Arrival!

What a busy last few days it has been - from my departure from New Zealand on Saturday afternoon, followed by hours of waiting around Sydney International Airport and a nine hour flight to Tokyo, my adventure began at Haneda airport at 5.15 on Sunday morning.

 The Land of the Rising Sun indeed!

I was met by a tutor from my study group, Keishi, who guided me to my hall of residence and started the process of setting me up to live here for the next wee while.

I was introduced to my hall of residence, Komaba Main (such pretty names they use here), which is a fairly ordinary looking building, reasonably utilitarian in nature, as seen here:

When the door to my room was opened, I was immediately struck by how Japanese it was, in that it is SMALL

 

No more queen sized bed for me!

 This was taken from the door of my bathroom, and sans shower curtain. Also, plumbers out there will notice how over engineered the tap is, it seems to have far more valves than necessary!

Having unpacked my suitcases, Keishi and I went to Shimokitazawa, a town nearby, where I acquired the necessities of life that I had not brought with me. This included coat hangars (anyone who knows me knows how much I love shirts), so 30 of these were bought, along with bowls, cutlery, and toiletries, and some groceries.

Speaking of food, I have breakfast in my room, which is a mix of yoghurt, granola and fresh banana, which is much like what I have in New Zealand. However, when I opened my yoghurt packet for the first time, I was met with this surprise:

Yoghurt, my God!

Basically it is telling me why May 15 is Yoghurt Day, but I prefer to think that this is yoghurt from God, making me feel quite saintly when I eat it!

Unfortunately I didn't take too many (any actually) photos of the first day's adventures, but most of it was spent sussing out how I'll live here, with very little discussion of my study or coursework, which we saved for the next day. I was briefed by Keishi about how I was to get to the campus my school is based in, Kashiwa, and made sure to get an early night's sleep - I was told I had a two hour train ride ahead of me and I was sure I was going to be generally overwhelmed by it all, so having a good sleep was what I needed.

The next day I got up at 7am, ready for an 8am departure onto the train system into the heart of Tokyo, so that I could get to the other side and into the next prefecture, Chiba, where the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences is based. As I headed into the train station filled with commuters, I was immediately reminded of this Canon World Photo Press Daily Life category competition winner from 2010 by German photographer Michael Wolf:

 Fortunately for whatever reason the particular train I took wasn't so badly cramped, and I didn't have my face pushed against anyone/thing unsavoury; also the fact I was a good half a head taller than most meant I was out of the way as far as my eyes were concerned! 90 minutes of trains and transfers followed, and I stepped out into the fresh air of Kashiwa-no-ha station, which is close to the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences (GSFS), and where I was meeting Keishi. As I was told it was going to take 2 hours to get there, and that I'd left an hour earlier than necessary, the 90 minute ride meant I was there 90 minutes early! With my free time I took a wander around the place, finding a little park/plaza with free wifi (having not yet set up a mobile account I don't have data on my phone meaning my contact with the internet is fairly limited). I made my way into a mall and took a look around, if only to look at the shop names, which in classic Japanese fashion are often in English but make little sense, either in terms of the actual words, or being totally unrelated to the stuff they sell:

I also experienced a seemingly draconian Japanese rule in this particular mall, one which, while it didn't affect me personally, I felt it overstepped the mark highly:

Let it be known there are to be no dogs contained within one's luggage while visiting this here mall!

As the time to meet Keishi came around, I made my way to the spot we decided to meet, and then we made our way to GSFS. A brief bus ride took place, and then I stepped out and saw the place that I'd first seen on google street view a year ago while working at Wellington Central Library

Stepping into the building, I was struck by how quiet it was - despite being a Monday, and during term time, it appeared as though noone studied here! It was quite dim in there (clearly Japanese workplace health and safety don't know about luxometers). I was shown my desk in the student office, which is shown on this floor plan:

Apparently I am James now

Nice enough view though!

I then was taken to enrol at the main office, which was a fairly straight forward process, unremarkable in the extreme, though I was given a huge dossier of papers and guides which I am yet to begin looking at - today's mission I think!

Having enrolled there and received my student ID, Keishi and I made our way to the Meguro City Hall for my Foreigner Residence Registration and Health Insurance signup. For a quick bit of geography, Tokyo is split into something like 26 'wards', which historically would have been individual towns, cities and villages. Over time they have expanded and met up, merging into the greater Tokyo city. Each of these wards has a city hall that operates something like a city, rather than regional or unitary authority in New Zealand, and they each keep track of who lives in each ward. This was an immensely bureaucratic process, putting anything I experienced working for the New Zealand government to shame! For my registration I had to write my name three times on one piece of paper, and was seen to by no less than four people, with a similar thing for my health insurance registration. Following all this however, I can now say I am a foreign resident of Japan, registered as living in Meguro ward, Tokyo, and a fully subscribed member of the National Health Insurance scheme. If now I get pregnant I am safely assured of getting a big payout, which put my heart at rest!

My third day in Japan I had nothing to do, so I resolved to do a bit of exploring. Next to my hall is the Komaba campus, which is used for undergraduate arts/humanities and mathematics students. Despite not being my campus, I thought it was as good as anything explore, and so off I went five minutes down the road to take a gander.

 Lunch from the campus convenience store - I had a hard time finding anything with vegetables!

This guy was flippin' huge, close to 10cm long easily!

 

There's a park nearby that I took a quick look into, deciding that it was getting too hot for much more of it, but I came across something that reminded me of a biblical scene, or that scarecrow scene from the original Planet of the Apes movie starring Charlton Heston:

 

 

Along the edge of this park there were what appeared to be crucified cartoon characters and soft toys; what heresy they had committed to suffer such a fate I do not know...

 

"Oh bother" - Winnie the Pooh shortly before being bagged and crucified

There must be some festival or something on, because at the entrance to the train station there is this set up as well that was mildly alarming the first time I saw it:

Mario and Luigi had evidently committed the most heinous crimes of all the cartoon characters to be strung up so publicly; criminal justice in Japan appears to be highly draconian for cartoon characters

 

After my explorations, I headed back to Komaba main, and was sitting in the common room with aircon on full bore, when another resident walked in and introduced himself as David, a Palauan studying civil engineering. Took off well, and we ended up getting dinner in Shibuya, concluding a pretty good day all round!

For some broader context about what I am doing, I have a scholarship from the Japanese government, which pays me to study at a Japanese university. Currently I am a research student, which means I am a student who is in a sense in purgatory or a halfway stage. I am able to go to lectures and so on, but I do not take assessments or receive credits for them Instead what I am working towards is an entrance exam in January, which if I pass will 'matriculate' me, meaning I become a full fledged Master's student, at which point I will be taking classes and so on, as well as writing a thesis. At this exact point in time I don't know much beyond this, insofar as what/where/how I will study, but I am going to a seminar with my professor on Friday at the main campus, Hongo, which is attended by about 20 others, including my tutor Keishi. This is a two hour discussion about various things (what these are I do not yet know), but I hope that from Friday I will have a greater understanding of what's what. Beyond that, all I really know is that until I have this exam in January, I will not have much cause to go to Kashiwa campus and GSFS, which in some ways is good because it's quite a distance away, and research students apparently do not qualify for a train discount. So until January at least I will be researching something, and staying around central Tokyo for the most part. As far as I know, and indeed this is the reason I opted for this program, my studies are in English; while I speak Japanese fine and have studied it as university, I am not feeling terribly confident about reading legalese and environmental policy in Japanese quite yet! My plan for today is to go create a bank account, and otherwise potter around for the day. Tonight I am meeting a friend from Finland who has invited me to a DJ event at a bar not far from here, so I am looking forward to seeing them, it's been six years! Tomorrow I'll try get some more exploration in, and take plenty more photographs! 

I plan to update this as often as there is something to update on, which in my previous experience of Japan is quite often! So please keep checking back, and I'm sure there'll be plenty to see!

Bye for now!

Troy