*** Just to apologise for the lack of photos, my computer isn't being cooperative in letting me post them. I'll try and sort it as soon as possible.
So here is my first blog post, finally having arrived in
Japan. I’ve been here less than a week, but I feel I have so much to say as
everything is so overwhelming. So for now I’m just going to focus on Tokyo
orientation. In a strange way, it seems like time has passed both quickly and
slowly. Whenever I look at my watch it feels like it’s sneakily jumped ahead a
few hours because I’ve been doing too much. But at the same time, it feels like
years ago that I was at Edinburgh airport because of how much has been packed
in this last week
Just over a week ago I was stressed out, running around
Edinburgh saying my goodbyes. It was a sad time to leave, given that the
festival was just revving up. I kept getting excited over this despite the fact
that logically I knew I wouldn’t be here to see it.
Anyway, I digress. The plane journey was fairly hellish, in
terms of the fact that it was 12 hours long (not including the flight to London
and the waiting in between) and I was unable to sleep for more than about 10
minutes at a time. When I arrived in Tokyo that day I felt like the whole world
was swaying. This swaying feeling only added to the feeling that I was
dreaming. It’s strange how we step into an airplane, step out however long
later and we’re in a new place. Have you ever stopped to wonder that it’s just
a simulator and we’re actually the star of our own Truman Show (great film that
is worth a watch if you’re never seen it before)?
So moving on from strange philosophical, Matrix-like
questions, the hotel was pretty damn sweet. I’m kicking myself now for not
having taken a picture of all the chandeliers hanging in the entrance and
dining rooms, but it was pretty frickin’ sweet.
Also, only in Japan does the toilet have a remote control. It
took me a couple of minutes to work out where the flush was, which, by the way,
isn’t even on the remote control.
I spent the first afternoon swaying in my dreamlike state
with a big group of other British JETs since we were the first nationality to
arrive. My first meal in Japan was a plate of noodles with random egg yolk on the top that took me
by surprise, though despite this, it was pretty tasty. But as I was soon to find out, this is only the beginning of the
surprises I would find awaiting me. By the way, we ordered the food by pressing
a button on a machine in the door and putting our money in like a vending
machine. Then a few minutes later the waiter turned up with our dishes.
The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around
Shinjuku, in all its bright neon lights, then getting the subway, or rather,
overground, since it’s not actually underground (or at least this line isn’t, I
haven’t ventured to the others). And guess what: it was cute! As in little cartoon character mascots everywhere! There are so many times that you can say "Only in Japan" and I think this is definitely one of them. Cute is everywhere! Even in the bank in Yawatahama which I'll get to later.
We got the subway to Shibuya and stood around in our big
gaijin bubble making the Japanese V in our pictures. Naturally this resulted in
a lot of Japanese people staring at us, which brings me to the topic of the
fact that Japan is an extremely homogenous country in that over 99% of the
population are completely Japanese in origin. Most of the other 1% is made up
of other Asian immigrants from China or Korea, so when a huge group
of British folk rock up, then the Japanese stare since they’re not used to
this. Even in Tokyo which you would probably presume has a bit more variation
in terms of race.
The rest of the day was spent in a sweaty and tired, but
completely awed daze, visiting a shrine near Harajuku and climbing a tall
building near the hotel to get a view of the city at night (when I say night I
mean 8pm, since it seems to get dark here around 7pm, even in the summer).
The next day was actual orientation. This meant hundreds of
JETs from all over the world were herded into a giant room and sat down
according to the prefecture they are heading to. We were basically talked at
for several hours, which isn’t a great idea when combined with jet-lag and suits in a rather warm and crowded room. In my
opinion, and also after having talked to several others, the JET Programme was
pretty harsh on us. They expect us to arrive in Tokyo after an extremely long
flight and a timezone change of 8 hours, then actually attend conferences and stay
awake the next day? Yeah, sure. And a lot of the Americans and Canadians were
much worse off, having an even bigger time difference and arriving late at
night.
To cut a long story short, we were talked at for a couple of
days and I was really sleepy. On the
second day I ventured out to lunch with the other Scots (definitely the best
group of JETs, totally not biased!) and ended up in a really traditional sushi
place. Unfortunately my friend has the picture on his camera, but it was my
first experience of taking my shoes off before entering a restaurant and sitting on the floor at a low table
to eat. Really great sushi and at least a third of the price I would pay back
home.
The second evening was also really cool. It was the British
embassy event, so all us Brits were herded to the British embassy for munchies
and bevvy (woo!). We were also given a lecture basically telling us not to
get arrested. Did you know you can get arrested for punching a plastic snowman?
Or for stealing a cardboard cut-out of Justin Bieber from a karaoke bar? Nope, me
neither. Later on I drank all the wine and loaded my plate with sausage rolls –
only at the British embassy. I mean, who knows the next time I’ll get to eat a
sausage roll? And of course there were the traditional Japanese Taiko drummers, which just about burst my eardrums but were very amazing and energetic in their dancey drumming.
Later that night a big group of us headed to an izakaya (a
traditional Japanese bar) and failed miserably because the group was too big.
So we split up, and I bought an interesting drink in the konbini (convenience store) called Strong Zero which
managed to get me tipsy after only 1 can. Yep, me, the Scottish girl who can drink
a bottle of wine like juice got tipsy from one can of something… I seriously wonder what they put in that stuff! So I had a fun last night wandering around
Shinjuku and Shibuya amongst all the colourful lights, and going into arcades and
not actually playing anything, but just gazing in awe at how many floors it has
and the weird prizes it had (a box with eyes on it, seriously?). So I must confess, and please don’t hate me
for this, we ended the night by going to McDonalds and having some chips. It
wasn’t my idea, I swear!
The next day I got up at early o’clock in order to catch my
flight to Ehime. The flight was short and I slept my way through most of it. In
fact I awoke to what I thought was turbulence, but was actually the plane
bumping down on the ground. I looked out the window to see lots of hills! And
green! And actual Japan! Not the crazy hallucinations of a frat boy on
mushrooms that Tokyo is.
So stay tuned in kids for the next instalment of Hannah
Wanders Helplessly Round Japan Offending Everyone She Meets With Her Gaijin
Ways. :)
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