August in a Nutshell

I've been busy recently, I apologize. I know it's no good excuse for rejecting my home, but it's an excuse nonetheless, so you can deal with it.

What have I done recently? I suppose what haven't I done is a more applicable question.

For the record, I haven't:
1. committed murder
2. learned how to be a ventriloquist
3. eaten meat (sorry, people, I know)

I have, however:
1. set off fireworks in front of my colleague's house, after going to an organic buffet restaurant with him and his girlfriend. It was lovely to meet her as well, they are both beautiful people. We also went to the grocery store, and I managed to snap a photo of an entire dried squid, as per my mom's request. Here is the photo:


2. Gone to Sapporo orientation. It was lovely to hang out with other ALTs and be once again surrounded by English. Call me pathetic, but it is comforting to have people around you that you can understand. We also went out on the town, and one of the ALTs and I spent the entire night walking around Sapporo in the rain. We got soaked and it was lovely. I managed to snap this beautiful shot of a covered shopping street while we were roaming, looking for a place to eat dinner.

3. Went camping at lake Shikotsu. It was quite the adventure. Jessica made onigiri for us to eat on the train for lunch, and they were absolutely adorable. Here is a picture of them.


Once we got to Shikotsu-ko, we spent the night eating, drinking, and playing silly games. Here's a photo of me attempting to win the bubble blowing competition for my team at the crazy olympics. I wish I could share the beauty of the spot with you, but for some strange reason, I forgot to take pictures.

4. Taught my first class. No pictures for this one, but it was absolutely terrifying. Let's hope that the next ones go better. Woo self introductions for the next few weeks!

5. Went to Noboribetsu for the Hell Festival! We had a chance to see the beautiful town and go to the beach, which was a lot of fun as well. I kind of wish I had a coastal placement so that I could go to the beach daily. You know I totally would. But it's all good. Here's a couple pictures of the beach.

When we got to the town, we came across this restaurant called Canadian Fried Chicken, and couldn't resist the urge to go inside. They had a flag outside that was basically the Italian flag with a maple leaf in the middle. No clue why. They served pasta and fried chicken. Canadian-Italian fusion, maybe? Who knows. Regardless, here's a picture of the sign.



Also also! They had a vending machine that sold piping hot buttered popcorn! And it had a giant hello kitty in it! I obviously had to buy some. Here's a picture of the vending machine:


Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the actual festival because both my camera and phone died. Sigh.

6. Rode my bike with Jessica all the way to the Kuriyama dam (It's about 7 km each way on street bikes). I know it's nothing to be impressed about, but it's a lot for me. :) The dam was actually quite impressive, and we spent some time just lying on the grass in the shade, eating the picnic lunch I'd packed. FUN TIMES I KNOW!


Other than that, it's been relatively quiet. I hope to post a few sort of themed posts in the future to alleviate the boring "I did this, then I did that"-ness of this blog. We'll see how it goes.

A Week in the Life

I've just brewed myself a lovely cup of hibiscus and rose tea, and I'm settling in to watch Lost in Translation and go to sleep. I suppose you could say that it's been a good day. :)

This entire week has been great, actually. I've been going to school daily, even though I don't really have much work to do. My supervisor said I could go to school flexibly, but I want to make a good impression, so I try to stick as closely to the 9 to 4 schedule that everyone else seems to follow as possible. Because of this, I've been studying a lot of Japanese (thanks to the Japanese for JETs book), and chatting a lot with my coworkers, but not doing a lot of actual work.

Other than work, I have been up to quite a lot, actually!

Firstly, the other ALT that I'd met before invited me out, so I got the chance to go play badminton with her, and a number of Japanese people. Old and young alike, they had one thing in common: they were all WAY better at badminton than me. These people were so intense. We drew straws to see who played who, and I ended up on teams with two Japanese people I'd never met before. Language barrier aside, I had a lot of fun. I found it hilarious that they would whip around their rackets and slam that birdie like it was nobody's business, then in between games, every single one of them would go out for a smoke. Only in Japan. I won one game and lost one game, but the win was no fault of mine. (The loss, however, probably was). Also that night, I met the other ALT in town, and we made plans to go out the next day.

The next day was a Wednesday! I went to school, then called up Jessica after work and we went to a tiny music store to see about buying me a guitar. The place was adorable, and the people were so nice, not caring one bit if we sat there for an hour, trying every guitar. Eventually, I settled on this one:


I love it so much, it's beautiful. I had fun trying to bike home with it, as the case had no backpack straps!

Also, I saw the ostrich driving a carriage statue in one of our parks. I obviously needed to have my picture taken with it.


Then, Thursday, I had a breakthrough with a colleague, when he invited me to his place to set off fireworks, have dinner, and drink beer. Was I interested? Definitely. We made a date for next week, so I'll let you know when it happens. After work, I went to dinner at Jessica's, and we ate some lovely Japanese food that she cooked all on her own (mostly). Then we jammed with our guitars and ukes until the wee hours of the morn (aka 9 pm).

And that brings us to today :) I went to school fully expecting to stay until 3, but my colleague told me that I could go home early, since nobody else was even at the school. Jessica had messaged me and asked if I wanted to go clothing shopping. I obviously did, so I hauled my bike out to MaxValu at around one to go meet her. We spent the day shopping, then returning home with our purchases (by the way, shopping is so great here, even at discount stores in tiny towns!). We then biked back out to Homac to buy me a bike lock, and then we went to Kuriyama Park. It looks something like this:


The next picture is of the little zoo that they have there. When we got there it was closed, but I plan on going back another time!


We ate ice cream together at a tiny little shop (pictured below), and then we went for a little bit of a walk, stopping to play with all the lovely park things.


They had things like a giant train that you can get into and ride! It was so cool! Also, they had this lovely elephant/tree slide. I'm not entirely sure what it was, but it sure was fun!


After this, we went to dinner at a cute little Japanese restaurant right next to the park. This one, to be exact.


The inside was much cuter than the outside. It was lovely though. Everything was in Japanese, but luckily for us, Jessica actually speaks the language! She ordered me a tempura meal without shrimp, cuz that's all they said it had. Little did I know that it was going to look like this when i got it:

For those of you who can't tell, half the tempura is fish. There is raw squid on one of the plates. The miso has fish cake in it. And there is also tuna with daikon (we think) on another plate. So much for understanding vegetarianism. Somehow, Jessica managed to order something for herself that was actually vegetarian, and that was the following:


So she ate my fish, I ate some of her noodles and it all worked out. The bike ride home was beautiful, though. And I think I'll end this post with some photos of the ride home.


That's all for now!

xoxo

Jeri

Tokyo Orientation

I forgot to mention that I actually left the hotel when I was in Tokyo! I know, be very very proud of me.

Look! I left the hotel!



We walked through Shinjuku, then took the subway to Akihabara, where we walked around, had dinner and checked out some of the crazy stuff that the neighbourhood has to offer.

For example:

1. 7 story tall sex store

2. vending machines



3. LOTS AND LOTS of lights



4. MORE lights

to be honest, I don't know if we did much else. It was a long night though, and I was looking forward to going back to bed. hopefully I'll manage to get back to Tokyo soon, to take in even more of the sights. This just wasn't enough.

Cheerfully yours,

Jeri

The First Few Weeks

Note: These are writings from the last couple of weeks without internet for Jeri. Enjoy!


(here is a picture of the road I ride my bike down to get to school)

August 3rd, 11

I’ve made it to Kuriyama.

I am pretty sure that yesterday was one of the most stressful days of my life.

Tokyo Orientation was comfortable. It was familiar. I was surrounded by other foreigners doing the same thing as me. I was in a hotel. I heard only English. I was in a big city, where there were many English signs and other foreigners. I was living in a hotel.

Needless to say, it is quite the opposite here. There is no English in my town. There are no other foreigners in my town, other than the two ALTs I haven’t met yet. Most of my fellow teachers don’t speak English. It is so overwhelming. Yesterday I broke down in tears when I realized that this was my real life. I’m over it, though. I’m ready to integrate into society.

It will probably be a while before I post this, as there is no internet at my apartment right now. Today, the office administrator is going to take me to get a bank account, a cell phone, and internet. He doesn’t speak any English either. This should be fun.

Soon, I’ll post some pictures of my apartment, my town, and my Tokyo orientation, but for now I have enough to deal with just trying to figure out how to sort my garbage. They gave me a 30 page book, all in Japanese, regarding the garbage system. I have NO idea what it means. I am going to have to ask someone. Apparently they get really really angry if you do it wrong, and it’s really strict. Eep!

Chat again soon, promise!

xoxo

Jeri

(side note from today: here is a picture of the view on my way to school. I swear this photo doesn't do it justice)


August 7th, 11

I’m feeling much much better.

3 things happened that contributed to this:

My supervisor invited me to lunch with another teacher the other day. We went to an onigiri restaurant in the middle of nowhere, and it was great to connect with my fellow teachers in a less formal setting. We chatted about the other teachers, and they introduced me to new and exciting foods. I ate a mushroom onigiri and a sour plum one. Unfortunately I forget the Japanese names, but they were both super impressed that I tried the sour plum. Score one for Jeri! It was so cool, feeling like I’d started to integrate into another culture, experiencing things I’d never experience as a tourist.

I got to meet one of the ALTs in the town that teaches at the junior high and has been here for a while. It was nice to see that I wasn’t the only foreigner in the city (instead, I’m one of 3!), and she gave me some great advice about settling in and the next few weeks from another ALT’s perspective, so that was really great

I took my new bike out for a spin today! I drove around downtown, past the supermarket and circled back around the entire town. I went into the 100 yen shop to buy a couple of bags, and a young man approached me absolutely fascinated by the fact that I didn’t look like him. He followed me around the store for a little bit, then came up to me and said “ nani-jin desu ka?” (I think. I’m probably wrong. My Japanese is obviously still quite rough but basically he asked where I was from). And, get this, I managed to reply with “Kanada-jin desu”!! I answered a question in a conversation with a stranger in Japanese! GO JERI! I realize that there is obviously a long way to go, but I was pretty pleased with myself.

So yep. Starting to feel a bit more comfy. Still no internet. Still a little bit unsure of what to do with all my free time. Still a little bit scared to go outside by myself. I think I am going to make dinner today for the first time! Real dinner! I was going to yesterday, but then I realized I didn’t have a frying pan. So today I bought one.

Tomorrow I have to go to the school all by myself. I’m going to work on my self introduction. Use powerpoint. Lots of pictures. Info about Canada. Should be wonderful!

Chat more later, lovelies!

xoxo,

Jeri

Day 1: The Arrival

Wow.

I still can’t believe it. After the 8 month waiting process, I’m finally in Tokyo, awaiting Tokyo orientation bright and early tomorrow morning.

Of course, that could just be the jetlag talking. I still feel a bit out of it. I didn’t sleep the night before the first flight, and I made it to the airport at 8 am Montreal time. I caught a flight to Toronto, had a 3 hour layover, then a 14 hour flgiht to Tokyo. Then, customs and immigration took me about an hour, and the 2 hour bus ride to the hotel brings the total time in transit to just under 24 hours. Approximately 8 am the next day back at home. Of course, 8 am there is 9 pm here, so the perfect time to go right back to sleep. I crawled into my bed, set my alarm tomorrow for 6:30, and got excited to get a full night’s sleep, since I’d gone so long without.

My dreams were dashed when I woke up at 2:30 am, 100% awake. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’m hearing occasional sirens outside with men speaking over loudspeakers in Japanese. Having no idea what they’re saying, I’m inclined to assume the worst. Nothing seems to have happened though, so I don’t think it was an earthquake warning. I’m rambling. It’s early.

Wait, I lied. I’m talking to my mom on skype. Apparently there was a quake somewhere. Trust her to hear about it first.

So yeah. I promise my other blog posts will be more coherent, but I needed something to do at 3 am.

I will close with a list of interesting/different things about Japan so far

You can buy meals at a convenience store. I knew this going in, but was still shocked at the variety and the deliciousness.
There is actually very little vegetarian choice. Even at the hotel restaurants in Tokyo. I expected it in the smaller places but not here.
you hand over bills with both hands. I knew this, but I’d forgotten. Oops.
The toilets have a bidet with them! You can press the buttons on the toilet to wash your butt! Also, the flush button is hard to find. In the airport I couldn’t find it, so I very annoyingly tried the “flushing sound” button, which was the only thing with the word “flush” in it. Turns out, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Only the flushing sound. There were volume adjustments and everything. Why would ANYONE ever need that button? I am utterly confused. Eventually i put down the lid and found that the actual flush was exactly where I would expect it to be.

So yep. That’s all for now, hang tight, I’m sure there will be plenty more later, when I am ACTUALLY functioning.

Sleepily but excitedly yours,

Jeri