charlie's journal

(Real names have been abbreviated to protect the innocent.)

Getting off the bus, I stepped into the neon lights I had watched from the bus. I lugged by bags underneath the red and blue neon lights and flashing star billboards of Sanyo, McDonalds, and a million karoke places.

Now to find a payphone. They're green here.

I join the floods of people heading for the ticket-wicket. But I have to fight against the flow to get to the phones.

Dig for the book, find the page with the number, hope I have enough spare change. Payphones require 100 yen using only 10 yen coins. No wonder everyone here has cell phones. Pick up receiver, insert 100 yen using ten 10 yen coins, dial A-chan's number.

"Konichi wa..."

Get a very nice sounding but annoying prerecorded voice that doesn't belong to A-chan. Damn.

Get change from payphone. Go back to McDonalds. Find nice looking twenty somethings sitting in front of said McDonalds. Stand there awkwardly. Wait to be noticed.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Do you speak English?" (hate yourself for taking the easy way out)

"No."

"Crap."

"Crapu?"

Bumble your way through "Can you help me call my friends?" in the most polite Japanese you can muster. One Japanese girl goes to the payphone to call the number for you.

See looks at you expectantly for change. Extend your hand full of 10 yen coins. See her grimace as she takes one. Remember that taking coins from someone else's hand is considered really dirty in Japan. Put said pile of coins on top of payphone.

Japanese girl tries number and gets same prerecorded message. Japanese girl shrugs her shoulders and puts hands up using the universal "I don't know either" sign.

Get change, call a different. Bow profusely to the Japanese girl while saying thank you and repeat.

"Moshi mosh"

"H-chan?"

"Charlie?"

"What's up? Hey, I need to get a hold of A-chan, but I think I have the wrong number for her mobile. Can you call her and tell her I'm at the McDonalds in Sagami-Ono? I'm supposed to be staying with her tonight."

"Yeah. She's probably at work, but J-kun can come and take you to their place. That'll probably be about ten minutes. I can be there in about half an hour."

"That's okay. I just need to get some sleep tonight."

"Okay, we'll be there in half an hour."

<Click>

Go back to McDonalds. See same Japanese girl. Bow profusely again. Pretend not to see her and her friend giggle and whisper at the only American in the station. Go into the McDonalds and order a shake. Sit by the window and watch for J-kun and H-chan. Listen to crappy vintage American music. Try not to stare at the man happily humming along with the song,

"St. Peter don't you call me cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store."

Oh McDonalds, it's like an American embassy away from the American Embassy. The floors are actually dirty here. And the place smells like beef. You won't get that anywhere else in Japan.

H-chan and J-kun show up, and we go to an Italian restaurant for supper (brunch for me). Much rejoicing and flexing of old English skills is had - followed by pizza and spaghetti. And iced tea with little liquid sugar packs (like for coffee creamer in the USA). Wait for A-chan. Ka-chan shows up later too.

A-chan and J-kun rode their bikes, but the rest of us didn't.

H-chan takes the train home, Ka-chan and I take the bus to A-chan's place, and A-chan and J-kun ride their bikes.

"I can't stay. I have to teach in the morning. But you are so lucky. Last time they made me run behind their bikes."

"She wouldn't ride on the back of mine!" A-chan shouts as she pedels away.

"...and it was in the rain," H-chan continues. "Say, I've got a high level elective English class tomorrow. Would you like to visit?"

"Sure. What time?"

"I'm picking Ka-chan up at K-eki at 12:45. Be there."

I'm not sure if this is a poem or a story.

***

She gave me Great Expectations

"Oh, Dickens." I said unwrapping it, "It wasn't on my reading list."

"I know," she smiled, "But it was on mine."

With a cracked smile I relinquished the weighty book to a handy shelf.

"Thank you dear."

She beemed, "You're welcome."

She had given me the Dickens Great Expectations.

I've been living alone for nearly six months now. And here is a tribute to the great and horrible things about living alone.

Pros

I can sit up late at night like this and write a Journal without disturbing my roomate.

I can cook and eat whatever I want.

I can take a shower with the bathroom door open and sit around naked without any hinderance.

I can completly ignore the needs of my roomate, and he doesn't complain.

I never have to vaccum.

I never have to wait to use the shower.

Cons

I waste my whole evening on the computer while watching South Park. And there's no one here to tell me, "Come on get out of here tonight, it's 10 PM already."

I have no one to eat with, no reason to cook, no one to remind me to eat at the right time.

When you think you're crazy, there is no one to confirm or deny your insanity.

No one to split the rent with.

I always have to wash the dishes.

My bananas always spoil before I can eat them. Even if I put them in the frig.

I spend so many days not talking at all, that I wonder if I speak correctly when I actually do talk to another person.

Friends are the people fate gives you. If someone would have told me four years ago that my best friends would be Japanese and that I would fly to visit them twice (and probably more to come) I would have told them they were crazy. As it is, I feel incredibly lucky to be in the situation I am.

My friend Zack took me to the airport on Wednesday. It saved me a lot on parking, but it cost him half his lunch break. He's a good guy, pretty generous, but he wouldn't even let me buy him lunch.

The day is uncommonly cold and cloudy here. It’s supposed to be the same weather in Tokyo. But I'll be above it all soon enough.

Security checks are okay, except for the taking your shoes off. I think that's just demeaning. I feel like a prisoner coming in from recess. Can you imagine how embarrassing it is for people with smelly feet? When they ask, "Sir, do you mind taking off your shoes?" in a very loud and authoritative voice, I should just say, "Yes, I do." Seriously, just because some suicide bomber used his shoes, that doesn't make me a suspect. They could at least slow down the line and give you some slippers or something.

A friend from college was on my connecting flight. He's headed to the east coast for more extensive training on international adoption. He's working for an adoption agency and loving it. Don't ever underestimate jobs you love.

I lied and told him I was still in software (a job I didn't love, but I liked it a lot). Traveling is kind of like working. It takes time and preparation, and it kind of sucks to do it alone.

I wore my glasses so that I wouldn't have to take my contacts out in the tiny 747 bathroom. In hindsight, I should have put my contacts in before or shortly after arrival. Is it just me, or is Japanese smaller and harder to read?

The guidebook says Tokyo has a growing senior population, and it's evident on this flight. About 80% of the passengers are Asian adults who are 50 and over. Granted the woman next to me is Pilipino, and the man across the aisle is Vietnamese, but I think most of the people on the flight are Japanese.

There are two Americans sitting near me. They're the kind of people who make me wish I was Canadian. They sing loudly to all the songs on the movie, even when the people next to them are trying to sleep. They're horribly overweight, and they block the aisles and walk over people while saying "Excuse me" with complete disregard. I'm sure my 40 pound backpack and I have been a pain too, but this is ridiculous.

On a side note, I noticed I'm missing a digit in the cell phone number of the friend I'm staying with. Japanese cell phone numbers have one more digit than American numbers. I only noticed when I compared it to another friend's cell number.

The great thing about traveling is that it takes you down to the basics – like camping. Toothbrush, shirt, shoes, jacket. You can't help but feel alive. It feels so, human.

When you travel, you're really only two paychecks away from having nothing. You could very quickly have no food, no roof, and no place to go. But hopefully you have friends to call. The friends fate gave you so that you have a reason to cook a decent meal. So you could get some people together and laugh, and enjoy some good company without having to worry about the stress of job and money.

While I share no commonality with this Pilipino woman - except destination - being gracious, sharing gum during take off and descent, letting each other in and out, sharing airplane food in little boxes with tiny wine, it makes me believe that there may still be hope for the greater human race.

When we arrived I grabbed her suitcase from the other side of the aisle. "I still have three more hours to the Philippines," she said. "I'll take me about two hours to get across town from here," I said. "Then I guess we'll get there about the same time."

Why is the distance from the international gate to customs so long at Narita? I travel light, which means I get to carry two carry-ons all the way. I think I sweated off five pounds on the way to customs. But at least the security check is easy.

"Do you have any firearms, narcotics, or contaminated biological organisms?"
"No."

"Do you have anything to declare?"
"No."

They open the bag, shuffle it around a bit.

"Okay. Next."

It never fails. I always feel ugly when I fly into Narita. I haven't showered, or shaved in a day and a half. And everyone here looks so fabulous. They all have their cool boots and cell phones with lots of color-coordinated accessories. Even people I knew in the states look better here.

So I stand outside the customs gate and look around for the currency exchange, then the bus counter.

I was hoping to speak a lot more Japanese on this trip, but you'll trade your dreams for safety when you're tired and in a foreign country. At the bus counter I used Japanese to ask the attendant if she spoke English. When she said "chotto" (a little), I asked her in English if this was where I could buy a ticket to Sagami-Ono. She said no and directed me to the other bus counter.

At the bus stop I asked the baggage handler if this was the bus to Sagami-Ono. He pointed at the side of the bus, which clearly read in English "to Fun-bashi station".

So I got on the next bus to Sagami-Ono. It'll be nearly 10 pm by the time I get there. That's about 7 AM CMT time. This has been the longest day ever. I feel sorry for the guy next to me. He has to sit next to a sweaty, smelly, unshaven guy for two hours.

I flew into Tokyo on Wednesday. I made it all the way to my friends station in Kanagawa by myself.　　That saves them about $50.

Last time my friends picked me up, and I hardly had a chance to use any of my Japanese. I kind of cheated this time and used a bus which is slower, but it`s a lot less confusing than a train.
It`s confirmed Ms. Maude, I had a friend here tell me I`d be a good travel writer, and I didn`t even bring it up.

Yesterday I went and visited my friend`s junior high English class. I also ended up in the middle of a Q&A session for the class. Lots of questions like

• Do you like hamburgers? and

• Would you marry a Japanese woman or American and why?

And of course everyone asked if the teacher was my girlfriend. I guess teenagers are pretty similar everywhere.

I`m keeping a journal, sort of, and I`ll write more in depth when I get back. ^_^

So this week, I had a meeting with my boss. He told me he needed a team of champions and I was just a nine-to-fiver. He said he had no use for me anymore, paid me for the rest of the month, and told me not to come back.

...It's kind of nice. Kind of like a three week paid vacation.

He said I was a hard worker, and I was loyal. He said I did my job well. He said he'd tell any employer that if I used him as a reference.

When I started this job I was defiantly green. I could hardly configure my own local DB service :$. I learned a lot. I learned how to debug faster, how manage complex DB schemas, how to read through someone else's thick and uncommented code and still figure out what it was trying to do.

When I started, he told me "I work more than 40 hours a week, but I don't expect you to." Right before I was "let go" I was averaging about 45 hours a week.

When I started this job I told him I had never heard of PROGRESS 4gl, but I was willing to learn. He said he was willing to teach. But he got busy with clients and sales. I taught myself enough to get by. Maybe I should have taught myself more.

There were a few things I hated about writing this software:

• Writing the billing part of the software. Insurance claims suck.

• Being to told to redesign an interface and add functionality, when I didn't fully understand what the interface did in the first place.

• Having to read code that was 12 pages long, had zero white space, and was completely uncommented

In the classroom I loved debugging. It was never very long. I mean, how long does it take to debug a program that turns degrees F into degrees C? or a program that shuffles poker cards and lets you play 5 card stud?

But in the real world, when the program manipulates insurance claims codes, and sends them to another part of the application - where they might get screwed up - then gets them back, updates them, copies them and submits the DB data in XML format to Medicare. It gets a little harder to debug. It just seems like a never ending hole.

Am I whining too much? Should I just suck it up? (I'm seriously looking for opinions here).

Anyway. The major choice I have now is: look for another development job, or look for something else. Did you know there are delivery men who get paid as much as software developers?

I'm probably going seek a web development job, not like I have a lot of experience in it. But I love web dev. I don't think I love software development. I defiantly hate medical/finacial software development.

So I have three weeks paid vacation. But I need to find a job. Flights from the USA to Japan are $500 this week. I've got the time. I'm really thinking about giving myself a weeks vacation, seriously considering what I want to do for a career, and then look into this find-a-job thing more.

Maybe I'll just work at Starbucks (health benefits for PT and FT workers) and do my own web dev thing on the side.