Sept 12

The thing about four-day weekends is that…they’re only cool when you’ve actually got things to do. This being the last day of my four day weekend, I was struck with the truth: I don’t have anything to do in this dern city. Not yet at least.

I checked my e-mail and saw that Atsuko had sent me a message.

Hey, David,

Have you taken care of your Alien Registration Card yet? If not, could you go to the Chikusei City Hall and register?

Thank you.

Atsuko”

Oh, right…that whole being a legal worker thing. Ha! Forgot about that. So, I hopped in my car and—wait, no. That’s not how it started.

I wanted to drive to my Junior High school today, so that I won’t get totally lost tomorrow. Then, I figured, I’d stop by the City Hall as well, and take care of stuff. Out came the maps. Five different people had given me maps, and on each map was marked a different special location. Genius, huh? But, eventually, I got it all figured out.

The drive to the school was simple enough. Only one wrong turn, but I found myself one awesome bridge and river that way. I gotta go back there sometime. But the fun began when trying to find City Hall. Oh, yes, in America, right turns are your friend. You can easily bypass traffic that way. In Japan, right turns are your worst enemy. It’s like a left turn in the States, but…with…a larger blindspot, and no guarantee that the cars going in the opposite direction will even slow down a bit to help you across. And guess what? To get to the City Hall from my school it was all right turns. JOY.

But, with a little gaijin power, I made it safely and walked into the City Hall. Even the workers there seemed amazed by my presence, even though they HAD to see foreigners all the time. Fortunately, when a big black dude walks into a Japanese city office, everyone knows what he’s there for, and is happy to point him in the right direction.

When I sat down to begin my application, people started trying to figure out ways to have to walk by me to get a better look. The woman at the desk was very friendly, and found my broken Japanese cute.

“Ah! Trust School! You know Atsuko!” she said, seeing the business card I’d somehow put in my passport.

“Atsuko? Yes…I know her.”

“Very nice girl.”

Apparently, knowing Atsuko got me some bonus points with this lady. I’m not complaining. But…I forgot to bring my pictures with me. Here’s a hint to anyone else moving to Japan. Bring, like, 80 copies of your passport picture. You can get ‘em cheap if you do it at Kinkos and cut them yourself. Make a few that are 2”x2” and others that are 3.5 cm x 4.5 cm. You’ll be golden. I however, had to find a picture booth…which happened to be aaaaaaall the way over at Shimodate Station. Grand. And when I got there, I discovered that it didn’t take bills as large as the one I had…punks. So, off I went to buy something small to break a 5,000 yen note. That’s 50 bucks in layman’s terms.

Blah blah blah…made it back, gave the lady my pictures, and she referred me to someone else. This guy we’ll call…Garbage Master. He’s been given the task of explaining the garbage process to foreigners, because, really…you need it explained. In Japan, you have to separate your trash. Oh, not just into recyclable and non-recyclable. We got burnable, non-burnable, recyclable, to big to pick up and too stank to pick up. Yes. Stank. It’s necessary. Each of these has its own bag. And each bag has its own day. If you don’t separate your garbage, it won’t be picked up. If you use the wrong kind of bags it won’t be picked up. If you put the wrong thing out on the wrong day, no pickin’ up. It’s actually not TOO different from the efforts of the Florida Recycling program, but man, you try thinking in terms of burnable and non-burnable instead of recyclable and non-recyclable for a little bit. It breaks your brain. I’ll get it down, though. Fortunately, Garbage Master found my broken Japanese to be cute as well, so he gave me some bags to help me out on my first try.

And with that, I left and went home. The rest of the day I spent taking a walk down the major highway right next to my house. Only traveling east, I found that I live next to…two banks, two huge grocery stores, a 100 Yen shop, three book stores, two huge electronics stores, a comic shop, some cool restaurants, a post office and two decent train stations. On my way, I took some pictures of my brightly lit avenue and smiled at just how fortunate I was in this world.

Still no culture shock, though…but I’m waitin’ for it. Oh, am I ever…

D