#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!