Adapting to Japan and its' lifestyle

Well it has been two weeks being in Japan and boy has it felt like I have been here for months now. I am getting use to the weather (hot, humid, rainy ><) and all the people around. I kind of like having all the people around the place all the time, kind of makes things lively. The food restaurants are great too, because they are open all the time and convenient stores are open 24hrs too, so you can get food and drinks all the time. If you don't know already, the convenient stores in Japan are 10x better than the US because of the food they have, not hot dogs and junk food, but actual good food =).

Now that I have started work, I have not really done too much in the first weeks except doing PC training and meeting people and going out. Of course no drinking involved =P. I have also been looking for housing and found a great place to live in Roppongi in a brand new mansion (aka apartment). Here is the link to the apartment that I will be living in: http://www.apartments.jp/roppongi/index.html. It is in Japanese, but there is English translations on some of the pages. I was debating on living on either the 15th floor or the 9 floor, but the view on the 15th floor was in a bad direction compared with the 9 floor. The view from the 9th floor is beautiful and encompasses Tokyo Tower and Roppongi Hills (priceless). All of you coming to visit will be glad you stayed at my place. Finally, I found out that I will be working on Nikko/Citi joint venture on the investment banking side. It sounds as though I will be working quite a bit, but oh well at least I get paid for overtime here.

See some more pictures other than the ones below at http://picasaweb.google.com/yamamotohenry.

This is our office sign in front of the building.

Our building from the bottom looking up. We are in this whole building and our FSG floor is on the 12th.

Oh, I forgot to mention that since I have been here I have experienced two big natural occurrences in mother nature. One is this typhoon (named typhoon 4) that riped through the south/west of Japan and dumped lots of rain here in Tokyo. I went out the other day and my shoes got all wet all the way to my socks.....that was a bad feeling.

Also, here is the other natural occurrence....a ~6.0 earthquake that hit north of Tokyo. Even in Tokyo I felt the earthquake in my hotel room for a good 2mins. Dang it was pretty freaky feeling the whole hotel sway around, especially being on the 15th floor, which makes the feeling even worse. But overall, I can say that I survived the typhoon and earthquake =).

I meet up with my former senior at KPMG, Tomoko Ogue. We went together to IKEA to look for some furniture for my apartment. IKEA here in Japan is the exactly the same as it is in the US and maybe even bigger. Same layout of a maze and down at the bottom getting a cart and looking for all the furniture that you picked upstairs and wrote on your card. Prices are reasonable, but not super cheap and shipping is about $100 for up to 30 items any size...not a bad deal.

I meet up with Miharu and her friends for dinner. We had some really yummy Yakitori and a few drinks.

Meeting up with Yuko and her friend for some shopping and eating. Of course I had to try out the Kaiten Sushi.

Pictures of the Kaiten Sushi from the inside. Looks good, huh. Hurry up and come and visit and I will take you to one.

Dang, do you see how much Yuko friend ate.....about double what I did. He must of been hungry. Even though he ate that much, his bill was about $24 US dollars. Not bad at all.

So I hear that some weird people hang out in Harujiku, so I had to check it out. Yeah, there are some weird people there. Check out the people below and how they dress.

I guess this is where they buy their clothes from.

This is all the people I am talking about in Japan. Just take a look at this street in Harujiku, Takeshita street. Wow...what do you think, a bit crowded?

I also visited one of the new places in Japan in a effort to revamp Roppongi. In my last post you might of seen some pictures of Roppongi Hills, this is Roppongi Tokyo Mid-town. It is very upscale and beautiful.

Picture of the building that Mid-town is in.

Of course there is a Starbucks here, like every corner in Japan. I guess some things are the same as the US.