Establishing normalcy

My alarm clock is beeping and my phone is playing a cute song turned annoying. I wake up to a room with dry, stale air. I kick my blanket off and take two big steps to my alarm clock and turn it off. Then I plop back into bed and re-set the alarm on my phone for 8:15 AM so that I can squeeze in 15 more minutes of sleep.

And the sweet 15 minutes pass by. I had dreamt about something but don't remember what it is. In defeat, I sit up and stare sleepily at the wooden floor. Slowly, I put on my slippers and make my way over to the sink by taking 7 steps. My eyes flinch as I turn on the fluorescent light above the mirror and once my eyes adjust to it, I see my sleepy self in the mirror. I laugh at myself and scratch my stomach as I begin to wash up.

Susan knocks on my door at 8:30, telling me that it's time to go.

"Give me twooo more minutes, I need to find a pair of socks," I tell her.

I frantically search my suitcase for socks. I know that I should fold my clothes and arrange it neatly in my suitcase but figure that I'll do it after doing the laundry.

Susan and I walk to the Shin-Egota station to take the Oedo Line, a subway train. We rush down the stairs, touch wallets (with our Suica cards inside) to the card detector and hurry down the stairs. Once we reach the bottom, we frantically check the arrival time for the next subway train-- 8:54. We had just missed it by a minute.

Once the train arrives, it's packed with commuters. Recently, Susan and I have been good at getting into cars that had space for us to get into-- before, we had to make space, as everyone did when there as a packed train.

Soon enough, we arrive at the Higashi-Nakano station. We get off the subway train and proceed to go up five flights of stairs to go to the JR Line part of the station, where we take the Chuo Line to the next station over, Nakano. From there, we taken the Chuo-Sobu Line for 20 minutes to the Musashi-Sakai station. We rush out of the train and hope that the line at the bus stop isn't long. Twice, we had gotten there too late when the line was too long. We couldn't board the bus so we had to take the taxi by grabbing two other people. We had met another foreign exchange student, Ah Song, by our emergency taxi rides.

Japanese class begins at 10:10 AM. We usually arrive with 10 minutes to spare. We walk into Honkan, the main building where all the classes are held, and walk up three flights of stairs. We arrive in our classroom, tired from our morning excursion. It had taken an hour and a half to arrive at school.

Since it's a Wednesday, we have our four hour long core class at 3:10 PM. After Japanese class ends at 12:40, we grab some rather bland tasting lunch from the cafeteria. Then we lounge around in the library where the internet's fast and the air conditioning is strong.

Then we go to class and sit through a two hour lecture, then a two hour film.

After all that, an entire mob of us wait at the bus stop, exhausted from a long day.

And that is the routine.

Everything is becoming familiar. I don't need to think about what train to take, what side of the platform to wait at, what platform I should be at, or if this train goes here or there. My eyes have adjusted to the complicated looking (but not really complicated) map of the train routes and I've learned to read the kanji for many of station names.

It still doesn't feel like Japan. Perhaps I'm in denial or I'm speaking too much English (I suspect that it's the latter).

I walk into the market and check out at the register, repeating the amount that I was told as I hand my money over and then mutter a quick "arigatou gozaimashita" before walking out of the store.

I veer left when walking down the street and lower my head while saying, "Sumimasen, gomen-nasai" when I'm in someone's way.

I've picked up the superficial cultural things, with respect to how I should act when, when to say "excuse me," "thank you," "I'm sorry" without looking too much like a foreigner.

And home is starting to feel like home. I sigh with relief when I arrive at home, just the way I do after a long day of classes in San Diego. I've acknowledged that for now that I have a home here but my mind isn't acknowledging that I'm in Japan. Still.