Whirlwind

So what have I done since Tokyo?

Let's see. Aug 18-20, I was in Kudamatsu City, about 45 minutes away from Hofu, teaching at an English camp. There were 8 ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) and 70 students, plus a bunch of JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English).

We stayed at a traditional style Japanese hotel - futons, tatami mats, and communal showers (and no, I am not even slightly kidding about that last one). The kids were great, and we split into groups of 3 ALTs to design a 30-minute workshop and a 45-minute workshop. Considering it was literally the first time I'd ever had to function as an ALT, I think it was a lot of fun. I'll try to put up some pictures from camp includin

g the awesome drawing my kids drew of me for my poster.

Every night, the teachers had drinks and snacks from 10-12, which is how I discovered my unending love for Chu-hai. If you ask me, Chu-hai tastes like a mildly alcoholic version of Sprite. I don't know why I like it as much as I do. It might have something

to do with the fact that it costs 100-200 yen.

The day after English camp ended, we had another orientation at Kencho. Kencho is the name of the giant government building in the capital of Yamaguchi prefecture (coincidentally, this is called Yamaguchi city). That night, Friday, Steff (the other Hofu ALT) and I went over to Tokuyama for dinner/hanging out with the JET who lives there (Al). Tokuyama is one city over from Hofu, and is slightly bigger population-wise but seems to have a lot more shopping than Hofu. It also has a shinkansen stop.

The next night, we went over to another city in Yamaguchi, Ube City, which is where the airport is. It's almost an hour away by train, and we got there at 8, so instead of getting on the last train back at 10 pm, we stayed over and hung out with the Ube JETs - Ryan and Kholo - until the sun came up!

Then we finally had to go back to work. September 1st was our opening ceremony, where the entire school gathers in the gymnasium. My main school has 1000 students, but luckily 200 of them were on a school trip. As the new teacher, I had to give a speech entirely in Japanese, which was fairly nerve-wracking.

I finally started teaching last Thursday at one of my visit schools. To get there, I have to ride my bike to the train station and then take a 45 minute bus ride, which somehow costs 820 yen. So roundtrip, for one day of teaching, it costs 1640 yen. I think I get reimbursed, but it's pretty expensive! The first day of teaching went okay. The kids are really loud and friendly... in Japanese. Getting them to speak English is a pretty big challenge.

Friday I had my first class at my base school, which also went okay. It's really hard to spend 50 minutes on a self-introduction so I suspect it'll become easier as the

year goes on and the lessons have actual content.

On Saturday, one of Steff's schools had a bunkasai, a cultural festival. The entire school is decorated and food stands are set u

p. A couple of us ALTs went and it was a lot of fun. One of my students from my school actually recognized me! Being an ALT kind of makes you a mild celebri

ty around your city. We stayed to watch the brass band perform, since we were told they were the best in the prefectur

e. It was incredible

- I've never heard a high school band play like that. There was singing and dancing, too! We talked with the conductor afterwards and I think he's going to set me up with an ensemble in Hofu since I've decided to start playing the violin again, now that I have all this free time. The only thing left is to actually find an affordable violin somewhere.

On Sunday, we went over to Yamaguchi City for dinner and bowling! Bowling in Japan is pretty much the same as bowling in America except the shoes are MUCH cooler here. I lived up to my title of regional bowling champion with scores of 55 and 43 for the two games we played. Next time I'll aim for mid 70s if I'm feeling ambitious.

Anyway, that gets the blog up to date, so people can stop wondering what I've been doing with my time. From here, I've got two more weeks of classes until there's a 5-day long national holiday, which I'll be spending in Yokohama, the second-biggest city in Japan!

The conclusion of our Tokyo trip!

Alright! So the second morning in Tokyo was spent entirely trying to find the Sakura House Hostel in Asakusa, Tokyo. It took quite a while, but it was SO much nicer than the Mayflower House. For instance, we weren't sharing our unsecured bathroom with a random tenant and there were no dogs. The hostel was awesome and I would definitely stay there again.

To be honest, I can't really remember what we did during the day, but I know at night we went to the VAMPIRE CAFE which was one of the most awesome experiences I've ever had. It also involved navigating my first entirely in Japanese phone call which was horrifying. The vampire cafe is not just a name - the ENTIRE place is decorated. The waitstaff is all wearing full vampire gear, including face paint and fangs and capes. The food is ALL themed. I got cross-shaped pieces of toast with spreads, for instance. I'll have pictures up later but all I can say is: if you go to Tokyo, you must go to the Vampire Cafe. If you're lucky, maybe you can sit at the table that is actually a real coffin!

Saturday in Tokyo was probably my favorite day because it was spent at.... TOKYO DISNEYLAND! Going to Disneyland Paris was one of the highlights of my time in Paris, so naturally I had to make it over to Tokyo Disneyland. Space Mountain was incredible. I wish I could ride that rollercoaster all day. Surprisingly, we only saw maybe 5 other foreigners at the park. We were expecting a lot more. We were at Disney from 10 AM to 10 PM so we were pretty exhausted by the end.

Sunday was pretty leisurely. After a brief visit to Akihabara, Steff and I trained it up to Ueno Park. Ueno Park is absolutely gorgeous. I spent most of the time in the Tokyo National Museum which was GREAT. They had a free English tour, and they had a free set up where you were able to make your own woodblock print! Woodblock prints are essentially my favorite art form of all time. To make them, a series of plates are carved - one for each color - and then dipped in ink and applied sequentially to the same paper. Each template has only the raised parts that will need whatever color is being used for that template. I'm not describing it very well, but if I could spend my life studying woodblock prints, I would.

Sunday night was awesome because I got to see AKI!!!!!!!! While I'm making very good friends out of my fellow Yamaguchi JETs, at this point I hadn't seen anyone I'd known for more than a few weeks in quite some time. We grabbed dinner in Shinjuku and hung out until our bus back to Hiroshima left. Seeing a friend made me day and I highly encourage all of you to visit me in Japan ASAP. I'll provide the futons!

Anyway, we caught our 10-hour bus ride back to Hiroshima and then had 5 minutes to catch our 2.5-hour train back to Hofu, at which point we passed out completely.

Tokyo!

So we made the genius decision to take a 13 hour bus ride to Tokyo. Despite booking our overnight bus tickets within a minute of each other, Steffanie, the other JET in Hofu was placed on a different bus from both me and Kris, another Yamaguchi JET. This would go on to cause many problems... especially when Steff's phone died halfway through the ride.

But anyway, on to Tokyo. We spent nearly half of the first day trying to find our ridiculous first hostel. I wish I was lying when I call it the sketchiest experience of my life. After nearly an hour of wandering around with a nice lawyer who's been living and working in Roppongi, Tokyo for 3 years, we found the building. It looked decent enough until they told us to go to the 6th floor. Upon exiting the elevator, we find a door with a sign that reads "KNOCK! BEWARE OF DOG!"... complete with the shadow of a GIANT dog barking and jumping against the door. At this point I was imagining my imminent death while racing through my head were thoughts such as "Why is there a dog in the hostel?" and "Will I ever see my family again?" The "check-in" area turned out to be some guy's living room littered with empty alcohol bottles and the entire idea of splitting the bill 4 ways seemed completely alien to him. We made it through the incredibly off-putting experience (with the giant black poodle in another room at this point) only to be led to our hostel... a two minute walk away. Despite requesting a 4-person private room, we were given 2 private doubles... in an apartment... with another bedroom... in which lived some guy who'd been there "for a few years." Other fun discoveries involved finding out the bathroom CURTAIN didn't lock, the toilet light was out, and the toilet didn't quite flush. We barely spent any time there, and for good reason.

On to the fun stuff! We wandered around for a while, first happening upon some kind of kid's festival where we met the Japanese version of the Power Rangers (I know, I know, the Power Rangers WERE Japanese...)

After that, I think we made our way over to Shibuya, the shopping center of Tokyo (okay, all of Tokyo is the shopping center compared to Hofu, but that's beside the point). Fashion in Tokyo is on another PLANET compared to NY. I felt really in place with my awesome gym sneakers amid the sea of stiletto heels.

Anyway, we ended the night with a visit to Alcatraz, a themed prison hospital restaurant. The entire set up is designed to look like a prison hospital and the menu is themed as well. It was all you can drink AND eat for 3000 yen for an hour or two. I will include a picture of the dessert which was pretty incredible so you can all be jealous.


That's all for day one in Tokyo... we survived the night in our sketchy hostel and went to another one for days 2-4... still to come.

Oops

So it's been a while. Actually, more like 13 days. Time to fill in the blanks!

In Japan, around the middle of August, is a national holiday of sorts called "Obon" when people go home to pay their respects to deceased relatives. Not everyone gets off, but we got 4 special days of summer leave for it. Since we are so cunning, we chose Wed-Fri and Monday, giving us a 6 day weekend of awesome.

Wednesday we took a 2.5 hour train to Hiroshima. We later found out we could have taken the Shinkansen (the bullet train) for maybe 1000 yen more and only used up a half hour... which we will do next time. 2.5 hours is a long time to kill. We started off by finding a place called "Okonomi-mura" which essentially means "Okonomiyaki Village" - it's a building that literally has 3 or 4 floors of okonomiyaki restaurants. Everyone sits around a giant hot plate and the okonomiyaki is made in front of you. Okonomiyaki is essentially a savory Japanese pancake. I don't have any pictures, but I know you have Google.

After a delicious lunch, we took a cab over to the site of the atomic bombing. Pictured here is the "A-dome" which is one of very few structures to survive the atomic bombing. It's also nearly directly under the site of the explosion which makes it even more incredible that it's still standing. I felt kind of weird taking pictures of it, so we moved on to the Peace Memorial Park and Museum. This sounds trite and obvious, but they were incredibly depressing though I'm glad I went.


We had a few more hours to get through before our epic Tokyo vacation began, so we killed some time in Kinokuniya, a giant bookstore which has English! Language! Books! I picked up a few books for the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam which is quite unfortunately on my 22nd birthday.

Anyway, we had a bus to catch at 8 PM that we would be spending the next 13.5 hours on, covering nearly half of the entire main island of Japan. Little did we know the trouble we would find....

To be continued! (Okay I'm going to write the continuation right now but I figured I should segment my posts somehow...)

In which I am a slacking blogger

It turns out I am not a vociferous blogger. Monday and Wednesday we went to the Hofu Tenmangu shrine to take part in a yearly festival. The street leading all the way up to the shrine, as well as the steps, are lined with candles. We got there a little late on Monday after having dinner at a grill-your-own-meat place. The waitress didn’t speak a word of English (which is a lot more common than you might think) but we managed to get a large plate of (mostly) delicious meat. At some points, we used the awesomely awesome free Japanese dictionary on my iPod Touch (thanks Mom and Dad!) to do some stilted question-and-answering about our meal. Afterwards, we went to the festival, and we probably shouldn’t have eaten because the food at the festival was SO good. We visited our old karaoke man and got some slushies. Other food at the festival involved: long grilled hotdogs wrapped in a thin layer of egg, covered with ketchup and mayonnaise; grilled octopus; Pikachu-shaped pancakes; fried chicken; sticks of grilled meat; and baby bottles full of some kind of drink. The best part of the festival was probably the fact that we MET　OTHER　ENGLISH　SPEAKERS! We met Anna, another English teacher in Hofu, her friend Naoya, and their friends Yayoi and Toru. We also met a girl named Andrea from Miami, but she was leaving literally the next day, which was unfortunate. We passed some time overlooking the city after the festival had ended and then they took us to a bar called Laughable(s). We’ll probably be spending quite a bit of time there.

The festival was by far better on Wednesday, the final day. Many more people, many more stands, and best of all, the old people karaoke from Monday had been replaced with HOFU　CITY　GANGSTER　RAP, complete with dancing. It was AMAZING. I think Steffany and I were the only two people in attendance that understood how funny this was.

Thursday morning we left for Kenchou – the main governmental building of Yamaguchi-ken, where we had our contract signing ceremony and orientation…. again. That night was a dinner/allyoucandrink/karaoke party. It was pretty fantastic. I really like our prefecture so far! I sang my first karaoke song, Wannabe by the Spice Girls. I think I officially enjoy karaoke, but only when alcohol is involved. We went to another bar afterward, and then I crashed in my awesome $50 single at the business hotel (the Super Hotel – in Japanese, the ‘supaa hoteru’). The next morning involved an endless stream of orientation. We crashed afterward, and 4 of us decided to stay another night to explore Yamaguchi city a little more.

Friday night we went to a lantern festival that has apparently been going on for 450 years. Theodorou family: imagine if the Italian festival in greenpoint involved a much shorter pillar of lanterns being hoisted by a million Japanese men wearing white short shorts. The festival was obviously much bigger than the one in Hofu, but same deal – tons of delicious cheap food stands. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we had yet again eaten at a grill-your-own-meat place for a ridiculously cheap price so we weren’t too hungry.

The next morning we made our way over to a 5-story pagoda. “Pagoda” is NOT a Japanese word, as we discovered the hard way in the cab. Regardless, it was the most beautiful place I have ever been. I never imagined Japan would be as luscious and green as it is. We ate our breakfast on a stone bench next to a giant pond in front of the pagoda. We spent the morning wandering around the pagoda and its accompanying ceremony before trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the day.

We asked the information booth at the front if we would be able to find a tea ceremony but apparently this was impossible. However, something to know about Japan is if you ask someone for any kind of advice, they will probably spend the next 10 minutes drawing maps and conferring heatedly amongst themselves to give you the BEST possible advice. In this case, a woman walked us down the street, went to her car, and gave us each miniature fans (fans are a necessary part of life here) and postcards before further walking us to show us the way. We ended up getting lost and asking a pharmacist for help, at which point he walked us the entire 3-4 blocks to the restaurant. The restaurant itself was less than stellar, but decent. We wandered around the shopping area until we caught our trains back.

Sunday involved finding the OTHER mall in town. It's called "You Me Town" but it's pronounced "you-may" town. I don't get it. I picked up some tupperware and other miscellaneous crap from the 100 yen store and had some icecream that kind of had no flavor.

Monday was pretty uneventful as well. And today is Tuesday.

Tomorrow, depending on how we feel, we may be spending half a day in Hiroshima before catching our 8 PM overnight no-toilet bus to Tokyo! We arrive in Tokyo Thursday morning, and we leave Sunday night (again on the overnight bus). We're staying one night in Roppongi (6 trees) and 2 nights in Asakusa. I really did not give Tokyo a fair chance during orientation and I'm missing big city life although I imagine being in a big city is scarier than a small city when you barely speak the language. One of those days will be spent at Disneyland Tokyo. All of those days will be spent battling rain from typhoons! With any luck we won't float away, and Tokyo will stop having earthquakes... at least for 4 days. Amanda, if you're reading this, I suspect our feet will feel pretty similar to how they felt in Rome when we got poured on.

Anyway, I probably won't be updating since I won't be bringing my computer so this is goodbye for now!

On Saturday we went out on our bikes intending to find the sea. When this brought us to a rather industrial part of town, we decided to explore in the other direction. We ended up at a 7-11 asking what there was to do in the neighborhood. We learned that the Tenmangu Shrine, Hofu's main (only) tourist attraction, was a 10 minute bike ride down the road. So off we went. We stopped at the base for some iced coffee, since it was 96 degrees with a "real feel" temperature of 110. I have never been so overheated in my life! Anyway, this old Japanese man beckoned us into his tiny store, using pretty good English. He treated us to a free strawberry slushy, which was good, because the iced coffees we then ordered ended up being 500 yen each! We talked to him for a while, and then a Japanese woman came in and they started speaking in rapid Japanese to each other. Before we knew what was happening, old Japanese dude bursts out into karaoke, singing along to “Yesterday” by the Beatles. He was pretty good, too! Way better than I would be if I tried, and English is my native language. I get the feeling this guy passes a lot of his time doing karaoke, because he also knew an Italian song by heart, which I’ve uploaded on facebook. I can’t really explain it, but listening to this guy sing his heart out in multiple foreign languages was incredible. I love Japan. He also told us about a festival that is going on for the next three days, where the 100+ steps leadng up to the shrine are lined with candles and decorations. There are normally fireworks as well, but the recent mudslides and heavy rains cancelled them. Apparently the mudslides were less than a km away from the shrine! After a while, we parted ways, and continued on up to the shrine.

From the shrine, you can see ALL　of Hofu. It’s incredible how GREEN Japan is. I never would have imagined I’d be living in a small city in one of Japan’s most rural prefectures, but I absolutely love it. We spent a while exploring, and then started for home. We decided to go out for dinner, yet again. This time we had okonomiyaki. “Okonomiyaki” means “as-you-like-it fried”. There’s two styles: Hiroshima-style and Osaka-style. Hiroshima style involves layering: a pancake layer, a mound of shredded cabbage, some seafood (we had squid), an egg layer, a layer of soba noodles…. And whatever else you want. Osaka style involves mixing it all up and frying it in a circular shape. We had Hiroshima style with cheese on top. After it’s cooked, you slather okonomiyaki sauce and drizzle mayonnaise on top. Holy crap, it was incredible. I couldn’t even finish half of it, so I had the rest for lunch on Sunday. Reheated okonomiyaki is nowhere near as good as okonomiyaki made on a giant stovetop in front of you

Saturday night, we tried to experience the Hofu nightlife and failed miserably. Hofu MUST have a nightlife, but we don’t know what or where it is. We ended up in an izakaya with a Korean expat who’s been living in Japan for 10 years. Oh, and he wouldn’t tell us his age, but we estimated it at 45. Kind of a weird night. I had fun because I essentially got to play translator since he spoke barely any English. Next time we go out, we’re taking a girl our age from my school (she works in the office) and hopefully she’ll have a better idea of where to go.

On Sunday we slept in, and then took off in one direction down the main street. We got nearly to the base of the mountains before the roads diverged and we turned back rather than get lost. We also found the 100 yen store, where we bought some basics. Somehow, my apartment only has ONE frying pan. This needs to be fixed. I have no idea how my predecessor lived here and cooked with one single frying pan, one spatula, and less than 10 forks/spoons/knives combined. It makes me sad enough to not have an oven, and to only have 2 burners, but I can’t really do anything about that.

For the rest of the month, work is obviously really light. Actually, I currently don’t do any work. But my work-days are light as well. This Thursday and Friday, all the Yamaguchi JETs are heading to Yamaguchi City for orientation. Then there’s the weekend. Then in 2 weeks, I’m going to be in another city in Yamaguchi, Kudamatsu city, from Aug 18 to 20 for an English teaching seminar. On the 21^st, we have orientation part two in Yamaguchi city again. On the 26^th is a staff meeting, where I will meet EVERY teacher, and give a speech in both English and Japanese. The 27^th and 28^th are dedicated to visiting the other schools I will be teaching at. And then school starts with the opening ceremony on September 1^st at Hofu SHS where I will be giving a speech (again in both English and Japanese) to the entirety of the school: 1000 students and ~80 staff members.

Anyway, we get this glorious thing called “4 days of paid summer leave” which is separate from our paid leave allotment. So I am taking August 12^th through August 17^th, for a total of 6 days of vacation! 　Unfortunately, it’s very soon so I don’t know where I’ll be able to go…. Okinawa is on the list, but it’s probably way too expensive this close. Maybe Kyoto? Who knows?!

Anyway, that brings this up to date. Check out the pictures on facebook if you haven’t already! And if anyone would like a postcard,email me your address. I wouldn’t mind getting postcards or care packages either, so let me know if you’d like my address!

day 2

My second day in Hofu involved sleeping in until 10. My supervisor was coming at 11:30 to pick me up but it’s amazing how long it takes to get ready when you’re not totally sure how the shower works. We went to City Hall to set up my Alien Registration card, but it turned out I needed passport pictures, which somehow cost me 1500\...for 4 pictures. I won’t be able to pick up my card until August 20^th, for whatever reason. Then we went to the cell phone store. It’s amazing how difficult it is to understand a cell phone contract in another language. They ended up calling their company translating service, which was good because the answers she translated for me were very different from the my pathetic attempt to understand the salesperson. I picked a free phone (one of my coworkers remarked that it is “very basic” – but their idea of very basic somehow includes the internet, email, music playing, camera, and games, so I can’t really imagine what the fancy phones are capable of) and it took about an hour and a half at least to get through the entire thing. For some reason they kept showing me phones they didn’t stock in whatever color, so I’d say I liked the phone and they would announce that the only available color is neon green or gold or whatever. I ended up with a “Sony Walkman” phone in black. Despite being free, it’s already too fancy for me as I can’t even figure out how to enter a phone number into the address book, despite the menu being in English.

Then we hopped over to the bank and set up a bank account. I won’t have a card for another 2 weeks, so God only knows how I’ll be able to withdraw money. Doesn’t matter yet anyway since there’s only 1000\ ($10) in it right now.

By this point it was nearly 4 PM and we went to the school to meet the principal and another vice principal who were out yesterday. I spent some time talking to the English teacher at the desk next to mine whose English is very good and who is very enthusiastic about helping me study Japanese. She also recommended that I speak to my coworkers in Japanese as often as possible or they’ll think I don’t like them. But given their poor English and my poor Japanese, we’ll see how communicative I get.

The other JET　and I took our bikes down to the mall to check it out. It’s gigantic and we could probably spend a few weeks exploring it. There’s even a movie theatre… Night at the Museum 2 comes out in a week! There’s a girl who works in the office who I just met who wants to go see it with me. I think I just made my first friend! I still can’t figure out how to input her cell phone number, so I just have it on a piece of paper now…. Very technologically advanced. Anyway last night we got some mall sushi, which sounds like it would be gross, but it was awesome. 10 pieces for 580\! We did a little grocery shopping and I got my new bright orange coffee maker and then we rode our bikes home. And now I’m going to meet a class of 2^nd year SHS students! I’m a little nervous!

Class is over and I’m back at my desk, drinking the most bitter green tea I have ever had。My throat kind of hurts… so I guess I’ll be going to　drug store for some cough drops. The class went pretty well. I introduced myself in English and then in Japanese which I’m sure they got a kick out of since I’m sure I made a ton of mistakes. It’s easy enough to give a short self-introduction in English, but I had no idea there would be one in Japanese also, so I didn’t have a chance to prepare. They asked me some questions after much apprehension and discussion in groups about what to ask and how to ask it. Hobbies are pretty big here, so as far as everyone knows I like playing volleyball and riding my bike. They don’t need to know that I haven’t ridden a bike in a few years… I might join the volleyball club for a few meetings. The questions I got were: what do you do in your free time? Do you know American Idol? What Japanese comic books do you like? (Nicole, I told them you liked Naruto, I hope that’s true…)

After I came back I had lunch. I ordered a school boxed lunch. To be honest, I have no idea what I was eating. There was rice, with some weird pink stuff on it that kind of tasted like sesame, and some yellow stuff that I can only describe as similar to silly string. There was a seaweed salad, some kind of potatoes, and some kind of spaghetti-looking thing that was most definitely not spaghetti. There were also two small pieces of fried chicken, and a small piece of melon for dessert. I have no idea how to eat melon with chopsticks, but I tried. Anyway, it wasn’t that bad. And that was the “Healthy” menu. Maybe next time I’ll order from the “Delicious” menu…

It’s now 12:46 PM　and I honestly have no idea what I’m supposed to do for the next three and a half hours.

佐波ハイツ、防府市、山口県、日本

So I've finally gotten some free time to update this for real(s). Tokyo orientation wasn't that great. Lots of workshops, some useful, most not. Tokyo itself is an incredibly bright, busy, and overwhelming city, and combining that with jetlag and hours of workshops/lectures is not a good idea. I went out for lunch one day with another JET who agreed that the pasta/marinara lunch offerings looked less than awesome. We couldn't really read the menu, but we ended up getting some delicious tuna... which appeared to be served on what I can only call a giant bone. I don't know where tuna are hiding these bones, but they're in there. We also got some cold udon. And a bowl containing a barely-cooked egg. Some of it was weird, some of it was delicious. I'll consider it a win.

The other highlight of orientation was the last night, when a bunch of us Yamaguchers wandered around the hotel area trying to find dinner, and we ended up in this awesome little restaurant in a private room, eating kind of overpriced, but delicious food.

Really, orientation wasn't that great and I was exhausted the entire time. This morning we were up at 5:30, at breakfast at 6:30, and on a bus at 7:30 to leave for Tokyo Haneda airport. All of us Yamaguchi-ken JETs had the last 3 rows of the plane, and I really do like pretty much everyone in the prefecture so far. It's unfortunate that we'll probably only see eachother once or twice a month from now on. The flight was an hour and a half, and then we landed in Ube airport. Our supervisors were all waiting by the baggage claim with signs with our names on them. I was met by my two supervisors, who are extremely nice English teachers at Hofu Senior High School, and they drove me back to Hofu-shi. We passed a TON of trees/mountains/etc... apparently Yamaguchi is a fairly rural area. They kept laughing when they told me that my apartment/school was in "central" Hofu. We got to Hofu, drove around for a little, and went to an adorable tiny Japanese restaurant for lunch. All I know of what I ate is that it involved fish, vegetables, miso soup, sunomono, rice, and umeboshi. Umeboshi is basically a pickled plum, and they seemed really surprised that I liked it. Next up, apparently, is natto. (If you don't know what natto is, do a google image search on it - it's fermented soy beans and it looks a lot worse than it sounds).

Then we drove to Hofu SHS. I met a ton of teachers, none of whose names I now remember, plus the vice principal, who called me Miss Christina. The school is 130 years old, and the building is old enough that the current student's parents went to school in the same building.

We dragged my luggage back to the car, and drove to the apartment. My apartment is amazing. I have a big kitchen, a big living room, and another smaller room. It's totally furnished and there's also lots of leftover stuff from previous ALTs - books, CDs, papers, etc.

Then we drove over to the mall, where the big grocery store is. Got some essentials. The supermarket is incredibly overwhelming and I'm glad I had my supervisors to tell me what the different kinds of milk and laundry detergent are.

The landlord's wife and the gas company came by to explain some stuff, which I really only got the gist of, and then everyone left and I finally got to sit down and relax. Relaxing involved going online and listening to the Japanese news on the TV. While I obviously can't understand much, I did notice that half the stories were about the mudslides in Hofu-shi. Kind of horrifying. The pictures and videos make it look pretty bad.

I went out for a short walk and took a bunch of pictures of Hofu. I LOVE Hofu. It feels pretty tropical and is hands down the most humid place I have ever been, but it's gorgeous. I'm surrounded by mountains. I love the houses. I love the stores. I love the fact that no matter which way you look, off in the (not so distant) distance is gorgeous green mountains. Yamaguchi means "Mountain mouth" literally, and "entrance to the mountains" more figuratively, and it's really true.

The only other JET in Hofu lives directly above me, and we took our bikes out and found an awesome Korean-BBQ-style restaurant where we ate a delicious dinner pretty cheaply. My bike is literally just barely rideable since it's so big, but I'm managing so far.

Tomorrow I'm meeting more people, going to City Hall to get my Alien Registration Card, setting up a bank account and buying a cell phone. Awesome!

I really suck at updating this thing. Tokyo orientation is essentially over, and we're leaving at 7:30 AM to fly to our prefecture. The weather tomorrow in Hofu is 88 degrees, feels like 110, with basically 100% humidity... and we need to be in suits. Awesome! I'll actually post something when I get to sit down and settle in.

The Final Countdown!

In 3.5 hours, I'll be on a plane for 14 hours, landing in Narita airport for a three-day orientation in Tokyo before heading onto Hofu City in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Stay tuned!