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.