My First Week In Japan

On the First day itself.e. on Sunday, my arrival day, I had to go for searching apartment. I had only one week of booking in Hotel. In Japan the apartments are quite costly. You must search hard for getting a good one and cheap one. Houses in Japan are much different than in India. Japan is earthquake prone country, so their houses are made of wood. Depending on the area the rent of apartment varies from 45k yen to 120k yen per month. This does not include any of the furniture. So you need to buy things like washing machine, microwave, TV, chair, table, bed, Internet etc. If you are lucky you will get lights, AC/heater with apartment. But if it is not there then you will have to buy it. There are 100 yen shops from where you can buy all utensils and daily required things. If you intend to stay for short term then, you won't be able to get apartment as it needs at least 6 months contract.

There is key money and advance/gift money involved in this. Key money you may or may not get back depending on the cleanliness condition of house when you are leaving apartment. But gift money is off course GIFT! The room above shows tatami (chatai in India). There are local agents available like Mini Mini (Unfortunately you need to know Japanese to communicate with these people).

There are furnished apartments as well like Leo Palace(English site). Here you will get all required furniture.

I have recently shifted to apartment having 3 rooms. There are 2 bedrooms and one hall cum kitchen. As weather here is quite cold, we have a gas connection for hot water going to every tap. Thankfully I had one friend in Japan who had already taken this apartment on rent. Its about 15 min walk from my office.

The left top photo shows my company building in japan. On my first day in office, I met lot of Japanese people from my client side. Also exchanged Meishi (business card) with all Japanese dialogs. It was a different experience. I had induction in Japanese which was hardly understandable because of their high level of Japanese. The HR guy was really helpful and he helped me in reading hard kanjis...rather he just told me the meaning so I could solve paper based on induction. After that I had to introduce myself to more than 50 people in the hall through a small speech (off course in Japanese). I liked speaking in Japanese and enjoyed that day!

The work culture here is very different from in India. In Japan, all the people whether senior or junior sit in one hall which is not having any kind of partition. Very senior people have separate table. The office space is also very normal one and there nothing posh as such. Basically these people don't have to show off about there work or they don't feel that having such a posh office is a necessity. They are more focused on their work. That's the difference!

The Japanese people work very hard and party harder. We had welcome party on weekend. We went for Bowling. The cans you see in left photo are not of beer! Its Green Tea! Green tea is very famous drink in Japan. They drink it cold and hot as well. The beer part was after this. We went to Japanese bar where off course every one had beer! I thought we will stop after having beer, but I was wrong it was just starter! After that they had Osake-Japanese wine made from rice. One thing I have noticed is, Japanese people in general don't become friendly very soon, you need to build the relationship. But I would also like to mention that Japanese people from my office are much friendly and easy to talk with.

Travelling to Japan

Being my first travel abroad, it took me some time to figure out all the required things. Considering weather in Japan, I had to buy lot of thermal wear and lot of other things. Just could not miss to buy ACHAR, CHATANI, READY MIXES FOR UPMA etc. My flight was Singapore Airlines from Mumbai to Singapore and then Singapore to Tokyo. Left Mumbai at 6th Jan 12:45 pm. I had a halt of 3 hrs at Singapore Airport, so roamed around the airport. It was so big!! There are lot of shops and you can shop till you drop!Also there is a movie theatre inside...if u have a very big halt u can watch movies there!

-Limousine Bus stop at airport.
I reached Tokyo Airport at 7am morning local time. So it must be 3:30am midnight in India. Thankfully I could sleep for sometime in plane. Custom's person must have found my face so innocent that he did not even ask for opening my bag, though I told him that I have some gifts. After going through Immigration check and customs I came out and inquired about train and bus towards hachioji. The train was after 35 min and Lemousine bus to hachioji was after 1 hr, but there was lemousine bus after 10 min for Shinjuku. So decided to go to Shinjuku by Bus. From Shinjuku I took train to hachioji. I reached hotel at around 11:30am local time. My hotel was close from station, but I preferred to take taxi considering my baggage. Minimum rent for taxi in japan is 660 yen, thats what I had to pay.

Japan is much more advanced country than India. Tokyo is supposed to be costliest city in the world. In Hachioji I got a room in Marroad Inn hotel which was around 7x9 where hardly a bed, table and a chair is fitted in the room. You just have some space between bed and table to walk 4 or 5 steps. Rent for this was 7840 yen (Currency Converter)per day.