Terrible Japanese is better than no Japanese

After 22 hours of flying, I finally arrived in Japan on the evening of the 21st. Completely exhausted, I faced my next set of challenges of going through immigration (took a little over an hour), getting my luggage and somehow navigating the subway system to the place I would be staying at in Tokyo. Now I have a giant suitcase, a carry on and a backpack that were all very full. This made things very interesting.

What I quickly learned, to my great relief, is that all the stations had their names in Hiragana and English. This made things significantly easier but I also want to note that knowing the phrase:
"(Place you want to go) doko desu ka?" was very useful in figuring out which platform to take. To be honest, it was very refreshing to see how orderly everything was. Everyone got in lanes on the side and left the middle open for people to get off the train. This was at 9:30pm at night though, I'm sure rush hours are much more chaotic.

"People will stare." That was the most common thing everyone would tell you about being a foreigner in Japan, needless to say that with my three bags I stood out even more than I usually would do. Luckily, I was prepared for this and honestly was too caught up with the thought of, "Holy crap I'm in Japan! LOOK AT ALL THE JAPANESE PEOPLE AND SIGNS AND VENDING MACHINES!" to even really care. After I riding the train, I got off the train to only realize I didn't have my ticket on me. A moment of panic set in, after some deep breathes I began to look for a train attendant and pray he knew some English or had paper so I could draw my dilemma at the very least. Needless to say he did know English and after explaining the situation let me go through without a problem. Maybe it was the tired look or out of pity but in any case I was and still am grateful.

As I reached my destination, I breathed a big sigh of relief. As I got ready for bed, it was great to take a shower again with hot water (since my parents have luke warm water at best). Also wanted to note, the place I am staying in is a hostel so there is two bathrooms we share. Having lived with at one time 5 people and 1 bathroom, it reminded me of the great times in San Francisco and the amazing new memories I was about to make in Japan. With that thought I went to sleep at midnight... only to awake at 6:30am.

When I was living at home, we would wake up at 6:30am to gather together and say family pray. Needless to say that my body still remembered so I said a quick morning prayer and went back to sleep. After a nice little 20 min nap, checking my facebook and twitter I set off to get ready for the day. Waking up early has its perks.

As a Japanese old woman passes by she says "Good Morning!" while I say "Ohayōgozaimasu!" We both look at each other and burst out laughing. It was an amusing sight, we both smiled at each other and were on our way. Thus my morning went as it usually does, except that all the sudden I have become a neat freak, it felt great to be able to do my routine. Today I will be heading down to Akihabara and taking some pictures with my DSLR, hopefully I can upload those in my next post. I'll admit that since I have touched down in Japan, despite not knowing the language very well, it felt like home. It is rare but I just felt like I was at the right place at the right time. This is only the beginning.

"Adventure is out there!"
~UP