The second First Day

It's the first day of the second year. And what a tiring, fun, awesome day. The first day of Tokyo Orientation for the newbies, and an incredible experience. I remember the first day of orientation for me, one year ago. It was like a dream. And at the same time, it didn't feel like Japan. But this time, I was on the "other side," being a senior member and guiding the way for all the younglings. Funny to call them that, as some of them are certainly older than me, and some with prior experiences in Japan.

Orientation was tiring. We had shifts at odd hours; early morning, late at night. But it was damn fun, even when we just wanted to sleep! In fact, those times might have been the most fun, 'cause we were tired and everything was amusing to us. The "shifts" I refer to are times that we are stationed to the Information Desk or Hospitality Center. The Hosp Center was arguably more amusing, as we were allowed to doodle on the portraits of all of the Orientation Assistants and Coordinators. I put my art skills to use and turned one of my friends into Kakashi from Naruto, and another friend into Super Saiyan Goku! Hilarity ensued.

There were a surprising amount of Filipinos there (as Assistants/Coordinators). Five and a half, I think. And perhaps some of the best parts about the orientation were meal times: free all-you-can-eat breakfasts in the hotel (Western breakfast, how I've missed you so!), and some sweet eateries around Shinjuku. Some meals worth mentioning: Burger King Whopper, it had been too long; kaitenzushi (conveyor belt sushi), always fun; ten-don (no, not tendons, the connective tissue between muscle and bone), but literally "heaven ricebowl," or rather, " shrimp tempura ricebowl." Sooooooo good.

Here's to more adventures!

Word of the day: 天丼　「てんどん」　"ten-don," explained above.

Obon's End

Well, today is the last day of Obon! Also known as Gozan no Okuribi (五山送り火), or literally, five mountain sending off (funeral) fire. In Kyoto, they light a giant 大 in the side of a mountain. That's pretty amazing, and I would love to see it for myself! Actually, there are a few more kanji on there as well. Just go to www.google.com and you'll see what I mean. Or check out the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gozan_no_Okuribi

Yesterday, I spent the entire day doing laundry and cleaning up my apartment. Actually not quite done yet, as I'm trying to figure out what to do about all of the paper that I've gotten from the two orientations. So much stuff to read through! I've gotten through a lot of it, but I believe the majority of it is really just for reference. But yeah, doing laundry in Japan is quite different in the US. I'll proceed to describe various other differences here that I've found amuzing or interesting (or even troublesome).

My apartment does NOT have a dryer. This means that once I'm done washing my clothes, I immediately put my clothes on hangers and put them somewhere to dry. My predecessor put a bar in one of the bedrooms for just that purpose. She usually used this bar during the winter and used a bar outside on the back patio to hang stuff when it wasn't cold out. But I found that hanging them inside was more convenient, because my shirt closet is in that same room. Also, the washer took quite a bit of time to figure out how to use. I had to look up the kanji that I didn't know and then make a vague interpretation of what the washer actually did with that particular setting. For example, one of the words was about flooding, so I figured that it had to do with re-filling the tank. There was also "drying," but the washer doesn't *actually* dry anything.

Another interesting thing is the trash system. In the US, we only have trash or recycling; and only recycling requires separation of stuff. But hoooooo, in Japan, even trash needs to be separated. When I was at a government institution last week for Miyagi orientation, there were four distinct trash bins for different stuff. Trash can be...er...MUST be separated into burnable trash and non-burnable trash. In other words, paper & organic waste versus plastic waste. But then you have lots of plastic bottles for drinks, known as PET bottles in Japan. To discard a PET bottle, you must first remove the cap and the plastic label and put those into the plastic/non-burnable trash. Then you may put the PET bottle into its designated container. Things like glass and aluminum have their own things as well, but in a public place, I think there are places for any sort of bottle-shaped trash. If you think about it, it's not really all that different from the recycling system that we have in the US. But the difference is that typically, the recycling and sorting happens at home, whereas here in Japan, it's public. I definitely think that it's for the better. I've also heard that if you don't separate the trash out properly, it gets returned to your doorstep!


Driving. Everything about driving here just seems *backwards*! The steering wheel is on the right, which Americans normally refer to as "passenger side." You must drive on the left side of the road and stay in the left lane. I believe passing on highways occurs on the right lane. The lane switch also means that left turns are now easy, whereas right turns are now more difficult. But see, I already knew about all that, so I wasn't surprised or shocked or anything. What seems the most "backwards" here is parking: everyone backs into their spot in a parking lot!!! This blows my mind, because in the US, nearly everyone goes head first into their parking spot, so all the cars face each other. But in Japan, all of the cars face away from each other! I haven't seen anyone load a ton of groceries in their cars like this yet. I'm sure to be amused when it happens.

Hmm, that's another thing. I've seen people buy lots of stuff; but the mentality of having abundant amounts of things is just different here in Japan. In the US, we like having a lot of a lot of stuff (yes, I meant to use "a lot of" twice). We go to places like Sam's Club or Costco or Walmart and stock up on things we use often, like toilet paper, paper towels, drinks, food, what have you. But in Japan...it's just not like that. I mean, people DO do that, but oftentimes, people are more inclined to buy smaller amounts of things because that's all that they need. I will share a story that I heard at Tokyo Orientation about this:

A JET participant (whom I'll refer to as "the JET") went shopping with a Japanese friend at the grocery store. For a long time now, the JET had been shopping at that store. There was a 1L (liter) beverage being sold for 80 yen. And every day, it was that price. There was also a .5L size being sold for 60 yen. But when the JET and her friend had gone shopping, the 1L drink was on sale for 50 yen, less than the price of the smaller one! The friend wanted to buy this drink, so she picked up the smaller .5L bottle and was about to go pay for it. This blew the JET's mind. "Why are you getting the smaller one??? You can get the larger one for a cheaper price!!!" "Because I only want this size." (I might have told the story a bit incorrectly; the two sizes might have both been 50 yen when it was on sale. But the point I'm trying to make is the same.)

Miyagi Orientation was last Wednesday to Friday; it might be a while before I see fellow JETs again. Orientation was fun; but the facility felt like a dormitory. Males and Females were separated by floor. And there were public restrooms rather than each room having its own bathroom. And there was also a public shower room (with private showers) but also a public bath. With public stools. And public sitting area. After two full days of getting to know people, a few of the guys fought their insecurities and went into the bath. And let me tell you, that was quite hot. But I hear that real onsen's have much, much hotter water. It felt good though. But I couldn't sit there for too long, because I was starting to get light-headed. Still a neat experience. I look forward to going to a real onsen one day; my supervisor said that he'll take me to one. Apparently our area is known for its many onsens. There's even one in town!

Word of the day: ごみ箱 「ごみばこ」　"gomibako" or "garbage can." Gomi, or trash, is also often written in the katakana form: ゴミ

Second day of orientation

Well, more seminars today. A lot of things were just repetitions from things earlier in the day or from yesterday. Which is actually good, because those are important things. Some of the topics we covered today included driving, lesson planning, communicating with our co-workers and community, our activities in Japan, safety, food, drug laws, learning Japanese...lots of topics.

Also, I don't recall if I had mentioned it last night, but on my way back to the hotel from the Shinjuku arcades, I finally used a vending machine and bought some Kirin Milk Tea. Delicious. [Note: This is not my own picture.]

Tonight, we had to ship any last bit of luggage to our designated prefectures to reduce the amount of luggage we actually have to carry with us. I've managed to take it down to just two messenger bags; let's just hope I didn't ship anything that I will need with me immediately on my person!

So yeah, clearly not too much happened today. The most exciting thing is perhaps going back out to Shinjuku with fellow JET ALTs who departed from Washington, D.C. with me. I had beef udon. And maaaaaaaaaaan was it good! The noodles were seemingly hand-made, as they were imperfectly rolled. And it made it oh so good.

Alright, I gotta pack up my last bit of stuff and get to bed. Good night, Japan! Good morning, USA!

Word of the day: 自動販売機　「じどうはんばいき」　"jidouhanbaiki," or vending machine. Literally, it means "automatic selling machine."

First day of orientation

So I've completed my first day of JET Orientation. Fun time! Except I was exhausted ALL DAY. It wasn't until I took a 10 minute nap at around 9 PM that I got a second wind and decided to go out. I went out because a fellow JET ALT said to a friend I just met, "When's the next time you're going to be in Tokyo?" With those words in mind, I dressed up and headed out. I tried to see if he was still in his room, but he had already left (probably while I was sleeping). I simply set out to look around the neighborhood a bit, and I saw plenty of bright neon lights everywhere and tons of things to buy. One of the electronics stores I went to had an eyesore of signs plastered all over the walls. It was like the store was yelling at me to purchase something. Things that piqued my interest in that store were phones and denshi jisho (you know, electronic dictionaries). Didn't buy anything of course. In fact, I didn't spend any money...

...until I got to the arcade. :-D I saw a Sega arcade which I almost thought was a pachinko parlor (because earlier I saw a pachinko parlor which I thought was an arcade). When I walked in and looked around, I was surprised at how small it was; but I believe there were multiple floors. I'm not sure exactly because I chose to stay on the ground floor; maybe I'll check out the rest tomorrow. In any case, I played Initial D Stage 5. If anyone else has played this series, they'll know that in each iteration, there is a new physics engine, and this one definitely had a new one. I couldn't get the turns or drifting right at all. Oh well, I still won.

Then, I walked around more, saw some more fun stores, and another arcade. And this one was where I spent quite a while in; maybe almost an hour. I lost track of time because I was too busy schooling other gaikokujin (foreigners) in Street Fighter IV. Got 5 wins and no losses! Then proceeded to beat the game. All on one credit. Win. :-D Tekken 6 was there, too. And I would have played it if someone else was; and if I had more time.

The orientation itself was very interesting and valuable. Apparently *everyone* in the JET Programme (and by extension, anyone who moves to Japan to stay for an extended period of time) will experience Culture Shock. I can agree with this statement, because Culture Shock (a.k.a. Cultural Fatigue) is something that happens on a personal level, and it's something that is very difficult to describe but easy to understand if one has experienced it. The speaker explained that Culture Shock (which I'll abbreviate as CS from now on in this post) is something that occurs in four stages very gradually. Which is why it makes more sense to call it Fatigue than Shock. It's something that builds up and wears you down. The four stages are basically 1) Excitation/Happiness/Euphoria 2) Sadness/Anger/Depression 3) Recovery 4) Assimilation. I won't go into detail about what each one means, but it's basically a roller coaster, where #'s 1 and 3 are high, 2 is low, and 4 is back to normal again. Some people get stuck in Stage 2, and that is the problem with CS; the person suffering from it has to go through Stage 3, or else will suffer during the entire duration of his or her stay in Japan.

The other seminars I heard dealt with teaching at multiple schools, cooking/eating out, and adult conversation classes, which I will apparently be doing. I also continued networking, mingling, and meeting more people! Overall a very exhausting, but equally fun day.

Word of the day: 時差ぼけ　「じさぼけ」　"jisaboke," or "jet-lag." The first character, as I've mentioned before, means "time," while the second character means "difference."