New Beginnings

I have been living here for nearly two weeks now, and so much has been going on. After travelling for what felt like a year, I finally made it to Tokyo. I decided to send my big suitcase home for about £20 and only travel through the big city with my hand luggage — good decision! Navigating the train system to get to Wako (about 1.5 hours on three different trains) was surprisingly straightforward. Google Maps is an absolute lifesaver: the fact that it shows the colour of the line, the name, the destination, the platform, and even which carriage to get on makes life a million times easier. With that, it is not more complicated to travel in Tokyo than, say, in London… except everything is a liiiittle bit bigger.

After arriving at RIKEN, I checked into my cute little flat and then spent the past week and a bit exploring some of Tokyo, getting settled into work, doing all of the paperwork required to live here, attending my first karate training, and getting my bearings in Wako.

View from my desk

My first day at work was mostly spent setting up accounts: email, Slack, server access, and all the usual systems. That also meant a full day of e-learning courses — thrilling, obviously. My office is on the 6th floor of the Centre for Brain Science, and the view is actually quite nice. Even better: the whole office is petrol blue/teal, which happens to be my favourite colour, so I feel right at home. My colleagues have been incredibly kind, and my boss is great too. The project itself is quite different from what I’ve done before, so at the moment I’m mainly focused on finding my footing.

The second day at work brought a proper bureaucratic challenge. I had to go to city hall and the post office to register my address on my Resident Card, sign up for health insurance, apply for a pension exemption, register for a MyNumber Card, and open a bank account — plus get a hanko (a personal name stamp used as a signature). All in one day.

There is absolutely no way I could have done any of this without my lovely colleague Emiko. Everything was in Japanese, and nobody could speak English. It was exhausting, but by the end of the day everything was sorted, and I am now officially registered as a resident in Japan. I even signed up for the local library that weekend — very domestic of me. 😁

Imperial Palace from afar

One of the nicest daily routines so far is lunch. My colleagues and I go to the cafeteria almost every day. You walk along and pick up dishes as you go, then place your tray at the checkout, where — through some magic (magnets?!) — the system automatically detects what you’ve taken and you just tap your card to pay. It’s efficient, cheap, and surprisingly good. We usually go at 11:45 to avoid the rush, which initially felt absurdly early to me. I was convinced I’d abandon it within days… but it took exactly one week for me to fully accept that I am now an early-lunch person. 

Getting into central Tokyo from here takes about an hour, including a 15–20 minute walk to Wako-shi Station. On my first day, I didn’t even try to rest — I went straight to Ikebukuro and spent hours in Sunshine City, a maaassive shopping complex. It’s also home to the Pokémon Mega Center, for which I queued behind what must have been a couple of hundred people. The shop itself was very cute (and full of plushies), but… possibly not worth the wait. 😅 Still, between Pokémon, Ghibli, Disney, Snoopy, and countless other stores, I had no trouble filling the day — and picking up a few things for my flat.

Itoya (middle)

Tiny Godzilla

My second Tokyo trip, on the Spring Equinox public holiday, took me to Ginza. The famous 12-floor stationery store Itoya was impressive, though very crowded by foreigners and Japanese alike. (I am aware that I, too, am a tourist — I just prefer fewer of us at once. 😉) The weather was terrible, but I still made it to the Imperial Palace grounds. Even from the outside, it was worth seeing. I also visited the Godzilla statue — much smaller than expected — and walked at least 10 km that day. I’ve started collecting eki stamps as well, and now carry a little book for them. 

Shitchitokudo Dojo at U Tokyo

Saturday was a highlight: my first karate training in Japan. Jack (Masao Watanabe) picked me up near where the University of Tokyo’s famous red gate (Akamon) should be — currently under construction — and we went to the Shichitokudo, the oldest and very impressive dojo. The young students were still finishing up their kumite training when I arrived and got changed. I was introduced to everyone in Japanese and then introduced myself in English, and later joined the black belt seminar partially led by a 7th dan Wado-ryu sensei.

Training started with a warm-up and basics. After 100 kicks on each leg during the warm-up, I was reminded quite brutally that being ill for weeks and not training for two months is not ideal preparation. I was exhausted within 20 minutes. Still, I pushed through, and the later part of the session — working through Wado kihon ippon combinations — was more manageable. As someone coming from Shotokan, it was all quite new, but I enjoyed learning new combinations and techniques and even received some praise. Afterwards, we went out for dinner, where I got to practise my Japanese and try new foods. A very good day, all in all — even weather-wise. ☀

Food has generally been excellent so far (as was to be expected). Highlights this week include a really good unagi (freshwater eel) dish at lunch and — somewhat controversially — a fish roe carbonara. It sounds questionable, but it was genuinely delicious. Also, it was served by a cat robot, which may have biased my judgement slightly.

Fish roe Carbonara

Unagi Dish - So good!

This and next week, I’m focusing on getting properly started with my project — a lot of data wrangling for now. I’m also planning to attend training at JKA Honbu Dojo, and on Friday, at the Mitsubishi Dojo with Osaka Sensei. Hopefully, my lingering allergies or cold (or whatever this is) settle down a bit soon. Living on nasal spray is not a great long-term strategy. 

Until then, 

Johanna