AUGUST 2003
AUGUST 1ST - SETTLING IN SHIRAOKA
Hi everyone! This is the first chance I’ve had since I got here to just sit down and take a break! The last week has been incredibly hectic, but finally I’ve reached my destination in Saitama Prefecture.
The first three days were spent at the 5-star Keio Plaza in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It probably has some of the tallest buildings in Tokyo, all of which dwarf any building in London. I stayed on the 24th floor of the Keio Plaza, which must itself have been higher than the top of the London Eye. It had 47 floors in all, and the view from the top at night was extraordinary!
The actual conference itself was very tedious. We were bombarded with information left right and centre, and I must have left the hotel with nearly half again of my original baggage allowance in textbooks and information handbooks. It was a disorienting and confusing experience, and wasn’t helped by my JETlag and sleepless nights! I spent half of the second day in bed having slept through my alarm - my room mates couldn’t wake me as they’d managed to do exactly the same thing. Pity though, the seminars we missed were on pretty vital things like “How to teach a class” and “How to make a lesson plan”! I continued to stumble around from class to class, and spent any free time I had queuing in the lifts to and from breakfast and lunch (putting over 1000 people in the same hotel, who are going in exactly the same direction at all times seems to be a bit of a recurrent oversight for the programme.
Still, I had a good night on the Tuesday. It began with a chance meeting with one of my students from NOVA, Nao Ishikawa, who spotted me in the lobby of my hotel. He must have come by on the off chance that he might find me, and had even brought a little present for me (a spot-and-learn Japanese phrasebook)! He then had to go back to work (they seem to work crazy hours here), and is travelling to Bristol for a holiday today I think! Next, we went to the British Embassy, who held a reception for all the new British JETs. The British Embassy is a beautiful stately home set in expansive surroundings (the value of the land must be astronomical). We listened to several welcome speeches, telling us all how important we were (yeah, right) before being entertained by traditional Taiko drumming (an energetic performance where men dressed in traditional red costume jump and dance about big drums, striking them all around their circumference to get different noises).
Even by this stage my body clock had not adjusted to Japanese time. I lay awake from 12-5am, by which stage I was just so bored that I decided to get up and go for a walk. Even at 5.30am the city isn’t deserted, and people seem to already be making their way to work! I was amazed that even at this time, the temperature must’ve been at least 25 C, and the humidity suffocating (apparently its cold for this time of year!). By the time we were shipped into buses at 9am, I was really tired, but had to stay awake for another Saitama Welcome Reception at 11am. Then I met my Supervisor, a Mr Yukio Yamaguchi, who took myself and my fellow JET Jeff (a Phillipino Canadian) to Shiraoka, which we reached by early afternoon. Most of the day was spent at the Board of Education sorting out our Inkan (personal stamps which the Japanese use to sign business documents) and our Alien Registration Card.
We reached our apartments by he evening. I would say by Japanese standards my apartment is really quite nice and spacious. I have a bedroom, kitchen, toilet room, shower room, and tatami mat living room. It’s fully furnished, with a decent sized TV and Video, fridge, freezer, washing machine, iron and ironing board etc. Unfortunately my predecessor didn’t wipe down the surfaces, clean the sink or toilet, and managed to leave her hair in just about every cupboard and drawer (and even, inexplicably, in the fridge!). Cheers Claire. I can’t complain about the town however. To my relief, it isn’t a suburb of Tokyo, but a small town in its own right with plenty of greenery, including allotments and paddy fields! The weather however, is desperately hot and humid, as its inland low lying country. Still, we’re only 45 minutes by train from Tokyo, so the best of both worlds really! The other JET Jeff seems to be a really nice guy, and the third year JET from America, Josh, has kind of taken us under his wing in explaining everything, showing us around, and has the fortunate talent of being able to speak and read Japanese!
In a nutshell, the opening week in Japan has thus far been utterly confusing, and I think it’ll take a few weeks at least to settle in and start finding out how to navigate around the town, meet my new colleagues, understand things like the garbage disposal system, or the nonsense that is Japanese television and radio etc! Some things are going to be much more difficult than others e.g. learning to read Japanese - a pain in the neck when you’re trying to buy groceries (“Hmmm, is this orange juice or toilet cleaner?”). However, the situation, apartment and surrounding JETs are all pluses, and things can only get better from here on in! I’ll try and write again for Monday or Tuesday - the town festival is on Saturday, so there should be something to report. Bye for now.
AUGUST 4TH - SHIRAOKA NATSUMATSURI
We had our annual town festival on Saturday, which was great fun. Jeff and I were gently told that our attendance at the festival would be appreciated, but I get the feeling that our attendance was more or less mandatory! It was a good laugh though. Everyone come out for bring and buy sales, branded good fakes abounded, there was a mini Shinkansen for the kids, and a stage with “Samba Carnival” Dancers for the adults. A lot of the old men sat around drinking sake, becoming more and more red as the night progressed.
Everything became more interesting in the evening. The place thronged with people, and hundreds of lanterns lit up the night sky. Towns people dressed in traditional costume paraded around doing some sort of very slow (and not too complicated) traditional dance involving fans. The highlight of the night was the firework festival. It was at this point that I realised just how different Japan can be despite the many surface similarities. Instead of a grand firework display with a finale, sets of fireworks were set off one after the other, followed by commercial announcements explaining which company had paid for that specific set of fireworks!! Kind of ruined the display really.
Today I took a short 15 minute train ride into the neighbouring city, Omiya. I’ve no idea how big this place this is, but I’m guessing bigger than Belfast at least. It served to highlight just how rural my location is. Although Shiraoka has about 48,000 people (so a medium sized UK town), the gulf in size was indicated by the fact that there were about ten times more shops in Omiya train station than in Shiraoka as a whole. Full marks to the JET for putting me in a perfect rural situation as I’d requested. The construction of Japanese cities is incredible - there are just no limits on the architectural feats that they’ll attempt. Every building is like a self-contained town thronging with people and shops. It al began to give me a headache after a while. I think Ill need to get accustomed to small town life before I can even begin to venture into the cities.
The greatest obstacle to me is the written system. Even if everything was written in the roman alphabet, I’d be able to walk around with my dictionary and decipher their meanings. No such luck here. Not only are there three different alphabets, which can be mixed up in a single sentence, but sentences can also be read both left to right and right to left. I’m not quite sure what rules control this yet. Josh tells me that the writing system over here is so complicated that most of the Japanese can’t even read an entire page on a broadsheet newspaper - I begin to lose hope. Nevertheless, I’ve now learned half of the basic phonetic symbols in Hiragana, and I’m beginning to recognise some Japanese brand names e.g. HONDA, ASAHI.
I’m going to go and wrestle with my rice and cooking sauce now - I can’t read the cooking instructions, but hopefully I can’t go wrong with these most basic ingredients!
AUGUST 5th
Hi all! This is my first update from inside the Board of Education, so I'm actually being paid as I type this! Not quite as good as some of the JETs have it though. I went to Omiya with Jeff last night to have a McDonalds and a beer with two other Saitama-ken JETs. Both are from Vancouver I think, and one of them doesn't even have to go to work until September, yet still gets paid! Where's the justice? I'm not worried though, since the air conditionning in my apartment doesn't seem to be working, as as I don't have internet connection at home, I'm more than happy to be here carrying out menial tasks.
Today I've been designing a word search, a simple quiz, and some pronunciation pyramids (such as the difference between "fried rice" and "flied lice", or between "I love Jude Law" and "I rub Jude Raw"). I don't know how important this all is, and its quite boring to be honest. Jeff and I spend most of our time checking for new e-mails, using MSN messenger, reading online newspapers etc. One of the computers even has a TV card, but Japanese TV is Satan's Spawn itself, I hate it, I hate it!!
The probalem with this place is the bureacracy. I get to work at 8.20am, and already most people are here. I leave at 4.30, and everyone remains. No one seems to work very hard - its like the slowing up of the economy has resulted in people being paid for checking their e-mals for hours at a time. This culture of long hours starts at school. Have I told you that the kids and the teachers go to school DURING the summer vacation? GO HOME!! Why are they there? The kids swarm around the school playing sports in totally unforgiving weather, or working on their Supichu Kantesto (Speech Contest), which I have the pleasure of correcting at the moment.
This update was rather pointless, I apologise. I now going back to Piatown in the middle of a thunderstom, on my bicycle (kindly provided by the B.O.E.). Hope my umbrella doesn't get caught by lightning. See ya!
AUGUST 7th
It’s another office day. Another pointless day sitting in the office with nothing to do. I do have internet and air conditioning, but my new air conditioner arrived today, so my reasons for being pleased at being in the office are diminishing. Once I have e-mail in my bachelor pad, I’ll probably despise coming here everyday.
The Japanese work ethic is so stupid. I don’t have anything to do. Most of the other JETs I’ve met so far are actually allowed to stay at home when they have no work, but this town is much more traditional, and I have to be here whether I like it or not. It’s kind of frustrating, as I’ve only been here for a week, and have spent everyday bar the weekend whiling away the hours on the internet or doing Supichu Kantesto. I want to be able to acquaint myself with the area, settle in, decorate my apartment, buy a CHAIR to sit on, get a phone, the internet etc, but they make me sit in a cramped little office for no reason other than to justify my salary!
I suppose I’m going to look forward to teaching when it actually comes around, as at least I’ll be doing something useful. I was tutoring a girl pupil (why isn’t she enjoying her summer holidays?) yesterday. She was just 13, with a tiny little voice, but when she spoke English she did so with a huge Kermit the Frog style brogue!! All the “Flied Lice” stereotypes apply, by the way. Half an hour later, our conversation class was interrupted when some kid was carried into the teachers office, passed out. The ambulance arrived soon after, along with the stretcher and oxygen mask. I was a little perturbed, but as nobody else seemed to be, I’d say that collapsing from heat stress because of playing baseball in the school grounds all day every day in the summer holidays must be a common occurrence! This obsession with punctuality, long hours, and its repercussions (i.e. suicide) are ingrained in the children from their youth. Just this morning on the news, ten cars were hauled up from a harbour somewhere with skeletal remains. With such overwork, is it any wonder the Japanese have the highest suicide rate in the world (at least I imagine they do)?
I think I might download an episode of the Simpsons and watch it later. Japanese TV is driving me mad. For example, the “Miniskirt Police” – about ten nubile young Japanese women dressed in blue latex police woman’s uniforms who run around bathing resorts measuring the angle of women’s bikinis with a giant protractor! This is just one example, I’m not yet acquainted with the wonders of Japanese TV in all its glory, but I’ve heard about some weird stuff.
AUGUST 8th - TYPHOON!
It's my last update of the week! My first typhoon is heading my way. We'll shotly be battered by terrifying wind and rain, so I hope I'll be able to get home on my bike before it starts!
I went to a sushi restaurant last night. It's the first real sushi I've eaten since I got here - squid, octopus, eel, prawn, mmm - oishikatta! (It was delicious). Other delights that I didn't try included clam, salmon eggs and sea urchin. One of the greatest misconceptions about Japan is how expensive it is. On the contrary, eating out is quite cheap, and a national pastime. A good meal at any restaurant outsde Tokyo won't cost more than about £5 and you don't have to tip - there's a small 5% tax to cover the tip. I've decided that it doesn't cost much more to eat out than to cook for yourself, plus you don't need to cook or wash up if you eat out. And its more sociable. Anyway, I'll mail again sometime after the weekend when I have somthing to write about.
AUGUST 15th
Hi again. I’m back in the office doing my Homer Simpson impression (coffee, doughnut, nothing), so I’m going to entertain myself for half an hour by pouring out mindless drivel onto the internet.
The typhoon hit on Friday and Saturday, but was really quite a disappointing affair. I think what they call a typhoon in Japan is what we would call a particularly wet and windy day in Northern Ireland (though possibly it blew itself out over Okinawa). Having said that, my umbrella collapsed, ripped a chunk of flesh from my thumb, and then spontaneously separated from itself, rendering it defunct, so I guess the winds were rather powerful.
I spent most of the weekend attempting to leave Shiraoka, because it’s incredibly boring, especially if you haven’t been given your Alien Registration Card yet and aren’t allowed a Video Store Card for an all day DVD session. Nevertheless, Omiya and Tokyo aren’t too far away, and provide ample shopping opportunities.
Omiya, as I’ve already said, is jus
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