The First Thanksgiving

Ah, Thanksgiving. By the time I realized that that was today and I didn't have anything to make for dinner, it was already almost 8:30. Facing the prospects of going out or trying to cobble something together on short notice, I decided to head to the store and see what I could find.

I realized about the time that I got to the meats section that I didn't actually know the Japanese word for Turkey. But, armed with my trusty English/Japanese dictionary, I started slowly decoding the labels to try and find it. After quite a bit of searching, I gave up on finding turkey in Tokyo, and settled for ham. The actual translation is "Ham steak." I'm not sure how that's supposed to work.

Green beans weren't even in my dictionary, but I found string beans and decided that those are close enough. Potatoes are in ready supply year-round here, because they're one of the staple foods of Japanese cooking. Right after rice, fish and noodles. Corn on the cob is sold in spring and summer for grilling, but finding it this late was likely to be difficult. Luckily, I had previously found the canned food section, which stocks sweet corn and cranberry sauce. Rolls, butter, and sour cream and a quick trip through the cash register and I was ready to rock.

First Day of Work

Today was (finally? already?) my first day of work. I'm still nowhere near set up here, but I think I have myself established enough to be ready for it. Of course, I start moving on Wednesday...

Most of today was your typical new hire orientation experience, albeit the bilingualish version. One of the really interesting things to listen to here is that, even when people generally speak English very well, they tend to retain their native hesitation sounds and interjections, and lapse back into Japanese for really short phrases. I also suspect that a lot of engrish has to do with people trying to transliterate in their heads. I'm commonly asked "heee. Why you can speak Japanese?" instead of something more natural like, "Woah; how come you speak Japanese?"

Later in the week, I get a double-batch of intensive mostly Japanese-language training material about history, policies, procedures, etc. Fairly typical first week training for a large company.

Oh, and no, we don't have a masseuse. There are 2 of them.

In which I make a concentrated effort not to starve

Reading Japanese can best by described as a series of educated guesses. 米 in one context means rice (uncooked); in another, it means the US.

Cooking, unfortunately, means following instructions - usually written instructions. Thankfully, improvisation works pretty well, because I've had to make some guesses just to make sure that things come out edible.

The first few days that I was here, I went pretty much exclusively for pre-packaged meals. Ramen is made much the same as in the US; boil water, add to noodles, and wait. It also didn't take much guessing to figure out coffee, which I found in little single-serving pour-over packets (I hope to post a video of them in use soon). The future of coffee is truly amazing.

Last night, I decided to try something a little more adventurous (and I'd found the local "supermarket"). It took me a while, but I finally found a packet of curry vegetables, which saved me from deciphering all the recommended ingredients from back of the package. For example, can I use one "king-size" leek in place of 3 "large" leeks? 2:3? Are they, in fact, the same thing?

The basic instructions on the back of the curry package seemed to read something like:

1. Stir together and heat up chopped vegetables
2. Stew for 20 minutes
3. Add curry blocks and continue heating until you have curry

Which is basically what I did. Turns out, it's really hard to screw up curry.

The rice cooker, on the other hand, had no such helpful instructions. There's a button for "Boiled Rice Menu", and that lights up helpful things like "White Rice/Unwashed Rice," but not an actual "Go" button. The instructions that the landlord gave me for the rice cooker basically say to push start and wait 10 minutes after the cook cycle completes. So, obviously, there was some guessing required here, too.

Aaron: 1. Confusing Japanese cooking instructions: 0.

Today, I am officially an alien

I went down to City Hall to get turn in my Alien Registration form this morning. The procedure is mostly reminiscent of going to the DMV: take a number, fill out a form, pony up cash (optional). The main difference is that there is a separate section for each procedure you can do, and just one cashier. So, I had to get a number from the "Alien Registration" section, and only had to wait for one of those windows to be open. And then, once I was done, I waited for the cashier to call my number.

After that, it was off to meet up with the realtor and view the apartment that I'll be moving into (hopefully) next week. A coworker went to check it out for me last week, and forwarded me pictures of it, so I already knew what I was getting into. It's definitely just as tiny as he made it out to be. I think, if I position things just right, I'll have room to lay down.

In between, I had some time to kill, and so it became Donut Monday:

That is a "caramel/orange" donut: caramel icing and dollops of orange marmalade. Thanks to this donut (and spell-check), I know now how to spell marmalade. The coffee was billed as a "cafe americano," but I have no idea what dictionary they used to come up with that name.

Happy Autumn Equinox Day

Last night, I got into Tokyo, and went into the first hotel I could find after I got off the train. It wound up being just slightly bigger than the bed, with a very tiny bathroom off to the side. But, it was a shower and a bed, and was close to a gyuunyuu restaurant, so I didn't much care. I stand by my earlier statements that Yoshinoya is really missing out on the US college market.

Today is Autumn Equinox Day (apparently), which means that all the government offices and post offices are closed, and I can't get my Alien Registration Card. This means that I can't open a bank account or get a cell phone, which were the other things I had planned today.

But, I did get to move into my temporary apartment. This'll be my home for the next week, until I move into my final apartment on Friday. I get to go see it on Monday, but have already gotten one of my coworkers to take some pictures of the inside and do a walk-through, so I'll have some idea of what I'm getting into.

I have internet again in my apartment for this week, so I'm able to check email and such. I should be able to get more passport photos tomorrow, and then I get to register as an alien on Monday, and hopefully open a bank account and get a cell phone.

Security Theatre

I woke up late this morning, after telling my alarm clock that it was far too early for me to be awake.

We got to the airport with 45 minutes until my plane was supposed to take off, but the skycap informed me that I couldn't check bags through to Tokyo without going inside. 20 minutes later, I was informed that it was too late to check my bags there, and that I'd have to try my luck at the terminal. I got to the gate just after the doors closed, and had to wait for the attendants to come back out before I could figure out what the next step was.

One of the airline employees managed to get me on another flight, this time through Seattle. Now that I had an extra few hours, I went back to the ticket counter to check my bags, and then got to go through airport security again. This time, since I had the dry run already, I didn't have any problems, and have just finally eaten breakfast and had enough coffee in me to start feeling human.