1st week at japan

it has been a week at japan and yes, i do miss everyone and everything about singapore. gradually i am starting to appreciate the tiny little bits of singapore that makes me feel comfortable. in singapore, it doesnt really matter how late i am home because i know my streets will be well lit and i will be safe. but here in japan, the sun sets super early. so the sky turns dark pretty fast. at around 7pm japan's time, the road leading to my dorm is already dark. and the total number of street lamps along the way up to my dorm is 2 only. pathetic isnt? so some parts of the roads are really dark, no light at all. so i do make it a point to be back at my dorm before my dinner serves at the dorm ends, which is at 9pm.

weekdays are pretty boring. it is just the normal daily routine of waking up to go to work, stay in the lab for almost the whole day, go back to dorm, sometimes go to the nearby supermarket for some grocery shopping, head back to dorm for dinner and rest. nothing exciting or worth mentioning for my weekdays.

yesterday was my first weekend in japan and i went over to chiba, the city area to watch angels and demons. yes, it is one of my highly anticipating movie of the year. i was waiting anxiously for my favourite part in the book and it was not shown in the movie. damn it! so disappointing. and it is really very costly to watch a movie at japan. a student price student cost me 1300yen, which is approximately S$20. crazy! so we should STOP complaining in the rise in the movie tickets, because it is so much cheaper to watch movies in singapore than japan. i din have much time to walk around chiba because the movie and lunch took most of my afternoon away. i was hoping to capture some city landscape on my holga in the day but it was a super cloudy day yesterday. sucks! there will still be chances ya.

it cannot be considered as a culture shock for working in japan. we are all asians. more or less there will be similarities. their work space has this open concept, which is absence in singapore. in spore, each employee has their own working space but here, everyone works in a big table and the only division between each other is the CPU. haha. so basically if i lean a little backwards, i will be able to see what my neighbour is doing. haha. i realised they place lots of emphasis on safety. i am not sure if it runs in all the japanese companies or because i am working in a chemicals research centre. but i have monthly safety meeting to report on safety matters in my centre and at other plants. to end the meeting, we have a short group discussion on HAZOP. haha. dont be deceive by the japanese drama. we dont do morning exercise together everyday before the start of the work. instead we have this team meeting at 9am sharp every morning to report on important matters and tasks that individuals are going to complete for the day. yes, task-orientated.

one thing that i may have some difficulties in is japanese are all super punctual for work. if the meeting is going to start at 9am, it really begins at 9am. and their transportation has timetable, that shows the arrival time for the buses at the bus stop. it is damn accurate although the some timings are quite weird like 1757hr. so i guess it is in their blood to be punctual. so far, i have not been late. so let's keep up the good work girl!

there are bound to be some difficulties in adapting to the life here. luckily the japanese were super helpful. when i first moved into the dorm, i couldnt connect to the internet although my cables were connected correctly. i tried to look at the guide CD but everything was in japanese. so i went over to seek help from my neighbour. he, his friend and the dorm in charge were super nice. they came over to my dorm for 2 nights to try to fix it for me. finally on my 3rd day, i got the net up. and the female neighbour just popped by to pass me some walnut brownies, cake and oranges that her parents bought for her. haha. nice!

one week has past and 8 more weeks to go. i do not have any major complaints about my stay yet except that sometimes the loneliness is unbearable. i do make friends with some japanese along the way. and i am sure things will only get better. miss everyone at home and thanks for letting me made this selfish decision back then. love you all!