Youkoso Japan!

I’ve been in Japan a week and a half now, and I said that I would try to keep a blog while I was over here. Unfortunately, due to extraneous circumstances, I have only been able to take a very limited number of photos since coming, because my old camera is seriously annoying (flattens batteries in about 10 photos worth of use…), and I managed to lose the new one I bought in Tokyo literally the day after I bought it! No good. It’s ok though, because I still managed to get a few photos before I lost it, and being that this is Japan, despite the fact that I left a perfectly good, new camera on the bus, someone found it and sent it back to me! Awesome!

Tokyo:
Tokyo was crazy, not much like I had expected. Us Aussies arrived on Sunday morning the day before the orientation conference started, so we had the entire day to vege out in Tokyo. My first order of business after the drive through Tokyo to the Keio Plaza was to find my way to Akihabara to buy some electronics stuff (I could not find a suitable adaptor for my pc in Australia, but in Akihabara they must have every cord ever known to man I think.) Did some exploring around the millions of electronic alleys in Akihabara and went to a couple of the multiple story gaming arcades which were kinda cool. EVERYTHING in Tokyo is like 5+ stories high.. shops don’t go out, they just go up. I went to a stationary shop to buy some wrapping paper and stuff and the paper was on the 5th floor, while the tape was on the 3rd floor. Crazy.

We then headed over to Harajuku and walked down the streets around there, where there was an insane amount of people. There are times where being big and tall are a big bonus, and making my way through a Tokyo crowd is one of them… these streets were just nuts, and some real nutty people there too. Headed back toward the station and over the bridge to Meiji Jigun, a temple which had the most awesome wood smell I’ve ever smelt. Pretty sure they had to cut down a forest to make the place but it was stunning inside. There was a poor security guard whose job it was to tell people that they could not take photos from the middle of the prayer bit, but only from the sides ? in the two minutes I was in that room I swear I heard him have to tell at least 30 people not to take photos…

On the way back we had to buy another ticket at Harajuku and although we had worked out how to buy them at that stage, we must have looked like we couldn’t because a guy came up to us and offered to help us out which was great. BUT, he ended up being a con-artist and insisted we pay him for his assistance! Thankfully we only had a couple of yen each in coins so it was just as easy to give them to him, but what a nerve! That is the only experience of a con artist I have had in Japan so far, it was totally out of left field!

The conference itself had its good and bad points. On the negative side, we spent way, way too long sitting in ridiculously small chairs crowded together in a not very well air conditioned room (1000 people with no aircon is not pleasant in Tokyo), and a few of the workshops were ludicrously boring. On the plus side, some of the workshops were fantastic, and everything else about the hotel was really nice. I was on the 33rd floor which offered and extremely good view of Tokyo, especially at night and ESPECIALLY during a Thunderstorm which there was. Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera to record that ? I had literally JUST stepped out of the camera shop, a 10 minute walk from the hotel, when the skies opened and more rain fell in 10 minutes than you see in an entire year in Australia.. Of course, this was after I had packed my bag to send to Miyagi and the only dry clothes I had were the ones I had prepared to wear the next day… real pain in the butt.

Monou:
So we caught a charter bus with all the other Miyagi JETs from Tokyo to Sendai, about a 6 hour drive. It actually wasn’t that bad, since it was air-conditioned and we had at least two seats each. At Sendai we had a little ceremony (they sure love their ceremonies) which involved sitting in an incredibly hot room for a while, and then went off with our respective supervisors. My supervisor is a man in the Ishinomaki Board of Education called Yushi Abe, who speaks pretty good English and is actually in Sydney as we speak with a group of Ishinomaki students. He drove us from Sendai to Ishinomaki (another two hours, but we stopped at Matsushima on the way which was stunning ? it is one of the top 3 sightseeing spots in Japan supposedly). At Ishinomaki we had another small ceremony, only this time they asked us to introduce ourselves, in Japanese! I actually didn’t do too badly remembering what to say which was suprising at the time, but since then I’m finding I can actually get by pretty well with my limited vocabulary!

So from Ishinomaki I was picked up by my Monou supervisor and a teacher at the local Chuugakkou (Junior High School), named Saijo-san and Yasuko-sensei respectively. Yasuko-sensei speaks fantastic English and invited me to her house for dinner that night, which was really great. My first experience of eating at a sit on the ground table! I think mum would be shocked at some of the stuff I have eaten since coming here…

Since then I have spent most of my time at Monou Chuugakkou, my base school. Two days though I spent with my supervisor, who speaks almost ZERO English, which was petrifying! Somehow I have so far splashed my way through, and he has managed to set me up with a Hanko (personal stamp/seal), bank account, phone, and coming soon are my alien registration card, mobile phone and INTERNET! Thankfully I can use the internet as much as I like at my school, else I would be going crazy by now without it!

My little town is great. My house is less than 5 minutes walk from my main school (where I will spend Mondays and Tuesdays), but most of my other schools I have to drive to. Here’s a short video of the walk from my house to school:

My other main school (Kanan Higashi Chuugakkou, or Kanan East Junior Highschool) is actually about 20 mins or a bit more drive away, but it is in a STUNNING position. The school is on top of a mountain (maybe not a mountain, but certainly bigger than a hill), and it has a clear view over the whole surrounding area. Really stunning views from up there! I feel sorry for the kids there though ? they have to park their bikes at the bottom of the hill/mountain and walk up every day, and some days here by 8:30 in the morning it is steaming hot. Thank god I am not further south is all I can say, Monou’s climate seems perfect ? it is bearably hot most days, some days (like today) are too hot but I survive, and in winter it is going to be freezing cold but not Hokkaido style cold.

I don’t have a car just yet ? I have one parked outside my house but ownership can’t be transferred without my having my foreigner registration card, and I can’t get insurance for it. Apparently in Japan blame for traffic accidents isn’t black and white ? you get assigned a portion of the blame ranging usually from 90/10% upward, which means that even in the lightest of crashes you are going to be up for some money. So, I definitely don’t want to start driving before I have insurance!

My nearest proper shops are about 10 minutes walk away, or a bit more. I have all the necessary stuff; supermarket, hardware shop, electronics shop, and a couple of convenience stores. Prices of stuff here are really strange. I won’t say Japan is more expensive than Australia or visa versa, but certain things in Japan are super expensive while cheap in Australia, and the opposite is true as well. Drinks here are really really cheap unless you buy them at a restaurant ? for example, you can be cans of alcohol and stuff for less than $2, but at a restaurant it’s more like $5-6. Bread is like $5 for about 5 slices, whereas rice is about $5 for 5 kilograms.. It’s really back to front compared with Australia!

My house is awesome, I think most people reading this saw photos already, but soon (when there isn’t crap everywhere) I will make a video of it that isn’t sideways! It’s not quite as big as it seemed in the photos but it is still plenty big ? I think just the fact that I am so tall makes it seem smaller to me. I hit my head on every single doorway in the place! Lots of bumps on my head in Japan so far. It has two tatami rooms, one of which is my bedroom, and the other is a storage room and also houses what is apparently the Miyagi JET library ? tonnes and tonnes and TONNES of books in my house. Everything from lonely planet guides to Japanese books to Harry Potter. If any Miyagi JETs want a book, come see me! Then, I have a reasonably sized Loungeroom with two big opening door style windows, which means that when I come home at night and my house is a sauna I can cool it down quickly. Attached to that is the kitchen, with a couple of sliding doors meaning that I can combine the kitchen and lounge areas, though previous JETs have taped one of the doors closed to make room for a microwave and stuff. Also, obviously, I have a toilet and a bathroom/laundry type with.

My house is on a street with a bunch of identical teacher housing, so the teachers go home over the weekend. It makes for a very quiet weekend if I want to stay in, which I don’t mind at all! I live next door to the Vice Principal and another teacher, and the Social Science and Science teachers are in my street as well!

Well, this is an extremely long entry so far so I might leave it there for now! More photos to come now that I have my camera back!

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