Stupid White Guy in Japan Moment #2

Today at lunch time I went to the bank to pay my room rent bill. In Japan the bank system is a bit different than back in Canada. There's no monthly fee for the account, but paying bills is like a transfer to another back account and you're charged a transfer fee for the transaction. At my bank it's ￥630 to transfer at the teller and ￥210 to do it at the machine. Pretty expensive but every banks fees are similarly high. Not wanting to pay the ￥630 I decided to test my luck at the machine. The machine has an option to use Enlgish as well so I figured it couldn't be too hard. Well it was. It took me about 5 minutes to get it all done and I was pretty sure I had done it right and was pretty relieved. Then about an hour later I'm sitting in class when my phone goes off. After class I check my message and it's from the bank asking me to call back. At first I thought that maybe I had left something there, so I call only to find out that I made a mistake at the machine paying the bill. I figure this out around 2:40 and all the banks here close at 3:00. Luckily it's really close to the school so I managed to make it there and get it sorted out. I had to pay the ￥630 fee as well and I doubt that my I'll get my original ￥210 back either which kinda sucks. I don't even know what I did wrong on the thing either. Hopefully I can figure it out so next month I don't get forked in the eye and have to put out another ￥630. The really retarded thing is that I can go to the 7-11 across the road to pay my power bill and they just take the bill, scan the bar code, you pay the amount and bam done. That's right the 7-11. It takes about 30 seconds. No extra fees, no confusing machines. You don't even need to say anything although I must say that the employees at the bank were most courteous and helpful.

国際友情

There's a river that runs through Kyoto called the Kamo River and runs right along side one of the most popular areas for the university age crowd to hang out, the Sanjo and Shijo areas of Kyoto. These areas are packed with clubs, bars, karaoke bars, yakitori, ramen and various other restuarants, but there are tons of people who just hang out by the river chatting, drinking, or having little fires. Anyway, last Friday Aaron (the other guy from U of T), Andy (from Washington D.C.) and myself went down to the river just to chill out, drink, and maybe get a couple of phone numbers. Things started out fairly slow and then we met a group of the craziest guys ever. What started out from Aaron asking for a cigarette turned into a night that included sumo wrestling in the Kamo river, hitting on basically every girl that walked by, and even some nudity thanks to Tetsuo who wanted to show everyone his shaved dick so he stripped and went for a swim in the river and then posed for the all the people in the middle of the river, and there were a lot of people too. Probably 250-300 people were within viewing distance at the time. Funny thing was no one else really seemed to think this was out of the ordinary and some people just didn't even seem to care at all. Then as we were about to leave they invited us to a birthday party on Wednesday (yesterday) Kitai who was turning 22.

Last night, the three of us went back down to Sanjo and met up with the guys. Then we went to an izakaya which is kinda like a japanese style pub. Yakitori skewers and other small foods as well as beer and other liquors are the staple of any izakaya outing. Very similar to wings and beer back home. The place we went to was called Watami and it was incredibly nice on the inside. For 30 bucks each we got 2 plates full of about 7 or 8 different dishes and all we could drink. As you can imagine we were there for hours. We also got to meet one of their friends who wasn't there on Friday named Ken who speaks incredible English. His mother is a translator so he's been exposed to it for a while. He even has a slight British accent when he talks in English. The only thing that's weird is he doesn't know much slang so he speaks very properly. Line of the night was when Kitai was showing Ken his presents (we got him a couple porn mags, Tetsuo got him a couple of sex toys) and Ken turned to the three of us and said "He's full of sperm" After a good laugh we introduced the word horny to him and explained it. The three of us also learned a lot of great Japanese slang, but unfortunatly I can't remember too much of it anymore and the stuff I do remember, well let's just say it's good stuff and leave it at that. The guys invited us to come over to Doshisha University where they are all at and they said they will introduce us to tons of girls who would love to meet foreigners. Doshisha is located a convinient 10 minute bike ride from Kyoto University so that is the plan for next Wednesday afternoon.

It's so fantastic that all of this came from such a little thing. Even though our Japanese isn't amazing and they're English aside from Ken's isn't either, they're always trying their best to speak in English to us and us in Japanese to them. Even though the words may be jumbled sometimes, the meaning is clear and we all seemed to take a liking to each other and bonded pretty quickly. The start of a great friendship I think.



Kitai (sitting) and Testuo testing out his new toy

My Room

I finally got my actual university internet access so I should be able to post more often now.

White Guy in Japan Moment #1

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but I didn't think it would be this soon. In the library at the university they have a media centre where you can watch movies and listen to cds that the library has. They also have a kind of mini theatre in there as well in case you have a group of people. This afternoon me and a couple other guys were in there watching Shawshank Redemption when the lights went out. We didn't really notice at first since it was dark in the room we were in, but once we did notice, we also noticed that we were locked in the room. Well not exactly locked in as we could unlock the door from the inside, but when we did this the alarm went off. We made our way back down to the information desks on the first floor and you could hear the alarm going off as well. We didn't even have to say anything and the guy at the desk knew what we had done. He seemed pretty cool about it and just reminded us that the media centre closed at 4 on the weekends, but I bet in his head he was thinking "god damn white boys" or something along those lines.

I made it and I'm alive

Things have been really busy ever since arriving in Kyoto. I forgot how much moving into a residence really entails. Couple that with all the orientations we've been doing at the university, and all the goverment forms and such that need to get done and you have little time for anything else. Alien registration, bank accounts, govt. health insurance it's really enough you make your head spin. Hopefully things should cool down a bit next week once classes actually begin. Then I can get out and about and really explore the city. What I've seen so far has been great and I'm sure there's a ton of great things out there just waiting to be found. It's going to be a good year.

Right now I'm somewhere over the Pacific Ocean on my way to Japan. It's a little hard to comprehend it all right now. As I was sitting in the plane in Vancouver I kept asking myself "What am I doing? Am I ready for this?" Pre-travel jitters of course, but as soon as the plane took off the questions stopped. There's no turning back right now no matter what. In about 10 hours I'll touch down and begin what is sure to be one of the best years of my life.

The plane ride to Vancouver was cramped, but at least I had a window seat. This plane right now is a lot less crowded and the seat next to me is open so I can stretch out my legs a bit which is nice. I'm not the only white person on the plane either. There's a white guy in front of me and I think I saw one more as well somewhere on here. The plane otherwise is pure old-timers. I'm guessing a toursit group since they all have similar tags on their shirts. 10 hours to go, what to do?

Osaka is incredible. I got in at 5. The trip from the airport was uneventful for the most part, but my luggage kept falling off the cart I had it on and I felt pretty pathetic because it felt like everyone was looking at me. Then I tripped getting into my seat on the bus as well. Very smooth. It's pretty far from the airport to the city, but the drive was nice there were so many factories and businesses on the way. The sun was setting as well and the lights were coming on. Honestly you can't even compare pictures to the real thing. It's insane. The roads were packed bikes and motorcycles everywhere trying to squeeze by in what I found to be fairly narrow lanes, but obviously they were wide enough. I couldn't believe the sheer number of people packing the streets. The only thing I can compare it to is Union Station during rush hour. It was all good though as I was still safely watching in awe from the bus.

Then the madness began. The bus dropped us at a hotel near Osaka Station. I knew that my hotel was a bit north-east of, and fairly close to Osaka Station, but I didn't have a map and I lost my sense of north-south somewhere on the bus ride. Needless to say I got myself hopelessly lost and spend nearly an hour wandering the streets of the immediate area searching for my hotel. But I wasn't just walking around, oh no. I had all my luggage in tow. A 25 lb bag on my back and two close to 60 lb suitcases, one for each hand. They had wheels but, they were still quite clumsy, and it was quite humid at the time which wasn't helping. I asked an old man for directions and he was able to point me in the right direction. Then with the help of a hotel worker from another hotel I was finally able to find the hotel.


The view from my room last night


To be continued...