Study abroad in Japan

Although the previous night had gotten a little chilly, this was to be a sunny, beautiful day in Osaka. I had hotto caku (hotcakes), as they are called, to last for a few days for breakfast, so I ate them once again. After being in Japan for one full week, I concluded that it was about time to figure out the garbage collection schedule. Garbage was picked up every weekday in my neighborhood, according to a somewhat complicated schedule. Monday was the day for plastic or polystyrene, Tuesday and Friday were for burnable trash, including kitchen and yard waste, but glass bottles could be put out on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month, Thursday was for non-burnable trash, including metal, glass (not bottles), and cans. I skipped Wednesday- what one puts out depended on which Wednesday of the month it was. The 1st Wednesday, they did not pick up, the 2nd & 4th Wednesdays were for newspaper, magazines, cardboard, and milk or juice cartons, while the 3rd Wednesday was reserved for large items, but only if you called first. All of the above was required to be put in “Toyonaka City Designated Garbage Bags” only, which I happened to come across while I was cleaning. They were clear, 42-liter plastic bags with the exact phrase above printed on them. The neighbors told me that, if you put out the wrong thing, the garbage men would leave it by the curb and refuse to pick it up. Instead of leaving out trash in front of our houses, the whole block left their garbage next to a pole underneath some mesh netting. I put my plastics out with some trepidation, hoping they would not still be there when I got back from work.

I started working on my computer project as soon as I got in; Kiyoe had given me a few suggestions of how she wanted to see the results displayed. This kept me busy until lunchtime, I ate lunch once again in the cafeteria with Kiyoe and had some shredded beef, a salad, and a little fried potato patty, called a korroke (croquette) in Japan. Kiyoe excused herself after lunch and said she would meet me at 2 to start my wet lab experiments. When the time arrived, Kiyoe showed me where to find bacteria as well as the media to grow them in. I streaked some out on a plate in order to get separate bacterial colonies and put the plate into the incubator to grow. I then had time to make a couple of flasks of liquid media, but then it was time for me to go the school!

Although it wasn’t entirely clear whether my research project would involve using live animals, Kiyoe wanted me to be authorized to use the animal facilities on campus. In order to obtain this authorization, I needed to take a two-hour class on research using mice as well as the correct use of the facility. The only catch was that the course was taught entirely in Japanese, and there was a test afterwards! Kiyoe assured me that just being present in the class was enough to satisfy the bureaucracy at the university and that the test was given entirely for assessment purposes, that no one had previously failed to receive the needed authorization. Kiyoe had given me a thin “textbook” that had been printed up for the class, all in Japanese, of course. As I started to leave, she stopped me and had me put on my lab coat, which was to be worn to all official functions such as this. As Kiyoe walked me to my class, I joked that I should also have a stethoscope around my neck to truly look the part. This, however, didn’t appear amuse her in the least. I tried to look inconspicuous as I took a seat, hoping that no one would ask me anything and find out how little Japanese I actually understood.

Class consisted of playing an hour-long video that (I think) explained mouse research in general, followed by a 45-minute talk on (perhaps) Osaka University specifically, and ended with another video demonstrating precisely how to use the facilities. Throughout the class, I pretended to scan the notes I had been given and tried my best to pay attention. I understood very little, my two years of Japanese were more geared to such queries as “Where is the train station?” than to the intricacies of scientific research. It reminded me of a nightmare I have had where I find myself in a particular class where I can’t understand any of the information, but then the instructor hands out an exam that I am expected to take. I had a lot of time to think during the two hours that followed. I pictured myself as Dr. Drake Ramoray, the character Joey plays on “Friends”. Joey is not portrayed as being particularly bright on the show but plays a doctor on a soap opera where he gets that contemplative “doctor” look whenever someone says something complicated that he doesn’t understand. I tried this look out a number of times during class.

The last 15 minutes actually made sense to me, it was a video showing how to go about the procedure that I have already described concerning working with the mice. Having gone through the whole process once, it all looked very familiar. Just before 5 pm, I was handed the test. I put my name on it and completely guessed at the dozen or so multiple-choice questions that were on it. In return, I received a form to fill out in order to get a microchip put into my I.D. card which would allow me to gain access to the animal facility.

I then hurried back to the laboratory and joined the weekly lab meeting, already in progress. It was like déjà vu- inside our conference room was a man giving a lecture in Japanese about a subject that I could barely follow. At the end of the meeting, the head of our research group of 25 or so people, Dr. Kaneda, announced that I had joined the group and had me stand up and introduce myself in Japanese. After this, the meeting ended and I resumed my work until the last bus was ready to leave for the Toyonaka campus.

When I returned home, I was pleased to find that my garbage had indeed disappeared from where I left it. I fixed soba, buckwheat noodles, for dinner and discovered two bites into them that one has to boil them like spaghetti before serving. They had not come dry but in a package like fresh pasta noodles, but were quite doughy without cooking them. I quickly put on a pot of water and did my best to prepare them correctly. By the time they were finished, I had eaten a variety of other items that I had around the house- so I wrapped them up and decided that they might make a good breakfast mixed with miso soup- I would find out in a matter of hours!

I slept in until 7:45, the latest I had slept in Japan yet! I mixed up the batch of pancakes for breakfast and added bananas since mine were starting to go brown. They tasted so good! I’m not knocking fish for breakfast, but you really can’t beat the taste of banana pancakes and pure maple syrup! I wanted to get going by 9 am since I needed to find the dreaded Ishibashi station that I had gotten lost coming home from the other night. I retraced my steps from Wednesday, realizing that I had still gone out of my way to get home after asking the man for directions in the residential neighborhood. There was a much more direct route from Osaka University to the station that I vowed to take from then on. I noticed that I had actually walked in the correct direction from the station the night I got lost, but that the streets didn’t connect through the way that I went. I took the train to Mikuni, the stop by the river, and walked the rest of the way to church.

I walked in to the church building around 10 am to find the place nearly empty, only Tomomi and her children were in the sanctuary, her husband was in a back room of the church in a meeting. “Does church start at 10:30? I asked. “No, at 11″, she said. I had been given a schedule for the services on Wednesday but had failed to confirm the time that it began! Being there an hour early was better than being late, though- so I introduced myself to people as they filed in over the next hour. About 40 people ended up being in attendance that day and I got to talk to many of them. Rich, the preacher, was actually visiting from a much larger church in Tokyo. He introduced himself and told me that he had grown up in San Francisco. I was in luck- he was giving his message in English, with accompanying Japanese translation, and Fiona, the Australian, was giving the communion message in her native tongue as well. Only the songs, announcements, and prayers were in Japanese that day, usually it would be the whole service.

This is not to say that I wouldn’t know what was going on during subsequent Japanese services, there were always a number of translations going on due to the international nature of those in attendance. Fiona translated to other English speakers near the back of the room. Nearby her sat another American, two Filipinos, and a Romanian. I sat in a different area, next to the Thai brother named Bond that I had met during my first trip to Japan, but listened to her from across the room when I couldn’t understand what people were saying. Nearby me sat two men from Indonesia, one busily translating the service for the other.

Since Rich only came once a month to preach to the church, he was going to stick around and give a special presentation after lunch for those who wanted to stay. I didn’t have anywhere in particular to go, and was interested to hear what he had to say- so I stuck around afterwards. After the service, they brought out cupcakes with candles on top of them to celebrate two birthdays, and then a few members went to pick up bentos for those who had remained behind. Around 2 pm, after we had finished with lunch, Rich gave a PowerPoint presentation, along with an accompanying talk, both in Japanese. At this point, I decided to move to the English translation area so that I could fully appreciate the hour-long message. Following this, people were still in no hurry to leave, so I stuck around and continued to talk to people. I had started a notebook at the midweek service and asked people to write their names and contact information into it; I took advantage of the time and continued to collect names until I had nearly three pages filled. Around 4 pm, as things were finally breaking up, Tadashi and his wife offered to drive me home, an offer that I gladly accepted.

That evening, I had white oval dumplings stuffed with pork for dinner. I had devised a simple formula for dinner selection: I chose the dish with the nearest expiration date and prepared it. When I had gotten the dumplings, I wasn’t sure if I could freeze them or not. Since they were delicious and I was positive that I would be getting them again, I thought that I should probably freeze some the next time in order to find out. Tired out from a full weekend, I went to bed around 10 pm.

Kiyoe said that I didn’t have to work on my first weekend in Japan since we had not yet started our experimental work, so I stayed home and got some work done around the house. First, I washed the dishes that had been piling up and then I tackled the yard. My German neighbors had told me that no one had lived in the house for 6 months, and judging from the yard- I didn’t think the grass had been cut in almost as long. Weeds covered the yard knee deep or more throughout, making it the only part of my house that was truly an eyesore. I had located a miniature scythe in the cabinet in our genkan (the entryway in which you place your shoes when you enter a Japanese house), wielding this- I attacked the yard with a vengeance. It had been raining on and off for the last few days, so the clay that covered our entire yard began to clump onto the bottom of my tennis shoes as I went to work, making it harder to move with each step. I started on the far corner away from the house and worked my way back towards it. The long coarse grass cut into my fingers a few times as I held it and slashed it with the scythe, but neither the mud nor the cuts could stop me- I was determined to get our yard into a tolerable condition. I eventually moved to the side and back of the house as well, piling up grass and weeds onto our back step into a heap that almost came level with my knees. As I was touching up the front again, the lady who lived across the street (a sign on the outside of the house indicated that her name was Mrs. Tsunomori) saw me and gave a low bow, as it to say, “Thank God someone has finally cut the grass in that yard!”

I changed my clothes before I set out to find another grocery store. Kiyoe said that she had seen one in the neighborhood when she first picked up the keys for the house, so I set off in the direction that she had indicated. Heading south and east, our hilly residential neighborhood soon gave way to a street lined with shops on either side. Taking this street further south, I soon found the grocery store Kiyoe had referred to, called Mandai. This store was much closer to our house than Nissho and, what is more, the prices seemed more reasonable for many things. I walked down the aisles, picking up things that looked good to me. There is something strangely liberating about not knowing what you are buying and going solely on looks, but it is a hard feeling to explain. After a week of eating rice and fish for breakfast, the only American food that I was craving was pancakes. I picked up a mix and splurged on a tiny bottle of maple syrup for 468 yen. I also bought laundry detergent, a sashimi and lettuce salad, gyoza, another type of dumpling that I couldn’t identify, tonkatsu (pork tenderloin), and a sandwich with what looked like spaghetti in a brown sauce stuffed inside. The total came to 4145 yen; a little more than my first trip, but not too bad considering the price of syrup.

After I returned to the house, I started to work on my laundry. Our washing machine was in the bathroom and had to be plugged into our bathtub faucet in order to function. We had no dryer, of course, and would have to hang our clothes outside on the balcony to dry. As I filled my washing machine with dark clothes, I tried to think of the last time in my life that I had done a load of laundry and couldn’t come up with anything. Trudy always did the laundry at home and never allowed me near it for fear that I would mess something up. It is ironic that I had to leave the country in order to perform this chore- and now had to learn using a foreign language. Luckily, a previous occupant of the house had labeled all of the buttons with their English equivalent, something that was true of neither the rice maker nor the electric tea pot.

After the laundry was chugging along, I decided to call Trudy over the internet. We had a bad connection and ran into another problem when her voice was coming out of my computer’s speakers and not the earphones. During all this, I checked my email. Tadashi, a brother from church, had invited me over for lunch and I had told him to either call me at work or email me and we would set up a time to meet. He had sent me a message, which I quickly read and replied to, saying that I was available to meet at any time. Trudy and I were eventually disconnected for good and I was not able to reestablish a connection. A storm was blowing through, which usually brought with it a bad wireless connection, I was finding. I also realized too late that Tadashi was probably assuming I was at work, since I told him previously that I worked half days on Saturdays, and not at home. I tried desperately to reestablish an internet connection while it was raining, but to no avail. I tried on and off for an hour and a half, and finally got a signal. When I checked my messages- sure enough, Tadashi had gone to pick me up in Suita and was expecting to meet me there at noon, it was now 1 pm.

Since he had included his cell phone number in his message, I decided to walk to campus to call him on the payphone at the International House and to apologize profusely for the miscommunication. As I neared the International House, Tadashi drove by, spotted me, and stopped to pick me up. He had figured that he would check my house after I had not showed up in Suita. He took me to his house, which was not far from me (it was actually in the vicinity of the Toyonaka City Municipal Hall, of all places), his 3 year old daughter, Akane, was in the car with us, but she was afraid of me and said nothing. When we arrived at Tadashi’s house, he asked me to watch Akane for a few minutes while he parked the car. This was quite a process since cars were parked three high at his housing complex; a hydraulic lift raised your car to the appropriate level so one could drive on and off of the circle drive in front. During all of this, Akane and I stood there silently for a while until I asked her, “Nan sai desu ka?” to which she put up three little fingers and finally smiled at me.

Tadashi’s wife, Tomomi, was waiting inside their house with their 9-month old son, Michiru. They had been waiting to have lunch until I could be located; it was about 1:30 at that point. Tomomi had made okonomiyaki, a favorite of mine ever since I had first had it in Hiroshima during my first visit to Japan. Tomomi had laid out chopsticks for the rest of the family, but had put a fork and a knife at my place setting, which I graciously accepted.

During the next several hours- we ate, talked, and watched the sumo matches on T.V. Akane continued to warm up to me, eventually showing me her Disney picture book and sitting on my lap in order to pose for a photograph. Michiru also seemed to like me; he babbled and laughed at me, I held him, and he eventually fell asleep in my arms. As it neared 6 pm, I said that I should probably be going. Tomomi sent me on my way with a loaf of bread and a bag of chestnuts, and we repeated the arrival process in reverse, Akane and I holding hands near the entrance to her building as we waited for her father to retrieve their car. When we got to my house, I showed them around and gave them some candy I had brought from America but had failed to bring to their house since I thought that I was running out to make the phone call. I ate the spaghetti sandwich (teriyaki flavor maybe?) and sashimi salad for dinner that evening, took my dry clothes in from the balcony, and went to bed around 10:30.

Kiyoe had said that she would be in late on this day since her kids were off for the anniversary of their school’s founding. I took the 8:20 bus and set to work on my project when I arrived at the laboratory. I had the first draft completed by the time Kiyoe came in at 10:00. Soon after this, she asked me to come to the animal facility to watch them work with the mice. She was working on a mouse model of Wolf-Hirschorn Syndrome in which an equivalent gene deletion had been introduced into mice. She had to weigh the mice that carried this mutation once a day in order to monitor their growth.

Going to the animal facility was quite a production! We walked to a nearby building that had to be entered by holding one’s I.D. card up to a scanner and placing one’s finger on a different scanner. Once inside, we changed our shoes and put on slippers that were provided at the entrance. After going up an elevator and winding through some corridors, we arrived at the mouse room. We entered a vestibule where we put on full-body protective gear, including gowns, hairnets, gloves and masks. We also traded our slippers for a pair of yellow rubber boots. You would have thought we were working with the Ebola virus instead of weighing a dozen mice! When our work was completed, we reversed the entire process until we had returned to our original pair of shoes and exited the building.

Upon returning to my desk, I set about fixing certain aspects of the first draft of my project from that morning that needed to be changed. About 12:30, Kiyoe suggested that we have lunch at her house, seeing as her kids were home for the day. Before we could do this, however, we had to drive to the store to stock up on lunch supplies. The grocery store was in a multistoried building with an attached parking garage and was even bigger than the one that I had been to in my neighborhood. Kiyoe bought sushi, fish eggs, shrimp, roast beef, bread, and desert, among other things. We then went to her house, which was fairly close to the University. She had warned me the previous day that she might invite me over, so I had brought gifts for the family. I gave her a bottle of liqueur that Trudy and I had purchased in Galena, Illinois and gave each of her two boys toys from America. Her oldest boy, Ryu, was 12, while her youngest, Sage, was 9. They were very excited about the gift and proceeded to get out their respective photo albums to show me pictures of when they were babies. Soon, Kiyoe had assembled lunch and we all sat down at the table. Kiyoe asked Ryu to show me how to eat the shrimp, which were raw and needed to have their heads and legs removed in order to eat them.

After lunch, Kiyoe needed to go to the police station so she could fill out a report about Sage’s bicycle accident that he was involved in the week before I came (he was doing much better, but had broken his jaw riding down a hill and into a pole). We went to a mall that came complete with a working police station within it, as well as having its own attached parking garage (parking can be hard to find in Japan). After getting the form, Kiyoe said we needed to spend 100 yen somewhere to validate the parking. I remembered that I needed miso soup, so we headed to the enclosed supermarket. In addition to the soup, we saw a display for a mix to make mabo dofu, which Kiyoe suggested that I get that so that I could try making the dish at home.

Kiyoe dropped me off at work about 3:30 and said she would be in after 5, when her husband got home to take care of the kids. She said I was welcome to go home anytime that I liked. Despite this, I ended up staying until the last bus left for the Toyonaka campus. Back home, I took out my mabo dofu and whipped up a batch. I sat in front of the T.V. and ate my dinner while watching the Osaka Tigers play baseball, although I wasn’t sure from the telecast whether they were winning or losing. At 11 pm, I went to bed.

I did wake up at 2 am, just long enough to switch the water heater on, then fell asleep again quickly and slept until 5:30. I turned the rice maker on, hoping that it would work now that I had given it time enough to forgive me for unplugging it as well as pressing all the wrong buttons. There was finally hot water coming out of the pipes, and it had only taken 3 days to figure it out! I also solved another problem that I had experienced from the beginning- the plug for the bathtub didn’t fit, so that it hadn’t yet been able to hold water. This hadn’t been an issue when the water was ice cold, but over time it became a bit more important. The previous day I had entered a “100 yen shop” in Umeda to look for another plug. Although what I ended up buying was actually designed to help open jar lids, I figured that it would serve the purpose. It was a round sheet of plastic that looked like what a person would put in the bottom of sinks in America to plug them up. As I suspected, the plastic piece worked just fine! After I took a bath, I saw that the rice maker was behaving as well- things were looking up for my first full day on the job!

It had been raining all night as far as I could tell and it was still raining on and off when I left the house, so I took an umbrella. I took the 8 am bus and got to work before most people had arrived. When Kiyoe got in, she suggested that I put my most recent form to good use and open my Post Office account. There was a Post Office in the hospital that was connected to the Medical School. Many people in Japan use the Post Office for their banking needs, in addition to mailing things. Every Post Office in the country has ATM machines that dispense money from Post Office accounts. Since we had arrived a little before it opened at 9, Kiyoe and I went to Starbucks and had a coffee. She apologized that it was so expensive, but I assured her that the prices were nearly identical to those found in America. When the office opened, I was finally able to open my account.

Upon our return to the lab, Kiyoe wanted to train me how to pour agarose gels. Now, I have poured literally hundreds of agarose gels during my career, but none according to strict Japanese rules. While I might have been tempted to simply point out where all the supplies were to someone and let them go at it, Kiyoe walked me through the whole process until we each had poured two gels. The main thing that stood out to me was the rinsing procedures for the glassware that we used. Before using each piece of glassware, we rinsed it three times with distilled water; after we had finished with a particular piece, we rinsed it 10 times in tap water and three more times in distilled water. It was important to Kiyoe that we count each time we rinsed it so as to avoid using the wrong number of rinses. After we had poured the gels, Kiyoe gave me another project to work on involving the computer.

At lunchtime, we went to the hospital cafeteria once again. This was not the only place to eat lunch at the Medical School, but it was probably the most economical. Green tea, for instance, was free; it came out of a fountain machine that was located near the cashier’s station. Kiyoe pointed out a Chinese-inspired dish called mabo dofu that was featured that day, but warned that it was very spicy. I got it, it was delicious but not particularly spicy- I think even Trudy could have eaten it, and she was definitely not one for spicy foods! Even the curry dishes in Japan did not have a strong spicy taste, unlike their Indian counterparts. The meal came with miso soup, the one thing I realized that I forgot to buy during my trip to the store!

For the rest of the afternoon, I worked on the project that I had. It was actually quite interesting focusing exclusively on research for that long, I usually only had short breaks in between classes, as well as my other responsibilities, at Monmouth College to do some research. At 6 pm, Kiyoe stopped by my desk and said that I could leave if I wanted to, that I had done a lot already that day. Because I was busy working on something, and because I wanted to have put in a full day on my first “real” day at work, I kept working and caught the last (7:15) bus home. Kiyoe told me that she usually put in 12 hour days four days a week, but left “early” on Fridays, whatever that means. She then put in half days on Saturdays as well. The last bus to the Toyonaka campus was very full; I didn’t know how everyone waiting in line would fit onto the bus. To top it off, when it arrived- it was already quite full with people from the other side of campus! Somehow everyone crowded on- I ended up standing near the front of the bus, and we were on our way.

Lunch had been quite filling so I was hungry, but not starved, when I reached home at 7:40. I made myself some ramen noodles (they had scrambled eggs mixed in with them), some rice crackers, and a banana, and changed into my pajamas. I read a little but was tired, so I went to bed around 9:30.

I had warned Trudy that I would probably not be calling her any more during her lunch hour, but this ended up not being true. I woke up at 2:30 am, tossed and turned for a bit, and dialed up Trudy. It was nice having wireless internet at home, even if I didn’t exactly know who the signal belonged to! I finished my grading after we hung up and then submitted the grades to Monmouth College using their online system. I did fall asleep for a while longer but finally got up at 5:30. I fixed myself some tea and was looking forward to a hot bath, but the water was cold again. Not to be outdone, I boiled two kettles of hot water on the stove, dumped it into the bath, and did my best not to freeze. My rice maker was also acting up again, so I abandoned the rice completely and fried up a fish, along with an egg, on the stove.

I had promised Kiyoe that I would be in bright and early, so I caught the first bus (at 8 am, boarding from a line in the back) to Suita and sat down at my desk. Anna, the girl who occupied the desk next to me, was from Singapore; she briefly introduced herself and then hurried off to class. Kiyoe soon arrived and I told her of my water heater problems. We apparently had experienced a slight misunderstanding: she apologized that she had shut it off to save energy at night and that I should have turned it back on in the morning, despite my earlier promise to not touch it. Kiyoe then gave me my first assignment: to do some computer-based research on a gene that her lab was interested in. Deletion of this gene was known to cause a disease known as Wolf-Hirschorn Syndrome, a form of mental retardation that is accompanied by a variety of other developmental disorders. Having performed previous research in the field of bioinformatics, as this type of computer-based research is called, it was just the type of work that I was cut out for!

At 10:30 or so we went to the Post Office to open an account in which to deposit my paychecks into. Alas, they required another form (proof of address) that had to be obtained at, where else but the Toyonaka City Municipal Hall! Instead of Kiyoe driving me again, we came up with an alternate plan- Kiyoe discovered that one could also obtain the same form at a branch office which could be reached by riding a bus from campus and agreed to point me in the right direction after lunch. At 12:30, we had lunch in the cafeteria in the Medical School’s hospital. I had sukiyaki, a type of soup with beef, tofu, and cabbage in it.

After we ate, I set out for Senri-Chuo where the city branch office was located. Unfortunately, Kiyoe could not accompany me, so she sent me off with the name of the bus as well as the form I needed written on a paper in kanji (Chinese characters), along with a map to the office (in Japanese, of course). She said that if I was going to go there, that I should take the rest of the day off and leave for my midweek church service from that station. I found the bus with no trouble, located the branch office, and soon had the form I needed in hand. I then boarded the train and took it to the center of Osaka in order to switch trains to one which headed in the direction of the church building.

The arrangement of the trains in Osaka is similar to that of New York in that one has to go in to the center of town in order to head back out to the periphery. Even though it was only a 30-minute drive between Staten Island, where I had lived, and Brooklyn, where I had worked, it was 1 hour and 40 minutes by ferry and subway between the two, going through Manhattan. The center of Osaka, called Umeda, reminded me of Manhattan as well. I had plenty of time to kill before church (6 hours), so I explored Umeda, as Kiyoe had suggested. It, like Shibuya in Tokyo, was a hotbed of activity. There were broad avenues lined with skyscrapers as well as narrow alleys jammed with restaurants, shops, and arcades. People were everywhere and bicycles and scooters darted amongst the crowds. Amidst all this, I stumbled upon a few serene Shinto shrines tucked away behind alleyways, like islands of peacefulness in the middle of all the hubbub. I eventually made my way to a 9-story mall with an equally large Ferris wheel on the top of it. Despite my fear of heights, I decided to ride it, which ended up being quite an experience! I could see the whole city from the top of the wheel- I tried to make out the area in which I now lived, but I could not tell for sure where it was. When I returned to the safety of the ground, I bought a bento at a convenience store and then boarded the train that would take me to church. Between the train station and the church was a river that one could cross over on a footbridge. Since I was still 2 hours ahead of schedule, I sat beside the river and ate my dinner.

I showed up to church 50 minutes early, just as the brother named Takashi was opening the building. I helped set up chairs and he prepared a video they were going to watch that night. While the church had originally planned to watch a video in Japanese, Takashi told me that he also had one that was in English accompanied by Japanese translation, and he would play that instead. 9 others filed in at various times, to which I introduced myself, in turn, including Nori and his fiancée, an Australian named Fiona. I did my best to sing the songs (one was in English- “Rise Up O Men of God”!), and then during announcements, I stood up and introduced myself to everyone. I was able to understand the video fine but found it hard to concentrate since I was so tired. Church ended about 9:15 pm, by which time it had started to rain. Nori gave three others and me a ride to the train station and we each debarked at our respective stops, mine of which was the last one out of our group. A brother asked me if I knew how to get to my house from the train station- I said I could probably find it. I was wrong!

I knew that the university was east of the train station, so I took the east exit and walked in what I thought was the right direction. A main thoroughfare lined with shops soon gave way to a residential neighborhood that was more akin to a maze. A few times I hit dead ends and had to circle back to an area that I had already been through. It was actually quite quaint, reminding me of something out of “Memoirs of a Geisha”, which I had finally seen once I had returned to the U.S. from my first trip to Japan. I wasn’t afraid, even though it was after 10 pm and I had no idea where I was going. I reasoned that I could not stay lost forever, could I? But I was very tired, it was still raining, and I desperately wanted to be home. Eventually, I asked a man who was walking by where Osaka University was. He indicated the way back to the train station and said, “Go up the slope”. I found the train station once again and this time walked in the correct direction. Just to be sure, I asked directions again from a young couple standing at a bus stop. They directed me to a path across the street that soon gave way to a cobble stone walkway which led directly into campus. I was very pleased when I reached a part of campus I recognized, one that I had seen during that first wait for the campus bus. I returned home about 10:45, even though the trip from church should have taken about 30 minutes. I was in bed by 11 and was pretty sure I could sleep through the night this time!

I woke up a little before 2 am and went to the bathroom. I had trouble falling back to sleep and eventually realized that Trudy would be home for lunch- so I called her over the internet using Skype. Around 3 am, I fell back to sleep and slept 2 more hours.

I fixed myself a bowl of rice, fish, and the mystery yogurt for breakfast. I had some trouble with the rice maker in that it did not reset from the night before and turned out mushy rice porridge instead of the sticky rice that I expected. This was fine with me, since rice porridge is actually a real breakfast eaten in the Kansai area in which I now lived; it brought back memories of my first breakfast in Japan. The fish that I had thought was steamed turned out to be quite raw, so I filleted it and heated it in the microwave. Kiyoe later told me the yogurt flavor, which read “aro”, was actually aloe flavor, something that is eaten in Japan for its positive effects on one’s health.

I had to wait around the house for the man from the gas company, who was set to arrive between 9 and noon, so I organized my clothes and books and then read for a while. The man came about 10:20 and turned the gas on but he spoke no English whatsoever and my own gas-related conversations in Japanese were rather limited as well. He showed me a sensor and seemed to be indicating that it was a detector for gas leaks. Luckily, I had practiced saying “Is my hot water heater on?” He checked, but there was no hot water coming out of the pipes. He played around with the spigots for a while but soon gave up and told me someone would return between 5 and 6 to fix the problem. As soon as he had gone, I got ready and headed to catch the bus to the Suita campus.

The bus stop was no more than a 10-minute walk from our house, but I arrived just in time to see the 11 am bus pulling out. Since the busses ran every 20 minutes, I took the opportunity to walk around campus for a while. I noted the location of the cafeteria as well as a noodle shop and bought a can of papaya juice while I waited for the bus. When one pulled up, I asked the driver (in Japanese, he spoke no English) “Is this the bus to the Suita campus?” He indicated that it was, so I walked around the front of the bus to get on. I realized too late that one only boarded the bus from the back. There was a transportation official directing people onto the bus who made me wait until everyone got on from the proper direction. I quickly circled around, joined the line correctly, and boarded the bus. At precisely 11:20, the official blew his whistle and the bus pulled away from the stop.

The ride to the Suita campus was about 30 minutes, during which time I watched out the widow with interest. I could see the mountains which surrounded Osaka to the north from the bus route as well as many interesting shops and restaurants. Once I arrived in Suita, I went by memory to find Kiyoe’s building. I finally entered a building that looked like the picture I had taken in January during my visit and asked the security guard that manned a station in the lobby, “Where is this department?” (in Japanese, of course), indicating the Division of Gene Therapy Science on an email from Kiyoe. Luckily, I was in the lobby of the very building that I would now be working in; I just needed to go to the 10th floor!

Kiyoe took me around and introduced me to people and then we went to lunch in a restaurant that was located in a neighboring building. I had the special: curry rice and a salad, the same thing I had gotten the day I met with Kiyoe during my trip the previous year, this time being mindful to eat the meal using a spoon. After lunch, I got on the internet to find out where I had to go to register as an alien- something I had to do before opening a bank account. Kiyoe looked at the addresses, called a few of the locations, and printed up several versions of maps showing the local area before we set out for the office. We left at 2 pm on what should have been a 20-minute trip to the office. Kiyoe, however, would be the first to admit that she was not good at driving around Osaka. She had politely declined to pick me up at the airport due to her lack of driving skills, I had then asked Nori to do it and he obliged. After about and hour and a half of taking wrong turns, turning around in tight places, and narrowly missing cars, bicycles, and people alike, we finally located the Toyonaka City Municipal Office. I filled out a form in order to receive my registration card the following month; the total amount of time that I took at the office was about 5 minutes.

Luckily, the office was located on the same road that Nori had used when he brought me home from the airport, so I helped direct Kiyoe to my house with no more problems. We arrived there around 4 pm and Kiyoe said she would stay there until the gas man came so there would be no more misunderstandings. I served her some lemon soda, along with some green tea, then turned on the Sumo matches on T.V. Before too long, Kiyoe was sound asleep on the couch. I decided to take the opportunity to finish the book that I had been reading that morning. The gas man’s arrival woke Kiyoe, he came in, looked at the pipes, turned some, and soon I had hot water coming out of the sink and tub. He indicated that I should not touch the pipes myself and that I should also not touch the controls to the hot water heater, so as not to mess anything up. He and Kiyoe both left within 5 minutes of each other and I set about making myself dinner.

I fixed myself a bowl of ramen soup, a pork manju, and rice cakes for dinner. I was exhausted, so I closed the windows, put on my pajamas, and got in bed while I graded final exams. At 7 pm, I couldn’t stay awake another second, so I went to sleep.

We passed over China on our approach to Japan. I stared out the window hoping to catch a glimpse of the Great Wall but all I could make out were mountains and lots of factories spewing liberal amounts of smoke into the air.

We landed in Japan a full 70 minutes before my itinerary had claimed we would be there. After passing through passport control, customs, and exchanging $ for yen (this time not getting such a raw deal), Nori was there to pick me up from the airport. He had asked me if I remembered what he looked like and I told him I did, but to be honest- I would have been hard pressed to pick him out from the crowd. He must have had the same problem but finally came up to me as I was just sitting back down from standing in a line for currency exchange and asked if I was the right person. Nori drove me to Osaka but was not completely sure on the route to the University. He took a few wrong turns so that we ended up seeing much more of the city than anticipated. Getting turned around didn’t really bother me, however, since I was in no particular hurry and liked seeing more of Osaka. We finally found the International House at Osaka University 1 hour and 45 minutes after being picked up at the airport. Unfortunately, it was now 12:15, and the office that had the key to my house was closed for lunch. Since Nori had to be at work by 2 pm (he teaches at a juku, an afternoon “cram school”, where Japanese students go after school to prepare for the difficult entrance exams that they must take to enter both high school and college), he left me and my luggage at the International House to wait for the office to open.

At 1 pm, the office reopened and gave me the key but could not give me good directions to the house. Eventually, the staff called Kiyoe at work, who said she would come meet me there, since she had already been to see the house and knew where it was located. Since it would take Kiyoe 30 minutes to get to campus from the Medical School, I decided to walk to the Family Mart convenience store and get a bento for lunch. Since it was a beautiful day, I ate my lunch on a bench outside of the International House; Kiyoe showed up shortly after I had finished. We soon found my new home, which actually seemed really big for a Japanese house. The house had been unused for a period of time, however, and was in need of a good vacuuming. Kiyoe called the various utility companies on her cell phone in order to get the water, electricity and gas turned on, however the latter company told her that they could not send anyone by until the next morning at the earliest. Soon, Kiyoe had to leave to get her son to a doctor’s appointment and I told her to go ahead, assuring her that I would be fine by myself.

My first instinct when she left was to take a nice hot bath. That wasn’t in the cards, though, due to my lack of gas to heat the water. Because I really needed one, I settled for a frigidly cold shower and soon set out to find the grocery store. The store, called Nissho, was a good walk from our house and ended up being a very interesting place. It was basically like the one I had gone to in Kyoto- with lots of activity and various people hawking their food products. Think of it as a cross between the people that give out samples at the grocery store and the carny folk that try to get you to play their respective games. I managed to find all of the basic staples: eggs, sushi, seaweed, steamed fish for breakfast, ramen, rice crackers, a big dumpling, green tea, yogurt of some unknown flavor, carrots, bananas, and rice, all for 4000 yen. At 1100 yen a bag, the rice was by far the most expensive item on my list. I managed to vacuum the house when I returned home, while I waited for the rice maker and tea brewer to do their thing. I then ate sushi, rice topped with seaweed, along with green tea for my first meal in my new home.

Having discovered early on that most airline specials to Japan had a 30 day maximum stay as one stipulation, I had opted for the one airline that had no maximum stay whatsoever: Alitalia. The only catch was that I had to fly to Osaka via Italy, which was definitely not the most direct route from Chicago. However, since I was in no particular hurry, and welcomed the chance to save $400 as well as see Italy for the first time, I found myself on Altitlia flight 794, en route to Milan. I hadn’t seen much out the plane window on the way over- I had watched as we flew over the Midwest but had missed the Ocean entirely due to the cloud cover as well as my attempts to sleep. I actually slept little, maybe a couple of hours despite the sleeping pills I had washed down with an Italian beer during dinner. Regarding this choice of beverage, I figured that although almost everyone has had some Italian wine during their lifetimes, how often do you hear of someone having Italian beer! I had also glimpsed the Alps briefly as we made our approach to Italy: snow-capped peaks which reminded me of the Rockies. But it was not until we were making our approach to land at Malpensa airport that I was able to get my first good impressions of Italy. It was, as far as I could tell- exactly like Central Illinois! The Alps had completely disappeared and in their place were miles and miles of fields covering land as flat as a pancake. The coaches of the Illinois State girl’s volleyball team were sitting in front of me and we joked that perhaps they had flown the plane in circles for 9 hours and that we were, in fact, still in Central Illinois. Malpensa Airport is a 40-minute train ride from Milan but you wouldn’t know you were anywhere near a city when you land there. Again, the farms and fields were all I could see around it.

We had landed at 7 am, but it took me a long time to find my way through the airport, cashing in some $ for Euros, getting a measly 19.65 Euros for $40 (the dollar was particularly weak against the Euro and I suspected that the airport money changers were charging a ridiculous processing fee), depositing my bags at the “left luggage” counter, and finally boarding the train to Milan. I boarded the 8:23 train that would arrive in Milan about 9. My second impression of Italy was that it was a lot dirtier than I had pictured. Italy was beautiful the various “chick flicks” I had watched with Trudy, but I couldn’t help but notice the omnipresent trash and graffiti. The train ride was through beautiful countryside and quaint little towns, but the wall lining the tracks was a never-ending stretch of graffiti the entire ride. I snapped some pictures of the countryside in order to prove that it was almost identical to home. My family, unfortunately, would not be getting a chance to visit Italy, since the price of the tickets on Alitalia had more than doubled to take the same route six weeks later, and I was forced to get them tickets on Northwest Airlines, instead.

At last, 2 hours after I had arrived, I stood in downtown Milan. This area was filled with narrow streets, statues, fountains, and sites such as an old castle and cathedral. The graffiti had luckily all but disappeared, although the town still had a gray, slightly dingy look to it. Perhaps that is because the buildings are so old compared to anything we see in America. Since I only had 90 minutes before I had planned to attend a church service in Milan, I began an express tour of all the sites I wanted to see. Walking at a fast clip and snapping pictures like mad, I walked to the Duomo Cathedral, through the central plaza, and finally through the Castle itself and around the surrounding grounds. I got slightly lost once, mainly since it was nearly impossible to make out any landmarks due a combination of narrow streets as well as relatively tall buildings.

I made it to the church service with about 10 minutes to spare after having walked approximately 3 miles on my tour. The service was great- there were about 5 Americans who were part of the 40 member church. A couple that sat next to me took turns translating for me. The wife, an English teacher, translated the communion message, while her husband, a pharmaceutical representative, translated the main message. After we had sung a few songs, the wife asked me, “Are you sure you don’t speak any Italian? You pronounce the words very well!” Maybe it was my ethnic heritage coming through (my mother was a Vignali), or just being thankful to be able to read a foreign language written in a Roman alphabet (that would soon change in Japan). Service went slightly long, until about 12:30, and I became increasingly concerned about whether I could still get to the airport two hours in advance of my departing flight. Luckily, the wife of the man I had originally made contact with in Milan was going to her parents’ house in the direction of the airport, and could drop me at about the halfway point, where the train ride was cut to 20 minutes. Her 3-year-old son rode in the back of the car and continually asked questions in Italian: “Are we going to grandmas’? Where is Japan? Are we going to eat there today?” I caught the 1:16 train from the Sardona station and arrived back at the airport about 1:45. Luckily, the lines through security weren’t long, and I ended up with 30 minutes to spare before boarding my flight to Osaka.

Morning saw yet another trip to Denny’s for breakfast, my third trip there in a 24-hour period. While the Hilton had a selection of very nice restaurants, they were, in my opinion, as overpriced as the movie theaters, if not more so. I did get adventurous and order the “Hawaiian breakfast” for a change from a more traditional Japanese one. This came with spam, eggs, and rice, in addition to a salad. A Yasaka van then took us back in the direction of the Imperial Palace, to Toyo High School, where we were reunited with the rest of the students, who were just returning from their home stays. At 9:30, we all met with a number of officials from the school, giving and receiving gifts and listening to a speech that Ken had prepared in Japanese. At 10, we were treated to a performance by the school cheerleaders, who were on their way to L.A. to participate in an international cheerleading competition, reportedly having achieved 3rd place in all of Japan. For the next 20 minutes, two dozen cheerleaders demonstrated their spirited routines to us in the school gymnasium. Afterward, we thanked the school officials profusely and then boarded a bus for our last stop before heading to the airport.

The bus took us to Odaiba, literally the newest district of Tokyo, having been built on an artificial island that was formed in Tokyo Bay. There, we spent the next two hours in a massive mall, once again experiencing the more modern side of Japan. While I wasn’t particularly inclined to buy anything, I had a great time window shopping in the (mostly upscale) shops in the mall. Attached to the mall itself was a huge building that housed a car dealership on the upper floor! A few of us took turns posing in some of the fantasy cars that were housed there, and one could even take a drive in a tiny “smart car” which ran along a track that encircled the building. For lunch, we ate at the “Doggy Deli” which not only specialized in hot dogs, it encouraged people to bring their own dogs into the restaurant with them. One man had four tiny dogs dressed in little coats that he was pushing in a stroller as he went through the line. I felt conspicuous not having a dog in tow, but still ordered a Parisian Dog, a foot-long hot dog baked in a tiny baguette, complete with ketchup and mustard inside. Finding that it was quite good, I tried a curry dog as well, this was similar to the Parisian one, but with a curry sauce on the inside. I decided that, although I liked hot dogs and also liked curry, I was not enamored with the mixture of the two.

We left the shopping complex at 1 pm for the hour-long drive to Narita International Airport, on the outskirts of Tokyo, where we said our final thanks and goodbyes to our driver, as well as our tour guide, both of which spoke very little English. As we waited for our 4:40 pm flight, Kristin and I noticed that a gift shop was giving away free samples of sake in an unabashed effort to sell some bottles to tourists before they returned home. We therefore participated in a tasting of a number of different kinds, learning that they all didn’t taste the same and finally finding that we had a particular taste for the $80/bottle variety. Despite these preferences, Kristin ended up buying a somewhat less expensive variety to take home with her. The plane ride home was, mercifully, almost 2 hours shorter than the one to Japan had been, due to the prevailing winds being with us, rather than against us. Once again, I slept little on the flight, watching movies or talking with the students who flanked me on the way back. We landed in Chicago around 2:20 pm on Sunday afternoon, where my family was anxiously waiting for me. Their own time in Japan would come soon enough.