July 31, 2002 - 11:54AM
Wes Ehrlichman

I'm in Japan! How's that for a way to start a journal! Well technically I'm over Japan. I'm in the airplane flying from Tokyo to Kagoshima City, where I will ride to Kedouin Town with my Supervisor. Am I nervous? Yes! Am I excited? Yes! Am I prepared? No! But I think I will be alright. We'll see though.

The topic of today's journal is communication. In the three days I've spent in Tokyo I believe I've spoken in Japanese to more people than I've spoken Japanese to in my life. The first experience was when we got to the Chicago Airport. I flew out on Japan Airlines. I was hanging out with Quinton, Damon, and a few of the other JETs when a group of Japanese people sat at the nearby seats. There were about 5 kids, including one in a wheelchair, and two women, who were probably their parents. We basically ignored each other like everyone does in an airport until one of the kids busted out his Game Boy Color. If you know me you know I LOVE talking to kids about games. So I said "Sumimasen," which means "excuse me." He ignored me, engulfed in his game like any kid, but his mother heard me and tapped him on the arm, telling him that I wanted to get his attention. He looked up and I said, "Donna Geemu?" Which I thought meant "which game." The mother tranlated, "donna geemu?" she said to the kid, laughing a bit when she said it, which I took to mean that I may have said it wrong like "dona gemu," which probably means Godzilla attacks. At any rate, the kid said, "Poohsan." I had a confused look on my face I guess, because he reiterated, "Pooh Bear." "Aaaahhh, Hai. Arigatto," I replied, which means "Oh, I get it, thank you." Everyone politely went back to their conversations and their games then, but when we got on the plane, every time I saw the kid I asked the question to he smiled really big and waved. I smiled and waved back each time too. I loved it! Kids are Awesome! This job is going to be so much fun!

Moving on, when we arrived in Tokyo we took a bus to Shinjuku, where we were staying at the Keio Plaza hotel (Note to Scott: I got in to Keio!). Unfortunately, this wasn't anywhere near Keio University. Oh well...

Quick interjection: Pokemon is playing on the screen in the airplane, and it's a crazy episode with Pokemon I've never even seen before. Ok. Back to the story.

So anyway, back to communication. At the hotel most everyone spoke at least a little bit of English, but as soon as we left the hotel to explore the streets of Shinjuku it was all Japanese. Quinton and I left at around 7:00 The first street we walked onto had a game store so I was set up. I bought Mario Sunshine, Castlevania, and Animal Leader. It was then that I realized that just buying stuff in Japan is a good place to try my Japanese. You have to ask how much things are, ask where things are, and thank the people selling the stuff. I did this fairly well, but I'm sure they could tell that I was a little rusty. We then went to a 3 story arcade that was set up with redemption games on the main floor, music games on the top floor, and fighting games in the basement. The big games seemed to be the latest Virtual On and Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution. There were at least 8 or 10 of each of these games. They are set up so that each person has their own screen on every type of game except for dancing and shooting. It seems very expensive, but arcades are a lot more popular here than anywhere in America so I guess it would be worth it. We sat down and played a couple rounds of Street Fighter with some Japanese Dude. It was so fun! I lost, but not as bad as one would expect from a guy from Ryu's home country.

We continued shopping around until stores began to close and then we went to a restaurant to eat. This was a fiasco in and of itself. First of all, an explanation. The Japanese restaurants in Shinjuku where we stayed were like post-bar restaurants. I guess I would relate them to burrito places in a college town. It was set up like a big bar though, with a long bar that stretched around the entire room and allowed the employees to bring food to you wherever you sat. The strangest thing was that you didn't actually order from the people working there. You had to buy a ticket from a vending machine on the wall and give it to them for them to make your food. Talk about lazy! That is a good concept though. It didn't work for me though, because all they had on the menu that I could eat was miso soup and rice. We had to go through a big fiasco of explaining to the waitress in Japanese that I didn't eat fish or meat or eel or pork or chicken or anything like that. She said she understood and asked me for 500 yen (About $5). She then brought me back 200 yen (About $2) and a salad, soup, and a big bowl of rice. A pretty good vegetarian meal if I do say so myself!

When we got back to the hotel I tried a little bit of Mario Sunshine then I went to bed feeling a little more confident in my Japanese skills than when I left America.

- One more thing. You know how I said that the arcade was three stories. Every single store seemed to be at least three stories! With very little wheelchair accessability. It would really suck to be that Handicapped kid in the Airport!