We made it! After traveling separately for 30+ hours, Nick and I met at the Kyoto train station at midnight on March 3rd.
For the first month and half we are renting a room in a home. We arrived at the house, met our hosts, and were served tea as we were introduced and went over house rules. At 2 am we finally got to lay down in a bed, but at 6:00 am we were wide awake and ready to start the day!
To start the morning, we walked along the Kamogawa (gawa means river in Japanese) to Kyoto University's Institute for Virus Research where Nick will be working in lab. We were introduced to Professor Tomonaga's lab members, and then sent with one of the assistant professors, Makino-san, to register at Kyoto's City/Ward Office and set-up a Japanese bank account. Makino-san graciously spent the entire day leading us around town and communicating with all the government and bank employees for us. By the end of the day we had registered our address in Japan, registered for the national health insurance and pension plan, and opened a Japanese bank account. It was a very productive day!
Nick in front of our house.
View down the street.
View up the Kamogawa
If you want to keep reading, I have a funny story I want to share from our first day: We were at the bank, which was final stop for the day, and were assigned a twenty minute wait time. On our way to the bank I noticed a sweets shop. It was almost 3 pm and we hadn't had lunch, so Makino-san and I decided to run back to the sweets shop and grab a treat to eat while we waited. Nick stayed at the bank. We went into this beautiful shop, they pulled out boxes of samples for us to try, Makino-san explained each flavor, we tried several samples, and we left with a sampler pack. As we were waiting to cross the street to the bank, Makino-san suddenly gasps and exclaims, "Oh no, Nick-san!" I looked toward the bank and saw that the bank had closed and they had pulled down these metal garage-looking doors. We doubled over in laughter imagining Nick's panic as they locked up the bank. We literally laughed all the way around the building as we searched for a way in. We found a side door and were reunited with a very worried Nick-san. Luckily, he was still waiting to be called. Once they called us, the banker made Nick fill out the application form . The easiest way for Nick to fill out the application was for Makino-san write a line on a sample form and Nick copy the line on the real application. He filled out the majority of the form writing Japanese words in the English alphabet, except for one line where he had to write his name in Katakana (Japanese alphabet) which looks like this:
ニコラス パリッシュ. Slowly he copied his name one Japanese letter at a time, and when he had finally written his name, the banker and Makino-san enthusiastically cheered and applauded his good work. (I hope this wasn't a "guess you had to be there story." It was really funny, but I was feeling pretty loopy since it was around 1 am back home.)
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