ohayo gozaimasu!

[mostly written wednesday, december 3, 2008]

so. i’m in japan.

i think i’m transitioning okay. i’m glad i haven’t experienced culture shock, which is actually not too big a surprise. the first city i encountered was tokyo, which is so similar to new york that it almost felt like home immediately.

geos training, contrary to what i was informed, began the day AFTER i arrived, not two days after. just imagine: 25+ hours of traveling between nyc and narita (which included two layovers), then finding your way through a foreign airport because the company retracted their agreement to pick you up and left you instead with lengthy instructions on what to do after passing customs, then taking a 2-hour train ride (which included a transfer) to your final destination, and finally arriving at the hotel at 7pm, knowing you have to wake up the following day by 8am. my gosh... i’m exhausted just thinking about what i did those days! haha. but in hindsight, i suppose it was better that training started immediately. because it really set my sleeping cycle, and i didn’t have too much problem with jet lag.

training was great! it was just the trainer, kirk, a canadian who’s been here for four years (started as a teacher, became a sub, and then a trainer), and two other trainees: gary, a tall guy from scotland who’d actually taught english in japan three years ago for a different company, and katherine, a recent grad from arizona who also had lived in japan before for a year after her high school graduation. kat also happened to have been my roommate at the hotel. (haha.. we met that night we both arrived at the hotel room, chatted for a few minutes, then went right to sleep!)

great people. enjoyable two days at akabane (a part of tokyo). i think we literally spent all nine hours of training for each day together. cuz kirk would want to take a morning break, and then he’d bring us to his favorite coffee place. and for lunch, he also brought us to his usuals. :) no complaints though. there were awkward moments, but i enjoy awkward moments haha.

the night after the first day of training, kat and i wanted to explore the city (well it was really her leading me), and at the train station we bumped into gary! he planned on going to a hidden nook of a restaurant in kunjin (?), and we followed him. hahah... my first dining experience in tokyo was a spanish tapas restaurant called las meninas! hahahha. really hidden place through small streets and alleys which only locals would find! i felt so cool haha. apparently gary frequented it when he was here last, and he actually was really chummy with the restaurant owner, john, a brawny irish man with a japanese wife apparently. that was a fun experience... i guess the dinner was genuinely what one would expect in spain, where the plates came out one by one, with you not knowing what was coming, hehe. we just told john that i didn’t eat pork and beef (haha, i felt bad for gary and kat). but the plates were delicious!!! i’d go again! if only i can find it again!

i took a quick liking to kat. we bonded over her barnes and noble bag with famous lines of classic literature (my fave: “reader, i married him. :) and our love for classic movies from the golden era of musicals. idk... i guess we’re just classy ladies :). i loved her talkativeness about everything and her ready admittance to being a dork. hehe. but she’s so far from it. apparently her dad had the most demerits from harvard haha, and her mom went to woodstock and signed up for the peace corps while she was drunk but did it anyway haha. and kat deviated from her crazy parents and became normal haha. somewhat. as i mentioned, she went to japan for a year after high school. her mother came with her and liked it so much that she stayed to be an english teacher for an air force base. and now she’s by hiroshima, and kat’s excited that she’s finally living in the same country as her mom again.

anyways, i also felt as if kat was a guardian angel sent from above just for me(!) cuz she really helped me out those first two days. we spent all the waking hours together and she translated for me everything i needed. haha... it basically was any item on a menu! and speaking of food... the second day of training was thanksgiving! (for us americans, at least.) kirk the canadian and gary the scot returned our greetings but they really couldn’t cared less about our holiday. so kat and i celebrated by ourselves. we... went... to denny’s! it was adjacent to the hotel, and the closest thing we had to home, even though nothing on the menu even remotely resembled anything in an american denny’s. twas a good time! we both said that we were both grateful to have someone with whom to spend thanksgiving, haha aw!

after denny’s, she took me to harajuku! which is familiar to me of course through gwen stefani’s marketing. she showed me her two absolutely most favorite stores in the world! one was like a cross between victorian wear and dominatrix attire. haha! quite interesting. indeeed! (i think that was an extreme though.) when i go back to tokyo, perhaps i’ll be brave enough to buy something from harajuku with the intention of wearing it! but for that night, i erred on the side of caution and just bought some crepes. hahah. omg... SO happy i did! best crepes i’ve ever had. caramel cheesecake. and they eat it here like an ice cream cone! soo cool. :)

the day after thanksgiving, kat, gary, and i said goodbye... sad :(. and we traveled to our respective teaching destinations. kat actually stayed in tokyo (lucky!)... she just transferred to like two stops over on the JR (the subway). gary flew over to hokkaido (the northernmost island) and he’s stationed in sapporo (yeah, where the beer brewery is located). and i traveled via shinkansen (bullet train) about 1.5 hours away to... koriyama!! :)

when i got my placement, they told me i was gonna teach first at shin-shirakawa. then it changed to a dual placement so that i’d be split between shin-shirakawa and at-koriyama. and no one told me, but it ended up that i would only teach at koriyama. thank goodness!!! i sooo would not have wanted to travel to shirakawa two days of the week.

i arrived at koriyama at 2pm, two hours into the school’s nine-hour schedule. i was retrieved at the train station by chihiro, the school manager, and sean, the substitute teacher. sean, whom they call sean-sensei, is a tall, blue-eyed, very well-mannered fellow new yorker and o-sixer(!) serving in the interrim between the previous teacher and myself. chihiro is a spritely, beautiful, wonderfully cheerful girl of 26. :) and they put me right to work! heheh. well, not really. i was still training, and they were absolutely welcoming and so warmly helpful that i was so happy to be placed at that school (even though i bet i would have experienced the same at any school). and for that day and the next, i just observed sean-sensei teach lessons. a bit dull, but definitely educational! sean has taught for two years, and he’s wonderful. fun but authoritative, friendly but firm, easygoing but definitely effective. i hope to be half as good as he is.

classes: geos prepared me and the other trainees to teach both adults and kids. the training was actually more geared towards adults, but i was so thrilled to find out that the majority of my classes would be kids!! they vary in age, but i think the youngest one is three! the size of the classes varies between one student (for private lessons) and seven students! the most challenging perhaps is a group of very young kids (cuz of their short attention span) and the most intimidating is a group of adults (cuz it requires lots of lesson planning and they just expect more).

looking at my current schedule, i teach six classes a day on average, ranging from 40 minutes (young kids’ lessons) to an hour (for adults advanced); thursday has four classes, and friday and saturday have seven classes! i work tuesday to saturday 12pm to 9pm! sometimes i have a class starting immediately at noon, with nice breaks sporadically throughout the day. and other days i don’t have class until 3pm, and then it’s back-to-back classes until 9pm. gosh.

so i observed sean for the last two days of last week.
and THIS week, i started to teach! :)
yesterday i taught my first two lessons. one class had three boys (masato, keisuke, and ryutarou), probably 4 or 5 years old. and it was all over the place! i felt discouraged. but the other, which had two girls (rena and kanami), about 12 or 13 years old, went a bit more smoothly, and i felt uplifted. :) sean taught the other four classes that day.

after sean leaves tomorrow (omg, sad and scary!), i basically have three co-workers. in addition to chihiro, there are curt and yuriko. curt is the other native english teacher: about 50 years old, comes from hawaii and he’s been with geos for seven years, two of them at koriyama. yuriko is the japanese english teacher (she teaches beginner students); she’s about 30+ years old, was born and raised in koriyama and has been with geos for two years. chihiro and yuriko are both japanese, and curt is of japanese descent. i really like them all! at the end of last week, the four of us went to eat and drink at watami, a fave of curt’s. yummy food and yummy drinks. i got a yogurt mango cocktail, so good! and curt made me try this “do-it-yourself” drink that apparently was “very japanese.” i was given a tall glass of weak sake, a grapefruit, and a juicer! hahah.. enough said haha. (ooh and another cool part was that shoes weren’t allowed inside; we had to take them off and store them in lockers. that was a first for me!) my co-workers are fun! :)

my apartment, according to sean, is apparently one of the nicest teacher apartments geos secures for its employees! for japanese standards, it is a rare find! because i have a bedroom, a hallway, a full bathroom, a washing machine, a balcony (third floor of twelve), and an actual kitchen and dining area! whoo-hoo! it’s fully furnished too... i’ve been here for six days, and i’ve yet to go buy something for my apartment. (i have small bottles of my essential toiletries.) everything was provided: a mattress (on the floor, very japanese :), a small sofa, bookshelves, kitchen table with four seats, bedroom table, mirrors, newly-purchased comforters and blankets, cleaning supplies, a vacuum, hangers, whiteboards and markers, plates and glasses and utencils, pots and pans, a tea kettle, a toaster oven, even toilet paper!!! everything! i admit, i felt kinda spoiled.

two drawbacks. first:
it’s a 25-minute walk away from the school. sean showed me the way, which is somewhat straightforward, although i have to walk under a street, then over a bridge, through a pachinko (casino) parking lot, and through an alley that is really dark at night, haha. i might have to buy myself a bike, which are ubiquitous here!

second:
sean took me to my apartment, and he gave me a tour, showing me how some things worked. he also told me general info i may have needed to know. but he was sooo kind enough to leave out one bit of info. i found out the next day through curt. “so how’s your apartment?? how do you feel about that graveyard?” me: “huh? what graveyard?” curt: “oh sean didn’t tell you? it’s right in front of your building.” me: [deer in headlights]. thanks curt.

ohhh my goodness. i DID step out onto my balcony, but there’s a temple before the street, and such a high wall across the street that i didn’t even notice all the tombstones. but yuuuup... there is indeed a huge expanse of land in front of my building that’s solely a graveyard. i hardly notice it walking to school in the morning cuz of the high wall, but do i EVER feel its presence when i’m walking back to my apartment late at night. i go home between 9 and 10pm, and my street is very dimly-lit. and there is NO ONE else around. i get soo spooked SO easily. especially cuz um... the night before i left for japan, the gv kids were telling ghost stories at our get-together. and one of the stories was about a man walking at night everyday past a graveyard and how he brought some spirit back home which caused his son to be possessed!!! aaahhhhh!!! (WHY did they tell ghost stories?!?!)

omg, that night after i found out about the graveyard, it JUST happened to be the foggiest night ever, and i nearly had a heart attack walking back to the apartment (i think my ipod saved my life). and i was sooo scared in my room all alone... cuz the wind was howlinnggnngg!! as if there were spirits outside taunting mee!!! that night, i had absolutely the two worst nightmares i’ve ever had!!! ugh... so vivid!!! when i woke up in sweats, i swore that i was gonna ask geos to find me another apartment!!! haha.

but everything’s better in the morning. it was sunny the next day, and that showed me a nicer perspective of everything. it’s still pretty creepy walking back home at night, but i just have to suck it up... seriously though... my ipod SAVES me!!! i remember walking back the second night, a clear night, and listening to “love the world” by perfume, and i was actually happy! :D hehe.

it’s a cute town, koriyama, a small-ish city for japan, if you call a population of 340,000 small. and it seems to be snugly nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains!! yes... i can see mountains here. :) i can see them from the school, which i forgot to mention is on the second floor of an outdoor shopping outlet. they’re beautiful on a clear, sunny day. and dusk. um... i kinda understand what “purple-mountain majesties” means now. hehe.

i find one odd, contradictory aspect of koriyama. walking to and from school, i notice that the people are quiet, simple, unassuming. they give me a reassuring sense of calm, as they themselves slowly walk about, or obediently wait on a corner before the no-walking light even though no car is to be seen for a mile away (haha), or leisurely pedal their anachronistic bikes with their belongings on the front basket. it’s almost as if they belong to a bygone era when life was... easier. without any of the commotion of a modern, fast-paced world. it’s really quite beautiful.

and yet... i pass by a louis vuitton and tiffany’s everyday on my way to school. they seem SO out of place that i really really wonder how they sprouted on the scene and if they’re getting any business. haha. so yeah... i guess that’s the only thing. oh and the pachinko. but... i guess they’re everywhere in japan.

food: i kinda spent recklessly when i first got here, but i didn’t even get to try out the japanese foods i really wanted: sushi, udon, takoyaki. and now i can’t seem to find them! grr. but it’s okay, cuz i’m budgeting. which isn’t hard to do, cuz all i see are lots of resistable fried stuff: katsu, croquets, tempura, etc. (resistable only cuz i had them last week already hehe). luckily i found the BEST cheap thing in japan: rice balls!!! (or onigiri, jordan informed me.) triangular packed rice (so no, not technically balls) with different stuffings inside. i LOVE the tuna one, i am officially hooked (pun intended). haha i’m so addicted that i’ve had one everyday since friday. thankfully though, the first time i had one, sean was around, and after i incorrectly peeled my first one, he showed me the correct way so that the seaweed actually wrapped around the rice. hahah.

so this is my way to the fat lane. and as if rice balls weren’t bad enough, i’ve found something else that’ll lead me there. pastries and bread rolls. there’s a supermarket by the school which i inevitably visit once a day, and i just canNOT resist the pastries!!! they’re SO interesting and tasty-looking! i just have to try all of them! one a day. or two haha. my favorite so far has been the bread that looked like cookies and cream with cookies and cream stuffing! and this other one that had a caramelized pecan topping. yummm. tsk tsk haha.

japan random mentionables:

face masks: when i first saw people walking around with white rectangles on their faces, which was a common sight especially in tokyo, i thought pollution. and “oh no. reeeally?? is the concern very extreme? here?”

but then kirk, my trainer, told me that it’s actually because of health reasons. if you’re on the train and you don’t wanna catch the cold of the stranger sitting next to you, you wear it. and if YOU’RE sick, you wear it so that you don’t spread sickness. how considerate!!!

the japanese are super considerate!! ie., the face masks. and they have the best customer service i’ve ever experienced! it’s feels like genuine care! super polite! it shows in their words and their actions. it seems they start a lot of their sentences with “sumimasen” which is “excuse me.” and they end a lot of their greetings with “gozaimasu,” which literally means “very much” but is just a word for formal politeness. and do they ever boww!! any meeting, any goodbye, any greeting. they’ve got me doing it now! and haha... once i stopped at a street corner and let a car go first, and the driver did a mini-bow. :) i love it.

japanese fashion: amazing. anything anything anything GOES!!! well.. maybe more so in tokyo. i noticed that all the grown-up girls wear stockings. mostly black. and they pair it with knee-high boots. there was this one girl my age i saw with knee-high boots and a yellow peacoat that stopped mid-thigh. and there was no sign of a skirt or shorts. very hot. (i guess you can find that outfit elsewhere, but idk.. it just looked hotter on her, haha.) i think women’s fashion is probably influenced by the uniforms they wore as schoolgirls. they’re borderline skanky: very short pleated skirts with knee-highs, but i love it! reminds me of sailor moon. :) but the sailor outfit, not the school uniform, haha.

oh and there was this one guy i saw in the subway: he had bleached, long, straight yet unkempt hair that looked perfectly imperfect. he wore giant headphones, a trenchcoat, skinny jeans, and cowboy boots. and he was carrying a briefcase. haha! i think my jaw dropped when i saw him. it just... worked! especially with the way he was walking and how detached he looked. i guess that’s why so much of the japanese fashion works. they just look so confident. as if it’s the most natural thing to wear things that don’t naturally go together!

cars here are so tiny!!! they’re almost as if they’re toy cars, and all the japanese drivers are kids playing house! hehe, i just can’t seem to take them too seriously. like, i hardly take them seriously. i rode in two cabs here, and it still didn’t feel as if they were real cars. i’m not even scared of them. especially with the way they drive too: a leisurely pace. the only reason why i wait at stoplights is cuz they’re such law-abiding citizens! i can’t cross the street unless it’s green for me. i feel as if i’m an awful person for doing so if there are other people around me. haha. and the streets are tiny too! they could be pathways in central park or something. it really feels like a miniature town here in koriyama.

but the tokyo trains, on the other hand, are the real deal! such a complex railway system! i saw a tokyo subway map and my jaw dropped. sooo intricate! cuz sooo many people use them!! and it gets crowded!!! that one time i visited harajuku, i actually didn’t finish my crepes-in-a-cone, and so i brought it to the train. and i couldn’t get a seat so i was just standing with kat. and two stops later it was soo crowded in the train and on the platform that people entered the train with their backs toward the train so that they could forcefully enter. kinda violent. people entered this way, pushing everyone inside the train and we were like schools of fish that were swayed this way and that, but out of our control. and people inside just took it without protest. cuz it’s normal for them. gees. had i known it, i wouldn’t have brought the crepe inside... i was so scared that someone was gonna hit the crepe accidentally and they’d get a sweet surprise. or i’d receive my crepe ON me. haha. luckily neither happened.

and that's it so far... :)