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.
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.
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.
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