The Remix
Woke up this morning…
Got out of bed…
And promptly landed on the tatami covered floor. First words out my mouth. “Damn, must be in Japan.” No more stepping out of bed. It’s all about rolling off the futon. At the age of twenty-six when most Sistah’s I know are talking about rocking the Prada, buying the house, and getting a ring from the man they’ve been “seeing” for the past five years, I’m starting over in a new country, new apartment, new job, trying to remember a hard-ass language.
By my age, Condoleezza Rice had her master’s, Brandy has had a baby, and Alicia Keyes has won over five Emmy’s. In comparison, I’ve had four jobs in four different cities and in the end either hated each and every one of them or was bored to tears. I was single relatively dateless in New York City with a cushy monotonous job watching my life pass before my eyes like a bad PowerPoint presentation. So when the possibility of an all expense paid trip back to Japan to teach English to well behaved Jr. High School students….and get paid for it popped up, the next thing I knew I was kissing the Big Apple good bye and moving all my stuff back home to my mother’s house in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Packing two seventy pound suitcases, a carry-on, and a laptop stuffed backpack, I dumped the corporate life and jumped on a fourteen hour plane to Chiba City.
After an hour and a half bus ride from Tokyo, I arrived at my new home. As the bus crept through the afternoon traffic, I had to wonder how the people got anywhere with all the congestions and not to mention the toll. Move thirty feet? Pay a toll. The streets should be paved with platinum for the amount these people have to pay in order to pull up and stop on what is defined as a freeway (such irony).
Chiba City. Home to a 1,000,000 people and it isn’t really on the map or in a guidebook. The place has its own monorail, international seaport, is about 45 minutes from the center of Tokyo, hosts the biggest mall in Japan, plus a Costco, but you can’t find it. Looked on the Internet and I couldn’t find jack, tried the map, just found a black dot. Had the impression that the place would be a nice suburb, complete with nice front lawns, backyards and the occasional swimming pool. Nah, I’m going to be spending a year in a city that bigger than Manhattan and has more concrete. In 2002, I’m living small one tatami closet on the first floor of what has to be the busiest intersection in place; paying ridiculously little rent in an apartment building that looks like it couldn’t survive another earthquake….
