Sorry about the lack of updates. Settling in here has taken more time than I thought. That and I always seem to be doing something.
As I write this I’m sitting in the staff room of Miya Junior High School while the rest of the teachers are in a meeting. The meeting is held entirely in Japanese so the Vice Principal told me to just stay here. You might think that I should be doing some kind of work rather than writing a blog entry. And I agree with you.
However, I have nothing to do. No work. No responsibility. I got my first pay check and I honestly got paid for sitting around, reading novels off my computer, and making the odd lesson plan.
No I don’t spend all day reading but it keeps me occupied. I can only make so many lesson plans in a day. Add in the fact that I still haven’t been in a classroom, exploring the school doesn’t count, and you can see why I’m hesitant to make too many lesson plans. For all I know I’m going to have to scrap the lot of them. Or they’re going to blow up in my face.
Thankfully school starts at the end of the week so I’ll finally have something to do. So now that you know what my work life is like, I’ll start describing my home life.
First off, I love my apartment! Honestly it’s perfect. Well almost perfect. It having air conditioning would have made it perfect. As it is I have a fan. As is one single electric fan. The weather has been in the high thirties, almost forties for a large portion of my time here so far. And that’s the temperature when you don’t count the humidity. And it is humid! I have never sweat so much in my life. Luckily, I have a bathtub in my apartment. Cold baths are awesome!
Since I’ve been here, I’ve come to appreciate how awesome Jen, my predecessor, is. She left me instructions on how to do pretty much everything. Which is good. Because I’d have never figured out the garbage otherwise.
Yes, garbage is in no way the same as it is in Canada. Oh no. You have to sort it. And this isn’t just recycling sorting. The categories are Burnable, Non-Burnable, Plastic, PET (AKA plastic drink bottles), Metal, Glass, Paper, and Milk Cartons. Each day a different thing is picked up. So you have this massive complicated calendar of pick-ups you have to remember.
Sorting this stuff is stressful enough. What makes it worse is that if you don’t sort it right they bring it back. That’s right. Like a child, if you screw it up they bring it back and make you fix it. Now being more or less told by the garbage people you’re an idiot is bad enough, but what’s the worst is that sometimes, especially if you have old, retired neighbours, they will go through your garbage to see if you’ve sorted it right. Oh my yes. Random old people will can be judging you based on your garbage sorting skills. And they can, and often will, bring your garbage back to you if you haven’t done it properly. Now I’m lucky as this hasn’t happened to me. Yet.
Another unexpected difference I found was when I went and got gas for my car for the first time. With Japanese gas pumps you have to pay before you pump. No matter how you intend to pay. And you have to choose between a set number of litres going into your car, a set amount of money, or pumping the car until it’s full. Thankfully, one of the super nice gas attendants walked me through the process. That and the pump has an English button.
One thing that I’ve finally gotten at least slightly comfortable with is driving. Given that the first time I got in the car, I was driving it off the lot, I nearly got hit by a truck, I didn’t have the most confidence for a while (I looked the wrong way when trying to get into the left hand lane. I was at least trying to get into the lane on the correct side of the road). I know I’ve gotten more comfortable because I’ve started yelling at other drivers again. From my car of course. With the windows rolled up. In English. So I have no worries about getting into trouble. Unless of course the cops pull me over.
Yeah that’s another thing that was stressed to us over and over again in our orientations. Do Not Break the Law! Not just because we’re supposed to be representing our countries and all that jazz but because you will get caught. There is very little crime in Japan and because of that, the police are really really bored. Seriously. They sometimes pull foreigners over so that they have something to do. God help you if you don’t have your Gaijin card. The Gaijin card, which is what we ALTs call the Alien Registration card, has your address and place of employment on it and is pretty much your life here. I still haven’t gotten mine in the mail yet. None of us new JETs have. I lie in fear of getting pulled over.
Mind you, Japan being so safe and all has its advantages. People will totally leave their cars running while they go into the combini (convenience store). And no one takes them! When I left my wallet at the 100 yen store, basically the Japanese equivalence to a dollar store in Canada, it was turned almost immediately in to the cashiers. When I finally came back for it, yes I am an idiot, all my money was there and the cashiers were very nice about it. Though I’m pretty sure they were laughing at the stupid foreigner.
Here’s another fun thing that frustrates us JETs to no end. The ATMs here have hours. Yes, after a certain time they are closed. My banks ATM in Miya closes at like 3pm on Saturdays and 6pm on weekdays. The ones in Takayama stay open until 9pm. Now this might suck more if things actually stayed open late but everything shuts down about 6pm every night in Takayama. Miya tends to close a bit earlier than that. The only things that stay open later are bars, karaoke places, combinis, and arcades. Oh and the bowling alley too.
Well that’s about all for now. I’ll do another post once I’ve actually started teaching. Bye!
Aug 13, 2010
In Japan!
So here it is, my first post from Japan. I arrived at Narita Airport in the middle of the afternoon. Walking into the place felt like walking into a sauna, the humidity and heat were intense. Then, we JETs were subjected to the never ending line. Seriously. It took us nearly two hours to get through Immigration. Not Customs, Immigration.
From there we picked up our baggage and went through customs which as actually relatively painless. Then, the helpful people in the JET t-shirts pointed us in the right direction which is good, because I’d never have found my way otherwise. I specialize in getting lost.
Eventually we were sent out to the buses that would take us to our hotel in Tokyo. Stepping outside in Japan for the first time I was struck by something. The wave of intense heat and humidity that is the bane of Japanese summers. Seriously, I though the airport was bad but this was like walking into a broiling hot, soaking wet towel. Thank god the bus had air conditioning.
The ride to the hotel didn’t take too long but I think that was mostly due to the fact every so often one of us would look at the other and say “Guess what? We’re in Japan!” This would then set the rest of us off. It was fun seeing all the different variations of the “I’m in Japan! Woohoo!” dance.
Our first night in Tokyo was ours to do what we liked with it. I wandered around and got lost for about a half hour (I wasn’t kidding about my superhuman ability to get lost). However, I did manage to feed myself along the way.
The next two days were filled with orientations and workshops. For the most part, these were unbelievably boring. People were actually sleeping through them. After the first few that were useless, I bailed. I mean come on, who’s going to sit through boring lectures about how you need to be polite and not hurl sharp objects at children’s head when you’re in Tokyo?
The answer is most people. Only a few of us slipped off to go exploring. Now when I say skipped I don’t mean I didn’t go to anything. I just didn’t go to the optional workshops where you had to choose them from a list, mainly due to the fact that none of them interested me.
So I went off into the city one afternoon so that I could find an Internet Café so that I could contact my family. I’m still not sure where I wandered off to. I know I ended up in both an above and under ground mall and I found a station somewhere along the way but I really don’t know where I was in Tokyo. It took me an hour to get back to the hotel. I’m not sure how I got back because I definitely came from a different direction, but I suppose it’s not really important.
When I got back to the hotel I found out we could get internet in our rooms. No, of course this didn’t make me feel like an idiot.
Two days later and I was on the train to Gifu, the capital of Gifu prefecture. It was fun watching Japan whiz by. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures as I have a tendency to do.
Once we arrived in Gifu it was another two days of orientation, this time they were a lot more fun, and then I was off to my new home in Ichinomiya, a village just outside of Takayama city,
I’ll describe my first few days in my new home in my next post. Until then, bye!
From there we picked up our baggage and went through customs which as actually relatively painless. Then, the helpful people in the JET t-shirts pointed us in the right direction which is good, because I’d never have found my way otherwise. I specialize in getting lost.
Eventually we were sent out to the buses that would take us to our hotel in Tokyo. Stepping outside in Japan for the first time I was struck by something. The wave of intense heat and humidity that is the bane of Japanese summers. Seriously, I though the airport was bad but this was like walking into a broiling hot, soaking wet towel. Thank god the bus had air conditioning.
The ride to the hotel didn’t take too long but I think that was mostly due to the fact every so often one of us would look at the other and say “Guess what? We’re in Japan!” This would then set the rest of us off. It was fun seeing all the different variations of the “I’m in Japan! Woohoo!” dance.
Our first night in Tokyo was ours to do what we liked with it. I wandered around and got lost for about a half hour (I wasn’t kidding about my superhuman ability to get lost). However, I did manage to feed myself along the way.
The next two days were filled with orientations and workshops. For the most part, these were unbelievably boring. People were actually sleeping through them. After the first few that were useless, I bailed. I mean come on, who’s going to sit through boring lectures about how you need to be polite and not hurl sharp objects at children’s head when you’re in Tokyo?
The answer is most people. Only a few of us slipped off to go exploring. Now when I say skipped I don’t mean I didn’t go to anything. I just didn’t go to the optional workshops where you had to choose them from a list, mainly due to the fact that none of them interested me.
So I went off into the city one afternoon so that I could find an Internet Café so that I could contact my family. I’m still not sure where I wandered off to. I know I ended up in both an above and under ground mall and I found a station somewhere along the way but I really don’t know where I was in Tokyo. It took me an hour to get back to the hotel. I’m not sure how I got back because I definitely came from a different direction, but I suppose it’s not really important.
When I got back to the hotel I found out we could get internet in our rooms. No, of course this didn’t make me feel like an idiot.
Two days later and I was on the train to Gifu, the capital of Gifu prefecture. It was fun watching Japan whiz by. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures as I have a tendency to do.
Once we arrived in Gifu it was another two days of orientation, this time they were a lot more fun, and then I was off to my new home in Ichinomiya, a village just outside of Takayama city,
I’ll describe my first few days in my new home in my next post. Until then, bye!
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