The first three days or What the #*%@$?

The first day:

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Arrival - Finally arrived, tired as hell because of the time difference, but staying up the entire flight should help in adjusting to the time difference. It's wild here, so different, hard to put into words. I got off the plane and followed the crowd to the trains that wisk you off to the main terminal. The language barrier is even worse than I thought, no one understands what the hell I'm saying!! After arranging a bus ride into the city of Osaka, I met up with a Nova guy who gave me my apartment and orientation information and also directed me to the subways. Wow, confusing...people everywhere (way worse than NY), strange writing, no one to ask for help. I know it sounds stupid, but in retrospect, I should have tried harder to learn the language. It's just that it was difficult without having someone to study with and bounce sentences off of. Anyway, I finally make it to my apartment (no help to the map given to me by Nova) with the help of a local, luckily I had my apartment address written in Japanese, this guy left work and walked me a block to my apartment! Man, the people here a freakin' nice! The apartment is small, but not terribly small. I have everything I need to get by here, except language skills that is! Worn out, heading to bed.

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The second day:

Jet Lag - Great idea not sleeping on the plane, really. Adjusting to the time isn't that bad, I feel a little jet-lagged, but not too bad. So, I head out to the local market, calling it the Fat Boy Market, because of the little fat Asian man they have outside, to grab some food/groceries. (Laughing) I can't read a thing! I can buy this food, but have no idea how it's supposed to be cooked! I know it's only been a day, but not having anyone to talk to or being able to understand anyone or know where anything is pretty lonely. Hopefully the roommates will be cool. I decide to just hang out locally and rest and de-jetlag myself.

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The third day:

Roommate #1 - Thank you!! The roommate, Craig from Chicago, seems really cool. We decide to go explore the neighborhood a bit. I swear all the streets here are practically malls. Every street seems to run into a huge semi-outdoor strip of fruit markets, restaurants, convenience-like stores, etc. The streets are packed and people on bikes are flying through the place ringing their little bells...I have no idea which way to step so as to not get run over! We walked so much my legs hurt (feet, ankles, knees, everything!). Craig and I head out to Umeda, a bar district, looking for an ex-pat English pub called Pig & Whistle. Of course, we get lost, which is amazingly simple to do over here since there are no street signs and all the buildings are so tall that it's hard to landmark anything. After stopping several people and just dying laughing because in order to explain where we want to go we inevitably end up turning our noses up to look like pigs and snorting (Pig) and whistling (Whistle) to try to get people to understand the name of the place we want to go! Yes, we are retarded, but we're having fun! With no luck, we just wander around a bit and finally decide to go into another bar and ask if they know where the P&W is. We step into Shot Bar Feet and try to communicate with Yusuke and Kaori, sometimes successfully, mostly unsuccessfully, for an hour or so. It's hard to understand, both ways, but the Japanese people are so patient and they love if you even try to speak Japanese, even if you totally butcher it. The strange thing is that the Japanese have a very hard time speaking English and an even harder time understanding English when spoken, but they read and write it perfectly. Inevitably we end up writing a lot of our questions down to get answers. The funniest part is that Craig and I seem to be fluent in Spanish again, rather suddenly, and find that when we don't understand our natural reaction is to speak Spanish, which just confuses the situation even more!! I guess that our only experience with foreign language is Spanish, so it just has a tendency to come out. Anyway, Kaori draws us a map to the P&W, which isn't such a great bar, but we did meet a nice couple from Boston, Brady and Liz, who have been here for 6 months, live close by, and are here finishing some PhD work at a local university. Glancing at my expense spreadsheet on my laptop at home I get freaked out for a second...I have spent 10600 yen in 2-1/2 days!! After a quick realization that it's yen and not dollars, $95 isn't that bad!