Weekend in Tokyo

Saturday was Yom Kippur, so, like a good Jew, I went to services. Not surprisingly, there aren’t many Jews in Japan – but there are a few. So, some of the major cities have Jewish community centers. So, on Yom Kippur, I found myself at the Tokyo JCC. I went with a guy who’s known as LBJ (Long Bearded Josh) – the only other Jew in my prefecture.

The Tokyo JCC is in a nice, quiet neighborhood in Tokyo – on a small residential street. We were greeted at the door by two guys. One I think was Israeli, but he spoke nearly unaccented English (if anything it seemed to be an Australian accent). The other was a Japanese man who said “shalom” to us. Bizarre – first time I’ve heard Hebrew come out of a Japanese person. Inside, the JCC is a small, three story building. Reform/Conservative services were held in the chapel on the third floor. The services proceeded like any other (they were much more conservative than they were reform). There were moments when I’d forget that I was in Japan. I had to consistently look out the window to remind myself – although, the congregation was a bit of a tip-off. While the vast majority of the congregants were ethnically Jewish, there were a handful of men with Japanese wives (and very cute Jewsian children). I assume that some of them had converted, because there were a few who seemed to be singing along to the prayers. There was one elderly woman (with her Jewish husband) who was apparently the first-ever (or first recorded) Japanese convert to Judaism.

I had been really interested to see the crowd, but it turned out to be fairly unremarkable. (I had, for some reason, expected to see more Japanese people.) It was mostly families with young children – which stinks because I couldn’t just go up to a family and start a conversation (their being busy with their kids and all). There were, however, a fair amount of young adults that I had conversations with. The cool thing was that they were from all over the world. I met a British guy (the first British Jew I’ve met), a French guy (also the first), some Israelis, and (of course) a lot of Americans. One guy actually grew up in Voorhees and was a counselor at the JCC Camp in Medford (I apparently made him feel really old when I told him that, when he was a counselor, I wasn’t yet old enough to be one of his campers.).

After having the break-fast meal at the JCC, I went to meet up with some friends on the other side of town. This weekend was the big Tokyo Game Show (a huge videogame convention) and some of the other JETs had come into the city on Saturday to see it. That night, we all stayed in a capsule hotel. For some reason, I had expected capsule hotels to be kind of like giant morgues, with people sleeping in drawers stacked ten high. It turned out to be fairly pleasant. The capsules are much roomier than I expected (though I had expected something the size of a coffin). The hotel was ten floors, with a bathroom and a room with about thirty capsules (stacked only two high) on each floor. The top three floors are for women (which is rare – this is one of the few capsule hotels in the city that accept women guests).

The next day, we tooled around Akihabara – a neighborhood known for electronics and otaku (huge nerds). We spent most of our time in this enormous electronics store – eight stories high and about the size of a city block. Each floor is devoted to a specific thing (the third floor is all computer stuff, the fourth has camera stuff and watches, the sixth is all videogames and other types of toys – even non-electronics, like LEGOs). We spent a lot of time losing people and then having to relocate them…

After that, we went to Harajuku – a neighborhood that’s famous for the freaks that hang out there. There were some weird outfits… One old man (who I didn’t get a picture of) was wearing a rice-hat that had small fishbowls hanging from either side. The best though, were the Elvis/greaser crazy people. I’ve never seen such big hair. They just put on music and dance around, and people watch and take pictures. I think most of the ‘freaks’ in Harajuku are just out to get attention, and I think most of the other people in Harajuku are there to take pictures of the freaks. So, the system works well. There’s also a famous temple in Harajuku that we checked out. We even got to see a traditional style wedding procession (apparently that temple is a popular place to have traditional weddings). The temple is a good ten minute walk from where the freaks hang out, but somehow, a group of freaks managed to wander over there. It’s strange to see old Japan and new Japan in the same place at the same time.

Then, we went to a baseball game. We couldn’t get tickets to a Yomouri Giant’s game (they’re the biggest team in Tokyo – like Japan’s Yankees), so we to a Yakkult Swallow’s game. They were playing the Hanshen Tigers (from Osaka/Kobe – the teams here aren’t named after the city they play in, rather the company that owns them). The game felt very much like an American minor league game, not only because of the level of play, but also the size of the stadium. The Japanese are very organized when it comes to cheering on their team. For the most part, the fans from each team sit on opposite sides of the stadium. When their team bats, they all stand up and do a series of organized cheers. So there’ll be cheering, and, as soon as you’ve caught on and started to cheer too, the cheer will be over. They have a few different cheers for each player on the team that they cycle through whenever he comes up to bat. Meanwhile, the fans of the fielding team sit quietly. It’s bizarre. There’s no free cheering or shouting obscenities. It’s more like:

A’s Fans: We will cheer now! Here is our cheer! [relative silence] Here’s another cheer!
[switch sides]
B’s Fans: Now’s our turn to cheer! Here is said cheer!

They have a big TV screen (you know, the thing that you mostly look at when you go to American sporting events), but they rarely use it. The only things they use it for are advertisements, showing people in the crowd, and replays when a batter gets a hit (but only of the batter hitting the ball – never of the fielders) – that’s it. If the pitcher burns the batter on a full count, the screen remains black. If something crazy happens (like when the pitcher tried to pick off the runner leading off first, but he overthrew the first baseman, and the runner stole second) the screen remains black. If there was a close call (like when I could have sworn the runner slid past home plate before the catcher tagged him) the screen remains black. I understand not wanting to distract fans with a live feed of the game (the way the screen does in America), but please, show a replay when something interesting happens. Sheesh…

That night, we stayed at a manga café (see the previous post), but I had to leave on the early side, or they would have charged me extra. So, I left before 8 in the morning and wandered around. You expect Tokyo to have throngs of people, and flashing lights, and loud, in-your-face advertisements, but at 8 o’clock in the morning, the city is dead – like that scene from Vanilla Sky. It was really cool wandering around the (seemingly) abandoned city. It felt like a totally different place. Of course, there was still a half-hour wait outside the Krispy Kreme (the only location in Japan, I think). That place is always busy.

[1. my capsule 2. part of the huge electronics store 3. elvis-type dudes in Harajuku - that's really his hair 4. wedding procession 5. Harajuku people at the temple]

So Strange...

So, I'm in Tokyo right now. It's midnight, and I've decided to stay the night. The only reasonably priced options are capsule hotels (just like they sound - more on them later), love hotels (also just like they sound), and manga cafes (not like they sound). I'm in a manga cafe right now. Essentially, you rent out a little cubicle with a padded floor and a computer. They have DVDs and games and manga (Japanese comic books) that you can watch or read. Generally you pay $3 per hour to hang out in these places, but at night, they charge $13 to stay over. So, here I am, in my little padded cubicle, with my computer and my PS2. Soon, I'll curl up on the floor and try to get $13 dollars worth of sleep for the night (or, if that fails, $13 worth of DVDs, games, and comics). Japan is so strange.

My Trash Situation is Seriously Messed-Up

I just spent the better part of an hour cutting up a bunch of milk and juice cartons so I could tie them together in a bundle. You see, trash can’t simply be thrown away in this country – it has to be sorted and prepped first. I have a whole pamphlet (in Japanese) on how to sort my trash, and a detailed calendar of when each type of trash is picked up.

Ok, so there’s burnables (regular trash – food, clothes, some other stuff – picked up on Mondays and Fridays – that’s the easy stuff), paper (cardboard and things – picked up once every two weeks), plastics (bags, packaging, and stuff – not bottles though – picked up once every two weeks), cartons (need to be washed, cut flat, and tied together – picked up once a month), metal (aluminum has to be separated from steel – picked up once a month), plastic bottles (the labels need to be peeled off (those are plastic) – picked up once a month), glass bottles (clear bottles, brown bottles, and other colored bottles need to be in separate bags – picked up once a month), and, finally, broken glass and lightbulbs (picked up once every three months). That’s eleven separate places that trash needs to be stored before it gets picked up (I have a trash can for burnables, a special blue mesh bag for plastics, a blue tub for plastic bottles, a bag for steel, a bag for aluminum, etc…). It’s ridiculous.

Plus, I keep forgetting when certain things need to go out. Last month, I missed ‘carton’ day, so I had a huge pile up while waiting for the next pickup date. I keep forgetting to put out my plastics. The paper’s been piling up. My house is full of trash. If it gets much worse, I’m just gonna drive it over to the convenient store and stealthily deposit it in their trash cans…

Did I mention that there are no trashcans in this country? Only outside convenient stores and other select places. Even on the streets in Tokyo. Need to throw something away? Are you in a building or on a street? Tough. No trash cans. Can you imagine that? If there weren’t trashcans every half-block in New York or any other American city, people would just throw their trash in the street. Only Japanese people are polite enough to carry their trash around with them, and then hoard it in neat little piles in their houses.

The Tea Lady

Every school has its own “Tea Lady”. The tea lady hangs out in the tea room (teachers break room) and sets out food and drinks (tea) for the teachers. She also leaves a hot mug of tea of everyone’s desk in the morning. Every time I walk into an elementary school, their tea lady gives me a class of iced tea. Every time!

The tea lady at our junior high school is really cool. She speaks perfect English. In fact, before she became the tea lady at the school a year and a half ago, she taught English conversation at a private school in Kofu (for some reason she had to work closer to her house – a family issue, I think). She even lived for several years in Northern California. Its really nice – when I have nothing to do, I can hang out with her in the tea room.

It’s really good to have people who have been to America in the office (her and Kae). They can see the ridiculousness of certain things that happen around the school (I’m talking about the things that happen to me). For instance, having me cut bamboo or do a “folk” dance with the students. For the other Japanese people in the office, that’s perfectly normal. Why shouldn’t the children do a random, bizarre “folk” dance? Why shouldn’t the American join them? At least Kae and the tea lady have the wherewithal to laugh…

Japanese TV Part 2

Japanese TV is so dumb… Most of the shows that are on in prime time are variety/clip shows. They have a panel of, like, D-list Japanese celebrities (people with minor roles on TV shows, people in commercials, people that have just become sort of famous for being on these clip shows) watch clips of random subject matters (ranging from human interest stories, to short dramas, to cooking segments, to comedy skits). Sometimes, a person from the panel will have a clip that they star in (like, one woman took some kids to Brazil to capture and eat an electric eel in order to see if it was “delicious”). Throughout the clips, there is a little corner of the screen that is devoted to showing the reaction of the “celebrity” panel to these clips (the JETs have affectionately called it “the emotion box”). So, the show is half about these random clips, and half about what low-level Japanese TV personalities think about the clips. Its weird.

Another popular format is the “D-list celebrities doing wacky things – mostly eating, though” type show. A panel of semi-recognizable Japanese TV personalities play weird games against one another. Most of the games involve eating (almost all these variety shows involve food in some way – every time a turn on the TV I see I shot of food, someone eating, or someone talking about eating). For example, one show had each member of the panel receive a different dish, and then they talked about the food and rated it. Another show had two teams compete in an eating competition where one person tried to feed the other from behind (the hands are trying to feed the face, but the hands belong to someone else, and that someone else can’t see). I guess its equal to (or slightly dumber) than American television.

"Jona-san"

On Monday, I had a day off (because I had to work over the weekend for the school festival). I had to go into Kofu to get my re-entry permit. So, when the school secretary overheard that I’d be in town, she insisted on having lunch with me – even though she doesn’t speak any English (it took forever for her to communicate that she wanted to get lunch). So, we met at a chain restaurant called Jonathan’s (which is very similar to Denny’s – they even have Denny’s in the this country). (Why call it “Jonathan’s”? No Japanese person can pronounce that name. They say “Jona-san”. If Kae hadn’t’ve stepped in to correctly pronounce it, I would have spent an entire afternoon looking for “Jona-san”.) Lunch actually went ok. She brought an electronic dictionary. So, with that and my tiny bit of Japanese, we could sort of communicate. The food wasn’t terrible either. I got pasta with “American sauce” (which is like a red cream sauce with crab in it). I think its hilarious that there are American style chain restaurants all over Japan.

School Festival: Day Two

The second day of the festival was so much better than the first – for so many reasons (some of them humiliating). The day started off with a bang – a rousing rendition of “We Are the World” – sung in broken Engrish. When the song ended there was a halfhearted call for an encore, so the band came back on and performed a literal encore – they played the same song again. At the end of the song, the two kids playing guitar each played a one-measure heavy metal solos (like, the band hits its last note, and then, all of a sudden, there’s 6 seconds of totally out of place wailing guitar, and then the song’s over).

Then, the ninth graders had their play, which was infinitely better than the other two. They actually did things like move around, gesture with their arms, show emotion when speaking (and when not speaking), and memorize their lines. Good job, ninth graders.

Then the festival kicked it up a notch. It was time for the feats of strength (the P.E. festival) – in which the grades are pitted against one another in a variety of physical competitions. Relays and tug-of-war were pretty standard, but the P.E. festival had some tricks up its sleeve. Some highlights were, the group jump-rope (where the classes tries to collectively jump-rope as many times as they can) and two separate races where the kids’ legs are tied together (one where the kids are standing next to each other, and the other where they stand single file). But the best thing (I don’t even know what is called) is the race-to-pull-the-large-piece-of-bamboo-to-your-side. Essentially, two groups of kids start at opposite ends of a field and, when the gun goes off, race to the piece of bamboo in the middle. Then they have to pick it up and carry it to the side they started from. But both teams are pushing/pulling at the same time. It was one of the most intense things I’ve ever seen – especially the girls’ event. They’re pretty much even, so it became a fierce struggle. They’re pushing so hard that some of the littler kids got knocked down and almost trampled. The kids were screaming, but the teachers were screaming louder – “fight!!!” Wow. And afterwards, the emotions – wild cheering, crumpling into tears, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, the agony of having several of your ribs crushed by a large piece of bamboo. I’m pretty sure that particular activity is illegal in America.

So, after the P.E. activities, there was a closing ceremony, where they lit a bonfire and the kids stood around it. And then (and this is priceless), the kids did a “folk dance”. So, in America, when people perform an artform from another culture, there’s usually some acknowledgement of the culture of origin. Like, how the artform is used in the culture, or what the significance of the artform is. Japan seems totally oblivious to anything outside its borders. There were two “folk dances”. The first might have been Israeli because I remember the tune and doing a variation of the dance in Hebrew school way back when (but I’m not sure if it actually is of Israeli origin…). The second was like an American western line dance to the tune of “The Turkey in the Straw”. It was bizarre and totally random. Where did these folk dances come from? Why are we doing them? Maybe its best not to ask too many questions. What made it even better was (yes, you guessed it) they had me dance with the students. It was pretty humiliating, and I’m pretty sure all involved were a little uncomfortable (except, of course, the staff – who seem totally oblivious of everything). Kae got a nice laugh out of it, though. So far, I think dancing with the students has been the most awkward moment of my time here.

[1. calisthenics before the P.E. festival 2. jumping rope in unison 3. the bamboo game is brutal 4. girls crumple into a heap while teachers scream encouragment 5. kids (with their legs tied together) try to run in unison

Pictures of the "Folk Dance"

[read the above (newer) post first]






[oh man...]

School Festival: Day One

So, the first day of the school festival was today. It was kinda fun, I guess… The whole day was spent in the hot, hot gym, and the “festival” was essentially just one group performance after another. Some of them were good. One of the 9th grade homerooms put on a Stomp type show that was surprisingly good (the music teacher is their homeroom teacher, so I’m pretty sure she put the whole thing together). The brassband played (though, I didn’t have to join them). They were really good. Especially considering that the kids start playing their instruments in seventh grade. I guess if you practice for two hours a day, you’ll get good pretty fast. I think the first chair alto player is better than me… The music teacher wants me to join the club for at least a couple days a week. Hopefully it won’t be too embarrassing.

Really, only the things that the music teacher had a hand in were good, the rest was utter crap. I was exposed to a unique form of Japanese torture called the “junior high school play”. Wow. Talk about a lack of direction… It was essentially the kids just standing still on the stage, with their arms at their sides, trying to remember their lines. And the plays were totally incomprehensible (even to the people who spoke Japanese). Something about cutting off hands and eyes and then they heal, but it’s a scam (?)… Something about a girl who dies in an accident and is resurrected in people-she-knows’ bodies (what happens to the spirits of the people whose bodies she takes over?)… They went on forever too.

That was pretty much the whole day. The gym was sweltering and I had to wear a shirt and tie (to give a good impression to the Board of Education people – who came for the opening ceremony and then bolted before the plays got started). The teachers saw that I had a nice camera, so I sort of became the official unofficial photographer. They wanted me to take as many pictures as humanly possible, but how many pictures can you have of kids standing expressionless and motionless on a stage? A ton apparently…


[1. a typical example of a moment from a play 2. the brass band 3. boys are bored by brass band 4. "stomp 5. they made this gigantic sign out of flattened milk cartens that you can see from my house]

A Typical (?) Friday at School

So, today, I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do for elementary school classes next week, and I get interrupted by the school secretary who eventually communicates that she wants me to come to the PTA chorus practice. The practice is tonight (in an hour actually) and it is the final practice before the performance – tomorrow. Yeah, thanks for the advanced notice. So, I learned the song in the tearoom with a bunch of other teachers singing to me. They really love to put me on the spot. Maybe they think foreigners can do anything… They kind of treat me like the new toy in the office that everyone has to share.

Speaking of which, later in the afternoon, I’m (again) trying to do my elementary lesson, when they come up to me and say (essentially) “Are you busy? Of course not. Why don’t you go cut some bamboo.” So they send me to this path behind the school with another teacher and expect me to cut back all the overgrown bamboo. Keep in mind that, per the dresscode, I’m wearing khaki pants, a collared shirt, and nice shoes (why do they want me to look presentable while doing yardwork?). So, there I am, trudging through the bamboo forest, in my Rockports, with my handsaw and my handsaw-scabbard, hacking away at bamboo. It was great…

Japanese Lesson

On Wednesday I had a Japanese lesson. My teacher is this old Japanese man who used to be the principal of the junior high school I work at. He just sort of showed up one day and said he would be teaching me Japanese for $10 a lesson. This was totally planned without my consent and they just sort of assumed that I would want/accept the lessons. The guy speaks almost no English, but he said his wife would make me dinner sometimes, so I figured I’d give it a try. The first lesson went ok (no dinner by the way). He sort of taught me things I already knew (like “good morning” – which I have to say everyday – “thank you”, “sorry”, “hi my name is”, “I come from…”) but insisted on teaching me them anyway, and then got impressed when I repeated them back so quickly. I feel like I could more efficiently teach myself these things, but I think I’ll hold out and see if they become worthwhile… At least they’ll provide some material for this blog (for $10 a lesson)…

Elementary School

This week was my first week of elementary school classes. It worked out pretty well, but I have no idea what I’m doing. I just did a self-intro type lesson where I showed them pictures of people and things from back home. So, if you come to Japan, there is a chance that about 40 Japanese children will recognize you.

They were particularly impressed with the size of our house – I tried to tell them that houses are just bigger in America, but they insisted that I was rich. Also, they got a kick out of the fact that I drove a Honda. I taught them some grammar, and then played a card game where they break into groups, and I lay cards with the pictures on them infront of them. I call out the name of something on the card (like, “my family”) and the first one to slap gets the card. It was kind of funny watching them slap pictures of everybody. The kids liked the game, so I think the lesson went well. But I have no idea what I’m going to do for next week.

A Japanese Sunday

On Sunday, Adam, Morgan, and I went to the Minobu-san Temple. Its this cool old temple at the top of, like, two-hundred stairs. At the base, there is a little, old street with suvenior shops and stuff. Morgan and I bought wooden Kendo swords. Afterwards, Adam took us to this little restaurant in my town (because his Japanese is so good, he can do a lot more exploring, and he’s been to every little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the area). The food was really good. I even tried horse meat. Yeah, the Japanese eat horses. Weird. It tasted just like beef. Then, we went to Morgan’s and they showed me a Japanese TV show where a comedian tries to beat classic Nintendo video games in one sitting. It took him, like, 14 straight hours to beat Super Mario Bros. 2 and way longer to beat Ghosts and Goblins. The guy’s kinda bad at video games and sometimes his younger assistants have to help him beat things (they even coach him on strategies using a white board).

The Coolest JTE in the Prefecture

I have the coolest JTE in the prefecture. On Saturday night her and one of her friends came out with us to one of the restaurant/bars in Minobu – something most Japanese teachers wouldn’t do. She even gave people hugs. Hugs! Japanese people don't hug - too awkward. They just bow profusely.

A Corrupting Influence

My predecessor, Adam, came back to Japan. I met him and some other guys at a little restaurant about ten minutes from my apartment. He seems like a really nice guy. I’m not quite sure why the staff at the school has such a strong dislike of him. The next morning, I mentioned to Kae that I met him. Somehow that news got around the office, because later in the day, the principal had a little chat with Kae about how he was afraid that if I hung around Adam, he would corrupt me. They really didn’t like him.

Sushi

The sushi restaurants here are very different than they are in America. Though, it could just be the ones that we’ve gone to… We’ve been to (I think exclusively) chain sushi restaurants. At these places, the sushi comes out of the kitchen on a little conveyer belt that snakes alongside all the booths (like luggage at an airport). When you see something you like, you just take it. If you want something special, or something that you don’t see on the belt, you push the button on your table and a waiter comes to take your order. When you’re done, the waiter comes and counts your plates to determine the bill (its about a dollar per plate).

Only in Japan, right? A place like that would never make enough money to stay open in America. People would just take the food and leave the plates on the conveyer belt. There’d be no way to tell how much food you had, and no way to figure out who left the empty plate on the belt. It only works in Japan because the people are (for the most part) honest.

With the exception of one, the food hasn’t been terribly good at these places. I have yet to visit a proper sushi restaurant.

[The picture, by the way, is of hamburger sushi, from the sushi chain "Kappa Sushi".]

JETs are Nerds

All of them. Some more so than others, but everyone’s got a little nerd in them. Almost every plays videogames (not casually), and the ones that don’t are nerdy in other ways. Some play Dungeons & Dragons every weekend, some are obsessed with anime and manga, and others love electronics. I knew I was in nerd land when I started talking Final Fantasy music with the guy who (beforehand) seemed like he was too cool to be on this program. And I really knew I was in nerd land when the guy who made his own suit of chainmail asked a group of us if we knew what the design of the chainmail was based off of, and the girl, who had previously shown no obvious signs of excessive nerdiness, yelled out “white mage!” (from Final Fantasy). Who else would come to Japan, right?

We Engrishi Lovu!

The Japanese are obsessed with English words. They love them. Every t-shirt I see has English on it, magazine covers all have English, and product labels use English too. There’s even more English if you count the katakana. Katakana is a set of Japanese letters used to write foreign words. So, you see some Japanese, realize its katakana, and then you can try to decode what the English is. The thing is, Japanese has a fraction of the sounds that English does, so the katakana letters can’t accurately represent English. So, the English represented by katakana is not actually English – it’s Japenglish. I have to go over a word a bunch of times and repeat it out loud before I can understand what the English is supposed to be. It’s like a little game (but the stakes are fairly high – Is this “shi chiken” (a.k.a. tuna)? or some horrible, horrible abomination?).

There are so many borrowed English words in Japanese. They’ve even gone to the extent of replacing Japanese words with Japenglish ones. What’s the Japanese word for “orange” (the color)? Who knows, it’s “orenji” now. How do you say “door” in Japanese? Who cares, they write “doa” on them in katakana.

You’d think with all these English words, they’d be able to write or speak English, right? No. Even with their love of English words, they have a complete inability to put them together to form anything coherent. Here is are some samples: from some lotion packaging – “It puts the lotion on its back.” From a ‘curriculum’ that was given to me by an elementary school principal – “Let a mouth learn English aloud well. I let a mouth learn English conversation! Even if I do not learn a character, please learn a sound.” From the same ‘curriculum’ – “Please become the one where a mother answers as possible at first. The English thing which I do not understand is Japanese, and please answer. It is practiced what.” How am I supposed to design lessons based on that?!

Bugs!

The bugs in this country are huge. The beetles are enormous, some of the crickets are 3-4 inches long, the stinging insects are twice as big as in America, and the dragonflies are like hummingbirds. Yet, Japanese people seem to be totally unfazed by them. Giant wasps fly in and out of the staffroom without anyone batting an eye. Students only notice the beetles when the start making horrible sounds in class. When I was in one of the elementary schools, meeting the principal, there was a huge prehistoric-size dragonfly trying to smash its way through the ceiling. They didn’t even look up.

Classes!

There’s another JTE here. She’s only part time, and no one ever seems to know when she’s going to show up. Also, her English is horrible. I have no idea how she manages to teach the subject. They track the English classes here, so Kae takes the more advanced kids, and Hoyuri takes the slow ones.

In the middle school classes, I don’t really have much to do. I say good morning to the students, wait for Kae (or Hoyuri) to finish their spiel in Japanese, then they tell me what to read or say. Sometimes its reading new words and having the students repeat, sometimes its doing listening exercises, and other times its explaining and conducting a game (for the advanced kids – the slow ones can barely say “my name is”). Its pretty easy.

Kae lets me come up with games and warm-up activities for class, which is good. She’s really open to new ideas. I have a feeling that by the end of the year, she may even let me run a couple classes (teach grammar lessons and stuff). Hoyuri is part time, so she doesn’t really give a crap about anything. If I showed up and said, “I want to play this game,” she’d let me (less work for her, right?). But she’s also just as happy teaching right from the textbook and treating me like a human tape-recorder – just telling me to read this or that (which she can barely even communicate).

Kae already has me grading papers. I graded the 8th graders summer assignment, and the 7th graders fifty-word quiz. That quiz… oh boy… I feel bad for these kids trying to learn to spell English words. But some of these kids… oh man, I got some “herro”s (instead of “hello”). “Table” was the most frequently misspelled word, and “father” was an absolute disaster. Most of the kids left that one blank. Two of the kids’ (who, Kae latter told me, have learning disabilities) I didn’t even grade – I just felt too bad.

The Opposite of Beck

The whole school has a very cozy atmosphere. There are only about 120 students and 15 staff members (excluding the kitchen staff). So, everyone really knows one another. It feels like a community, rather than just a place that the kids go during the day. This school couldn’t be any more different from Beck. Everything is the opposite.

Lunch!

So, everyday, I eat lunch with the students. The setup is really interesting. Just like the students clean the school themselves, the students set up lunch too. They set out all the trays, serve the food, put it on the trays, get the milk (the drink is always milk – no matter what they’re eating), get the chopsticks, etc. They all wear bandanas and aprons while doing this. I try to help, but I feel like I mostly just get in the way. Kae gave me an apron, but I don’t yet have a bandana. The lunch itself is pretty good – rice usually, some kind of soup, other things I can’t identify… Sometimes there’s some weird stuff I stay away from. Yesterday there was this congealed potato stuff cut into wedges. It didn’t really have a taste, but the texture was a little disturbing. It’s wiggly, like jello, but offers more resistance, like rubber. It doesn’t really break down in your mouth either… It was weird.
After lunch, the kids clean up the place. Uneaten food is dumped back into the empty containers, bowls and plates are stacked, milk bottles put away, tables wiped, etc. The kids are pretty efficient.

"Special Class"

The kids are very busy preparing for their school festival. I’m not totally sure what the school festival is, I just know that it involves playing sports and music, putting on a play, doing a dance, synchronized jumping rope, banging on drums, and running around a track with everyone’s legs tied together. Each day until the school festival (on Sept. 8th and 9th) is only half a day of classes and the other half is filled with the above activities. So, today I had literally nothing to do. No junior high classes. No elementary school classes. I did some gardening with the P.E. teacher and the retarded girl. That’s her “special class”.

School!

On the first day of school, I had to give a speech at the opening ceremony. I think it went pretty well. Most of it was in English, and Kae translated for everyone. Not being able to keep track of all the formalities and stuff, I feel like a moron. Kae keeps having to signal to me, “bow,” “stand up,” “sit down,” “take your hands out of your pockets.” I just try to smile a lot to smooth things over.

After the ceremony, the students had to go clean the school (at the end of each school day, the kids clean the school for about twenty-minutes – I guess so they don’t have to hire a janitorial staff). I went to visit the elementary schools I’ll be teaching at (finally). Everyone at the elementary schools is very nice, and the kids are very cute, but I’ll be in charge of 5th and 6th grade English instruction at three different schools. In junior high classrooms, I am an assistant, but in the elementary school classes, I run the show. The homeroom teachers don’t speak English, so I’m on my own. It should be interesting…

On Tuesday I had my first day of classes. In junior high I did a self introduction and showed some pictures. Kae had the kids fill out a worksheet, answering questions about the things I said. Even though the kids are really shy, it went really smoothly.
Then, I went to one of the elementary schools for classes. This Australian guy, Peter, kind of led the classes to ease me into it (which was good). Peter has been teaching elementary school kids English for ten years. He has a company that places private English teachers with schools. He was there to help out one of his employees (the husband of a new JET who’s teaching 3rd and 4th grades at the school’s I’ll be at). So, he gave me a hand too. He was really, really good – a tough act to follow. I’ll be on my own next week. Oh boy…

(S)SETY

Thursday was the first day of the SETY (Summer Semester for English Teachers in Yamanashi – yeah, we lost an “S” in there somehow) conference. It’s mainly for the JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) but all the JETs have to show up for it. They split us into smaller groups (15 – 20) and we do little activities. Thursday was mainly icebreakers. We had to bring in an object that was “important to us”. Then, everyone received a random someone else’s object and had to try to guess who’s it was. I think its mainly to get the JTEs to speak English with native speakers.

After that, we broke up into even smaller groups (3 – 5) to make a skit/commercial using someone in the group’s “important item”. I was in a group with two other JTEs, so I pretty much had to take the lead (as they were shy Japanese women who’s English wasn’t exactly stellar). One of the women brought in Pokemon figurines (that her kids played with) and we made up a skit based on them (in the skit/commercial, the Pokemon were “Working Monsters” that you purchased based on your profession – a teacher would buy a teacher working monster – and when you activated it, it would turn into a you-lookalike and go to your job for you). It was a silly idea, but the skit turned out to be kind of funny. We had to perform it in front of our larger group (the 15 person one). Then we all voted on the one that would eventually be performed for everyone (almost 200 people). Of course, no group voted for their own, but somehow, almost everyone (except for those of us in my group) voted for us. Great… So, we performed our skit in front of the whole crowd. With a little bit of improvising, we won (by vote of applause – hardly an accurate statistical method). A pretty good first day… Oh, and I got paid that day. Almost $3,000 – and, other than winning the skit contest, I haven’t done a thing yet.

Too Little Too Late

On Monday and Tuesday we finally had local orientation (something we really should have had as soon as we arrived from Tokyo). We got a chance to meet the Group B people (the people that came into the country a week after us – so, a thousand new JETs came in with Group A – my group – and another thousand that came in a week later). All told, there are now 32 new JETs in Yamanashi. Because we’ve already spent a lot of time together in our smaller groups, the people from Groups A and B were slow to mingle, and even now, they sort of feel like new people. Its funny how fast you make friends and stick with those friends when you’re in a new situation.

The orientation was in Kofu and started off with our meeting the Vice Governor of Yamanshi. We all had to wear suits and stuff for this occasion. It was pretty boring though. Some speeches were made, words exchanged, blah, blah, blah. There were some TV cameras there, and photographers too. I think we ended up on the local news, and in the Yamanashi newspaper.

Then we went to a fruit museum (or some such thing). Yamanashi is apparently a large producer of fruits (especially grapes and peaches, but not pears – even though Yamanashi means “mountain of pears” there are hardly any pears grown here). The Vice Governor, in his speech, went so far as to say that Yamanashi had become a “Kingdom of Fruit”. We thought we might get to meet the Fruit King... It was pretty swealtering walking around outside the fruit park in our suits, and there wasn’t even any fruit to sample…

Later we went to a Yamanashi history museum. Again, all the exhibits were in Japanese, but we were led around by a tour guide who was translated by one of our CIRs. That night, we got to stay in a hotel, and we each got our own rooms. Even though we were exhausted and had to get up early the next morning, we all went out that night. The area of Kofu we were in was pretty dead, so we ended up walking the mile to The Vault (a Kofu bar run by an Australian guy). It was a good time. We finally got to mix with the Group B people. It turns out that some of them are pretty cool, but by the end of the night, it was only Group A people left in the bar.

Kuruma Arimasen

Later that night, after going to a party at a bar in Kofu, a few of us went to a McDonald’s (yes they have them here, and you can get a shrimp burger) drive through – without a car. When we walked up to the window, Dave (who’s Irish – which is why everything he says is funny) said to the guy “Sumimasen, kuruma arimasen”, which literally means “sorry, car does not exist” (practically, it means, “sorry, we don’t have a car”, but the literal translation strikes me funny). The attendant there (at 3 in the morning) was really chipper and helpful. He wore his McDonald’s uniform with pride. That seems to be a theme here in Japan – there are no ‘bad’ jobs, and everyone takes their job really seriously. People take satisfaction in wearing their work uniforms (and there is a heavy emphasis on uniforms). Whereas someone working at a McDonald’s drive through at 3 in the morning in the middle of nowhere in America would be annoyed and surely when a group of foreigners walked up to the drive-through window, this Japanese guy in the same situation tried his best to give us an excellent McDonald’s experience.

A Day Trip to Tokyo

On Sunday, some other new JETs and I went over to Tokyo. We took the bus from Kofu. It takes about two hours to get from there to Shinjuku station. There’s not much to tell – we didn’t do all that much – just sort of walked around and got lost a lot. We did manage to make it to Moiri Tower, where you can see a 360 degree view of Tokyo. It was pretty cool. Tokyo doesn’t have nearly as many skyscrapers as Manhattan. Most of the buildings are pretty low, actually. The city is made of up many smaller neighborhoods connected by a labyrinth of roads. It would be a nightmare to try to drive around Tokyo – it’s hard enough to walk. The streets are not gridded. In fact, there’s no order to them whatsoever. Most don’t even have names. There are just streets – going in all different directions. I hear the taxi drivers get lost sometimes.
The subway system isn’t much simpler. I shouldn’t say “subway system”, but rather “subway systems”. Yes, there are two separate subway lines. Not like “red line”, “blue line”, but two wholly different subway systems that overlap each other. One is run by JR, a huge Japanese transportation company that runs most of the trains in the country, and the other is run by (I think) the Tokyo Bureau of Transportation. They each have a ton of different colored lines going all over the city, but they are separate from each other. You need two completely different subway maps to navigate, and each one is ridiculously complicated in and of itself. It took us a while to figure out how to get around…

[Ok, so I think the pictures require some explaination. One is a street in Harajuku that had some insanely nice shops. One is an intense-looking bus. One is the famed crosswalk in Shibuya, where like, a thousand people cross at once when the light changes. One is a Kevin standing in front of a Masked Rider subway poster. And the last one is one of the views of the city from Moiri tower.]

Fireworks

On Tuesday night I met the other Yamanashi JETs at the fireworks festival. The fireworks were definitely the best I’ve ever seen. Instead of one big fireworks show that sort of pulls out all the stops (like in America), the festival consisted of smaller shows. In between, a Japanese women would give a speech (I think about the sponsor of the upcoming display). Each little show was perfectly choreographed. The ones that were set to music were done so that the firework cues matched (almost) perfectly with the soundtrack. It was really impressive – especially since we were sitting so freakin close to the fireworks themselves. They were literally right overhead. During one of the shows, a burning ember landed, like, fifty yards infront of us.

A Busy Tuesday

So, this afternoon I had lunch with Kae, my JTE. Beforehand, she showed me around Nakatomi Junior High, the school I’ll primarily be working at. The school is on a mountain overlooking the town. The view is incredible. The school itself is three stories. It’s a lot more friendly looking than American junior high schools (Beck certainly doesn’t come to mind). Except for science, music, and PE, the kids stay in their homeroom all day and the teachers come to them. Without lockers, it kind of feels more like an elementary school. One interesting feature to the school was the abundance of helmets in all the classrooms. You know, for earthquakes. They apparently strike about once every two months.

The kids are now on summer break, which means they don’t go to classes but instead participate in clubs everyday. The dedication of these kids is unbelievable. Kae took me to the gym where the badminton team was practicing. The badminton team, by the way, is all girls (the boys play baseball), and they could flat out ruin me in badminton. I’ve never seen anyone (let alone a thirteen year old Japanese girl) hit a birdie so hard. They were crushing that freaking thing. Our junior high has the first and third best badminton players in Yamanashi.

I met the music/band teacher, whose name I have since forgotten. Since I put it on my JET application, everyone in the school knows that I play saxophone – especially the band teacher. She wants me to play in some sort of school festival. I told her I didn’t have my horn with me. She said they had extra ones at school. I tried to tell her that I was really rusty, but she didn’t seem to care. She gave me the sheet music. Great… If the girls in brass band (its all girls, I guess ALL of boys are busy with baseball) are anywhere near as good as the ones on the badminton team, this is going to be really embarrassing…
After showing me around the school, Kae had to go to the local firestation to visit some students who were learning about what its like to be a fireman for a day (or something… I’m still not really clear on what we were doing there). When we walked in, the kids were busy performing CPR on a dummy, so we started chatting with one of the head fireman. After finding out that I was from Philadelphia, the guy kept saying “Rocky!” to me and punching the air. After the kids finished their lesson, the firefighters took it upon themselves to enthusiastically show me every piece of equipment in the station. They took me into the ambulance and took my blood pressure and monitored how much oxygen was getting to my fingers (?!). Apparently not enough – I was six points below average. Then, they insisted on having me try on all of their firefighting equipment. I tried on the fireproof jacket (even though it was like 95 degrees out). Then they strapped an oxygen tank to my back and put this giant, face-covering mask on my head and had me breathe through it for a minute (though there was enough air in the tank to last another twelve). Kae just sort of stood by and acted as my translator through the whole thing. I’m still not sure why we went there in the first place. Kae barely talked to the kids. I think the Japanese are on a mission to humiliate me.

Japanese TV Part 1

Japanese television is retarded. I just watched a show where two kids are reading “Lord of the Rings” and the characters come to life. Only, its not Lord of the Rings, because the characters are a guy in a red eighteenth century European military uniform, a princess in a two-dollar tiara, a guy with a plastic helmet and shield, and a greasy haired old woman in a French maid outfit. But they totally used the music from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack all throughout the show. At one point, the guy in the military uniform was fighting a wall made of cardboard boxes, and then he fought construction equipment. It was like a bad dream that insisted on making no sense.

Sometimes, Doing Things is Kowai (Scary)

Everything is a little bit terrifying over here. I had some errands to run today, and I knew that in order to get to the big Target-like store (which is like 45 minutes away – everything is far away here – but the drives don’t feel long – they’re very scenic) I would need to buy gas. I prepared myself. I was all ready to say “man-tan kudasai” (full tank please), when I saw the attendent, but when I drove up, he started asking me questions or something. I ended up getting my tank of gas, but the experience was a bit more frightening than it would have been in the States. I guess I’m better for it.

Driving

Driving in Japan is a real trip. Everything’s opposite – you drive on the left side of the road in the passengers seat. The first time I drove, I made an American right turn… I won’t do that again. Since then though, I’ve gotten used to it. I drive an old white Honda Vigor. There are all sorts of weird Japanese cars that never make it over to the States. Honda, Toyota, and Nissan pump out all sorts of cool designs over here. Its really rare that you see American cars here (surprise, surprise). So far, I’ve seen three – a Buick (what?!), a Mustang (apparently they’re fairly popular), and a Hummer (I hear they’ve caught on as a status symbol). We were driving around the other day, and we saw a guy in a red Ferrari. Beautiful car. The guy must have imported it because the wheel was on the left side.
The nomenclature for roads here makes navigation very difficult. When a new road is built, they don’t bother giving it a unique name. Instead, they name it after an already existing road. I live on Rt 52, but there are three other Rt 52’s that run parallel to it. They don’t even bother with words like “new” or “old” – all the 52’s are just 52. Good luck figuring out which is which. And its not just 52. There are many Rt 5’s, and several Rt 12’s. Its fun to come to an intersection where, any way you go, you’re on the same road.

Weeding with Neighbors on a Sunday Morning

I had to weed the area around my apartment this morning with the other residents. My supervisor (Ishida) recommended that I go, and then he showed up at my apartment that morning to make sure I did. It was at 7 - on a Sunday. Ugh. The neighbors seemed nice. They kept trying to talk to me, but to no avail. All they could communicate was “what’s your name,” “how old are you,” and “go rake that stuff over there” (they did that with gestures). I think they were making fun of me right in front of my face, but I have no way of knowing.

My Apartment

My apartment is off of Rt 52. Its kind of Japanese style – with tatame mats in three of the rooms. There are two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a large bathroom. Its probably almost twice the size of our apartment in Evanston. The space is great, but the tatame mats create a strange smell that is distinctly Japanese. There’s no hot-water heater in the apartment. If I want hot water, I have to turn on the gas and heat the water as needed. Its different, but I’ve gotten used to it. The one problem appliance is the clothes washer (there’s no dishwasher). I have what must be the first washer in Japan. Calling it automatic is a stretch. I turn on the hose to fill the wash chamber, put clothes and soap in, and set the timer. Once it gets going, it just sort of swishes the clothes around – kind of slowly. If I stuck my arms into the washer during its cycle, I would be in absolutely no danger. Once its done swishing, the clothes just sit there in the soapy water. I then have to move them over to the rinse chamber. I haven’t quite figured this part out. Basically the idea is to rinse and spin at the same time, but I’m not sure if I should keep the water going as it spins or fill it up with water and let it drain as it spins or some combination of the two. I think I need to sabotage it so the Board of Education will get me a new one. I mean, I would gladly pay for it, but I don’t think they would go to the trouble of helping to get me a new washer unless the old one was broken beyond repair. So the sabotage will have to be bad enough to make it not worth repairing, but not so bad that they suspect foul play…

My New Neighborhood

Minobu is beautiful. It is in the southwestern part of Yamanashi. The “town” is in a valley, so a river runs down the middle of it and there are mountains on either side. Minobu is really a collection of towns that were condensed into one (probably to increase paperwork). There’s not a whole lot of room between the river and the slope of the mountains, so all the towns are small. Rt. 52 runs along the west side of the river and it connects all the little towns. By driving along 52, you pretty much see everything there is to see in Minobu (the east side has a comparable road). It’s pretty rural. Many houses have little farms (think 50 ft by 30 ft). At the same time, though, there are chain restaurants, and big supermarkets. But no movie theater. The nearest movie theater is in Kofu, the capital of Yamanashi. Kofu is about an hour away by car or train (the nearest train station is a ten minute’s drive from my apartment). Downtown Kofu reminds me a little of Evanston, but as soon as you leave the downtown area, it becomes suburban sprawl – like Rt. 70 or Dempster. From Kofu, you can take a train or a bus to Tokyo (there’s even a bus that leaves three times a day from Minobu to Tokyo). It takes about two hours. So, overall, I’m about three hours from Tokyo.

Going to, and Arrival in Yamanashi

On Wednesday morning (after a long night of karaoke) we checked out of the Keio and boarded a bus to Kofu (the capital of Yamanashe). The ride took two hours. We stopped at a convenient store (konbini) along the way. It was like an American convenient store… but different. Like, they had an instant green-tea maker and little things of sushi and fried noodles to go. Oh, and all the product lables are in Japanese (though many of them are in katakana, which means they are actually English if you can decode the Japanese).

Some of the JETs who’ve been around for a couple of years came to Tokyo for the Yamanshi night out and then took the bus back with us in the morning. It turns out that two of them work for the same school district that I do, and we even have the same supervisor. When we got dropped off at the international center, I met my JTE (Japanese teacher of English), my supervisor, the principal of my school, and the head of the Board of Education. Then we all went out for sushi (the two other JET’s too, which was good). I had the best unagi I’ve ever had – great stuff – and I got my first chopsticks compliment (apparently the first of many – the Japanese like to compliment foreigners on their chopstick prowess – either because they are just trying to be friendly, or they are legitimately surprised when foreigners are able to use them).

My JTE is really cool. She speaks perfect English and is really laid back. And she has a sense of humor (yes, someone I can talk to so I don’t lose my sanity in the stuffy Japanese teacher’s room). The veteran ALT’s think that she’s the coolest JTE in the prefecture. Ishida, my supervisor, is a Buddist priest who speaks no English, but listens to jambands. Driving me around Minobu, our conversation consisted of me naming bands and him either not recognizing them, or recognizing them and naming a similar band. It turns out he likes String Cheese, John Scofield, Leftover Salmon, Yonder Mountain String Band, The Grateful Dead, Soulive, Government Mule, Jazz is Dead (when I mentioned it, he said “Jimmy Herring!”, and also named the drummer whose name I can’t remember at the moment). We listened to Mediski, Martin, and Wood as well as Phish while driving around.

Getting a cell phone and a bank account were a lot of fun. Ishida certainly knows the best places to go. (By “best” I mean the ones that will take the longest but require the least amount of work on his part.) Everything takes a really long time here. I had to open my bank account in one branch (that took at least an hour – probably more), and then had to go to a different branch to deposit my travelers’ checks into the account. That took another hour. An hour just to deposit some travelers’ checks. Another JET brought a check that she wanted to deposit into her account, but when she gave it to the people at the bank, they just looked at it and said, “nan desu ka?” – what is it? She then had to explain the concept of the check to the people working at the bank. Lucky, I didn’t have it that bad.

The cell phone place was great. I had to fill out a bunch of forms (pretty standard), and then the guy faxed them somewhere, and we waited ten minutes. Then the guy talked on the phone with someone for a while (probably the person he faxed the forms to). Turns out, I didn’t put my middle name on the form (they make a big deal about my middle name for some reason. I think because its on my passport, they think it needs to go on everything. Its really stupid.) so we had to start a new form (if you mess up one form, you need to start a new one). The new form also needed to be faxed to the mystery man, and then I waited another ten minutes (but it was more like twenty). All this needed to be done with my honko. A honko is a personal seal with one’s name on it. Its used on all official documents. My supervisor had mine ready for me when I arrived. It says, “Sesu” (in Japanese). It even comes in a little case.

Power Rangershttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

So, it seems the Power Rangers (while only a short lived fad in America) have reached mythological importance here in Japan. They've been around since the 70's, and there have been new iterations of them every year. On of my roomates in Tokyo (who has spent time studying abroad here and speaks Japanese) showed me this SNL-type Power Rangers spoof that is the funniest Japanese comedy I've seen thus far.

Check it out on YouTube


There are a bunch of episodes. This is the first. They follow one another, so I recommend watching them in sequential order.

Tokyo Orientation

For some reason, the airport for Tokyo (Narita) is not in Tokyo. It’s in Narita. So, after this 14-hour plane ride (that I couldn’t sleep during because I kept being interrupted with additional food), we collected our bags and get on a bus for Tokyo. It takes at least two hours to get to the hotel (depending on the insane Tokyo traffic). I didn’t take any pictures of it, but (if you can imagine) the hotel was really nice. It was pretty cool – JETs from all over the world were coming in for this orientation. The number of English accents was staggering.

Before going to our rooms, they give us about a dozen tote bags full of stuff we should read. Just to give you an idea, one of the packets was from the US embassy, and it contained (among other things) a book on US geography, a book on US history, a book on the US economy, and a book on the US government. So, after unloading all our bags (including the ones we came with), one of my roommates, a guy I met in NY, and I decide to go explore the area around the hotel. The Keio (hotel) is in an area of Tokyo called Shinjuku, which I think translates to freakin’ crazy. I don’t know if I was delirious from lack of sleep or jet-lagged or what, but as soon as we got about a block from the Keio, it seemed like we had entered crazy-town. Every shop/restaurant/business establishment pays someone to stand outside of it and scream in a high-pitched voice, and every other shop is a pachinko parlor (which must be legally required to have neon flashing lights and big-eyed anime characters outside of them). There was a truck driving around with a giant Pikachyu-like character painted on its side blaring some shrill music. And another truck with The Masked Avenger on the side of it (The Masked Avenger’s mask makes him look like a gigantic red-eyed insect). Its really disconcerting when, after leaving an insane pachinko parlor, the street outside of it is just as (if not more) crazy. After wandering around for a while, we finally got up the courage to get some dinner (in a place that was disappointingly normal). If you’ve ever watched any anime, Shinjuku is pretty much exactly what you expect Japan to be like.

After getting some sleep, they put us through two days of non-stop orientations – and in each one, they gave us another tote bag full of stuff to read. Despite their length, and the emphasis placed on their being mandatory, the orientations were surprisingly useless. The Japanese, it turns out, like to make a big stink of things with formal speeches that end up saying very little. It seemed like, every hour or so, there would be a new Japanese official giving us a fifteen-minute welcome speech (at night, though, these speeches had food waiting for us at the end – but don’t even touch the food until the speech has come to a complete stop). While the whole experience was new and exciting to everyone coming in (about a thousand of us), the Tokyo orientation is apparently exactly the same from year to year, with the only change being in the sentence “the JET program is in its Xth year” (this year it was 20). At each orientation/seminar, they would present a wide range of possibilities of what your life would be like in Japan, and say that they couldn’t be more specific because every situation was different (depending on what prefecture, town, board of education, etc).

So, during the prefectural orientation, I expected my questions to actually be answered – no, no, no…. The whole thing was big catch twenty-two. They gave us a Yamanashi train schedule (a huge fold-out schedule) written entirely in Japanese. This, they said, would help us get around. I could read the times all right, but if you don’t know where the train is leaving from, where its going, what the stops are along the way, and what train station is closest to your house (or how to get there), how are you supposed to get around? To top it off, I had thought that we would be going from Tokyo to Kofu, the capital of Yamanashi, for a more specific orientation, but it turns out we don’t have local orientation for another two weeks. At the local orientation, they are going to tell us about how to travel around Yamanashi (and other places), how to maintain our apartments, and how to get internet. That’s all well and good, but if you can’t read the train schedule, how are you supposed to get to the orientation? And once (if) you figure that out, what’s the point of telling you had to travel around? And if you’ve been living in your apartment for two weeks, you’ve probably had to figure out how to use the appliances, right? Why tell you two weeks later? And of course you could figure all these things out if you had internet (train schedules for all of Japan are written in English on the internet), but they don’t tell you how to get that until local orientation.

On the first full day, they packed us into a large multipurpose room and sat us according to prefecture. Its weird, I had already made friends at Tokyo orientation (mostly people that came in with me from New York), so I hadn’t quite accepted that these new people I was sitting with would be the ones that I would almost exclusively be hanging out with (my other friends would be far, far away – scattered across the country). It’s a good thing that they’re a cool bunch. I met someone from UPenn (its nice to be able to commiserate with someone over not being able to get a cheesestake), and there was even someone from Northwestern (who I had never met, of course). She introduced me to a bunch of other Northwestern people who were at the Tokyo orientation (but not going to Yamanashi). Apparently there are NU people scattered all over Japan. Go fig.

On Tuesday night, all the Yamanashi people went out to a restaurant in Tokyo. There were even some second and third years who came to greet and hang out with us. After dinner, we went to karaoke. I figured I’d give it another try – “when in Rome” right? It still sucks.