絶望した！荷物と飛行機は絶望した！

All right, then. Here we go.

I have been in Japan now for exactly twenty four hours, eight minutes and eighteen seconds. Things seem to have turned out well, despite some initial gaffs caused by unbelievably heavy suitcases. I regret nothing that I brought, but it did make the going tough once I landed.

So, here's the deal. Took off from Portland heading up to Vancouver, BC. Short, pleasant flight in a cool little dual prop plane. Less than an hour later, I'm at YVR, and I can't stop thinking of the song YYZ in my head. I realize it's a different airport, but I won't be the one complaining. One battery of customs later, I'm on a flying fortress from Japan Airlines ready for the long haul. Somehow I calculated that this flight would be close to sixteen hours at the airport - shows what I know about math or time zones or any of that. Nine hours and forty minutes later, we were down at Narita Airport. I will definitely be using JAL on the way home - their in-flight entertainment, paired with my extra long-lasting iPod battery, made the time go really quickly.

Once we were on the ground, I headed through immigration, baggage claim, and customs. Easy enough. We did have a couple casualties - one bracelet and one watch were broken due to awkward placement of heavy bags. I still have the watch and am using it as a pocket watch now instead of a wristwatch.

I grabbed a ticket for the Narita Express bound for Shinjuku, where Sakura House (my housing agency) has their headquarters. Getting to Shinjuku was easy, navigating it was anything but. It's a little difficult to know when to turn right when the landmark Epson sign has been taken down and you can't recognize anything. Thankfully, I looked pathetic enough that a local gentleman offered to help set me on the right track. I eventually found the office and signed my lease. After that, it was definitely time to grab a taxi. A couple more locals helped me flag the first one down and load up my cases.

I'm going to be the Japanese Blanche DuBois before this trip's over. 絶望した！

We reached the house around 7:30. The house is a little funky, but I love it. It is set back in a little neighborhood off of a narrow one-way street in the Otsuka neighborhood of Bunkyo City in the Tokyo megamunicipality. There are three girls and two other guys here as of right now - ranging in origin from the USA to France, Spain, and Russia. We all have a pretty good handle on English and are able to understand each other very easily. We all made our introductions and smalltalk, and then I was beat so I had to crash for the night after a bit of unpacking and organizing.

My room is everything I wanted and more. Japanese straw mat flooring, plenty of bookshelves, a folding futon that I put away in the closet every morning, a small desk/chair set, two walls with windows and curtains, a massive closet that takes up an entire wall, and even a free TV.

And then there's the chair.

This is the most unbelievably awesome chair in the universe. Imagine the front passenger-side seat of a car. Remove the rollers and metal on the bottom and make it 30% softer and you have this chair exactly. It sits right on the floor by my little table, and it even has a lever to pull that allows me to recline it. Pictures will follow, as they will with everything else.

So I got organized and slept. The next morning, I took things really slowly in getting up - no sense in rushing. After about an hour of lounging, surfing the net, and a bit of yoga (straw mats make a great surface for it), I decided to head out to do a bit of exploring. I knew that eventually I'd have to head to the city office to do my foreign person registration, but I needed some properly dimensioned photographs for it. Luckily, they had a passport photography place inside Ikebukuro Station, the second largest train station in the world (and ten minutes from my house). So I got my pictures taken there and headed back to get my passport. That and photos in hand, it was time to go register. I tried for a station that was apparently a little bit closer to the house, but got kind of spun around. I found it eventually with help from a gal at Lawson convenience store, but I think I'll stick with Ikebukuro Station for my day-to-day travel.

Registration was quick, easy, and afforded me an opportunity to grab some lunch while the papers were processed. I'll have to go back in a couple weeks for a couple reasons.

1: Pick up my card when it's ready.

2: Check out the building next door to the city office, which has a roller coaster on the roof.

Then I came home to take a little anime break (Wolf's Rain ROCKS!), and now I'm here typing this blog post and chatting with Duffy down at Rice.

Don't expect daily posts on this blog - I am planning on having a life over here - but I will keep it relatively updated. Until next time...

絶望した！