It’s 3pm on May 23rd and I’m in at Hon Dana Café on the 3rd floor of a large building in Tachikawa on a rainy day. I’m listening to Kaskade and feeling very optimistic.
My first few days in Japan generally followed a pattern. Wake up between 630 and 7am, go for a walk, shower, breakfast, then go out and do things. Come back to Miyoko’s after lunch, nap, work with a break for dinner and then sleep between 1am and 2am. Thank you Mom and Miyoko for the wonderful meals!
May 2nd, 2023 | Getting Down To Business
I was pleased to find myself asleep until 630am. I (hazily) remember being 5 years old visiting Japan and waking up at 4am, completely awake and at the mercy of powerful jetlag. Waking up at 630am on my first morning felt like a total victory for me! After breakfast, Mom and I walked down to the Bunkyo-ku City Hall where I was to register for my Japanese Residence Card (Zairyu Card) – I came to Japan on a 1 year Japanese Descendent Visa. While getting that, I ended up signing up for health insurance and social security. The Japanese attorney who helped me get my Japanese Descendent Visa gave me a heads up on all of these but I had forgotten about the health insurance and social security so it felt oddly spontaneous to sign up for these serious things on the spot without coming in intending to do so. Fortunately everyone we interacted with was kind and patient and the overall experience, while slow (as you’d expect from any government office with lots of people waiting in many lines) was good. The amount of paperwork involved felt reasonable and the questions were pretty straightforward – at least with Mom helping me. These monthly costs were also super reasonable… ~$14 for health insurance and ~$100 for social security (this one will be refunded to me if I leave the country). Thank you Mom for translating, making everything go so smoothly and supporting me here! Afterwards, we picked up some tasty premade food, went back home to eat them and napped.
At 5pm, I woke up and started work. Unlike my typical work schedule where I’ll go back and forth between individual work and meeting with people on Zoom, it was immediately clear the flow of the “workday” would be different. First, I’d have about 5 hours of uninterrupted work time and then my meetings would be more back to back for the last few hours. Context switching is costly so I was optimistic about this routine (and still am!). Miyoko’s internet was solid and I was able to be productive until dinner time when the three of us enjoyed another great meal. I wasn’t able to quite stay up until 1am but made it hours later than the night before.
May 3rd, 2023 | Imperial Palace and Yummy Noodles
I was keen to get back on track with my daily habit of a morning walk. Fortunately, Mom and Miyoko were also up for it so the three of us walked around the nearby Tokyo University.
This is a super beautiful campus and one of the most prestigious universities in Japan. I had known Todai was one of the top universities in Japan but didn’t know about Tokyo University. After spending time walking around campus, it came to me. The word for university is “daigaku” and therefore “Todai” is a combination of beginning of “Tokyo” and the beginning of “daigaku”! This was satisfying for me as the world made just a tiny bit more sense than it had previously. After our walk, we headed (trained? subwayed?) over to the Imperial Palace. This is a large area with a big moat, impressive stone walls, super well maintained gardens, the home of the Japanese Emperor and his family, the former site of Edo Castle and at the center of Tokyo.
Miyoko had been interested in being a tour guide here so it was wonderful learning more details from her as we strolled through the grounds. As we took in the sights on a day with perfect weather, I felt incredibly grateful to be there in the moment and on a workday even. Afterwards, we made our way over to Tokyo Station – one of Tokyo’s largest train stations. We walked through the endless underground passageways packed with people until we found the famous Ramen Street. There were lines at all restaurants but it was only 20 minutes or so until we found ourselves chowing down on some heartwarming tonkotsu ramen.
I don’t particularly love chashu but this was the best chashu I’ve ever had, super thinly sliced and packed with savory goodness. For both Mom and me, jetlag caught up to us and we made our way home, needing an afternoon nap. The evening was a repeat of the prior day. Wake up at 5pm, work, take a break for a bomb dinner – thank you Miyoko for making amazing mentaiko pasta!
May 4th, 2023 | First Run in Japan
I was very happy to get out for a run in the morning. I took the opportunity to explore further around Todai’s perimeter.
It felt like someone turned on hard mode for my run: I couldn’t tell how much was due to not running as much lately vs way more humidity than I’m used to vs other factors. That said, it felt wonderful to be moving my body and to have some alone time with the flexibility to improvise my route as I pleased. Afterwards, Mom and I walked around the neighborhood – checking out a konnyaku shrine and picking up groceries. Then the classic combo of nap, work and dinner and work.
May 5th, 2023 | Family & Soba
Mom and I started the day enjoying the Todai greenery. She described San Shrio Pond as her happy place.
Then we headed over to Ebisu where we met with Mom’s cousins for lunch. This was wonderful as connecting with family is broadly one of the reasons I wanted to come to Japan AND my mom’s cousin Hideatsu generously agreed to be my guarantor as part of my Japanese visa application. Everyone was in a good mood and I did my best to keep up with the conversation but it was tough for me. Experiences like these provide me with motivation to work at getting better with Japanese conversation skills. This sounds obvious in hindsight, but I found it much easier for me to have a (simple) 1 on 1 conversation with someone rather than try to understand what’s going on with a group conversation full of fluent speakers. We enjoyed great food at the soba restaurant and it felt right to have a glass of Ebisu beer in the Ebisu neighborhood of Tokyo.
I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone better! Afterwards, Mom and I stopped in Shibuya to reserve train tickets for our upcoming travels to Uozu and Kyoto – especially important since it was during Golden Week (a busy week filled with holidays and people typically traveling to and from their hometowns). Then it was the classic nap, work and dinner.
Beau's Blog 
Leave a comment