First expedition

Happy late 4th of July! I hope you guys are all in the Hamptons (seriously)...

So yesterday I had an appointment with someone from the French chamber of commerce (CCIFJ) so they could tell me how my job quest was ridiculous since my Japanese level was, well, inexistent. But before you get to the CCIFJ, you have to find it. And here goes my first experience by myself in the subway...

Actually I did well (I left 2 hours in advance to go to a place that was, the reception told me, 20 minutes away). The subway is pretty easy, everything is in English (most of it at least) and when you survived the New York subway system, you can handle any subway.
First can I declare my love to the Tokyo Subway System (not to confused with the Metropolitan Tokyo Rail system, I haven't try that yet. It's another subway company or something, I have to get to the bottom of that. actually, here you go). Anyway the subway is so clean, I think you could trustfully eat sushi on the floor (but you can't do that, it's not polite to eat or drink on the street here). Then when they say the subway will get here at 4:22:45, it gets there at 4:22:45. In the car themselves there's a little map of the line with an arrow that tells you in which direction you're going and a little red dot that indicates the station. After 4 years of taking that stupid express instead of the local because I wasn't thinking, this is dreamy.

So here I was at the station, trying to figure how much my ticket could cost (depends on how far you go). I did the smart thing, I asked some nice subway agent (there're pretty much everywhere, and since I can't believe they're here to help the poor lost souls like me, I think Japanese are just as confused about Tokyo). So: got the ticket, got in the subway, got out at the right stop. That's where it starts to get confusing. The outside world. Don't ever expect to go in the right direction. I mean I have the worst sense of direction anyway but someone I know gets confused as well.
I was looking for an avenue. I could see it on my map, I could see it on the subway map at the entrance. It was supposed to be right in front of me but it wasn't. Another avenue was there. I went back in force in every possible direction and decided to (and that is really the smart thing to do in this city) ask someone right before I had a nervous breakdown.
Oh irony! I was in the right avenue the entire time, it just had a different name (like let's say you're not from New York and you're looking for 6th Avenue and you get to the Avenue of the Americas but underneath it doesn't say 6th avenue...). I went to a cafe to wait for my meeting (it only took me 1hour and 30minutes to get there), the cafe was called "café crié" (which means nothing in French). There I had to sit and listen to a instrumental triangle version of "when you believe", the Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey song.
My meeting went well, the nice gentleman who met with me agree that not speaking Japanese could be a problem, but that-I had-a-great-US-experience-and-that-should-help. I purchased a 600 pages book that has most of the info of the French companies here and was sent home. (they are also supposed to email my resume to all their database, so if your bff if the VP of LVMH Japan, now would be a good time to tell me).
I tried to take a cab to go back to the apartment (to much emotions for a day, and it was raining and my shoes were new), but the cab driver wasn't happy with me when I show him my little apartment card that says "can you please take me there" and it has a map and direction and all in Japanese. So he yelled at me for 5 minutes and then told me to get out of the cab. It's probably for the best since a cab would have cost me millions of yens and the subway is only 160.
I made it back ok. With the right subway, the right stop, the right exit (there are like, 20 options). How exciting is my life...
Max works late so he doesn't have much to say. It sucks to work in finance in Japan because you're awake before everyone and than you have to work late to interact with people from the US. Since when it's 8:30pm here, it's 7:30am there (or something like that), it's not that much fun. Luckily I think he's working mostly with London, but what do I know...

This is exhausting, I'm not sure I want to keep writing in both French and English, the last thing I want to do now is to write that again in French.