The First Week in Japan
Hello everyone,
Here is my first post of the summer! So far, I've been in Japan for about a week. I live just outside of Tokyo, in Chiba prefecture, in a huge apartment complex called "Columbus City" (コロンブスシティー) with the Itai family. Asae, the mom, works at home; she runs a webshop where she sells colorful handmade sandals to people all over Japan. I don't know the dad's name -- I just met him last night, because he works a few hours southwest at a pharmaceutical company in Fukuoka during the week -- so I just call him Itai-san, which means "Mr. Itai." Their son, Rintaro (Rin), is 18 years old and studies international relations at Kanda University down the road. Their daughter, Ririka (Riri or Lily), is 16 years old and attends high school. They all speak some English (and I try to speak a little bit of Japanese!), though sometimes we have to play charades :)
Columbus City houses about 900 families, and has a communal area with playground equipment, greenery, and barbecue grills; kids run around freely because the space is closed off from the busy streets and train tracks. On the opposite side of the complex from us is a convenience store, or konbini. I've walked over there a few times to buy tea or fruit, and I've noticed that when I do so the smaller children on the playground stare at me! It occurred to me that they may not have seen a non-Japanese person before (none of the older kids or the adults seem fazed, but the younger kids lock in on me). The center of Tokyo is more racially diverse than I expected, but I am the only non-Asian-looking person I've seen in Columbus City, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were confused by me. As someone who lives in a predominantly white/European community in the United States, I've become acutely aware that my complexion is salient in a country as racially and culturally homogeneous as Japan, where I am clearly marked as a "foreigner."
I started work at Second Harvest on Tuesday. Their main operations (the pantry, kitchen, warehouse, and office) are in Akihabara, a part of Tokyo most known for its anime- and manga-related venues. They also have a warehouse in Saitama, which is about 30 minutes north of Akihabara by train. The main purpose of the organization is to provide food to Tokyo's needy, including refugees, single-parent households, older people, and students who are just starting out in the "real world." I'll write more about my work at 2HJ in the next post, because this week was just about learning the ropes and meeting fellow volunteers/co-workers; I feel like I'll have more insights to offer after a few more days of work!
I use the Citymapper app to find my way, just as I did in Denmark, but it's a bit trickier here because it only lists the train lines in Tokyo/the surrounding area; the app hasn't included the bus line yet. My commute to Second Harvest is about an hour, so I've been practicing my Japanese with the Duolingo app, researching grad schools, and reading the news. I am fascinated by public transportation here (Mom, you would seriously love how organized it is). It's incredibly clean and quiet, especially for how many people use it each day! I was also surprised to find that everyone lines up neatly to the left side of each station's escalators, so as to allow those in a hurry to pass on the right side. People also line up exactly on either side of a train's doors, allowing those inside to exit the train before entering themselves. It's a level of mass human organization I have not witnessed in a public setting before, and it's seriously impressive -- especially considering the chaos of relatively smaller "big cities" in the United States. Whether there are posted signs encouraging these practices, or Tokyo's residents just consider it to be "second nature," I do not know -- but there is definitely a much different atmosphere than what I have experienced in New York City, Chicago, Paris, or Rome!
As an aside:
I have become acutely aware of my privilege as an English-speaker travelling to different countries. For example, over 90 percent of Danes speak English, and while not nearly as many Japanese speak English, Asae-san said that most of them learn at least some in school. Many labels on Japanese produce in supermarkets are translated into English underneath. Road signs often don direct translations or romaji (English-phonetic) representations of the Japanese characters, and each stop on the train is announced in both Japanese and English. In addition, one of the Japanese alphabets, katakana, is used solely for words adopted into Japanese from other languages -- the primary one being English. So if you learn the katakana characters and sound them out, you will find that they often denote a word taken from the English language, such as クリネックス (kurinekkusu / Kleenex) or コロンブスシティー (coronbusu shitei / Columbus City). The fact that my native language is so prominent in a country where most people hardly speak it is testament to just how much linguistic and cultural influence North American and English-speaking-European countries exert upon the world. In this particular situation, I imagine that part of the reason is because Japan is home to a number of American air force bases, and I'm interested to learn more about how people feel about this.
As with last semester, I am going to be posting my photos separately into a Google Photos album. It's quite a bit easier than figuring it out on Wix, so I'll just link the album in each of my posts. So here you go! https://photos.app.goo.gl/1kWzwYaGcEU1n9sS7
ありがとう ございます (arigatou gozaimasu / thank you so much) for reading! See you next week :)
