Tokyo Tower

After work today Toshi took me to Tokyo Tower. I never know what I am doing that day until that day and sometimes only a few hours before hand. Today about 15 minutes before we are leave we are working and I hear someone shout Earthquake! I look up from my desk and from where I sit I can see everyone in the office and everyone is turned facing me. I see that the monitors are swaying, I am sure the look on my face was priceless considering the laughter. It isn't much movement and I can understand how I missed it. Toshi comes out of his office and I can tell that he is telling the others that we are going to the Tokyo Tower in Japanese, I then notice that he makes motions with his hand making a joke that we will be in the tower when an earthquake hits. That is a very scary thought. We take the train to get there. We arrive and I am a little nervous about going up butI can't wait all at the same time. Toshi suggests that I take a picture, it is dark out and the tower is lit up. It has 2016 lit brightly and Toshi informs me that this is the the year Tokyo will host the Summer Olympics. We get the tickets and we head up to the oberservation deck. The view is amazing. The entire city is lit up, I can see Shinjuku area where I went last night with Emily. I took pictures, but they don't do the view justice. As we are walking around the observatiion deck I notice all the couples. What a fun date that would be and it made me miss Holliday-san (Gerald). After me make the round around observation deck we go up another 100m ( i believe) A group is crammed into this little elevator and as we are going up, I believe that Toshi was getting nervous the higher we went up. As we are riding the elevator, the annoucer says that they elevator will creak and this is normal, I don't care how normal this is, we are 250 m above the ground, this doesn't seem right. We arrive safely, and do another round on this deck. We head down and take a taxi to dinner. The Taxi door opens automatically, he gets in and I follow, I close the door and am informed that they close automatically and I could cause damage for closing them. OOPS... I don't know where we went but we ate chicken fajitas and pizza. The combination of foods amazes me. But it was good. Tomorrow is shopping with Emily again and I believe another co-worker is meeting us for lunch. Then SUNDAY IS DISNEY SEA!!!!

The night of the Proposition

Tonight after work Emily and I set out to go Shopping. We started out at the MITSUKOSHI department store. I have been told that this store has been around for over 300 years. Longer than the US has been around, they tell me and laugh. It almost seems that this little joke is a slight jab at the US. This is the 2nd time I have been in this department store, it is just down the street from the office. The first time I went I was taken there at lunch by the guy in Marketing. He wanted to show me where he goes for inspiration for ideas and meditation. He showed me this beautiful statue of a lady. I wish so bad that I could take a picture of it, but it just doesn't seem appropriate in such a nice store. The statue is several stories high and is a combination of a mythical goddess with western and oriental inspiration. (those are his words, not mine) The department store contains many expensive designers, which is fun to look at.

Emily and I browse the store, just looking at the expensive items. After we finished there, we took the subway to another part of the city. We are on the first train and I notice a sign that has a little bit of English on it. It is amazing how much things in English stands out to me. It is rather comforting to me when everything is so foreign. The English part read Women Only. I asked Emily what that sign said , she informed me that during certain times of the day and evening this car of the train is for Women only. Interesting I think to myself. After a few moments, she leans in closer to me and tells me that Japanese men sometimes like to touch woman and it is bad. I think to myself, I wish someone would try to cop a feel, they wouldn't know what hit them. We transfer trains, the 2nd train was packed, not squished in, but every hand rail and seat is occupied. As we are standing there, I hear a man sneeze. I happen to turn my head and over my shoulder, I see a man standing there holding a magazine that is covered in spit, I assumed this is the man that sneezed. I immediately thought of Gerald, because he always teases me when I sneeze that I spray him, no matter where he is in the room. After this instance, all I have to say is that my sneeze IS SO LADY LIKE.

We arrive at our final destination and it is crazy busy, I am amazed by all the people. The Lights, every where you turn, lights line the street. It is amazing, It is almost like every place is trying to out do the other person, it so many lights that it seems for something to stand out it would have to be the opposite. (wow that was a brilliant observation...lol) As we are walking along, there is a crowd listing to a rock band that is playing. People are standing outside restaurants holding menus, trying to entice the passer buyers to come in. People are constantly trying to hand you things as you walk past. Emily will either turn her head or just nod. I follow her lead. We go to department store called OIOI. The stores here don't have racks of clothes in different sizes, they display one size of each item only. Of course the sizes are small, I ask Emily what you do if you want to try something on, she says they will get it for you. Similiar to trying on shoes, I guess. We found stores that had items that are more in my price range in this area. I am excited, until I realize that nothing will fit me, unless all they sell in Tokyo is 3/4 length sleeves.

We stop someplace for dessert and a soft drink, which is not pop as we call it. It is Juice or tea. Our feet were killing us, we had been walking around in heels for 2 hours. We were happy for the rest, but dreaded having to get up to head back to the train. We grimace at every step. At every intersection, stairway, or entrance there is a yellow line, these lines contain raised circles or raised lines. Like a warning track or something, when your feet are in aching, such as mine were, the hurt to walk over. We are laughing at the pain as we walk back and try to hurry as gently as possible. As we are walking a guy comes up to Emily and starts talking to her in Japanese. She doesn't really acknowledge him but he keeps walking and talking with us. I can't figure out if he is hitting on her or if he is being vulgar, but I sense from her that she wants to get away. I grab her arm and keep pulling her away and think it might feel good to clock this man with the shoe that is killing my feet right now. He finally walks away and she is in shock and then starts laughing. I ask her what he said and she told me that he said to her in Japanese, that there is a service that is only in Japan where we can pay him 10,000 Yen ($100) yen to go to drinks with us. WE PAY HIM?!?!? How backwards is that.... This still makes me laugh. He assumed that because she is Chinese and I am obviously foreign that we might be interested I asked her if it was really drinks, or other services. She didn't know, I told her that she should of told him that if we had $100 to spend we would spend it on shoes, not him.

Dinner with Yushui and Emily

Wednesday, I met up with Yushui and Emily for dinner. Yushui (pronounced You-Sway not You-shoey like we have been saying) Yushui is working the overnight shift while I am in Tokyo, but he came in early for dinner. Both Emily and Yushui are Chinese and we were going to go to a Chinese restaurant. But on our walk they asked me if I had ever had, what sounded like Currey BBQ. Anything with BBQ sounds safe to me, I don't know why. I told them that I would try it. We are walking to the restaurant which is a few blocks from the office. I can sense from the people that I go to lunch or dinner with that they are a bit nervous or anxious. My goal is to get past that feeling and try to keep the conversation going.



Before arriving to the restaurant, we turn down this little alley way. I made a joke about them taking me down a back alley that they didn't get, because they didn't laugh. I think my jokes are funny, so it MUST be that they just didn't understand the English. ha. Anyways, we arrive at this restaurant and it has about 4 tables and a side room that you can sit on the floor. This is for larger parties I assume. We were the only three in the restaurant. Then they ask me what I would like to eat. This menu is has pictures, which I like since I am a visual person. As I start looking at the pictures I realize that they are pictures of Raw Meat. I don't understand this, I begin thinking about Raw horse that I have heard of?

It was a good dinner, we cooked the meet on a grill in the middle of the table. Conversation was great, I was very glad for this opprotunity to spend with Yushui because my impression of him has changed greatly. I realize now that some of our run ins prior to me coming to Tokyo have been misunderstood. He is not fluent in English so what I have interpreted as him being bossy has been just him having a limited English vocabulary.

Yushui taught me how to properly hold a set of chopsticks, I have been practicing and by the end of the night, I was showing Emily, how to use them. She can use them but she does not hold them properly. We all laughed at the american teaching the chinese girl how to use chopsticks.

Surviving Earthquake

So...Monday there was an Earthquake at 22:50 (10;50 PM for you Westerners). I was just mae made aware of this fact. I was asked about it today one of the co-workers in the office. He told me that he was at home and felt it shake. When I told him that I didn't feel it, he seemed shocked. I am thankful that I wasn't aware of it, I think that I really would have freaked out, but I bet it would have made for an interesting story. I just got done reading that Japan has 20 % of the worlds Earthquakes. I didn't know this fact before traveling here. I pray that this is the only one for the next couple of weeks.

Toshi

I had dinner tonight with Toshi. After work he took me to Ginza which is a very ritzy shopping center. It is about a 15 minute walk to this area from the office. I haven't figured him out yet. He has many similarities to my Grandpa Amstutz which makes me feel comfortable and very fond of him but all from a distance. If that even makes sense. We went into several stores, stores that I would never afford to buy anything. We went into Louis Vuitton, Cartier those are the only two I remember. When we went into the stores he would go one way I would go the other, we would browse the merchandise but I had to keep an eye on where he went or I feared he would be gone. I had flash backs of when my Grandpa left a bunch of us grand kids at church. Being left at church is much different than being stranded in Tokyo. We could call for help. It was clear that he was doing it to entertain me rather than himself. As we were walking down the street we past a bridal shop and we got to talk about his daughter who is getting married in April and her and his wife have been shopping for a dress. She found one, of course I asked, for those who are wondering. I get my inquisitiveness from my mom too.

We went to dinner at this place that reminded me of an Irish PUB. OK, I have never been to Ireland but I imagine this is what the are like. ha. This place had pizza, which is why he brought me here, very thoughtful. As I was taught last night at dinner the drinks are ordered first. In a pub it seemed fitting for a beer. (mom and dad skip ahead if you are having spring break flash backs, please) Toshi gave me the same look that my dad gave me when I told him I drank beer on spring break instead of wine coolers. I can joke now about this situation because 1. it was over 10 years ago 2. I am on the other side of the planet and 3. I am currently over 21 . We order a Margherita Pizza, a Ham appetizer, later some roast beef. The ham was frozen and looked more like shaved raw meat than ham. It tasted like ham. The pizza was good, but drenched in olive oil... Never saw that before. That isn't how Maggie serves us the Margherita Pizzas?!?!? I really thought I would come to Tokyo and lose weight, but I don't know... the Roast beef was delicious too very tender. Dinner conversation was about work things, and what 5 Japanese things I need to learn before I go home. Tonight I learned, ( I am going to botch the spelling so I will just type how you should say it) See-ma-say. Which is a combination of excuse me or sorry. You use that to get a servers attention, or if you bump into someone. After we leave the restaurant, Toshi says to me, " I sink it get cold now, I sink you should ride taxi home to hotel." So he puts me in a taxi, tells the driver where I need to go, and hands me 1000 Yen. Off I go back to the hotel in a taxi that has lace covers on the seats. The drive I debated seat belt or no, seat belt or no? This driver is like typical taxi driver who drives fast, breaks hard, follows closely, runs red lights. I guess, I don't know why I expected it to be different in Tokyo than in Chicago? I made it safe to the hotel with 20 yen to spare.


Link to restuaraunt http://www.sapporoholdings.jp/english/company/lion/

1st Dinner

Dinner tonight was a pleasant suprise. I went with Yu and Kichiya tonight. We walked to this section of town that just had little restaurants just lining the street. When I say little, they look like the conch bars in the Bahamas. They are wide open, no doors on most. I wish I would have taken a picture, I forgot I had my camera. They are all aware of the "Seafood Allergy". We walk down the row of restuarants and we choose one which I believe is called Danke-bros. http://www.danke-bros.co.jp/index.html They seat us in these little rooms. To get into the room you have to go through this tiny doorway to get in. It is so small Kichiya has to duck to get in. Kichiya comes up to my shoulders maybe. When we sit the tell me that in Japanese culture you order drinks first. So I order some Peach/Orange drink. I don't even think it contained alcohol but it was good and it sounded safe. They begin reading me the menu, which for someone that doesn't eat much of anything out of the ordinary, phrases like "this is like chicken" or "this is the tendon of the chicken" or "this is the skin of chicken" and I am questioning these phrases they begin laughing and I realize the fate of my food is in these guys hands. I begin to wonder if this is let's gross out the American girl or are they going to take care of me.

The lady comes in to take the food order, they ordered so much food. Again, all in Japanese, and I have no idea what is coming. First dish arrives, it is steamed snap peas with salt. Yu informs me that Martha Stewart eats these and they are healthy. I pop one in my mouth, and I realize as I am chewing and when they take one that you "snap" the peas out and don't eat the pod. Pod's don't taste that great and don't chew nicely, so I swallowed whole with a swig of the peach orange drink. 2nd dish is a salad with pork and egg plant. Good, pork was a little fatty, but tasty. Egg Plant really good. Next dish is noodles, again, this looks safe with pickled ginger. Noodle good, pickled ginger, not so good. 4th dish arrives, Fried ToFu. Taste ok but the texture was gross. 5th dish- is this dried rice, grilled, and with what looks like BBQ. Awesome. It was rather funny listening to them describe to me what it is made of. They didn't think that I would like it after the Tofu, but it really was good. Crispy grilled taste on the outside. I found a link to a picture. http://www.danke-bros.co.jp/08-jirou.html#02 it is the picture on the left. 6th dish is Chicken on a stick grilled, Good, tasted like Amstutz chicken that Aunt Patty and Uncle Jeff Make. 7th is the "like chicken dish" They compared this to ground up chicken like hamburger. I was leary. They both take a bite, Kichiya, is chewing away, going mmm MMMM mmmm . They both ate it all. It looks good from the outside so I decide to brave it. I pressed my luck WAY To far now. This chicken had ground up joints in it. I took a little bite and it started to crunch. Now, as some of you are aware, I have difficulty eating the chicken off the bone, I get grossed out with chicken wings. Everything I fear in Chicken was in that one little bite. I couldn't even chew it, so again, I swallowed whole. That was the grosses thing ever. I can't believe that I tried it. I want to hurl thinking about it. After dinner, we went to Starbucks for hot chocolate. Then we head to the train so they could take me back to the hotel. They both were extremely helpful. They showed me how to buy a ticket and how to switch the monitor to English. They were excited, they were teaching me something until we all realized that the maps were in Japanese with no english subtitles.
Once we made it to Tokyo Station, they were amazed that I was able to direct them to where my hotel was. (I get my sense of direction from my mom, thank you!) They didn't know where it was. I joked with them if they needed help gettin back to the train, I could take them. Appartently, when they drop me off, they have to call Toshi to report that the Eagle has landed or something. It was a fun evening, and I was more proud that I tasted food, I didn't know about. That is a big step for me.

1st day at the office

My first day at the office was a little different. Toshi picked me up in the lobby and we walked to work. I pray that I remember my way in the morning because I am on my own. The walk to the office was interesting, I observed the cars driving on the wrong side of the road. Street signs of houses, trees, and very little English. The streets are clean, not trash, no overflowing trash cans, no cigarette butts on the ground, it was strange to be in such a big city with out seeing such things. Many people were walking the streets, riding bikes in business suits. We arrive to the office, I walk in and everyone turns and smiles. Several nods. They show me my desk and I suddenly realize how hot I am, Not hot as good looking, but hot as in a heat wave, personal summer, hot flash what ever you like to call it. I am not sure if it is from the walk, nerves, or just that the Tokyo office follows the same Temp restrictions as the Ada office but it was a billion degrees in there.


As I am setting up my computer, I begin to notice how quiet it is in the office. I start to get nervous again, because as we all know, I am not a quiet person. I laugh loud, I talk loud, I walk loud, I am loud...I commented to Emily about it and she said that it was cause they are nervous about me being there. She took me to lunch, we had Chinese. Let me just say that Chinese in Japan, is not like Chinese in the US. I was a little discouraged after lunch and was starving again. Note to self, get up early to go to hotel breakfast.... I am very grateful that I have someone going with me to lunch. I can not talk to the servers, I can not read the menus, I would be in a world of hurt. Emily, is so nice and I feel very comfortable with her. She doesn't fully understand me, but she tries. She has a lot of mannerism as Kristine Barr. ( I think my family will only get that Description, it is a girl I went to high school with) It is a combination of her smile and her walk.

Height observations. I can not cross my legs at the desk, I think that I hit my legs trying to do so about 6 times today. I wonder how many times it will take tomorrow. My other goal is to take pictures of the sink in the bathroom, I am not kidding the counter reaches my knees. Seriously, I get a back ache going to the washing hands. Although, the trade off is a heated seat and a bum washer. Hehe it makes me giggle saying that.

Training started out well, will start the One on One training tomorrow. Towards the end of the day, one of the new guys comes up to me and starts to ask. "Do you mind if I open a Window?" I practically cut him off by saying," NO I don't mind at all." After the blessed man opens the window, he comes back over and says to me, If you get cold we can shut it, I assured him that I probably won't. He was my favorite person at the moment, if only I could pronounce his name. Ume, I believe that is what he told me to call him.

Racial Profiling is Everywhere

As I am waiting for Toshi to buy the train tickets into Tokyo, a police officer came up to me and asked me to see my passport. Odd, I think, but I oblige, dig through my luggage to locate my passport. I had packed it away since I was out of the airport. I find it and hand him my passport. He opens it up and starts taking down my information on a little notepad he was carrying. I started getting nervous as he is writing things down and I have no idea what I did to cause it, what he is writing down or why for that matter. Is it a ticket? I cant figure it out. He hands me my passport, says thank you, and walks away. I still find it rather strange considering I made it through customs with out any trouble. Is he trying to pin a crime on me and I won't make it back. I prolly could have taken him... ha! I tried to ask Toshi about it but he didn't acknowledge my question and I don't know if he didn't understand me or if he didn't want to talk about it. I asked Emily today at lunch and she said it was stranged too but couldn't offer suggestions but that I am different. Hmm, interesting.

Too Tall for the Cameras

Too Tall for the Cameras
I arrived at the airport in Narita at 15:20. ( I am working on using the termonology correctly). The Immigration line was long, and it was hot, when I finally got to the counter, I handed them my passport. I had to give my finger prints and they had to take a picture. It took them 10 times to get it to take. It was not connecting to my eyes so it wouldn't take. I truely believe it was because the camera was pointed to my neck. Every take I bent my knees so I could get lower. I made it through customs without any further trouble. When I come out, I couldn't find Toshi right away. I almost paniced, when he finally came through the crowd I wanted to run and hug him. HA. I am sure that would have went over really well.

Trip to Ft.Wayne before Tokyo

Friday after our Department breakfast, I dreadfully headed to the Dr's office to get my recommend shot for the trip. I decided my fate in Tokyo by forgoing the Farmland shot. A decision I am certain I won't regret. :-) I started packing when I got home. How does a woman fit 3 weeks of clothes in 2 suitcases, plus leave room to bring things back? I wasn't able to complete my packing before I left for Ft. Wayne but I am determined to make it all fit.



Turkey day which I have deemed as the Last Supper, was so good. The whole famn Damily was there. Wes was sick the day before so Abby and him were concerned about getting me sick before I leave for Tokyo. He was fine that day so I think that Tokyo is clear of me spreading any American diseases and wiping out the population. The girls went to see a movie Thursday afternoon. Bella, I recommend it to everyone. Let me just say, the main character (Eduardo Verastegui)) with the full on beard, put Russell Crowe to shame ladies. We ended the day with a new dice game my mom taught us, which brought many tears and laughter. I learned that my family has trouble remembering their left and rights. Let's just say that towards the end of the game my dad sounded like Raymond from the movie Rain Man muttering "5 right, 6 left, 5 right, 6 left, 5 right 6 left...."

My sister, my mom and I are braving the crowds on Black Friday. We are leaving by 7. Most people spending the day doing their Christmas Shopping, we like to spend the day shopping for us. Why pass up good sales on others? Ok my mom just came in to wake me for the big Adventure.