by Patrick Rial
Landing in Tokyo to the sounds of the jet engines furiously reversing their thrust signaled a new beginning for this first year Kanagawa JET. Ahead lay Japan - the Far East, further east than the American East Coast, even further east than the Middle East - and it was wondrous. I knew that I was going to a prefecture called Kanagawa. I knew nothing about the place, other than what I had gleaned from the prefectural web site. On that site I found that Kanagawa is purportedly a very interesting place to visit with many unnamed attractions, and that its citizens were too busy enjoying the innumerable attractions to waste any time on developing a decent web site that actually divulged some real information.
Upon arriving in Kanagawa I was taken to my apartment and left to enjoy it. I was thrilled to discover that this apartment building was recently renovated and thus had thick, modern walls that would allow me to blast my mind-numbing eighties hair metal music at obscene levels, all the while jumping around the apartment in my underwear with air guitar in hand. However, besides the air guitar, the apartment had few amenities. There was a child-sized futon that doubled as my chair when I rolled it up and put it against the corner. I had also neglected to bring any towels and somehow kept forgetting to buy one on my shopping trips to Sagami-Ono and Machida. Thus, I was left drying myself with a dishrag and trying to have my washcloth double as a kind of sponge. These were all things that I did not mind too much, because I knew that with a little time and some money I would be able to make things work for the apartment.
There was one area where money did not provide a quick fix: cooking. I am sadly an atrocious cook. For the last year I have probably eaten less than eight meals, including breakfast, in the comfort of my own home. I took a trip to a local ramen shop down the block. There, I was hailed as a friendly foreigner and regaled with gifts of raw eggs and fish with their heads attached. My stomach indicated to me that it would not tolerate any more of these "adventures in dining" without some due warning, so I decided to give cooking on my own a shot. Unfortunately, the only thing that I can really do correctly is rice. I have tempura a shot, but when the oil started to pop and splatter onto my face, sending me screaming across the room, I knew I was in trouble. Grilling fish proved to be another problem as I discovered that you only have a very short period of time from when you buy the fish to when you eat it. Luckily, I found some peanut butter and jelly at one of the local supermarkets, so I eat my dinner huddled in the corner of my apartment, worried that some Japanese food might jump out and try to kill me if I even think about making it.
WIth all these struggles, I am still optimistic. I did not come to Japan because I thought it would be easy. I came to become a ninja.