March 2005 Archives

Arrived yesterday, brimming with hope for the future.

Now we are off to the apple store.

Mwauh ha ha haaa!

(Sorry)

I have been watching almost non-stop television since late Saturday night. Wow. Television, like everything bad for you, is even better in excess.

I am picking Nathan up tomorrow from Shinjuku station, hopefully with enough time to spare to get him back home to drop off his bags, and back on the train to Shimokitazawa (my work place). He will then have about five hours to himself while I work. Shimo is a rockin part of Tokyo and should keep him busy for a while at least.

Well, off to bed, I probably should have retired a few hours ago, but catching up on E.R. is very important work.

Everyone that has been complaining that I'm not answering my mail, Robin has fixed the domain name problems that magisys.net has been suffering. I can now read and respond to mail.

I had coffee today.

It was very good.

Good enough to have two in the space of ten minutes.

I have found Macchiato Mecca.

Well, it's probably not that good, but compared to the others attempts I've endured here, it was really, really freakin' awesome.

Segafredo was the brand of coffee for those of you who care.

Oh, Nathan is coming over on Tuesday. He will be here for a week. I shall be a host to someone that's never been here, I like that.

Nathan, if you're reading this, I did get your emails, phone me when you get to Shinjuku, or email my mobile whenever you want.

INTERNETGUYOUT!

These are some notes I kept on the first couple of days while I was here, as you can see they go from lacking in detail to too much detail and back again before petering off...

I am also uploading photos as I type, so watch out!

20050222-20050223:
Preflight: Giant box o' speakers...excellent pressie, unfortunate timing :-)

Flight 1: Sat next to Cockney, end of defacto visa ("Never trust a woman"), programmer/web developer, story about 75% pay at Microsoft - watched tele - listened to Robert Jordan - slept a little - clutched my money/laptop/ipod/camera/passport/speakers to me

Flight 2: Two Chinese men sitting next to me - strange conversation - weirdly possesive...no, rich-rude...you know, obnoxious, definitely a little chauvinistic, but what was with that convo? Also, old guy behind me...eh? Didn't eat a thing, had a glass of water when awoke at some time (4am?) - mouth tastes nutty, maybe they forced bad peanuts down throat when sleeping -

Arrival at Narita: At baggage claim, finally approach someone to check if they're with _my company_, they were, talked...general nervousness, finally meet our chaps, after some confusion, and me not hearing a word due to tele noise, got on train. Dude dropped papers/keys. Kerfuffle.

Train ride: Renee is our chap., helpful, pleasant. Speakers still causing me grief! Using laptop now to document trip, but have caught up with self. Renee said the district in which I work is really nice, good to know, some sort of market hub or something...good since I live right near where I work, or so I hope/but don't believe. 10% batt remaining, might write more when arrive at apartment. Gotta ring home and say hi.

After Renee was Roxanne, who took me and a married couple (names, Cameron, Meg?) for a leg of the journey, didn't talk to Roxanne much, but Cameron and I talked of many things. After that I met Claudine, a friendly Kiwi (Renee Kiwi too?) who took me straight (well, as straight as possible, considering the many train changes) to my apartment. It's kinda (really) out 'in the sticks'. Claudine suggested that I move out sooner rather than later, get cheaper rent, and move a little closer to the cbd (it's about as far away as Hornsby was from the city)

The apartment: well, it's small, but that's no surprise. It's quite light when opened up, doesn't smell, and the rooms aren't too small. Since I'm currently the only person here, I got to choose which room to take. Each has it's own [dis]advantages. The front room is the only bedroom not connected to the kitchen, so noise from the kitchen would be reduced, however the floor is wooden, and without a mat apparently that's bad for the futon (mold city?), the second wooden floored room gets _very_ dark even during the middle of the day if you close the doors, this pretty much sold me, except that it has no windows (thus the darkness). No windows = stuffy/sweaty, esp in Japan's humid, humid summer. The room upon which I decided is the only "traditional" bedroom, tatami mats on the floor (cool), and has a door to the balcony. The disadvantages? Noise from the kitchen, it doesn't get very dark in here...but considering my last room in Sydney with the white translucent shades, it's practically pitch black in here!

What to do now: I have to be at the apartment between 1600-2000, since my luggage will be delivered about then. I would like to do a bit of grocery shopping, and call home. I would really like to organise my "Alien Registration", but I don't think I'll get time to do that today, maybe Stanley and I can do it tomorrow...trains here are pretty complicated as far as I can tell, and some stations have very little (if any) Roman lettering (what's the japanese word? romaji?). I imagine Stan will be here soonish, though I don't have any kind of ETA, so it could be he turns up at four in the morning. I hope he doesn't mind me calling him Stan in my notes. I hope he doesn't mind me calling him Stan in everyday life...I have an idea, I think I'll try to catch two hours sleep.

Yeeh.

Oh, and of course, my cool and excellent speakers have an _Australian_ power plug, so I won't be able to use them 'till I get a converter (voltage and connector) or something...probably tomorrow, when I go into "town"...tee hee, I live in Tokyo!

Also, my battery charger suffers from the same problem...but not as much.

Dayam.

Night!

Okay, so I slept for a few hours (try four), it's now 1800 Japan time. Problems: I'm very hungry, and I have to wait in the house for the luggage to arrive. Stan has not yet turned up, which makes me hungry, cold and slightly bored (no internet, and I didn't bring any books due to their weight)...also, I'm slightly worried I missed something important. After Claudine dropped me off, I decided to use the toilet. Just after sitting down, I heard the chime of a doorbell. Not being able to tell if it was my doorbell, and being currently indisposed, I did nothing. I didn't hear anything more after that, and I checked the mailbox for cards, so maybe it was just Claudine having forgotten something very important. Oh well.

So, what are my options?

1) Wait for luggage/Stan
Avd: don't miss getting luggage.
Dsavd: don't miss not getting food

2) Go get food
Avd: Make stomach feel nice
Dsavd: Make luggage-requiring brain feel baaad

3) Cry quietly to myself
Avd: Can drink salty tears and pretend they are some strange Japanese drink
Dsavd: My tears are poisonous to hu-mans

Well, I think it may be options three (3), but without the whole tear drinking bit.

Also, some emails should now be written.

1845: Luggage arrived! w00t. No more worry about missing important luggage doorbell, now I'm thinking maybe it was a friendly neighbour going to say hi, and give me some company. Sniff.

Well, off to ring home...

Rang home, talked to family except mum. It's cool that I'm now the exciting call from overseas brother. Went shopping, bought a bunch of instant noodle packs and some orange drink. Noodles were good. Orange drink tastes like bad orange cordial. I can't speak a word of Japanese, so shopping is interesting, and the check out operator tried to be helpful but suffers from the same problem everyone seems to: she thinks that if she speaks slowly, people will understand her...even if they don't speak the language...or maybe she just doesn't believe that anyone would be stupid enough to live in Japan without at least a simple grounding in Japanese.

It's not very cold here, afaict. I went out in jeans, t-shirt and a jacket and wasn't at all uncomfortable. Maybe when the wind hits me, I'll shiver.

It's 21:05 and Stanley is not yet here. I did want to greet him when he got in, but I'm getting tired again, so I think I might try sleeping soon. Maybe he missed his flight or his EDA was wrong? Anyways, I should get some sleep.

Stan arrived about ten minutes later. So we did stuff. Goodnight.

Stan arrived about ten minutes later, he chose the dark room with the carpet in about two seconds. We walked around town, Stan wanted to ring home, so took him to the 7-11 where there were two public phones (I bought inari). We then wandered up to the grocery store, I bought a bunch o' disposable chopsticks and Stan bought some instant noodles and green tea. From there we wandered around...or I should say _I_ wandered around, Stan thought I was taking him home. After reaching the top of a particularly steep hill, Stan mentioned something about the way home and I had to point out that it was from whence we came. In any case, we were soon home, talked a bit more (I talked a lot, probably too much, but it wasn't a one-sided conversation at all), then I went to bed. Slept like a fat little lamb after ingesting Valerian root and getting some exercise.

20050224:
Woke up this morning. Had a shower and a bath. In that order. Although I showered in the bath tub, since I had my toiletries bag on the floor of the room, and I didn't want to get everything in there wet...I'm going to have to work on the whole Japanese shower thing. Still the bath was nice and hot, and the tub was quite deep. Relaxing.

Today the plan is to get our Alien Registration done, and then to travel to Akihabara. Stan wants to buy a mobile phone (so do I, but I need a credit card, and my card is debit only...so I'll need to transfer funds into it from my other account to make it work). I - on the other hand - want to buy a new power cable for my speakers, an australian/japanese power converter (for my battery charger) and maybe an Airport Express/Extreme/Ex-summink. Should be fun...must remember to take batteries for camera.

Other thoughts: I saw some pasta in the grocery store, and pretty cheap ingredients for nice (meatless) Italian food. I also saw some bread (8 slices in a loaf) and milk (need to find out how much milk and bread cost at home, to see how expensive this stuff really is...should have learnt last year, since I bought it all the freakin' time). I would like to have cereal for breakfast, but I'm not sure what my chances are going to be like. I'll see what the prices are like. I also need to learn to cook simple Japanese food. I would like to be able to spend as little as possible on day-to-day fare, and go out for dinner once every while. I guess I'll see how that works out, seems like it may be a little optimistic.

Back at the flat, 19:53. Big day today, we started by walking around our area, checking out a bunch of great stores, and finding ramen shops. We ended up in an ramen store run by what I assume was a husband and wife. They didn't speak _any_ English, and while Stan does speak some Japanese, it wasn't enough for us to make ourselves well understood. There was a vending-machine like contraption in the front of the store, which (it turned out), was used to order one's food. One would enter one's money, press a button, and from the machine's mouth a receipt would appear. Then one hands this to the proprietor, who makes the order. We originally decided to go for the cheapest thing (�200), hoping it would be something edible. It was a bowl of rice. The woman running things tried to help us by suggesting we press the �500 button, which we did. We ended up buying delicious dumplings of some sort (Stan called them gyooza), and that was very good.

After that we continued to explore, and found ourselves eventually at the train station. Catching the train to anywhere means navigating different lines owned by completely different companies. Fortunately, a lot of the station names are written in romaji, so it's not entirely impossible to find one's way even with zero Japanese knowledge.

We eventually made it to Akihabara, and walked around in awe at the crazy amount of coloured lighting. There is a lot. I have a headache. While there, Stan bought the slimmest damn camera I have ever seen (a Panasonic D-Snap), and I bought a couple of cables for my speakers and battery charger (�200 each). When I went to buy it though, the guy just said "two hundred yen", so I gave him two hundred yen - he looked at me strangely, like I was trying to cheat him, then I realised that it was �200 each, and handed the rest across. I feel a lot more vulnerable to suspicion here, as if I could be arrested at any time.

We caught the train home some time later, and I experienced my first 'sardine train'. It gets very squishy. I recommend not being next to someone against whom you'd rather not have to press tightly, it could be uncomfortable. We got home (eventually), and my feet and back hurt and I'm tired, and I want to go to sleep, but under all that, I'm exhilarated! It's so cool just to be living here, and doing everyday things like shopping and catching the train and complaining about my back. I love it.

Not twenty minutes after writing the above did Thad arrive. His luggage has been lost, so we'll have to pick it up tomorrow. It's snowing! We went shopping, I spent _way_ too much money, but bought some western essentials (bread, milk, jam, margarine...). It's snowing in Tokyo! Anyway,Thad is from California, and he seems cool, he's spent a few years in Japan before, so he'll be able to help us with things like internet access.

20050225:

Alien Registration.
�100 stores.
Roppongi.
Expensive transport.
Shopping (lots o' food and drink) - some 'western' food.
Wendy.
Sam.
Tokyo tower.
Shrine.
Sore feet.
Subway ticket disaster.
Home at last!

20050226:

Hard Off (coax).
Tele works.
Don Quixote (food!).
Rang home.
Some (20 mins?) Japanese study.
Shower/Bath
Ate weird Milo.
Sleep. (1700)
Wake and listen to Shadow Rising.
Thad and Stan went exploring today.
Still no internet caf�.

This is it baby!

I gots me da net...but I gotta go to work.

Will use it more tonight.

Then there will be a mighty reckoning.

I'll start with the bad news: still no intarwebinets. Soon, maybe. At this point, I am resigned to a very long wait, and can't build up any kind of anger, righteous or otherwise.

Now, some good news: I have a phone in Japan. It has a 2 mega pixel camera with 2x optical zoom, bluetooth, 3G, cool multicoloured LED torch, and a good deal more. I also have a phone number, but I won't be publishing it here.

Some more news: Saranne came for a week and is now back in the sunny south of Japan. It was nice to hang out with an Aussie, and in particular, a Novocastrian. Did the expat Roppongi thing, saw a lot of Shinjuku for some reason (probably because I can get cheap tickets there from my place), and watched crazy Japanese television.

Burger phone!

Our house has a burger phone. From a bad 80's movie. Except more plastic. And cheaper (if that's possible).

Follow up training

I have what we refer to as FU training on Wednesday. It will be just like going to normal work, but probably with more people looking over my shoulder, and I'll have to get a different train ticket. Hooray.

Okay then, be cool folks, I'll have the internet one day, and on that day...

A'right, the internets weren't exactly quick in their coming, but I, the patient man that I am, was fine wi'dat.

I was fine. Now I'm stinkin' mad.

As a cut snake? I hear you ask.

No, not that mad. That would be a little over the top.

As a bull in a china shop that only wanted tupperware?

Yes, exactly that mad. That poor bull, all he wants is airtight containers made of durable plastics. What does he get? Overpriced and breakable saucers and the occasional tea cup. Now this bull might be partial to a teacup, but he doesn't want one now.

He wants tupperware.

Just like this bull, I want tupperware, there's nothing in which to keep my leftovers. But even more than that, I want t3h INTARWEBS! Can't you send me it? Can't I look upon its face?

No.

At least, not until the crazy-arse ISP has our username and password freakin' HAND DELIVERED to our house. We have to be there. To receive this paper. If we are not, then we don't get it, so no internets.

Which makes me kinda a little not so happy.

We did get our modem last night.

It has a software cdrom.
It has a web interface.
It has instructions.

It has snowed heavily twice since I got to Tokyo. The last time was less than a week ago.

Yesterday, it was 20 degrees celsius. Twenny-freakin degrees.

What is wrong with this city?

How can it jump 25 degrees upwards in the space of four or five days? Eh? Moogly?

To be honest, I'm not really upset about it: today I walked to the bank wearing a tshirt and some random trousers. No scarf. No jacket. No ring of cold resistance. Nuttin.

Actually, come to think of it, I got more "crazy gaijin" stares today than ususal. Hmmm, maybe it is cold, and I've lost my ability to feel it.

Bank? Did I mention a bank? My bank? That's right, ladies and gentlefolk, I now have a bank account with a bank that I will use for various banking purposes, like making bank transactions.

Unfortunatley, as far as I can tell, Japanese banks in general do not "do" internet banking. Which sucks majorly, since my credit card is attached to a savings account back in Oz, and I should be able to easily siphon funds between my accounts without filling out forms, and especially without having to nod and smile a lot at a bank teller who is in fact telling me that I have successfully closed my account and donated my earnings to the Yakuza.

We get our modem tonight.

Setting up our internet connection has been a little different from what I would have imagined. We have to set up a phone line for ADSL (no surpises there), and we have to set up an adsl 'connection', and pay money to NTT for the modem (okay, fine). But, when we rang about something else, they asked us who our "provider" was going to be. Aparently, we have to pay other people to actually handle passing out ip addresses, which'll cost a little more a month. These people could take up to a week before they actually activate our new adsl connection...grrr. I needs it.

I'm currently (finally) reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I picked it up from the Shinjuku station Kinokuniya for only 960 yen. Not bad. I'm almost finished though, so I think I might be doing some more purchasing soon...or actually start working on my Japanese...

Saranne will be coming over to stay in Tokyo for a few days on the weekend. That'll be cool. First Novocastrian visitor to our humble abode. I have convinced Thad and Stan to help me clean up the apartment a little...a lot. It's a little styesque at the moment. In about three weeks, Nathan will be staying for a week, so that's cool. He's off trekking through the jungles of Vietnam at the moment, so think of him, from time to time.

Well, work's calling, and I can't pretend not to hear it for much longer, so I'll see you again this side of the intarwebinets soon. Hopefully from the relative comfort of my own apartment.

Where to start? Firstly, this is the closest I've been to the intarwebs since last monday. So, if I didn't reply to you and you think I'm rude, you're right, but for different reasons.

Okay, so what's been happenin'?

Last Monday, orientation in Shinjuku...from there to some irish pub...from there to some jazz cafe...from there to some other bar with some great food but really crappy service...Now, you may know that the trains in Tokyo shut down at about twelve, twelve thirty am, and don't start again 'till fiveish. You may also know that taxis cost about US$160 for a twenty minute journey. Combine these facts...consider.

Have you considered?

Yes.

I was very tired on Tuesday morning, the first day of training.

Training

Training was a little stressful. I was tired (see above), there was a lot of new information, and I was in Japan.

Three days of intensive On-The-Job-Training (OJT) was humungo fun.

Work

Started work on Friday, it's actually pretty fun. The people are friendly, the students are all pleasant and want to learn, and the hours (four a day) don't leave much room for complaint. After Firday/Saturday had two blissful days off. Spent them mostly around Horinouchi (which is in Hachioji city, which is in Tokyo), checking out things...I have yet to find a close 'net cafe, though I Saranne has sent me an email with the location of one today, so I'll check that out soon.

What else
Some answers to the questions I got in emails, but might not have time to answer before I leave for work:

Will probably have slow internet access (47Mbps) this friday at home. We wanted to get adsl first, since it requires no installation, and would be done quickest. As soon as we have it, we will be applying for fibre-optic net access (100Mbps).

If you come to my place, bring at least a pillow and a blanket. It's not particularly cold, but we don't have anything there except for one blanket each.

Also, if you come to my place from overseas, bring vegemite and DVDs. DVDs should be either british (black books, the office) or something quintessentially Australian but funny...John Safran's music Jamboree or some such.

No, I cannot spell. No, I will not apologise for it.

If you need my actual address, email me and I will send it to you. If you want it but don't need it, then all you have to do is close your eyes real hard and wish three times, then write down whatever comes into your heart...do it!

Thanks for fixing up those DNS issues.

The Bjork CDs are in Jessie's collection in Newcastle, sorry about that. When I get a connection, I could send you some VBR mp3s, if that'll do you.

To get the vcr and the tele to work, make sure the coax (arial) cable goes into to vcr, then another one goes from the vcr into the tele. If that doesn't work, send me another email, maybe with a picture of the setup.

Okay, gotta go to work. Bye for now.

More updates soon.