End of week 2: Pennies and midnight showers

It’s been almost 2 weeks since I landed in Japan. I then decided to get a good vegetarian snack, some hot vegetarian noodles and some alone time with a good shower. I was then pulled down to Earth and reminded that I was no longer in India. I was in China for 5 days before coming to Japan, and I thankfully found some good Indian food, or people who could speak in English and understand that I’m just a sad brown kid who needs his greens.

It’s hard to remember everything that happened in the past 13 days. I was in Germany before for an internship, but it was completely different. Although I struggled to find some good vegetarian food (By now, you would’ve understood that I’m a vegetarian. Yes, some people are scarred for life), I did manage to get some tasty potatoes in the cafeteria. Here however, I got the same rice – salad – more salad combination every day, and I soon found out that being a vegetarian who can’t speak Japanese and flaps like a bird in cold weather isn’t easy in Japan. What was I thinking?

Anyway, getting back to the story, after covering a live UFC event and being on top of the world, I had to catch a 3 AM ferry to the Hong Kong central, then a taxi to the Hong Kong airport, from where I flew down to Shanghai and had to catch another plane to Tokyo. In the airport, after managing to successfully get lost for a few minutes, I found the person who was supposed to take me to my hotel room. Her name is Risako, and you’ll probably hear a lot about her and other people that I will be mentioning soon. Anyway, I had some noodles for dinner and hit the sack after a long day.

Next morning, I was taken to the office where I would be interning for the next 2 months. ULVAC Inc. is a company working in the niche and cutting edge sector of vacuum technology. I was placed in the PMG department, and I first met Ms. Kawamura and Mr. Izzal Din, the person who would be my supervisor. After a couple of failed attempts at slapstick humor, I soon realized I had to shut up. I met Alexander “Don’t call me ‘Murican” Peace, a Canadian with a great sense of humor (And then we clicked, of course), who would be my next door neighbor, and he showed me around (Not in that sense, perverts). I soon realized that there was a common shower, and have since started bathing at 2 in the morning. It’s a huge room with a sauna and a lot of nozzles, like those scary bath scenes in Japanese horror movies. Anyway, so food and bathing became huge issues, but I found solutions in the most outrageous ways.

I then met Joe, a cool guy who cannot handle his alcohol *Stop pointing fingers, hypocrite*. Ahem, anyway, we had a good time last Wednesday, and I was finding my place in this amazing, yet scary country. The people go out of their way to be nice to others, and it used to tick me off at first. Then I started doing the same, until some people called me a stalker and asked me to leave their lawn alone. They must’ve thought I was a Mexican. Not funny? Your face!

The person who was the supervisor of my supervisor, Mr. Modeki (Hope I got it right) decided to take me out for dinner along with some colleagues for my welcoming party last Friday. We went to an awesome Indian restaurant near the bus station, and I was happy as a dog after getting a hold of its tail. Mr. Ozaki, one of my colleagues, bought me warm clothing so that they won’t have to deal with a dead Indian soon, and that made me ecstatic. I finally found a great place with great people! Last weekend, me and Alex met Risako and the other AIESECers, along with a new intern (No, I won’t take his name), and went to the Tokyo nature park, along with a couple of other places. We then had dinner at another Indian restaurant (Pamper the foreigner. That’s a ritual in Japan), and then Alex and I went to karaoke along with a bunch of his friends, spent the night at a club, walked around for 3 hours in the morning as I did some stuff that I don’t *cough* remember. We slept at a hotel for a few hours in the morning and Alex got me on the wrong train. Yes Alex, it was your fault.

So my Sunday got wasted in me figuring my way back to my room, and without proper rest, the next week began. This week, it was all about knowing my role, getting hands on experience, watching those humongous machines in the factories being manufactured and tested, and all that jazz. I then learnt 3D and 2D CAD and AutoCAD in a couple of days (No shizz, Japanese are THAT good), worked on a presentation that I will be presenting in just over a week’s time and found some places where I can get more salads (Yay!). Today, I was involved in a meeting that was done in Japanese, as I yawned, flexed and bored my way through, and we are done with the second weekend! Oh, and I spent so much money for my trip to Tokyo that I have to live the next 8 days with virtually peanuts. Yes, I’m just that awesome.

Germany was a different experience. I could stay back because I’m too lazy to get up at 8, take an occasional day off or go to the office extremely late. But in Japan, it’s a norm to be early, which is considered to be on time which is at 8:20 in the morning, and no one takes a day off. Worse, they work over time, don’t really chat that much and work like a *pause* horse (Not the best place to put in my innuendos). I really don’t have plans for the weekend, but I have a lot of work and since I didn’t have internet for the past 2 weeks, I need to catch up on a few things. But rest assured that I will be following up with some more updates about how I’m screwing things up in the land of the rising Sun!