The flight and arrival

It is now late Sunday morning as I sit in my 'apartment' in Tokyo. While it is a lazy Sunday here, my laptop still shows east coast time and it is about 1030 in the evening on July fourth and I imagine most of you have been 'celebrating' our independence. I have finally found time to sit down and reflect a bit about the hectic couple of past days and summarize what has happened.

To being with, my flight was rather uneventful which I suppose is a good thing. Luckily I did not get stuck in the back, but instead sat in the front. Unfortunately, the gentleman that had the window seat refused to open the window and I did not get to see Alaska, the arctic, and the Bering Sea from 38,000 feet up. Needless to say I was disappointed. I arrived in Narita Airport at around 215 pm Tokyo time (115 am eastern) and was met by two aiesec members. Here I hit my first little snafu of the trip in trying to get money out of the ATM. I tried to withdraw about 700 dollars because I owed Ryota for putting a deposit down on my 'apartment.' Much to my dismay the ATM would not allow me to withdraw money and rejected my card. Ryota, being the generous person he is, spotted me money until I figured out the whole situation.

We then proceeded to take the train into Tokyo because Narita airport is about an hour away from the city itself. We took the train back and forth between the office where I paid for the apartment and the apartment itself. If any of you have ever been to my apartment in Brooklyn try to picture my kitchen, then cut that in half and you have my place of residence in Tokyo. I have a bunk bed (not sure why), a table, and a 10-inch television. Despite the fact that I am used to living a life of luxury, liberal spending and all around ballin, I am more than happy with my accommodation. What is most important is that I only have a 20-minute commute to work and that I am in a nice neighborhood.

After dropping off my things in my closet I was taken to my office to meet everyone I am working with. This was without a doubt the most pleasant experience I have had to date. Everyone in the office greeted me and made me feel extremely welcome. My boss was extremely happy to see me, introduce me to everyone (I remember absolutely no one's name) and eagerly took me to dinner. Ironically enough my first meal in Japan was Italian food, which included pizza, pasta and salad. Towards the end of dinner I was starting to feel the side effects of having been awake for about 26 hours straight. I got back to my closet at around 11 pm and promptly fell asleep for about 14 hours.

The next day I took as an opportunity to procrastinate some more and walked around my neighborhood. The reason I say procrastinate is because on Monday I will have two presentations which I have t adjust a little, I meet with the Shirai group CEO, and I am judging a business contest the company held for local college students.

Upon arrival I began to notice several things that make Tokyo starkly different from New York. The first thing that you notice is just how much cleaner everything is in Tokyo. The trains smell like cleaning solution, the streets have no garbage on them, and the people don't throw their cigarettes on the floor after they are done smoking them. That being said, there are a surprisingly small number of garbage cans on the streets, I think I have seen two in total... The second thing I noticed is rather small but important, it is the fact that people will not cross the street unless there is a green light, regardless of whether there are cars coming or not. There seems to be much more respect for laws throughout the society in Japan than in America. I asked Ryota as to why he doesn’t cross the street when there are no cars coming, and I asked another aiesecer, James, why he doesn’t just throw his cigarettes on the floor and the response seems to be along the lines of 'the betterment of society.' Thought they have clearly not pondered these questions beforehand, what seemed evident was that they both felt a responsibility not to do these respective things to their fellow citizens. This is seemingly a collectivized sort of notion within a heavily capitalist nation). Something that seems lacking in our own society.

Today I must finalize my assignments for tomorrow and get ready for the long week ahead. I have figured out the situation with the ATM and am now able to get money, which is important in order to obtain food. On that subject-I have no idea what the fuck I have been eating; I have only been able to identify noodles. But I don’t really care, as it all has been delicious.