“This doesn’t look anything like any part of Tarpon Springs I’ve seen,” said Matt, half snickering.

“It’s not the look, man…it’s the feel.”

We’d been on the bus for an hour or so, and the sun was setting. I was hurriedly trying to take pictures from my seat, while Matt just…relaxed. I watched the driver wield the bus through impossibly narrow turns and alleys, while pedestrians and drivers of much smaller cars didn’t seem to mind how close we were coming to killing all of them. Then I remembered: I was gonna have to drive in this.

Unlike Matt, whose schools were within walking/biking distance, my schools were as far as 10 km away, and the company I was going to work for pretty much forced me to have a car. Not for my convenience, I imagine, but so that I wasn’t a liability. Being that late just does not cut it. Even more wonderful—I actually had to rent the car FROM them. Oh, I could turn it down…and you better believe I was waiting for that chance.

“You driven here before, man?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” replied Matt, munching on some chips.

“Was it…difficult?”

“Nah. Just…follow the lights, man. Green means go, red means stop. No other rules. None.”

“…Right…”

Yeah…this is gonna be fun.

The bus stopped at Mito Station, where Matt and I got off. Mito is the capital of the Ibaraki Prefecture…like a state. The state where I would be teaching. So, this was a bigger city with tall buildings, faster cars, but…the station most definitely didn’t look like a station. Everything in Japan is so crammed together that it’s hard to find where one thing stops and another starts. This bus station looked like a demolition derby between department stores.

After helping me lug all my baggage to a better spot, Matt called the company for which we’d be working, and they offered to come and pick us up, but I didn’t know how anyone could possibly find us in all the confusion. Cars were flying everywhere, taxis were parked on all inches of the streets. And what really creeped me out was that there were Japanese school girls EVERYWHERE. No guys. All girls. And seeing those uniforms just….

“So, you still terrified of Japanese girls, Dave?”

“It’s not right, man…just…not right…”

Fortunately, our driver soon showed up, in the form of a very small, very confused, Japanese (what else?) woman…whose name I still don’t know. We hurriedly crammed all that baggage into the car and leapt inside, as the taxi drivers were quite perturbed by our presence.

After a few minutes of absolutely insane driving, we had arrived… Now…in all my imagination, I expected an office on, say…the sixth floor of a huge building with other offices. I forgot that my image of a gleaming Japan was dead wrong.

There it was, Trust School, on the second floor of a normal building, above a dry cleaners’, in the middle of an area that looked like the ghettos of West Palm Beach.

Yeah…I was in Japan, alright…

To Be Continued…