City of Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture

I'm a hotel in Aomori prefecture, right next to the Shinkansen (Bullet train) station. Finished up training this morning and hopped on the train immediately, rode twoa nd ahalf hours to here. The countryside on the way up was absolutely beautiful, really stunning stuff. Japan's terrain seems divided into two categories. Huge, stark mountains and flatness, which occur in some pretty interesting combinations. I tried taking pictures as i drove, but didn't figure out i could change the shutter speed on my camera until later tonight.

I mean, I'm not sure how I could've made it not be blurry. I took the damn picture from a freaking bullet train.

Last night the whole class went out together as a group, trainers included. We went to an all-you cna eat/drink resturant, which was one floor below a all-you-can-drink karaoke bar. Needless to say, certain individuals (possibly including myself) found themselves a little less tharsty. Karaoke is wicked fun, we sang everything from "Living on a Prayer" to "Twist and shout" and some lame-ass girl wanted to sing the japanese pop songs she liked but we discussed the matter as a group and decided to boo the hell out of her and skip the song.

Ended up at a bar with three other folks attempting to communicate about yakyu (baseball) with our poor waitress.

Oh, check this out:

That, my friends, is the light switch for my room. yeah. I couldn't figure it out for the first ten minutes, but then i stuck my key in the damn hole and the room lit up. I think that's wicked cool, even if it doesn't make too much sense.

A note about Aomori: in the words of one of my trainers, "it's really Japanese up there." Basically, I may be the only foreign person the locals have seen in the past six months. In tokyo, it was strange to be looked at all the time, but there were plenty of other gaijin (foreign-people) around so the Tokyoians were very accepting. I mean, if you stood outside with a beer in your hand they would immediately assume you were drunk and going to assault them, but you can just smile. During training, we would gather outside the hotel during breaks, standing in the alley between the two lobbies of the hotel, and cars would drive by with the passengers' faces plastered to the window, oggling the crowd of gaijin. One of my trainers finally said, "hey, if they're going to stare, you may as well wave..."

Here, I can tell already, folks are not really sure what the deal with me is. Lots of stares, but nothing more. It's totally fine, I've just never expereinced it before.

Tomorrow: Higashidori village, the town of 5000 people where I will live for the next seven months. Booyeah. That's what's hot in the streets.

More pics because today was suprisingly nuts.

HEY.

TODAY WAS THE ANNUAL ASAKUSA SAMBA FESTIVAL.

THAT'S RIGHT. A SAMBA FESTIVAL. THE DANCE.

A 7-hour parade went right by the front door of my hotel. The streets were packed:

And the traditional Japanese sterotype of polite, quiet folk completely disappeared today. Gradmothers, small children, skinny little men throw elbows, shoulders, their body weight at you if they thik you're too slow or in their way. Definetly the most aggressive crowd I've ever been in, surprsingly. But not to such a degree to distract from the event, just surprising from such a fanatically polite people.

The costumes etc. were crazy, reminded me of pics I've seen of Carnival in Rio. The few photos that came out well don't do the event justice, but as soon as I figure out how to post the video I took with my wee lil camera, I will; it's pretty great.

Anyway, hit the streets afterward in pursuit of a new pair of headphones. Paid around $25 for what may be the best pair of headphones I've ever had. I heart this country.

Went out to dins alone since everyone else was out partying and I was committed to finding a pair of headphones before I left. Left the resturant and the street looked cool, not Shibuya or Roppongi cool, but interesting nontheless:

A quick picture post to prove I'm still alive...

Went to a temple after waking up at like 4 am. Here are some pics I took, wish they could be in better resolution here, but hey...

Inside ceiling of the actual temple...

Like this woman, people would just stop for a brief second and pay their respects to statues of buddha or the doors of the temple themselves...

Tokyo is full fo little streets like this, just full of small shops and stuff, but some of these tiny alleyways have major attractions on them. This particualr street was decorated with the red posts due to the close location of the temple...

The other side of Japan: lots and lots of people and modernization. This is a view of the area outside Shibuya station, where the crossroads look something like the battle scenes from Braveheart. Keep in mind that this is after the main mass of folks crossed the street.

This, well, this is just kinda funny but really demonstrative of what I've seen of the big J-P so far:

You. littering. bastard.

Training Day 1: I fail to sleep in, find coffee

What is like to be in a bathroom in Japan?

I am Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians. I am the Incredible Hulk in a clown car. I cannot take a shower without feeling like I'm about to pull a Kool-aid Man move and bust through a wall. And the directions on the toilet don't make a lot of sense:

I hope you can read that. They're instructions for the dials on the toilet seat.

I'm not complaining, by the way. It's just so new.

Woke up at 5:30 this morning, dashing my belief that I'd already beaten jet lag. Wanderd around the neighborhood early in the morning, realizing that Tokyo is completely like New York in the fact that everything shuts down between 2 am and 7 am.

Honestly, I couldn't get this until 7 am:

Thank you, globalization gods.

TRAINING AND ACTUALLY FIGURING OUT STUFF

Began going over company policy today, haven't gotten into teaching style yet. The most important news I learned today is that my situation in Aomori proves as wonderful as it is intimidating.

It's kind of Yin & Yang. I drive a company car (wonderful) over about a 100 kn stretch of highway (intimidating). My position is in a beautiful, remote area (awesome) where the company has never had a contract before (the contact for the closest branch office, whom I met today, gave these instructions: "Please, let us know you're alive"). My board of education offers government housing in a [ta-da!] house of my own, but, um, I don't think anyone on the board of education speaks English.

It feels somewhat like speeding down a slope, aiming my snowboard at a huge kicker; exhilirating but scary. I'ma ctually really lucky though, because in light of my situation the head of my branch office, a native Japanese, will be the one escorting me to my town.

Anyway, I'm wiped. I figure if I can stay up two more hours or so I'll have a better shot of getting on nihon no tokee [japan time].

Oh, one more thing: the japanese can make a damn good hamburger.

I AM ACTUALLY IN TOKYO, JAPAN.

Hey all,

arrived yesterday, 3 pm. I'm completely exhausted. Here's what happened:

First, a 13 hour flight, Sandwiched between a fat, friendly guy from Queens and a grumpy old man. Not so comfy, glad when it was over. Narita Airport (Tokyo) was immediately intimidating, but customs was extremely efficient (actually, Customs proved to be the first of many impressively efficient things I've seen over the past three days.) Found my pickup at a designated "meeting point," and we picked up two more guys before leaving. I've basically spent the past two days with Jon (Denver) and Brandon (NYC & Babson).

Took an increasingly crowded hour & half train ride from Narita to the hotel with our Interac contact, a young Iranian woman who grew up here (three impressive things on Tokyo trains & subways: 1. You can eat off the floor 2. or the plush seat cushions 3. but not in the cell-phone free section of the car)

Essentially what happened next was a night on the town. We got some food (adammantly ordering in Japanese, regardless of our waitress' responses in English), wandered around a lot (it's totally safe here; saw a twelve year old girl bicycling down an alley at 1 am in the morning), and got more food and Asahi beer at a Yakitori joint (food on a stick; in our case, octopus). Crashed about 2 am after struggling with phone cards, an event which became an epic journey from public phones to embarassingly complex conversations with the guys at the hotel desks.

Oh, this is what it looks like outside of my hotel:

And I took this early today, the view from my hotel window:

Pre-tty wild.

Today was awesome. Did a LOT of wandering. Started out going for breakfast at a japanese fast-food joint (you buy tickets, hand then to the waitress, and get a bowl of rice with stuff on it. Curry & seaweed actually work together). We then hit the subway system, traveling first to this place called asabashi (i think), a gargantuan electronics store that sold anything possibly technological (DVDs, CDs, computer parts, electric pianos, cell phones, books). 7 floors. lots of lights and blinking.

Then on to the imperial palace in downtown Tokyo (Chiyoda-ku), which meant a long ride on those clean-ass subways. Beautiful, but unfortuneately I forgot my camera. Brandon took a lot of pics for us, I'll post them later. Then more wandering: Roppingi shopping area, wandering around looking for lunch, finally stopping at a 7-11 for directions (which we promptly misunderstood).

Yes. A 7-11. They also have Denny's.

Finally, found some dinner and hit the trains again, sumimasen!-ing our way through the crowded rush-hours subways, this time bound for Shibuya shopping district, where we found what we figured Tokyo would look like.

LIGHTS. TALL THINGS. LOTS OF PEOPLE.

We returned here, and we're are ready to cras. It's 8:15, and I don't know how much longer i can stay up.

A few Tokyo observations:

1. Walk on the left, drive on the left, stay to the left on escalators, but get the hell out of the way of bicyclists.

2. Always smile. Period.

3. There's almost no graffiti, litter, or smoking on the streets of Tokyo.

4. Want a refreshing bottle of soda? Try the 20 oz of green tea instead.

5. Sumimasen, sumimasen,sumimasen.

6. No Jaywalking. If you're in an alley, there's no cars coming, and the light hasn't changed, there's still no jaywalking.

7. Ambulances use their megaphones to ask you, "please, get out of the crosswalk." We think.

8. Japanese is HARD. Especially if you're fourteen hours out of whack with a few beers in you.

9. Sumimasen, there's no jaywalking.

10. If I can stay up tonight just an hour more, I'll be on Japan time. Word.

T-minus three days

Before I begin, a bit of filler...

How I spent my summer vacation:
1. Spread 24 cubic yards of mulch
2. Visited Vicki in NYC a bunch
3. Did lots more yardwork and hung out with my parents.

DONE.

Actually relevant stuff:
At 9 am on sunday morning, I board a flight to Chicago, where I will catch a 14-freaking-hour plane ride to Narita Airport in Tokyo. I'll spend about five days in Tokyo in training, a day in Hitachi for orientation (which is, perhaps, different from "training") and then I am sent to the town where I will be working for the next seven months. It is called Higashidorimura. It is located here:

I'm on the northernmost end of Honshu, the largest island of the four that make up the mainland of Japan. It's pretty exciting, evidently a very cool, remote area, about 500 miles north of Tokyo.

Hope everyone is well.

Oh, actually, just wanted to point out that the title up there is from the song "Roadrunner" by the Modern Lovers. It pertains in no way to me traveling to Japan besides the fact that I will listen to it at least four times on the plane due to the song's absolute encompassing sweetness.