Creating a new routine

I have always been a creature of habit with a bit of a wild streak.  I like new adventures and experiences, but I tend to surround them with a daily routine.  For example, I enjoy taking a different route to places I go a lot because it adds a little variety. Or trying a familiar dish at a new restaurant.  My husband always makes fun of me for this.  He says I am a coward.  I say I just want to find the best whatever dish.  Really, he is right.  I am only okay with so much adventure at one time.

So what happens then when you move into a completely new and drastically different culture?  You grasp at every repeating occurrence to try and create a new routine.  For me, these are the people I see almost every day on my morning commute.  There is the old man who taps the warning sign as he passes it on the escalator at Koboroguchi Station.  He is not coming to take the train.  He just goes up the escalator, hits the sign on the way, then stops at the station window and stares out for a few minutes before going back down and continuing with his day.  Sometimes he looks at his phone so he might be waiting for a call, but I have never heard him say a word. 

There is the large man with the white driving cap who always sits in the same spot on the subway and fans himself.  He has a fabulous goatee and dresses in very nice khaki or light brown three quarter pants, a white t-shirt with a simple, but colorful, design, and a pastel linen over shirt.  He reminds me of a good family friend from Louisiana.  He has kind eyes and a dignified air.  Maybe one day I will actually talk to him. 

Then there is the high school student who gets on my bus and immediately falls asleep.  I always worry he will miss his stop.  But somehow he wakes up just in time. 

Finally, there is the extremely near sighted woman who squints at Japanese magazines as we bounce down the road.  Of all my fellow commuters, I think she has made the biggest impression.  She was the first to say hello to me after a few days of riding together. I often wonder where she goes when she gets off our bus.  Maybe work.  Wherever it is, I look forward to seeing her smiling face every weekday morning.

Whether they know it or not, these individuals have been incorporated into my daily routine.  They are road signs to make sure I am on the right bus or train.  But more than that, they are familiar faces in a world full of strangers.  I don't know their names.  I have never spoken to most of them.  But they are precious to me.  When they are absent, I worry about them.  It makes my day seem off in a way I cannot explain.  In a world of new experiences, these strangers have become my constants.

'Cause we are living in a vertical world, and I am a vertical girl

I can't say enough about the efficiency in Japan.  It is truly amazing.  They don't waste an inch of space.  You should see the looks of confusion when I try to explain my in-laws' ranch.  Even when I show them pictures.  The limited space has created an interesting new dimension for me.  I now have to look up, as well as left and right, when I am looking for a business or store.  It is a vertical world with shops, restaurants, and offices stretching high into the sky (and sometimes several stories below ground as well).  Sometimes you unknowingly pass up an amazing place because you just didn't look up.  Like the time I was trying to find the Statue of Liberty in Ame-Mura.  It was on top of a building.  I could not see it from under my umbrella.  Thank goodness I ran into the friend I was meeting as I was wandering around.

Some examples.

I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!

So it is not just in my school's staff room.  There are calendars and clocks everywhere in Japan.  I am really lucky I am not OCD because even in my share house all five of the clocks have different times!  I think they do it to keep themselves on time.  If you are never a hundred percent sure what time it is, you will always leave with enough time to spare.  At least that is what I do.

A little more on trains

Apparently Japan has a sexual harassment problem.  I have not seen this, and find it very hard to believe, but there are certain things I have come across that support this.  One of these is the Women Only subway and train cars.  Regardless of the reason for their existence, I really love these cars.

Almost all public transportation in Japan is eerily quiet.  Aside from children, teens, and the rare group of adults, everyone rides in silence.  They might be on their phones, listening to music with headphones, reading, or, amazingly, sleeping.  The only real noise is the sound of the transportation you are riding.  You can travel in blissful silence.  I find it a good time to write and reflect.  Also to catch up on Facebook or otherwise waste the precious moments of my life.

But even if everyone is quite and keeps to themselves, crowded subway cars can be a little uncomfortable.  In some cases it is literally like a can of sardines.  For a culture not too big on infringing or imposing on others, this is one glaring exception.  Everyone bears it gracefully, though.  They make room for new passengers, even when you think there is no possible way to fit one more person.  They tolerate the closeness of complete strangers, usually keep their eyes closed (especially if they are seated since it means staring at a strangers crotch), and wait for their stop.

For me, though, there is another option.  The Women Only cars are almost never that crowded.  Even during rush hour I am able to keep a tiny bit of my American personal space bubble.  It makes being a woman feel a little extra special.  Until I look around at all the fashionable Japanese women who look amazing.  Then I feel completely underdressed to be in the Women Only car.  

Trains, busses, and subways...Oh my!

Now, for the first time in my life, I am officially a commuter.  Even as I write this, I am sitting on a bus, the third leg of my morning commute.  I have about an hour long journey each way that involves walking, riding a light rail train, and taking a bus.

This change in transportation has caused me to make some changes in my mental process for figuring out how and when I am going somewhere (and most importantly, when I need to leave).  At home, deciding on a restaurant or finding a certain store meant a simple google map search.  A quick check of how long it took to drive there, plus the addition of a few extra minutes for traffic, confusion, and unforeseen circumstances, and I knew when I needed to be out the door and on the road.  But that was when I had a car.

Now that I rely on public transportation, my travel choices revolve around time tables and route maps.  And everything runs on a tight schedule.  Miss one train or bus by even a minute and you could wind up an hour late.  This is not such a big deal on weekends or trips made for fun (unless it is the last train home and missing it means sleeping at the subway station), but for work it means I have to leave by 6:30AM at the absolute latest.  Coming home, I need to be on my way out the school door at 4:05PM, my scheduled quitting time, to get to the bus stop just in time to catch my ride.  Any later, and I have to wait 30 minutes for the next bus (which has happened and was not fun).

For someone with only a relative grasp of time (I’m sensing a pattern here), this has involved some mental rewiring.  I am staring to understand why there are clocks everywhere in Japan.  Although I am still not sure why they are all slightly different times.  Just from my desk in the staff room I can see four different clocks with four different times.

When effeciency goes too far

Every day I am amazed at the efficiency of Japan.  Everything has been streamlined – from supermarket checkouts to train timetables.  Space, resources, everything is used to its full potential.  There are rice fields next to high rise apartments, balcony and potted gardens; every square inch is productive and useful.  But sometimes it seems this uber efficiency makes life slightly more difficult – especially for foreigners.

In Japan, walking and eating is considered impolite.  It doesn’t stop anyone from doing it, but it does make trash cans a bit hard to find.  And when you do find them, they look like this –

 

Even with the helpful pictures, trash disposal takes a bit of mental effort

To streamline waste disposal, the public trashcans are divided into sections.  Only, I don’t always know what my trash is classified as.  Also, you can’t always find a full set of trashcans.  Sometimes it is just one.  For example, next to a drink vending machine, you might only find a can for PET bottles, cans, and glass bottles.  It makes tossing your trash a cognitive process that can took me a good five minutes the first few times.  

Holidays

Okay, so technically September 11^th is not a holiday; but it is an important day in America.  So much has changed after that morning.  Even after all these years, I can still remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard.  But in Japan, it is just another day.  It’s okay.  Japan has its own September 11ths that I am equally ignorant of.

However, when I looked at the calendar and realized the date this morning, it got me thinking of other holidays I will miss.  I think the concept of Christmas is pretty universal at this point.  The religious significance might not carry over, but the idea of peace, presents, and Santa seem to be fairly well understood (probably even by children in remote Amazonian tribes that have never even seen a bearded fat man).  But how do you explain Halloween?  Especially to a child just learning English?

Kids, in America, one night a year, normally sane adults turn into raving lunatics and run around in masks and costumes.  Some are good.  Many are not.  It is a very scary night.

For all our similarities, there are still innumerable differences between America and Japan.  And sometimes they catch you off guard.  

On spacial awareness

As someone who is chronically unaware of where my appendages are in relation to other things, moving to Japan has not been the easiest transition.  Before I moved, my hands were constantly covered with scrapes and bruises where I accidentally hit them against door frames or objects.  In Japan, everything is built to a smaller scale: rooms, doors, stairs are all made for people a good deal smaller than me (and modern Japanese people as well).  This has caused some discomfort and more than a few knocks to the head.  There are also a lot more people in Japan than I am used to.  Everything is crowded.  From subway trains to sidewalks to narrow grocery aisles, there are people to avoid bumping into everywhere.  I have to say sumimasen and gomen nasai a lot.  But on the plus side, these factors are slowly teaching me to be a little more aware of my body and its relation to people and object around me.  I have to move a little slower.  Think about my size a little more.  And just pay more attention to what is going on around me.  Not a bad thing.  But it does hurt like blazes when I clock my head on the doorjamb coming down the stairs.

Good thing I have a hard head.

Learning Japanese the hard way (is there an easy way?)

My first chance to speak Japanese to an actual Japanese person, I chickened out.  It was in my hotel, my first morning here.  I wanted to ask where to get breakfast.  I practiced before I went down.  I knew I didn’t have all the right vocabulary, but I felt confident that I had enough to get my point across. My nerves started to creep up on me in the elevator.  By the time I arrived at the lobby and the doors opened, I had lost my nerve.  I shuffled up to the counter and sheepishly asked the smiling receptionist where to get breakfast, in English.  She didn’t understand.  You would think this would encourage me to try again with my little sentence.  No, I had forgotten it by now as my nerves took over.  I did manage to say coffee.  Since they are almost exactly the same in English and Japanese, and it was seven in the morning, the kind lady behind the desk pulled out a map and pointed me to Starbucks.  I left the desk with the map and a feeling of failure.  Now I have not been studying Japanese long, but I should have been able to manage a simple “where is” question.  The simple fact is, learning a new language is hard.  Actually using it with native speakers is even harder. 

I have gotten a lot better since that first day.  My attempts are still grammatically incorrect, for the most part, and on par with the speech of a small child, but Japanese people are patient and kind, and we can usually come to some sort of understanding.  It doesn’t hurt that many of them are excited to speak English as well.  And are quite good at it!  In the park or walking to my subway station, I get hellos, good mornings, and sometimes how are yous.  I even had a stranger explain the markings in the stones at Osaka Castle in English when he saw me taking pictures of them.  Unlike me, Japanese people seem eager to test their speaking ability with a native speaker.  When I answer them in the little Japanese I know, they are always very excited and tell me I am very good.  It might not be true, but it makes me feel a little braver for the next person I meet.

These are the crests of the clans that repaired this part of the wall after the castle was destroyed.