#8 First Week in Kurashiki

Sorry this didn't get posted this weekend. Blogger was having some issues with working properly.

So my first week in Kurashiki started with meeting my manager and the NET I was replacing when I got off the train in my city. They took me to my apartment and showed me how things worked and where stuff was. Overall the apartment was in decent enough shape. Osama, the Emergency Teacher I was replacing had done his best to clean but since he doesn’t usually cook, the entire kitchen needed a good scrubbing. But the bathroom was spotless! The rest of the apartment also needed some TLC but nothing major. The only major thing was the faucet in the sink. It was leaking pretty bad to a point where it was spraying water everywhere and I was told that it would eventually get fixed. However when the whole thing popped off later in the week, the company got someone to fix it really fast.

Anyway, after I was shown my apartment and my futon set, we stopped by Chelsea’s apartment (who would be my co-NET.) And she was on her way to a wedding so she left pretty quickly. However manager invited me out to lunch with her and Osama, so I accepted since I always like food and we went to a pasta place that is walking distance from my apartment. I think it’s really funny that an “Italian” place is right around the corner from my apartment since I LOVE pasta and I had been feeling less than fantastic lately with the msg-heavy foods. The pasta was pretty good! I wasn’t expecting much but I was pleasantly surprised. Manager let me try some of what she ordered and she called it “Japanese flavor” and it was actually pretty good and it was the first time I liked how a mushroom tasted! I normally can’t stand mushrooms and I liked the mushrooms in this pasta. They didn’t make me want to spit them back out! After lunch I went back to my apartment and started unpacking. The rest of the day was spent organizing. I cleaned out my whole closet and found a lot of useless junk left from previous tenants and threw away the majority of it. I kept the floor fans and space heaters and of course the kotatsu. I had to vacuum the closet out before I put anything back in. Everything was REALLY dusty. (The rest of my apartment was also caked in dust but I only tackled the closet that day so that I could at least unpack my bags.)

The next day I walked around Kurashiki with Osama and he showed me the historical district and a bunch of other places. It took a long time because I wanted to walk due to the fact that it was pouring outside. We didn’t get too wet but the bottom of my pants were soaked and we were really tried towards the end of the day because it was constant walking. We did go to the local conveyor belt sushi place which was a lot nicer than the one I found by accident in Okayama and everyone gets their own booth and you can order on a screen if you want to special order any sushi that you don’t see on the belt. Or you can order desserts or other non-sushi items, then when your order comes up on the belt, the screen beeps at you and that is how you know it is yours. It was pretty fancy.

The rest of the week consisted of going to work and following around Osama and learning his duties. It was good because I could see how he interacted with the kids and how to keep them entertained while trying to teach them something. There were only a few classes that have a TON of kids and I find that there isn’t really any good way to keep that many kids amused and that it is a struggle for any teacher, even the really good ones. But for the most part I have a lot of private or semi-private lessons, and I really like those the best because I can really teach them better like that.

On Saturday, the last day of our work week, we all went out after work to a big dinner. It was at this cool “traditional” style place and you have to take off your shoes when you go to sit down because everyone was on tatami mats and there were cushions on the floor to sit on. We were such a big group though that there was a little room under the table where the floor dipped down and you could put your feet down and sit like you were in a chair. I was glad for that because sitting on the floor for many hours gets pretty uncomfortable and we were there for a good 3 hours too. After the dinner party there was a lot of bowing and “Otsukaremashita” and more bowing. Then we kind of went our separate ways. Many of us were going in the same direction so we walked together as well. Once we got to a bar that Chelsea really likes, all the Americans broke off to go have more drinks while everyone else went home. We only stayed for about an hour because we were all really tired as it had been a really busy week plus work-related dinner party.

Now we are up to April 24 and 25, which for me is my weekend because I get Sunday and Monday off. I’ll talk about this week and weekend as well since it was mostly uneventful and I really want to get to my golden week post because a TON of stuff happened during golden week.

So that weekend was another cleaning and organizing weekend. I pretty much spent the entire weekend doing that too. I bought a futon pad and a tiny shelf at the home goods store that is practice around the corner from my apartment. I got the expensive futon pad because I knew that if I got the cheap one I would still be uncomfortable at night. The cheap pads were made of normal cushion material and squished pretty easily and the expensive one felt like memory foam. Since the pad is the barrier between the floor and the futon I went with the memory foam. My floor is pretty hard. I also went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of other organizing stuff to help with my kitchen and my bathroom situation.

Speaking of the kitchen this was when the faucet popped of the sink too; which definitely made cleaning the whole kitchen a lot harder since I was in the middle of cleaning all of my dishes. (They were also caked in dust and I was sick of having to wash a dish right before using it.)

And now for a bombardment of apartment photos:

The Shower Room

The "Bathroom Sink" and a cabinet and the washer on the left.

Kitchen dishes on the left, the walkway into the bathroom sink and and you just see the bath tub in the shower room

My cabinet for all of my dishes. It's almost useful.

My kitchen. (I am standing with my back against the dishes)

My front door and tiny shoe area.

The main room. Desk on the left, dining table on the right. (I am standing in the bookshelf corner)

The Bookshelf on the left, then the tv, my computer on a coffee table and a floor couch on the other side of the desk.

My hanging stuff. The hanger contraption doesn't fit in the closet because of the way it is set up. The double doors on the left are the closet doors and the HUGE window leads out to a tiny balcony where I hang my clothes to dry.

The toilet room. It gets its own room. Its next to the shower room.

The next work week was only 3 days long and they were my first 3 days teaching on my own. It was really crazy because I needed to get my sink fixed and go to the bank to deposit some of my traveler’s checks and I still needed to try and lesson plan since I hadn’t had any chance to do that the previous week because I was brand new. The 3 days went by really fast and it’s a miracle that I was able to keep up!  But then it was Golden Week and I had a whole week to do whatever I wanted!

Next Up: Golden Week!

#7 First Week in Japan

Okay so this took a lot longer than I thought it would because learning all of my duties makes me crazy busy and I’ve just been way too tired to write up anything during the week and last weekend was also super busy with moving into my apartment and cleaning it like a mad person and I haven’t had internet either. So let me get you all caught up with my first week.

Let’s start with the first weekend.

So on Sunday (April 10) most of the people in my training group got together and went to Okayama Castle. We had to stop at the international center and ask for directions. (Aka I had to do it, cause I like planning and knowing where I am at all times.) I got a map and spoke with a person who could speak English and then we were off! We crossed through Okayama station to get to the super busy east side of it and took a street car (like the ones you see in San Francisco… er.. I think its San Francisco… maybe it’s another city in Cali…) to the end of what I am going to call Main Street. From there we walked through a park and spotted people camped out by the sakura trees celebrating Hanami, which is the cherry blossom viewing festival. (More on this later) It was sooo pretty! And the weather was absolutely perfect! From there we walked to the castle. It was huge and super cool! I constantly felt like I was looking at a photo in one of my history books but for once I was looking at the real thing!! I feel I will have many more moments like this over the next year.

Okayama Castle was really cool inside too. There were 5 levels to explore and each level had a bunch of really cool things in it. My favorite thing was being able to dress up like a Japanese feudal princess and take photos. (I can never miss a chance to dress up!) There were also places to watch people working on swords. They even let us hold some parts of it to feel the weight of it and hot warm it got when he would work on sanding a part of it to perfection. (I call it sanding but it may be called something else; it looking really similar to the sword and metal version of sanding, ha ha!) The top of the castle had such an amazing view of the city too!

After we left the castle, one of the people in the group wanted to see if there was the samurai’s graveyard near the castle grounds. She had seen a photo of it in the castle on one of the information panels and was curious about it. So we stopped by a stand on the grounds and tried asking the people there if they knew where it was. There was a LOT lost in translation and things started to get pretty funny. At one point, one of the girls who could speak Japanese a lot better than the rest of us went into the castle with one of the stand employees to show him the photo of the graveyard while the rest of us waited outside and chatted with the other employee who was a woman and the funniest person we have met to date! She did a lot of gesturing and made a lot of funny comments. She tried to give Ferrah  a hug (who has quite a fabulously curvy body) and ended up bouncing off of Ferrah’s chest instead. The woman had an ”OOOOHHH” moment and said that she had a lot of junk in the trunk and then fake patted her butt while saying the sounds for it (The Japanese onomatopoeia for whatever butt patting sounds like, she did that. LOL) Then the two that went into the castle came back and informed us that the graveyard was actually on the other side of the mountain and that it was like 45 minutes by car to get there. So those plans were scrapped. 

We left the castle grounds and I had ready signs that seemed to point to a garden and so took everyone in the direction that the arrows pointed, but after walking for a bit I realized that the gardens probably just meant the castle grounds. But it worked out for the better because we stumbled onto the BIG Hanami Festival!! A lot of us were hungry but we decided to just walk through the festival and not stop at any of the booths to get food because it was probably really expensive and really bad to eat. But our walk through the festival was pretty hilarious. All the kids kept yelling “Hello!” at us and the adults kept pointing at us like we had jumped out of a storybook or something. “Gaijin desu!” “Doko??” 

Once we had finally walked all the way through the festival the hunt for an open restaurant began, we finally found an “Italian” place to eat. I got a margarita pizza and it was surprisingly tasty! I finished the whole thing! (I have a hard time finishing the food on my plate, so I’m always really proud of myself when I manage to clean my plate)

The rest of the day consisted of walking back to the dorm and stealing internet and napping at odd hours. I was still really jet lagged.

Monday was also another day off. So I went to the train station with Alyetys… (I think that’s how her name is spelled. It’s really strange, so let’s just call her Alice.) And we walked around the train station shops. All of the stores were REALLY expensive but it was totally worth it to look around because everything was super adorable. I also tried on an outfit and I wanted it really badly but again, it was way too expensive, so I had to leave it. I tried on some shoes too and I found out that I fit the mostly normal size ranges! :D I really thought I would fall into the LL shoe size which can be really hard to find, but instead I fit into the L size which is a lot more common to find! So I was super happy about that discovery. But for the most part the day was full of window shopping. It wasn’t nearly as eventful as the previous day, but that is okay. We were all pretty tired and still jet lagging really hard.

Tuesday through Saturday: These days are kind of a blur for me because of all of the information I needed to absorb in such a short time and all of the lesson planning I had to do for my mock lessons. We had a really good training group though because everyone would go back and work on their lesson plans instead of going out and partying. It was a really good atmosphere to be in. I just remember that by Saturday I had started to feel ill because my body wasn’t really used to the food and I think it was overloaded on food high in MSG. (I have an allergy to msg and if I have too much of it I get ill.) Plus I think the stress of the week had taken its toll on me. By the end of the day though I was a lot better than I was in the morning, which was good because the training staff treated us to a DELICIOUS dinner and some drinks.

After dinner, the trainees got together and we went out to karaoke. The place we went to was HUGE it had like 5 floors and the rooms were pretty big considering we were a group of 10 people. The night started with a lot of Lady Gaga, and then once the girls had gotten all of the Gaga out of our systems, we moved onto other fantastic songs… Like songs by Queen. Ha ha! I think everyone is obligated to sing Bohemian Rhapsody at every karaoke event. 

So we were out only until about midnight with the karaoke and then we headed back to the dorm. We had to leave by 9 am the next day to go to our respective cities and meet our manager and coworkers. But before heading to bed I went to the common room to iron my suit for the next day because we had to wear a suit when meeting our manager to make a good first impression. A couple of the girls were already in the common room watching late night Japanese TV. The show they had found was really amusing and even more so in a tired state. For some reason a toilet unintentionally having a face was hilarious.

So overall it was a ridiculously stressful week, I’m pretty sure I lost some years off my youth due to this particular week, but there were a lot of good parts too and I think it was a really good start to being in Japan.

Next up: My first week at my school!

Also I have consistent internet now! So my posts should hopefully become more scheduled and the rest of my photos are on my flickr account!