Model Behavior

When I asked for suggestions for Model U a lot of you said you wanted to hear stories about my experiences. So although this isn’t a traditional Model U post I thought it was fitting. I am going to tell you the story of my first trip abroad for modeling. It all began 2 summers ago….

I was living in Canoga Park California at the time, waiting for my visa to Singapore to come through so I could spend the summer there (it never did come through and I still really, really want to go to Singapore!) My agency told me there was a change of plans and in a WHORLWIND few days that included several trips to the 24 hour Kinkos in the middle of the night to fax documents, I had a plane booked to Tokyo.

Yes I was terrified. Yes I realized that this was different from going to NY, that Tokyo was literally as far away from home as I could possible get, and that no one spoke English…BRING IT ON!!!

The flight was just fine, long and relaxing, I love international flights. The drama began when I arrived at the Tokyo airport. Luckily the signs were posted in Japanese and English so I could at least find the exit. The agency had sent me an email telling me to call them as soon as I landed and they would tell me how to get to the apartment. Pay phones in Japan are funky, and I hadn’t quit gotten the yen thing down yet, so I ended up paying about $10 for the first phone call (I just crammed in coins until I got a dial tone, I was stressed and wanted to hear a friendly voice!) My booker answered and told me to buy a bus ticket (she had to spell out the name of the street, bus company, everything, I could NOT understand hardly anything she was talking about!) but of course the bus only came every 2 hours. And I had just missed it. So I wandered into a Japanese candy store and sampled

Bus comes, takes me to my apartment. My face is smashed against the window the whole time, I was SSOO excited to be in another country I just wanted to breath it all in. I was really apprehensive about going alone not knowing a sole person there. But actually, being in a place where no one knows you, where your cell phone doesn’t work and no one speaks your language; it was very freeing in a way. As soon as the bus left the airport all my fears drained and all that was left was excitement and freedom.

With the time difference, I had been up packing and traveling for about 27 hours straight. And I LOOKED like I had been up for 27 hours straight! But never the less it was only 6:00 pm Tokyo time when I landed, so I had to go immediately to a casting. Seriously I hadn’t even seen my room yet! Shockingly, I didn’t get that job

After getting back I desperately needed to wash the plane feeling off of me so I opened my bag to find that my shampoo had EXPLODED in my bag. I’m not talking that the cap leaked and it gooed out, the bottle looked like someone attacked it with a butterfly knife, I still have no idea what happened to it, Shampoo everywhere.

So I walk to the convenience store with a map someone drew for me at the front desk and bought what I thought was shampoo. I’m now convinced it was some sort of hand sanitizer, stupid language barrier.

I finally got my shower and fell into bed exhausted around 8:30. I woke up at 12:30 to some sort of alarm going off, followed by very fast sentences in Japanese. F**K that’s not good. It sounded nothing like the fire alarms in America, but the loudness got the point across: DANGER!

SSWEEEETTT, I’m in Tokyo, I’m confused and tired, the building is about to burn down (or something), and I can’t understand anything the intercom is saying. It went off for about 60 seconds, long enough for me to find something to throw on and make it to the door. When I opened up the door I didn’t see any Japanese people running for their lives…I took that as a good sign.

I peaked my head out for a minute just waiting, then the door across from mine opened and an equally confused European woman poked her head out. I asked her if she knew what was happening, in a gorgeous (French maybe?) accent she said “honey do I look like I speak Japanese?”. I shared with her my theory that everything was ok because no Japanese people were panicking. She agreed, we said goodnight.

The next day I wondered if it was a dream until I saw her and she said “buildings still standing” and shrugged.

Nothing’s ever easy that’s for sure