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 20th, 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 2nd 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.
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