It's about time for a blog update I think!
I've now been living in Japan for nearly two and half months! I really like it here, even though I live in the city. I'm a country boy; I'm not at all a fan of cities. But it is safe and clean, and being a foreigner in Japan means that, except for on the trains during rush hour (and in women's clothes shops, as I have discovered), people keep their distance a little bit, so one rarely feels too crowded.
I arrived in Japan on March 20th. I'm on a working holiday visa currently, which means I can stay for up to a year.
Initially I had to stay in a dormitory in Harajuku (south-west Tokyo) because the guesthouse I was scheduled to move in to wasn't ready yet. The dormitory was newly opened – for the first four days I was the only person living there. It is located just off a famous and fashionable shopping street called Takeshita Street; the sort of place many young people visit. It was unbelievably crowded! A definite baptism of fire for me. At busy times it could easily take five or more minutes to get to the convenience store (when not so busy, it'd take a few tens of seconds).
It was possible to escape the crowds, though, as just by the train station is the large Meiji-Jingumae temple. It has gardens and woods around it. A nice place to relax a little and forget you're in a megalopolis for a while. I watched a crow perched nearby on a branch over a stream from a humped bridge. It felt so totally Japanese!
Harajuku was pretty noisy, but interesting in a 'glad I'm not staying here too long' sort of way.
After the first four days on my own, a Japanese guy moved in to the dormitory. He was a really good guy. We spent many times talking as best we could until the early hours. We also went out to eat a few times – he often very generously paid for me. We had tonkatsu (battered pork) at a nice place on Takeshita Street, we went for burgers at a famous place in Shibuya (I lost their business card though), and we also went for ramen, which is always good (well, nearly always).
Two people in that dormitory was enough, but it can sleep four. After about a week another Japanese guy moved in. I didn't really see anything of him at all. A few days later, I moved on to the next place. I'm glad I didn't have to deal with more people in that room than there was. It was too small for four, and it wouldn't have been fun for me at all!
On the 2nd of April I moved to north (kita) Ikebukuro (north-west Tokyo), to a brand new guesthouse in a quiet residential area (quiet but for the fact that it is right by the train line).
It was very difficult at first, because all of the amenities which had been so close in Harajuku were suddenly much further away, and the house itself had only the very very basics – no internet, no TV, no kettle(!). At this point I had already been suffering through not having the internet whilst in Harajuku too.
I wasn't at all happy.
Thankfully those problems were corrected fairly quickly. I was definitely relieved to have internet access again!
There I lived with an American guy, a Japanese guy, and a Chinese guy – as it was a new house it wasn't by any means full. I didn't see a lot of the Japanese guy, as he was a typical Japanese worker, so he was working all the time. I saw plenty of the American guy :p He was hoping to get work in Japan and be able to stay for a long time. Unfortunately it didn't work out for him, and he had to go home.
The Chinese guy was a young guy studying Japanese in preparation to enter the Japanese university system. He gave me lots of strange food. I ate duck's tongue! Yeah, it's about as pleasant an experience as you'd expect. Imagine French kissing a duck and you should have a pretty good idea. I learnt something though: ducks have bones in their tongue! Amazing.
I went into the centre of Ikebukuro a few times. I didn't like it much. It's like a big city, and for me high-rise buldings etc. are very intimidating. I preferred it out in the narrow streets of Kita-Ikebukuro.
While I was there I met with one of my Japanese friends from the internet, and her husband. That was really great! Wonderful people. We went and had dinner and drinks at an izakaya, which is a place similar to a pub, but where food is eaten very casually and shared, and then we went to a whisky bar.
One of the days my house mates and I went to the local ramen shop for lunch. It was a strange place. The stove was covered in really thick, burnt-on crud. None of us could read the menu, so we just chose randomly. The American guy had something that turned out to be really hot. It knocked him sideways. He slept right through the whole of the rest of the day. I had something that was pretty mild (I had the same thing at a different ramen shop last night in fact, but I can't remember what it's called . . . ), and the following day, I could barely stay awake. I spent most of the day sleeping and feeling generally terrible. Then I got symptoms of having a stomach bug for a few days. I think that ramen shop wasn't a good place to eat. I never went back.
On May 1st I finally moved to the guesthouse I'm in currently – the place where I wanted to live from the beginning. I have a very good friend who lives very nearby, and I wanted to be close to her. Unfortunately, since she met me at the airport, I've not been able to see her again, as she has injured her back. I'm very worried about her, because it has been a long time since I heard from her; it must be pretty serious . . .
So this guesthouse is to the east of Tokyo, just outside the main part of the city, in a place called Ichikawa. I was initially very nervous about moving here, as it was the first established place I was moving to, and I was concerned about fitting in with the people and the lifestyle. But I needn't have worried. To a person, everybody here is fantastic. It's like a big family!
Most of my house mates here are Japanese, which is great – I specifically chose this company because they don't have a 'foreigners only' policy like some other places do. After all, I'm not in Japan to spend all my time with other foreigners!
This guesthouse is in a nice quiet residential area, with lots of amenities nearby. It's a really nice house too. There are three floors, with a total of nine rooms. I live on the top floor, where there are two other rooms. I live next to a lovely Japanese girl, H-san, who is just about the most splendid neighbour one could ask for. She helps me a lot, and I've been fortunate enough to be able to help her with a few things too. Across the hall lives a half-German, half-American guy, F, who is a good guy. He's doing the same thing I am, being here on a working holiday visa.
Of the others, there are five Japanese, one Canadian, and a Brazilian (who is of Japanese descent, so I totally assumed she was Japanese . . . I only found out the other night she's not. Oops!)
We often have parties, which are really good fun! Simple affairs: food, drink, and (usually highly amusing) conversation. It's not at all 'studenty' here, which was one of my fears. It's a much more mature environment than I remember from my shared-house days at university. I'm glad, because, although I enjoyed it, I wouldn't want to repeat it.
A few weeks ago I went shopping with H-san. She, er, didn't tell me beforehand that it was women's clothes shopping . . . I really didn't mind at all, though. Who would? She's excellent company, and I learnt a little about Japanese culture too. (Women shopping in Japan seem to be just as ruthless as women shopping in the west! And yes, Japanese women also appear to be compelled to go around every shop twice, change their mind uncountable times, and end up buying what they wanted from the very first shop they went to^^) I also found that in Japan, Ikea sells cheese! Most easily available cheese in Japan seems to be both expensive and rubbish. If Ikea weren't so far, it'd definitely be where I'd satisfy my need for cheese!
An interesting note: The other night Spirited Away was on TV. It was the third time I've seen it, but this time all of the things that seemed so foreign and exotic before felt astonishingly familiar. It is interesting, though, how before coming to Japan I thought it was going to be entirely alien here, but it's not really so different. Most of the things you see on TV about Japan are more the extremes. Life here feels remarkably ordinary to me.
Or, perhaps I've just got used to it . . .
Illustration, Proofreading
