Being in Japan for me is like being in a RPG. Specifically, being in a map too high for my level. I finished Japanese 1 at Wellesley, that’s like the tutorial ground, where you slay a few slimes (or learn to read hiragana, katakana, and a few kanji), you have a bunch of friendly newbies (or classmates), and you’re like “I’m ready to take on the world!”
Somehow I’ve wandered into the “Japan map,” full of people who’ve been speaking Japanese for their entire lives. I’m just in total awe. I skirt around the city trying not to look too lost. The quests that I’m accepting (“get a haircut in Japan!”) have skyrocketed in difficulty.
I bought myself motivational notepads
We’ll do away with the RPG analogy now. I’ve been in Sendai City for about a week and here are just a few personal anecdotes.
Thank’s pirate samurai!
I am a monster. Just kidding. But I feel pretty tall here. I’m like 5’ 4” and that’s the average woman's height in America (or below average). Either way I don’t usually feel very tall, my entire family has a few inches on me, but here it feels like everyone (girls, sometimes boys) is under 5’. I feel this the most when I’m washing my hands. All of the sinks here hit me mid-thigh, and usually I end up splashing water all over my pants (and that’s when I notice!).
Side note, all public bathrooms have this machine that will automatically make this waterfall sound when you use the toilet, it’s suppose to cover up the sound of your pee (or poop) and make going to the bathroom more modest, but it’s so loud! I think it’s really there to ward off anyone who might want to browse their phones on the potty.
It’s the black one, pretty boring looking imo
I have a new bike. Well, a new used bike. It’s the first time I think that I’ve had a steel framed bike. It’s really heavy. It’s also the first time that I’ve had a presta valve on a bike. When I went to inflate it I was like “woah, I didn’t prepare for this” and then after using this weird clippy attachment thing I figured it out. Not sure if I’m doing it right, but hey, the tire’s inflating.
Clip attachment thingy
People here bike everywhere. Literally. On the left side of the road, on the wrong side of the road, on the pedestrian walkways, everywhere. And while there are bicycle laws in existence, it seems like the rule of thumb is “there are no rules, until someone gets hurt.” I also find it kind of weird that most bikes in Japan come with bells, but bikers weave in and out of pedestrian traffic like silent bike ninjas.
A bike parking lot
Also since everyone bikes, the lock your bike to a post idea doesn’t work (there aren’t enough posts!). Bike parking in Japan is actually a pretty big problem. When people park wherever sometimes it causes a huge blockade in pedestrian streets. So there are designated bike parking zones, and I tried to use a bike parking lot today. There’s like a slot that you can put your bike into that clicks and locks, and there’s this ticket machine you use to pay for your time. So I park my bike and try to pay for my parking spot, I put a 100 Yen coin in, it spits a 100 Yen coin out. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Omg I hope someone notices that I’m really confused and have no idea what I’m doing. Eventually I figure out that you pay after you come back, I mean, they have your bike hostage.
Bike parking machine
There’s a department store called Loft. From the name I thought it was like Japanese Ikea or some kind of fancy high end clothing shop that I could never afford. But! It’s actually like if someone picked my brain and created a department store with everything I’ve ever wanted and more. Like seriously. Everything here is so freaking cute. And it has all those weird things that you never knew you needed like thermos exclusively for soup, a umbrella that doesn’t get wet, stationary in every type of cute animal, a hand pillow disguised as a bear, everything.
Hand pillows disguised as sheep
blang blang
Finding manga is really hard. Before I got to Japan I (and every other foreigner) was like “it’s going to be manga paradise!” What you quickly come to realise is that everything is in Japanese and you have no idea where your book would be in this sea of really cheap graphic novels. I’ve done some research on the system, it’s organized by genre, publisher, imprint, author, title in Japanese alphabetical order. So armed with this knowledge, I walked into the store (BookOff) a second time more confidently. And of course I forget that the main problem was I can’t read Japanese (well). Looking for my books was a little like playing where’s waldo with kanji in a sea of kanji. I finally located where my book would be… if they had my book! Back to the drawing board!
So I picked out a children’s book “101 Japanese folk tales.” What I’ve come to find out is that children’s books are hard. I’m still on the first story and I’m finding myself looking up the meaning of different words every single sentence. And I wish that was an exaggeration.
昔々
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