The Eye of Patrick

Hello everyone,

It has been ages since I posted and I am sorry for that. Since my last post I did a bit of traveling. I went to Brazil to visit my family and we went skiing in Chile and on our return to Brazil my laptop monitor stopped working. So I have been forced to connect my monitor to other monitors to view stuff. This troublesome behavior made it difficult to update my posts and as a result I have ordered a brand new 24 inch lcd from dell (should get it next or the following week). But in the mean time my laptop monitor is working, why I don’t know and for how long, no idea. But for the limited time it is working I will try to use it.

I will go back and post later about my travels to Montreal, Brazil and Chile, while at the moment trying to cover what has happened to me since I arrived in Japan on August 6^th at 3:10 pm.

Going back to August 6^th now…..

The flight to Tokyo Narita Japan was on August the 5^th at 1 pm and had a total flight duration time of 10 hours and 30 minutes, but do to the time difference when we landed in Japan it was August 5^th at 3:10 pm.

The flight over was pretty much uneventful, the movies I had already seen on my flights to South America and as a result was not too interested in watching “failure to launch” or Ice Age 2 for the 3^rd or 4^th time. So I tried to get some sleep and was able to sleep for about 2 or 3 hours and killed some of the flight. The other time was mostly spent playing on my Nintendo DS which I had bought for this exact trip and a device that lets me play downloaded games. I also thought of how I was actually on my way to Japan, I had spent the whole last year planning and applying and preparing for this moment to get to Japan, that when it was happening it was hard to believe. I was going back to Japan, I kept on saying that in my head.

Even when we landed at Narita Airport (For those who don’t know when you fly to Tokyo, you actually fly to Narita which is kind of a suburb of Tokyo and then make your way into Tokyo by Train, bus, car or other means) I could not believe I was in Japan. At that moment I was full of lots of energy, but then as I opened my eyes and saw the lines of people waiting to clear immigration, I realized I was going to be here for a while, which was true as I think I spent over an hour there. It was while in the lines that I noticed a fun game being played. The immigration area had a few small air conditioner vents located around the queue that were able to only give off enough cool air for the person under it and not anyone else. So people would try to maximize the time that they could spend under the vent, this meant that the line would progress in surges. People who were waiting under the air condition until they could move on to the next one or were simply forced to move forward due to the grumbling of people behind them.

This would ebb and flow for about an hour until I was able to make my way to the front of the line and the chance to finally get into Japan. The immigration person looked at my passport and then looked at me and he stamped my passport, finally I was in Japan.

Or I thought, I still had to pick up my luggage and clear customs. I got one of my first suitcases and thought I was in the clear. But ah it failed and I had to wait a few minutes for my second suitcase to finally appear. This was a relief, except to realize I could not find my passport. I had this thought running through my head, that something would go wrong and for those frantic few minutes I thought it had happened. But through the graces of god I was able to find my passport and I finally made my way through customs and onto the JET line. The JET line was numerous current ALT and JET officials in blue shirts holding signs guiding us through the airport and onto the bus.

It was on the bus ride to the Keio Plaza hotel in Shinjuku that the jet lag finally caught up to me and I felt exhausted for the first time. I was talking to someone, and I just think the conversation curtailed until I was asleep and woke up to realize the conversation had ended it. It was as if we both had subconscious concluded to each other that it was best to head to sleep then to continue the conversation. But when I was awake the conversations were mostly filled with the discussions of where one was going and how big or small it was. This was amusing and interesting, but at the same time it was difficult to remember who was who and where they were going, so many questions would go on being repeated. The combination of jet lag and the large number of people being met in a short time resulted in the above condition I think.

The bus would arrive at the hotel at roughly 6:30 to 6:45 pm and from the bus we were put into more lines. Some of the lines were to collect information and the last one was to collect the room key and our luggage. It was at this stage I was finally able to rest. But I had to get ready for 7:30 pm when I had agreed to meet my Japanese friends who I had met at my university in Canada. It was the first time I had met some of them in Japan.

I went down to the bottom of the Keio Plaza hotel and waited for them. When I noticed two of my friends, they had looked at me and walked by. I think they had forgotten how I looked. But it was nice to see them.

We then set out to find a place to eat, one of my friends suggested a restaurant that was associated with the one her brother worked at. It was a izikaya or Japanese bar that served yakitori. It was a very chilled and relaxing atmosphere. The place felt was very Japanese, but with a mixture of new and old.

It was good to gather with a group of old friends, friends I had known from my own country now showing me there own country. I was in a foreign land where a language I barely spoke was around me. But because I was with my friends it was like I was back at university at someone’s house sitting around to enjoy a good meal and conversation in the hope to escape the pressures of study. Also getting together with a group of friends was useful to prevent me from falling to asleep, as I knew if I had stayed in my room I would get bored and lay on my bed and fall asleep. This would not have done good to help me get over my jet lag.

But with all good things, they had to come to an end and this was the same. I think around 10 or so we left, after eating wonderful delightful food. It was a bunch of yakitori dishes, different parts of pig, cow and chicken. Some of them that I would not normally eat, but because I was in Japan I wanted to give them a try. I hope that I am able to meet up with those friends again. I think I am lucky to be in Hokkaido as people may visit me, so that they can go see Yuki matsuri (snow Festival) in Sapporo.