You’d think I’d get some chill after the JLPT, but nope. This woman’s got work.
I’d strategically planned to send the fam off to Yokohama (another big city just west of Tokyo) today so I could get one uninterrupted day of productivity. And yes, I sometimes feel like an imposter calling writing these blogs ‘work’ — it’s made-up work. In theory, there wouldn’t be any consequences if I just didn’t do it. I wouldn’t not get paid (because I’m not getting paid anyway, RIP). I wouldn’t get fired because I can’t fire myself.
But just like I studied for and showed up to JLPT even though nobody would've stopped me from bailing — I’ve been writing every single day for the past 39 days, and I’m not stopping now. Self-imposed or not, it’s work, and it needs to get done.
Also, my real job at Bending Spoons starts in less than two weeks and I had an introductory call today with their VP of Engineering — the first step in getting my team assignment. After weeks of Japanese revision, I was miles out of touch with the software engineer life, so I needed to dig through my previous communications with the company to get back into the right mindset.
Plus, with the JLPT having taken precedence over pretty much everything else in the past few days, the language apps I’d worked on over the past few months had been left abandoned. With the new job looming and my life about to get very hectic again, I knew this was probably my last window to clean up any loose ends on those projects — ideally making them self-sustaining.
For all those reasons, I banished — I mean, lovingly encouraged — the others to go sightseeing without me. I’m writing like I masterminded this, but in reality, it was seriously worth the trip for them. Yokohama is beautiful. The port area is stunning, and its Chinatown is the best in Japan. I knew they’d enjoy it, with or without me.
Anyway, 4 hours behind schedule, they left Tokyo around 1pm. I was planning to leave after them (after their original planned time of leaving, I mean — so around 9ish) so that I could keep the room keys, since I would be in the area and might decide to come home for my meeting. They weren’t expected to return until after it. But, with how delayed everything was seeming, I left a little after 11am for a Lawson cafe close to the house and asked them to drop the keys off with me as they left.
I sat and wrote for a couple of hours at Lawson, and then for another hour or so at a Family Mart café (yes, I’m on a konbini café crawl at this point), after which I headed to the place I’d really been waiting for: Dog Cafe Rio.
I’d spotted the place a few days ago when a girl stood outside holding a puppy in her arms like an advertisement. I’d mentally bookmarked it.
Mom, Dad, and Bua had previously visited an animal cafe that had owls, hedgehogs, snakes and an iguana (or some other sort of lizard). Although I won’t admit it to them, I did kind of get FOMO seeing their photos even though it was me who refused to go there with them (again, in favour of ‘work’ — but also because snakes scare me and I didn’t really get the hype with owls).
But I already had my visit to Dog Cafe Rio planned, and I was hyped. Although the others originally planned to go there too, they’d had their hearts’ fill with animals by the time they got out of the owl cafe and they’d told me to go ahead on my own, which is what I did today.
There was a couple who entered just before I did, and the cafe staff explained the rules separately to everyone before entering, so I had to wait for a few minutes before I was allowed in.
I learned during my own brief not to pick the dogs up and that the ones wearing red scarves were on a diet so I wasn’t to feed them. I’d read on Google reviews that the dogs here were very food motivated, since there’s an option for customers of the cafe to buy treats to give them, and that if you want them to pay attention to you you should probably buy those, so that’s what I intended to do.
After agreeing to everything, I sanitised my hands, changed into slippers, put my belongings into a locker and entered.
Within seconds of sitting down, I was mobbed. The dogs knew the smell of chicken treats well.
There was a spoon provided with the tray, but I found it easier to just pick the bits up with my hand and feed them directly, like I was used to with Kiki, the dog I used to have back home in India. A slightly too-eager chomp from one hungry pup reminded me why a spoon had been provided though, and I resorted to using it for the rest of that food’s fleeting existence.
Like the Google reviews said, food-motivation was real. As soon as the food in my hand was gone, so were the puppies.
They weren’t as disinterested as the cats in the cat cafe that Eva and I had visited a few weeks ago, naturally, but that kind of behaviour was expected from cats. In fact, we’d left the cat cafe pleasantly surprised that quite a few cats at least let us pet them, and one particular kitten wearing a Winnie the Pooh hoodie had been exceptionally affectionate.
My expectations were higher today, given that I was visiting a dog cafe. I don’t think I’ve been to one before, and was under the impression that all the puppies would be eager to play. I guess that when you’re surrounded by so many other dogs and humans all day long though, the social energy kind of wears out, even when you’re a dog.
It’s not to say that I was completely ignored though. A floppy-eared brown pup (I know my dog breeds, but I was honestly stumped today) kept circling back to me, and another springy grey one bounced around like he was on a trampoline. I threw a ball; he ran after it. Never brought it back. Very Kiki-coded behaviour. ‘The attention span of a puppy’ is literally a saying and this is what it means.
In contrast to Kiki though, the dogs here were quiet. During my entire 40 minutes there I heard one single bark. Japanese dogs are on another level.
Sure, I clearly wasn’t the main character. I did feel a bit of envy seeing another girl with a dachshund sleeping on her lap while I was essentially a glorified vending machine. But then again, who am I to deem myself worthy of these pups’ attention? Still, I like to think I made friends with a couple of them. It was literally therapeutic (even if part of it was rejection therapy). I’d considered not coming here today in order to work more, but I’m glad I decided to in the end. Pure oxytocin.
Post-puppies, I headed to Saizeriya — a chain diner that mom and I frequent — to prepare for my meeting. I managed about an hour and a half of work before being politely booted out during a busy rush. I hurriedly finished my tiramisu and, while I’d thought of perhaps taking the meeting from a Starbucks, eventually decided on heading back home. I was expecting a delivery and didn’t know when it would arrive, and although Starbucks is calmer than other places I work at like McD or diners or konbini cafes, it doesn’t beat home, and I needed to be fully focused for this.
The call went smoothly. It was mostly about sharing my preferences so they can assign me a team. I didn’t learn anything new, but it gave me that little professional jolt — a reminder that I’m about to re-enter real corporate life again, and that I want to do it well.
I got back in touch with my career side after quite a long time, but I also realized how much I’m going to miss the life I’ve had for over a month here in Japan. The realization that I only have 10 days left in the country kicked in, and I reorganised my calendar to balance a fair amount of Japan tourism with tying up the last of my personal projects so that I can start work at Bending Spoons with a clear mind.
(Fun fact: Bua is really really bad with names. Japanese place names are just a nightmare, but even when I told her about Bending Spoons for the first time, she came back a week later saying she couldn’t find out anything about my company online. Turns out, she’d somehow saved ‘Bending Spoons’ in her mind as ‘Spilled Beans’ (how even does that happen?!) and that’s what she’d been Googling.)
Anyway, Dad’s declared that he’s on a mission to gain one new experience every day from now until the end of the trip, so I’m sure that more chaos is coming. And I, for one, am very ready.