I came to Japan on November 28 of last year, and that makes tomorrow the 6 month mark. Here are a few random observations from my brief stay in Tokyo so far. Any suggestions on how to proceed during my next 6 months are most welcome:
- Tokyo will never get old: There’s always some corner of Tokyo that you’ve never visited before, or at the very least haven’t seen in a long time. Way cool.
- Public transit doesn’t suck: I don’t mind the trains at all as long as I have a full iPod. Navigating the underground took some getting used to, but with the right resources it’s a breeze.
- Finding Jobs are Tough: After flirting with full-time freelancing writing, some gigs dried up and I’m left browsing for more jobs. On the plus side I have more time to devote to studying Japanese (and some programming as well).
- Japanese study requires serious time invested: I’ve been using Smart.fm as my main study tool, but I need more speaking opportunities. And I’m going to start using Lang8 for writing output.
- Just like in China, the expat trap is wide open: There are a huge amount of expats here in Japan, and if one wanted to it would be very easy to just drift in and out of gaijin circle-jerks and not really fully experience Japan. I figure that as my Japanese vocab expands so will my sphere of friends. I mean really, what percentage of the local population can converse in English? 5% maybe? I found this out at the Make Meeting this past weekend. So many questions and so few words to build them with…
- Dog walkers are the new taxi drivers: When I was in China, I got to practice a lot of Chinese speaking with taxi drivers. In Japan it seems that the biggest opportunity for conversation comes when I walk my dog. “Yes, yes, I know he is kawaii. Is your dog a female by any chance?”
- Sumo is awesome. Like, really awesome.
- I need to focus more on what’s important: I’ve been trying to fill my time with too much of the wrong things. While making new websites is kind of addictive it doesn’t do me much good right now. Neither does twitter. I’ll continue to write for the sites that pay me. And every now and then I’ll add something to 2JPN, or make a post here or on DS Ninja. But for now I’m gonna cut this short and get back to some study.
at Tokyo Barcamp
Photo by Jim Grisanzio
