Now I understand why all the blogs I’ve read about people leaving for Japan stop for the time being after they arrive. I feel like I’ve been through a blender or perhaps a hurricane. Also please forgive me for this super-late entry, I only got internet on my phone today so I finally got all the pictures from my phone to my computer.
This is going to be quite long entry but let me tell you what happened.
The day I had my flight from Helsinki to Nagoya was a would-have-been-a-nightmare-but-it-wasn’t. When I was at the gate and handed over my boarding pass to the flight attendant, the machine beeped red. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. What happened? Why didn’t my boarding pass work? I’m not sure if it was because I’m a member of Finnair, or because I was one of the last ones to board the plane, or if I just got lucky, but I had been promoted to business class much to my astonishment. Apparently they had booked the flight too full.
And so I got my first taste of first class flying in my sweatpants and shirt, with a messy bun and dirty shoes. It was such a bizarre experience. You are handed a class of sparkling wine from Iittala’s Ultima Thule classes as soon as you sit down. You can basically drink and eat as much as you want and you have all the legroom you’ve always dreamed about in crowded airplanes.
Thankfully my seat was superb as well; the seat went all the way down to lying position so I could get my much needed beauty sleep and do my best to adjust into Japanese timezone. I couldn’t sleep very well in the business class so I can only imagine the horror of flying in economy class. The only down-side to this was that I bought and brought my neck-pillow and earplugs for nothing, but I am more than happy to exchange those for first class seat.
The switch from Nagoya to the airplane that took me to Sapporo went really smoothly, and I got my resident card because you get it at the place you first enter Japan. The second I stepped on the Japanese ground I understood the rumors about Japan’s humidity; I was drenched in sweat in just a few minutes. After a quick wash and a much needed change of clothes, the flight from Nagoya to Sapporo took around two hours, and afterwards we took a shuttle bus to our respective dormitories.
I arrived to my dormitory Kita 8 around 3 pm, completely exhausted and starving. Last time I ate had been the breakfast at Finnair flight around 7am. The second we barged through the dormitory doors with our massive bags and eyebags, we were sat down and told to sign a bunch of papers. They also told us the rules of the house. This included that you should take your shoes off at the door and put them in your locker, you leave your umbrellas by the door, you have about a million different ways in which you have to separate your trash into designated garbage bags, and that no boys are allowed into the upper floors of the building. Ever. When you finally got your room there was nothing from toilet paper to towels, so the first night we spend just… managing. I felt like a survivalist. Everyone was too exhausted to go and find a supermarket, and t-shirts were pretty good towel-replacements anyways.
There were so many new rules and so many official papers that we all felt a bit overwhelmed. That was, however, nothing compared to the next day. Bank. Post. University. Insurance. Student insurance. So many thing. So many papers. So many places to go and look lost at. I have no idea how we would have survived without our awesome Japanese supporters (thank you Yuka, Saya, Reiko and everyone else on the team!) who sacrificed a whole day, literally the whole day from the morning until the very evening, to save our asses. They helped us to fill the papers, they translated, found us a place to eat, helped us to get our phones working, finding adapters, finding cables for the internet landline, and finding equipment to our kitchens. They were just amazing, I feel eternally indebted to those kind souls.
But when things settled down, after we got all the official stuff out of the way, things have been just nicer and nicer every day. It’s like you finally get a grasp on your surrounding and you are not just floating along with no fucking clue as to where you’re going. I’ve met some awesome people here and already made some really good friends (that’s you, Franziska and Agne!). Every day you feel a bit more connected to the place, like when you learn where the local supermarket is, you learn on which side of the road to walk on, how the boiler works, you find the right soy sauce out of million different options… It’s the small things that make you feel like a proper citizen.
These past few days we’ve had a lot of free time because the next university thing, the orientation, is next week. We’ve been exploring our surroundings and the city, and spend our days enjoying the Sapporo Autumn Festival which is at Odori Park, not too far from our dormitory. The festival lasts for a few weeks so we’ve been going to almost every day to try different foods, taste Sapporo’s classic beer and enjoy the music, performances and general atmosphere. The Odori Park is located pretty much in the middle of the city, it’s big and easy to find from a map, and the tv-tower is hard to miss even from a long distance, so the place acts as a good landmark for us lost foreigners. Hence also the entry name.
We’ve also visited gorgeous Maruyama Park, prayed to the gods in the traditional Japanese style and got our fortune told. Not that we could read the fortune but I took a picture of it and hopefully, by the end of the year, I’ll be able to tell what it says. Accidentally we also found a good café for rainy days.
All in all, it seems that things are finally settling down for us. The only thing to mess this peaceful schedule of ours – aside from the ever screaming and croaking crickets – will be the soon starting classes but I think by the time they do begin, we all are ready to have some real order in our lives. Even if it’s school.