Today I had my first Japanese lesson. I think I picked the right level, at least as far as the speaking/listening bit is concerned. Probably the reading/writing part will be a bit too easy for me, but I don't think I could've gone a level higher either. The teacher was nice, but apparently we'll have a different teacher depending on the weekday (since the class is three days per week, that means three teachers). This was the "Friday" teacher. There's quite a large number of students in the class, no one I know though. I do hope they'll pick up the pace a little; today was very slow.
The classes are at the Hongo campus, and I also had to pick up some papers from the office of the faculty of Engineering while I was there. Since I had to wait until the office opened, I had some time to kill which I used to take some pictures. Hongo is simply huge; it takes more than five minutes walking to get from one side to the other.
There's also a few pictures from Shinjuku which I took on Wednesday.
I think Dr. McCoy said it best in Star Trek 4: "The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the Universe". The Japanese definitely seem to have taken it to an art form. In the past few days, I had to fill out more forms than I think in my entire prior life (ok, probably not really, but you get the point).
Forms for the dormitory, for alien registration, for health insurance, for the University, for the internet account, for the Japanese courses... it's gotten so bad I pretty much know how to write my own address by heart. In Kanji.
But at least it's almost over. I think there's just one more major form-signage session coming up, which should be for a mobile phone. Unfortunately Dutch mobile phones don't work here at all, so mine is currently serving as a glorified alarm clock. I've been given two different explanations for this; the first is that the networks in Japan all use 3G, so regular GSM phones don't work, and the second is that foreign providers are banned from the Japanese network. I don't know which is true; it might be both. At least all the phones I've seen in shops are 3G.
Not having a mobile (or "keitai" as the Japanese call them) is a bit of a bother since I also don't have a phone on my room or anything so the only way for people to contact me is by e-mail or postal mail.
Yesterday I signed up for the Japanese courses. I just barely made it to the sign-up office in time because I got lost on the Hongo campus. It's just huge. According to the placement tests I'm level "pre-3", which is what I signed up for. I hope that's okay since the test was just a simple "if you can read this, you can enter level X", and my reading skills are better than my conversation skills. But we'll see; worst case I'll have to work a bit harder the first few weeks. The classes are three times a week at the Hongo campus, which is about one hour travel from here. Fortunately the classes start at 13:10 so I can avoid the morning rush hour.
All this travel is getting quite expensive though. At least when I get a bike I'll be able to get rid of the bus fare everyday. As for the rest, I wonder if they have something like a monthly pass (this is however made more difficult by all the different railway companies in Japan). If not, I'll just have to deal with it. In that case I should at least get a "pasmo", a new type of electronic, rechargable ticket that works for almost all trains and buses. It's not cheaper, but at least it would be easier.
It’s now my third day in Japan, and finally I have enough time to write a decent blog post.
Last Wednesday I got up at 5:30 in the morning, and my parents and I left for Schiphol Airport at around 6:30. Fortunately traffic was not too bad, and we arrived at Schiphol shortly before eight. There I picked up my tickets (which apparently really costs €4800 for a one way ticket as I had previously seen on the web; why they don’t just buy a round trip (which is only about €1000) is beyond me) and met up with Vincent, the other Dutch MEXT student who was leaving that day. After saying goodbye to my parents and a few friends who were there as well I went through security, and at around 10:10 we boarded the plane to Frankfurt.
Thanks to strong winds at Frankfurt, the flight was around thirty minutes late, but we were still well in time for the connecting flight (especially since that one was delayed as well; apparently they had to close a runway because of the wind). As I had feared I wasn’t able to sleep in the plane, despite trying to, so when we arrived at Tokyo eleven hours later (around 8:30 local time, 45 minutes later than planned) I was thoroughly tired. Unfortunately, I wasn’t about to get any rest.
The first thing we had to do at Narita was go through customs, which took a long time. Because almost every European MEXT student was on that flight there were a lot of foreigners, and they were very thorough, and because I was at the back of the plane I was also at the back of the line. It took maybe two hours before we were finally finished. Then we had to wait for transportation. It was complete chaos as nobody really seemed to know what we were supposed to do. I hadn’t really expected the Japanese to organize things so badly. For me this was especially aggravating because I had to meet my “tutor” from Tokyo University at noon, and had no way to contact him about it.
Eventually, everybody had registered, and we went by shuttle bus to the Tokyo City Air Terminal in central Tokyo, and from there with a taxi to the international house. By then I was about 90 minutes late for my appointment. Turns out the poor guy was waiting for me. Because I was so late (and understandably very tired; I was awake for about 25 hours by then) we decided to cut short our plans a bit and only went to Hongo campus (the main campus) where I had to fill out some forms at the Office of International Relations. We couldn’t finish some stuff because I don’t have an Alien Registration Card yet, so I’m going back on Monday, which is also when I will first go to Kitsuregawa Lab. Hopefully I will also find out when the Japanese language courses will start, the lack of information about some stuff is really driving me nuts.
After having dinner with my tutor (I still can’t quite get the hang of eating with “hashi” (chopsticks), but it’s getting better) I returned to the international house and pretty much went to sleep immediately. I had a pretty rough night; although initially I didn’t have any trouble falling asleep (and that’s not surprising since I was awake for 32 hours by then), I woke up at about 2:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep, mainly because of the rock-hard pillow. After switching to using a towel for a pillow (after eleven years of being a boy scout you learn to be creative with your sleeping arrangements) I managed to sleep again until 9:00.
The next morning at 10:00 we had a brief orientation meeting, followed by filling in more forms for the never-ending bureaucratic processes here in Japan. Forms for the house, alien registration and health insurance all had to be filled out. We also got a brief tour of the house, including facilities such as the library and the gym. Then we went to the Setagaya administrative office to deliver the forms. It’ll take about three weeks before I get the alien registration card but I did get a written certificate that I can use in the mean time.
After that we returned to the international house, and together with two Italians who had also arrived the day before I went to find the other station (there are two near the house). There was a very nice shopping street there as well so we browsed around a bit there, and then ate at a take-away for only 210 yen (around €1.30, really cheap). I don’t remember what it was called but it was some kind of omelet-type-thingy and it was very good. Then we stopped at “Mister Donuts” for desert which you see a lot around here; it’s kind of like Dunkin’ Donuts. One of the Italians was apparently a pretty big fan of “Mister Donuts” and insisted we went there. :-) After coming back I briefly checked my mail, and then went to bed.
Today I didn’t do much. I slept in late, ate something and talked with a few French guys and an Irish guy. Then I went to Shinjuku and walked around a bit, browsing the shops. Shinjuku really is the way I imagined Tokyo to be: bright, noisy and crowded. The train station alone is so big that the train line from my house has two stops there (yes, two different stops at the same station)! There’s an electronics store there called Yodobashi Camera where they sell everything. The closest equivalent in the Netherlands would be something like Mediamarkt, but this is about five times bigger and fifty times more crowded. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera but I’m sure I’ll go there again sometime in the next two years. ;-)
And now I’m writing this blog post. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do tomorrow. There’s apparently a flea market here at the international house where I should be able to pick up some stuff for my room, and then there’s the guy from the NTT of course, but after that I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go to Shinjuku again, or maybe Akihabara, or perhaps something else will present itself.
In any case, so far it’s been pretty good. The jetlag hasn’t been too bad after the first day, and so far the culture shock hasn’t been too bad. Mostly people are just incredibly polite. For example, no matter how packed the trains are (and they can be very packed, much more so than Dutch trains) they always queue up neatly in front of the entrance, and enter orderly without any pushing at all, quite unlike the way it’s done in the Netherlands. One thing that I hadn’t anticipated is that it gets dark here very early, around six (compared to after eight in the Netherlands). This is because it’s much more southern than the Netherlands and because there’s no Daylight Saving Time.
The only annoying thing, as I said, is a lack of information about some things relating to the University. But I’m sure that will improve next week.
Today is my last day in the Netherlands. Everything appears to be set: I've got everything I need, I finished all the work I needed to do here, and I've started packing. I can only hope I haven't forgotten anything.
With the exception of some holiday trips or things like that, I won't be coming back here for two years, which is just really weird. I still can't quite believe it, and I must admit I'm getting a bit nervous. After all, it's not everyday you emigrate to the other side of the world.
For those of you who are interested, here's the flight details. I'm flying Lufthansa from Amsterdam Schiphol to Tokyo Narita, via Frankfurt:
Lufthansa LH 4673
Departure Amsterdam Schiphol: 10:40, April 4th
Arrival Frankfurt International: 11:50, April 4th
Flying time: 1:10
Aircraft: Airbus A319
Lufthansa LH 710
Departure Frankfurt International: 13:50, April 4th
Arrival Tokyo Narita: 07:45, April 5th
Flying time: 10:55
Aircraft: Boeing 747-400
I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again; I've been told it can take two to three weeks before you can get Internet on your room in the international house. But there's apparently also a wireless network in the public rooms you can use, so I do expect to post well before that.
So the next time I post here, it'll be from Japan. :)
PS: If you posted a comment here in the past few days but it hasn't shown up, try again. There was a problem with posting comments that had to do with the URL rewriting I use for the posts. It should be fixed now.
Not too long ago, when someone was going to some place he hadn't been before, you would have a map, and on that map there'd be a big blank spot where you were going and possible the text "here be dragons". Okay, maybe that's a little longer ago.
Nowadays things are slightly easier. Not only did I get a map of Tokyo from the people at the Embassy last Tuesday, which conveniently doesn't actually contain my new home (Tokyo is just too damn big), we also have the power of the Internet.
So I went and created a nice little map that holds some of the important places for me (the pushpins are probably not all at exactly the right place, but they should be close at least. Number 1 is the international house where I'll live, number 2 is the research lab at the University of Tokyo where I'll work. Number 3 is the University's main campus. I'm not sure I'll be there very often; likely I'll have to go there for some administrative stuff (like registration) but after that I'm not sure. It's possible the Japanese courses I will get will be there, but I don't know. Number 4 is the Japan-Netherlands Institute; there's a possibility I'll get a job as a Dutch teacher there. Number 5 is the world headquarters of Aikido, arguably the most important Aikido dojo there is. If my schedule (and my injuries) allows it, I hope to train there. And number 6 is the airport where I'll arrive, which is quite a ways outside Tokyo as you can see. Fortunately I'll get a free taxi from the airport to my dormitory.
On a related note, some of you may be thinking "why isn't he using Google Maps? That's blasphemy!"
It's true that Google Maps has much better satellite/aerial images for many places (for instance Narita airport. But for most of Tokyo, Live Local is on par, and I do like the features of Live Local better. For instance it's not possible to just create a collection of pushpins and share them like I just did with Google Maps.
Also, see if you can spot the baseball fields around the international house. There's quite a few of them!
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