first week pictures

maya said every good blog has pictures, and i agree. some first week favorites:

heres the first traditional toilet i used. there are buttons to make tinkling noises because its inappropriate to pee loudly haha. i was pretty freaked out as is, and then i opened the door and was face to face with lil bo peep, about 22 yrs old, pictured right. she looks 3x as ridiculous from the front, with her crazy make-up, blond streaked hair, and pink frilly umbrella. wow. all the toilets at school are like this, so im not getting used to it. i think the button on the wall for noise, but what if its an emergency help button?? i can't read it. maybe i'll check someday...

my first day's groceries: grapefruit mentos, a carp charm, eel on rice for dinner, and anything else i could distinguish. since i cant read the 3000 chinese characters, it is quite an adventure trying to figure out what the heck i am buying and how to cook it. so these were safe. ive been more adventurous, of late.

as i love sunrises and sunsets, here is from day 1 in Tsu. i live on the edge of the city, so i have tons of stuff on one side and rice paddies on the

other. the mountains are amazing. one day, i tried to ride my one-speed bike to them. i made it to the trees. i'll try again sometime soon.

homestay weekend

August 24th
This past weekend I did a 2 day/ 1 night homestay. It was in a small town in the sticks, Odai. The town ran along a river and was surrounded by beautiful green mountains. Everyone was so friendly, and we were just about famous as foreigners.

My family was an older couple (age 60) who had met in elementary school. They slept in separate rooms, and really didn’t seem to love each other all that much. They got along fine, but the husband just liked to eat, drink, and be merry whereas the wife spent her time cooking, doing calligraphy, and was generally very reserved. So we learned some cooking, calligraphy, tea ceremony, etc. And we had a feast and drank the nite away.

In the end, I am glad I am in Tsu “City”. In Odai, you need a car, it takes 40 minutes to get to the train, and there are no places to go out. But Tsu is small enough to feel a lil welcomed : )

work in the summer

August 7, 2008

On Friday, the English department took me out for a welcome party. They still talked in Japanese for 96% of the time, but it was still pretty great. Such is Japanese business, where there are no such things as interns and people join to stay. The entire meal was about 9 tiny plates of food, including raw beef, chicken, and fish- so great! Lots of drinking too.

Some other facts about my past week
-I bought a bottle of iced coffee out of a vending machine.
-There are dead cicadas everywhere.
-I have read a handful of essays where the students argue for school 6 days/ week.
-I refuse to turn on the AC at my place
-I involuntarily wake up at 645am every morning when the heat and humidity kick in
-What I thought was iced coffee was actually tea. Damn it!
-It took me an hour to stop typing in Japanese characters
-I am really awkward at returning bows
-Everyone in the halls does a lil bow at me
-And kids bow when I hand out papers
-I definitely can’t bow and pass out papers at the same time
-There is already an Okamoto Sensei here
-No, I am not his daughter (several have asked)

Right now I am staring at a stack of 32 class assignments piled on my desk. There are around 40 kids per class. You do the math. If you cant, well, that’s a lot of assignments to grade. Especially I get an essay which begins “I don’t agree not to eat sweet for health.” This may be a long year...

welcome to my home

July 30, 2008

Today we left orientation as a group and then eventually went our own ways when people from our schools met us. Anyways, I was met and taken around Tsu High School to meet all the staff and the English teachers. One man told me about how he regrets his life and wished he were me. I didn’t really how to respond, and it was awkward to say the least. One woman grabbed my hands and said how thankful she was that I came (translation: I’m drafting you for 3 hours everyday in my summer classes and you will grade many essays for me). I just smiled, gave an awkward bow, and mumbled any Japanese greetings I knew.

Then my apartment! No one could explain in English how anything worked, so I guess I can figure most of it out through their hand gestures and broken words. My Japanese is not much at all, but it’s the easiest way to communicate. Oh my goodness!

The apartment is pretty huge though, it has 3 rooms and a large kitchen. The guy before me had a wife and kid, and he left a lot of stuff.

I had two options as I sat in my new home by myself with no one to speak English to, no internet, no working phone, and totally helpless: I could break into tears (odds favored this highly) or not. Well after nearly 10 minutes trying to unlock and un-kickstand my bike and staving off tears, I was off smiling through the streets. This is my life now, and I have to make the most of it. I will try my best to greet everyone, especially the nearby stone statue of a smiling/waving walrus (who really puts that in their house?). I’ll call him Wally.

There are sooo many funny insane things, and it’s tough laughing by yourself but I gotta learn (and continue to blog for pages each time? hope not…). From the insanity of Japanese TV, to the 6 child charms that all jingled when the 40 year old English teacher pulled her phone out, to the 4 tries it took to put my futon cover on—this is Japan.

When my dad was this age he moved from Nara, Japan to the United States to begin his new life. Now, I have picked up and left the country I call home and am living hours away from where he grew up. Unlike him, I don’t plan to start a new life here. But this certainly isn’t my old one...

Getting off the plane...

July 27th (the 26th disappeared in flight)
I am no longer in America anymore.
I flew on American Airlines from Los Angeles to Tokyo today. I haven’t slept in 24 hours, there are gross bright orange droplet stains from the ramen I just ate all over my shirt (how do the Japanese avoid these??), and I really have no idea what time it is.

It feels kind of lonely, and I am not even out of Tokyo. Everyone here is so excited to be here. Except me. I mean I am, and I can’t wait to actually get to my own apartment and start to settle down in Tsu, Mie, where I will live for the next twelve months. Wow. I hadn’t even begun to realize the challenges. Buying food, mailing a letter, grabbing a cup of coffee, accomplishing anything... Suddenly, these things are all huge obstacles for me. Realizing the up escalator is on the left side, remembering to cover my mouth apologetically every time I yawn, and figuring out how to flush the toilet…these are all small obstacles, yet still obstacles. I already feel the stares and suddenly realize that I am surrounded by a different type of people, and I’ve only been out for about an hour to go get dinner. I ate at Denny’s, and there was no “pancakes with bacon and egg” on the menu. It was all Japanese food, and it even said the calories next to everything. No, I am no longer in America anymore.

Greetings from Japan!

Hey All,

Thanks for checking this out. Can't guarentee anything, but that's the fun of it i suppose. Anyhow, it took me so long for internet that the first handful of posts will be all old stuff I wrote in the first month. Enjoy!