This is something I wrote during my first week after arriving in Japan! (so August 5th is the date I actually wrote this) I have been saving it on a word file, just in case I ever got the chance to start a blog. It was so funny to read this again! My how things have changed. What my experience is really like now will be coming soon!
Ohayo Tokyo!
The Keio Plaza Hotel
Day 1 Tokyo
After a 14-hour plane ride including many hours of conversation with a missionary, 2 critically acclaimed movies (8 below and failure to launch), and some “really great” plane food, I arrived at the Narita airport! Upon arrival we were corralled out of the airport and boarded onto buses that lead us into Shinjuku Tokyo. The Keio Plaza really was a nice place to stay, however, when you put 1500 people in any hotel it tends to have some negative affects on the functioning of the elevator system, it was quite unfortunate, trust me.
In hopes of finding my two friends whom had come with me on this adventure, I headed down to the lobby. Only to find that oh some 500 other people had tried the same thing. I must have looked quite lost and I heard this girl in a thick (what I thought to be Australian accent) ask me who I was looking for. I thought that was quite funny since I’m sure she would be a lot of help. I told her that my friends must have gone to bed. She was like why don’t you hang out with us?? Me being the number 1 party girl that I am readily agreed. Turns out that it wasn’t it an Australian accent, but a New Zealand one. So I met 6 other kiwis and 3 of their native Japanese friends and we headed out into Tokyo. It was so lovely. I spend most of my time talking with this guy named Aaron. He was so wicked. (Some kiwi slang that he thought I should start using.) The Japanese friends then took us to a little restaurant that had a cute private downstairs room. So we drank a lot of Japanese beer and ate more food than I would have thought possible. It also turned out that none of us actually knew each other!haha. Most of the kiwis had never met before and they had just met the Japanese folks that night. Needless to say, we were having a fabulous time. They all assured me that kiwis were where it was at and if anyone knew how to have a good time, it was them. After closing down the restaurant we headed back to the hotel only to realize that we all wanted to stay out longer.ha. So we headed over to Karaoke! All 10 of us crammed into a small booth and sang such crowd favorites as foo fighters, oasis, extreme and kelis – milkshake. So although I think the kiwis had some apprehension about hanging out with an “American” after I stood on the table and shook my moneymaker to milkshake, they were all about hanging out with me. So I ended my first night in Tokyo at about 3am after not sleeping since 4 am the day before. It was a wicked time.
Day 2 Tokyo
The next day my roommate, whom I did not know, woke me up at 6am. (Which I now appreciate. ha) We got up and watched some Japanese children’s programming and repeated once again “wow, we’re in fucking Japan.,” as we starred out at the vast expanse of Tokyo from the 20th floor of the Keio Plaza. My kiwis called my room for breakfast and after meeting up we started our LONG day of meetings and presentations. How fun, business attire, thank god I bought the while suit with the plum pinstripes. That’s right, white and plum. Some of the presentations were quite redundant, but some got me pretty geeked to start teaching again! I guess I didn’t realize just how few people in Japan speak English. Hardly anyone I have met so far speaks ANY English. So the main aim of the JET programme is to get an English speaker in the classroom who can motivate students to want to learn English. The Japanese teachers most likely know much more about English grammar than I (or is that supposed to me??ha) however, many times lack the ability to make it fun and interesting. So my job as the Assistant Language Teacher is to not only help students learn English, but to be a role model and ambassador for the American way of life. A task that seems a smidge daunting. However, the job sounds like so much fun and I really cannot wait to be in the classroom!
After a long day of sessions we had to have a semi-formal gathering. Woo. Woohoo. Woo. Thankfully they had lots of beer at this soiree. So I made some awkward conversation for an hour and continued to down glasses of beer and watered down whiskey. My prefectural group (or people who are all in Chiba-ken) went out for a get together! It was fabulous we went to a beer garden on top a shopping mall complex (which I found out is a quite common location for them in the summer months.) I met a few JETs who were going to be second years in the area and they seemed like a whole lot of fun. So after a few more beers I stumbled back to the keio plaza with this girl from france.haha. After arriving I found a friend that I had met earlier in the week and she wanted to go out. Once again, being number 1 party girl, how could I turn down such an offer??haha. We wandered the streets of Shinjuku for a while until I saw it. A casino in Tokyo! I couldn’t have been more pleased, if you know me, you know how happy this must have made me.
So I sit down at a machine, put in 1000 yen and out comes hundreds of what look like silver marbles or ball bearings. Humm. My friend and I look at each other in bewilderment. A man comes over – seeing my obvious confusion. He tries to explain to me using mostly hand signals how to play. You twist a knob and it sucks up these ball bearings and if it lands the right slot you win! Well, I won all right. So the man helps me cash out my machine and puts me in this line to wait for my “winnings.” So I’m watching ahead of me and people are getting things, not money in return. I then became nervous because my limited Japanese language ability does not allow me to ask questions. So I just walk up and hand the woman my ticket and I get back 2 small boxes of Calories Mate (food supplement)
It was very strange, but you know what, I loved it. I have now found out that this “slot machine” I was playing was called pachinko. It is the loudest game in the whole world. The combination of the thumping music and ball bearings flying through a 100 machines is deafening. However, It turns out things are never too different from home, I saw no one smiling while they played the slots.hah.
Day 3 Tokyo
This was another day devoted to sessions and presentations. The sessions today were more practical. We got to talk about actual stuff that goes in the classroom and sessions about not knowing any Japanese, making Japanese friends, and community involvement. By the time 5pm rolled around I was happy to get back to my room. When I walked in the door my roommate was on the phone and stops quick and says, “let me ask her. Hey molly do want to go dinner with this friend of a friend?” I was like sure. Why not. Then I commented on how funny it is that we don’t know each other and we are going out to meet a guy that she doesn’t actually know. I figured it would be a match made in heaven. On our walk down to the lobby I learned that my roommate was 29 and a little bit more menial stuff about her life. We met up with this guy named matt who turned out to be awesome! He had been living in Tokyo for 4 years being an engineer for a TV chip place. So he took us out to this great restaurant that pretty much sold exclusively fried pork (tonkatsu) The nice thing about Japan is that the fried food is never as gross as it is in the US. It actually turned out to be a really great time and we all exchanged numbers and contact info and went back to the hotel. As I was sitting the room someone knocks on the door and my roommate figured it must be for me since I was sooo popular.haha. This girl is at the door and she was like hi, umm…do you want to go to dinner with me? I actually didn’t even know her name she just lived down the hall from me and we had been making small talk. Turns out she didn’t know mine either!haha. But she was just so cute. So I agreed and went back out to the streets of Shinjuku to find a place to eat. This was quite an adventure since it was my first meal out without a Japanese speaker. I am able so say polite things in Japanese like “Domo Arigato” and “sumimasen”, but not much else. Thankfully there are lots of menu pictures. This girl turned out to be named Marie and was 28. She was awesome! She was such a great person and I took her out to play pachinko with me again. We then found an arcade with ridiculous little prizes. So after spending oh, 2000 yen, I had a monkey mirror, a squishy octopus and 4 spongy cookie things to show for it. It think I made out quite well. We then found these games that used tokens and pushed off more tokens. So we started playing and I won a whole cup! So I tried to go cash them in. It turns out in Japan they are not as focused on the winning as we Americans are. They told me, or I inferred, that the token were just for playing. If you won lots of tokens you could just play more. What is that all about? So tapped a Japanese lady on the back and handed her my cup, she seemed happy. At least I had my monkey mirror.
