As I’ve mentioned in the previous post, the day wasn’t entirely over. After being handed the ticket and coupon I wandered through the airport, slept an hour on a bench next to a noisy ad and encountered the first of many odd English signs. “For Adult Smokers Only” was printed on a door; obviously minors have to smoke outside. Obviously. The next part of the diary starts out when I arrived in Sapporo, but it was written the day after.
Sapporo is amazing. Just walking down the streets to the dorm where I was to be lodged (or not?) was enough to make me feel excited. I couldn’t believe it and I think it’s still going to feel surreal for a while.
DK House(the name of the dorm) was moderately hard to find, but luckily I had learned the route beforehand by going through Google Earth. By the time I arrived I thought I’d finally be able to rest, but the manager wasn’t there to check me in(Now that I think about it, the fact that I was 8 hours late and it was around 23:30 might have had something to do with it). Probably noticing the look of confusion on my face everybody helped me; they called the manager, he came, told me to take my shoes off and showed me to my room. You haven’t been to Japan if nobody told you to take your shoes off. So, thanks to the people at DK I was able to sleep indoors last night.
~next day~
My feet hurt. I left the dorm to buy some things I didn’t bring with me from Romania, like soap, shampoo, a towel and so on. First I tried at a 100 yen store, but they don’t sell those there; at least not the one I went to, maybe others have those items, I don’t know. By the way, at the 100 yen store everything is 105 yen. Funny how it says 100 yen in a huge font outside. I suppose it would be a pain to change the sign every time the prices change.
After walking a LONG way I managed to buy what I needed(Thinking about it now, it was an unnecessarily long walk; the store was pretty close to the place I lived, it’s just that I wandered a lot to find it). It happened by accident, really; I was just curious what they sold in “THE DRUG STORE”. I’m both confused and amused at the same time; my face must look funny.
Finding a place that sold soap, shampoo and deodorant wasn’t as difficult as finding a soap that didn’t smell of strawberries, grapes, mango, cake, fluffy kittens or anything else kawaii. I managed to find a “soap” scented soap in the end and I got that. I say “soap” scented because I have no idea what it smells of apart from, well… soap.
So after I took a shower, which by the way is annoying because not only is the right temperature near impossible to find, it also changes every 5 seconds, I went exploring through Sapporo. It’s a beautiful city; stumbling across a small river in Susukino I thought I might see some fish in it. There were, but they weren’t that difficult to spot. Not only were they big and fat, half of them were at least partly white. Some Japanese woman was standing on a bridge and feeding them; no wonder they’re so fat.
As I walked through Oodori Park trying to avoid the guys with the imperial flag (lest I get my very own ‘hoaito piggu go hoam‘) I suddenly noticed a middle aged Japanese woman looking at me with a look of shock and ultimate happiness, as if she’s seen her son for the first time in 20 years. Wat?
I think I was being too full of myself though. Even though I studied Japanese by myself and managed to get somewhere at 400-500 kanji, I can barely understand what people say and can only utter hai, iie and arigato. I suspect it might be the anxiety though. (I suspected correctly, after a while I got used to it and started to understand and speak to a certain extent)
I was supposed to meet a girl I had spoken to for half a year before coming here (let’s call her Aoko for now), but since my flight got cancelled we failed to meet. I wish we had met up, I’m feeling lost; for all the happiness of being here I can’t help but feel alone. (Fun fact, Aoko reprimanded me for not letting her know I arrived safely. For such a small girl she can be awfully bossy.)
Ok, this accounts for my first full day in Japan, however what I’ve missed to mention in this entry is that this was the day I met the guys from Russia for the first time. I didn’t know it then, but these guys would become some of my closest friends there. Not to mention the funny stories I wouldn’t have been able to record had I not befriended them.