Today, on the 15th day after I arrived in Japan, I moved into the apartment in which I will be spending the remainder of my year here. It was a bit hectic getting packed and ready, but I’ve really just been living out of my duffels for the last two weeks, so it wasn’t too bad to just put everything back in and head out.
I’m hoping to get pictures up fairly soon of this place; it’s essentially a small studio apartment. It occupied half of the first floor of the building that the language school is in; the school itself is in the second floor. The other half of the first floor is apparantly the headquarters of a shoe wholesaler; it’s got a separate entrance, and I was just told to generally stay away from the place. There are a few distinctly Japanese quirks, like the 4-tatami area on which my futon rests, but it’s pretty normal otherwise.
The thing about staying here is that the general foreign-ness of the place seems to diminish with time, as you begin to pick up the hints and clues that allow you to function normally. Some kanji become familiar just because of repeated exposure: 入 (entrance), 出 (exit), 大 (big), 小 (small), and so forth.
One thing which remains odd in my mind is that you almost never get discounts here for buying in bulk. It’s not uncommon to pay exactly the same unit price for a can of soda from a vending machine and a bottle 5 times the size from a grocery store. The Japanese way of dealing with this is simple: instead of buying from grocery stores and storing a pantry, they’ll just buy whatever they need for the day’s cooking that day, often from a convenience store. Such stores actually are convenient, because they’re everywhere, and you don’t face the absurd markup that you often see in the US for said convenience.
Actually, convenience stores are used for more than just food. They’re where you go to find an ATM, or even to pay your bills. This bill-paying aspect comes from the fact that Japan is a cash country; credit cards are rarely supported, and debit cards and checks just don’t exist here. Large scale money exchanges are usually accomplished by direct bank transfers. However, banks offer extremely restrictive hours. Therefore, convenience stores offer a reputable place where you can pay your bills 24 hours per day; they’ve got a network set up such that bills have bar codes; you can go to nearly any store chain and they’ll just scan the bill, take your money, and forward it automatically.
Unfortunately for me, this requires some adaptation on my part. The designers of the apartment didn’t include any place to put even moderate quantities of food in reserve, so if I want to make anything, I need to buy all the ingredients that day. Making extra and saving it is improbable, because the only fridge I have here is smaller than the mini-fridge I kept in my dorm room.
I don’t want to seem like I dislike it here; I’m still really excited about everything that’s going on. At the same time, I think I’m ready to start working on developing my daily routine here and settling in, instead of living every day as an adventure. Adventures will probably find me, especially while I’m still learning where everything is, but those can’t be avoided. I was lost for two hours today after taking the wrong path out of an intersection, but I came out of that with detailed knowledge of the area in which I wandered. I managed to find my way back without retracing my route and without asking anybody for directions, which certainly helped me feel less bad about the fact that I was very lost.
Next time I go exploring, though, I intend to do so on my bicycle. If nothing else, I’ll be moving faster while lost, instead of wasting time walking from place to place.
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