Orientation

20-08-2010

Time for an update again! For the past three days I’ve been in Yashiro having the final orientation with Hyogo Board of Education. I have to say it has been a strange few days. In all we had about 10 seminars based on life in Hyogo, the educational system and various team-teaching techniques. Some of the information was really useful, but the rooms we were in for the seminars didn’t have air conditioning and there was no supply of fresh drinking water between meals for the first day, so everyone struggled to concentrate in the 34 degree heat. Japan is a beautiful country but the heat is unbearable, and in all honesty the only humidity comparable to the Japanese climate is that of a sauna.

And I don’t last very long in saunas.

We had an opening ceremony where our notice of employment was presented to us. The Japanese are big on ceremonies, even for small things, so when I arrived (on time! Woohoo!) and forgot to change out of my canvas shoes with bright pink laces (D’oh!) I thought I had set myself up for a fall. I seem to be the queen of bad impressions. In fact, the day I arrived in Hyogo I was dressed in my scruffs for the long journey as one of the group leaders gave the impression that we wouldn’t be meeting anyone important… but when I was collected by one of the English teachers I was taken straight to school to meet the two vice-principals and the staff. In any case the orientation staff weren’t the slightest bit bothered by my shoes, and I even checked with one of the Japanese ladies organising it beforehand, so the ceremony had a bizarre feel to it.. semi-relaxed but definitely a formality. It was pretty cool to get an official notice of employment anyway. The Japanese take such pride in a lot of things, their work in particular, and it’s such a nice change when you contrast this with Britain and its nation of job-hoppers.

The ceremony wasn’t the only part that had a bizarre feel to it. In one of the opening speeches the main supervisor from the Board of Education listed the rules of the institute and joked that previous JETs referred to the place as Yashiro prison, reassuring us that this was not at all the case. I suppose it depends on your perspective - to me it felt like being on a school trip with a twist. We were allowed to drink alcohol and even encouraged to do so, but requested not to get so drunk that we would set off the fire extinguishers in the toilets. We could go out if we wanted but there was a curfew of 10pm. Lights went off at 11pm and anyone who was caught wandering the halls was sent off to their dormitory (four JETs to a room, men and women on separate corridors.) In the morning, the tannoy played gentle piano music into the dorms at 6.55am, followed by a wake up announcement at 7am. After this, the music switched to ‘I like to move it move it.’

I think I can safely say that this is the one part of my Japanese experience so far where I have truly woken up and thought ‘where… on Earth… am I…’

So it’s been a change of scenery, to say the least! But I feel much better for having done it. I had no idea there were so many JETs close by - there are even some in South Nishinomiya! I got to meet loads of other people from the surrounding areas and I feel so much better for it. For the past few weeks I really have felt like the only gaijin in the village. This was not a good feeling! Yet it seems I have struck the right balance - whilst I have JETs close enough to meet up with if I want, I am still living around Japanese people, so I have the incentive to learn Japanese.

All I have to do now.. is learn Japanese.
Uh…

SoftBank

15th August 2010

The quest to get my keitai (mobile phone) lasted two whole days. I now have a beautiful black shiny phone with a pretty good deal through the company AU - the internet is too expensive to access through my phone but I can send and receive email for free! Actually it blows my mind a bit that you can receive email without having to open an internet connection.. but I guess I’m just a bit behind the times.

The first company I tried was called SoftBank. At the Tokyo orientation all the Jets had been talking about how text messages between Softbank phones were free, so it seemed like the obvious choice - except my application for a contract got rejected. After we spent nearly an hour filling out paperwork and waiting for an answer from their central office. Natch.

Whilst we waited for the decision, Sensei explained the advertising campaign of SoftBank to me.


The dog is the father of the family. There is a mother, daughter and son. In various adverts on TV the Japanese can see the family life of these characters as the dog tries to look after everyone and keep them in line.

The dog also graduated from the Sorbonne University and speaks fluent French. Who comes up with this stuff??

Who nose what's acceptable in Japan?

14th August 2010

Hello everyone. Well, it’s a Saturday night and I’m sat in with a green tea peel-off face mask on (I pray that it won’t stain my face green. That would certainly give the kids something to talk about!) So whilst it’s drying into a peel-able form I thought I would write and summarise the past week. That is to say my first full week at work.

It’s going to be a bit difficult for you all to work out what point I’m at, which is purely because without the internet I can’t upload these posts as I write them. So if you find yourself getting a bit lost, please refer to the diagram:


Clever isn’t it? I didn’t even realise I had Microsoft paint on this netbook. How handy.

In the time that I wasted making that little doodle my face mask dried, by the way. My face wasn’t stained green, although I did nearly lose half an eyebrow to the peeling process. What a moron.

Anyway! So I’ve been organising various things, such as signing up for my alien registration card, internet, phone etc.. you get the idea. Japanese bureaucracy, aside from the obvious fact that it is all conducted in Japanese, is a lot less frustrating than that of the Italians or the French. That is except for one small thing. Dates. In Japan the date is written year-month-day, which isn’t such an issue as I guess it’s just as logical as writing it day-month-year. But their years are different!

On all official documentation they don’t write 2010, they write 22. Every time a new Emperor takes over they start from the year zero - this is such a pain in the backside when you’re trying to backdate things and especially when you have a deadline to meet! But I guess it’s culturally quirky, one of the whole reasons I set off on this adventure.

The parts of my week that weren’t taken up with trudging around shops and offices have been spent planning lessons and reading books on team teaching. In Japan, when you start a new job (and I am told this is standard) no one talks you through what you’re meant to be doing - they just sit you at your desk and expect you to pick it up from watching other people. It’s quite unsettling really, but I like that I don’t get watched all the time. I like that I’ve had the time and opportunity to read through the materials that are available, even if it has led me to realise that I am way in over my head here (seriously - how am I going to teach English to these kids? How?)

On the Monday I was summoned into the principal’s office and given an insight into what was appropriate attire for a public servant. Earrings - ok. Make up - ok. Nose piercing - no way José. So here is a picture of my beloved nose piercing as I beheld it one last time:



I took it out that same night (reluctantly) and within an hour it was but a mere dimple. Of course, I knew there was a possibility of this happening, but I was still really upset about it. Still. Them’s the rules.

So aside from these little discrepancies, things are going alright for the moment. The Hyogo Jets have been summoned to prefectural orientation next week so I’ll have to go away to Yashiro institute for a few days. According to previous JETs it is much like a prison… I remain optimistic. As long as it has Western toilets, I will handle it. I think.

Funny things I have seen so far..

A few random photos I have knocking about from the first week in Japan.. The first is a poster on the Tokyo underground, advertising (I think) the latest Cats and Dogs movie. The dog, as you can see, is an aeroplane. On the wing, possibly a bit too dark to make out, a pigeon is perched as the two are pursued by a cat sporting a jet pack:


Also of interest, especially to a particular friend back home, is a demonstration of how the Japanese are keen followers of a certain British band:


I don’t know what exactly inspired me to take that photo.. I guess it was just seeing familiar popular faces in such an unfamiliar environment. It’s a bit trippy. Speaking of trippy…


…now THAT is weird, right??

Finally, as a treat for all you frenchies out there, one hilarious example of how using French to appear chic can go drastically wrong:


Tee hee.

Food and drink 1

I’m hoping to do a few of these blogs because I think they might be interesting for those of you back home. If nothing else there should be some cool pictures. So, drinks and snacks that I have found in Japan!

First up, the ‘lemon water’ I discovered in Japan at Tokyo train station, awaiting the shinkansen. On an incredibly humid day I was attracted to this drink on the top row of one of the many vending machines on the platform. ‘Physical drink’ was the English description on the bottle. Perfect! A refreshing sports drink for a hot day spent lugging a heavy bag on and off trains. In went my 150 yen and out popped the bottle.


Lemon water my foot. It tasted like ‘resolve’, the hangover cure I resort to at my lowest of morning-after ebbs. Bleugh. It was pretty thick and didn’t taste anything like the lemon cordial I had imagined. Major letdown.

Next, the apple juice. I think it was apple juice anyway, it had pictures of apples on it:


The flavour was so full of apples, it was incredible. But it also tasted like a lot of added sugar so it didn’t taste particularly healthy. On the day in question this wasn’t an issue; I needed the sugar!

Ah, these are the blueberry ‘sours’ that I bought on my way home from my second day at school:


I didn’t want them, or need them, but I thought buying random sweets was a good way of meeting the shopkeeper. He was a friendly old guy, but we couldn’t understand each other. Still, my Japanese will improve and I hope to have a conversation with him by the end of the year! The sweets were quite nice! But not sour. Hmm…

Finally my can of Fanta Grape. My little brother tells me this doesn’t really exist as a standalone flavour in the UK; apparently the grape flavour gets mixed with other berries.


Anyway, this tasted… like anything but grapes, actually. How bizarre.

Shinkansen

8th August 2010

Ah, what is more symbolic of Japan than the bullet train? Apart from cherry blossom.. and Sake.. and sushi.. Well it’s still up there in the top ten of ‘things that represent Japan’ anyway. My first trip by shinkansen took place on the way to my placement town from the Tokyo orientation. As I didn’t book the trip myself (it was done by the JET crew) I don’t have any tickets to show for it.. although in Japan the ticket machines tend to eat your ticket at the end of the journey, so you can’t keep them as souvenirs anyway. Sad face. This also means that I don’t know how much the journey actually cost, but some pre-departure research suggested it was in the region of about £100. Ouchy.
I would have paid it, however. In fact, I don’t expect that was my first and only trip by bullet train, I do intend to return to Tokyo at some point this year to visit my friend Mai. We met when she did an exchange year at my University when I was in first year and we lived together for a while. This is a very pleasant upside of this placement, seeing people I never thought I would see again!

I digress. At the request of someone back home, I took the opportunity to take a few photos. So here they are! Firstly, an arty attempt (I stress ‘attempt’) at a diagonal shot of two trains side by side:


Here is a more serious attempt:



With an added shot of the carriage for good measure:


So you get the idea really. Very aesthetically pleasing, sparkling clean, plenty of leg room, and discreetly speedy! I say discreetly as it never really seemed to be going that fast, though the distance covered in a couple of hours suggested that it clearly was. For those of you who are interested, here is a video clip of the scenery, just for a minute or so. Nothing much happens in the clip, I just thought it might be nice to capture the landscape as the train rushed by:



As one final point to add, the Japanese sell lunchboxes at train stations, often including the local delicacy of the area. At 1,000 yen I can’t help but feel the lunchboxes at Tokyo were slightly overpriced (and they do seem to be cheaper in small towns). I had the surprising good fortune to find a box containing only vegetables and rice! It was even easy to spot amongst the meat alternatives, as you can see:


All in all, a great experience! Why can’t we have such great trains??

Arrival in Tokyo

1st August 2010 Keio Plaza Hotel
Local time: 19.47
UK time: 11.47
Status: Knackered.

Unfortunately even though I’m writing this blog whilst it’s relevant, it may be a while before I can track down an internet connection to upload it, so there may be a surge of posts from time to time. I did spot a starbucks earlier with a wi-fi connection so if I can get time to go there during the orientation then I will do.. But it may be hard :(

This won’t be a long post anyway as I will probably crash out in bed soon. I got on the plane at 19.15 UK time on Saturday and arrived in Japan somewhere around 14.45 local time.. I still can’t get my head around the time difference but I suspect I have been robbed of an entire night of my life. The injustice! I don’t expect to recover it on the return home next year either, the world doesn’t work that way. Ah, the ramblings of the sleep deprived.

I have now truly, truly experienced jet-lag. It feels remarkably like the day I handed in my dissertation.

At Narita airport, Tokyo, I experienced the infamous Japanese toilets for the first time ever. There was a control panel next to the bowl with various pictures of things (bidets, bums, etc) and symbols in Kanji with English ‘translations’. Whilst searching for the flush I found a button labelled ‘flushing sound’. Ah! Thought I. Surely a mistranslation, probably just a warning that the flush is loud. So I pressed it, only to hear a recorded flushing sound (no actual flushing) and buttons flashed, encouraging me to increase and decrease volume. As it turns out, the Japanese like to muffle the sounds of their bowel movements with various different noises, from the less obvious (toilet flush) to the more obvious (bird tweets, so my room mate told me this evening.) Consider this your first strange fact about Japan from my voyage of discovery!

To compliment this blog, see below for a photo of the toilet in our hotel room. Considerably less high tech, but the drawings on the panel are most enjoyable. Note also the possibility of electronically controlling the water pressure of the bidet or ‘spray’ (I have not managed to work out the difference, but I’m sure as heck not trying!)

Actually here are some more photos of Japan so far. My in-flight vegetarian meal:


And the plush bathroom of the hotel:



That’s all for now folks. More updates soon! First day of training tomorrow!