konnichiwa, japan!

So now I've officially spent one day in Japan, and I can already tell that I am going to love it here. Granted, my experiences this week in Yokohama/Tokyo are probably going to be very different from how I'll spend the rest of the term in Nagoya, but I have high hopes nonetheless. :) But I'll start from the beginning (be warned; this will probably be a long post).

Walking through this was really cool!

At the end of my last post, I was about to leave for the airport; I made it there with all my bags and said good-bye to my dad, only to discover that the Air Canada counter doesn't open until 4:30AM, which meant waiting there for about fifteen minutes with nothing to do. But it did open, so I checked my bag and was happy to discover that it only weighed 43 pounds - whenever I fly to/from school it's usually over the weight limit of 50 pounds, so this was a big deal. Plus that means that I can start filling it up with stuff I buy here in Japan (which is already starting to accumulate...but more on that later). So then I got on the plane and had a layover in the airport in Toronto, which was a really nice airport. There was free Wi-Fi, for one, and also this huge black sculpture that I couldn't help but walk through twice even though I didn't really need to, plus some bronze cougars (or some sort of big cat). And then I had lunch and people-watched and tried to guess how many of the people around me were Japanese (most of them, I think).

View from my window seat!

The flight to Japan was around 13 hours, and it was pretty uneventful. I took a lot of pictures from the plane because the sky was so pretty, slept a lot, studied kanji, watched Finding Neverland for the second time (good movie), and felt bad for bothering the girl in the aisle seat every time I had to go use the bathroom. I was watching Up in the Air as we landed, but my timing was off so I still have 20 minutes left that I plan to finish on the way back home. But I didn't really care, because I was finally in Japan! As predicted, I did freak out a little bit, but it was mostly internal, so all anybody else saw was a big smile. :) Then I waited in line for immigrations while guessing the nationalities of the people around me in the foreign passport line (mostly Chinese, surprisingly, with some Americans and a few British and I think French mixed in), got my bag from baggage claim, and went through customs, where I had to explain what Advil/ibuprofen was, though he figured it out when he looked at the bottle. And then I went out and saw Megumi! Or rather, she saw me as I was looking confused and called out to me. :) Then we went to buy bus tickets to go to Yokohama, where she lives, and then promptly missed the bus we just bought tickets for. -.-' Luckily we could just switch them to the next bus, which was arriving a minute later, and we got on the bus and ended up at Yokohama Station, which seemed pretty big to me, so I spent the whole time just following Megumi and staring at all the people/signs everywhere. Then we took a taxi to Megumi's house and watched Japanese game shows and a special about a girl in Britain who was only 13 but looked 50 because of a rare disease. It was a good intro to Japan. :)

Too bad you can't see the whole uniform.

Then we got up this morning and went to an exhibition for Mr. Donut's 40th anniversary (if you can't tell, Mr. Donut is a big donut franchise). It was pretty cool, even though we had to wait in line for a long time. But we each got a free donut (chocolate/coconut - delicious!) and took a picture with Mr. Donut cutouts. Unfortunately the guy took a horizontal picture instead of a vertical one, so it's hard to appreciate how great it really was. :/ We wanted to take picture with Mr. Donut uniforms and the mascot, Pon de Lion (I'm not sure if I spelled that right), but then we decided we didn't want to wait in line anymore, so we just left.

Then we went to Akihabara! Apparently Megumi and her mom predicted that I would want to go there, since it's basically the place for anime goods (and electronics) - even though I'm not as big a fan as I used to be, I still wanted to see it, because I've heard so much about it. Also we wanted to get me a prepaid cell phone, but as it turns out they were sold out at the store we went to and I would need my alien registration card anyway, so I guess I'll get a phone once I get to Nagoya. We also looked at electronic dictionaries, because I wanted one, but they were all pretty expensive. Then we just wandered a little, looking a maid cafe, because we'd both never been to one and wanted to (actually we wanted to go a butler cafe, but we had no idea where to find one). On the way I saw a store full of anime stuff and wanted to go in, so we did; it was 7 floors and full of stuff! I hardly recognized anything, because I'm so out of the loop, but even Megumi was impressed by all the manga and merchandise - we both bought something, too. I was on a quest to find a Haruhi body pillow for Phil, but no luck. :( I did buy a couple of things from the little dispenser-things (I can't remember what they're called at the moment, but the ones where you put in coins and turn a dial to get a random toy - they look like bigger versions of the candy things in the US), plus a little Totoro tin. Then we saw a cat cafe and I wanted to go, but before that we decided we should get something to eat, because at that point all we'd had to eat besides breakfast was a donut each, and it was almost 6.

So many cats!

True to our original intent, we went to a maid cafe, which was actually really easy to find because they have people dressed up in maid outfits on the street recruiting customers. Unfortunately, they don't allow cameras, so I have no photographic evidence of our adventure, but it was highly amusing (though a bit expensive - it was 500 yen each just to sit at the bar). It was a cute little place, and as expected, all the waitresses were in maid outfits and talked in really cutesy voices (except for the bartender, who was also a girl and quite pretty, but with very short hair and dressed in a black button-up). When we sat down, one of the maids brought a (fake) candle and told us that when she lit it, we would be like princesses (or something like that; this was all in Japanese so I only caught some of it). The menu was also pretty cute; all the dishes had faces drawn on them in ketchup and cutesy names. When we (or anybody else) got our drinks and our food, the maids had us say a charm and make gestures (i.e. hand in the shape of a heart or a 'beam' with our fingers) to make them taste better. Megumi and I were highly amused. The maids also sang once while giving some guy his drink, which was entertaining. The food was pretty good, too. Then we left and went to the cat cafe, which was exactly what I'd heard it would be. Basically you just pay to spend time in a room full of cats, which we did, even though Megumi is allergic. It was a pretty small place, but there were lots of cats sleeping everywhere, and we just petted them and took pictures for half an hour. It was great. :)

After that we did some more wandering into anime shops and one more electronics shop, where I found an electronic dictionary for 3800 yen! Most of the other ones we had seen were 20000-30000 yen, and nothing lower than 10000, so this was really cheap - it was the last one they had and a model that wasn't made anymore, which I think is why it was discounted so much. Also it had no box and no stylus (which I only discovered after getting back to Megumi's), but it was so cheap and actually pretty nice - it's in color and has a lot of (confusing) functions, including an IQ test. O_o  And then we came back to Megumi's house, where I am now, contented after a successful first day in Japan!

So far Japan has been very much what I expected, from the sleeping people on the train (who I tried to take pictures of, though I suppose that might be rude) to the vending machines everywhere and all the people/shops in Akihabara. Like Liz mentioned before I left, Japan feels very safe, even at night in the midst of lots of people; it probably helps that it's also very clean. I don't understand everything, of course, but I've been able to read a good amount of kanji on signs and things and I can get the (rather basic) gist of what people are saying, which is exciting. I feel like I could definitely get used to living here, which is good considering I plan on coming back after college. :) I think it's interesting because I don't stand out as a foreigner (and foreigners definitely stand out! Even I took special notice of them, just because they look so different from everybody else) - I wondered if people could tell. I think maybe if they looked closely, they could figure it out, but enough salespeople talked to me in Japanese that I don't think it's obvious. So this could have both its advantages and disadvantages; we'll find out if one outweighs the other, I guess. :) Anyway, this has been a very long post and I'm also feeling pretty tired, so I will end here with another list!

Japan expenses, day 1:
- 2000 yen, Suica card for the train; 500 yen deposit for the card and 1500 for fares
- 300 yen, 2 capsules from the dispenser-things whose names I can't remember
- 525 yen, Totoro tin and keychain
- 2000 yen, dinner at a maid cafe
- 800 yen, half an hour at a cat cafe
- 3800 yen, electronic dictionary

(I probably spent more money than I really should have, considering I have four more months in Japan to go, but I also think it was well worth the experience; plus the dictionary will come in very handy, I'm sure.)