This was initially going to be a complete post chronicling my back to Japan, two years later — I wrote this while on a flight heading to Tokyo to visit for over the Christmas and new year’s holidays in 2015-2016, and never actually bothered to continue it, because I was so busy. I figured, though, with the influx of people swinging on by to read the not-particularly-updated guide to Yokohama study abroad life, that I’d go ahead and publish what I had edited for consistency in tense, because why not. Here’s the first new content in three years; here’s another plane ride to Japan.

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Unlike the rest of my peers back home who are currently enjoying their winter breaks, my break lasted just about two weeks. This is because fall semester at YNU starts in October and ends in mid-February. It’s roughly the same period of time spent studying, except set up so that the spring semester doesn’t start at the end of January — it, instead, actually starts in springtime, at the beginning of April.

Unfortunately while I was partying it up in Tokyo like crazy (as people came to visit and I wouldn’t get to see them for another seven months, at least!), I caught the season’s flu two days before my return to school, and it manifested itself in several ways over the first week back, culminating in my first absence from a class on a Friday morning. Thankfully, the weekend allowed me plenty of time to rest and recuperate, and now the symptoms are all but gone…except for one heck of a sore throat and — I’m gonna blame this on the illness — a messed-up circadian rhythm.

So here I am, playing games on my computer when suddenly hunger calls. I’d just finished off the bag of rice that’d lasted me through the past month and a bit, and my only pot was currently full of oil, having been used as a deep-fryer for karaage. I decided I’d just get a bento from the 24-hour bento place in the neighborhood, because it’s cheap, fast, fresh, and filling, and not in the Western fast food kinda way. (An aside: twice-cooked Szechuan pork stir-fry is amazingly delicious and I need to learn how to make it.)

As it turns out, it’s on the other side of the shopping street, across the river. That was fine by me, and the walk to and from the place was actually sort of refreshing.

It was on the way back that I saw a car, engine active, straddling the side of a parking lot like the lot was full and it decided to just block the lot in protest. Inside the car was a single man sitting in the front, left-hand-side of the car, with one of his hands on the steering wheel waiting expectantly.

Wait a minute, I thought.

Wait just a damn minute.

I tried to remember how the insides of cars looked back home. It was sort of surreal, that moment: no matter how many times I conjured up the inside of a car, driver’s side on the left, my mind was asking are you sure that’s how it was? Only while waiting for the crossing light on the main road did I confirm by means of the cars speeding by: yes, cars in America do have steering wheels on the left side of the vehicle, and drive on the right side of the road, and cars in Japan have steering wheels on the right side of the vehicle and drive on the left side of the road. Which means that car I’d passed was perhaps imported from America or some other place with left-side steering wheels.

What blows my mind is how long it took me to confirm that; and the fact that it took just about three months to get to this point. That was a bit weird.

I guess for the time being I’ll blame that, too, on the flu… ◆

It was the end of the first week of December.

Japanese announcements were blaring from the intercom. We stood there, slightly speechless, staring at the electric sign that should’ve been lit up with details on the next trains incoming. It, instead, showed only one line, alternating between Japanese and English: all service on the Blue Line — the Yokohama municipal subway system — had been suspended, and people were advised to take alternate modes of transportation.

There had been an omen earlier: the line for the bus outside of the FamilyMart right beside the Mitsuzawa-kamicho station entrance was far longer than it usually was. We’d been joking that the line’d been long because maybe something had happened to the subway, and maybe we should instead swing by a karaoke joint in Wada-machi before taking the Sotetsu line from the station there instead, but it turns out: it was true. There were, in fact, no trains to take.

Something had happened on a Japanese train system that made it shut everything down, and we were at a loss on what to do next.  Continue reading →

To those people who know me IRL: yes, this earthquake just happened, and yes, we felt it in Yokohama. Don’t worry, we’re completely fine.

There was quite a bit that happened today on the way back from the university, though…I’ll put up a blog post tomorrow on that.

So I went to Tokyo for the first time since landing here to visit a couple of friends…and coming back to the dorms has honestly been a profound experience. I mean, yeah, I’d realized I was a stone’s throw away from the world’s largest metropolitan area, but I think the realization sort of actually hit me when I stood in trains for an hour while taking two JR lines and a subway to get back.

And as I was standing in front of the dorms, that feeling sort of developed — my dorms aren’t just a hotel or anything. This is my home for ten months, and I’m just getting started. I mean, when I start saying “it’s good to be back” when I’ve just gone to Tokyo for an evening…yeah, there’s something happening.

Oh, and Akihabara hasn’t changed one bit from when I last visited in 2008, I swear. Just replace the advertisements and goods for the anime and games of 2008 with advertisements for the anime and games of 2012. Makes sense. ◆