Narita

The weekend has restored my faith in how awesome living in Japan will be. The past week was all about schedules, meetings, paperwork, etc. And after work was riding the same trains, walking the same streets, going to the same stores, getting sucked in to a daiso -hundred yen store- and watching some unintelligible japanese drama on television. It was beginning to feel a bit mundane, which is kind of a confusing feeling to have while living in a foreign country.
On saturday though, some fun was had. The two other trainees and I decided to spend the afternoon at the shrine in Narita. A nice little train ride later we were there. Albert's presence or maybe just his hair was driving a pair of teenage school girls wild on the train. They giggled, and stared, and hid themselves, and giggled more. The road down to the shrine was lined with statues of chinese zodiac. Music, for some reason, was being piped through speakers lining the street. Lanterns were being hung all over the place to get ready for a festival next week. There were lots of shops selling dried foods and crackers. Most everything was open air. I even watched a guy fillet a live eel that was flailing itself around despite having its head nailed to the chopping board.
The shrine was huge. The temple that I went to in Shanghai was large, but still no bigger than a third of a block. This one was a sprawling complex. There was even a park inside of it. There was one main temple and then lots of smaller shrines and temples scattered around all over the place. There was a wooden torii and through that people with stands selling religious offerings, amulets, and food. Further inside there was a pond with fountains and a bridge through the middle. The pond was crawling turtles. They covered the rocks. They were swimming with the fish. People throw coins onto the rocks down below and by default, onto the turtles. Its kind of a strange sight, all these turtles crawling around on piles of coins. Maybe its the Japanese version of the dragon sleeping on piles of treasure.
Folded up prayers were tied to tree branches. Colorful pagodas and buildings were all over. All the buildings, especially the main temple are fairly new. Lots of temples and shrines were destroyed during WWII. The big temple building is made out of aluminum or some such thing. A service was going on while I was there. Luckily I stashed a pair of socks in my bag, so I put those on and went inside. One monk banged one of those huge drums that you hit with sticks. There was chanting and a guy tended a big open fire in the middle of the room. Other monks, dressed in purple and green and orange, held stuff over the fire to be blessed. At first it was some white folded up paper things. Then all of the women popped up from kneeling on the floor and ran over to the front with their purses. The monks gathered up bunches of purses and brought them to the fire too. I never thought I would see a buddhist monk with armfuls of Coach and Louis Voutton purses, but i did. After a while, my legs started to go numb from having to sit on them for so long, so as soon as someone near me got up, I booked it. I made my way around all the shrines and temples, and found myself in a forest-type thing. Albert later called it the Totoro forest. There was a cottage type thing in there with monks washing tables. Small lakes were nearby, but I decided not to investigate down there because of some signs with a picture of a gigantic bee and a crying child. Away from gigantic bees was a stream and a waterfall. After all the buddhism, we stopped at a noodle shop and I ate a gigantic bowl of ramen. Its definitely not top ramen.
Later that night, the guest house faction wedged its way into the goodbye party plans of a departing teacher from a nearby city. Wade really wanted to experience one of these types of restaurant/ bars, which I can't remember the term, but basically you go with a bunch of people and you order as much food and booze as you like and at the very end everyone splits the tab. I really wanted to see what Japanese nightlife was like too. It took us about an hour on a really convoluted train itinerary to make it to a city that is 10 minutes away by car. We finally made it. The teacher Michael met us by the train stop. He and Marie, one of our "trainers", took us to the bar. We had a private room with sliding screens. We took our shoes off and sat on pillows on the floor. Once everyone arrived, the beer flowed heavily. There was a big, burly irishman, a big boisterous teacher named dave who wore a gold silk shirt and metallic silver pointed shoes. Other less vivid characters were there as well. We ate sashimi, meat on a stick, edamame, spring rolls, deep fried chicken knuckles (pretty tasty), french fries (actually nothing like french fries), fish, gyoza, and some other stuff I have no idea what it was. We drank and talked and ate and were generally too loud. After all that Michael decided it wasn't time for the party to end. In Japan that means one thing. Karaoke. More beer was bought at the 7-11 and we crowded into a private karaoke lounge and sang the night away.

where I learn the stuff

Today started with ramen. Actually today started with Albert knocking on my door asking if I was ready to go to breakfast at Denny's (yes, of the big slam variety). Considering that I answered the door wearing my work shirt (green polka dots) and my pajama pants (blue plaid), I said no, I wasn't ready. My super clashing outfit also said no. I had mostly forgotten that we had planned to all go to Denny's in the morning before training. My sleeping in, which was a small feat in itself considering jet lag, might have also been subconscious sabotage. I don't even like Denny's in America. I wasn't sure if I was really prepared to deal with being served salad on the same plate as my ridiculously overpriced stack of pancakes. Also, it gets a little tiring spending all of your day with the same two people. Hannah and Albert are nice enough, but I am getting rather burned out on them. I was kind of glad that I had overslept so I could have some time in the house by myself, or listening to rap songs in the kitchen with Wade, who i like a lot better than the others in the house. But yes, ramen instead. It had a flat rectangular thing on top that resembled a sponge. It also tasted like a sponge. A tasty sweet freeze-dried tofu sponge.
Then it was off to more training. The room we were in had pictures hanging on the wall of the Mona Lisa and Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl earring that had been colored by students as an activity. Most of them were illustrated like japanimation characters.
The second half of training was in Chiba. We sat in a starbucks for a while drinking weak coffee and staring out the window at people passing on the sidewalk. There was a kid with a 1950's greaser haircut. I ate a curry tomato pastry. Girls with legs as thick as my arm walked by. I sipped more weak coffee. Albert, Hannah, and i still had an hour to kill so we decided to wander around. We came across a huge building with a big beehive looking thing suspended within the glass structure. Turns out it was a planetarium. At training we learned to hide our important stuff in the freezer, not to run around screaming in our boxer shorts during an earthquake, and how to wrestle cockroaches. At the very end we learned the important stuff- the stuff about the next year of our lives.

I move out of the guest house on Monday. I stay with another teacher in her apartment for a week before I can move into my actual apartment. I also learned what classes I will teach, at what schools, and when. I only teach at 2 schools (+ a daycare) which is rare for this kind of gig. Usually teachers are all over the place. I teach mostly young kids and adults. There are a few high school and Junior high school thrown in too. Nine of my twenty five classes in the week are kids pre-school (age 4) to grade 6. Eleven are adult classes, many of which are private one- on- one lessons. The wild card is a pair of "classes" at a day care. While all other classes in my regular schools are capped at 6 students (3 students is the average), the day care will have 18 to 25 little kids for me to attempt to teach. Aside from the obvious difficulties of trying to manage 25 rambunctious toddlers in a foreign language, the ages of the kids can have a wide range. Teaching English to a two-year old who cannot even speak japanese yet requires a very different approach than teaching english to a six-year old. In the day care all those ages are mixed together.

The adult classes and the day care have me the most nervous. For the adults, the egos are fragile and the language skills have pretty much plateaued. Bad habits are already ingrained, and correction seems like a delicate matter.
Despite these anxieties, teaching seems much easier than it did when I was in Portland. Wade who is observing, and the other teachers say it doesn't even feel like a job. You just play with kids all day and get paid. In my case I will be playing with kids all day and asking housewives and business men where they went shopping on sunday while getting paid for it.

Hannah reminds me so much of Shannon. Sometimes I am convinced they are the same person. They look exactly the same. Both tall. Both pale and strawberry blond with the same exact bone structure in their face. To make matters worse their voices sound the same and they have the same manner of making conversation. This girl Hannah gets unreasonably excited about cartoons and video games too. I swear if Shannon was smaller and from Hillsboro, i would be living right now with her in Japan. I have been trying to sneak a picture of this phenomenon, but I don't want to be weird or creepy.

Wednesday- Its a pencilcase!

Today was simply more training. This time we didn't have to go all the way to Chiba, but could stay at the Yotsukaido school. Training today was much less boring/ anxiety-producing than the previous days. We spent the majority of the day playing games intended for 6 year olds who don't even know English. And here I was playing name the object with my full-grown mother-tongued self. We bounced balloons around the classroom. We played musical chairs with flashcards. We played hide the flashcard, We learned the intricacies of bingo. We hit things with fly swatters. We pointed. We gestured. We chanted. We played with a mechanical crocodile that bites your hand if you press the wrong tooth. And oh yes, we learned the zen art (and I am not kidding about this) of laminating flashcards with packing tape. Jack was very adamant that We had to clear our mind of anything else while making flashcards.
There were several breaks, during which I discovered both coffee in a pop-top can and coffee in a juice box. Trips were had to our regular bakery (I had a bun with potato, bacon, and seaweed inside), the conveinie, and to an arcade.
After work, Albert, Hannah and I continued our search for the elusive reasonably priced watch. Our quest lead us to a used bookstore. Most things there were beyond my appreciation since they might as well have been written in ancient greek. I did however pick up a comic book. Here in japan comics are actual book-sized books. My plans for this little book is to mercilessly rip out its pages and make various art projects out of it which I will most likely leave in half-finished states around my tiny apartment. But I figure I will need something to occupy myself in the first week or two in my village. Another electronic store was on the itinerary.
The most exciting part of the day was the eating. Not surprising. I had my second restaurant dining experience in Japan. I convinced Hannah and Albert to eat at this sushi restaurant that Jack had recommended. The sushi came on a conveyor belt that snaked around the huge restaurant. There were all sorts of things that I had never seen before. There was corn sushi. There was blue eggplant sushi. There was okra sushi. There was sushi with coleslaw looking stuff mounded on top of it. I swear I had one that was rice pudding and pureed fish. Hot water for tea came out of a spicket that was built into our table. Ginger was bright yellow. The sushi was pretty delicious, aside from a few plates chosen in the spirit of adventure, and at roughly a dollar a plate, pretty cheap.
Other highlights of the night include amateur Sumo wrestling on tv and a truly horrific "sport" that involves racing a horse along a narrow corridor lined with people and trying to get it to fly up a really steep hill at breakneck speeds, which usually resulted in the horse foundering, or slipping, or collapsing halfway up the hill with its legs splayed all over the place.

Breaking news: I have encountered my first Japanese Jehovah's witnesses.

too tired for wit

I suppose some backlog is in order. I left Portland Friday morning to begin my series of 14 flight hours. I nearly missed my plane to LA, which involved some serious line jumping, security line jumping, running to the gate, etc... where i made it with about 4 minutes to spare to take off time. I made it to Tokyo though. I wrangled, and dropped, and reassembled my 150 lbs. of luggage, then let it push my limp rag-doll body through customs. A teacher named Jillian was there waiting to meet me. She had one of those signs with my name on it. All my life I wanted someone with one of those signs to be waiting for me. I don't know if it was the jet lag or the lack of glamour involved in presenting my grotesquely sweaty self (even the airports in Japan are inhumanely humid) with my grotesque amount of luggage in the most grotesquely unenthusiastic way to some poor girl they had conned into picking me up on her day off, but it was really not that exciting after all- that sign. There was lots of fun trying to find an atm that would accept my american credit card so i could withdraw some cash.

Then Jillian and I took the train to Yotsukaido. Yotsukaido is the city where American Language school's guest house is. They use the house for new teachers who need to complete training at the nearby headquarters in Chiba. I dragged all my bags through the town of Yotsukaido, as Jillian insisted that I ask her every stupid I could think of about Japan. She thought I was being shy. Really, I was wondering if all those sleeping pills I had taken on the plane had been laying dormant up at that altitude and had just then launched a surprise attack on my nervous system. I managed to hold myself together until we arrived at the guest house. The guest house is a big ol' house by Japan's standards. There are five bedrooms, a living room, and even *gasp* a dryer. One of the rooms is occupied by Junya, the head accountant for the company who sleeps at the house during the week and goes home to his faraway house on the weekends. When I got there, there were two other new teachers. Dean, a middle-aged jolly green giant kind of guy who has been teaching in japan for lots of years already. And Wade, a crazy-haired, chain-smoking, college boy from Idaho who never seems to stop talking. Like me, he has never been to Japan. Unlike me, he at least tried to study Japanese for a while.
In an effort to keep me awake past 9 pm (the time they have for some reason designated as the time that will allow me to sync up with the Japanese schedule) Dean, Wade, and I went to a teacher's party. It was in some guy named Frasier's little apartment. There were lots of other teachers there from the area and some admins from the company. There was a gallon of whiskey in a plastic bottle and sake in a carton. I met lots of people there, i think. I didn't even look at the booze. I propped myself up against a wall and stared blankly at people. Now some of you may be thinking that I am over exaggerating this jet lag thing, but I insist that there is really nothing like flying for 14 hours over the date line (flying west is especially bad) and when you finally arrive you find yourself in a place where absolutely nothing makes any sense.

The next day Wade and I wandered around Chiba and went to Ito Yokado, the gigantic department store/grocery store/food court/ megamonsterstore. We ran into Dean there. We perused the bookstore and floors of wares. Most importantly though we concluded with the food. Ito yokado, also known as 7-11, has a huge wall full of delicious already prepared foods from sushi to tempura to noodles to to dumplings to soybeans. So far this is my favorite thing about Japan. There was this park by our house that has a bizarre jungle gym in the shape of a huge pink geometric squid. As it is the rainy season in Japan, it poured for the entire rest of the day. We were stuck inside and watched movies. it was kind of a welcome respite though. It was nice to hole up with some American movies in an American house with some Americans, while the Japaneseness of the outside was still feeling a little jarring.

On Monday, Dean left in the morning. Wade and I took the train to Chiba. I had already seen most of Yotsukaido, so I wanted to see another city in Japan. Also, I was a little nervous about the next day when we would have to travel to company headquarters in Chiba, where none of us had ever been to for training. Wade, who had already finished training, showed me where the place was. Then we wandered around Chiba which is a fairly large city. There is a huge underground mall that lies underneath the train tracks and stretches for about 10 blocks. We exploded our eyeballs in a huge electronics store full of crazy asian electronics. I also finally discovered the wonder that are 100 yen stores. Tons of stuff... for only a dollar. Its nothing like an american dollar store. You can buy alcohol there, clothes, small electronics components, lots of stuff. We also walked under this huge monorail that had a river underneath it. The river was really shallow and filthy, but it had huge carp in it that must have been 3 feet long. At about noon, wade and I were overloaded and took the train back to our house. We made a run to another grocery store where Wade made an unfortunate choice with some liver on a skewer and we called it a day.

Later, two new teachers arrived. There is Hannah, who strangely enough is from outside Portland and whose Dad works in the mailroom at Reed. She's already been to japan before. our particular kinds of pretentiousness conflict. After her, was Albert, another college kid from Hawaii. Wade and I called them our kids (actually, i would never say such a thing, but Wade did) and took them to the 7-11 so they wouldn't starve and kept them up the appropriate number of hours.
backlog complete.

So today was our first real day of stuff. We took the train to Chiba, and since I had been there the day before, I was in charge of leading the two fresh-off-the-plane teachers through Yotsukaido to the train station, tell them how to buy tickets, get us all on the right train, and then lead us through Chiba to the head office. I guess i succeeded, because we ended up there. Jack the main guy was there to tell us about teaching stuff and to give us a million papers. And though none of us were expecting it, he had a surprise for us. We had to interview these Japanese women to assess their English language competency. There is this whole elaborate formula for doing so. After letting us read over a packet of information for 6.5 seconds, he decided we were ready to do it for real. We each got our own poor frightened Japanese woman. We asked them questions about themselves and how long they have studied English, ask them elaborate questions about stupid pictures, had them read stuff, then asked them more questions. After all that we critiqued their English skills which are 5 million times better than my Japanese skills will ever be, and assigned them to categories. Refreshing. Actually it was nerve-racking. We were horrible. I felt awful for these poor women. We bumbled all over the place, where really nervous, and really confusing. Then finally we broke for lunch. We ate at a curry house. It was yummy. Then we went back for more presentations about stuff and more stuff. The meetings went an extra 45 minutes, which was hell. Then we searched Chiba for cheap watches and returned to Yotsukaido unvictorious. More 7-11 ensued.