I had barely arrived in Tokyo when a typhoon hit. I felt like a Mongol invader meeting the kamikaze. With rain outside, I stayed in bed until noon.

Maybe I was allergic to this room. I woke up with a few pimples on my head, so I hurried to wash my hair and added disinfectant spray to my shopping list.

I spent the afternoon online, clicking around here and there. I had meant to set up OpenVPN on the lab machine, but it was such a hassle that I put it aside for the time being. Once I got too bored, I went to the supermarket by the station to buy supplies. I brought back hand cream, disinfectant spray, and clear plastic bags, and also picked up rice, pasta, and some ready-made meal pouches. My delayed lunch was pasta with one of those pouches, which was actually pretty good. The rice came in a two-kilogram bag, and I was a little worried I would not finish it.

The internet in the room was not very stable. In the afternoon, while my girlfriend and I were trying to figure out how to book tickets to Kyoto, the bad connection kept making it hard to communicate. Only at night did I realize there was actually an Ethernet cable I could use. After plugging it in, the connection became much more stable, and I was even able to use the university VPN to read Apple Daily. Shouldn’t I have been reading papers instead?

It was only after dinner that I remembered I needed to prepare a self-introduction. I casually wrote two or three lines and hoped that would be enough.

At the supermarket that afternoon, the cashier asked me something in Japanese. I could not understand it, and I responded in English that I could not speak Japanese. I think this is one of my bigger problems. I am too quick to lean on others to accommodate me. I should be saying in Japanese that my Japanese is bad. That would be the real first step toward fitting into life in Japan.

Before bed, I got a message from someone at the company saying I did not need to be too punctual tomorrow and that safety came first. That was actually a hard judgment for me to make, so I decided I should at least be mentally prepared to get soaked tomorrow. I just hope the trains do not stop running.

Note: This article is translated from Traditional Chinese.