Orientation & Travel

The last couple of days have been rather busy (a bit of an understatement).

I’ve had two days of orientation at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo, which involved MANY lectures on all sorts of topics (culture shock, teaching in junior highs, driving in Japan, food (or how to tell cat food from tuna), etiquette, etc.). I met the group of new ALTs (assistant language teachers) for Nagano: a really nice bunch. I’m going to be nearest to a couple of guys from Leeds, in England (yes, I have already started to pick up a British accent again). We had our first night out as a group (at a traditional Japanese pub on the seventh floor of a skyscraper), which included my first Japanese beer. They also went out for Tex-Mex on Tuesday evening, but I decided to take a nap and didn’t wake up until 1 am (silly jet lag).

Wednesday morning we checked out of the hotel and boarded our bus to Nagano Prefecture. The greenery is so lush here! The mountains look like some kind of giant creature covered in tree fur (no wonder they came up with Godzilla). We drove through valleys until our lunch stop, where I ordered food for myself in Japanese for the first time (“kitsune soba onegaishimasu”) and had a view of Suwa Lake, the largest lake in Nagano. From there we went to Matsumoto to drop some of the ALTs off (which is due west of Sakuho, but there’s a mountain in the way, so I stayed on the bus), and then on to Nagano City. It was really interesting- almost every valley had some sort of village or town, but they are all very spread out: it’s hard to think of any of them as cities- they look more like suburbs.

In Nagano City, I was greeted by Julienne (the other JET ALT in Sakuho) and the second in command at the Board of Education. We drove to Sakuho via Saku City (where I registered for an Alien [gaijin] card) and I met the rest of the Board of Education staff. It’s very friendly lot, and I lucked out- the head of the BOA (my direct supervisor) used to be an English teacher, so he speaks very good English. Then they took me to my house. It’s one half of a two story duplex, and very cute. I have two traditional style rooms (with tatami mat floors), and the rest are more modern (pictures to be posted on Facebook as soon as I finish unpacking). According to Julienne, the office lady from the BOA (a very nice lady called Hata-san) spent two days cleaning in preparation for my arrival! We went grocery shopping (thankfully Julienne speaks Japanese and could translate things for me, so now I have a bit of an idea of what to look for) and then the BOA took us out for my first sushi dinner in Japan. It was AMAZING! The food was so incredibly tasty (they were very impressed that I could use chopsticks and liked eating tofu) and there was sooooooo much (tofu course, sashimi course, edamame, Chinese dish [something with pork and lots of vegetables], and then sushi… plus beer, sake, green tea and water). Only Julienne and the head of the BOA spoke English, so I was a bit lost, but everyone else seemed so interested in getting to know me (they found out I like vegetables and all decided to bring me veggies from their gardens the next day- I ended up with about 30 baby eggplants [plus peppers, tomatoes, and cucumber] apparently I shouldn’t expect to be buying any for myself).

For a day that I was so nervous anticipating, it went really well. The only real snags were me forgetting my greeting:
Hegimameshite.
Emma Phillips-u to moshimasu.
Doozo yoroshito onegashimasu.
And the fact that my internet wasn’t quite running when I got in (I need a password to access it and they forgot to give it to me when I was at the BOA). All in all, very exciting and crazy ☺

Today I met the principal at my junior high, as well as the english teachers that I'll be working with. They're really nice and have very good English! Did most of the unpacking and finally got the internet running. Dinner at Hara-san's (the head of the BoE) house tonight. Japanese people don't usually invite people they don't know really well into their house, so I've decided to take this as a sign that they like me.

Long post, but it's been a busy week :)