And So It Begins…

I’m writing this entry on my way home from my first week of work. That gives me something like 40-odd minutes to complete this entry before I have to meet people for dinner. Tuck in for a not-so-wild-ride through this past week.

There are so many firsts in life, it’s hard to determine which firsts are worth remembering and which can be hastily stuffed into a box and burnt to a crisp.

Thankfully, my first day at work in Japan falls into the former and not the latter.

I can admit one particular fact – I was not ready for a 9am start. Waking up on a Monday and not having concrete plans until Friday had become a way of life for me since moving to Kyoto. The only downside to that lifestyle is a lack of income flow.

I arrived at the head office of my company at around 8:30am. There was actually a line to use the elevators, as this 30-storey building houses many, many companies. So there’s another first – lining up to use an elevator. Thrilling stuff, seriously.

And then at 9am, it was time for the daily meeting. I was introduced to a room of 60-0dd people and then it was my turn to introduce myself.

So, in Japanese, I said: “Nice to meet you. My name is Paul. I came to Japan in April. I am from Australia. Please accept my kindness.” and then I was treated to raucous applause like I had just achieved some sort of life goal or saved medieval townsfolk from a dragon that was surely going to ruin their homes if I hadn’t intervened, ’80s fantasy action movie style.

Next came one of those moments where you kind of need to check whether someone is just taking the piss, or it’s a genuine moment that’s occurring.

I’m talking, of course, of the morning exercise routine performed by all members of the office. I can officially say that some places do, in fact, take five minutes of a morning to do exercises together. Why? Because I took part in such a routine. I had absolutely no freakin’ clue what I was supposed to do, so I kind of mimicked what everyone else was doing, just a few movements later than everyone else. This practice isn’t carried over to my actual office, although it kind of would be a bit of a fun way to kick off your day.

A slew of paperwork ensued after this point. If there’s one thing Japanese companies love, it’s paperwork. Digital? No chance. Hard copies of everything.

Then it was time to show up at my actual workplace. After taking the underground subway walkway (for those of you not in the know, all the major cities have underground subway walkways connecting various parts of the city – ingenious design FTW) I arrived at work. I’m fortunate enough to be working with a pretty good group of people. Everyone has been really helpful in my first week and I seem to be making a good impression on students and co-workers alike.

Once my first day was finished I headed to my favourite bar for a nice drink, then home where I rested up for a bit. Nakamura-san came downstairs and we decided to head out for dinner. Instead of cooking Italian this week, I ate Italian at a small restaurant in a basement off Karasuma Street. Really nice food. I was talking to the chef about where he learned to cook Italian food and he said that his mentor runs a restaurant in Osaka. I’ll definitely be checking it out if I get a chance. While we were at this particular establishment, we met two women and got talking. One of them wanted to practice her English, which is fine with me, so we chatted away for a few hours. Her friend that was talking to Nakamura-san for most of the night would interrupt occasionally to say, “PAUL IS GREAT!” and then go back to talking to Nakamura-san. More drinking occurred, followed by the woman I was talking to passing out at the bar, so we decided to put her in a cab and call it a night.

Her friend, however, was not content with ending the night at this point. Walking back towards Karawamachi Street, she could be heard yelling out “PAUL IS GREAT!” until we reached La Bellota, a Spanish restaurant right near my house. Sangria was consumed and more proclamations about how great I am were shared with the whole of the bar, even if they didn’t particularly want to hear it.

It’s hard to keep an ego in check with people running around yelling about how great you are, but I somehow managed to do that.

Later in the week, I had to take care of some administrative business, like setting up a bank account and organising a medical check. Both these items seemed to be more of a problem than they should be. Thankfully, Nakamura-san was able to help me out with both items. I tried organising the bank account on my own, but my Japanese is nowhere NEAR good enough to attempt that yet. THREE hours later and I now officially have a Japanese bank account.

Trying to set up the medical check presented its own level of chaos, which included a non-scheduled visit to the Kyoto branch of my company because it just so happened to be in the same building as the place where I can get the medical check done. The form I had supplied had some level of detail that was apparently going to be too great a hurdle to overcome, so we checked with my company to see what the deal was. Upon arriving, I was greeted by the staff, I explained the situation and eventually the manager came out to assist too. She heard that I was working at Umeda. The next words that came out of her mouth were…

“You must be Paul. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Looks like I’ll be in for an interesting ride from here on out. Apologies about the lack of photos this week, but there’s not been a lot of photo opportunities.

But here’s a picture from the elevator at my work.

So you may notice there’s a distinct lack of a second and third floor. Naturally, these are now the most fascinating floors in the world to me. I can only believe that each floor consists of a parallel universe where unicorns are playing volleyball on giant flying magic carpets while William Shatner stands on top of a heavily corroded beach house, lathering himself in melted butter while reading out passages from Dante’s ‘Inferno’.