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!