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Published: July 27th 2006
Alright! So I'm now here - still pretty tired and yet excitedly wide-eyed. As the adventure has now begun, I will begin the account of my Japanese expedition thus far...
My travels began in Calgary from where I flew to Minneapolis to catch my flight to Narita-Tokyo. Aboard the huge-ass plane in Minneapolis, I ended up sitting next to a young gentleman, Andrew, from of all places, Estevan, SK. It was nice to share a long flight with a hometown guy. We visited and shared some wine over an in-flight Disney movie. The trip actually passed quite quickly.
It would be important here to include that this flight was delayed by about a half hour. As it was, my connecting flight to Nagoya was leaving only an hour after my arrival, so I was one of a few who was pushed to the front of the plane to allow as much time as possible to get to my connecting flight. I ran through the Tokyo airport directed to go to Immigration. That done, I ended up on another side of Immigration, suddenly with no one directing me anymore. What followed was a half hour of asking one person after
another, none of whom spoke English, where to go, getting pointed in one direction, then another two directions, then back to Immigration, then in another three directions, then to my flight which I missed by about 3 minutes. Of course, from there, it would only make sense that I be directed again through Immigration, and eventually to baggage claim and through to the train station to get from the airport to Tokyo, and eventually to Nagoya.
So there I was, my first day in Japan and tackling the Tokyo train station with two oversized carry-ons and two 50 pound suitcases. I ended up crossing paths with a young man from England named Tom. We were both headed to Nagoya and we were equally lost, so we buddied up and developped a fine system in which one of us would go ask people questions, and the other would stay with the baggage. Eventually we got to Nagoya.
The next challenge was to get ahold of Mr. Adachi to let him know I was there so that I could be picked up. I still haven't figured out how I went wrong, but I'm sure that somehow, using public payphones in
The keyboard
This is for you Curtis. Same keyboard structure. The combinations of keys make Japanese symbols, unless you Caps Lock. That's how I type in English.Japan is a whole other system than in Canada. After about a half hour, a young Japanese man came up to me and asked if I was Kara. "Yes! How did you know?", I cried, realizing as I said it that there weren't likely a lot of lost looking Canadian girls in the Nagoya train station. So we made the hour and a half trek from Nagoya to Hekinan by car, me feeling the entire time both drunk for lack of sleep and completely wrong for driving on the left side of the road.
So an adventure to get here, but I'm here and well. My homestay lady, Miyoko, is very nice. She is 56 and she does not speak a lot of English, but enough that we are getting by. My room is very nice and big. About the size of my room in Lloydminster. I have a double bed and a big closet, a vanity and a balcony and most importantly right now, an air conditioner. I was warned that it would be hot and humid here, but it is literally like living in a sauna... and a very hot one at that. I don't know how
middle aged women could live through menopause here.
Slowly but surely working out the kinks of language barriers and culture shock, but mostly just very excited to see what Japan has to offer.
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Brittany
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the sink
You didn't show the sink so I could check for toothpaste goobies! When I lived at the Language Institute, a visiting Korean prof expressed his regret that Canadian bathrooms aren't like Asian ones where you can splash around all you like. He also regretted that we don't have any bathhouses where one can go to check out the size of other men's peckers! True story!