The First Week.... and a half, of Work.

       I have reasons for being here, but none of those could happen if it not for the work I do allowing me to stay in Japan. Shuffling around to 5 different schools over the course of a month doing between 3 and 6 lessons per day of 45-50 minute length. That's what I was hired for anyway. Covid-19 is disrupting all sense of normality. Currently I'm going to schools and looking through materials and planning out lessons and worksheets to go with them. I've worked 6 days so far. Two of my schools aren't having students for the month of April and stated they wouldn't need me to come in. The school closest to my house has been where I've been 5 of the 6 days. I will enjoy that school. There are some neat English teachers and several have come to me with questions on why things are certain ways in English. It's nice to be part of the workings. That's an overview. I'd like to be a little more detailed on what 'work' has looked like for me so far.

       My first day of school I drove out to a school to the South. I had driven out the previous day to learn the layout of the school a little. Normal procedure was supposed to be a school introduction with the translator who helped me move in. Those were cancelled, likely because of weird covid schedule things. So I'm entering all my schools solo. On this day a younger teacher asked if I was the new ALT(assistant language teacher). Yes. He helped guide me to the entrance. This is actually difficult because most schools have an entrance for staff and another one or two for students. There are little shoe lockers because you don't wear your outdoor shoes indoors, gotta have specific indoor shoes. They even had a locker with my name on it! Then I was brought upstairs and shown the staff room. Introduced to the Vice Principal. Apparently the Principal has put in their due time and is more of a comfy position while the VP works a lot. The staff room is where teachers have their work desks and meet in the morning. Looks like an office but without cubical dividers. I was asked to introduce myself to the teachers. We practiced these in Japanese based on a script given in training. Everyone giggled a little when I said good morning. Pronunciation by non-native speakers is apparently a little funny.  The head of the English department showed me my desk. I'd practiced my introduction lesson and was ready to go. The English teacher I would be working with doing 3 classes per day introduced herself. Then it was communicated there were no students today. So... I had 7 hours to lesson plan! All the teachers left for a meeting in a different space for about an hour and a half. I did my best filling the time but 7 hours is a lot when you don't have materials and I didn't yet have access to the computers. I went through the rest of the day writing details to the 2 things I came up with. At the end of the day you communicate to your co-workers "osaki ni shitsure shimasu" which is about the same as "excuse me for leaving before you". They respond "thank you" and you finish with "otsukuresamades" thank you for the work you are doing or "otsukuresamadeshta" thank you for the work you've done. Feel free to throw it out to anyone on your way out the building, outside the building, or even in the hall passing co-workers almost like a casual 'hey'. During training they said if you're feeling comical you can try and get away with "oats'n curry samades". I think they told me the school planned to not have students for the rest of the month too. End of day 1 though.

       Second day! The school closest to my apartment, which I hope to walk to frequently once I get myself together. Parked and followed some other people to an entrance. Greeted several people and was asked if I was the new ALT. Yep. They showed me my very own SECOND shoe locker! Then the staff room. The head of the English department is a younger guy for this school but his desk is beside mine and I can ask questions pretty frequently. During my self introduction I forgot the end part of my "I like rock climbing and karate" in Japanese, which is "Roku kurimingu to karate ga suki des." I remembered the S for  'suki' and just said the first thing that came to mind after a pause, Shimas." You guys.... I had no freaking clue what 'shimas' meant.... Several people just nodded and nobody gasped in horror so I continued. After returning to my desk I asked the head of the English department what 'shimas' meant. It means 'to do'. I have not studied this word, I simply heard it frequently at the end of sentences that morning and the day before. Instead of "I like blah blah blah" I'd said "I do blah blah blah". Holy bowly. The rest of the day went pretty well. Several teachers introduced themselves and I had a seating chart for the staff room. Somewhat unhelpful since everyone's names are written in kanji and I can't read them phonetically. I can recognize 英語 for English Language. So I circled the English teachers. I was also given a little impromptu staff directory where staff had answered several basic questions about themselves. Within this was a little gold nugget of furigana, which is when you write in the kind of Japanese I CAN read how to say your name. So I sat and cross referenced the seating chart and the computer printed characters with what I could try and make out from the hand written ones to almost guess some peoples names. This was about an hour of my morning... I was shown the English room on the third floor and there was a shelf of previous ALT stuff. I took half of it back to my desk and browsed through it and made notes and stuff for most of the rest of the day. Several of the English teachers introduced themselves and talked with me which was nice. One teacher asked for an explanation to the sentence, "She has been dead 5 years." Wanting to know why it wasn't "She have been dead 5 years" or "She was dead 5 years". It was kinda fun because you can't simply say "It sounds correct." (I had to think about it for a while but "was dead" implies she isn't any longer. And 'have been' is for plural.) Another young teacher has the same name that I was called when living in Africa so we talked about that. She'd lived in the U.S. for close to a year and has great English. As the day wound down I noted things to buy such as more notebooks for the next day. End of Day 2.

       Day 3 is pretty similar to day 2. Lots of writing and planning and making notes about worksheets and lesson ideas from previous ALTs. I was invited to eat lunch with some English teachers in the lunch table/sink/microwave/copier room attached to the staff room. Someone asked my age. I started to answer and then remembered it was my birthday and the number was different. Happy birthdays ensued. More planning and then back home.

 (I tried to go explore the mountains to the West of Kesennuma behind my apartment. Couldn't find any walking paths so I stopped and went a short distance to a little shrine.)

 (Figured since it was my birthday I should have good food. So Steak and potatoes.)

       Day 4. The furthest school from me, and one of two that I haven't yet visited in my free time to make sure I know how to get there and stuff. BEAUTIFUL COMMUTE! A highway through mountains that peaks out at the sea sometimes. This is gonna rock in the summer. Up a hill and into the parking lot. Bunch of teachers outside directing cars. The dude directing traffic asks if I'm the new ALT. BINGO. He's the head of the English department! Shows me the school entrance and then the staff room. There are about 9 people in it. Looks like it has desks for 30. I'm told it's the first day for students which is a big hurrah and everyone is very busy. Downstairs to meet the principal. Formal greetings and bowing. Invited to sit. Several nice questions. TEA. Secretary brings in tea y'all. Ok thanks for tea headed back upstairs. "Thomas-san for today... please return home, and we will let you know when to return." "Are you sure? I have work I can do on my own for the day." "Yes, so sorry for this." Well I offered and I'm not gonna argue too hard against a free day. I tell him it isn't a problem and it was nice to learn where the school is and meet several teachers. Meet several English teachers in the parking lot and talk for a few minutes before leaving. Now I've had my eye on the big island to the East of my city and with a free day... Home to change out of my suit and straight there. A text pops up on my phone later in the day from School 2 English dept head saying he's sorry for the bad news from the other school today and that his school is very much looking forward to having me. I don't know how he knew? But it was nice that he sent more welcoming.

       Day 4 part II (The Return to the Island I've Never Been to Before) Drove out to the Oshima Island and took pictures and video for you kids. Then went to the beach and looked at stuff. That's about it. Look at the pictures.

 (These are from the top of the hill/tiny mountain? on Oshima Island. I also saw a deer up here and it like hissed at me or something and was way different colors than I expected, AND was hidden in brush so I though it was like a dog-sized fox. So I gave it some distance.)

 (Looking East out into the Pacific Ocean)

 (Looking West toward Kesennuma city)

 (Looking South. I think that farthest mountain visible is 40 miles away?)

 (North)

(You can see the beach in the bottom left of this panorama picture that I went to after this spot.)

 (That's a dead sponge! I thought it was super cool.)

 (The white things are oyster halves that were pried off the rock, half of it stayed.)

 (I love inter-tidal zone critters.)

(The tide was apparently coming in. I was looking at some stuff in a crevice and standing on a little rock in the middle of it. The crevice was maybe 3 feet across. I figured the tide had gone down(wrong) enough so waves wouldn't come up in there anymore. Then I noticed the ocean level go down a decent amount and thought 'oh crap that's gonna come up in here." I wouldn't have been washed away or anything but my shoes would have been underwater. So I set my arms on the rocks to each side and pushed and then pulled my feet up and held myself while the water came in and then slowly went back out. Made me laugh that I had done it and quickly enough to not get wet.)

       Day 5. Same as 3 pretty much. I think I used up most of the ink in my pen. Have you ever used up most of the ink in a pen in 4 days? I do the same stuff on Day 6 and 7 too so BOOM! Easy writing. I was given access to the computer system on day 6? Spent an hour trying to figure out how to get the computer to display stuff in English. While holding my phone over the screen with Google translate the English dept head asks what I'm trying to do. He recruits more help. They discover! It cannot be changed. Ok. So I find a list of commonly used computer terms Kanji and figure it out. Little slow but took me about an hour to get down the basic functions like "open" and "save" and stuff.  I made this excellent worksheet.

       Some other realizations have set in over the week. This isn't Peace Corps. Part of me wanted it to be. I was looking for the adventure and the uncertainty and the "who knows what might happen next!?" That isn't here for me though. This is something else and won't be an extension of the enigma of my time in Africa. Which isn't a bad thing. Japan has excellent and ABUNDANT tea and food that I am absolutely loving. Japan has oceans and islands and mountains and shrines and shops for me to explore. I expected it to feel so foreign, but I point my Google Translate phone at stuff and then have a decent understanding of what's going on. Maybe having been so exposed to unexpected situations simply raised what my brain thinks of as "unexpected". Things are new, but very little has felt like I'm being pushed outside my comfort zone. Except that capybara. That thing was awesome.

       A couple setbacks in the set up. Apparently the easy to use English speaking home internet service requires a credit card to set up. So I'm looking at other options. Before that I had to figure out what my address was. Streets don't usually have names. So the parts of the town/city are split up into little... districts I guess? and then each one cut off from the others by a road has a number, and then the houses in that number have a number. So trying to figure out how to communicate verbally where I live based on a bunch of Kanji and numbers was difficult. I was also sketched out about the trash. You need to have everything sorted specifically and there are waste pick ups every day, but only from this one spot in your neighborhood, and each day is a different type of material picked up i.e. plastics, recyclables, food waste/burnables.

       It's also... lonely. I'm sure people all over are feeling similarly. I just also happen to have moved to the other side of the world at the same time. While I could find a cuddle cafe and pay a stranger to cuddle and have tea with me for an hour(which sounds like it could be nice other than the fact that I need to go through a PHD course on another person before I feel comfortable letting them touch me.) Part of me keeps saying "You should have stayed home and put energy into dating" and it's really hard to argue that when I have so much free time to focus on negatives. I've been running though and a 10 minute drive from my house I can run on mountain paths overlooking the ocean and the top of the mountain looks inland through more mountains. Which is quite epic. I've also driven 300km without crashing into anything! I still have the tendency to want to turn right and if I can't see any cars physically occupying the right hand lane I have to remind myself to not start driving there. Most of the rest of the time it's easy to stay on your side of the road or simply follow the car in front of you.

 (Curry! But it tastes like Tim Horton's chili minus the meat and beans.)

 (I seared up some diakon raddish with soy sauce and threw a boiled egg in. Bam. Excellent dinner.)

 (Big thing in Japan to check out all the flowering cherry and plum trees in the spring. These are just beginning, not quite in full swing yet.)

 (I drove 10 minutes up into the mountains near my house. I parked and ran a little bit along some mountain paths. There was an awesome overlook of the city of Kesennuma but I didn't have my phone with me. I could also see really far inland and that was super cool. Lots of hill/mountains.)

(One of the teachers at my school has an umbrella with a sword handle.)

Kesennuma 気仙沼

       Japan was the first step. Training in Sendai was neat, now I am finally in my city. In a hotel... but in my city. Kesennuma. Home for the next year. Kesennuma is a fishing city, a huge chunk is employed in the fishery. I was given a bus ticket. Told when to get off the bus, and that a taxi would most likely be in the area. I had a picture of Japanese text on my phone to show the driver. The ride up through the countryside was pleasant since my first cross country trip by bullet train had been at night and didn't deign to allow me a view. The hills are so steep. It's a flat plain and suddenly it's steep hills. The part of North America I've spent most of my life was covered in Glaciers 10,000 years ago and they made the hills soft and rolling. Anything sticking up higher is a solid chunk of rock back home. I'm quite excited to explore the bamboo and cedar? forests. I got a few glimpses of the coast as well. I'm anticipating many days hanging out on a rocky beach looking at mollusks and starfish and inter-tidal zone critters.

(The kanji for my city. 気-ke　仙-sen　沼-numa. If you saw any pictures with signs from the city I did training in perhaps you saw 仙台 for Sendai.  See the first kanji for Sen!)

 (Bunch of pictures I took on the bus ride)

       First trip outside of the sheltered world of training where all questions and troubles can be immediately solved by the experienced trainers. A bus ride from Sendai to my city of Kesennuma. The head trainer guy, who is crazily born in the city of Bangor I had been living in a month ago, sets me up with a bus ticket and gives me the rundown on getting to my hotel. Nice ride through the countryside and I absorbed it all with my eyes. After a couple hours start seeing my town. Its not what I expected. The satellite images show a city but there are so many hills! It's hard to get my barrings because the hills reduce how far you can see.  The bus comes up to the stop and I ask the driver if this is city hall and with the affirmative, disembark. Now... to find a taxi. Supposedly they are frequently in the area and I can show a picture of Japanese words and magically get to my hotel. Don't see taxi's though. Try to call the company guy for guidance. No answer. Call another number for the company. They ask me what I want and then say they'll call me back. Now this is where I THRIVE people. Waiting. Senegal(my Peace Corps country) has made me a connoisseur of the art of waiting. I can wait so good. This time is only a 15 minute wait though, and then they tell me... "20 min walk, you can do it?" "Uh, yeah sure." I also have 45 lbs of bags and don't know the name of the hotel at all. The writing I have is Japanese and I can't read the kanji phonetically yet. So I'm on google translate trying to look at the words I have. I find 'hotel rajenta' within the text. More googling of 'rajenta'. Nothing. Switch over and look for "hotels near me". Too many, unhelpful. Although one that says it's a half hour walk from me is called "La Gent"(french-ish for the gentleman?). Probably my hotel since rajenta~la gent. Start getting my big bag ready and adjusting the strap which had broken. Call comes in from the first guy I called. He says he'll set up a taxi. OK! Taxi to the hotel. Then the fun part where I go to the grocery store just down the road. You guys... one of my favorite things in the world is to walk around a grocery store. It's partially because I like to cook and love food, but also because I love the potential. When you walk around a grocery store you can look at every item and think about ALL the other items that would go with it to make a fantastic dish. Maybe also from my time in my village where the options weren't too varried? Anyway, walking around a JAPANESE grocery store... whole new level. Here's some pictures.

(Right here is like 23.4% of the reason I wanted to come to Japan. The food. And LOOK at the cost. Converting to U.S. dollars is moving the decimal point two to the left. Most of this stuff is 4 dollars! These are meals! Like GOOD MEALS!)

(Kitto Katsu in Japanese means roughly "you will surely win". Combined with a cultural practice of bringing small gifts "omiyage" back to co-workers and friends from places you travel that are best if they can be shared among a larger number of people, means Kit Kats have thrived here. There are 200+ flavors with many seasonal and regional specialties.)

(I bought all this for my dinner/breakfast in the hotel. It was.... 15 dollars total. In the U.S. the sushi by itself would have been 15 dollars.)

       The next morning a local lady from the company came and picked me up. She was my translator and organizer for setting up bank account and registering at city hall and stuff. We had a good morning and went to lunch before heading to my apartment. While waiting at the bank I showed her what moose were and she looked up pictures and laughed and commented for a good 5 minutes on their size. It was fun. In my apartment I was pretty impressed with how much space there was. Place seems really nice. I may even be able to practice some Karate kata in the center room. 

 (I have the bottom floor. The car belongs to the translator. I made sure to take the picture to include the moon!) Here is a link to Google Maps should you want to look at where my apt is

 Tom's Japan Apt

(Rental furniture includes! Desk and chair.)

(The view out the window! Considering there are MANY other options in this city I'm quite happy to be able to see the woods.)

 (Rental furniture also includes! Bed/bedding.)

(Soft rental blanket that I would have picked out myself for the excellent color.)

       All I really did was set up the bed and take a short nap waiting for my car to arrive. Went to bed around 10pm. P.S. this is my bed.

 (And if you think it looks thin. Let me tell you right now. You are correct.)

(Very lightweight though. I fold it and put it away during the daytime. Also the room with the desk has the heater so I'm setting the bed up in that room and closing the door so as to conserve heat.)

       Wake up and there's a neat white car outside my door! Mother would like to video chat first however. So video chat with siblings and Mum. Then try to figure out where to take my car first. Looking up stores is rough because saying "Hey google show me nearest grocery stores" doesn't really work that well. I have to first ask google what 'grocery store'[or whatever I'm looking for] is in Japanese. Then I have to switch my typing thing over to Japanese and type the Japanese into google. And theeeennnnnn it finds me what I'm looking for. A fun way to learn kinda, but a bit slow. Then the white car drives away...? I was maybe 10 minutes from walking out and inspecting it. A half hour later another car pulls in, Black. Dude in a delivery outfit with a clipboard comes to my door and says the car is for me. YAY car! It looks like this almost.

       Recall that driving in Japan is one of my biggest worries. Thankfully my street is pretty sparsely populated and out of the way. Before driving there's a giant box of snow tires in the back that I take out. Then I remember the international drivers permit AND emergency contact info card I need to have in the car when driving. I went in and out of my Apt like 5 times before I was ready to drive for the first time. Also gotta take your shoes off in the apt so each of the five times was shoes on and off. I did a loop around the block and then drove to a hardware store down the street. Quite fun actually. Driving has become a repetitive thing I've been doing for 16 years but now I need to concentrate because its all switched around. They gave me the car on empty so I gotta get gas too. The hardware store is like 3/4 hardware and 1/4 food? But has most of the items I want to set up in my apt. Minus a chair because I only brought 200 dollars. Back to the apt, grab some cash and look up as much info as I can find on how to get gas in Japan. Turns out it was pretty easy. Drive up, say "Genkin"=cash, then say "mantan"=full tank. They give you a little rag to clean off your dashboard. All gassed up I head BACK to the hardware store to get the chair I wanted and some poles to hang my laundry on. Then I decide to drive down to the High School I'm supposed to teach at on Monday. About 20 minute drive and I'm getting the hang of not crashing, still unsettling when another car comes around a corner and feels like it's on the wrong side and is about to crash into you. Stop by a grocery store on my way back home and then start unpacking all my new crap and making some food. I bought a rice cooker! Directions aren't the easiest to follow, but tasty rice and you can even cook whole(rice based) dishes right in the pot! AND you can have it wait to start cooking until a specific time! So I can make dinner in the morning and then tell the rice cooker to start it an hour before I get home. BOOM! Come home to a nice meal. Well that's it. I'm settled and can drive around and search for stuff in Japanese. Start teaching at the schools and I'll have a routine and can settle into my life in Japan for a year.

 (You couldn't possibly think I would move to Japan, buy a single bowl to eat all my meals out of[I didn't think to buy a plate...] and not have that bowl have DRAGONS on it)

 (The Induction heat burner which works by running electricity through the pan and needs special pans, and my new rice cooker! and a pineapple for dessert .)

(This is the main road right outside my apt. The sign is for a liquor store/dollar store called Yamaya. The sides of the store are separate but you pay at one set of registers. My apt is about where that truck is in the distance.)

       I need to prep some materials and lesson stuff as well as practice my Japanese greeting for when I meet the teachers. That's my plan for tomorrow. Continue to unpack some stuff and study Japanese and catch up on a bit of paperwork that needs to be done for Interac(my employer). Oh and for anyone wondering about Covid-19. We are required to take our temperature every morning and report it. All schools are requiring anyone entering to have been monitoring their health condition. Things are shifting around a lot and it's more region specific precautions within the country at this point. We are asked to wear the medical masks and limit travel to essential stuff. I set up my apt but probably won't be going on too many adventures soon. Thanks for tuning in. I hope it helps allay'all not be too bored.