map and told me to come back in a minute. I managed to get a full refund on my useless bus ticket and returned to her. Instead of just being able to get on a direct bus I now had to get a train, then 2 subway trains to get there. She wrote out all the station names, the times of the trains and all in English as well as Japanese so that I would definitely not get lost. I knew she had no faith in me; maybe it was my teeth.