Class Has Begun (But You Don't Get to Hear About It)

So, I didn't do any blogging yesterday, thanks largely to laziness (and tiredness, to a certain extent). Quick recap of yesterday: I wasted the earlier part of the day doing very little, then I went off to try to find my course building around 6 PM or so. The location had been (fairly abruptly) changed from somewhere in the Shibuya district, which is pretty close to where I am, to somewhere in the Chiyoda district, pretty much in the dead heart of Tokyo. Luckily, it's not far from the central Tokyo station, which is on one of the most important railways in Tokyo, the JR "Yamanote" line. The Yamanote line runs straight from Harajuku station (near where I am) to the Tokyo station, so I don't have to do any transfers on the trip, and it is such a frequently used railway that trains are leaving and arriving about every 2-4 minutes, both directions.

The downside of all of that, naturally, is that busy trains are, well, busy. Especially at peak hours, which I was kind of catching the tail end of at 6 PM. When I first got aboard, I had to stand right up against the door I'd just passed through, since the car was so jammed full. I wanted to take a photo, but it was kind of awkward and seemed a bit rude. I took a hurried photo a few stops later, after the crowd had thinned out a bit. So, imagine this picture, but more so:

Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's a photo from atop the Harajuku Yamanote platform.

And, taken earlier in the night, this was just an intersection in the surrounding Harajuku area. (Not quite "Harajuku proper", maybe just outside it.)

Back to the train ride. I took this a few stops after the earlier crowded car photo; the car had cleared out enough that there was actually sitting room by this point, and so this photo was taken from a seat near an exit.

The rest of the train ride was pretty uneventful. Eventually, I arrived at the Tokyo station. This really is at the heart of Tokyo; or that's the impression I get, anyway. The emperor's palace is pretty nearby, and this station is kind of a nexus for both commerce (of the clothes and restaurant variety) and other forms of transportation. (The streets are much larger than in Harajuku, Shinjuku, and Shibuya, too.)

Actually, I had a bit of a frustrating time getting out of the station. In Tokyo--or at least, on the lines that I've been taking--they make you use your ticket for exiting the station as well as entering it. (This lets them track your distance traveled to make sure you aren't cheating; I believe San Francisco does this too). But, my ticket was giving me an error when I tried to pass through the gate. Thinking I might have paid too little, I tried taking it to a so-called "fare-adjustment" station, but I got an error there too. Soooo, I attempted to get help from one of the guards/assistants on hand, but he spoke English sort of poorly, and I couldn't get across what I wanted to say in Japanese. He seemed confused about where I wanted to go--I was telling him that I just wanted to leave the station, and he'd nod, but then sort of stare at my ticket and go, "Hmmm" perplexedly, then ask where I wanted to go again. It probably didn't help that this particular exit also led toward a subway line (or something); I think he thought I wanted to use the ticket again to travel somewhere else, and for some reason I couldn't make it clear that I just wanted to exit.

He finally let me through, though. I think this took about 15 minutes altogether. I think I may have screwed up my ticket by scratching/tearing it or something, I'm not sure, but so far it hasn't happened again. (Earlier today I lost my ticket on the train ride, but that's another story.)

As you might expect, there are quite a few buses that serve the station too:

This photo isn't of anything in particular, it's about a block or two away from the last.

So far, so good; but at some point, I concluded that the map I was following wasn't quite... adding up. I was using a screenshot from Google maps that I'd placed on my phone; but none of the street names matched anything I saw around me, and I didn't seem any closer to my destination. Yes, that's right, folks, I was lost again. This seems to happen depressingly frequently. Although, lost seems like too strong a word, since I knew I was still pretty close by the station, and I knew how to get back to it easily. Rather, I'd had a bit of a mix-up, which I realized after extensively consulting my map and comparing it to some of the posted maps in the nearby area: I had exited the station to the east instead of to the west, so I was going the exact wrong direction.

This realization made, I about-faced and passed back through/under the station, and had a much easier time finding the appropriate building.

I should note that, as with my last expedition to acquire an adapter, I was walking around an unfamiliar part of Tokyo at night (I think it was around 9 by the time I headed back to the station, all told. I also grabbed some food at a few places, in addition to the getting-lost delay and the struggling-with-ticket-guard delay), but it really seemed very safe. I still kept an eye out and on my guard, of course, but I never felt even remotely threatened/endangered/unsafe. On a related note, in general I've been pleased to see a lot of women walking alone at night without fear in this city; this is due largely to the low rate of violent crime, I think. Something you don't always see in other cities. (Women in Tokyo do have a perhaps higher risk of being groped in, e.g., busy trains and subways, of course; but let's count our blessings where we find them). I'm sure there are seedier areas somewhere--every city has them--but jeeze, compared to the Portland train station at night? There you're SURROUNDED by wackos and freaks; not so with Tokyo's central station, everything seems respectable, safe, and well-ordered. (Hmm, but by "wackos and freaks" do I mostly mean "homeless people?" because that seems awfully class-ist and judgmental. Food for thought...)

(Another thing to remember is that I wasn't there at, say, 11 at night. Maybe it gets worse then. 9 PM is still pretty early.)

Anyway, here's a statue kind of thing that sits in the median of one of the streets near the station.

Some random highrises:

Lastly, almost forgot! In the below-ground shopping center that surrounds the Tokyo station, I found this cute little waffle store that sells waffle "sandwiches" with delicious creamy fillings. I'd picked one up earlier, and I stopped on a bench to munch on it as a celebration for finding my classroom building. This isn't the most flattering picture in the world (horrible lighting), but here's the marion berry mascarpone waffle I had:

And that's all for now. (I seem to be updating this blog mostly one day behind actual events. Ah well. Tomorrow I'll cover how my first day of class went.)