Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Overview of my first couple days

The flight into Japan went well, but was foolishly long. When I arrived I bought a ticket for the Limo-Bus (a service that takes you from the airport to various central locations around Japan) and immediately befriended an old Japanese lady. We sat together on the bus and she proceded to tell me, in broken english, about her trip to China and all of her grandkids. I tried out some of my Japanese and was surprised to find that what I had learned was actually words over here. After the hour and fifteen minute bus ride she waited with me at the station in Yokohama, while I waited for Akiko Tamura my host mother.
Luckily Akiko found me in the station even though neither of us knew what the other one looked like. After we met and I said goodbye to my friend she led me back to her car which was parked about 10 minutes away, due to the traffic. The walk was fun because Yokohama is attached to a giant department store and I was lucky enough to be carrying all my bags through it during the peak of the shopping day on Saturday. So I was forced to carry my bags through a sea of Japanese mallgoers in order to get out of the mall.
After we arrived at the house I had a day to acclimate myself and get to know my family. I'm currently staying with Akiko, her two english speaking kids, Sam and Julie, and their grandma. The house is great and has wireless internet. I'm up in my own room on the third floor. From my house it's about a 20 minute walk to the train station and about 40 minutes of train riding after that to get to my job.
I'm working at Aoi Advertising Production INC. in Osaka, Tokyo. Finding it was the first adventure as my computer stopped working and I didn't have my directions to the, and none of my other e-mails from my host family's computer were going through. So I went without true directions onto the Japanese trains during rush hour in order to find the company. If you've never seen pictures of rush hour in Japan then you can't really imagine how people pack onto the trains. It's just a sea of business suits by the time the train gets fully filled. Luckily I had my host-mother's cell phone and was able to call her for some directions while I was on my way. Luckily again, when I arrived in Osaki station with no idea where to go Julie Thomas, my boss at AOI, spotted me out of the crowd and led me to the office. It consists of three floors (4th 5th and 6th) of a large building and is right below the "Hello Kitty" headquarters in Tokyo. On my first day I got introduced to everyone in that office including the president, vice presideant and about any other position of power in the company. The section I'm working in now is primarily English/Japanese speaking young women so I haven't really been forced to use my Japanese all that much. Everyone is really nice at the company and I've been having a great time. I'll post a little later what my specific job is, but it's been a great time so far.
That's all for the logistical stuff of my stay and hopefully next time I can give you some more specific ridiculous events. Feel free to post on this site if you have any comments or news for me. I hope everyone is having a great summer and I hope to hear from all of you soon.

2 Comments:

At 9:18 AM, Blogger Ally Felser said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

 
At 9:21 AM, Blogger Ally Felser said...

brett willis... nice blog... show off. perhaps i will use the space for comments as my own blog.

glad to hear u made it there and are havin a good time thus far.

(i think everyone could pick you out "luckily" because you are 6 ft tall and white)

peace

 

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