What up players. I started writing this from my tiny hotel room in a building attached to a train station pretty close to my office in Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. It is 4am and I have been up for hours. It is my first night here, and I forget that it usually goes like this. Breakfast/civilization starts around 6am so I am just killing time at this point, and what better way to kill time than reflection.
This is now my 4th time in Japan. When I tell people how often I’ve been here I sometimes think they perceive me as some kind of weeb or that I know everything about Tokyo/etc but actually when I’m here I’m in random small towns that no overseas tourist would ever stop in. I go on the train and I am the only non-Japanese person. I go to the grocery store, pharmacy, restaurants, parks, and it is all the same. In a country that is so hot for tourism, I am in a part of the country where there is literally none. Just an occasional expat or military guy since there is a base sort of close, or maybe one of my coworkers on assignment here as well. I think the closest touristy thing to me is like a Snoopy Museum but even that is like 30 min away. I guess Yokohama is kind of close but idk if tourists actually go there.
In some ways, it is kind of refreshing. An “authentic” experience. But in others I think I am just causing stress and kind of inconveniencing the people here when I am google translating that I need a bag for my groceries and I have no idea where to get it because its not in the self checkout line and they don’t know even the slightest bit of English to even just know the word “bag.” Not their fault btw and I felt so bad I trained myself to memorize the word for it (bukuro) to avoid further embarrassment. Also- hard to really get accustomed to the area I am in because of how busy I am with work when I’m here.
I wake up around 5:30am, get ready for breakfast at the hotel when it opens at 6:30, hop on the train at 7, get off and walk to a bus stop that takes us to campus at 7:15, and am sitting at a desk in my office at 7:30. From 8am-8pm, I am in meetings. After that I do that whole travel process in reverse, and then have to figure out something quick for dinner because I have a meeting with my US team at 9:30pm, and just got back to around my hotel around 8:45. That is my schedule from Monday-Friday, but I skip the late meeting Friday night (Friday AM US time) for my own sanity. Then after that, I wake up Saturday morning and remember I am in Japan and have to plan some packed weekend to do something fun. Pretty tiring overall, but I do love the weekend here. Trains and food and sightseeing and all on the company dime is a wonderful feeling.
The Japan-United States work connection works great if executed correctly because it basically utilizes an entire 24 hour day. While Japan is awake, the US is asleep, and vice versa (13 hour time difference currently). So when things are hot, someone in either country can continue to work on something. The downside to this for me is that I cover 12+ hours working in the office and then at night my team needs an update on it all before they start their day, which means it just takes more time away from my day.
I think the way I grew up and my relationship with food + having a huge budget to spend on food everyday + the favorable exchange rate + the inability to have time to sit down and eat dinner somewhere because I am constantly working really fucks me up lol. Tokyo can be a bit expensive and push the limits of my budget, but on weekdays I literally could have dinner anywhere in these small towns and have an incredible meal but I can’t because there is no time to. So instead I get some quick Japanese curry from the Coco Ichibanya or an assortment of conbini or grocery store food to eat in my hotel room which just doesn’t feel right. Once or twice I just told my team straight up I was skipping the night meeting because I needed to enjoy a nice meal sitting down in a restaurant.
My breakfast was usually at the hotel, which was not bad and honestly a great way for me to try local stuff because these hotels are not typically used by non-Japanese folk. See pic below of a whitebait salad I would have like everyday (sorry ripped from the internet because I didn’t take a pic but yes those are lil boiled fish and let me just say I am a big fan of breakfast salad).
Lunch I would have to eat in our company cafeteria, which is subsidized and I think the max amount I ever spent was like 900 yen ($6). With a food budget of 11,000 yen (about $70), knowing I had so much left every evening that I couldn’t use really got to me. It was like fomo but for great food. I would think about this constantly lol. One time I went out to dinner after my meeting at 10pm and that just made me feel terrible (tummy full in bed) also.
Because of where my office is, there are 3 main places where I can stay that are just at different parts of the train line. All three are pretty different but also all have some kind of secret underground scene featuring scantily dressed women and guys in suits with headsets walking around the streets. I brought this up to my old boss who has since retired, and he let me know that all of these locations are on the route from Yokohama (port city) to the inland, so a lot of military would come into Yokohama, then take the train in to these towns to get some butt (including American military men). Definitely a sketchy part of Japan that I am not sure people get exposure to, but it also results in some cool, weird restaurants or bars that I can hit on occasion that may or may not be affiliated.
Aside from that part, I do love my lil towns. Imagine the concept of a 15 minute city except here it’s actually only 5 minutes and it’s not just the biggest cities that are able to enjoy this luxury. Literally everything you need is right in one place so you don’t have to go far, even if you sometimes want to. If I decide to head to Tokyo, it’s about an hour train into Shinjuku which honestly isn’t bad. I had a day last year where I was able to leave work at 5pm and head straight to Tokyo to hang out which was pretty nice.
Working where I do, there is always an option to push for an assignment in Japan for a few years (min 2). When I’m in the US, it’s something I legitimately consider, and then I go back on a business trip and am reminded at how hard it sucks working this much lol. But as I am sitting on my couch back in Detroit rn I think about how it would be cool and if I have a kid them being able to live there for a lil and experience another culture would be a cool thing. I attribute a lot of who I am to having lived overseas for a time and my numerous travels and multicultural upbringing, and ngl I am mildly concerned about my own ability to provide that experience to my future kin considering my lack of family in the area and generally just my own ability to embed culture into a lil guy. But ultimately I think will be fine I just be getting paranoid. But also can’t deny a lil brown baby partially growing up in Tokyo would be sick as hell.
During my roughly 16 days in Nippon, I was able to carve out two weekends of fun. Like I mentioned earlier, I traditionally put a lot of pressure on myself to go ham and do things at risk of not taking advantage of the “free” vacation. Or at least that was the case the previous 3 times. This time was different.
Being there so often took the burden off my shoulders to have to do anything. I just kind of had some general idea of things to do, and went where the wind took me. My first Saturday I took a train to the ocean, took a monorail to a giant Buddha in Kamakura, watched the USMNT World Cup game on the beach, then zoomed up to Tokyo where I accidentally joined a hoop session in Shinjuku for like 2 hours playing with a bunch of Chinese dudes who would mostly just argue in mandarin in between plays. I wandered around the rest of the day, had a bunch of great food, and went home. The next day, I woke up early to watch game 5 of the NBA finals at a coffee shop in Shibuya, and literally wandered around the entirety of the rest of the day, and had dinner and explored a bit in Yokohama. Maybe my favorite two days in Tokyo ever.
The next weekend I transferred hotels to Tokyo, and just explored neighborhoods I’ve never been to. I thought it would be fun to get my hair braided, so I got cornrows in Harajuku and watched the Japan destroy Tunisia in their World Cup game with my braider dude, followed by getting some insane Thai food. My last day I went to a fish market at 7am and got omakase at 8am, before heading to the airport around noon. Life is so much more chill without expectations or burdens. We all need to wander more. Numerous times I found myself just kind of knowing where I was going without a need for google maps, almost feeling like some kind of local, with no true goal other than the goal of experiencing whatever lied ahead. It was awesome. It's hard to feel that feeling for me sometimes back home, because I love being comfortable at home.
I’ve been home for about 2 weeks now with even more time to reflect. It’s the Fourth of July and all I want to be is just home, and that is where I am spending most of my time. Giggles hangs out with me like 95% of the time. I am watching so much soccer to get me through the rest of the summer, and love that it is also an excuse to stay home. I am outside and inside and cooking and cleaning and hosting and gardening and working and it feels great. I always tell people- summer in Detroit is different. If it was like this all year I don’t know why anyone would ever leave. I do miss trains tho lol.
"I accidentally joined a hoop session in Shinjuku for like 2 hours playing with a bunch of Chinese dudes who would mostly just argue in mandarin in between plays." Love the imagery here! And shoutout to trains!