Tokyo: Day 2

Wednesday was my first day of work here. I met Tomo in front of a giant store called PARCO (Tomo says it’s pronounced “Palcoh”) at 8am so that he could show me how to take the trains to work.

I’m staying in Ikebukuro but my work is in Nakano-sakaue (both are sections or wards of Tokyo) so I have to take two trains each morning. The train stations are similar to the bigger subway stations in New York, but here the different train lines are operated by different companies. So you have to make sure you buy the right ticket for the train you need to take! The first train I take is the JR Yamanote Line from Ikebukuro to Shinjuku. The train goes very fast, and it seems that one arrives every two or so minutes! And the stories of jam packed trains are true… people just keep getting on and getting on even after you think there is no more room. After I get off at Shinjuku Station, I have to make my way to the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line. This train is usually less crowded and it’s also a shorter trip. The trains thankfully display the next stop in English, so I have some idea of when to get off!

The office is a short walk from the train station, located on the 23rd floor of Harmony Tower. When you enter the lobby, there is a giant crowd of people waiting to get onto the elevators. When an elevator door opens, the crowd lurches forward and fills the elevator to the brim. On the way up, I actually feel the pressure change in my ears… I guess 23 floors is pretty high up! The office has a lot of windows, and it’s a pretty amazing view! Tokyo is incomprehensibly large, the city just sprawls out as far as you can see in every direction. And I’m talking big city, not suburbs!

Work was work. I didn’t stay late even though most of the guys there work from 9am to 9pm or later (often MUCH later). There is actually a chime at 9am to announce the start of the work day, and one at noon for lunch, at 1pm to signal end of lunch, and the last one at 5:30pm to announce ‘end of day.’ As far as I can tell, 5:30pm is when you can technically leave for the day, but no one actually does. The only other thing of note is the bathroom… there are no towels in the bathroom. You know how annoyed you get when you discover that a bathroom only has those stupid hand blowers and no towels? Yeah, well you don’t even get a hand blower at this place! Apparently you are supposed to bring your own towel? I saw one guy pull a washcloth out of his pocket to dry his hands… I have to wipe my hands on my pants.

I left work a little before 6pm because I was meeting someone in Ikebukuro at 6:30pm. That someone was Akiko Takeuchi, a foreign exchange student that my family hosted 15 or so years ago. We’ve stayed in pretty regular contact with her since then, last time I saw her was 4 years ago when she came to visit Portland and Seattle. Our plan was to meet in front of PARCO, and I secretly wondered if I would be able to pick her out of a sea of Japanese faces. I figured even if I couldn’t, she’d have no problem finding the one white dude standing around! But I did recognize her, so we talked a little and decided to grab some dinner. She took me to a place that served Tonkatsu, which is breaded pork. I got the meal that came with pork, shrimp, and potato all breaded and fried in the same batter. It was pretty tasty! After dinner we walked around a bit and she took me into a giant electronics store. We went up to the 3rd floor to look at video games (she desperately wants a Nintendo DS, but they are constantly sold out everywhere in Japan). I didn’t know of any games that I might want to import for the DS, so I just looked around a bit. After that, she had to go, so we said goodbye and I found my way back to my hotel.