Golden Week

So Golden Week is a week in early May with many holidays, so many people have the entire week off and travel or just take it easy with their families. There is a lot of traffic; all modes of transportation are booked and more expensive than normal, as are hotels I believe. With my belongings all packed, Maruyama and I began this most golden of weeks getting me settled in Tokyo. We drove around to some random train station in Saitama Prefecture then boarded three trains before coming to our final destination to meet up with Goseki-san. We walked to his apartment and I dropped off my bags there.

Then we walked around the neighborhood for a bit and finally had dinner at an Indian restaurant nearby. I have since returned to that restaurant and have chatted with the three workers, none of whom are Indian. The owner is Bangladeshi and has been in Japan for 22 yrs, so unsurprisingly his Japanese is fluent. The other two workers are Nepalese and have been in Japan 3 and 4 years. They are very friendly and I think they enjoy talking to their customers, which may not happen too often. Anyway, they gave me a free mango lassi, which was delicious.

After getting settled, Maruyama-san returned to Tsukuba, and I went to get some shut eye while Goseki-san stayed in his lab to continue working on his polymer syntheses.

The following day I walked around Tokyo some more and revisited places like Yoyogi Park and Shibuya. I also made plans to meet up with my friend Ryu who is originally from Tokyo and now lives/works in Saitama Prefecture. I met Ryu on Kibbutz Lotan in southern Israel when I was there for four months. He was a regular volunteer and worked primarily with the goats.

I met up with Ryu-chan in Asakusa and we walked around just talking about life and Japan. We went to the temple, which was crowded, prayed, and then went off in search of a good place to eat lunch. Most places were crowded, but eventually we found a good udon place with a short wait. I forget the type of udon we had, but it was thicker than normal udon.

I had hung out with Ryu on several occasions while on the kibbutz, but never really had an extensive conversation with him. I am not sure why because he is a very interesting person. I learned that he studied linguistics, but he ended up not liking it, so he went on to fashion school and also to a hat school. He then worked for a design company as a professional hatter, but decided to quit when the market was becoming unstable. He traveled for a bit and is now working with an IT company and makes hats in his free time. He has an exhibit in late summer where he says he plans to show 50 or so of his hats. I told him that I would definitely purchase a custom-made Ryu-chan hat.

After Asakusa we went to Akihabara to check out the electronics and the maid cafes, since he had never been to one. We went to one where you can pay to get slapped in the face by a maid. We didn’t buy this since it was expensive and I told him that I would slap him for free, but it was still an interesting experience, albeit weird.

Our last stop for the day was Ikebukuro, which I had never been to. He said it was known for its liveliness and he took me to one of his favorite restaurants. The food was spectacular (I feel like I keep writing that the food is good by using different adjectives, but I am not really sure how to adequately explain the actual tastiness of the Japanese cuisine, so bear with me, or come experience it for yourself). Afterwards we went to a pub nearby and after more great conversations he said he would skip work then next day and that I simply had to return to his house so we could hang out more. Unfortunately I had already made plans to go to Fukushima Prefecture with the Sakurai family, but maybe before I leave I’ll go over, and maybe learn how to make formal hats. We parted ways and I returned to pack for my three days in Fukushima.

Fukushima Prefecture is north of Ibaraki Prefecture and is pretty rural. We first drove to the capital (taking longer than expected because of traffic) and met up with some of Sakurai-san’s friends. He gave them fresh bamboo shoots from his garden. Everyone was very happy to see him and still referred to him as shacho (company president). We had a great dinner, and I was surrounded by smokers. Although everyone kept apologizing for smoking, nobody stopped smoking. The addiction must be terrible.

Anyway, the first night we stayed in a hotel and I had a great view of a large 7-11 sign with some mountains in the background. We then drove around the city and went to a park to check out all the koinobori. We also drove up a nearby mountain that still had a lot of snow on it. I even saw a group of cute little wild monkeys, but unfortunately I did not have my camera on hand to photograph them. The place on top of the mountain reminded me of Iceland because of the rocks, moss, and all the minerals and the smell of sulfur. For lunch we met up with Sakurai-san and the kids. We ate at this ramen place that had really good spicy ramen. If was a huge bowl however, and I was unable to finish it all.

Once we were all together, we drove to the small village of Hurudono, where the Fujitsu plant is located, and dropped our bags off in the small hotel where we were staying. The owners of the hotel and the Sakurai family have known each other for several years and they were pretty much family. Everybody was really nice and at dinner I met more people who used to work with Sakurai-san’s father. After dinner they decided to take me to a local karaoke joint, which was the coolest thing ever. It was a smallish bar, with a waitress maybe in her 60s sporting pigtails. There was an older couple sitting at the bar, and three young men sitting in the booth in one corner. The waitress brought us edamame and the karaoke book. I chose a song, I think by Linkin Park, and the other people chose mostly enka songs; the youths were mostly singing Japanese rock and pop songs. After my song which everyone applauded me for (nobody listens to this music and their English isn’t good enough to realize how terrible a singer I am, maybe) I decided to try my hand at a Japanese song. The only two Japanese songs I sorta know the words to are the theme song to Neon Evangelion and Bluebird by Ikimono Gakkari; they only had the Evangelion song. I told one of the people to help me, especially with the faster parts since my reading skills are not very good. The song went by well and I enjoyed it. I sang several other songs in English, Spanish (they had Juanes), and even an Italian song (“Volare”). A little later three more young men came in and sat in a different booth. As the night progressed one of the guys approached me and greeted me I a mix of English and Japanese. He asked if I knew any Backstreet Boy songs because he would like to sing a song with me and that’s the only English songs he knew. I said that I probably remembered some of their songs and so he chose the one he knew (“You are my fire” or maybe that’s not the name, but something like that). So when the time came for us to sing, two other guys joined us and the four of us stood in the middle of the bar sharing two microphones and rocking out to the Backstreet Boys. One of the guys also knew a Linkin Park song so we also sang that as a group. In the end I asked if I could take a photograph of everyone to remember this most awesome karaoke experience.

The following day we toured the Fujitsu plant and went to the park so the kids (me included) could run around. We then drove back home, still with a lot of traffic, and then they dropped me off at the TX station so that I could return to Tokyo.

Overall it was a great Golden Week. Fukushima is a very awesome place and I could see myself living in a place like Hurudono, which lies in a valley surrounded by really green hills and mountains.

Post-Tsukuba

Everyone in my work group seemed to be worried about me and my plans for after Hitachi Chemical. I did not really have any plans myself, but I did not worry about it. Before coming to Japan I had thought of several scenarios for after my internship. My ideal plan was to take some intense Japanese classes while having a part time job and being a part of a taiko group. None of that happened, but I am OK with that. I had also contemplated WWOOFing across Japan, but in the end I decided against it because I felt that two months was not enough time to WWOOF all around Japan, and constantly moving around meant high traveling costs.

Sakurai-san’s father, who is the ex-president of one of Fujitsu‘s plants and is very well connected, was adamant in finding me a job. From working and living in a hotel on top of Tsukuba mountain to working as a translator and liaison for foreigners seeking information at the Tsukuba city hall. Unfortunately, since I had neither a working or student visa (just a special activities visa) it would probably have been illegal for me to work.

My next thought was simply to rent a cheap apartment or room somewhere for 2 months and have the liberty of traveling wherever and whenever I felt like. Most apartments are pretty expensive because they have deposits and gifts for the landlords and other random expenses which don’t make sense for a two month lease, and most contracts are for a year or two anyway.

So I then decided to stay in a Sakura House or something similar in Tokyo. These places are intended for tourists who are staying in Japan short term and their prices are pretty low for Tokyo. I think the cheapest room available, which is dorm-styled, is under $500/month, which is roughly how much a cheapish apartment in the US costs, so not too shabby. Being based in Tokyo would also facilitate traveling since this is the hub of Japan, and the city itself is pretty happening.

Still the people in my company worried about me, because traveling for 2 months is very expensive in Japan; the transportation, the accommodations, and the food, will I have enough money? Someone even estimated for me that I would need at least $5,000 for two months of travel. I agreed with them, but informed them that I did not plan to travel using the fastest/most convenient way (like by Shinkansen) and that I did not plan to stay in hotels, but outside in free campgrounds or with couchsurfers or in cheap hostels at best. As for food, I could live off of conbini food for 2 months, but I would treat myself occasionally to real meals to try out the local cuisines. This style of traveling is not common for Japanese people so maybe they continued to worry about this, but I assured them that many a backpackers from the West have survived like this, for longer periods of time. And since Japan is a fairly safe place, I did not mind sleeping in the middle of parks or in nature-y places as long as it was legal.

So this is what I had decided when one day as Maruyama and I were walking around Tsukuba center he informed me that I could probably stay at an ex-Hitachi worker’s apartment in Tokyo for free, since he lives in his lab running chemical experiments. I said that that was probably too much trouble, but sure enough everyone informed me that this was fine and that he really did spend 95% of his time in lab, so his apartment was mostly unused. I said that if it was truly OK (remember the Japanese can be very vague and it’s hard to understand them sometimes) then I would love that.

So it was settled, I would stay in Goseki-san’s apartment in Tokyo sleeping on his little futon in the corner (he offered me the bed, but I honestly prefer the floor). He lives near Meguro ward, close to the Tokyo Institute of Technology, which is where he works/lives/studies for his PhD. He gave me a tour of his lab which is pretty awesome, and his professor and fellow mates were very nice.

Before leaving Tsukuba, Maruyama informed me that there was money left over from the one time we had Sakurai-san’s BBQ, and that everyone had agreed to use the excess money to buy me an internet stick so that I would not have to worry about internet anymore. Could these people be any more awesome? So we tried several places, but they were all ridiculously expensive, especially for two (or four) months, so in the end it was impossible, but the gesture of kindness left me speechless. It’s not like I expect non-niceness from people, but usually an intern that you know for under two months, and have some difficulty communicating with isn’t someone most people would bend over backwards for. Maybe they are just really hospitable, or I made a good impression on them, or they wanted to make sure the MIT guy was happy, or who knows, but I have definitely bonded with my coworkers and I plan to continue that friendship for the rest of my life.

So I am now writing this blog in my Tokyo apartment and will use the Ethernet cord in Goseki-san’s lab (the professor said it was OK) to use the internet and post this.

End of Internship

At Hitachi Chemical, and maybe other Japanese companies, there are ‘activities’ that employees can partake in. Basically they are sport activities and I think they are intended to provide the employees with fun and healthy things to do outside of work. I have been to a weekend tennis practice and usually play tennis during lunch if the weather is good. However, Tuesdays are supposed to be badminton nights, but since I came during the busy season, this activity has generally been postponed. But after constantly asking about it, with two weeks left in my internship I attended my first badminton practice.

This is my first time touching a badminton racket in maybe years, and although I still had some rusty muscle memory, I know I am nowhere near my peak during the end of senior year. The practice consists of four Hitachi people and maybe six university students. After observing everyone for some time and hitting my first shots it is clear I am the best player here. The other person who is also pretty good is this 23 yr old university student, so I mostly hit with him. There are no badminton lines in the gym, so we don’t really play any games, aside from a very casual doubles game. Nonetheless it felt very good to play once again and the three hours went by too fast.

On my last week I also went to practice, with roughly the same people present, and once again it went very fast. I think my weakest shot has always been the drop, both in execution and in returning. During my ‘peak’ I was becoming decent at the drop, but I have since lost that. Also because of the lack of lines I cannot really judge how good my clears are: whether they are long or whether I have lost power and run them consistently short. Everything else, although weaker and slower, I think I have retained, but I cannot measure it accurately until I go to a real practice back home.

April 28^th was my last day of actual work, since the 29^th is reserved for cleaning everything before Golden Week. I turned in a report of what I had done and of the data I had collected. The 28^th was also my going away party. When I was asked if the 28^th was a good day for a party I originally thought that it was a welcome party for the new people who had transferred to our group in April, but alas, I was mistaken. It feels as if only yesterday I had my welcome party, but hey if the company wants to fund a night of great food for me and my coworkers, go for it.

Everyone minus two people who had already left for Golden Week festivities attended my first party. The food, as expected, was above par and locally grown, I was informed. My second party (because two are better than one) saw maybe half of my group. I asked for everyone’s private email, speeches were made all around, and dinner conversations ranged from my travel plans to the situation with the military base in Okinawa. I even received some really nice chopsticks with Japanese black lacquer and a set of pencils with my name written in hiragana.

As I previously said, the 29^th was a day for cleaning. We swept and wiped down our lab, threw out all the trash, and washed all the glassware and instruments. In the office space we cleaned the windows, vacuumed, and I cleaned out my desk, which was pretty barren to begin with. The remainder of the day I read the news online, after which I read articles on theonion.com, which was mostly hilarious. I had to work to hold back my laughter, although being my last day it wouldn’t have mattered too much, maybe.

I turned in my clothes, shoes, and time card to the PR people. I said “osaki ni sitsuree shimasu, otsukaresama deshita” for my last time and began to make my way to the bus stop. Then everyone who remained from my group (people had slowly trickled home early to get an early start on their Golden Week plans) walked me to the bus stop. Well half-way to the bus stop the bus came, so they ran me to the bus stop and made the bus wait. I shook everybody’s hand, they wished me the best, and I gave them my sincerest thanks and boarded the bus. I waved to them as the bus left knowing that I would miss these people.