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Rob is 14120 days old

If you want to be emailed these types of writings as I write them, email me at rob@robnugen.com

My first few days in Japan have been basically fun, with a couple of
"negative" things, lots of new things and plenty of positive for my
enjoyment.  I've been living in a hotel for the past three nights.
My apartment was not ready for me, which turns out to mean that the
guy I'm replacing hasn't moved out yet.  He'll move out today, and
I'll move in today, escorted by a woman named Adrienne who I've not
yet met.

I've actually already made my way to my apartment, but I'll appreciate
her assistance because my route wasn't quite the shortest possible.  I
took the correct trains, but I still got lost in the larger train
stations.  ((speaking of train stations, they are all cleeeean.  Clean
like a, gosh I hate to say clean as a hotel, but clean as a motel - no
litter, no graffitti.  Only a fine layer of well troddedness, as they
are still basically outdoor enclosures))

Upon arrival, I went through customs with no problem, just followed
the crowd and found plenty of English signage to confirm my path was
indeed correct.  My first stop was to get my passport examined, and a
guy stamped a stamp in it and used other stamps to fill in the blank.
He had a whole array of stamps.  My two: "1 year" and "Specialist in
Humanities/International Services."  At the next stations, after
declaring that I had nothing to declare, the guy waved me through
without further question.  Out the sliding glass doors and into
Japan!!

Well, into the main part of the airport, where I sought a body holding
a "NOVA" sign.  I found it after not too long and the body holding the
sign called himself Cookie.  He looks Japanese, but has a British
accent.  Met some other Nova recruits: Andrew (who has traveled a lot,
and who was placed in Tokyo (near enough to me that we could
conceivably hang out on occassion) even though he requested Chiba),
Janelle and Kevin (married), Justin and Tera (married, who will be
placed in Sendai), and others whose names I've forgotten.

Cookie led us through dropping off our bags with ABC, a local courier
that would bring them to our respective apartments.  I had to do a
little clothes swapping as I wouldn't be at my apartment for three
nights.  Changed the last bit of my cash to yen and hung out with
Andrew for a while.  Learned that he's been to Laos, Burma, Thailand,
Taiwan, Macau, Viet Nam, Hong Kong, NZ, OZ, Samoa, and Tonga on a
recent(?) Asian adventure.  He's also been to Central America as well
(if I remember correctly).  He said an interesting thing while we were
on the train - something like, "I've always wanted to go to Japan
cause it sounded so mysterious, but now I'm ready to leave.."  It's
like the process of collecting is better than the having.  I don't
feel exactly the same way (I don't want to leave yet), but I did have
that "ooooh Japan is so mysterious" thought rumbling around my head.
Now the mystery is simply all the parts of Japan that I've not yet
seen.

Soon as I arrive, though, mystery solved.

We were spoon fed train tickets and navigation of the train system.
Just follow Cookie as he bought all the tickets for us.  Eventually
Cookie dropped off everyone at their respective train stations where
they could follow their individualized maps to reach their apartments.
Finally it was just Cookie, Andrew and I on the train to the next stop
where we met up with Fiona, another Nova employee.  Fiona took me to
my hotel where I dropped off my stuff, then led me to the Head Office
of Nova for Eastern Japan.  It's within five minutes walk of the
hotel.  She punched 23 and 29 on the elevator, made sure I knew how to
get back to my hotel, got off on 23 and said "see you Monday!"

Now I was in Japan.  Basically.  Up to 29 I took the elevator for a
nice view of the black and white tiled floor 29 stories below.  From
that vantage point, the image looks remniscent of a simple m.c. escher
image, with narrowing white lines giving way to widening black lines
in a patchwork.

I walked around the perimter of the 29th floor, wondering what each
restaurant was like inside until a restaurant host approached me,
welcoming me in.  Somehow we determined that I wanted 5 piece sushi
sampler and water.

Each piece of sushi (is it still called sushi if they are cooked?)
were served on a little skewer.  (except for the crab claw, where the
skewer handle was the claw itself) I put the skewer back on the tray
from which they were being served and the cook told me in Japanese
(and showed me in kinesthetics) that they go into the gaping mouth of
the ceramic frog sitting up on the counter.

During my meal, the host gave me a free coke.

I discreetly watched others around me for cues on social niceties, but
didn't notice anything unusual.  One stinky thing though is the number
of people here who smoke.  Ewww.

Kickin' it in my hotel was a good reprieve from the impossible to
understand yammering and general hustle and bustle of life in the
city.  I slept a lot during my time here, and marveled at the small
bathtub/shower and toilet with bidet.

On the last two of my few days here, I had a routine of sorts.
Breakfast at the restaurant downstairs 1600 yen for a buffet including
some "normal" food and then some interesting new items like rice
wrapped in a sweetened crepe and rice balls with goo on them and
chicken balls with different goo.  And orange juice on the side.

Then zip over to the Virgin Megastore for cheap internet access - for
the price of a drink (such as orange juice) I could officially sit at
one of their many wirelessly connected computers for an hour.  But no
one really monitored how long people were there.  The speakers
overhead played western pop music with a British announcer and
Japanese commercials.  Huge number of CDs in the store, including all
my favorites and an enormous array that I couldn't begin to guess what
might be on them.  And then some that I could guess, but had no idea
if I'd like the music.  I purchased nothing from a huge megastore
though; no reason to make such stores even bigger.

As I started this entry, I was waiting for Adrienne to bring me to my
apartment.  That was... some days ago now.  At this point I'm on the
train to my second day of work after OJT (On the Job Training).

Before OJT, we had a day of orientation, which was fine at the
beginning but then dull at the end except that we got new cellphones
with a great range of features.  All phones have large full color
displays on the front and little full color displays on the outside.
Animated characters or more business-like animations greet the user
and announce phone calls..  All phones that I've seen have a camera on
them and people often take pictures with their phones.  Or play video
games or send text messages to one another.  I've counted up to five
people in a row on a train, all staring at their phones, punching
digits and messages, etc.  This culture loves to smoke and loves their
phones.

But no smoking on the train, thank goodness.

An interesting tidbit about smoking:  there are no Japanese cigarette
companies.  At least there are no Japanese characters on any of the
cigarette machines or packs.  To me that's amazing.  How can a culture
be so infused but not keep the money local?

My roommates Frank and Matty are hilarious.  Frank is from New Jersey
and has served in the US Army and is all for the war, but hates that
the way the government has gone about things makes us look bad.  He
hates working for Nova and says if he had to commute on the train each
day he would have quit a long time ago.  (He only started working in
January, so I wonder how long that long time ago could be!)  Matty is
from Liverpool England, loves Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, hip hop
and other dance/techno music.  He and I might go to the Eminem concert
in May.  They both watch movies most nights and rant about Nova.  I'm
beginning to rant some, but I'll get to that momentarily.

OJT sucked.  Four people took OJT at my Nova branch near Kawasaki
station.  Three of us continue to work here (Benny, Olivia and I)
while Solita works at a different branch.  We were taught by a cat
named Steve who... just seems to love Nova a bit more than a normal
cat should.  He appears to be the optimal Nova employee, though rumor
has it that he married one of his students.  I dunno.  OJT is over,
but man I was hating it on the second day when I had just finished
teaching a great lesson where all the students had a great time and
were really engaged and profusely thanked me afterward and then I got
griped at for not having stuck to the "Nova way" of doing lessons.
Steve took me aside all, "if you are not able to show that you can do
all four parts of the lesson, you'll have to do more OJT."  I was
fuming inside and destroying him with my eyes as I said, "thank you
very much for letting me know."  My OJT-mates were understanding and
reminded me of our mantra "just one more day, just one more day."

The one more day went more easily for me.  The previous night I had
oscillated between enforcing a "perfect" schedule on the students and
intentionally skipping different parts of each lesson, forcing Steve
to put me in more OJT, which would require him to allocate another
instructor to watch all my classes.  Bah; what's the point in that...
so I just adjusted my classes a bit to make everything fit.  When I
showed Steve how well other instructors had rated me, he said, "don't
get cocky."   Grrrr.

Yesterday (Saturday), though, no Steve in sight.  Classes went
swimmingly compared to OJT.  I actually didn't do any pre-planning
except to choose what lesson I'd present to the students.

On the way home from work most nights, I stop by the internet cafe
near my station (Tsunashima).  The cafe is called Gera Gera, and
offers free drinks to returning patrons.  Free juice and coke (Pepsi).

On my day off, a group of us went to view cherry blossoms.  I'll write
about that next.