A Holiday in Nagoya

My phone rang around 10:30pm Wednesday night. It was Michitaka. He wanted to know what time I was boarding the train the next day so he could pick me up at Nagoya station.

"Well..." I hesitated as I calculated how long it would take me the following day to pack, go to the bank, eat a sandwich, buy headphones and make it to the train station. "1pm." I decided.

I awoke the following afternoon at 1:36pm and called Michi to apologize and reschedule my departure estimate. I showered, packed, and made a break for the train. It was nearing 3pm and I'd been trying to make it to Citibank all week to cash my salary cheque. Banks in Japan, you see, close at an inconvenient 3pm. No exceptions. I don't know much of what goes on in the morning, but I get the impression that they're only open a few hours per day and spend the rest of the time counting their piles of money and watching the video footage of me outside, banging on the doors with a disappointed expression on my face.

The past two days I had made it to the bank between 3:00 and 3:10pm. The same woman greeted me through the glass door with an apologetic expression on her face, motioning to the sign that clearly explains, in English, that they close at 3pm. On Wednesday, thinking that I didn't understand, she brought me out a brochure explaining, in English, that banks in Japan close at 3pm. No exceptions.

So, today, my train pulled into Umeda station at about 3:00pm and I bolted for the bank. The elevator was waiting for me as I proceeded to CityBank's 7th floor entrance. Again, the same apologetic woman greeted me from behind the locked glass doors. She made that international facial expression of pity given to someone you've witnessed fail at something time and time again. But this time, however, I was ready with a lie.

I sadly told her, in broken Japanese, that I teach at an Elementary school everyday until 2:30pm and run to the bank but can never seem make it. Yes, blame the Japanese children, but don't ask for any favors... just tell your sad story. That's how things work here. And my story checked out - I arrive at roughly the same time everyday and had obviously been running.

She looked genuinely concerned for me and asked me to wait a minute. A minute turned into six, but soon enough, the security guard accompanied her to the door as they let me in, ushered me to the counters and cashed my enormous salary cheque.

Ryan - 1, Incovenient Japanese Bureaucracy - many, many, many more.

I got another call from Michi around 3:30pm asking if I'd left yet. The blaring upbeat music in the background made it obvious that I hadn't. My headphones had stopped working on my jog the night before and I had to buy some cheap replacements at Osaka's biggest electronics department store.

Yodobashi Camera absolutely obliterates Future Shop when it comes to electronic shopping. It's floor after floor of endless gadgets and accessories under bright lights, blaring music and enthusiastic announcements in various languages. And somehow, every last corner of its eight or so floors is packed full of busy consumers with that spend-spend-spend attitude typical of Japanese department stores. This place must pull in billions upon billions of yen.



But what I like about Yodobashi Camera is the tourists. It's the only place in Osaka, other than the airport, where you're guaranteed to find non-Japanese people with luggage. I've never checked to see what's there in the guidebooks, but it must be listed as the top thing to see in Osaka because every time you go, you encounter old wide-eyed overweight foreigners, clutching their bags and waddling towards the exits as they attempt to process the chaos going on around them.

After the successful purchase of my headphones, I made my way to Shinosaka station to catch the shinkansen (Japanese bullet train). The shinkansen, the world's first high-speed train, hurls passengers across Japan's Honshu island at speeds of over 300 kilometers per hour. A journey that once took days, such as Osaka to Tokyo, is now condensed into under 2.5 hours.

My destination, today, was Nagoya, Japan's fourth-biggest city and home to the global automobile conglomerate, Toyota. I was going to visit my former Japanese teacher and his wife who had recently returned to Japan from a two-year hiatus in sleepy Halifax.

Nagoya, by shinkansen, is barely an hour away. The time, along with the scenery, flew by. Watching out the window is nice, but the train goes so fast that it mostly just looks like this:



It was early in the evening by the time I arrived in Nagoya. I was greeted at the station by Michitaka and Toyoko.



Michi and Toyoko are extremely pleasant individuals that I had the opportunity to get to know last year in Halifax. I used to meet Michi weekly for a Japanese/English language exchange and business discussion. I still keep in contact with them and we met up again when I visited Canada in the summer. Their English had skyrocketed! They told me that they would be moving back to Nagoya in the fall and I made a promise to come visit them before I leave Japan.

As I mentioned earlier, Nagoya is the fourth-largest city in Japan and is the heart of the Toyota Motor Corporation. Actually, the city lives off of Toyota. In Toyota City, one of Nagoya's suburbs, I'm told that it's difficult to find someone who is not directly employed by the company. Have you ever wondered where all that money is going from the purchases of Tercels and Tauruses? Well, the answer is Gucci shops and Louis Vuitton bags sporting small dogs. And, as I soon found out, streets so clean you could eat off of them.



Michi and Toyoko brought me high up into a building where the city sights were inspiring. Japanese cities, even dirty Osaka, look so efficient and functional from high places. Traffic moves smoothly and there are lights and neon signs as far as the eye can see.

As I had previously informed them of my love for katsudon (a Japanese pork & rice dish), Michi took me to a restaurant famous for its miso-flavored katsudon (yes, that's miso as in miso soup - it's a flavor here). The restaurant's logo was of a giant, obese pig whose flab was bursting out of his clothes. This one would certainly discourage self-conscious eaters in the old country, but it's fine for Japan. The restaurant had some kind of grinded sesame powder that made the meal more delicious than one would guess from my expression in the below picture.



Before dinner, Toyoko left to meet her friends to go watch stand-up comedy (?) but we were going to meet up with her again later. Michi took me on a tour of Nagoya's bar and restaurant centre and to an izakaya called Yamachan (below). Yamachan had delicious wings, of a spice mix that I had never before tasted.

We drank beer, discussed the English-teaching and various business plans. Michi is getting ready to open his own English school in Nagoya and I'm really excited about it. He offered me a teaching job for down-the-road, and although I'd like to, teaching in Japan is kind of over for me. We made a few business deals and planned out some future joint Canada-Japan ventures that are surely going to make us both very wealthy. Eventually, Toyoko and her friend Tomoko showed up and joined us for some drinks. The alcohol threw me into high-confidence Japanese language mode and we carried on conversation for the rest of the night in only Japanese. I think they should serve beer in language schools. Oh, and dancing establishments.

After getting back to their apartment, snacking and socializing for an hour or so, the Japanese went off to bed a little after midnight. Ryan, on a very different sleep schedule, stayed up to update his blog. It's unsure whether he's going to be able to get to sleep tonight, but he should hope so, as he's been informed that he will be woken up very early to go to a famous Nagoya coffee shop. Ryan briefly tried to reflect on the last time he'd woken up in the morning. He couldn't remember. But hey, live a little... we're only in Japan once, aren't we?