Quinn Sipes
NOH Theatre
Tokyo, Japan
Summer 2017
I arrived in Japan extremely jet lagged and confused. My flights went over without many problems. It was a 13 hour flight from Toronto to Tokyo and I ended up staying awake the whole flight because the guy behind me decided to knee me in the back every few minutes. Luckily I was able to power through and saw that by staying up the whole flight would help me get onto Tokyo time.
I travelled to the heart of Tokyo in Shinjuku to sign over my life to Sakura House and receive my keys to my house near Yoyogi Hatichiman Station. I originally got off at the wrong station…actually I went on the wrong train line all together. To say that my brain was fried when I arrived is an understatement. While trying to navigate the train stations in Tokyo is hard enough; picture following signs that are in both English and Japanese but then suddenly turn into solely Japanese, during rush hour in Tokyo’s busiest train station with one hiking backpack and one suitcase weighing approximately 15 pounds and 26 pounds respectively. I was in total sensory overload and everything moved so fast that I had a really hard time trying to keep up!
I finally made it to my room and quickly unpacked while also stripping down to wash the grime of 24 hours of travel and 3 hours of Tokyo train hopping off. After getting comfortable in the quiet neighborhood where I will be spending the next month I quickly slipped into a coma. When I woke up I met my two roommates; one from Hawaii and the other from Tunisia. I woke up at about 5 am in Tokyo time and went outside to explore the area I now live in. Now comes literally all my advice; to make it easier to digest they will be listed below:
1. Nothing is open at 5 am in Tokyo, especially in a quiet residential area filled with elderly people and children.
2. Take out enough Yen in cash because card isn’t accepted everywhere.
3. Make sure you have enough money before coming here! (I do have enough, but I am actually waiting on it to all come through so I have to budget literally everything!
4. Don’t wander with no sense of direction…(I walked about 4.5 km in a big circle because I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going).
5. Before you leave write down as much information about the places you need to go, in case google maps and your phone decide to be dead weight (you guessed it I am going into this month long experience completely blind).
6. Watch what others do and just copy them, until you figure out what to do in certain situations.
7. Walk on the left! And on escalators you stand on the left walk on the right.
8. Wait in line for the subway and trains…don’t rush into the car!(this one came a little naturally for me, during rush hour everyone was in a line so it was easy to just follow behind).
9. Learn the language!! I can’t stress that one enough! I have 0 experience with this language that has 3 alphabets and sounds absolutely foreign when people are speaking (obviously it will be foreign…good observation Quinn…).
10. Buy a Passmo or start walking (a Passmo/Suica card is what gets you on the trains, subways, metros, and bus lines throughout Tokyo and other parts of Japan. Pass up a Passmo and you may as well just start walking because buying tickets at every stop is a real big hassle).
The above points are only some of my advice…if I added anymore it would be a sensory overload and I can’t do that to you. I got very lost the first full day in Tokyo.
I started walking in one direction hoping that if I got super lost I could consult Google Maps to get me back on track. However, my phone is not supported in Japan even if I bought a Japanese SIM card. I guess that’s what I get for getting some bootleg off brand smart phone. Also Japan is sorely lacking in its ability to provide free Wi-Fi so be prepared to buy a mobile hotspot if you really need it (like me). I somehow got from my house to where my class will be held at the Kita Nohgakudo in Meguro, a Tokyo neighborhood about 20 minutes from where I live, to Ikebukoro which is about an hour from where I live! How did I get there? I have no clue! Luckily I made it back to my house at about 8 pm and ate my first meal in two days: a cold soba noodle with tea from the 7/11 down the street from the station near my house.
After these past few days, I am so exhausted from all my walking and getting lost I really wish I studied this language a little bit more. I think when the class starts in a few days I should be okay as I will be in class for like 12 hours a day from 10 am to 10 pm with like a two hour break. I plan on doing a little more exploring, but maybe less spending until my outstanding checks make their way into my account! Until I go on another crazy adventure in a land where I am hardly in tune with the culture or language or direction of things, I guess that means tomorrow, have a wonderful day filled with a whole lot less confusion than mine! If you want to see pictures of the craziness that is Tokyo follow me on Facebook or Instagram.