Airport, Eri, Osaka, Restaurants
First I went out and got my bags. I was a little worried because all people ever talk about with flying is how they lost their bags, but mine came out in 10 minutes or so. I wanted to pet the drug dogs that were sniffing me but I figured that’s bad form, especially in Japan. I took my bags and went to immigration where I gave him my form. He took half and put the other half in my passport to give them on the way out. This was the first time I spoke Japanese for real (I didn’t seem him put it in my book and asked where the other half was). One thing that surprised me was how empty the airport was. I don’t think it’s supposed to be like that; it’s a really important new airport and it has very nice facilities, but no one was there. It seemed like ours was the only flight around that time. After I left immigration, I came out to the public area and I saw a Japanese girl nod to her friend and walk up to me. Eri looked different from how I imagined (she didn’t have any recent pictures to send me), but I met her and her friend and we started walking. She took me over to the baggage shipping place and we sent my bag to Tokyo. I had to fill out some more forms in Japanese and I needed a phone number so Eri put hers for me. After that we went to the train station and took a fairly long train into Osaka. The airport is a man-made island only connected to land by a huge bridge (it actually sinks a few inches every year).
Talking to Eri was a little strange because I’ve never really spoken Japanese before. Classes are two big so it’s never more than a sentence or two using a specific grammar. It probably makes me seem very quiet because I can’t just throw around random comments like I do with friends in English. I have to decide if something is worth the trouble of saying it in Japanese and then try to get it right. For the first while Eri would speak to me in English (which is about as slow as my Japanese) and I’d speak to her in Japanese. That’s probably the best setup for comprehension because no one’s listening to anyone else rattle off in their native language. As time went on though, we switched more into Japanese. When I wrote my first blog post I realized I hadn’t spoken English since I got to Japan and it was kinda weird to switch back. Speaking to Eri in Japanese was very useful because she usually knew where I was coming from and could figure out what I was trying to say and help me, but also she has a huge English vocabulary. Her speaking skills are probably like mine, but she knows almost any word you would need. If we were speaking in Japanese and I didn’t know something, there was no threat of switching to English like with a real bilingual partner, but I could ask her almost any word I needed and we didn’t have to look up too much in our dictionaries. Her friend was very quiet around me, and at first she was afraid to be left alone with me, but as I got better at Japanese and she warmed up to me we talked a little. Eri had other friends that were going to hang out with us but were too shy.
I’m very glad Eri was there to help me get started; I would have had to do so much more research and planning without her, and even so I’d probably have ended up sleeping on the street in Osaka the first night. It was very nice to have her for the first few days and slowly pick up how to do things on my own and get used to getting around in Japanese. While I was with her I learned how to figure out what trains I need, use the trains, ask for directions, order food, etc. By the time I left her, I was very prepared to travel Japan alone (but still a little nervous about it).
First, Eri took me to a famous shopping street in Osaka, Dotonbori. All the shops there have neat mascots outside like a dork playing the drums or a giant crab. I still didn’t feel tired wandering around Osaka but I was probably pretty disoriented and I was just following Eri and Hiromi and trying to convince myself I was in Japan. Osaka is a very nice city but there’s not too much there for tourists so that’s why we didn’t spend any time there. I also had my first encounter with the covered shopping streets that are all over Japan. Japan doesn’t have American style malls or shopping centers; instead they have covered streets and underground malls, which are both really nice.
After seeing Dotonbori, we tried to find the yakitori restaurant where we had a reservation. We finally found it hidden in a corner somewhere and went it. I wish I had pictures of restaurants and food and such, but I’d feel weird taking those so I don’t have any. This restaurant was very nice and it was washoku (traditional Japanese style). We took off our shoes and put them in little lockers with wooden keys. At traditional Japanese restaurants your whole table orders a lot of stuff and everyone shares. That’s great because that was I can try lots of things and I don’t end up with one thing I don’t like. For example, the chicken knuckles (or something like that) looked tasty and actually were pretty tasty except I’m not a fan of munching on cartilage so I only had one. Of course the girls were amazed at my chopstick skills (I’ve since learned that the Japanese assume no white people can use chopsticks at all). I also found out that even at traditional Japanese restaurants, you don’t sit in seiza (on your knees) anymore, so I couldn’t impress anyone with my seiza ability (I actually did have to do it a lot at at temple in Kanazawa but that’s much later). Even when it looks like it, they have a sunken part in the floor so you’re really just sitting like you would in a chair. That’s because most modern Japanese can’t do seiza either.
This is probably a good time to talk about Japanese drinks. Orange juice is on the menu at every restaurant in Japan and it’s a common drink (from what I’ve seen). They do have coke but not every type of coke. The biggest selection is always juices and teas, making me feel right at home. I think I’ve talked about vending machines before but just in case, those are the same way. You have maybe a coke, but then you have a selection of 20 or 30 (there are usually two machines in one spot) juices and teas. Depending on the area you’ll get sports drinks or coffees too (sometimes a few hot drinks). I’ve been buying more vending machine drinks than I normally would just so I can try everything. My favorite is Gogo no Koucha (afternoon black tea), which is amazing and has milk in it so it’s keeping me from milk withdrawal. (Now at school I get it in full size containers from the grocery store).
Packing, Flying, Nintendo DS with Rakubiki Jiten
I didn’t pack for Japan until the day before my flight and mostly just that night so I stayed up very late. I figured that was a good idea anyway so I’d have to sleep on the plane. I brought a bookbag and a small suitcase only. The bookbag had small bathroom things (shampoo, body wash, razor, etc) 6 changes of clothes (shirts and boxers), one extra pair of shorts, one towel, and miscellaneous things (lock, guidebook, Nintendo DS, camera, flash cards, pen, energy bars, etc). I could have fit more in but that was already more than I was planning on fitting and the bag was pretty heavy.
Also, the Nintendo DS was mainly for the dictionary. Before I left, I bought a DS Lite, Mario Kart, and Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten, a Japanese English dictionary for the DS. It’s a very good dictionary with handwritten kanji input (great recognition algorithm) and would be perfect except you can only jump to English words, not Japanese. That means if I’m looking up a word and I can’t read a Japanese word, I have to write it by hand instead of just jumping to it. The dictionary was meant for Japanese people, which is why it’s set up that way. That is a pretty big inconvenience, but still for $50 I got most of the functionality of a $400 electronic dictionary, so it’ll do. Also, I can’t rely on it too much, which is good.
All I packed in my suitcase were some more clothes (with one pair of long pants), and my computer. Then I slept for one hour and got up before dawn to catch the early flight. Mom and Dad took me to the airport and seemed fine when I was still there at least. I checked my suitcase and took a 2.5 hour flight to Dallas. The Dallas airport was huge and I had to take a bus to the international terminal where my Japanese experience started. I found my gate easily by all the Japanese people near it and when I was waiting I tried to understand them. I heard a kid talking to his mom and looked up words I didn’t know. I also tried to call mom from a payphone but she couldn’t hear me and the phone ate 75minutes of talk time. I called again with a credit card which I knew would be overcharged but she’d worry if I didn’t call.
The flight over was a harder than I thought. I’ve been to Europe twice and barely remember the flight being a bother at all, but this seemed much longer. I slept for awhile but then after my first few hours I couldn’t really fall asleep again no matter how comfortable I got. I’m small and resourceful and I can get pretty comfortable, but I couldn’t get past half asleep. The movies were okay but they only showed 2 or 3 I was interested in over the full 13 hours. There was also Japanese TV but it wasn’t nearly as good as most Japanese TV. I also listened to the J-Pop (Japanese Pop) radio while trying to sleep to get in the mood. I was trying to convince myself I was going to Japan but it didn’t really feel like it. The lady beside me was some Japanese businesswoman; we didn’t talk but she was a nice sit-beside-silently buddy. The flight attendant quickly realized she didn’t need to ask what I wanted to drink and just started bringing me milk at drink times. Also the meals were pretty good and bigger than I remembered. We’d get 5 or 6 things for each meal. I also filled out an immigration form saying why I was there and where I’d be living and such. I wasn’t sure if I should fill it out in English or Japanese but I figured I’d better start assuming things were Japanese. It was a little weird to use Japanese for the first time officially.
Finally we got to Japan and for some reason made a giant circle around the whole country before we landed at Kansai. I thought the circle was to get the right angle and was just huge since we were going fast, but he did another small loop around the airport to get in line again so I had no idea what that was about. My first view of Japan was some island probably off Kyushu. Finally we landed at Kansai and I got off.
