First Day of Teaching

This is the real reason why I am starting a blog; I wanted to be able to remember the best and probably worst parts of teaching English, so that by the end of this trip I can have some fun memories to share with everyone. This is what I will count as my first day of teaching, because even though I taught before, this was the first day I had lunch with the students and got a real full work day. My first school has been Nisshin Junior High School; it has around 380 students which makes it one of the biggest middle schools in Shinjo. Japanese schools are divided by grade and then by kumi, which is just how many classes there are in each grade. Nisshin Junior High School has 4 kumis for level 1 (7^th graders), 5 kumis for level 2 (8^th graders), and 4 kumis for level 3 (9^th graders). The school day is broken up into 6 periods that are each 50 minutes long, and the students only leave the room for special classes like home ec, gym, and science. On top of that they have lunch time after 4^th period which takes place in their classroom from 12:45-1:15. In this time the students prepare their own food for their class, and must finish all of it within the given time. After lunch they have cleaning, where each class not only cleans their own classroom, but a random part of the school as well. Finally the students have a lunch break from 1:35 until 1:50 before starting their last two classes.

For my first day I was to work with Takahashi sensei and Yatsuyanagi sensei. Takahashi sensei is the second grade English teacher and I had her for first, second, and fifth period teaching classes 2C, 2B, and 2D. Yatsuyanagi sensei is the first grade teacher and I taught fourth and sixth period with classes 1A and 1B. Since these were going to be my first lessons to the classes I was scheduled to give an introduction speech and then work on the student’s English introductions. My introduction has gotten better since the first time I gave it, but I think it will need serious re-working for each school I go to. I start out by saying who I am, then I move on to my siblings. I think my favorite part of this is showing them the pictures of Ariella and Jacob and then having them guess who they are. No one ever believes that Ariella is my twin, and so far I have had one second year say that she is my wife, and one first year say that she is my mother. As for Jacob people find him a bit more believable, although I have had a first year from a different class mistake him for my father, which was equally as weird. From there I move on to a somewhat amusing map of America and I show the students where Colorado is, where I went to college, and where Ariella, Jacob, and Brianna live. The best part of this lesson is telling the students that it takes over a week to drive from Washington to New York, something that they can’t believe. The next slide was a little boring to them, and it was when I showed them a map of Colorado and told them some facts about it. Luckily by the third class I found a way to make this one of the student’s favorite slides. I had just told the class that I drove to my part time job every day in high school, and the students shouted out, “You can drive in high school?” I did not realize that there was a difference, and I simply said, “Yes you can start driving at 15.” This blew the student’s minds, so I decided to take it a step further and show them a picture of Wyoming, and tell them that you can drive at 14 over there. This is one of the few things that made my students want to come to America, and it is much better than their favorite fact which I will describe later.

From here I show them some of America’s sports, and I usually get a good reaction when I show pictures of baseball, soccer, and basketball. Students do know what football is, but it is not as exciting to them, since none of them play it. Of course if a class is quiet up until this point I can always get them to perk up when they see a picture of Ichiro, the Japanese baseball player for the Seattle Mariners. I was surprised to find out that they actually had a pretty good knowledge of American athletes, once you get them talking. It is odd, because in America kids would always want to say they knew sports players to look cool, but since doing this admits you know more about America than the rest, most kids keep quiet. I say this only because after class the kids like to talk to me in Japanese and they tell me all about their favorite players and teams, while in class they say nothing. I actually was very lucky by picking Darek Jeetar as my second picture, because I knew him and so did the Japanese students. After this comes another one of my favorite sections, the animal comparison slide. Before this class I had planned to make a huge slide full of pictures showing deers and hawks in America and Japan and comparing them, but in truth I only had time for 2 deer pictures and a buffalo. The students never believe me when I say that buffalo are taller than me, it kinda blows their minds. I thought that they would like to compare the small Japanese deer to the American deer, but that one is kind of a hit or miss. This could be of course my fault because I don’t know if deer in Shinjo are the same as deer in Nara, which are very small, so they might actually be used to big deer.

The slides that I might have to get rid of are the ones about college and what America is and is not. I think that a comparison between Japanese and American schools is interesting to them, but college is so far away that it is a little boring to these students. Furthermore, even though telling them that America is not lazy and fat and that every America does not own a gun is important, but not interesting enough. Even after I give my speech and say that most American’s don’t own guns, they just mutter under their breath, “Well the cops sure have a lot of guns,” or, “I am pretty sure they still do.” I want to replace this with a slide about American food. I got this idea when a kid asked me the odd question of, “Do I like food?” When these kinds of questions come up I have the urge to say something like, “No, I am a natural anorexic.” But I cannot because that is rude, and the sight of a foreigner muttering random words than laughing to himself might be a little too odd for the students. Anyways, after I gave them that answer another kid became brave enough to ask me, “Is Japanese food small?” I know that the natural answer would seem to be yes, but really most of Japan’s food has larger proportions than American foods, especially when it comes to rice and noodles. So when I answered, “The drinks are small.” The teacher asked me to compare the McDonald’s drinks in Japan and America. I told her that a small in America is like a Large in Japan, and all of the kids in my class screamed, “Ehhhh” (This is a very impolite way to say what). From there we began to talk about the differences between French Fries and hamburgers, and then the price differences between America and Japan. I don’t think I could have gotten a better reaction from them if I told them America was made of gold. These kids barely ever eat hamburgers, and later some admitted that the only good thing about McDonalds was the French Fries, but they were hanging off of my every word. Now the problem with having made his discovery so late is I cannot change my introduction in this school. All of my teachers know this intro, and they do not want to have to relearn everything just because I found something to catch the student’s attention for 10 seconds. So all it means is that in the next 5 schools I will have an incredibly interesting presentation, and hopefully I can learn another cool fact to teach them there. As a P.S. to this section I wanted to add that hand gestures are very helpful, but if you don’t do them right, or if you use them too much, the student’s will mock you after class for them.

So now I come to the best part of the blog, the student’s self-introductions to me…in English. I both love and hate this because it is incredibly amusing, and I have had to laugh at a few students which makes me feel awful afterwards. These introductions are incredibly basic, the student says ‘Hello’ than ‘My name is ___’ followed by, ‘I am from ___’ and finally, ‘I like ___.’ After my speech I go around and watch them prepare this and even though the teacher explains everything in Japanese, they don’t always understand. One of the best mistakes that I heard was with a student I tried to help 3 times. Each time I passed by his desk I saw that he wasn’t writing anything down, and I would bend down and give him some answers to his own introduction, yet he continued to ignore me. So when it was his turn to stand up in front of the class and speak English he was in a lot of trouble. He stood up by his desk, stared up at me and said, ‘Herrroo’ in one of the most questioning tones I have heard, and I had to crack a smile there. Then he continued by saying, “My name is Shinjo…I am from…Ryuiji Taka…EHHHH.” It was by this point, where he already said his name was the town he was from and that he was from half of himself that he realized what he was doing and screamed in embarrassment. Again I am glad to say I was not laughing just yet, but I could not help but laugh when I turned around to the other students and saw them all covering their mouths with their hands, as if they were wanting him to continue saying it wrong to the very end.

My second favorite mistake came during the lunch period. It was decided at this school that I would have lunch with every class in the school starting from 1A, and working my way up to 3D. During lunch I am allowed to speak Japanese and I get to ask the students as many questions as I want. One of the questions I just happened to ask was ‘What is your favorite Disney movie?’ Now I do not know the name of this student but he was truly a good student because he tried to answer back in English by saying, “I…like…Fighting Nemo.” Again I am glad I can suppress a smile as I pretended that he had said it right to encourage the kid to speak more. Unfortunatly for him his friend was not as kind and shouted back, “Tatakau Nemoka” (literally translating it to Fighting Nemo). This caused the kid to turn bright red as all the boys surrounding him jumped up and started smacking him while calling out “Fighting Nemo.” I honestly think that this one memory will make me laugh for at least a month, and I still can’t hide my smile while I am writing about it.

All the mistakes that day were not on the student’s end; in fact I had one of my more embarrassing mistakes as well. During class the teacher asked me, “What are you going to do this weekend?” It was on the spot, and not wanting to seem boring to my new students I told them what I did two weekends ago, and answered back, “I am going to Fukushima.” This caused the kids to gasp and mutter ‘Dangerous’ under their breath until the teacher quieted them down. I thought this was the end of it, until lunch time when one student asked me in Japanese, “Why are you going to Fukushima.” I replied back, “Tomodachiha, Fukushima ni shindeiru” instead of the appropriate, “Tomodachiha, Fukushima ni sundeiru.” So for those who don’t speak Japanese let me explain the difference between shinu and sumu. Sumu means to live, so if you want to say I live somewhere you say “___ni sundeiru.” Shinu is the opposite, and so a rude way to say someone is dead is to say, “___ni shindeiru.” So in other words, in front of a group that thought I was fluent in Japanese I responded to the question, ‘Why are you going to Fukushima’ by saying, ‘My friend is dead in Fukushima.’ I turned beat red when they corrected me, and refused to say anything in Japanese for a few minutes, reminding myself how embarrassing speaking a second language can really be.

I have also had the pleasure to have some pretty peculiar students so far in this school. One of the things you have to get used to when you are a foreigner in Japan is for little kids to be weirded out by you. This generally involves walking down the hall in between classes and being spotted by a student who does not know you are coming. At this point they usually yell “Ehhh” and point at you, or if they are a little more used to foreigners they will start shouting “Hey” and “Good morning” which is a little less off putting. Another unexplainable phenomenon is something that only retains to girls. Basically whenever I enter a room for the first time there is usually a group of girls who scream out and then huddle up to talk about me. I believe this is because all of the students at my school believe me to look like Harry Potter because I am also white with glasses. So once you get over that initial shock it usually gets better. Nevertheless, when it comes time to talk to the girls individually they all get bright red whenever I talk, and usually half way through their self-introduction they have to turn to their friends for help finishing up. One girl in particular was incredibly weird, I have had her for 2 classes up until this point, and my first lunch was scheduled to be in her class. As the homeroom teacher led me into their class with my lunch tray, the girl took one look at me, screamed and curled up in a ball to hide her face between her knees. I have no idea what that was or why it happened, and I did feel bad because I was put in the seat right next to hers and she had to deal with me all during lunch.

I also already have two stalkers in this school; one is a boy from the third year B class who admitted half way through my speech that he was a stalker. I did not improve my own situation by telling him what apartments that I live in and my apartment number. I have already have had 2 students show up at my apartment just because they wanted to meet a foreigner, so who knows if this is going to become a regular occurrence. My second stalker is in the first year B class as well, and this kid has not said if he wants to go to my apartment, but after hearing my speech he started following me around everywhere in the halls and asking all sorts of random questions. This one

First Impressions

So since I am still trying to cover as much as possible within the first month without posting I am going to write about all of the people that have helped me over the past month. Literally everyone I have met so far (at least all of the adults) have tried to help me in one way or another adjust to my new lifestyle. However due to limited time and memory I am only going to write down what I found to be the most helpful or amusing interactions I have had with the Japanese people to this date. I should begin by telling you one of our first encounters with Nisshida Mama at her restaurant. She works at a Korean BBQ where you get to grill your own food right in the middle of your table. Nisshida Mama and I get along very well simply for the reason that we both love meat and I can’t really turn down anything she offers me. We went to this restaurant for the first time as a way to meet the 4^th JET in Shinjo, Amanda. Amanda is from England and is one of the most British people I have ever met, which include a British accent, an actual love of the queen, and a general European view of the world. She was a science major and apparently quite smart, but she has been here one year and barely speaks any Japanese. However despite this one fact she was willing to do anything to help us acclimate to Shinjo, and if Kristin did not already know so much of this town it would have been very helpful.

When we headed over to the Korean BBQ I found out how bad of a restaurant choice it was considering out of the 4 of us I was the only one who actually ate meat. Peter and Kristin will eat fish but Amanda is a strict vegetarian, so I really don’t know why we went there. Anyway when Nisshida Mama found out I was the only one who was going to eat meat, and that I said I was willing to try anything she brought out an Andrew Zimmerman-esc dish of pig stomach and intestines. I am actually really grateful for that show because Mr. Zimmerman did teach me you can eat anything if you give it a shot, and I have to say that I really did like stomach. It was soft and had a lot of flavor, but I could not say the same about intestine. There is nothing wrong with it, but at the same time there is nothing good with it either, it is just a tough meat that tastes ok with a lot of sauce. I have been back there again and have had normal pieces of meat as well, and they are just as amazing. I figure at least once a month I am going to have to treat myself to this restaurant just so I don’t forget what real meat tastes like. Another great thing that came out of the night was that Nisshida Mama introduced me to her boss, who not only gave us some free food while we were there, but is also a Kendo instructor. I have not yet taken him up on his offer to teach, simply because of lack of time, but hopefully within the next week or so I can start taking lessons.

The next story was actually one of the most embarrassing times someone has offered to help me. It was my first Saturday in Shinjo, and I had thought that I would spend that day sleeping and getting ready for the next week. Nisshida Mama had another idea though, and she decided that it would be better to take Kristin and I shopping for food that week. Unfortunately for me, I did not know the door custom in Japan, which is that anyone is allowed to enter your house and stay within the first few steps of the doorway (The place where you don’t have to take your shoes off) as long as the door is unlocked. What this meant was that Nisshida Mama knocked on my door as I was changing, and as I went over to shout that I was not dressed yet, she walked in to tell me we were leaving. So one of her first impressions of me turned out to be a white guy standing there in only his boxers, who in shock had forgotten all of his Japanese, and just waited for her to close the door, before getting quickly dressed and following her out. From there Nisshida Mama took us to Daiso once again to do more 100 yen shopping and then to a grocery mart to get our food. In the grocery store we met up randomly with Amanda who decided to tag along since she needed food as well. Nisshida Mama took over from here though, telling us what she wanted to eat and that we should get food based upon that. I, for instance, like mushrooms, but since Nisshida Mama is not a big fan, we did not get many mushrooms. She did show us the best curry to get, which was truly delicious, and what kind of miso to buy (which I haven’t tried yet). Unfortunately about 50% of the food that she showed us to buy I could not actually eat in time because people kept inviting us out to eat, so I never had time to cook. From there she took us to a drug store to buy some more cleaning supplies as well as shampoo and conditioner, which I desperately needed. The best part about this woman is if you tell her you need something she will always go out of her way to get it for you.

The best example of this was when Kristin and I told her that we wanted some weights to start working out with. Well as it turns out Nisshida Mama happens to be best friends with the owner of the sports store in town and she said she would take us to get a special discount. Now apparently just taking us to a sports store and back was too boring for Nisshida Mama because when we got in the car she simply turned back to us and said, “So we are going to a mountain now.” That was basically all the information I got, and it took 10 minutes of driving to figure out that the mountain in question was an hour away, and that we were going to be climbing that mountain. Of course I was prepared for this with my handy-dandy mountain climbing flip-flops, so I wasn’t worried at all. Unfortunately for me and my sandals, the weather became way too hot for us to climb, so instead we just drove to the top and walked around. It was a beautiful temple and the mountain itself was gorgeous, so again I am incredibly grateful for the experience. We explored it for about half an hour before deciding to get a snack before heading down to what I assumed would be the sports store. Now this snack was basically a combination of two of the blandest foods in Japan. The first I forget its name but it is basically three semi-transparent balls on a stick (similar to Dango, but much larger, if you know what that is) that has absolutely no taste. To make up for this they stick it in a miso broth and slowly boil it for hours to give it some flavor, but since that is still not enough they give you Japanese mustard to put on it as well, and that makes it taste good enough to eat. Another interesting fact about this food is it apparently has negative calories, meaning that you burn more calories when chewing and digesting then there are in the food.

The next food that we tried was something that we do have in America, but not in this form. I had mocchi, which in America is what the Japanese lightly cover ice cream with to make a delicious treat. Here it is just a large blob of gloopy mush. The best way I can describe it would be to melt down a marshmallow and then take out all sugar and taste, and then they cover it with miso powder or green tea powder, making it a blob of mush with flavored powder on it. To make it worse they are about the size of a fist and they are served in fours, so this is a food that is very hard to eat politely. I would complain more but a lack of a taste is always better than an awful taste, and some of the food here can be truly awful. Well after these delicious snacks we headed back to the car to go back to Shinjo, or at least that is what I thought. Instead they decided to go to Sakata, the coastal town in northern Yamagata, to get some fish for a BBQ they were throwing that night. So this was another half hour drive in the opposite direction of Shinjo, now making it a hour and a half drive back, in order to pick up fish I could not eat. Well the best part about this trip was that I got to talk to her son Taku, who I am now teaching in Nisshin Junior High School, and who also ignores me every day that I am at the school. The fish market itself was cool, since I have never really ate seafood much before Japan I have never seen anyone actually buying it in front of me, and it was interesting to see what she was purchasing and why. Well after exploring that store for a while we finally did start to head home, and the drive wasn’t too bad this last time because I knew how long we were going to be driving, and I could take a nap. That brings us to our final part of the day, at 4 o’clock we reach the sports store and head inside. Instantly she finds us a jump rope in the front of the store when we believed there weren’t any, so just within the first thirty seconds she is proving to be a better shopper than us. From there Nisshida Mama gets her friend who pulls out an exclusive catalog to order from. She finds us our dumbbells, which turned out to be a little expensive, but this was a great find and Kristin and I both placed an order for a pair. Finally we were done shopping and we could head home. The trip was planned for 10:00 am, we would leave, go 2 blocks to the sports store, and then come back to rest and nap for the rest of the day. In truth we left for the mountain at 10:00 am, got back from the sports store at 4:00 pm, just in time for me to politely decline the invite to dinner, feeling that I needed some alone time to finally relax.

There are two more events that I feel are worthy of writing down, which were our first taiko practice and then the fireworks festival. I will say at this point that for some reason I decided that I was done writing and took a 2 month break between the last sentence and this one, so if the writing style suddenly changes that is due to time and a lack of sleep from the last night. Our first taiko practice was particularly strange because we were not given drums to practice with, but instead given bamboo flutes. I have never played a wind instrument before this, so waking up early on a Saturday morning, driving to a random field, and being given a bamboo flute instead of the expected drum through me off quite a bit. Besides that our instructor spoke no English, but between his pantomiming and the both of our broken translations, we were able to understand the man. The practice lasted for 2 hours but it took us at least one hour just to get a single sound out of the flute. It was pretty funny and embarrassing to be standing in a group of 20 or 30 college students and salary men, blowing over the top of a piece of bamboo and not making a single sound. The man who was teaching us kept telling us to stretch our lips to make a long flat line, which was a facial expression I had never done and every time I tried to picture how I looked at the moment I lost all of my concentration and burst out laughing. I am proud to say that I was the first to make any sound come out, it wasn’t pretty, and it certainly wasn’t a note, but I did make the thing sound like a flute. After the first ‘note’ it got a bit easier but soon my cheeks were killing me and I had to call it quits for the day. Maybe next year I can join the festival but at the time we were only 2 weeks away and we were not going to be in Shinjo for the time anyways, so there was no point in continuing.

The fireworks festival was amazingly fun, and although I love the cool temperature and beautiful leaves of fall, I will miss the summer fireworks. I have been to many fireworks festivals in Japan, and I can easily say that Japan truly knows how to put on a firework show, nothing in America can compare to it. This firework festival was in Akita, the ken (state) right above Yamagata. Nisshida Mama came to pick us up at 5:00 right after work, giving us just enough time to change before jumping in the car with her friend, her son, her daughter, and her daughter’s friend. Hideharu (Nishida Mama’s friend) is an amazingly amusing man but also basically a functioning alcoholic. The second we got in the car he offered me a drink, and when I asked what it was he said it was something he created himself, and that I had to try. It was good, but it was strong, and through the hour and a half long car ride to Akita, I had two glasses of the stuff. The festival itself was pretty cool; it was just a stretch of land along a river that had a row of food stands that stretched about 150 feet. That was no the impressive part, to the other side of the bridge was a parking lot that was at least a quarter of a mile long and growing, and more than 2 thousand people gathering along the river to watch the show. In my opinion the best part of a Japanese festival is the food, hands down. So as soon as we parked the car Kristin and I set off on an epic food quest. It started out with Japanese cotton candy which turns out is just like American cotton candy, then we got some Takoyaki, Okonomiyaki, and crepes. I got my favorite ‘Japanese food’ which turns out to be steak on a stick, but it is delicious for a country that barely serves meat. The fireworks show itself lasted an hour, which might not sound impressive but it was an hour of straight fireworks. 99% of the fireworks shows in Japan do not play music, I used to say all but I did recently go to one show that did, but that was a competition and not a fireworks festival.

As we were walking back with our food I bought a beer for my meal, drank that, and then ran into Hideharu and Nishida Mama. Upon meeting them they offered me another beer, which I had to drink because Hideharu wanted to see how much it took to get a foreigner drunk. He must have told every one of his friends that this night because when we found our seats among a group of Japanese people I did not know everyone kept offering me drinks. Now you might be thinking, ‘If you didn’t want to drink why would you keep drinking then?’ Well to answer this you must know two things. The first being very obvious was that I was in fact tipsy by this point, and probably not making the best decisions in the world. The second is more of an excuse. When Japanese people want to get a foreigner drunk they do not ask, “Would you like another drink?” Instead they ask questions like, ‘Can you drink alcohol?’ or, ‘Do you like beer?” or, “Have you had this drink before?” If you answer yes to any of those questions you are then obligated to finish whatever drink they were talking about. In the end I really don’t know how many drinks I had, but I can say it was definitely more than I should have, because I had to end the night looking up how to say, “Excuse me, there are no toilets around and we have a long car ride ahead of us, where can I go to the bathroom?” The night ended like any other, drunk and tired, knowing that I had work in the morning and hoping to god that I would not have a hangover

Moving to Shinjo

My first month in Yamagata has seemed incredibly long and yet somehow has gone by in a blur. We had to leave for Yamagata at 9:00 in the morning on our last day of orientation, which meant another 6:00 wake up because for some reason no matter what time class/work actually starts, breakfast is served from 7:00 to 7:30. There are very strict rules here for eating, and they always warn us that if we want breakfast we need to show up at 7:00 exactly, because for some reason people need half an hour to eat no matter what. Furthermore, clearing the breakfast hall is always interesting because this is an indirect society. That means that they never say, “It’s 7:30 get the hell out,” instead they say something like, “It looks like most people have left already.” For Japanese that is very direct, but when you are a foreigner who is hungry you usually get the sudden urge to feign ignorance and keep eating, but it’s only a fleeting urge. Anyways after saying goodbye to the people I met at orientation half of the Yamagata JETs headed up to the train station to go to our new homes. Yamagata is so big that they actually had two options for getting JETs to their new home; half of us used the Shinkansen while the other half flew into Yamagata on a local flight.

One of my only regrets on JET so far has been to be a little reclusive on that day of travel. I think I was just a little intimidated because all of the Irish JETs had gone out last night to party together and I felt that I was one of the few people on that train who had not bonded with everyone, so I withdrew a bit. This of course will not haunt me for long because I am sure that I will make friends with anyone I want/need to when the time comes, but it probably would have been a good idea to get a good head start on it then. Shinjo is the last stop on the Shinkansen so we had to watch as everyone exited the train one by one. This changed at Yamagata city which holds almost half of the JETs in Yamagata, so here half of our group got off. This left just Kristin, Peter, Alex, and I on the train after Yamagata city for a half hour ride up to Shinjo. Alex is our CIR in Yamagata, which means that he was chosen to be the head of the Yamagata JETs as well as translate any documents and go on any government business that requires a translator. This is really the job I wanted to get, but since my Japanese was not that good I became a ALT. Hopefully in 2 years I will have much better Japanese and I can apply for a CIR job my last year in Japan, but again who knows what the future holds. All throughout the Tokyo orientation we were told again and again how hard it is to change jobs or locations once you were accepted into JET, but I have met so many people who have done that that it is a little hard to believe that it is nearly impossible. Alex is a very nice guy and he is actually dating my block leader Clea right now, who is super genki (energetic and fun) and adventurous. I should also explain that prefectures are also broken up into blocks as well, kind of like how northern Japan is the Tohoku region; each prefecture has regions of its own. Anyways I am in the northern block which has the fewest amount of JETs but it is very pretty and I really do love it here.

When we got off the train Peter was greeted by his supervisor and then shooed off to his own school for his own welcome party. Kristin and I were greeted by Koseki-san, who over the next few weeks, and from now on really, has been our saving grace when it comes to Japan. He was also with our Ko-cho (boss) Kurita-san. Kurita-san is a hilarious man even if my Japanese cannot always keep up with his jokes. Every time we go anywhere with him he always makes sure to crack a joke with anyone he meets and he makes sure that our meetings are never quiet or awkward. These two men took us straight to our apartments to drop off our belongings and set up our house before we went out to our Enkai (welcome party). The apartment that the Board of Education (BOE) moved us into is brand new and not fully rented out yet, so I actually do not have any direct neighbors above or next to me. I am at the end of the building on the first floor in room 109, and I really do wish I could say that it is more than just a room. My apartment includes a bathroom and a toilet room, which is an odd Japanese tradition that says that a toilet cannot be in the actual bathroom, so they need to make a very small toilet room with no sink except for the one attached to the top of the toilet. It has taken me 3 trips to Japan to trust that toilet sink enough to use it. It could just be me but I always found it a bit odd to flush the toilet and then stick our hands under water that looks like it is coming out of the toilet, but it is clean and I use it now. We are also given a “kitchen” which is at the end of the entry hall into our room. All that we have in our kitchen is 2 electric burners, a tiny refrigerator, a microwave oven, a sink, and a cabinet big enough to hold maybe 5 cups or plates at most (so basically it’s pointless). My room is fairly large and it looks like it comes with a bed. This of course is not true, we are given a storage box that we put our futon on top of. I am incredibly grateful for this because there would be no other place in my room that I could have stored my suitcases or any of my boxes that should be coming soon. Now when I first arrived in my apartment I expected them to show us about and tell us a few things, maybe make our bed or tell us what we needed, and then we would leave. To my surprise Koseki-san turned to us and said, “So let’s set up your internet.” It turns out that Leo-Palace apartment complexes always come with their own internet and cable system that is part of the rent. So I am proud to say that Kristin and I were probably some of the first JETs to get internet, even if it took 4 Japanese people and me to figure out how to set it up.

Our welcome party was in a restaurant called the “English-Pub” which served all the typical English food like pizza topped with corn, spaghetti sauce, and crockets. We were greeted by everyone at the BOE and then set to start drinking and eating while trying to tell our life stories to everyone. Almost no one speaks English at the BOE, and even if they were fluent it seems that now that they knew we spoke some Japanese, we would never hear a word of English from them. Occasionally over the past month they have told us a few words in English, which raises the question at how good they actually are at the language, but the truth is I will never fully know how fluent they are. At drinking parties it is rude to have an empty glass, but you are not allowed to fill your glass. That means that while you drink you have to keep scanning everyone else’s glasses to make sure they are not running low on beer, and if they are it is your job to pour them a new cup. Another rule is that you must always pour for your boss first, wait for him to tell you when you can drink, and always make sure to be aware of what he wants to do with the party. This means that when he wants to leave the party is over, and every Enkai starts and ends with a speech from one of the senior members of the organization that is hosting the event. Once the Enkai is over the party does not have to stop, because there are usually second or third parties after that. I was actually invited to a second party that night by Koseki-san and Kakizaki-san, where we went out to the local Karaoke bar. Again I cannot stress how much I dislike singing in public, and this dislike is doubled when I am around people I have never met before. Yet you cannot argue with someone who you just met so I agreed to go and get a few more drinks to boost my confidence. This Karaoke place is actually pretty interesting because besides just singing you can also play darts, and there is an unlimited amount of vanilla soft serve as well as free non-alcoholic beverages. That night was actually the first night where I was the center of attention while I sang, and it is hard to come up with songs on the spot like that. Luckily I had read Learning How to Bow, which is a great guidebook as to what to expect in JET. Here I was informed that it doesn’t really matter how bad you are at singing, if you are white you can say the words and they are impressed enough by that. I do not need to reminisce on my horrible singing though, so in the end I came back to my apartment at around 1 o’clock, only to have to get up in 6 hours to go to work the next day.

This was probably the most productive day I have had in Japan so far, because as soon as we got to the office Koseki-san took us out to do all of our errands. At first we went downstairs and to the next building to get our picture taken for our Gaikokujin Tourokushou (Alien Registration Cards). In Japan you need to carry around your passport or your Gaikok Torok (what they call it for short) at all times if you are not Japanese or the police can simply walk up to you and arrest you. Since this is a homogenous society for the most part open racism is not seen as a problem here, so racial profiling is also deemed acceptable. From there we went and got our bank accounts at a local branch that only exists in Yamagata. Kristin and I thought this was kind of stupid because that would mean that if we traveled we would be screwed, but Koseki-san assured us that any ATM in Japan would accept our cash cards and that this bank refunded any ATM transaction charge, which would be very nice to have. The next stop was then to get us some supplies at the local dollar store. If you have never been to Japan you cannot begin to grasp how perfect dollar stores are in Japan. In America it is where you pick up cheap last minute gifts, or just some random things for a party. In Japan you can get almost anything at a dollar store ranging from kitchen to cleaning supplies, as well as some furniture that lasts forever. I went with Koseki san while Kristin was lead around by one of the female members of our office, as if we would be getting completely different items. In the end of course it did not come down to gender differences but simply preferences and what we thought we would need at the moment. This was not and will not be our last stop at the Daiso dollar store; because every time you get back to that small empty apartment you think of one or two more things you could buy to make the place feel a little more like home.

Our last stop for the day was at Softbank to pick up our cellphones. We were told on our way up that the Japanese did not have a credit system, so how this would work is that they would make you pay for the cellphone in full when you first bought it, and then every month they would detract $20 from your bill in order to refund you for the supposed “Free Phone.” Well of course this was not the case, and for some reason Kristin and I had completely different experiences buying the phone. For Kristin she just had to sit down, pick out a number, tell them some of her basic information, and then receive her phone. I, on the other hand, did the same process up until it came time to receive my phone. Then for some reason the company decided that I was not trustworthy enough, and insisted that I be charged the full amount for my phone on my American credit card, instead of to the Japanese bank I had just set up. I have no idea what could have led to this different policy but nonetheless I had the cell phone troubles while Kristin did not. By this point it was already 4:30 and time to head home, but we had other plans. The new JETs were supposed to have a Yamagata welcome party, making it the second day in a row that I would go to work after heavy drinking and little sleep. This party was in the biggest city, which is a full hour away from Shinjo by normal train. So in order to make it to the party on time we had to leave the Softbank store immediately and not head home. Luckily for us our coworkers were kind enough to take our new stuff back to our apartments for us while we headed to Yamagata. This was probably the shortest train ride I can remember because playing with your brand new iPhone sure kills a lot of time. Our welcome party was supposed to be on the roof of some Beer Garden, but by the time we arrived it was raining pretty hard so they rescheduled and moved it to a bar that was much smaller, but drier.

I think that night there was only one waiter, who was probably not too happy to see 20 some foreigners packed into their tiny restaurant and acting as loud as a hundred Japanese on their rowdiest day. We all had to introduce ourselves again and try and order food which took forever to get. I sat by a Chinese American girl who got me to try gut soup (It was a soup containing all of the intestines and organs of a pig) and after a few rounds of beer we started to do Karaoke again. Now for some reason I had the misfortune of sitting right by the Karaoke machine and was in charge of changing every song which was kind of a pain in the ass but it also meant I didn’t have to sing. Now some people did catch onto this by the end, and they made me stand up (which no one else had done) and sing Like a Virgin by Madonna why everyone watched. It was embarrassing to say the least, but I guess when you are singing a Madonna song, ability really doesn’t matter. The only truly embarrassing part was realizing that I only knew the chorus of that song, and most of it I was kind of stumbling along. Perhaps the best part of that night was the fact that Alex and Clea picked the song Rasputin to sing. It is the oddest song in the world but now it will be my Karaoke favorite because of just how stupid and ridiculous it is.

In the end we had to leave early in order to catch our last train to Shinjo, arriving at midnight or later once again so we could get just as little sleep for work the next day. The last thing I wanted to add in this post was Nisshida Mama. She is Kristin’s old host mother and one of the most outspoken Japanese people I have ever met. She met us as soon as we got off of the train in Shinjo and greeted me by saying, “I am Nisshida-san, you can call me Nisshida Mama because I am your new host-mother now.” She has been an incredible help to us, and has gone out of her way in order to get us whatever we need to make life her comfortable. In fact our third day she told us to meet her at her house for breakfast because she knew we weren’t making our own proper breakfast. The other interesting thing about Nisshida Mama is that her son Takuda (Ta-kun for short) is one of my students at Nisshin Junior High School. He apparently likes me a lot but he hates English and is embarrassed to be seen with me, so he is definitely going to be an interesting student. I will talk more about Nisshida Mama later; she kind of deserves her own post for all of the stuff she has done for us, including hopefully finding me a Kendo instructor.

Arriving in Tokyo

So this is the start of my JET journal, where I will be able to write down most of the best experiences of my trip, and maybe actually keep up with it this time. This is the 4^th time I have been to Japan and I have never been able to keep up a blog or any written accounts of my travels, but now that I have a steady job that might change. Of course this blog did not get off to a good start considering it has been almost a month since I got here and this is the first entry that I have been able to make. I have been incredibly busy and every chance I have gotten to write in the past month has been replaced with either sleeping or drinking. Because of this long gap between my arrival in Japan and my first post the details will be few and hazy, and I am only going to try and write about what I found most memorable.

Tokyo orientation was surprisingly a lot of fun, despite the fact that we had to get up at 7:00am every day with jetlag. I remember the first night I was in Japan I was able to have dinner with a kid from Denver, who I have regrettably forgotten his name, and two random other JETs from Chicago. The only memorable part about this was that all four of us went out for Ramen and the Ramen restaurant played only American Country music the entire time we were there, which was not what I pictured to be the first music I would hear in Japan. On the second day I ran into basically everyone I knew from before JET, which was a good and bad thing I suppose. Perhaps the most awkward run in was with a girl named Jasmine, who at one point was my friend during my study abroad in Tokyo. Now due to some confusion that has finally been cleared up to me thanks to Darek and Tate, I had made enemies with one of her best friends. I was still optimistic that this would not affect our friendship but I believe I was wrong, because that was one of the more awkward conversations I have had in my life. I have come to realize that for some reason I have a great talent for annoying women, but that is another story that I do not need to get into now. I also ran into Katie Weller, another Tokyo friend, who is now living in the south of Nara prefecture in a full size house. It is interesting to have a mixture of jealousy and sympathy, knowing that I have been crammed into a small apartment with a town, while she is put into a large house but with very little civilization to amuse her. As of now I am going to assume that her, and everyone I have met so far, is having as great of a time as I have been, and that everything balances out in the end.

The first full night in Tokyo was very interesting, and I could not have predicted what would happen because again it all happened out of pure luck. After our meetings most prefectural groups decided to gather up and go out drinking together. Unfortunately the Yamagata group was not so lucky, so when it came time to head out I was left alone to fend for myself. At first I was going to go out with Kiri and her prefectural group, but it felt odd to tag around with a group of people I would never see again, so I decided against it. Instead I went upstairs, watched a little TV, and then headed down to the lobby to get a snack. When I got down there I ran into Michael (Hope that is his name, I did forget it and I feel really bad about it) and his friend who I will never pretend to have known his name. I had known ‘Mike’ from our Denver orientation, as well as our flight in to Tokyo and a few of the classes that we went to the first day. After talking to him and his friend I found out that they wanted to go to out and sing Karaoke, but they were not able to make a group due to the fact that most people had plans by 8:00 at night. So instead the three of us decided to go out and find a bar on our own. Now JET had given everyone a map of Shinjuku (The area we were staying in) to let people who did not speak Japanese know where the nearest banks and restaurants were. It was a very detailed map, except for the fact that they left out Kabuki-cho (The old red light district). JET figured that this area was too dangerous and that foreigners should not go there, so naturally that was the first place we started looking. Within five minutes of entering Kabuki-cho we were called out to by a man from a restaurant who said that they had a nomihodai (All you can drink bar) for one hour for only 1000 yen (12 dollars). This sounded too good to be true but we decided to follow him inside and get a table and see for ourselves.

Well we were right, or at least so we thought, because as soon as we entered he started telling us that even though the nomihodai was 1000 yen, there was also a 500 yen (6 dollar) table charge that we had to pay as well for a 2 hour all you can drink bar. Well we were outraged at the idea of paying 18 dollars to dink all the mixed drinks we could handle for 2 hours, so we left in search of a better deal. Now a few minutes outside of the restaurant we realized that we had made a huge mistake, and after seeing the prices of all of the other bars, that ranged from 20 to 40 dollars, we knew we had passed the best deal in town. Unfortunately, we could not go back and say to the man, “So I know how we said we would drink at your bar, had you bring us water, then storm out at the price and called you all liars, but mind if you get us another table.” So we were forced to spend another hour wandering around Kabuki-cho in search of cheap liquor. Eventually we did find a hole-in-the wall bar that advertised a 1000 yen nomihodai. It was basically only about 10 feet wide and maybe 40 feet long, and when we entered we were told to sit in chairs that were made for people much smaller than us. Another thing I realize I need to point out is the nomihodai culture in Japan. When you are a foreigner, and you hear that you can go and drink all the beer you want for 2 hours for under 20 dollars you freak out, go to the restaurant, and drink them dry. However Japanese are a little different, they go to the nomihodai, order one round of drinks, then a round of snacks and start making long speeches. After this they order dinner, and maybe one more round of drinks, and again begin with the speeches. This means that in the 2 hour time at most each person orders 4 drinks as well as one or two items from the menu each. This is how nomihodai’s make money, the food.

Therefore, when the three white boys entered the bar the waiter knew he would have to work very hard to make us order enough food to make the bar a profit that night. He asked us what we were going to order, and when we only said a drink order he waited around, hoping we would say something else. After he left we felt a little bad and ordered some teriyaki (Basically its Teriyaki chicken on a stick) because it was the cheapest thing on the menu. However after a few more rounds of drinks we started to feel worse and worse for not ordering and finally caved and ordered Shabu Shabu. Some people may know what this is, but in Japanese Shabu Shabu is actually the sound for stirring and refers to the motion you make when you take a very thing piece of raw meat in your chopsticks and stir it back and forth in the boiling water until it cooks. Usually this is a very expensive item and rarely eaten, so when we saw it in a dive bar it was probably not the best idea to order it. When the order arrived it turned out to be a bowl of boiling water that he filled with cabbage, and on the side he had a plate or raw cut up bacon. This was not the best tasting meal, and I still do not know if you can cook bacon in 40 seconds in boiling water, but nothing I can do about it now. So if you ever go to a nomihodai, or any bar in Japan you should know one more word, Sa-Wa-. A Sa-Wa-, or sour, is when the bartender takes some weak whisky, and mixes it with a drink of his choice. Usually this is fruit juice and you can order a mango sour or a lemon sour, but at this bar they had Ramune sour, which is a bubbly Japanese soda that you open by hitting a marble at the top of the drink and it always instantly fizzes over the top.

When our time was finally up in the bar we headed out into the “dangerous” Kabuki-cho once again in search of my least favorite activity, Karaoke. I was kind of hoping by this point we had drank enough that the guys would have wanted to return home and sleep, but they were persistent so we had to find a place before it was too late. Now I put “dangerous” in quotes because it really is not that scary of a place, but there are very annoying things about Red Light Districts. For instance most strip clubs decide to employee Nigerians who live in Japan as ways of getting foreigners into their clubs. For some reason they think that if they get some loud Nigerian to follow you and scream things like, “Do you like boobs?” at the top of his lungs, that you will turn around and say, “Why yes I do” and walk in. We had this happen to us three times that night, and one man even followed us for five blocks trying to get us to talk to him about where we were from and where we are staying, so in that regard, Kabuki-cho is not for everyone. However this is beside the point, eventually we found a karaoke bar and headed up to sing. I do not need to remind anyone how bad I am at singing but thankfully the other guys liked to sing so much that they would drown out my bad voice as they stood up and danced to their own voice. For some reason whenever you tell someone you don’t like to sing at Karaoke they always decide that what you really mean is that you secretly love singing, it’s just that you only want to sing Disney or Madonna songs in a high pitched girly voice. I still have not figured out the logic to that to this day, but I will be here for a year so eventually I will understand Karaoke, or develop a good enough voice where I don’t feel too weird singing in public. We left the Karaoke club at 1:00 and headed home for a 20 minute walk and then a 4 and a half hour nap before starting or second real day of training, all in all I made only smart decisions that first day.

The best part of the second day was getting to go out early that night to hang out with my friend Kenta from college. He had recently moved back to Japan with his family for work, and luckily we both had the night off to catch up. I met Kenta in Asakusa, near the ninja café, and we went out for a medley of Japanese food, half of which I had never had before. That has actually become the most popular game for Japanese people to play with me, the ‘I wonder what this Gaijin (Foreigner) can stomach at my expense’ Game. Upon meeting Kenta I began using Japanese for the first time since I graduated college, and after 3 months of purely American thoughts, it was a rough transition. One of the reasons I have always thought of Kenta as such a good friend was that he could actually put up with my horrible Japanese, and pretend that it was actually not too offensive. Of course after Kenta had been in Japan for an entire month the idea of speaking was clearly not too appealing to him, and he quickly told me that I would not be using any of it tonight. I unfortunately do not remember the names of the dishes that we ate that night, and I was not clever enough to bring a camera with me, but I do remember my favorite Japanese dish.

The new rule that I have discovered in Japan is when it comes to cooking, if it’s cheap, put it on a stick. This means that any part of an animal that is not top quality meat gets dunked in Teriyaki sauce and put on the skewer, as well as random fish parts and vegetables. They also have this thing that is basically a chicken hot dog…on a stick, that is ground up chicken meat and surprisingly tasty. Now I might not have given this food the justice it deserves, because it really is my favorite snack I can get here, yet it does have its downsides. The worst in my opinion is the pigs liver on a stick, and in a tie for first and second to worst is chicken skin on a stick. It is perhaps the tastiest meat on a stick I can find, but if you eat more than 3 or so you will feel incredibly sick. Well getting back on topic we had a typical Japanese night out which involved too much to eat and drink, and then a long walk afterwards. Kenta was nice enough to take me around where he worked, as well as showing me the Diet and the Prime Minister’s house. As a politics nerd this was really cool, I have always wanted to go into the Diet when it was in session, so hopefully I can do that once while I am here. Eventually I caught the last train back to the hotel and arrived in my room at 1:00 am, one of the latest arrivals that I have heard of. Basically that does not make me cool for staying out late drinking, it just makes me stupid because like it or not, my body always woke me up at 5:00 am every day.

This was an annoying habit that took me over a week to break, but every day I would get up at 5:00 am for a morning that didn’t start until 7:00. I know the logical thing to do would be to go back to sleep, but the curtains were so bad at this hotel that once you were awake it became impossible to fall back asleep. So after the annoying awakening I would have to get my suit for the day and go down 40 floors to use one of four irons that were available to every single JET in that hotel. I want to point out now that ironing is bad enough, but waiting in line to iron at 5:00 am makes it even worse. After ironing I usually had time to go back upstairs to change then come back down the same 40 floors to use the community computer supplied by JET. Now the hotel had internet and I had a computer, but I was too clever for this simple process. I had to decide to buy a computer that has a three-prong plug, and when I bought the right adapter, I made an even more clever decision to leave that adapter in the wrong suitcase. So anyways that meant for the first three days I could only use the computer for 20 minutes at a time, which is not a lot when you are trying to tell everyone that you are ok and write as many emails as possible at once.

I was however fortunate enough to meet some very nice people during orientation. The cruelest thing about orientation is that you get to meet a lot of nice people with similar interests and situations, and then find out that they live half a country away from you. One of those people that I met was named David, and he was a pretty awesome kid right of the bat. Actually besides Kristin, he was the only other person who I could have known from before JET. Kristin is best friends with an old friend of mine, Eddie, so technically I could have met her somehow before I left for Japan. David on the other hand was from Colorado College, and actually knew of Ariella, due to the fact that it’s a small school and my twin has an amazing ability to be known, or at least heard of, by everyone in the world. Well I was able to have breakfast with David on the second morning of orientation, as well as hang out with him in 2 learning sessions and during lunch. I was smart enough to get his email, but not smart enough to email him yet, I should get on that. I realize now that I have not talked much about the actual orientation part of orientation. It was interesting, but again due to time and sometimes lack of paying attention, I have forgotten a lot of about the classes that I took. I do remember the ‘Teaching at Multiple Schools’ to be incredibly helpful, and the ‘Driving in the Country’ to have some very good pointers in it. For instance in Japan you cannot make a left turn on a red light (since they drive on the opposite side of the road that is actually quite shocking when you think about it). Furthermore, there is a no tolerance alcohol policy when it comes to drinking and driving. So if you have a sip of beer in Japan you are not allowed to drive, and if you get in the car with someone who has had a sip to drink, and you get pulled over, you get in trouble as well for not preventing them from driving. So the question is how does a country of alcoholics survive when there is absolutely no drinking and driving? Well they have come up with a quite brilliant solution (and the Japanese name escapes me at this time) where you can drive up to a bar, get wasted, and then call the taxi company to come pick you up. The taxi company sends a car with two people in it, and when they arrive one gets out and you give them your keys before getting into the taxi. The second driver finds your car and then follows the first taxi home and parks it for you. I have more interesting car facts but I figure I will write a post about renting my car in Japan soon and I can continue from there.

Now along with my good classes, there were some pretty awful sessions that I went to during orientation. The worst was one called ‘Understand the MEXT Handbook.’ MEXT stands for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and is the organization that founded JET, even though they are not our bosses. Each JET has a different boss depending on what prefecture (state) they are in, and what grade level they teach. For instance there are five JETs in Shinjo, and we have different bosses. Kristin and I work for middle schools and elementary schools, so we are employed by the Shinjo Board of Education (BOE). On the other hand, Alyssa, Peter, and Amanda all work at high schools and therefore employed by the Prefecture of Yamagata. This is why even though Shinjo has had high school JETs for years, Kristin and I are still considered knew because the Shinjo BOE has never hired anyone before us. Well now I should get back to explaining MEXT. In Japan education is completely centralized, meaning that what the government says should be taught is taught, and the states and teachers have little say in the matter. This is important because there are many teachers out there that do not want to do team teaching with a JET, and who will resist it at every turn. That is why MEXT made a handbook in both English and Japanese so that when a teacher does not want to use a JET, we can simply tell the teacher that it’s what the government wants, and there will be no more arguing. This handbook is incredibly thick and dense, so when I saw that there was a session that would tell us what to read and what it would mean, I jumped at the opportunity. Well luckily for me so did Sara (a very funny girl from Colorado) and Kiri (a girl from my college), because it was the most boring hour of my life. The presenter basically told us some general guidelines of what was on a few pages, but gave no hints as how to navigate the book. Instead they kept telling us, “This is important, so read the entire thing.” So in the end I did not take the speaker’s advice, and instead made a very good paper football that I flicked at a random person, and missed them completely. So this has been a bit random and scattered but that was the real important parts of Tokyo Orientation, if you have any questions or want me to try and add something to this just let me know. When I actually get the time and motivation I will start keeping a regular blog so that people can keep up on what is going on without me having to write hundreds of long emails, and instead I can send more manageable emails on a regular basis.