Not Cool

Ok, the first couple little earthquakes I felt in Japan were kind of soothing and gentle. But today I am in the office (yes on a Saturday, putting my six-month project into production) and a big earthquake just occurred and it's continuing in little spurts. Now everyone in the office is wearing their company-distributed green hard hats, looking like a bunch of Mario Bros. And now my stomach feels queezy and an announcement came on saying they stopped the elevators because it was pretty big and I'm on the 30th floor. One of our System Administration guys just asked me if that was my first one and I said that's the biggest one I've felt and he said congratulations how do you feel and I said queezy and he said haha I feel closer to heaven. Not cool, dude, not cool.

Have you ever...

...tried to open a bank account where nobody at the bank spoke English well enough where you could actually ask them questions? And in order to open the bank account, you must have a medical insurance card on which the only thing you can read is your birth date? And even your birth date looked different because it was in Japanese style where years are counted by the year of the emperor's rule at that time? So instead of 1976, you were suddenly born in 51? Not 1951, just 51? Oh yeah and did you know that this year is 17? And then they asked you to fill in the bank account form by using your full name in Japanese katakana characters? And the Japanese bank tellers would not write your name for you so you had to write it yourself? Hello, everyone, my name is　ハロッド　クリストファー。

Japan -> Houston -> NYC -> Japan

I have not posted in a long time. Let me see if I can remember all that's been going on.

I settled mostly everything for converting to a Japan employee, so I am moving back to Tokyo for a year or so. It's up to me how long I wish to stay, I can leave when I want to. I left Tokyo a couple weeks ago, because my 90 day visa was expiring, so I went to visit friends and family in Houston. The same day I left, my colleague and friend Noriko left my company, so that was a major disappointment. She had been assigned to me as my "buddy" to show me the ropes around the office and help me get around Tokyo. I also met many people through her, both at work and outside work. But she'll still be around in Tokyo, so we'll get to hang out. This coming weekend, I may be going with her and some others to a white sand beach that's a few hours from Tokyo by train. We have Monday off for a Japanese holiday, Marine Day I think. One of many random Japanese holidays.

I surprised my parents by arriving in Houston about a week before I told them I could come home. My sister picked me up at the airport. I'm glad they didn't hear about it beforehand, because Linsey cannot keep secrets and ended up telling everyone except my parents. But they were definitely surprised. I got home and walked into the office where my mother was at the computer and sat next to her and she was looking at me like I was a ghost. Later I surprised my dad when he got home from work by just waiting in the office where he always goes after work to put down his briefcase. I had to do a lot of preparing for the move while I was home, like shopping for clothes and furniture and organizing things, so I didn't have as much time for fun things as I would have liked. But I got to hang out with most of my friends. Holden's band played at the Rhythm Room in Houston for Davis's 30th birthday. I ran into McCord there, a friend who lived in Tokyo for three years, so we chatted about it for a bit. My buddy, Michael, proposed to his girlfriend, Sarah, a week or so before I came into town and so it was good to see him. They plan to marry sometime next April. I hope to make it but seeing as I'm on the other side of the world, it may be difficult. Over my last weekend home we had a family gathering, where my cousin Jon showed us photos from his recent trip to China. It looked like he saw more during 12 days in China than I saw during 3 months in Japan.

Then I flew to New York to work for a week and to complete what I thought I needed to for relocating to Japan, like filling out documents, visiting the Japanese embassy, and so on. But I ended up not having to do any of that. My manager told me that the corporate housing had run out so I needed to make my own hotel reservations. I made reservations at the Soho Grand which they told me was on my company's preferred list. After one night staying there, I spoke with the travel agent for my flight back to Tokyo and double-checked that the hotel was on my company's preferred list, but this time they told me it wasn't. What a pain. So after work I moved to another hotel, Morgans on Madison Avenue. The location was worse for my commute but better for being close to friends. I hung out mostly every night. For July 4th weekend, my friend Ali invited Brooke, Margaret, and me to the Hamptons. Her friend Sam has a house, I think, in Bridgehampton. I'd never been out there before and it was really nice. It reminded me of being at my family's old beach house in Galveston. The beach was less than a minute walking distance. It was good to get back onto a beach and into the salt water, even if it was purty dadbern cold. Sam and his buddy Hooper cooked out jalapeno burgers and other stuff and we went out on the town for a bit Sunday night. The next day I hit the beach some more and played in the pool and then we headed back to the city in the afternoon. (Brooke says: "You don't mention us having fun with the cool-as-hell tubes in the pool or anything." Yes, Brooke and I played a lot with the floaty tubes in the pool while Margaret laid out and laughed at us and talked about her new boyfriend, Bernard, whom I coined as Bernardino Suave.) Later that night, a friend of Brooke's from work, Christine, had a small dinner party at her place, which coincidentally was around the corner from my hotel. We couldn't really see the fireworks display on the East River, but we heard them loud and clear, it sounded like a war zone, they were the loudest and biggest I'd ever heard. Dylan came by to hang out for a bit, too. It was good to see her. The next morning I checked out of my hotel and made my way to JFK, flying Japanese airline ANA back to Tokyo. It was a nice but long 14 hour flight. They give you noise-canceling headphones, down-filled pillows and blankets, and there were many movies to choose from. I think I'm pretty much over the jetlag already. Guess I'm getting used to this crazy time-change, day-change business.

So I'm back in the Tokyo office now, met with HR, got my new business cards (English on one side, Japanese on the other side), getting my visa (gaijin card) in a few weeks, need to open a Japanese bank account, get my stuff shipped from Houston, and start looking for an apartment. It's weird to be back and knowing it's not just for a short business trip and knowing I won't see any friends or family back home until December.