Day 1 – September 13, 2007

Paola woke up crying today. In fact, she cried more or less through out the night, whenever she woke up. I don’t think she was too much to blame, though, for my own lack of sleep. I woke up several times too, and ended up staying up when I finally woke up around 4 am. To pass the time, I wrote the blog about our arriving in Japan.

Since I was up, I waited anxiously for the sun to rise so that I could walk around and discover my new neighborhood. Finally around 6:30, the sun was up and the sky was bright. I went outside and saw what the immediate neighborhood looked like in the light of day. Unlike the previous night, being able to see everything helped me realize that I was in Japan. I didn’t go very far at all, barely half a block in one direction. There were a lot of people passing by (going to work or school, I imagine), either walking or riding bikes. I liked the town character that seemed to display.

I wanted to let everyone know what my apartment looked like, so I made a video tour of the apartment (it might be a while before I am able to post it online since I don’t have internet access).

Afterwards, I was able to convince Paola that we should go for a little walk towards the train station to see what we would be passing everyday. Nothing much was yet open, but we got an idea of where to go without getting lost. We went to a small market and got some food and other things that we needed. Since we knew that our luggage would be delivered between 9 and 12, we wanted to be sure to get home in time, and so we did. We looked over all the introductory paperwork that the company gave us, and we realized that we should go to the local community office to get the paperwork started for our alien registration cards. So we had a plan for the day.

Having been awake for so long with such little sleep, I went back to sleep. I woke up some time later, and a few minutes later the delivery guy with our luggage came. We decided that the best thing to do would be to leave the luggage for now, and take care of our alien residency papers. We took a bus to the office, which wasn’t so far from our home, but in the opposite direction from the train station. I told Paola that after we were done at the office, I wanted to walk back home to check out some of the stores that we passed during the bus ride.

The gentleman who helped us fill out the paperwork spoke little English, and I spoke little Japanese, but between the two of us, we were able to fill out the papers completely. I was happy with the progress I was able to make with my Japanese. Paola said that the whole process took longer than she expected, but we were done within an hour.

On our walk back home, we stopped at a great supermarket that was close to home. They had a lot of complete lunches made for, what seemed to us, very inexpensive prices; the same sorts of lunches would have cost at least twice as much in New York. We were excited, and picked out something to eat, despite the fact that neither of us was very hungry. I insisted, though, claiming that we should eat a little something anyway since it was lunch time (about 1:30).

When I paid for lunch, Paola realized that she did not have her passport with her. This only aggravated her more than she already was (she had still been crying a few times earlier that day). I tried to convince her that it wasn’t that big of a deal since we had already registered with the local community office (which we just left, and had a certificate saying so). We decided to walk the path back to the office to see if she had dropped it somewhere along the way. We got all the way back to the office without finding the passport. For a moment we hesitated going inside and asking if they had found it because we were embarrassed that we were just there, and had already lost a passport. We had our Japanese dictionary with us, and I rehearsed what we would say. I started to tell the lady, and she interrupted, telling us that she had the passport.

She then gave me a map to go to the local police office (I can’t really say that it was a station) and told us how to get there. Paola was amazed with my Japanese ability to figure out what was being said, and where we needed to go. Before I left, I made sure that I understood what the word was for the place we were going; I did not yet know that it was the police station, but merely the “koban.” I had initially misheard the word as “kabo” and asked to be sure. I was lucky that I asked because the first place that we went to was not the right place, so I asked where the “koban” was. The lady told me that it was around the corner. If I had asked where the “kabo” was, she would not have understood me, and everything would have been lost.

We got to the “koban,” when I immediately realized that “koban” must mean police station (or office). The old man behind the desk did not speak any English, so we had to get by with the little Japanese that I had studied sporadically over the last few months. Everything went as smoothly as could be expected in such a situation. The officer even complimented me on the very limited Japanese that I knew. After we left, Paola extended the compliment, and told me how awesome I was for having navigated through the whole situation. So I felt as proud as a man with a 30 centimeter penis (metric system in Japan). This also reassured Paola that there was some control that we had here in this new land. She didn’t cry for the rest of the day.

We went back home and unpacked our luggage, and put everything away. We were both very tired from walking so much today (back and forth from the office after losing the passport, and then even further for the police station). However, I insisted that we go out and explore the neighborhood some more. We walked all around, but couldn’t find an internet café. We did find several small and inexpensive restaurants, and another inexpensive market. We got some food from the market, went home, ate, and fell asleep.

I felt like we got a lot accomplished in our first day, despite the fact that nobody here speaks English at all (which betrays many of the English signs all around the neighborhood). It made me confident in my Japanese, and only makes me want to learn more. Even more, Paola assured me that she always needs a couple of days to get adjusted to a new place and situation. I am counting yesterday as a day, so I expect her to be cool by tomorrow.