Four years ago today marks an incredible date that has forever changed my life. My life living and working in Japan started 4 years ago. An inspiring journey that til this day as I look back still surprises me at how I left everything in Vancouver and embarked on a solo journey to Japan at age 22 where I picked up the most intriguing inspirations that I've ever gotten in life.
So to reminiscent those days, I pulled out my old blog and reposted my first entry here for your pleasure.
And here's a picture of me in Shinjuku, Tokyo
Please comment here if you'd like to see me digging out more of my old blog and repost "My Adventures in Japan" here every once in a while. :)
Mata-ne!
August 27-September 2, 2006
はじめまして (Nice to meet you)
So I’ve been off the plane for 5 days now. Hit by jet-lag for 3 days, I managed to survive all the official Japanese greetings. Within the 3 days that I arrived, I met at least 100 people. I was in Shinjuku for 2 days and then I went up to Niigata. I was taken every where to do the formal あいさつ (greeting) and greet everyone in the Mitsuke city hall. 10 minutes after I arrived at Mitsuke I met the superintendent of Education and was interviewed by the newspaper.
I am twenty-thirteen years old
Before I could stop to catch my breath and enjoy my new apartment, the next day I met the people at the fire and police department. Finally, I met the mayor of Mitsuke. I think the best meeting was meeting the people at the fire department. All of them were so eager to speak English and one of the best self-introductions I’ve heard so far started with “I am twenty-thirteen years old”. Turns out he was trying to say he was 23 years old; that’s when I realized that the firemen here are all very young. In fact they are the only young people I’ve met so far in this pitiful tiny town. Amazingly they’re all under 30 and funny enough they’ve already made plans with me to go out for drinks and movies. Is the city so small that the only friends I find are firemen? But I can’t complain since I’ve never met anyone as insane as they are. Also, for the sake of cooking mishaps, I should get to know my 911 guys. But on this side of the world, we dial 119 instead.
９月１日
Today is the first day of school for me and every student. At the assembly I had to do a self-introduction in front of all the students which turned out quite strange because the students were like zombies gawking at me throughout my speech. Today is also my first day without my translator. My translator, aka supervisor returned to Shinjuku after bringing me over here. He was so nice that it seems so weird without him now. I think I relied on his translations too much but I realized today that I can understand almost everything that people try to tell me.
The city hall gave me a bike today. Unfortunately I haven’t been on a bike for almost 10 years so there was a group of people watching me go as I biked off home today. Everyone came out to watch me off but I think they wanted to see me crash into a poll as I rode off which I almost did and made this lady scream as if she saw Godzilla.
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