Akiへようこそ

Yes, that is a Pokémon plane.

No, we weren't on it.

But the regular old All Nippon Airways plane got us from Tokyo to Kochi City on Wednesday, July 29 all the same. Thankfully, the flight was only a little more than an hour. Upon landing, we were immediately whisked away to our various cities. I was met by four teachers and Matt, the other ALT who works at the Aki City Board of Education. We stopped for lunch at this little restaurant that had an amazing view of the coastline.



Then we went to City Hall, where the Board of Education office is and where I'll be working. To my shock, I had a welcoming committee.


Then I had to give my jiko shoukai (formal self-introduction), which I, in my state of shock and nervousness, completely botched.

And, oh yeah, then I met the mayor. Talk about awkwardsauce. I could barely understand the guy, and even if I could I wouldn't have known what to say. (I took Japanese for two and a half years in college, but being in Japan makes me realize just how little I actually know.)

Then I went to the Board of Education office, where I was able to email my parents and my boyfriend (from what is probably the oldest and slowest laptop in the world) to let them know I made it to Aki.

Here's the office and my desk:



(The next day, Matt configured the Firefox settings on my Mac so I can just use my own laptop at work.)

After showing me around the other offices in City Hall, Yokoi-san (one of my supervisors) took me to my apartment, which was being frantically cleaned by three or four teachers. They told me my apartment wasn't ready yet, so I'd be staying in a hotel that night.

Yokoi-san, along with Yokoyama-san and Kataoka-sensei (my other supervisor), took me to dinner at a sushi restaurant (the title of which translates to "Big Ocean Sushi"). It was about as Japanese as you can get — tatami, shoes off, sitting on the floor, the whole shebang. And, of course, excellent sushi.

Dinner was surprisingly relaxed and laid-back, and everyone was very considerate of the fact that I don't eat meat. Kataoka-sensei had printed a map of my hometown she found online and seemed very interested in my family and my life back home.

After dinner they dropped me off at Hotel Tamai.




Let's take this moment to engage in some "potty talk." Some toilets in Japan, like the ones at this hotel and at the Keio Plaza hotel in Tokyo, are super high-tech. There are buttons that perform various functions, including seat-warming, deodorizing, and what can only be described as a water gun aimed at your tushee. The toilets at Narita airport even have a button that makes a flushing sound but doesn't actually flush. Handy. Then there are these:


Dawn, my roommate at Pre-Departure Orientation, warned me about this type of toilet, also known as the "squatty potty." ...If you really want to know more, I'll leave it up to Wikipedia.

Luckily, the toilet at my apartment is somewhere in between — Western-style but with no bells and whistles (although it does have a built-in sink).

But I digress.

The next morning, I had breakfast at the hotel while enjoying a beautiful view of the city.








After breakfast, Yokoi-san met me at the hotel. We walked to the office (where my suitcases had been shipped), brought the suitcases to my apartment, then went back to the office. Kataoka-sensei gave me DVDs of Andrew's (my predecessor) and Matt's classes to watch so I could get an idea of what I'd be doing. The videos, which featured Matt and Andrew leading their classes in goofy songs about fruit and birthdays, reminded me how excited I am to start teaching.

I went with Matt and Yokoi-san to apply for my alien registration card. Then Yokoi-san told Matt to take one of the BOE cars so he could show me around the city (in Japan, people drive on the left side of the road, which is why I plan on never driving here). He took me to see the house of Yataro Iwasaki, founder of the Mitsubishi Corporation who grew up in Aki.




Aki, in all its rural glory:






(Koi!)




Then we stopped at the grocery store (which is, conveniently, only a couple of blocks away from my apartment).


I was marveling at everything, but I could tell Matt was getting bored, so I just bought a few basic things and decided to come back later by myself when I could spend more time browsing. We dropped my groceries off at my apartment, then drove to the junior high school to watch part of a 6th grade swimming competition one of the teachers had invited us to.

Later that evening, Matt and I walked to a restaurant called Yourou No Taki...


...where we met Kym and were later joined by Scott, Aki's two other ALTs (they both teach at the high school). The idea of this restaurant is to order a bunch of little dishes and share them. Apparently it's hard to find good cheese in Japan, so they frequent this place a lot (and after tasting the mochi cheese balls, it's not hard to see why). Bonus: they even have pizza and fries.

Out of the four of us, I'm the only newbie. Scott and Matt are going into their third years as ALTs, and I think this is Kym's second. They're all older than I am — Scott has a Japanese wife and two kids, whom Matt and I actually ran into at the grocery store earlier that day.

Friday consisted mostly of errands. Kataoka-sensei took me to buy some new sheets, I got my hanko (personalized stamp that people in Japan use in place of a signature), and I went with Kataoka-sensei and Yokoi-san to set up an account at Shikoku Bank. I did give my self-introduction again at a meeting — and this time, I had it written down (not as ideal as reciting it from memory, I'm sure, but better than forgetting what to say and sounding like a moron).

I spent the weekend relaxing and getting settled in my new apartment!

Entranceway:


(Shoes off at the door... it's the Japanese way, and I've gotten in the habit of doing it now.)

Bathroom:


Toilet room (which is separate from the bathroom):


Kitchen:



Tatami/Living room:



Bedroom:


Balcony:


View from the balcony:




On Sunday, it occurred to me to check my mail, and I was happily surprised to have received a lovely "home sweet home" card from my mom, which is now displayed on my bookshelf next to the TV :)

There were also fireworks that night as part of Aki's version of the Yosakoi Festival (the main one is held in Kochi City every August 9-12). I could see them from my balcony:






By the end of the weekend, I already had a favorite haunt in the city: the bakery.


Monday and Tuesday were pretty low-key. On Monday, Matt and I helped one of the teachers with an English translation of the story of Yataro Iwasaki, since she's a volunteer tour guide at his house.

I also got a keitai (cell phone). There were lots of super high-tech phones — I saw some with 8-megapixel cameras and some that charge via solar power. Mine has a 5-megapixel camera, a touch screen, and I can watch TV on it — and it was free with my plan!



On Tuesday, I was given a BOE-owned bike, which will come in handy to get to some of my schools.


However, I'm also allowed to use it for non work-related purposes, like shopping, so that's pretty cool.

After work, I went to dinner at Yourou No Taki again with Matt, Kym, Matt's girlfriend Kate (an ALT who lives near Kochi City), and Alex (a new JET in Tano, a town close to Aki with a population of 3,000). Afterward, we met up with some of their Japanese friends at a bar for some laughs and karaoke.

Wednesday, Kataoka-sensei and I went to Doi Elementary School to go over teaching plans with the 5th and 6th grade teachers I'll be working with there.



Afterward, we went to visit an old samurai house, since it was in the neighborhood.














Then we went to a couple of museums. First, there was the calligraphy museum.




(In some places, like schools and apparently museums, you have to switch to indoor shoes.)





Then it was off to the Aki City Museum of History and Folklore.






(The Hanshin Tigers are a baseball team... I think they practice in Aki or something. I don't know. I don't do baseball.)




(This is an old-school taxi. One dude climbs in, two dudes carry the pole on either end. Looks kind of small to fit a person, but I guess people were tinier back then.)



Some greenery outside the museum:



(Rice field. They're everywhere.)


The last couple of days have been pretty chill. Might do dinner with a couple other JETs tonight and hopefully see a bit of the Yosakoi Festival in Kochi City on Sunday!

Peace,
B

Pre-Shikoku shenanigans

Hello ol' chaps,

It is taking way too long to get Internet at my apartment — something about needing to wait for an available port — so I'm updating from work (the students are on summer break until September, so there's pretty much nothing to do at the office until then).

Since a lot has happened since my last update, I'm going to split it into two posts — orientation and my first week in Aki.

Pre-Departure Orientation

On Friday, July 24, I flew to Chicago for Pre-Departure Orientation. Need a good laugh? Picture this: me, struggling with three suitcases, chasing down three wrong shuttles, and getting lectured by the driver of the third wrong shuttle in a thick Russian accent before I found the right shuttle. (A random guy did offer to help me with my suitcases, but as far as I could tell he didn't work for the airport, and I had just watched "Taken" not too long ago, so I politely declined. He might just be a nice guy, or he might be a creeper. The world will never know.) I got to the hotel several hours early, and we couldn't check into our rooms until after 2 p.m. (which was the same time orientation started), so I just chilled in the lobby until then.

Orientation consisted of some opening speeches, getting our flight information (along with our passports and visas), a Q&A, and an exercise where we had to draw the letter "W" on a Post-It. The W is supposed to represent the highs and lows of culture shock. We discussed where we were on the W with the people sitting near us. At that point, I was in the middle of the W — sad about leaving the people I love, but excited about going.

It was really interesting to meet so many new people who were all in the same situation. Everyone was leaving home for a new life — it's kind of how I felt starting college.

After orientation, there was a dinner where we sat by prefecture. Since there were only a couple us from Kochi, they grouped us with JETs from the other three prefectures on Shikoku island.

After dinner, I went up to my hotel room. My roommate Dawn invited me to a bar with some other people, but I decided to spend my last night in America relaxing in my PJs and making goodbye phone calls.

The next morning, I headed for O'Hare with the Japan Airlines group (they split us into two flights, Japan Airlines and American Airlines). Miraculously, my suitcases were under the weight limit, and before long we were on the plane that would take us to our new lives.


The flight was dreadfully long. I was sitting next to Elena, one of the girls I had compared Ws with at orientation the day before. It turns out we had both requested vegetarian meals :) I chatted with her, read my Kindle, watched one of the in-flight movies ("17 Again"... don't judge me), and slept on and off, and 12 or so hours later, we had landed in Tokyo, where it was Sunday.


東京: Day 1

I turned on my phone excitedly to call my parents and boyfriend and let them know that we had landed safely, but to my dismay... no reception! (Although I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, as I barely get cell phone reception in my own house. Hats off to you, T-Mobile.) Since Narita airport is outside the city, I figured reception would pick up once we got into Tokyo.


Nope. (However, I have since discovered the beauty of Skype.)

Upon our arrival at the Keio Plaza Hotel...






...we were given a gigantic stack of books and papers containing orientation info and the key cards to our hotel rooms. We were also informed that there was a room with computers, irons and ironing boards we could use. I wasted no time dashing to the computer room so I could email my parents and Garrett to let them know I was there. Then realizing they might not check their email right away since they were expecting a phone call, I updated my Twitter, knowing it would send Garrett a text to his cell and he would check his email and hopefully tell my mom to do the same. Ah, technology. (Padre, are you still with me?)

My 28th-floor hotel room and the view from it:





(Me and my awesome roomie Melissa!)





Since orientation activities didn't begin until the next day, I decided to have dinner with Rachel, a hilarious girl I sat next to on the bus from Narita to the hotel (and whose only Japanese speaking ability is the sentence "the boy ate the apple," which she learned from Rosetta Stone). We were joined by Melissa and Rachel's friend Lee. We wandered around Shinjuku (the area of Tokyo where the hotel is) for a while...




(Vending machines are EVERYWHERE in Japan. Even in little, rural Aki, there's one on just about every corner.)


...before we finally settled on a soba/udon place to have dinner.


(From left to right: me, Melissa, Lee and Rachel.)

I crashed sometime after 9 that night and woke up around 3:45 a.m.

東京: Day 2

By 4:30, I realized I wasn't going back to sleep. I went down to the computer room, where there were at least five other people chatting, checking their email and ironing their clothes. I overheard a lot of talk later that day about people who woke up at random hours of the night. I personally envied the non-jetlagged Australians, whose time difference was only an hour. By the time I got back to the room at 5:30, Melissa was already up and dressed — we had slept with the curtains open, and it turns out the sun rises RIDICULOUSLY early in Japan.

We went down to breakfast at 7, then went out to find an electronics store so Melissa could get a grounded adapter for her laptop. Some sights along the way:






We found the store, but it wasn't open, so we went to 7-11 to see what random Japanese snacks we could find.



(Japan has all kinds of crazy KitKat flavors — including mango!)


(Perilla-flavored Pepsi. Yeah...)

Then there was orientation itself. It was just a really cool experience to be around people from so many different countries — Ireland, Jamaica, South Africa, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Australia — and to hear all the different accents!


There were opening speeches, lunch, a series of truly lame workshops that several people skipped out on to sleep (which I really wish I had done as well), and dinner.

And after dinner, I had The Moment. I'd been on a plane for several hours, out and about in Tokyo, but it still hadn't clicked that I was actually in Japan until this moment. I was walking through the hotel lobby when a little Japanese kid, who couldn't have been more than eight years old, accidentally bumped into me — and started apologizing and bowing repeatedly. I was completely taken aback, and then it hit me: "OMG. I'm really in Japan."

Later night, Louis (one of the Kochi PAs, or Prefectural Advisers) got the Shikoku JETs together for a night of karaoke!




¥2100 for karaoke and all-you-can-drink. 'Nuff said.

P.S. ¥100 is about a dollar, and this is what yen looks like:


Some bright Tokyo lights we passed on the walk (stumble for most) back to the hotel:





東京: Day 3

Another day of incredibly lame workshops — all except for one:


The only useful workshop in the bunch taught us how to approach teaching an elementary school class and how to work with their regular homeroom teacher. And we even learned a few games :)


Another bonus: the workshop was on the 43rd floor of the hotel. Check out this view!





Later that afternoon was the Kochi prefectural meeting, where we met our other PAs. They warned us that we may not have Internet at our apartments for a while (which is so far proving to be true, unfortunately) and told us about our flight information for the next day.

東京: Day 4

Melissa's prefecture left early that morning, so after breakfast we said our goodbyes (though we're keeping in touch via Facebook and, soon, hopefully Skype) Then I met the other Kochi JETs...


...and we boarded a bus to Haneda airport.

Sayonara, Tokyo.





Coming up: Aki!

Peace,
B