Becoming a Local

This isn`t my first time in Japan. I`ve backpacked nearly half way accross the country and also spent time living with a Japanese family. The logical thing to do next was...become a local. You never fully understand what a country is like until you go through the pain of becoming a local. Yes, I said "pain".

For a long time I`ve always thought Canada was a relatively simple place to live, both in the financial regard as well as social. Here in Japan, I`m beginning to find out just how true that is. Of course, wanting to study here requires more time than the alotted days on a Temporary Visitor Pass, a visa is necessary. And as expected, the fun stuff begins when you actually manage to get here.

First and foremost is to register as a foreigner. Not to anyone`s surprise, the forms all say "Foreigner Registration" in Japanese but the English translation is slightly different..."Alien Registration". "Alien?", I ask my friend. He says "Yeah, doesn`t that mean foreigner?" I gave him a small explanation on what exactly an "alien" is and boy was he unable to stop laughing. In Japan, either you are Japanese, or you`re from another planet. I am obviously from another planet.

Next came the mandatory National Health Insurance. Why can`t everything be this easy? I filled in only 3 forms and had to wait a good 10 minutes before I was enrolled in medical care. Yay, now I can safely get into accidents.

I also needed a bank account here for, well, banking needs. This happened to be the few hours of my life where I wanted to scream continuously despite me being a relatively calm person. When filling out a form, you have to write everything yourself. Not even the friend standing next to you whom you give full athority to can do it for you. Yet if you make a mistake, you can`t cross it out and pretend life is all dandy. No sir, you have to fill out a fresh form. Given that everything had to be written in Japanese, especially the address, I guess I couldn`t do it perfectly the first time. I won`t mention how many tries...

Everyone of course knows that Japanese cellphones are years ahead in technolgy of their western counterparts. Well, does everyone know that they cost an arm and a leg to buy? If you don`t sign any sort of contract, you are going to be paying out of the arse. I`m talking 50,000￥ or more for an average phone with Softbank. This particular company happens to have cheaper plans for students and gives good discounts if you sign up for a two year contract however. Docomo has the coolest phones around with the coolest and most useless features. I like cool and useless features, so I opted for this company. The plan was slightly more expensive then with the other companies as they don`t have a student discount but the phone itself ended up being realtively cheap and spectacular. What can I say, I`m a geek for technology in Japan. I`ll upload a picture soon.

"Alien Registration", medical, bank, and cellphone were a bit difficult but somehow managable with the help of my dear friend Shinchi who has saved me more headaches than I could count. That`s all right? Nothing left? What about school? Good question.

I never thought much about registering for classes. I mean, they take my test and decide my level and then throw me in a class, right? Not quite. There were several manuals explaning how to register for classes, including deadlines, procedures and whatnot. I thought this was supposed to be the easy part. To my dismay it took me a few days to figure out but in the end I signed up for absolutely everything I could. They said you could drop classes but not add any later, and tuition doesn`t change so why not! Let`s see how it goes.

Next step is to move into the apartment my friend helped me find. Then maybe I can inch closer to becoming a local.

The Restaurant Process

It never really is easy to say goodbye, but we all somehow experience this dilemma at one point or another. Last Friday, my Korean friend Julie, who was to return home the following morning, and I decided to have commemorational party. Now Victoria is a small city, so there's not much selection when it comes to throwing a party. You can take your bunch down to Red Robin, a family restaurant, or you can vie for a more mature option and go with Boston Pizza. The latter was open late, and gave us the option for a reservation at 9:30pm so we went with it.

Come nightfall, we headed there in our various groups of people. Now when you go to a restaurant, there is sort of a process. You go inside the doors, check your reservation, head over to your seats, greet each other and then the most important part...you sit down in preparation of the meal to come. Well you see, we never got past the greeting process and a good portion of our group, about 25 people, decided they were going to stand and continue to converse. This was a mockery of the great restaurant process! How could someone go to a restaurant and not sit down for their meal. Complete blasphemy. Anyway, when you have 25 adults standing around their tables, the area tends to become slightly overcrowded. I noticed as our waiter brought food to a few, he looked as if he wanted to hurl the Thai Chili Pizza he was carrying at our faces. Or at the very least, scream.

Several hours later, as we are all still standing, the last of our group has trickled in to say their goodbyes to Julie and I. We snapped some pictures and shared some hugs and words. All in all, we had a good time as we butchered the sacred restaurant process.

The group outside Boston Pizza:

Introduction

Hey, my name is Muhammad. I'm a University of Victoria student in Engineering going on a year long trip as an international student to Doshisha University in auspicious Kyoto, Japan. I began this blog as a means of sharing the more interesting moments of my excursion.

Welcome to my blog, and I hope you enjoy my stories!