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.