Home sweet home

It is hard for me to believe that I’ve been in Japan for only a week. It feels like much longer, probably because I’ve moved around so much in that time (from the hotel in Tokyo to a hotel in Sendai to my apartment) and because days seem longer when jetlag wakes you at 5 am every day.

The shinkansen (bullet train) was less frightening than I was expecting -- it doesn’t feel like you are going that fast. It felt pretty much like a standard train, really. When we got to Sendai, they put us up in a downtown hotel and took us to a nomihodai (all-you-can-drink-and-eat for two hours; one of the more genki of our number refers to it as a nomi-hoedown) to meet the new JETs who arrived last week and the veterans. It was at the rooftop beer garden that I discovered that Japan has cockroaches every bit as large and creepy in Florida. I had seriously been hoping that I had left cockroaches behind me.

In the morning, they had a welcoming ceremony with our supervisors and accountants from the schools, at which we all had to introduce ourselves in Japanese. Then we were sent off with them to get our Alien Registration cards, bank accounts, cell phones, apartments, etc. For those of us who don’t speak Japanese, we are almost completely helpless. I was very grateful for the superhuman patience of my supervisors with their brand-new 22-year-old infant.

Today I decided to try to be a little less helpless, and went wandering about the town in search of tape (to get my pictures up on the walls) and matches (to try to get my gas stove working). I found them both at a drugstore which happened to be next to a hyaku-en (100 yen, therefore $1) store. There are no words for how excited I was at this discovery. If you haven’t lived abroad, you might not be able to understand the confusion and powerlessness that comes with not being able to read anything around you, nor the sense of accomplishment when you manage the simplest of tasks, such as locating a store or speaking to a clerk in a way that doesn’t make them laugh or look at you strangely.

Not to mention the excitement of a store where almost everything was made in China and intended for North America, and so the packaging is in English. I was a kid in a candy store. Perhaps most importantly, I found a charm for my new cell phone, which is bright purple and now adorned with a beaded grape bunch. Cell phone charms don’t seem to have reached across the Pacific, but they are huge here. Everyone I see (regardless of age and gender) has at least one and usually many dangling and often ringing or chiming. I broke the rules a little -- they are supposed to be souvenirs from a trip, or at least a collection with some theme or other -- but my phone seemed so naked without one.

Besides, I think my collection is going to be of products with Japlish on them. Apparently, they think English is cool and it doesn’t matter whether or not it makes sense. My purchases so far:
nail clippers with a picture of a little church and “I want to sing with a romantic scene. It perfectly fits my private time.”
socks whose packaging reads: “Rousing: Modern woman just like you would enjoy an active life. Please enjoy this comfortable fit for your delightful urbane living.”
a coin purse: “Favric case: I will pack it with a wonderful memory.”

I am also still collecting quotes. The best from Tokyo Orientation --
Presenter A: As soon as you sniffle or cough, it’ll be like: “Oh, no, the foreigner’s sick!”
Presenter B: We’re an expensive machine that they don’t know how to work.”

Japanese minister: “I’m so nervous my body feels as tight as jeans taken from the dryer… people would rather die than speak in public.”
“You don’t need to see your mom sausaged in pink spandex working out…it’s a big turnoff for me, anyway”
“Remember symphony orchestras: if you have only conductors, the only music you get is belch, burp, and occasionally fart.”