Oh, How Time Flies

Well, over a month has passed now as I continue to settle into my new life here in Tokyo. Saying that I realize that in reality I may never be able to say that I feel settled here. I know that I won’t be here permanently and will never "fit in" seeing as I am a "gaijin" (foreigner) but I must say that I have adjusted to the fact that I am in Japan. Turn the T.V. on and I would be surprised to hear English, little things like that are my gauge I guess.

Anyways, a lot has changed since my last post. I have moved into my own apartment ("Nakamurabashi" lat=35.7411194779, lon=139.632812038 if your a google earthling) and it is only 45 minutes from work!! But that means no more Hina or beers with host dad or care packages from the old people around the neighborhood. I must now fend for myself and make plans for food or starve. Our local grocer "Seiyu" is the only real option in the neighborhood and it is located directed at the exit of my new train stop. They have all of the staple foods at outrageous prices of course, so I find myself wandering the aisles almost daily in search of the daily specials.

My apartment is what is called a guesthouse. I live with 6 other people in a two-story house and it is for the most part similar to anything you would expect in a college house. Two of my roommates are German; there is one Frenchman, a Swedish girl, another American and a mystery guest. There is sadly only one shower and it is located between the stove and fridge... I don’t even want to go there. The kitchen is shared by four of us seeing as two of the rooms are partial apartments meaning they have kitchens. The three who I share the kitchen with are not the cooking type. I basically have the kitchen to myself and I enjoy cooking up a storm. My room itself is your average sized room, brand new tatami floors, which still carry the smell of freshly cut grass which depending on my mood can be quite pleasant. I like my new place.

There is also a new addition to Japan life. My girlfriend Rebecca moved over here November 11th (just in time for my birthday). She has loved it here so far. She lucked out and got a fantastic job at a really nice international school in a really nice part of town. They love her and after she designed a stunning winter art scene for the kids in her first week they have asked her to be the art teacher. Although being a teacher comes at a cost... germs. She came home sick on Friday and has been pretty sick all weekend. Hopefully she will get back to her happy and healthy self and can continue to wow the teachers and students at school on Tuesday. Its now 7pm and she is still very sick... I don’t think getting out of bed at 5am tomorrow is going to happen for her.

My job continues to be interesting and challenging. I spend a large portion of my day on the phone calling companies trying to locate their top employees so I can meet them in hopes of someday placing them at a client company. I also spend a large portion of time interviewing people and researching changes in the market place and its effects on companies that are associated with my clients in the case that there may be sudden growth in the company or down sizing in which case I will scout out all those laid off... not exactly top drawer guys, but candidates none the less. No matter how you look at it I am learning a lot about the business world, it is a great experience for me, I get to speak a lot of Japanese, and at the end of the day I am getting paid.

The hardest thing is adjusting to full time work. Being a student was so much fun... Why didn’t I enjoy it more? Such an obvious thing and so many people tell you to enjoy your student life but you don’t really think about it until you are sitting there in your little career capsule 9-7 all day dreaming about taking the after noon off to have a tub of beer for $1.25 with your friends at the campus bar. But you know its hopeless because you have "targets" that "must be met" because "competitors are struggling right now" and we have to "take over". AAAAHHHHHHHH
I secretly love it though because I know I wont be doing this forever, and I am sure there will be a day that I look back with a smile at the days of East West Consulting and Tokyo life...

I’m going to go and get some more ice cubes for Rebecca so she doesn’t dehydrate. Miss all of you and hope that every is going well in your own worlds.

Wake, work, sleep, and repeat

Time goes on.

So... I have completed my first week working for a Japanese company. My thoughts? Well, the first thought I have isn't even of work, its of the crammed train in the morning and the desire to move closer to work minimizing the time spent commuting. I hop on the bus at 7:12am and then I am literally squeezed onto my first train at around 7:30am just to be birthed from it at around 8:30am, just in time to run up some stairs and squish on another train for 20mins. The total time from home to work is roughly 2 hours. AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH. So I plan to get a nice cozy apartment close to work asap.

Regarding the actual work at East West Consulting. It consisted of a small amount of training and a huge amount of personal training through trial and error. My objective for this week was to "obtain an assignment". Assignments are given to EWC by very large outside foreign companies and all we have to do is locate potential candidates for them to employ. So I spent a huge amount of time foraging our database for companies and calling and meeting with them. I am pleased to say that I have obtained an assignment and am now looking for program managers.

All that can really be said at the end of the week is that work is work, and I am somewhat relieved to have a job but I know my weekends will quickly become more and more precious. This weekend was fantastic. Guillaume has a very good friend who has just arrived from France. His name is also Thomas and we all went to Shinjuku to show him around a little bit. BUT, upon walking around for all of 5 mins we found an Izakaya that was $10 all you can drink for 2 hours. We decided that this was too good of a deal to turn up so our night started a little earlier and a lot cheaper than we had planned (which is great for me because $10 is about my budget limit at this point in time). Entering the Izakaya, they saw three large foreigners come up stairs and one of them said in Japanese "they cant come in here". This is very typical, simply because they don't think we know any Japanese and certainly cant read it. All it took was a well pronounced "konbanwa" and we were escorted right in as they complemented our skills. Apparently we were the first foreigners in this establishment. Anyways, against the waitresses advice we ordered a delicious dish of chicken covered in "uneatable" peppers. Guillaume having lived in Ecuador for 6 months last year likes to show off his pepper eating skills. Upon receiving the dish he went straight for the red guys. He ate about 1/4 of an entire pepper, his face went bright red and he quickly started coughing. Thomas and I laughed and then both reached for a pepper. Boys being being boys things quickly became a contest and the waitresses all stood around laughing as we all ate as many of the peppers as we could. Gulliaume eventually killed the fun and almost himself when he stuffed several peppers in his mouth at once. He started hiccuping uncontrollably, couldn't speak, and could barely breath. He required a large dose of milk which was quickly fetched by our new friends. After this incident things were settled down and our time came to an end and we stumbled out into the bright lights of Shinjuku. We wandered around for a while before we decided to head back to Guillaume's part of town. This was a good decision because we found a fantastic little Jazz bar to relax, chat, and listen to great music. Ahh what a weekend, although I have found that my French is improving faster than my Japanese at this point. Not quite what I had in mind, but I am sure that my mother who is headed to France later this week would appreciate my skills.

Now, its approaching dinner time and my host father will shortly be sending their Dog "Hina" to come and fetch me so we can enjoy a beer before feast. Hina really is incredible, she will fetch just about anything. She seems to have a fantastic memory, or maybe Japanese is easier for dogs. She will fetch your cell phone, socks, tissues, and just once my tooth brush. But maybe the cutest part is how she has a little plate that she carries around while we eat dinner. She will come up and lightly remind you that she has her plate as you eat. I'm not one for begging, but how can I resist this? (that's her raincoat)


So, yes I must go, eat, and prepare for another week.
Thanks for reading... and if you know any good program managers who speak Japanese and English pass em my way.

I'm Back

To all those who wonder

Well…. As most of you know after living in Nagasaki two years ago I fell head over heals for the land of the rising sun. It is a culture that I found a great deal of respect for, it is after all a country filled with respect. There is a sense of being here that one cant really explain with words, and most don’t even understand upon visiting. This something surely is related to the 'Wa', but this isn’t a philosophy lesson so I will leave it at that. After a teary departure at the Seattle airport I arrived in Tokyo and was greeted by my good friend Yuka, whom I met TA-ing at the U of I (Her wonderful family has allowed me to live with them). The first night back here was awful, it was muggy, hot, I couldn’t sleep, I wondered what I was doing… I came over here with no job and barely any money. I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. If I cant deal with these worries and stresses how will I ever make it to be successful in the real world? I knew I would most likely find a job teaching English and I kept thinking "how will teaching English in Japan help me in my future? I should be making power moves through the difficult business world of the US." I had to continually to remind myself there was a lot more to why I was here. There was this element of the culture, which had inspired me so much, continuing to develop my speaking abilities is something that will only open more doors for me down the road, and I am young and there is no time like the present to experience life, any new experience is a new lesson and that’s what, to me, it is all about. I wonder what I will learn this time?

I had several interviews (mostly at English schools) arranged prior to arrival, which was a comforting thought. I arrived on Saturday the 13th of September and the first interview was on Tuesday. So, come Tuesday morning I departed the house at 12pm (the invitation to the interview had said “interviews will be held from 12pm-5pm” ). I arrived at the location and sat and waited, an Australian guy finally walked up, greeted me, and he asked if I was Thomas Bailey.
“yes” I replied.
“Thomas the interview started at 12pm, sorry we didn’t get a chance to reply to your email about the time check”.
You see, I had been a little hesitant that they would have people show up at random times throughout the day for interviews, so I wrote to the school to make sure it would be appropriate for me to show up at 2pm because I hadn’t been assigned a time. Who has a 5 hour-long interview with someone you only know through a resume? They never responded and so I showed up at the time I had told them I would be there. Lesson #1, ALWAYS show up to things of importance at the EARLIEST possible time. This was a big blow to my already smoldering confidence about the decision to come back here. I got home that day and had a hard time putting a smile on my face. However, I still had the American Apparel interview to look forward to.

The American Apparel interview went extremely well. It was conducted in Japanese and I managed to get through it without even asking them to repeat what they had said once. They have shown interest in hiring me to their team in Shibuya. In the mean while I have had several other interviews. I have heard back from a couple places and had to reject a couple. I received an offer from a rather sketchy fellow from Taranaki, New Zealand whose resemblance, both physically speaking and personality wise to David Brent (link) had me holding back the tears of laughter throughout the interview which consisted of extremely cheesy and self promulgating speeches and demonstrations. I thought he would be hilarious to work for but his over zealous persistence on me signing the contract and lack of "professionalism" did nothing but send me running. I had another interview with East West Consulting on Friday and I found myself in the "hot seat" once again. I didn’t really have any anxiety about this interview due to the fact that A. I enjoy interviews and B. didn’t really have an expectations. I was greeted by a very serious young lady from China who proceeded to give me the initial 3rd degree, it went very well. She then did a mock call with me where I had to convince her to consider a change of career. I used some of the logical argument strategies I have learned over the years and apparently I did well because when we were finished she fetched the owner of the company. He then came in and we sat and chatted. He was from Oregon and has been to North Idaho on several occasions, he has also visited New Zealand and our thoughts about Japanese society are very similar. We got along quit well, he asked me to come back for some trial calls on Monday. I came back, made some trial calls in Japanese and he made me an offer that day. I told him I needed to think about it and that I would be in touch. So I went home, thought about it, and went back and signed the next day. I was given a tour of the office and was quite impressed. It was a place filled with suits in their late 20’s early 30’s all from different countries and speaking different languages. It promises to be a new and interesting experience.

In between all of these interviews I have had a lot of time with my “host family” and other friends who live in and around Tokyo. One particular friend Guillaume (from France) is a friend I met in Nagasaki a year ago. We have gone on several excursions around Tokyo for Buddhist temples and really accomplish nothing other than the repeated realization of just how massive this city is.

Today is my last day of freedom before I join the Japanese work force. Apparently I have made an impression on the neighborhood, today I was woken up by my host mom because a neighbor (a woman in her late 60’s) whom I had met at the local pool the other day had put together another (the third) basket filled with all sorts of goodies for me, and this time a very fancy traditional Japanese dish was included in congratulations of my new job. God only knows how she found out I have been employed. I am the first foreigner she and her friends have ever met and they were all very surprised by the fact that I can speak the “impossible language of Japanese”. After being closely monitored as I ate her gift I sit here again completely stuffed. But, I am very happy. Japan is lovely, in every sense imaginable, I am overjoyed to be here. Lets hope this is my attitude tomorrow when I arrive home from work.