I’m tired. After several days where my greatest accomplishment was leaving my apartment to get food, I had a super busy day to make up for all that. Went to bed around 4:30 or 5AM last night, and had to wake up at 7. Showered and put on a suit and hit the trains for Tokyo. Morning isn’t even that hot, but the humidity and the crowded trains definitely make it uncomfortable. Uchibo trains are especially ghetto, but the Sobu trains were fairly comfortable. Either way it’s not fun wearing a suit in this weather. Had a 10AM interview at a headhunting firm, which went pretty well. I was invited back for a second interview, which I guess is a good sign. I don’t really know about that line of work, though. After that, I snagged the subway to Shibuya, where I walked around a little bit but realized the blazing sun was making things very sweaty, so I ducked into a McDonald’s for some lunch/breakfast. I was already feeling tired. Not a good sign.
Walking further up the road towards Seibu and Loft, I considered seeing a movie because I had 6 hours to kill before my next interview and needed to be inside somewhere cool. Instead I went to this pretty nice internet cafe in the Shibuya HMV building. About 980 yen for a 3 hour day pack, which allowed me to chill out and most importantly take a bit of a nap. The place must be made for salarymen to nap, because the place was really dark and I heard a lot of snoring. Please don’t tell me I’ve become a salaryman. Anyways, it would have been more comfortable, but the reclining chair had some weird springs that made the chair move back and forth like a water bed or something. Even if I moved just slightly, the whole chair would swing a bit. It was almost like being in a hammock but not as extreme. It was nice at first, but got annoying when I was actually trying to sleep.
After my 3 hours was up, I headed to Akihabara to check out the giant Yodobashi. Instead I ended up wandering around and checking out the Crossfield building area, which is actually pretty cool. There’s like a beer terrace that would definitely be nice if I wasn’t wearing a suit and wasn’t running on 3 hours of collective sleep. Wasted some more time inside a bakery/coffee shop, and started feeling really tired, almost dizzy. I figured it was time to move around. Headed to Ebisu about 30 minutes before my next interview, which was good, because it was a longer walk than I had expected and I had to take about 10 minutes to cool off and get dressed. Since the morning I had already taken off my jacket, tie, and had my sleeves rolled up.
After that interview was all said and done and I made my appointment for the second interview, I headed back to the station. Is it just me, or do second interviews this time seem easier to get? 2 for 2 so far. Oh well. Went to Shinjuku to meet up with Mizuki; we were going to hit up some Mexican place but it was crowded so we went to an Indian restaurant in Takashimaya Times Square. Times Square is a really swanky department store, and our seats were on a terrace. First off that is potentially bad because it might be super classy expensive. Second of all there is warning signs because it’s balls hot outside. Luckily, the food was relatively cheap (and really good), and the breeze made the terrace quite nice. Overall a good night after a long day of sweating my balls off all over Tokyo.
Headed back on the train and luckily had a seat the entire way back to Chiba. Good thing too, since at one point there were people packed on, and in this weather that’s got to be uncomfortable. There were some weird troubles at Chiba with the Goi-bound trains, but I got the last one and got home. I’m still super tired, need to sleep, but more importantly need to pack for Seoul. My flight leaves in less than 12 hours and I haven’t started packing. Off to do that. Next blog will probably be from a Korean net cafe, provided I can somehow communicate with the people there.