Category
Saitama
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Saitama
Final Reports
It’s pretty hard for me to believe that anyone is still reading this blog. But just in case, I thought I’d post the Japanese and English reports I wrote for the internship program at then end of my experience. They’re intended for a pretty specific audience, but I think they do a decent job at explaining my impressions. Read both after the jump.
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Saitama
Going Away Party
While my internship doesn’t technically finish until next Tuesday, my going-away party was tonight. I was initially a little frustrated, because a couple of the people I would have liked to come weren’t free, but it ended up being really wonderful. It was held at a nearby Japanese restaurant, and the food was definitely delicious. The best part was the fish-de-resistance: two huge tuna heads were brought out and carved in front of us by women wearing kimonos. Isn’t Japan great? Meanwhile, following Japanese tradition, beer and sake was flowing among all attending. I’m ready to go home, but I’m definitely sad to have to leave this experience behind. I think that’s a good place to be.
But truly, the best parts of the evening were the warmth I felt from everyone there, the people in the office I spent the most time in. I wish I had had time to get to know them all better (and I said this during my little speech). In Japan, company parties are opened and closed with impromptu speeches. I was completely touched by the speech my first host father (second-highest ranking company member at the party, and yes, this actually matters in ways I still don’t understand) gave to close the party. Among other things, he said that I was among the top three interns Bushu Gas has ever had, and that while he doesn’t have children, if he did, he would love to have a child like me. Something like that, I think, truly has meaning, whatever the culture. Wow.
Tomorrow, I have to finish my two-page Japanese report about my internship, which will take most of the morning. In the afternoon, I’m going to the Kawagoe police station, for reasons I’m not completely sure of yet. This weekend will be great — I’m going to a famous onsen (hot springs) with the Chairman of the company and his wife.
I have another couple posts I’d like to make before I go, so check back soon! Hope you’re great. Send me an email! I probably won’t respond until I’m back in the USA, but I’d love to hear from you.
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Saitama
Long, boring
Because I’m behind and want to at least have some rudimentary record of the past week or so, I’m going to do this one a little differently.
Friday, July 4 marked the end of my second week at Bushu Gas. This day was a little different, because rather than go to the company, I met up with the other Ohio interns for some activities sponsored by the Saitama government. It was a little frustrating at first, because my supervisors/caretakers at the company didn’t even think about letting me take the train to Omiya by myself, despite my assertions that I’ve taken the train plenty of times before. But if it makes them feel good, it’s fine with me.
Our first stop was the Saitama Young Career Center, a prefecture-sponsored career search and counseling center. Finding a job is very different in Japan than it is in the US. Traditionally, workers in Japan work at the same company for their entire professional lives, so the job search is a pretty important process. College student spend the end of their junior and much of their senior year (in Japan, the year runs from April to March) going through the process. There are rigid deadlines, remarkably consistent from company to company, and the entire process rests on introductions to companies, often through college or government career centers. In addition to applications and interviews, extensive tests are common. The tests are not necessarily content-based; i.e. applicants to a gas company aren’t expected to have gas experience or knowledge – the tests are thought to evaluate the candidate’s capacity as a lifelong worker.
During lunch, I caught up with the other interns, which was really interesting. Everyone’s experiences have been pretty different. While I’m mostly job shadowing, one student had been selling lunches at the Saitama University co-op, another doing hardcore biology/pharmaceutical research, and the other producing straws and doctors’ masks on a factory floor.
After lunch, we went to the brand new Women’s Career Center, serving a function similar to the office in the morning, but for women of all ages. Many women in Japan stay home with their children, so there’s a big drop off in terms of women’s employment around age 30. The center aims to help women find first jobs, or get back to work.
Next was a tour of Saitama Shin-to-shin, a newly-developed area of the city. It was new and frankly not that interesting, though home to the John Lennon museum (what?) and Saitama Super Arena. Our tour guide was trying to practice his English, which was cute for about three minutes. We walked in circles, and it was hot. Oh well. Also, an NTT showroom that was like an advertisement for services none of us want or need.
Our final stop was interesting, a support center for start-up companies. It was pretty interesting to see how the government is really really trying to get people to start companies, and to help them with advise, business plans, seminars, etc. There were also a couple floors of hotel rooms converted into mini offices at low rent for people just starting out. I’ve thought about starting a business some day; this would be pretty useful. Anyway, it was an interesting, hot, and tiring day.
I was met at Kawagoe Station by Sekine-san, my host, who took me to a nearby isakaya (bar/restaurant/pub?) where his section was having a get together. It was a lot of fun to get to know some of the office workers a little better. They had me try a lot of different bar food and drinks, which is always fun. I got pretty relaxed, and had some good moments. Someone asked me “what’s your favorite part of Japan?” and I replied, “well, that’s hard. There’s a lot I like. But I’m going to have to go with the natural gas.” (Ironically, by far most of Japan’s natural gas is imported from overseas). Anyway, drank plenty, wasn’t nearly as drunk as most of the other people there, and had a pretty good time. Pretty packed day.
After sleeping in on Saturday, July 5 we ate breakfast next door (remember, my single male host in the company apartments doesn’t cook, so we did our meals next door, with an awesome couple). We headed in to Tokyo, led by Junko, the wife of the couple next door. She took us to Tsukiji, famous for the fish market. I didn’t get to see the famous tuna auctions (they happen really early in the morning, and I don’t think they’re actually open to the public anymore) but there is a great market area, full of all sorts of sea-based products. Markets are great, no matter where, and I had never really seen one like this in Japan before. Cool.
After eating lunch (I had some really tasty poached fish), we went to Shibuya, known as one of the hot spots for young people in Tokyo. It was definitely full of people, and lots of crazy, silly fashion. We walked around for a while, then wen to Tokyu Hands, probably the most fun department store in the world. I don’t even know how to begin to describe it, so I’ll just link you to Wikipedia. Later, we went to the Toden (Tokyo Denki = the huge Tokyo electric company) museum/showroom. It was partially research; Junko is one of the women who leads the gas vs. induction heating cooking demo at Bushu Gas. And, of course, Toden is all about IH cooking, and the aru-denka (all-electic home, another bane of gas companies worldwide).
We headed back (on the newest Tokyo subway line, from Shibuya direct to Kawagoe-shi), went shopping, and had yakiniku/okonomiyaki for dinner. Yum!
On Sunday, July 6, I went to Tokyo Disneyland.
If you know me, you may know that I don’t really care for Disney. I’ve never really gotten in to the movies, and, I don’t know, the whole thing is just too cutesy and commercial. But when, on Saturday, Sekine-san says to me, “how would you feel about going to Disneyland tomorrow, with a couple girls?” I of course say, “yeah, that would be awesome!”
And actually, it was a pretty good time. The night before, Sekine-san surprised me with a gift: a yukata to wear the next day. Apparently, it was some sort of theme event, where everyone was encouraged to wear a yukata. So, we did. It was very comfortable, and fun to dress up a little. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, there were tons of girls dressed up, but very few guys.
Disneyland is pretty much the same wherever and whenever you go, so I’ll spare you the details. I rode Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain, the Jungle Cruise, the canoes, the “It’s a Small World” ride, and Space Mountain. I also got 10 out of ten shots at the Western shooting game, and got a badge. Neat. Anyway, it was a pretty fun day.
On Monday, July 7, I was with the safety group. I learned about a lot of preventative things the company does, including replacing old iron pipes (in the ground and in customer’s walls) with new polyethylene pipes (more on these later), and checking customers’ appliances every three years (required by law). I ended up talking to the manager of the section about completely unrelated things for about an hour, though. For example: the best place from which to view Mt. Fuji and what kind of ingredients make the best soba.
He asked what I usually do for lunch, and after explaining that I usually eat the bento provided by the company, he said “well, want to get soba today instead?” So after going with another worker to look at a recent gas pipe replacement, the three of us went to get udon (there wasn’t a good soba place nearby). It was great, but they ordered me a large and it was gigantic (a huge platter with 700g of udon). One of the other guys ate a full large, and some of my leftovers, crazy.
The afternoon was with the emergency response section, and after learning about how they solve these sorts of problems I went out to a work site for an hour or so to watch. Water had gotten into a gas pipe, so workers were dispatched to dig it up and find the problem. There was a lot of groundwater, and the whole thing was really interesting to watch.
The most interesting part of the day was later on, at my host department’s 歓送迎会 (Kan-so-ge-kai, a welcome and farewell party for employees). Two new workers joined the department a few days earlier, and another left. Also, me. And because my department is the 社長室 (literally, “President’s Room”), guess who came! Yes, the company President, and his father the Chairman.
The party was held at the fancy Prince Hotel’s Chinese restaurant, and it was probably one of the most fascinating events I’ve ever attended. It was an embodiment of everything I’ve ever read about Japanese business parties, with the heavy drinking, pouring for each other, speeches, toasts, and so on. I didn’t really know what to do, and trusted people to tell me when to do what (they did). The chairman loves 日本酒 (=sake), so it was flowing freely. I got to know a few people from the office a little better, including the President, and that was really nice. I also learned about closing a party with a haishaku, a tradition I’m definitely bringing back to Oberlin.
One funny/akward thing about the evening was how the Chairman kept talking and talking (he was drunk) about how I used to have a beard. The picture I had originally sent to the program, and forwarded to the company was from a couple months ago, and I had a beard for most of last semester. Facial hair of any kind is a no-no at the company (it’s actually on the appearance checklist), and apparently they were worried I was some kind of hippy. Which, when it really comes down to it, might not be as far from the truth as I’ve led them to believe at this point. While it’s a little frustrating to have been so visibly prejudged, but I’m glad I’ve been able to do a good job in my role as an intern to make it something everyone can laugh about.
On Tuesday, July 8, I was with the Planning group in the morning, and the systems group in the afternoon. The planning group does a little of everything, from thinking about long-range pipeline development to internal and external PR. After listening to the section chief tell me about all the stuff they do, I was taken to the reporter room in City Hall to see if any reporters were there who might want to interview me (and get Bushu Gas in the paper). I talked to two, one from the Asahi Shinbun (one of the biggest in the country!) and later some sort of smaller business paper. The employee who drove me got upset when he realized the picture he gave one of the reporters had me cooking on an electric stove rather than a gas one, so we actually took some extra pictures to send once we got back to the company.
In the afternoon, I learned about the company’s IT infrastructure. There’s a lot, it’s 99% Windows (one Linux webserver), and it’s largely hosted off-site and BG Systems, a subsidiary IT company. I had to make a website introducing myself for the company intranet, and instead of using their silly WYSIWYG program I did it from scratch. Take a look.
After work, I went with Sekine-san and his neighbor Kei to an onsen (hot springs). It wasn’t a real onsen, but was more like a fancyish public bath. It was my first time naked in a room with a bunch of Japanese men, but I have to say that it was really great. First, you shower and wash completely, then there are a bunch of different pools, with different kinds of water, inside and outside. Totally relaxing, and it was really fun for the three of us to chat.
In the evening, I had Te-maki-Zushi (hand-rolled sushi) at the Miyahara’s (the neighbors) and it was a lot of fun. I had showed them The Japanese Tradition: Sushi, so we watched a whole bunch more Rahmens videos on YouTube. Highly recommended.
Wednesday, July 9 I was with the accounting/accounts receivable group. Because Bushu Gas is a gas company, it needs to be able to collect from its customers. Meter readers go out to all of the company’s 180,000 customers every month, the data is uploaded onto a computer, and everyone is billed. Most customers have arrangements with their banks to pay automatically (like web bill pay, pretty much), but there are some who pay in convenience stores or at the company. (Japan is still largely a cash-based economy, so people don’t use checks to pay bills in the same way that they do in the US.)
I didn’t do much for the rest of the day. The people in the department didn’t really know what to do with me. I sat in on a meeting of the meter readers, which was interesting. They were all women, who work part time. I still don’t understand why they’re called ハローマイト in Japanese. For dinner, I taught the gang how to make pizza, which was fun. It didn’t turn out quite as well as last time, but they seemed satisfied. Most Japanese homes don’t have full ovens, so we tried cooking a pizza in the small grill built in to the cooktop, and it turned out better than I expected.
On Thursday, July 10, our coordinators arranged for all the interns (including the two students going to Ohio from Japan) to meet Saitama’s governor, Mr. Ueda. I went by train with Nakajima-san (my manager) and the company president. The get-together what pretty much what one would expect. We sat waiting 20+ minutes for the governor to show up. He welcomes us. We introduce ourselves. He gives us each a gift. We take a group picture. Still, pretty awesome to meet a governor. I mean, I haven’t met Ted Kulongoski or Ted Strickland.
Afterwards, there was a lunch party with all the interns, a couple interns from previous years, and all the company representatives who attended. What they didn’t tell us was that we were each expected to talk for a few minutes (5-10) about what we’ve learned in our internships so far. It really stressed out the other interns, but I decided not to worry about it. And it turned out to be fun. I talked about how I had had a particular image of “gas company” in the US, and found that the image wasn’t totally correct. I talked about safety, and the new pipes Bushu Gas is putting in the ground, and about some of the outreach and sales stuff I’ve seen. I talked the longest, I think, and the President seemed pretty satisfied. So, that’s good!
I didn’t do much in the afternoon other than starting to finalize my week-long travel plans in August. We had a tasty, easy-on-the-stomach stew for dinner, though it was a bittersweet night – I was moving the next day. I learned about tejime something I saw for the first time at the party on Monday. I don’t know how to describe it other than a kind of hand-clapping thing Japanese people do during parties. Kind of a “Hip Hip Hurray” sort of thing. Anyway, it’s great and weird, and I’m totally bringing it back to Oberlin.
On Friday, July 11, I moved. After sleeping in a little and eating my last breakfast next door, Kei gave me a pretty funny gift. We relaxed until 9:30, when Tobisawa-san and Nakajima-san came to pick us up and bring us to work. I didn’t have any particular schedule for the day, so I mostly caught up on emails. I was taken to my next host family, the home of an executive at Sakado Gas (a smaller subsidiary gas utility in the city of Sakado), in the early afternoon.
It’s a totally different living situation, once again. The house is in the same city as Bushu Gas, but on the outskirts. It’s an old house, and actually quite large by Japanese standards. I’m sleeping in a Japanese-style room (with tatami mats and a futon) in one corner of the house. It’s wooden and creaky, which is not what I’m used to – so that’s kind of cool.
The family is also very different. There are two children, one married and moved out (with a cute two-year-old girl), and the other still living at home, but working. Also, the grandmother lives at home. The father isn’t home much at all during the week, getting home around 9:30 at night, going straight to bed, then leaving by 6:30 every morning. The mother is nice, but I don’t think she gets me, yet. We’ll see.
Anyway, I went out food shopping with the father, and we had some interesting chats. We ran into a friend of his from school, so we chatted for a while too. Surprisingly, a pretty normal day.
OK. More soon. Then I’ll write some real content.
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Saitama
First week
So, I’m not doing the best job blogging. I haven’t had a whole lot of free time to myself, but as I fall into a schedule I’m having more time to to work on personal projects. Like this thing! Anyway, this post is mostly copied from a weekly report I submitted to the internship program.My internship is at Bushu Gas in Kawagoe, Saitama, Japan. Bushu Gas is a utility company that supplies natural gas to Kawagoe, Tokorozaka, and a number of other nearby towns. There are about 200 employees (not including the subsidiary companies, which I’ll write about in a later post).
Although I’ve come to Bushu Gas via an internship program, this has definitely not been what I think of as a traditional internship. It’s really more of a company-wide job shadow. Here’s why: although I have a desk and supervisor, I’m assigned to a different group every day. So far, it’s pretty much worked out so I spend the first hour or so in the morning learning about the particular group’s functions, then either job shadow within the company or then go out in the field and see first hand what the group does.
Last Monday was mostly an orientation day. I was given a company uniform and locker, and tour of the offices. (I’ll write more about the uniforms in a later post, but almost everyone in the company, only excluding the chairman, president, and top-level management wears the uniform every day. Also, I think it looks pretty funny on me, but definitely in a good way.) I watched a video about natural gas and the company, and was given a lot of information about the company’s structure and my schedule.
I have a desk in the “Executive Secretary” group, where my supervisor and manager work. I haven’t exactly been able to figure out what everyone does yet, but for the most part they do administrative work for the President and Chairman. I leave my host family’s house at 7:45 on bike (a crazy electric powered hybrid/cruiser that I need to take pictures of), change and check in around 8. I often have a few minutes to read the newspaper and check e-mail before morning exercises and the brief department meeting. I start the day’s activities at 8:30. I have an hour off for lunch, usually eating the lunch the company provides, then I go back to work. At 4:30, I head back to my desk and write a summary of my day in Japanese. While time-consuming, I’m really glad to be practicing written Japanese, especially because I’m getting feedback: Matsukawa-san, my supervisor, checks what I’ve written and helps me out with grammatical mistakes
Tuesday, I was with the Service group, which provides background support for salespeople. I learned tons about gas appliances. I like machines, so it was fun to see the differences in Japanese and US stovetops and water heaters. (Example: in the US, I’ve never seen a talking stovetop.) I went to one of the company showrooms and saw all sorts of great and convenient products! Even fun things like under-floor heaters and mist showers. In the afternoon, I participated in a cooking demo comparing a gas stove and oven to electric induction appliances. The three (uniformed) woman who do the demo every day were totally shocked to find out about my cooking experience, and it ended up being fun. Anyway, I’ll leave it to you to guess which food tasted better. I also learned about the Eco-Will, a home water heater and gas powered electric generator for your own personal fresh power.
Wednesday, I was with the maintenance group, and learned about GHP and TES. GHPs are gas heat pumps, which functionally are gas-powered air conditioners. TES is the Total Eco System (but used to be called Total Economic System), a single hot water heater for two purposes: heating via radiator and regular hot water for kitchen/bathroom use. I went out with maintenance workers and helped service industrial GHPs at the Bushu Gas office in Tokorozawa. It was actually a lot of fun. GHPs operate the same way as normal air conditioners, except that a natural gas engine (rather than an electric motor) powers the compressor. And like any internal combustion engine, these needs to be periodically serviced. I switched out air filters, put chemicals in the engine to clean carbon off the innards, and learned how to switch out spark plugs. Fun!
Thursday was the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting, so everyone in my office was pretty busy getting everything taken care of. I was actually invited to observe, which was totally cool because I doubt I could have that experience as an intern at a company in the US. I didn’t understand much of what was said, but it was interesting to see how nobody asked any questions throughout the entire presentation. In the afternoon, I watched a work crew convert a customer’s home from propane to natural gas. Propane is still widely used throughout this region, and many customers are switching because natural gas ends up being significantly less expensive. A few houses are converted every day; most of the work is done by outside contractors, but they work closely with company employees.
Friday, I was with the housing group. This group does everything relating to getting gas service into new homes. Like in the US, there’s been a trend toward all-electric housing, so this group has to do some degree of PR with construction companies to stay viable in the marketplace. The group also takes care of arranging for new gas mains, and through contractors will even get gas lines in your new home. It was really interesting to see how this group has formed relationships with a number of water utility contractors in the region. By communicating during new construction, gas and water pipes can be laid at the same time, reducing costs, service disruption, and road work. I went out to see a number of new construction sites. I also helped mark up part of a road that needs to be re-paved because of pipe work.
Today started with a company-wide meeting. After giving a number of employees awards (and serious bonuses) for good work, the President gave an interesting speech about oil prices, safety (it’s national safety week), and politics. I also had to introduce myself, in Japanese, in front of the entire company. Afterwards, I joined up with the group that handles Bushu Gas’ largest customers: factories. While there are only a few dozen factory customers, they make up a large share of the company’s gas sales. Notable names include Honda and Citizen (the watch company). I went out with one of the office workers (and my host starting later this week) to two factories. We met with the company president at one, and a higher-up at the other to inform them that their gas prices will be going up. It was fascinating to see how these sorts of things are handled in Japan (not that I know how they would be in the US, really). I ate delicious Ten-don Udon for lunch (cold udon with tempura donburi). In the afternoon I went to one of Bushu Gas’ ECO STATIONs, gas stations for natural-gas powered cars.
All in all, my experience so far has been pretty awesome. Bushu Gas has been extremely warm and welcoming to me. I’ve been meeting new people every day, and I’m starting to get a feel for what the company does. It’s pretty cool to be able to have a chance to try on the shoes of everyone in the company – I can’t think of another way I could ever have a chance to do anything like this in the US. It’s neat seeing first hand differences between Japanese and US companies, but it’s also fascinating just to see how this company – or any company – works as a whole. As I develop my thoughts a little more, I’ll be posting about some of the differences I’ve noticed.
So that’s work so far. Things with my host family have been good. They’ve shown me a lot of interesting things in and out of town. They took me to Mt. Fuji on Saturday. It was kind of foggy, but I did get some great views of the mountain – we drove up to where most people start the climb to the top. We also stopped in Hakone on the way back. It’s an old checkpoint on one of the roads from Kyoto to Edo (Tokyo). My host father took me out for drinks with a business associate on Friday, which was totally great. I tried horse sashimi, and found that shochu can be really tasty. Sunday, I taught my host mother how to make pizza from scratch. It turned out pretty well. I’ve been eating a lot of great food – they’ve taken me to most of their favorite local restaurants. I had hand-made soba the other night here, and have also gone out for okonomi-yaki. My host mother is also a pretty good cook. I’ll be moving to my my second of four host families on Thursday, and I’m a little disappointed to have to move on. My next living situation will be totally different – with a company underling in the company-owned apartments. I’m excited to be with someone younger, though and to keep trying new things.
Anyway, it’s way past my bedtime. Hope this keeps you going for a while, and I hope I won’t take so long to write next time.Finally. I do have a mailing address, if you would like to write me. Just send me an email,and I’ll give it to you. Or just send me an email anyway, because I want to hear what you’re up to.
P.S. I showed this video to my host family and it’s become sort of an inside joke in the house. Check it out: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0b75cl4-qRE
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Saitama
Catching up
I’m not sure what I want this blog to be, exactly, but I do know I want to write about my first few days here. So, even though I’d really rather share lots of impressions from my first days of work, for now I’m going to leave you with a little about my arrival and weekend activities…
First, Friday.
After waking up at 5:30 from the jet lag, I got dressed and met the other two interns staying the hotel for breakfast around 8:15. It was pretty much the same exact breakfast I’ve had at every Japanese hotel I’ve ever stayed in, so that was nice.
Erika, the woman who organized the program from the Japanese side (and who picked us up at the airport) met us in the hotel, and it was a very short car ride to the Saitama prefectural government offices. Erika works in the Industry and Labor Policy Division, and I don’t really know anything about what she does. Something to do with policymaking, but that’s all I could get.
The first thing we did was introduce ourselves to the entire division, probably 40-50 people who stood and clapped after each of us spoke. Very intimidating. Then, we got to meet and drink tea with the director of the division (Erika’s boss’ boss). Fun! (Actually, it was pretty fun.)
I spent most of the rest of the day sitting in a conference room talking to various government employees and learning about Saitama. It was interesting to hear the kinds of things the government is proud of, but I can’t help but wonder about the things they didn’t tell us. The time was surprisingly unstructured (the orientation is usually only half the day, and it was changed only because of some scheduling problems), which was just as well because I was exhausted.
I didn’t learn a whole lot more about the internship itself, except that my final host family is going to be the home of my company’s president (!!!), I get to meet the governor of Saitama (!) and the program is going to take us on an overnight trip to the western (pretty, mountainous) part of the prefecture, and we’re probably going to spend the night in a temple.
We had a pretty tasty sushi lunch, and were shown a Saitama tourism video in English. We ran some errands, and mostly to kill time were taken on a little walking tour of the city, including a kind of sad-looking shrine.
Dinner was, by far, the most interesting part of the day. It was the welcome party for the interns. In addition to the interns and government representatives, there were people from each of the companies and many of the host families came, too. I learned a lot more about Bushu Gas from the man coordinating my internship. Among other things, they ordered an English newspaper for me to read and printed me some business cards. He seemed really excited, and asked lots of questions. It was totally fascinating watching all the businessmen exchange meishi (business cards), because it’s something I’ve been reading about forever but never actually seen.
Dinner itself was also crazy, because it was my first time at an Italian restaurant in Japan. Really, it was more of an Italian-style (if by “Italian” I mean “American Italian”) restaurant, with lots of crazy Japanese twists involving fish and seaweed. Definitely some flavor combinations I never would try myself, but actually quite good. Also, the name of the restaurant was Pasta!Pasta!Pasta!
After dinner, I was driven to my first host family’s house, a couple about my parents’ age. They live in a really fancy new house in Kawagoe, about an hour from Saitama City. They seemed friendly, I was sleepy.
The weekend.
The Yoshida family wakes up early, and since I’m here, so do I. Breakfast was a lazy 7:30, both days. Saturday, I played a kanji game on the DS Lite with Yoshida-san, and we had fun fooling around with the English game, too. He had to go to a memorial service of some sort, so I stayed around the house and had lunch with Noriko and her niece who came over for the day. June is leaving in a week or so for California, where she’ll be for two years.
Saturday afternoon, I got my first taste of Bushu Gas. The company was sponsoring a concert (annual?) by Obara Takashi, a relatively well-known pianist and host of an NHK radio show. He played a lot of flourishy arrangements of Japanese songs, and some European classical tunes I knew. Having spent the last three years at Oberlin, this was definitely a change. He got up and talked for about 5 minutes between each piece, which was sort of weird. The focus was definitely on him, not just on the music. Also, he played a piece he called “jazz” and it was most definitely not. And I don’t even know anything about jazz. I kept both of these facts to myself. After the concert, a few of Noriko’s friends came over, and I had a good time joking around with them.
My favorite part of the day was dinner. I was a little skeptical, because Yoshida-san said he had made reservations at the Prince Hotel Japanese restaurant, and my experiences in hotels have been pretty hit or miss. But I think I can safely say that this was the best Japanese meal I’ve ever had. It was a three-course meal, with lots of little items as part of each course. I took pictures of everything, so once I upload them I’ll write a little about each dish maybe. Also, I had the best sake I’ve ever had. I haven’t had much sake before, but this was smooth and delicious, even served cold. I’m not sure I can say that about the other sake I’ve tried. It was served cold, and was extremely smooth. Yum.
There’s not a whole lot more to say about Saturday. June decided to spend the night here. The Yoshidas made fun of me for not shaving for a day. (This is the first time in my life that I’ll actually have to shave every day of the week. Boo.) June was talking about Google at dinner and we discovered that Noriko hadn’t heard of the company at all. Or YouTube. So I showed them Sushi: The Japanese Tradition, and they loved it. It’s been an inside joke since.
Sunday was relatively low key. The Yoshidas took me and June to a number of museums and historical sites – the Kawagoe History museum, the art museum, an Edo-era building, an old kurazukuri-style (fire resistant wooden-frame buildings made with bamboo and mud) shop/museum, and the Kawagoe festival museum. The festival museum was actually totally awesome; there’s a huge festival every October, and tons of people come. There are 29 huge wooden floats, pulled through the town by human power, and they had a couple displayed. We stopped in the middle to eat lunch at a soba-ya right next to the house. The noodles were great – they were a green kind I had never had before. I got a stack of five small bowls of cold noodles, with another stack of five different toppings to eat the noodles with. Cute and delicious!
It was raining hard (it is tsuyu, after all), so we went back to the house. It was a lazy afternoon, but actually had a great time just chatting with June and Noriko. We dropped June off at the train station, then went out to eat to an okonomiyaki restaurant. I would love to devote an entire blog post to this meal too. For now, let’s just say that it was great, and that I love okonomiyaki. In the evening, I finally gave the Yoshidas their omiyage, and I was so glad I did. It was almost as if they seemed relieved. And I think the things I picked out to give were good. After some chatting about the Japanese Oregon travel brochure I brought, I tried my first umeshu. I’m not one for sweet drinks, but it was actually really tasty.
My next post will be about my first day at work. It’ll definitely be a good one.
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Saitama
I’m here
So, I made it.
It was a pretty easy flight, direct from Portland to Tokyo-Narita. I had no problems clearing immigration and customs, and was met by a representative of Saitama, as well as one of the other interns, at the airport. After waiting for the third intern to arrive, we drove for about an hour and a half to the Royal Pines Hotel in Saitama, where we stayed for the night. After checking in and a quick dinner, I crashed. Woke up before six this morning.
Today is orientation. And as far as I can tell, we’ll be brought to the Saitama prefectural government office, given a tour, introduced to all sorts of officials, then oriented for a few hours. We’ll be meeting representatives from our companies, too. There’s a welcome party in the evening which will probably involve lots of people, and lots of self-introductions. Yikes.
I move to my first host family’s place this evening, and start work after the weekend. I have no idea whether I’ll have regular internet access, or time to blog, for the next few weeks, but here’s hopin’.
