Between Beginning and End

The current ongoing adventure is uncontrollable, erratic sleep patterns. But, since that in and of itself is not particularly interesting, let me instead paint a picture of my daily life in Tokyo.

I wake up sometime between 9:30am and 4pm. This literally changes dramatically from day to day. I then spend a few minutes checking all my online conduits to the free world (several email accounts, Facebook, and maybe Linked In), and a few more minutes chatting with various people (you know who you are) for both personal and professional reasons.

After 30 - 60 minutes of sitting on my floor mat (where I sleep) with computer in hand, I have a 30 - 45 minute yoga session. I cannot over express what an excellent way this is to start the day. It rids all the aches, pains, stiffness, sleepy cobwebs, etc., and gets the breath steady. It also recalibrates physical, mental, and spiritual attentiveness for all that awaits in the new day. This is followed by cooking a hearty breakfast - cereal, fruit, potatoes, tofu "scramble", toast, V8, and coffee.

The rest of my "day" is a mosaic of various activities. I am spending many hours working, which currently consists primarily of building web pages, but also includes a bit of establishing marketing relationships for clients. I work from home and in different cafes throughout my general area in Tokyo. On one hand, I prefer to be out integrating with the culture of the city around me. On the other hand, the only cafe that does not permit smoking is Starbucks, and they don't have wifi. Without wifi I can't work. So, I work in other cafes as long as I can stand the smoking, and then I work from home. By the way, if you are a smoker - please quit.

Besides work, of course there are the usual household chores: grocery shopping (which I do frequently because we have a tiny refrigerator), mailing letters, I don't know... whatever chores you do around town, I'm doing them too. Of course, I use a bicycle to get around when I'm doing them. And for that matter - you should too.

In the evening, I've also been going to a rock climbing gym a couple days a week. But, when I'm not doing that (which is most of the time), I usually just cook some Asian themed dinner (some combination of noodles, beans, mushrooms, and seaweed - just add sesame seeds!) and then either work more, go out drinking, or study (yoga, web programming, zen Buddhism, Japanese language are the main topics currently).

I was feeling a little guilty that I haven't been doing more shopping or sightseeing. I will do those things (and have done some already), but that's not the kind of experience I came here for. I really wanted to know what it's like to live here - not be a tourist. It's basically a lot like my life in America, except filled with new insights and a lot of asthetically pleasing details.

At the end of it all I manage to hit the sack sometime between 4am and 8am.

Japanese Vegetarian Bike Cops

I had a bit of an adventure today. I’ve been in Japan for less than three weeks, and I’ve already had a run in with the law. We parked our bicycles where we weren’t supposed to, and they were impounded. This is a little trickier than it sounds. There aren’t really very many places where locking a bicycle is allowed. However, bicycles are in heavy use in Tokyo, and they are parked everywhere! There are even other bicycles parked where ours were parked, but I guess we were made an example.

Anyway, the police left a note for us, but this was hard to decipher, as we don’t read kanji. We figured that our locks had been cut, so we returned to the bike store where we bought them, and while there we got an employee to read the note for us. From there it wasn’t a very big deal. Just a two mile walk to the impound, and 2,000 yen each to get them back (about $20 USD).

Next to the impound we found the Japanese counterpart to the Asian grocers found in America - a ‘western’ grocer, so to speak. This was pretty exciting, because they had a few things that are hard to find anywhere else - particularly tortilla chips. So now I can buy an $8 avocado and make the most expensive guacamole of my life.

From there we discovered yet another awesome restaurant/bar. It was quiet, dimly lit, well stocked (Hoegaarden on tap), and easily made me feel underdressed in jeans. The food was fantastic, as usual, and they had some great jazz playing on the radio. Now as I write this, we’re listening to more great jazz, and hanging out in our favorite haunt - a little café called The Brown Sheep.

This leads me to a few more of the many observations I have to make about Tokyo. First, there is jazz EVERYWHERE! I mean, not just every restaurant, every bar, every café, but even 7-11, book stores, wherever. If they have music, it’s jazz. This has reinvigorated my love of this music in a way that I haven’t felt for a long time. And, I don’t mean smooth ‘jazz’, or fusion, or some other pseudo jazz. I mean, Bird, Coltrane, Joe Pass, … Wynton Kelly at this very moment.

On the subject of going out, I should discuss two other topics: getting around, and being vegetarian.

Getting around is pretty easy, in the sense that everything you need is easy walking distance from wherever you are, Tokyo is bicycle friendly, and there’s great public transportation. It’s difficult in that it’s hard to get and keep your bearings. All the roads are very windy, and most of them don’t have names. Plus, many of the signs for stores are written in kanji, so it’s hard to create any landmarks. Also, I find riding (my bike) on the left side of the road to be very unfamiliar to the point of being confusing. Making a right turn is still hard for me to wrap my head around. Also, when crossing the street, there’s a tendency to look the wrong way for oncoming traffic!

Being vegetarian in Tokyo isn’t as hard as I feared, but it’s not without a bit of challenge. I’d heard from many people, and read online, that it’s impossible to be vegetarian in Japan, because no Japanese food is vegetarian. This is half true. Very little Japanese food is vegetarian. However, there’s way more to Tokyo than just Japanese food. It’s a huge city, and they have everything - Thai, Chinese, Indian, etc. They have many familiar restaurant chains - Subway, Pizza Hut, Dominoes, McDonald’s, etc. There’s even Shakey’s Pizza! Of course, I don’t want to come all the way to Tokyo and just eat American fast food. So, much of what I’m eating is unfamiliar. In those cases, it’s difficult to communicate my vegetarian preference, as it’s a rather foreign concept to the Japanese.

Another foreign concept here, is the idea of being flexible with the menu. If it ain’t on the menu, you ain’t getting it. At a curry restaurant I saw one curry meal that came with rice and salad. There was another that just came with salad, which is what I wanted. Unfortunately, I couldn’t order the curry flavor I wanted without the rice, because it wasn’t on the menu that way! All that said, I’m so far managing just fine, and in fact, having some of the best food of my life. Also, I’m able to get most of the groceries that I need to cook great meals at home.

That’s all for now!
P.S. Comment your questions if you got ‘em!

Even Better Than the Book

Okay, I’m back, and I’m staying back. I wanted to leave some space between my last entry and this one, so nobody would miss the last one. At this point I think all stragglers are in.

Now, you get to hear about Japan. Aside from the fact that I’m in Japan, I haven’t really had any “adventures” in the way that I mean that word in the title of this blog. However, this is an incredible place, and I’ve had a tremendous amount to soak up in these first two weeks. If you know me well, you know I’ve always been a bit of an Asiaphile, specifically a Japanophile. I’ve been dreaming about living in this country for nearly 20 years!

In coming here, my concern was that I’d built it up too much. Sort of like a movie that can never live up to the anticipation, I half expected that being in Japan really wouldn’t feel as remarkable as I expected. I predicted this, especially because my interest has always been mostly in traditional Japanese art and culture, which I already knew is not exactly what Tokyo is all about. Well, I’ve been pleased to discover that my experience has so far greatly exceeded all my expectations. I don’t know if I was Japanese in a past life or something, but I really feel at home here. It took me three years to feel that way about L.A., and about three hours to feel that way about Tokyo (don’t worry Ormond, you’re still my main squeeze)!

So first of all, what have I been doing? The first whole week was mostly spent shopping for things to get settled in. I’m not in a hotel or anything, I have an apartment for three months. So, dish soap, towels, groceries, etc. Plus we were shopping for a couple bigger items: I had to get a cell phone and plan that I could use here, and I had to get a bicycle to get around. This whole process also took an unusually long time, because we had to find places, get acquainted, and stop and check out every neat thing that came across our path.

By the way, by “we” I mean me and my buddy Aaron. He’s lived here twice, for a total of about 18 months, and has visited like five other times. He speaks Japanese fluently, and knows his way around our neighborhood pretty well. This trip really wouldn’t work for me without his help. I’m pretty resourceful, but I don’t think I could have nearly this complete of an experience.

Once we got settled in, we began filling our days with a variety of activities: cycling, yoga, rock climbing (bouldering actually, and in a gym, not on a real rock), Japanese language study, cooking, drinking in bars, and working. Just so you know, two of the business ventures I’ve moved into are moving forward already - panning out better than expected! We also met up with an American friend of Aaron, who happened to also be here. On that occasion we went to Meiji Jingu, which is a temple erected in honor of the 19th century Emperor Meiji, who is credited with modernizing Japan. It’s an extraordinary temple, set on grounds the size of Central Park (if you haven’t been to NYC, trust me, that’s big)! And, it happens to be right down the street from our apartment - the perfect location for a bit of jogging.

Okay, so I know many of you are dying to know about how Japan compares to America - what’s different? Well, this blog is already kind of long, and this is a long topic. So, I’ll give you a couple tidbits, and then I’ll spread the rest out over future posts (which I promise will be much more frequent).

The first thing I noticed is how clean this city is. Americans, we really need to get it together and take a little more pride in the way we care for our surroundings. I mean, this city has four times as many people as NYC, and there is nary a piece of trash to be found - not even a cigarette butt! I saw one piece of paper on the ground by a store that had probably just been dropped accidentally, and a policeman walked over to it, picked it up, and carried it to a waste receptacle! Trash is actually kind of complicated here. Everywhere - including my apartment - there are multiple containers for paper, plastic, and other. Everybody respects this system, and discards their waste accordingly. I can’t picture every customer in an American McDonald’s removing the lid and straw from their cup, to throw them in one bin, while throwing the ice and liquid in another, and then the paper cup in another. But, it works here. People just do it. Amazing!

Here’s a little difference - a subtle small thing to remind you you’re amidst a foreign culture. In every store, or restaurant, or whatever, every cash register has a little tray next to it. That is where you place the money. You don’t hand the money to the cashier. You place the money on the tray, and then they pick it up. Oh, and along those lines, some of the more sophisticated stores don’t even open the register. They just insert the money into a slot, and the register spits out the correct change! It’s so cool!

Alright, this is a major blog code length violation. I’ve got tons more to say about the ways in which Tokyo differs from American cities, but it will have to wait. For now just know that I’m having a great time. I already know for certain that I will come here again many times. And at the same time, I miss you all!

P.S. Thanks for the push Shayla. Now you don’t have to kill me.