Back in Japan

I'm not surprised that my second trip to Tokyo has been nothing like my first.

Six months ago, I had the royal treatment in Korea and Japan: through five big cities, paid-for meals, hotels, transportation, tours and pretty much life for two weeks, courtesy of the Scripps-Howard Foundation that paid for the journalism scholarship. Now I'm here for much longer -- nearly four months -- living on a budget, doing less sightseeing and more adjusting, and seeing another side of Japan that I had only heard about.

I've been here for six days; it's been different, and it's been fun.

The family I'm staying with is as accommodating as it is hilarious. Michiaki and Sadami Hirao are 66 and 64, respectively, and have taken me in as a third person to feed in their ninth-floor apartment in Inzai, Chiba, about an hour from Tokyo by the train that I take every day.

(Above: Michiaki and Sadami. The 38-year-old man is their son, Kohei, with his wife and two children, 2 and 5. This picture was taken during a riotous evening of dinner, The Lion King and discussion of Keira Knightley.)

The first couple of days in Japan consisted of recovering from both jet lag and hardly sanitary food from the 12-hour United Airlines flight out of Washington, D.C. On only a few hours of sleep, I woke up early on my first day to head to orientation at Temple University Japan Campus, where I'm taking four classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The subway system, comparable to the innards of a wooly mammoth, perplexed me in the summer and continues to rattle my brain. Thankfully I don't have to change trains going inbound toward Mita station.


After I got to Mita, giving myself 20 minutes to find Temple, I quickly became lost and had to ask the very polite Tokyoites around me for directions ... which proved interesting. Let me explain the address system in Japan.

Temple's address is 2-8-12 Minami Azabu in Tokyo. Azabu is a large region that stretches for a few square miles with many different sub-sections, of which one is Minami. The "2" means Temple is in the second ward; the "8" means it is on the eighth block of the ward.

The "12" makes absolutely no sense. The final number in all addresses denotes when the building was constructed. So the "12" means it was built after the "10"s and "11"s but roughly sometime before the "13"s. It does not, in any way, indicate where the building is located.

Which is why I was 20 minutes late to orientation. (The second time going to campus, for my first day of classes, proved slightly more successful; I gave myself 40 minutes to get there, and arrived with 5 minutes to spare.)

Since that first day I have also visited (again) Shibuya, the Times Square-ish area of Tokyo, as well as Akihabara, the electronics district, and Harajuku, the teen-angst-punk-if-Tokyo-had-punk alleyways. Travel had been expensive, about $25 each day, until I bought a commuter's pass recently that brings that down to about $6 a day with a student discount. Food can be cheap or not, depending on where and what you want. There are cheap noodle shops everywhere, but once ramen is too much for lunch every day, there are a variety of Japanese foods worth trying. At home, Mrs. Hirao has made something different each night, and each night has been a new adventure. Every Japanese food I already knew of I have had in the past six days, plus new things. Presentation is everything (but taste is not far behind). Most recently, we had make-your-own sushi (OK to eat with your hands if it's with the family!), though she also made rice and curry, udon noodle soup and some other things I can't pronounce, but it's all got good veggies and fish.

And of course, Mrs. Hirao, who admits to being a borderline alcoholic (somehow I know this with my minimal Japanese and her minimal English), pours sake in my drinks every night. The first night she made me hot tea with hot sake, and I could hardly drink it, so since then we've had cold tea and pineapple juice mixed with the traditional booze. When we walked in Naritasan to visit Shinshoji temple, Mrs. Hirao insisted I down a shot of sake with her near one of the many shops that line the steep streets, followed shortly after by a cup each of amazake -- a hot rice-and-honey mix with, yup, sake.



I've only had one day of classes so far, because on Friday I'll begin my internship at the AP's Tokyo bureau, and I expect that to be a two- or three-day-a-week (unpaid) gig. Luckily, a station near the bureau is en route to Mita, so I don't have to pay any extra to commute there.

This is my first truly abroad experience for a lengthy time, and I hope it won't be my last. Tokyo has everything you would expect it to: poorly translated English T-shirts, bizarre game shows with no real point or winner, and hordes of people crossing streets a la Lord of the Rings battle scenes. But it also has many surprises, even for people who think they know the place well. I'll be lucky if I fly out of here in late April thinking I've seen enough.