Filed under: Happenings
Week one has come and gone; it’s Friday, right? The weekend is mine? Overall, it’s been a good first week. Only have to visit my fixed schedule classes, I got to learn about my schedule as I went along. Next week I’ll start going to other English classes to give a “one-shot” English lesson as well as my fixed schedule classes. Since these classes usually don’t have an ALT, I’ve heard you can be treated like a star. Only time will tell.
The only day I had issues with was Thursday when I had to visit both my main school and my visit school. Mostly I felt as though going to the second school was a waste of time and resources, because I will only be teaching 1-2 classes while there. Because of the schedule, I pretty much get two hours to commute between schools, which gives me plenty of time to walk down the mountain, pick up lunch somewhere, take the train, walk up the next not-so-tall mountain and eat lunch at my desk. But is it all worth it? I’ll give it a couple of weeks and see, but for now I hope this Thursday schedule only applies to my 2nd semester.
I also had my first orchestra practice on Wednesday. The music was a little difficult for the first time reading through it, but the whole experience of playing in a community orchestra brought back a lot of memeories of high school playing in the Jefferson City Symphony. The people were nice, the music was good, and the conductor was well, a conductor so it was easy enough to figure out what part of the music he was talking about and what needed to be fixed because of how he spoke. “Bah ba ba ba BAH” etc.
Finally, my first grad school class started, though with some delay so I am trying to catch up at this point in time. 
It’ll help once I get internet at my apartment.
This weekend I visited the Imada ningyo (bunraku) troupe on my own for the first time, and am here to officially state that my Japanese is horrible. They had a special meeting on Sunday too, which I probably shouldn’t have gone to (=Japanese overload) because going home I felt like I was not only completely inept at Japanese but that I was a colossal burden to the instructors and other members. There’s another meeting this coming Saturday and yet again I will go. It might take a few months (if not longer) to get used to these meetings; last summer aside from the 2-3 Imada members, everyone was from my study abroad program and the more advanced student members could help translate. Well, the students and student leaders have gone home now and it’s just me. O_O
At the same time this experience last weekend has taught me how much I am in my element when I’m in the classroom. I had what I think was a great first day in the classroom, giving presentations and leading the students in activities from the get-go. The students were alittle quiet, as expected, but came around enough. My visit high school might be a little more challenging, since the students are general ed on in some other field of study as opposed to the International Studies students at my main high school. Regardless, I’ll make it work. I have to make it work, I’m an education major.
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, so here it goes. Here’s a brief tour of my apartment. I took these pictures during the first week so already it looks different. (more random crap on the walls, etc.) I am living at Takamori Town’s teacher housing apartment. Conveniently located between a department store and a home improvement store (think Wal-mart and Home Depot only smaller only higher quality) and a ~3 minute walk from a train station, while this apartment is a little ways away from downtown Iida City, the location in itself couldn’t be better.
My apartment has one main room, a bathroom and a kitchen. The main room is an 8 tatami mat room and the tatami is brand new. Except for the strip of wood you see here where the tv and whatnot is placed, the rest of the floor is tatami. The school provided the tv and vcr, I bought the dresser from my predecessor, bought the chair at Apita (the dept. store), and the closet/shelving/desk unit is the apartments.
My Apartment:Desk and TV area
My Apartment: Kitchen Area
My Apartment: Kitchen Area
This is a view from the main room facing the kitchen. The kitchen itself seems a little industrial, since it’s all stainless steel, but its easy to clean and won’t get dated looking. I ’stole’ the range from another predecessor who left it behind, but had to clean it for an hour. Except for the rice cooker, I bought and/or my predecessor gave me everything on the kitchen rack. I also bought a scale and kitchen/bath mats too. Also, you can’t see it but behind that little metal wall there is a washing machine.
My Apartment:Tatami Style
This picture was taken in the same location only facing the other direction, into my room. Since clothes dryers are rare in Japan, every apartment has a porch with a pole in which you can hang stuff on to dry. Right now there’s an American flag hanging there both to show my support for team USA and show where the American is living.
Lastley, here’s a picture of my closet area and of my bed and couch. This is what is left of the famous bed that I broke. I much prefer sleeping on the floor; makes my room look bigger so I’m happy. My predecessor gave me enough blankets for a small army to sleep over so I’ll have no problem when guests come to visit, and I bought the couch and chair from her so people have places to sit. Since I won’t use my whole closet for linen stuff, I threw the shelves up there to save space, along with my mirror, iron and ironing board, which literally is a small board. While there are a lot more posters and random stuff around my room, there is nothing on the sliding doors now. Trying to remove the blue and white info sheet, I found out that while the sliding door paper is slick, it’s only paper and tape will remove strips of paper from the door. Yeah. The wall paper is really durable though so no worries there. I feel bad about the door, but I guess when you build your house out of straw and paper, things aren’t suppose to last forever. I was told tatami has a life span of about 10 years before you should get new. Imagine replacing your carpet every 10 years.
I’m pretty happy about my apartment. While there are ALT houses available, they are not as new, as clean, or as conveniently located next to stores and a train station like this place. Plus, I think this place is safer; only teachers are allowed to live here and with several of the tennants being English teachers, I’ve got people to ask questions if any problems arise.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my tour. 
My Apartment: Closet area
My Apartment:Bed and Sofa/Table Area
Filed under: JET
With the opening ceremonies coming and going, the 2nd semester has officially begun. Since the Japanese school year starts in April, assistant language teachers not from Asia begin after a third of the school year has already passed. I’ve been placed in two different high schools, one is my host school, and one is a visit school that I visit 1 1/2 days each week. Prior to yesterday I’d only visited my visit school once. As a vocational high school, it’s pretty good school, but nonetheless, it does not cater to the same students as my host school. The students were pretty loud and obnoxious yesterday, talking out loud during the assembly and whatnot. Of course, being the new girl, I had to give a speech to both the teachers as a group and the students, and of course, they preferred me speaking in Japanese since I’d studied the language before. Being in an unfamiliar place with rude students, I was nervous and didn’t do that well on my speech. It didn’t really matter so much though. I wore a suit, I spoke Japanese, I tried my best. Some of the teachers told me afterwards that the staff was impressed, so I was grateful.
This whole ordeal was great practice for today’s opening ceremony at my host school, where I did a lot better. The students were a little chatty during the assembaly, but I guess I would be too if the teachers’ were enforcing the rules. On a whole, though, these students were much better. My host school is the 2nd best high school in Iida and with a strong international studies program, caters to students who are not only college bound, but have their eyes fixed on the better universities of Japan, as well as wish to study abroad. I’m glad to be placed in two different school environments, and see how these schools compare and contrast.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Apparently when it’s hot, Japanese people make excuses to stay out late to beat the heat, hence there’s a lot of summer festivals in the evenings. Yesterday I went to Ichida’s summer festival, which was just one train stop away from me. Hoping to meet other people from Takamori, I was disappointed to see the usual tons of people from all over the area, including similar vendors and activities. Some of them probably attended Tenryukyo’s festival on Saturday. It was still a good time, mind ya, but I kept wondering what’s different about this festival, and why does it matter to come here when it’s so similar to Ringon and other events. Luckily I later met up with my host family and the MU student they’re staying with and we walked closer to the fireworks display than I bothered wandering before. Because of Obon festival of the dead, the locals were launching small rafts alit with torches down the river to symbolize the souls of the dead. Actually sitting in the grass and avoiding the drunk, and otherwise abnoxious festival goers was a relief (, and for a while it was almost mystical seeing the lit rafts make their way down the Tenryu as fireworks were lanched from the other side of the riverbank. The finale, as my host mom describe, is Japan’s Niagara Falls.
The Festival
I took my first two days of nenkyu (paid vacation) on Thursday and Friday, choosing to head down to visit my friend and her family in Himeji and Kobe, two of the many cities I hadn’t had the chance to visit yet. Traveling two and from Nagano-ken isn’t difficult; there’s a bus that runs hourly from Iida City to Nagoya, and from Nagoya you can take the Shinkansen (bullet train) to all the major cities in Japan. As long as you reserve a bus ticket, you’re good to go. I didn’t reserve shinkansen tickets though, which normally isn’t a problem at all, expect this weekend was Obon, and everyone was traveling. I lucked out though and got a reserved seat and was able to sit and snooze on my way home while others had to stand. (I didn’t know they allowed standing on a shinkansen. O_O)
Before getting into the trip, I think it’d make sense to explain abit about my friend. She studied abroad at my university for a year, and when her mom and brother came to visit I drove them around and helped them out. I also helped my friend out on a few occassions and took her around Missouri on other random trips. So when I said I was going to Japan, they insisted I come visit. I had no idea what all we’d be doing, but it turned out to be an excellent trip.
Himeji was great. I was able to stay at my friends house, where I taught her the phrase “pack-rat,” to better define her family, especially her mom. They’d just gotten back from Finland and Italy, and were soon going to head off to South Korea; only having a single entry visa for the time being, I felt as though I was stuck in Japan for the first time. There are many great places to visit in Japan though, including in my own backyard so I’m not too worried.
After visiting a lovely little community Obon festival dance, and meeting my friend’s aunt, whose a professional artist on Thursday, the next day my friend and I conquered Himeji, visiting the world-famous Himeji castle. I’m glad to have visited Himeji castle; it’s one of those places you check off on your must-visit-before-i-die-for-the-sake-of-visiting list, however it was fraught with tourist – usually something I try to avoid. We walked around a Japanese garden near the castle and had lunch there, where I was able to try anago, a local specialty that resembles unagi (eel) only it’s acutally a fish. Roasted and served over rice, lunch was a wonderful retreat from the hot sun. Afterwards we wandered around the garden a bit more where I realized that this was the first Japanese garden I’ve visited in Japan. Check another place off my bucket list.
The rest of the day was spent wandering around the various covered shopping streets, buying some things on my list, including a number of Japanese cds and Japanese text books. The next day my friends parents took me to Kobe; my friend had to stay behind which was a bit of a bummer, but I nonetheless had a good time in Kobe. My friend goes to school in Kobe and her father works there during the week so they have an apartment in this city as well.
Kobe, known for it’s foreigners and beef, was also a great place to visit. I got to try Teppanyaki (known as Hibachi-style Japanese steakhouse cooking in the US), where the cook was very serious – no throwing knives, no onion volcanoes, etc., which was another thing I wanted to experience in Japan. My friend’s parents were disappointed when we found out the beef was from Australia, and thus not Kobe style, so the next day we went to a real Kobe-beef joint. Formal, most likely expensive, and absolutely delicous, the restaurant’s style matched it’s high class beef perfectly. We ate nice sushi for another meal too (not sure which).
Other than eating, we toured Kobe’s ‘Merican park, which is it’s sea side port next to the traditional foreigner part of Kobe, China Town, which was surprisingly fun depsite looking like any other China Town in the world, and got to see Kobe’s night view from a nearby mountain, accalimed to be one of the top three best night views in Japan. We also spent a lot of time in DaiMaru’s department store, where I did a lot of looking but no buying.
I got back to Iida by about 7pm where I unpacked, made a list of things I need to do around my neglected apartment, and watched the first Harry Potter movie in Japanese dubbed with Japanese subtites. Surprisingly awesome. I’m now searching through my department’s number of movies on DVD, looking for ones I’ve seen several times in English to watch in Japanese.
After surviving a rather quiet day of work, minus my brief encounter with the Hip Hop Dance club at school, I decided the best thing to do would be to go home and relax since the Nagano ken meeting took so much outta me. My hostfamily mom called me, however, and before I knew it, I’d been picked up at school and taken back to my apartment to fetch my swimsuit for a swimming/onsen excursion with grandma, grandpa and Takako-chan. The pool, only being about 4 foot deep, was perfect for older people to excersize in, as well as provide a place for children to practice swimming, and the onsen attached to the place wasn’t bad either. Following that, we met up with the rest of the family and Cooper-san for yakiniku at a nice restaurant, and after a little persuasion, Coop and I convinced the moms to take us and the kids out for karaoke. Unlike the place we’d usually go to, this karaoke place was really bright, located on a busy street somewhere around the Motozenkoji area of Iida. It even had a parking assistant with a big red wand – completely unnecessary for such a business. Despite the younger kids choice of elementary-aged sing alongs, it was fun… until we realized the total cost of karaoke at the nicer place my host family selected was about $100. At the joint my friends like to hang out at, it’d cost about a 5th of what this place costs, and we would have gotten a lot better service in a more personal atmosphere. Oh well, you don’t know until you go.
Anyway, next is Himeji.
Filed under: JET
The meeting ended and I’m happy to be back in Iida. The end. (or not)
Giving the speech was nerve-wrecking of course; the second I slipped up, I went from being mildly nervous to panicky, but I got through it and it’s over. Some people congraduated me afterwards, and I saw the Japanese officials nodding their heads while I spoke… but yes, it’s over and while this experience probably helped improve my public speaking in Japanese or whatnot, it still sucked. It was the whole “WHY ME, GOD?” type moment, since no one else had to give a speech. Anyway, after the Senior High School ALTS finished their serious ceremony, we walked back to join the rest of the ALTs, we found the elementary and junior high ALTs doing the chicken dance and ‘learning how to be a kid again.’ Talk about unfair.
The rest of the day faired about the same. I was never able to easily make friends with college-aged people, nothing new was really mentioned at the meeting, and the whole waking up at 5am to get to Nagano City was no fun either. I ended up accidently missing the $30 all you can eat/drink party, followed by staying at some random JET’s house/hotel thanks to booking an early bus ticket, but wasn’t bummed at all. (In fact, I was relieved, being completely exhausted by that point in the day) I ended up on the same bus as a cool person I met at the Tokyo Orientation and we were able to sit by each other and talk the whole way back.
I’m now in school today, one of the few in the building not taking nenkyu (paid vacation), but will take 2 days nenkyu tomorrow and Friday. I’ll be heading off to Himeji, Kobe, and if I can talk my friends into it, Nara too. Until then.
As of late, the head of the Japanese puppetry troupe I’ve joined has made a point to brag about me then force me to speak publically in front of a room of Japanese people on several occassions. He wrote me a letter of recommendation for the JET Program, for which I am very grateful for, yet while speaking publically in English doesn’t bother me so much anymore, speaking publically in Japanese is nerve-wrecking. What’s worse is that several hours later, after the shock of of having to say something in Japanese in public has subsided, I then realize what a great opportunity I’ve missed by not saying more. If anything these past 3+ public speaking nightmares has strengthen my resolve to actually seriously study Japanese, among other things. I want to be the JET who came in knowing little to nothing and come out not only with more knowledge of Japanese language and culture, but as a better person.
That being said, tomorrow I’m off to Nagano City to the new ALT Welcoming Reception, where I’ve been chosen to give a speech in Japanese on behalf of all the new ALTs… At least this time around I have a speech prepared that has been checked and edited by about 4 different Japanese people and my Japanese professor. Still, it’s nerve-wrecking.
Filed under: Uncategorized
A trip abroad wouldn’t be a trip abroad without a few mishaps and culture shock moments. Those who say they never experienced any culture shock are LIARS, but culture shock isn’t usually as severe as some make you think. Most of the time you just laugh it off.
Mishaps
- My bed broke! It was my 2nd or 3rd night in Iida when I decided to go to bed early. I laid down and decided that I needed to pop my back. So I began to stretch when all the sudden half of my bed collapsed! I was so tired and shocked, I just pulled the matress onto the floor and fell asleep. There I slept several days until I decided it’d be best just to sleep Japanese style. I had bought the bed from my predecessor and it was really shoddy; the part that holds the matress up was a bunch of flimsy boards stapled across an equally flimsy frame. My caretaker’s family helped haul the mess away. What they’ll do with it.. fix it up or burn it.. I don’t know (or care really.)
- Standing people up. The first week was so tiring with everything that I’ve had to do, I forgot to go to at least one event, and upon going to my 2nd high school yesterday, I forgot i was suppose to meet one of the teachers at the train station. I just walked to school. That’s not good anywhere, but as long as I don’t make that mistake anymore, I think it’ll be ok.
- I didn’t realize that I needed to plug in a small adapter that I already had to my phone charger first in order for it to charge my phone so I ended waited around for a weekend with a dying phone for no reason.
Shocks
- My phone can turn into a tv!
- Scented toliet paper is the norm. I ended up buying Japanese grape scented~
- Paper towels are little stronger than napkins and come in a tissue box.
- My kitchen looks like a commercial kitchen, all stainless steel. At first I thought that was weird, but I guess not so much. I mean, my boyfriend’s kitchen is 70s styled in his apartment in the US. Stainless steel is timeless.
- Stocking your kitchen is a bit annoying at times. What the heck did I eat last summer? Seems like it was easier then.
- English textbooks can help me learn Japanese.
- My tub. I guess my tub is alittle clogged or something, because when I have the water on for over 30 seconds or so, water will spill out into a little drainage area outside the tub and preceed to flood the bathroom. The fact that there’s an area for water to flow into ouside the tub itself is a little strange.
- No airconditioning. Not a shock, just a little sad. But I think I’ll just deal with it instead of buying an airconditioning unit. Besides, the school doesn’t have airconditioning either. Might as well get used to it.
- Cats are bad for tatami mats.
- Buying an oven. So the range part of the oven and the actual oven are two different things. I bought a small oven from my predecessor, but had no range. Faced with the problem of having to spend $200 on a decent range, it turned out that another JET who just left the program left his range behind. It was really gross - had to spend an hour cleaning it, but hey, it works and beggars can’t be choosers.
- What Japanese teachers have to put up with. This year two JETs left my high school and two new ones (me and another guy) came in. One JET in particular left his house absolutely disgusting, forcing the Japanese teachers to clean it up in their spare time. I’m lucky these high schools didn’t say, “Forget it! We’ll get ALTs from Altia or JapanInterac.”
- Shy, keep-to-yourself Japanese. I’d forgotten how much Japanese people are like this, because my greatest memories from last summer were of my wonderful host family and the members of the Imada troupe. On the train, on the streets, etc. people ignore you, probably because they think you don’t know any Japanese, or they just don’t know what to say. It can be discouraging at times, but from now on I’ll keep saying “Ohayo-gozaimasu” to everyone and hope for the best. (Also, I force some students to talk with me while walking to school every day. They have no choice. XD ) This means, however, that when Ryan moves to Japan he’ll be in paradise. XD
- How much you don’t know. I found out my Japanese is only decent when making introductions and other light conversation. In other areas, however, my Japanese isn’t good at all. Time to study.
Good news though, my apartment is pretty much all set up now and looks good. While it is farther away, it is the newest and niceset teacher apartment complex around, which means no ‘ghetto-style’ living for me. I’m guessing two or three people could spend the night here pretty comfortably so I look forward to playing host sometime.
