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!