Heat and Japanese

Well, here it is, my first post on this blog about my time in Japan! This will be where I'll post what I'm doing over here in Japan, as well as any interesting things that go on (especially things demonstrating cultural differences or other stuff like that). I'll set it up to post these on facebook as well. I tend to write a lot, so be forewarned. Anyway, I guess we'll just get started..

I arrived at the airport yesterday after the 12 or 13 hour flight, and the first thing I noticed when I stepped off the plane was the heat. Or maybe it was the humidity... either way, it is very hot and very humid right now in Tokyo. Over at Davy's place, where I'm staying for about a week, everybody is wearing either a t-shirt, a wife beater, or nothing. Apparently it's going to stop in about a week, so that means it'll be hot the whole time I'm at Davy's. Oh, and we have air conditioning in some of the rooms but we're not really using it--probably to save electricity and because it's not as useful to have on all day when it's only in part of the house.

The other biggest difference about being here is, of course, Japanese. Actually at Davy's place almost everybody that comes by also speaks English, but Japanese is the language of choice (as it should be). Still, this makes it a little hard for me to get to know anybody very well, since I don't understand most of what's going on, and usually can't say anything of my own to add to the conversation. This makes me really want to learn more Japanese, but of course learning a language well is a process that takes a lot of time, and I'm not really feeling patient about it right now.

Surprisingly, it's actually easier to speak Japanese with someone who doesn't speak any English, partly because then it makes sense to use it than English (obviously), and partly because that means we can't resort to English when something is confusing or whatever. That happened when I was on the train to Tokyo from the airport--I ended up talking to the guy next to me in Japanese for almost the whole time (about 50 minutes), but it was really fun because I was trying to say things I'd never normally try to say in Japanese. This meant that it was really horrible Japanese most of the time, but at this point it's more important that I'm understood at all. Traveling from Narita to Davy's place was pretty interesting, since I was on my own, I had to take 3 different trains, and it took almost 3 hours. Apparently I did it pretty fast (for sure faster than James Cho!) It totally sucked to have all my baggage with me though.

Anyway now I'm at Davy's and have sort of nothing to do, or at least nothing planned. Actually tomorrow I'm going into Shibuya with Davy to go to a hiba party and to meet Emi there, and then sometime before Emi leaves I'm going to meet up with her again. So far for food I've had curry, instant noodles, and eggs and bacon. All of it was really good but it's nothing very exciting or worth talking about.
Oh, and for anyone wondering about jet lag, I slept a little on the plane yesterday and then stayed up til about midnight (10:00am) and slept for about 7 1/2 hours. I'm starting to get a little tired again but it's not bad (currently 5pm Japan time). I'll post again later but in the meantime I hope you're all doing well! Anyone is free to email me about how you all are doing at andrew.butz@gmail.com . Ja ne!