Tired in Tokyo

Well, I had planned on making this first post a very structured, informative, complete account of my future here in Japan, but then I got on planes for 14 hours and was shuffled around in Tokyo and handed reams of paperwork for two days.

But, if I don’t post now, I will have to do a recount post in a week and I’ll have forgotten things.

First things first. I am going to be living in Murakami City, Niigata Prefecture, Japan for the next few years. I am in Tokyo now, and take the Shinkansen (bullet train) there tomorrow. School does not start for another month, so I will have some training and settling in duties during that time.

Basically, I’ve been so busy here in Tokyo adjusting to the time change, acclimating to wearing a suit, listening to plodding if not mildly amusing presentations (this one guy had a fabulous vocabulary – diffident, phatic, rejuvenate – and talked to us about hangovers for 20 minutes which forced him to rush through his last 40 slides) and drinking that I have not had time to do nearly anything else. I am very glad I had three months after graduation to basically screw off and laze around, because I will continue to be very busy.

I do have an address, but I do not yet have a phone, and won’t have internet for a week or so. I’ll post those all at once when I have them all.

I am on the 14th floor of a 47 floor hotel here in Shinjuku, one of Tokyo’s megadowntowns. I can see into the office building about 100m across the street. Last night around 1 AM, I took a photo of a guy slumped over a desk sleeping. Tomorrow, I’ll be in a second story apartment and I’ll be able to walk to the Japan Sea.