Week 1: I made it!

March 29th, 2026

Preface: I do not use any AI to write or enhance my writing. This is all straight from the brain of yours truly. I have been using em-dashes since before ChatGPT was conceived.

I had many worries going on the flight. I woke up at about 6am to get to the Philly airport, a little worried about TSA, because I heard in the news people were waiting for hours at some airports. Luckily, it only took about 10-15 minutes and I was right to my gate. Another worry was my bass—I needed to store it in the flight attendants’ closet, and if they said no, or there wasn’t any room, I wasn’t sure what the backup plan was. This ended up going smoothly as well, and the flight attendant was very nice and immediately let me put my bass in.

Things went about as smooth as they could’ve. The first flight even had free wifi. I had downloaded some episodes of shows and some comedy specials, and brought my Switch 2 with Pokémon Pokopia newly downloaded. These mostly kept me entertained through the second flight (13 hours!), but I also watched some movies on the screen in front of me, namely Knives Out (so much fun, and I love Chris Evans), Mean Girls (can’t believe I hadn’t watched it before, also lots of fun), and Bugonia (...not as fun. Great acting and directing, but very much not my kind of movie. It was labeled as a comedy but was not funny at all. Just sad). I also started playing Pokopia which I have enjoyed so far, but it’s a little slower than I’m used to—a lot closer to Animal Crossing than Stardew Valley.

I did a bit of people watching, too. One lady two rows in front of me watched so much of The Office that she had to have been repeating episodes, because there were only like ten of them on the airplane entertainment system. Another guy in front of me played such a terrible game of chess against the computer that he just turned off the screen and stared out the window for a few minutes.

The last 4 hours of the flight, similar to last time I came to Japan, were rough. I got up plenty of times, but still my only thought was that I needed to be off the plane. Which eventually I got off, and was glad to be done. And then I remembered that customs exist. I was a bit worried because it’s a bit of a process, but again, these worries amounted to nothing, as I got my residence card and went through customs without being asked any questions.

As I was going to the taxi area, someone asked if I needed a taxi, so I said sure, why not. It saved me the hassle of having to go down an escalator with all of my stuff. If this was any other country, I would have said no because I would probably be kidnapped or charged an insane amount of money. Somehow, though, he charged me a pretty normal fee and got me to the house I’d be living at in a decent amount of time. I promise I usually have better survival skills than this. I think.

I briefly met Yoshio, the house manager, and he helped me get my stuff up the stairs. I quickly unpacked and passed out at around 8:30pm. In total, from arriving to PHL to arriving at the house, it took just about 24 hours.

My living situation is pretty nice. It’s about 35-40 minutes away from the school by bus (5 minute walk to the stop, 25-30 minutes on the bus, a couple minute walk to school), which is a bit further than I’d like, but very manageable. It’s a 7 bedroom sharehouse, one of them taken by the house manager Yoshio. I have only talked to him a bit so far, but he seems great and I’m excited to get to know him more. I’ve only heard good things about him from the friend that recommended this place. My room connects to the living room, and is the closest to the entrance and bathroom. It has a bed, night table, table, and 2 closets. Everything a man could dream of.

I have met three of the roommates but not really had time to chat yet. One is moving out by the end of the week, though. There are two people also from Rowan that are going to be living here, one isn’t here yet and moves in on the 31st, and one is here and also moves in on the 31st (she’s currently staying in Yoshio’s extra apartment because someone still has to move out). The one that is here, Artemis (middle name Etsuko, which is what I call her as we met in Japanese class and her middle name is Japanese (and I will probably refer to her as that in the future (nested parentheses! What’s next, semicolons?))), has a good person to go to things with. She arrived the day after me.

The second day was pretty uneventful. I went to 7/11 in the morning for breakfast which was two rice balls, and then fell asleep from 12:30pm-5pm. I went to FamilyMart to have my first Famichiki of the year (my love), and then rested again until I fell asleep. I woke up a lot during the night because I slept half the day. Travel is exhausting.

The third day was slightly more eventful! I met up with Etsuko to go to breakfast and go shopping. I got eggs on toast and then we walked about half an hour to a mall, which wasn’t open for another half hour. I guess I forgot to look that part up. We walked to a nearby park, which I thought would have grass because it was green on google maps, but was just sandy gravel. It did have some trees, though, and was a nice spot to chill for half an hour. I wanted to go to the mall to get a top sheet and soap and shampoo, but ended up getting none of that. There was a soap store but the soap was expensive and the shampoo was not a scent that brought joy. There was also store for home goods, but they mostly only had duvet covers and not sheets, and I ended up just using the duvet cover in my room without anything inside as my top sheet. The mall was fun to do some window shopping in, though. It had an electronics store and a musical instruments store with some beautiful guitars, some of them many thousands of dollars. I felt like I couldn’t even get within 10 feet or I’d end up scratching it and having to pay someone a lot of money.

We got lunch at Sukiya, a fast food chain, and I had one of their new limited time specials, a grilled chicken and spinach curry. If you haven’t had japanese curry before, it is one of my favorite dishes and I would highly recommend it. It was like six dollars and a lovely, easy meal.

After lunch, it was grocery shopping time, and luckily there is a grocery shop less than a two minute walk from the house. Almost everything is very cheap. The strawberries were 4 dollars for about 12 strawberries, which isn’t great, but that’s evened out by the dozen eggs for nearly 2 dollars. Insanity. I got soap for much cheaper than the mall would’ve been, spaghetti, and some snacks and breakfast foods.

It started raining so I had a chill afternoon indoors before going back out to get dinner at FamilyMart. This was when I realized I needed to put a limit on my Famichiki numbers or I would be having 7 a week. 2-3 a week seems like a reasonable amount. I also got a bottle of water, which was for drinking but also had a secondary purpose which was to put soap in. The soap I got was liquid soap in a bag, for refilling a bottle. I did not have a bottle. So now I own a water bottle full of soap.

The next day was rainy nearly all day. In fact, next week nearly every day is going to be rainy. Perfect for peak cherry blossom season. I’m not mad, you’re mad.

During this cold rainy day I thought about my plans to go to Sapporo in a week and a half and realized I didn’t want to go to a colder place. I rescheduled it for late May, which unfortunately costed an extra 200+ dollars (nearly doubling the travel cost) because I had to pay to change the flight and pay extra for a busier time at the hotel. I’m okay with this, though, because I am essentially just paying that extra money to have a much better time. It will be in the 60s with flowers and greenery instead of highs of 50 and looking like winter.

I took a nice evening walk when the rain lightened up and enjoyed walking by the canalside, seeing the beginnings of flowers blossoming and many small dogs. After a bit over an hour, I realized I was exactly back at my house even though I was walking completely aimlessly, and I figured that meant it was time for the walk to be over.

While I was on the walk, I saw an Indian/Nepalese restaurant that had some yummy looking food pictured on the windows. I went back soon after with Etsuko and had chicken Kashmiri curry with garlic naan. The garlic naan had some sort of sauce or something on the inside that was so yummy, and the curry and chicken was absolutely lovely. There’s lots more I want to try from there, I will be going back often.

Next day was sunny, finally! Etsuko and I went to Toyosu, where the campus for Shibaura Institute of Technology is. The school has an exchange partnership with Rowan, so I will be a student of this school for the next semester.

We took the wrong bus (my fault), but it took us in the correct general direction so we only had to walk to the nearest train station and go one stop to end up where we were supposed to be. The campus is only one building, but the surrounding area is absolutely beautiful. It has many trees, already with leaves and the beginning of blooming, and tall beautiful buildings. There’s lots of good looking restaurants surrounding, and I’m excited to explore more of the area.

We took a nice walk, had lunch, and ended up at another mall because I saw a flower shop at the front. We went in and it was a little overwhelming how many stores and things there were, so after looking around floor 2, we decided not to go up and just to check out the pet store on the ground floor. There were some adorable puppies and kittens, which of course I love to look at, but their enclosures are a bit small for my liking, so I hope they get adopted/bought real soon. I think they’re too cute not to, to be honest.

After making our way back to where we came from, we took the correct bus home and I made some spaghetti for dinner. I was going to try to roast some broccoli in the air fryer, but realized I have no clue how this air fryer works so I’m delaying that to a further date.

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early at 7am, just to rest in bed for about two and a half hours. I went to the store and made breakfast, did laundry, lost my sock at the laundromat and found my sock at the laundromat, and took the train to Meguro. It was about an hour away and Etsuko and I were able to catch the tail end of a cherry blossom festival to see some live music. I saw a vendor selling some fruit on skewers so I had a grape one but didn’t realize it came in a cup with sparkling wine. The grapes were nice, the wine was wine.

The cherries down the riverside were pretty, but it was still too early for peak blossom. At home, the trees are about a week behind last year’s schedule, and it seems like it’s about the same here. It was still lovely to walk down the river with them, though.

After walking for a while we decided to get some dinner and tried an Indian place. It wasn’t as good as the one near the house, but still decent. The entire time they were playing music that sounded like it was playing from a record that got ran over by a truck and then ripped in half and glued back together with chewing gum.

The main attraction of the Meguro river around this time is the illuminated pink lanterns lining the sides of the river at night, which while they were pretty, didn’t quite give enough light to be able to see the trees at night. It wasn’t disappointing, but didn’t quite live up to expectations. I may come back later when the petals have had some time to fall and will be on the river.

My muscles hurt and my bones were tired when I got back, so I took a hot bath for the first time in many years. It was lovely, I don’t know why I don’t do that more often.

I had another slow morning on Sunday, and stayed in bed until around 11. I had breakfast-lunch (that’s what I call it when I have breakfast and then lunch immediately after. Other name suggestions welcome), and took off just after 12. I was going to Tama Forest Science Garden, an arboretum in Hachioji, about 1h45m west of where I live. Or at least it’s supposed to be, but I was reminded today that I need to factor in an extra 30-60 minutes to travel times due to my own stupidity.

I got off the first train, and then just couldn’t find the next line I was supposed to be at. It wouldn’t have been all that bad, but I swiped my card because I thought I was at the right area, but realized it wasn’t so I had to leave. But when I tried to swipe to get out, it told me I had to inquire a worker. Only issue was there were no workers on that side of the gate. I tried a few other times to see if it was a fluke, but it seems to not let you go in and out at the same station. So my genius solution instead of trying to find a worker was to take the train at the platform I was at, go one stop away, swipe out at the gate, swipe back in, and take the next train back so I could have a valid swipe out. Is it stupid if it works? …yes? Oh.

Luckily the rest of the trip over went smoothly after that point and I made it to Tama forest in one piece. And I’m glad I did, because it was absolutely beautiful. It wasn’t a very easy hike, and was almost completely uphill, but the views were worth it, and there were so many amazing trees.

Unfortunately, my time got cut short, as I got there just a bit before 3pm and it closed at 4pm. In my spreadsheet (did I mention I have a spreadsheet of nearby arboretums that I want to visit? It’ll come up next week, don’t worry), it said that it closed at 6, so I either got it wrong or it changed. To make me feel better, I’m saying that the hours changed. I had to rush out because I only realized it was closing at 3:50, so I didn’t get to go to the museum or do any gift-shopping or see the second half of the cherry forest. Oh well, just extra reason to go back soon.

I looked around for food near the area, but didn’t see much and figured I would go to Hachioji to get food. Then after looking around for a bit, I decided to just get food at home. I missed my stop and had to take another train back two stops, but otherwise made it back flawlessly, much smoother than the way over. I asked Yoshio for a recommendation for some chicken katsu curry, because it’s not super common unfortunately, it’s usually pork. He gave a recommendation that was real close but it was closed. Bummer. I’ll update when I go there next time.

There isn’t much that has surprised me so far, except some small, unimportant things. For one, people almost exclusively have small dogs. After thinking about it for 2 additional seconds, this made complete sense, as nobody has yards and houses and apartments are tiny in the city. Another thing is that the water pressure is crazy in this house. I don’t think you particularly care about that, but something you might actually find interesting that I didn’t realize was that literally everyone waits for the signal to cross the road even if there are absolutely no cars in sight. Unfortunately, I love jaywalking, so this was crushing news to me. I’ve only seen one person rush through when it was red, but even teenagers on bikes wait, so you know it really is widespread.

That’s about all for this week. It’s been lovely, and I’m excited to see more parks and arboretums/gardens in this upcoming week for my aptly-titled garden week during peak cherry blossom bloom. Unfortunately, the weather is going to be much worse than I’d hoped, with one day being rainy all day, and others cloudy, but I’m hoping to get to at least 3 of the places I’d like to even if I don’t get to all of them.

Until next week. Have a lovely day.
-Dan