So I've had limited access to the internet over the past little while - my much loved pirated wireless signal decided to up and disappear. I'm now all settled in at my new apartment in Oita and have officially been an English teacher for 2 days!
Oita's alright, minus the scary right-wing fascist types that drive around in their big, white, Japanese flag adorned vans with tinted windows who yell their anti-foreigner manifestos over a loud speaker... Although I've seen/heard them I haven't had a run-in with them yet (thankfully) but they've been known to pull up beside foreigners and start yelling at them! ...So aside from that whole scene the town's alright. (I think those guys can been found in any city across Japan, so it's not just limited to where I am). But I do have the feeling that this area of Japan is much akin to the Southern US or parts of Alberta...
Anyway, so yeah, I'm adjusting well to my new living arrangements here in Oita. My new (temporary roommate) is pretty cool, she's moving out at the end of the month though. She's been super-helpful so far in showing me the lay of the land so to speak. ...Filling me and Amy in on all the secret rules of life in Japan and at Nova that people generally fail to mention. I'm especially getting used to *not* sleeping on a single three-inch futon mattress on a hardwood floor - think a la camping. I now have three futon mattresses piled up and it's actually quite comfortable or at least tolerable. I also now have a tatami-mat floor in my room so that softens things up as well.
The day before I left Kitakyushu I went out with Lucy to celebrate the end of our training. We went to a local bar and were just going to point to random things on the menu and hope we'd end up with something edible. Luckily one of the bar/wait staff spoke English and he helped us choose some drinks and appetizer. His name was Jun-ji and he was pretty cool and his English was excellent (he lived in Vancouver for a year so I'm sure that helped). He also had a mullet - and suprisingly enough pulled it off quite nicely haha. Mullets seem to be all the rage for Japanese males, it's kind of frightening actually...
On Wednesday we ended up at a kareoke bar - we were the only foreigners in the place. When we first walked in I thought they were gonna turn us away, but the owner-lady turned out to be really friendly, and with the use of our phrase books we were able to communicate somewhat... I even sang a song! (First time for everything). You know, the song "Michelle" by The Beatles seems a lot faster when I sing it in my head LOL. I also got my first Japanese gift! There was an old man in the bar (one of like 3 other patrons) and after he found out I was leaving for Oita the next day he ran out and came back a few minutes later with a sashimi platter for me. It was so sweet! It turns out he owned a sushi restaurant nearby according to the owner of the kareoke bar (who's name escapes me at the moment).
So this has been a week of firsts for me - Japanese gifts, kareoke, becoming a teacher... I also tried some eel sushi (along side the tuna and salmon, which I've tried before). Not to mention the cheesecake (which I would normally avoid) and some red wine (again, which I would normally avoid).
I haven't been in Japan two weeks yet but already I can see why people love it so much. It's not exactly as beautiful as people often speculate, but the people, the culture, and the whole atmosphere in general are just so warm and friendly. ...You know apart from the scary van guys.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Japan - Day 6
Over the past few days I've come to learn that the Japanese are obsessed with their cardos! They have them for everything! And if you don't have them then you're screwed! Well not really, but they certainly seem to make life much easier. In Oita on the weekend I went to City Hall to apply for my Alien Registration Card (AKA my "gaijin card") which will allow me to open a bank account, join a gym, get a movie rental membership, etc., and more importantly - buy a cell phone. I was told that if I asked for a temporary Certificate of Alien Registration it would tide me over until my actual card was available (March 5). This however was a lie! Well it allowed me to open up my bank account but it most certainly did nothing to help me buy a cell phone! Amy and I probably wasted close to three hours on Saturday trying to convince various retailers to sell us a phone, but we kept being rejected by the smiling shop girls because we didn't have our cardos. No cardo = no phone :( At least they were nice about it. (They truly were) And what's 2 more weeks without any form of communication? Alright so there's a slight chance I *may* be over-exaggerating a bit here, I mean I do have the luxury of accessing my (hijacked) wireless internet connection, but still - I want a phone!
Anyway... (That's my angry rant of the week)
Oita turned out to be a lot better than I was expecting. ...From the looks on peoples' faces here when I told them I was placed in Oita you'd think I was going to end up living in, well, No Man's Land. Oita's actually not that isolated, but maybe by Japanese standards...? It's a fair bit smaller than Kitakyushu but it's pretty spread out and there's still almost a million people in the city-proper I've discovered. The population of 400,000 people I was told about earlier is just in the downtown area... Compared to where I am now things are a bit pricier but not horribly so. For example, here a 1.5L of Coke is about $1.59 but there it's like $1.90 or something.
[On a side note - when I said earlier that prices in Japan seemed fairly normal, I still maintain that statement for most things, but there are food items that are crazy expensive - i.e. a single cantaloupe costs 3500 yen!!! Yes that translates into $35!!! It's a good thing I don't like cantaloupe to begin with, I won't have to worry about any weird/random cravings for it! Apples are also expensive here ranging between $3 and $6 *each!* ...Mind you they're absolutely HUGE apples - think almost grapefruit-sized.]
But yeah, I think Oita will turn out to be okay. At least for a while anyway. There are only 4 or 5 teachers at our branch, so if things turn out to be more desolate than my initial experience has led on, then I may ask for a transfer to a larger city... At least Oita will be a good stepping-stone into Japanese life and culture. One thing I learned in Oita this weekend was how to take a Japanese bus... The system is really different than back home, but I actually think it's a lot better! You enter by the back/middle entrance and either slide your basu cardo (bus pass/*card*) into a card reader or take a ticket with the stop number you got on at from a machine. At the front of the bus there's a board which shows a bunch of stop numbers with different fare prices underneath. At your stop you either slide your card through another card reader at the front of the bus and the fare is deducted automatically, or you put your ticket and designated fare into a box by the driver. Oh yeah, and there are also change machines on the bus which are super-convenient!
On Saturday Amy and I ventured out to Beppu, the neighboring touristy city. Beppu is famous for all its onsen (hot springs) and hell springs (too hot to swim in, but nice to look at). We didn't go to any this weekend but did go to Mount Takasaki to the monkey reserve. There are some 1,200 Japanese Macaques living in their "natural" habitat there, and for 500 yen ($5.00) you can go up and walk around. The monkeys were actually quite cute, at least the babies were. The adult males on the other hand were actually sort of scary! (Especially when they were fighting... Which they did a lot)
Back in Kitakyushu today Lucy and I started our first day of training. I was really nervous this morning and thought I might turn out to be a horrible teacher and they'd send me home! Luckily that wasn't the case and they really ease you in to the whole situation. We started out with some paperwork (naturally) and then went over the textbook a little bit. ...Everything is pretty much done for you, even the lesson plans, so it's actually pretty simple and straightforward. We taught three lessons today to actual students. Well not full lessons, but sections of lessons along with other teachers. Tomorrow we're going to do two on our own, which seems kind of scary, but I'm sure it'll end up okay. The classes are super small with a maximum for 4 students each (8 if it's a kids class). Today I had two classes that were single students and one which had two... I'm not sure how common that actually is.
[On another side note - Lucy and I found our rotating sushi bar today :) I was quite adventurous I'd say and tried some salmon and tuna sushi! I also tried some corn sushi (yes, I am a wild one) and some california rolls (which had some omelet in them as well). The chef came out and starting talking to us (not that we could understand what he was saying... I think we were taking too long deciding what to choose next haha). After he left, he came back a few minutes later with some grilled salmon sushi on the house.]
Okay so it appears that I've written yet another novel of an entry so I guess I'll wrap things up now. I hope you've all enjoyed reading :) (And if you're still reading this I guess I didn't bored you too much haha)
Konbanwa (meaning "good evening") ...That's as close to "good night" as I know right now.
Anyway... (That's my angry rant of the week)
Oita turned out to be a lot better than I was expecting. ...From the looks on peoples' faces here when I told them I was placed in Oita you'd think I was going to end up living in, well, No Man's Land. Oita's actually not that isolated, but maybe by Japanese standards...? It's a fair bit smaller than Kitakyushu but it's pretty spread out and there's still almost a million people in the city-proper I've discovered. The population of 400,000 people I was told about earlier is just in the downtown area... Compared to where I am now things are a bit pricier but not horribly so. For example, here a 1.5L of Coke is about $1.59 but there it's like $1.90 or something.
[On a side note - when I said earlier that prices in Japan seemed fairly normal, I still maintain that statement for most things, but there are food items that are crazy expensive - i.e. a single cantaloupe costs 3500 yen!!! Yes that translates into $35!!! It's a good thing I don't like cantaloupe to begin with, I won't have to worry about any weird/random cravings for it! Apples are also expensive here ranging between $3 and $6 *each!* ...Mind you they're absolutely HUGE apples - think almost grapefruit-sized.]
But yeah, I think Oita will turn out to be okay. At least for a while anyway. There are only 4 or 5 teachers at our branch, so if things turn out to be more desolate than my initial experience has led on, then I may ask for a transfer to a larger city... At least Oita will be a good stepping-stone into Japanese life and culture. One thing I learned in Oita this weekend was how to take a Japanese bus... The system is really different than back home, but I actually think it's a lot better! You enter by the back/middle entrance and either slide your basu cardo (bus pass/*card*) into a card reader or take a ticket with the stop number you got on at from a machine. At the front of the bus there's a board which shows a bunch of stop numbers with different fare prices underneath. At your stop you either slide your card through another card reader at the front of the bus and the fare is deducted automatically, or you put your ticket and designated fare into a box by the driver. Oh yeah, and there are also change machines on the bus which are super-convenient!
On Saturday Amy and I ventured out to Beppu, the neighboring touristy city. Beppu is famous for all its onsen (hot springs) and hell springs (too hot to swim in, but nice to look at). We didn't go to any this weekend but did go to Mount Takasaki to the monkey reserve. There are some 1,200 Japanese Macaques living in their "natural" habitat there, and for 500 yen ($5.00) you can go up and walk around. The monkeys were actually quite cute, at least the babies were. The adult males on the other hand were actually sort of scary! (Especially when they were fighting... Which they did a lot)
Back in Kitakyushu today Lucy and I started our first day of training. I was really nervous this morning and thought I might turn out to be a horrible teacher and they'd send me home! Luckily that wasn't the case and they really ease you in to the whole situation. We started out with some paperwork (naturally) and then went over the textbook a little bit. ...Everything is pretty much done for you, even the lesson plans, so it's actually pretty simple and straightforward. We taught three lessons today to actual students. Well not full lessons, but sections of lessons along with other teachers. Tomorrow we're going to do two on our own, which seems kind of scary, but I'm sure it'll end up okay. The classes are super small with a maximum for 4 students each (8 if it's a kids class). Today I had two classes that were single students and one which had two... I'm not sure how common that actually is.
[On another side note - Lucy and I found our rotating sushi bar today :) I was quite adventurous I'd say and tried some salmon and tuna sushi! I also tried some corn sushi (yes, I am a wild one) and some california rolls (which had some omelet in them as well). The chef came out and starting talking to us (not that we could understand what he was saying... I think we were taking too long deciding what to choose next haha). After he left, he came back a few minutes later with some grilled salmon sushi on the house.]
Okay so it appears that I've written yet another novel of an entry so I guess I'll wrap things up now. I hope you've all enjoyed reading :) (And if you're still reading this I guess I didn't bored you too much haha)
Konbanwa (meaning "good evening") ...That's as close to "good night" as I know right now.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Japan - Day 3
It's bright and early on a Friday morning here in Kitakyushu. For some reason since coming to Japan I've lost my ability to sleep in! Damn time change! I suppose being an early riser isn't such a bad thing...? (I can't believe I just said that!)
Not too too much has happened in the past few days but there have been some adventures. I'm glad to report that my luggage arrived safe and sound yesterday morning. It was carried up by a fragile old man, and I felt bad, but he wouldn't let me take them from him until they was inside. They have excellent customer service here. Everyone is super-friendly all the time! (I wonder if there are anti-depressants in the water haha)
What else? Oh yeah my roommate Lucy arrived about 8:00PM on Wednesday and unlike myself, she was fully escorted to the apartment by another local teacher! I'm still proud of myself for finding this place on my own though haha! One sonic express train, monorail, and a short walk later... Lucy is pretty cool, she's 25 and from Brighton, England. I have to admit - I can't always understand what she saying to me, but I think I get the gist :P
Yesterday Lucy and I ventured into the city and wandered around for a while. We were on a mission to find a restaurant that had a rotating sushi bar but our luck fell short. We ended up settling on some noodle/soup shop in a food court. I'm not sure if it's *all* the foodcourts here or just the one we ended up in, but it's a different kind of experience. Most of the restaurants had a vending machine of sorts outside where you put in your money and I *think* made your order. I think from there you take a ticket up to the counter and they make your food. Luckily the shop we went to was much more simplistic and we just ordered at the counter. And by "order" I mean pointing to a picture of the food we wanted. I had soup with two pieces of shrimp tempura in it. It wasn't too bad actually aside from the fact that the tempura batter retained a lot of heat from the broth and I burnt my mouth a few times.
While in the city we also found a pet store and decided to take a look inside. Aside from the smell it appeared to be a fairly run-of-the-mill pet store. The smell, we discovered, wasn't due to lack of cleanliness, but from the two tamarin monkeys they had for sale. They were very cute! But oh so stinky! The puppies they had there were also adorable, but insanely expensive!!! The cheapest dog I saw was a black lab for 80,000 yen, or approximately $800 Canadian. But the smaller dogs like the chihuahuas ranged from 130,000 to over 300,000 yen! ($1300 - $3000) And the cats they had went for about the same prices! Not exactly as much as the chihuahuas, but still over $1000. They must have been purebread? Still crazy!
Aside from the animals things in Japan aren't as expensive as I was told they'd be. We went grocery shopping yesterday and everything seemed relatively cheap. Coke was about $1.58 for a 1.5L bottle, and steak was about $9.50 for two (not sure the weight). We were also able to find most of the same things we you get back here - Hagen Daaz ice cream, Doritos, etc. (Couldn't find any "normal" brands of chips, but they did have them) One thing that struck me as odd was that rice was kinda pricey! $8.80 for a 2kg bag??? It must have been some specialty rice or something...
So far my journey into Japan hasn't been overly difficult or daunting. No one really speaks English and most of the signs are in Japanese but it's still easy enough to navigate around the city and to find what you're looking for. So far no huge surprises. This afternoon I'm off to Oita to visit Amy and to get acquainted with my future new home town... The train leaves at 12:29 and I best not be late! They leave EXACTLY according to schedule! I might actually learn to be punctual while I'm here :)
Not too too much has happened in the past few days but there have been some adventures. I'm glad to report that my luggage arrived safe and sound yesterday morning. It was carried up by a fragile old man, and I felt bad, but he wouldn't let me take them from him until they was inside. They have excellent customer service here. Everyone is super-friendly all the time! (I wonder if there are anti-depressants in the water haha)
What else? Oh yeah my roommate Lucy arrived about 8:00PM on Wednesday and unlike myself, she was fully escorted to the apartment by another local teacher! I'm still proud of myself for finding this place on my own though haha! One sonic express train, monorail, and a short walk later... Lucy is pretty cool, she's 25 and from Brighton, England. I have to admit - I can't always understand what she saying to me, but I think I get the gist :P
Yesterday Lucy and I ventured into the city and wandered around for a while. We were on a mission to find a restaurant that had a rotating sushi bar but our luck fell short. We ended up settling on some noodle/soup shop in a food court. I'm not sure if it's *all* the foodcourts here or just the one we ended up in, but it's a different kind of experience. Most of the restaurants had a vending machine of sorts outside where you put in your money and I *think* made your order. I think from there you take a ticket up to the counter and they make your food. Luckily the shop we went to was much more simplistic and we just ordered at the counter. And by "order" I mean pointing to a picture of the food we wanted. I had soup with two pieces of shrimp tempura in it. It wasn't too bad actually aside from the fact that the tempura batter retained a lot of heat from the broth and I burnt my mouth a few times.
While in the city we also found a pet store and decided to take a look inside. Aside from the smell it appeared to be a fairly run-of-the-mill pet store. The smell, we discovered, wasn't due to lack of cleanliness, but from the two tamarin monkeys they had for sale. They were very cute! But oh so stinky! The puppies they had there were also adorable, but insanely expensive!!! The cheapest dog I saw was a black lab for 80,000 yen, or approximately $800 Canadian. But the smaller dogs like the chihuahuas ranged from 130,000 to over 300,000 yen! ($1300 - $3000) And the cats they had went for about the same prices! Not exactly as much as the chihuahuas, but still over $1000. They must have been purebread? Still crazy!
Aside from the animals things in Japan aren't as expensive as I was told they'd be. We went grocery shopping yesterday and everything seemed relatively cheap. Coke was about $1.58 for a 1.5L bottle, and steak was about $9.50 for two (not sure the weight). We were also able to find most of the same things we you get back here - Hagen Daaz ice cream, Doritos, etc. (Couldn't find any "normal" brands of chips, but they did have them) One thing that struck me as odd was that rice was kinda pricey! $8.80 for a 2kg bag??? It must have been some specialty rice or something...
So far my journey into Japan hasn't been overly difficult or daunting. No one really speaks English and most of the signs are in Japanese but it's still easy enough to navigate around the city and to find what you're looking for. So far no huge surprises. This afternoon I'm off to Oita to visit Amy and to get acquainted with my future new home town... The train leaves at 12:29 and I best not be late! They leave EXACTLY according to schedule! I might actually learn to be punctual while I'm here :)
Japan - Day 1
Well after almost 24 hours of continuous travel Amy and I arrived in Japan last night wihtout too many bangs and bruises - we even managed to find our hotel in Fukuoka without too many complications (even though the cab driver didn't speak a word of English).
Note: If you ever visit Japan and need to take a cab, have your destination address written in Japanese otherwise you probably won't get to where you want to go!
So this morning we dragged our luggage (the bags we didn't ship from the airport) a few blocks to the subway to try and find our way downtown to pick up our arrival packages and apartment keys from the Nova office... Anyone who knows us won't be surprised to hear that we ended up walking in the entirely direction away from Nova and only about half an hour later did we finally manged to find two guys who helped us find the building. ...This detour wouldn't have been so bad had we not still been carrying all our bags! I've never been more in need of a massage in all my life!!!
Skip forward a few hours and Amy and I have gone our separate ways. She's in Oita on the mid-north-eastern coast of Kyushu and I'm in my temporary location in Kitakyushu which is about 120 km north-east of her. My roommate has yet to make an appearance but on the brightside my futon and bedding was delivered about an hour ago :)
...My luggage from the airport however is another story. As luck would have it they attempted to deliver it before I arrived here and I was left with what I can only assume to be a missed-delivery slip in my mailbox (I *assume* because it's entirely in Japanese). My attempt to call them to locate my bags was a miserable failure because the time on my payphone call ran out before the women on the other end could find someone who spoke English... I'll try again tomorrow during the day when I can hopefully find someone to help me.
It's about 7:00 PM here right now and I'm all alone in Japan and wondering what to do for dinner (that's 5:00 AM for those of you back in Ontario). I noitced a pizza place around the corner earlier during my attempt at using the payphone so that might be a good option, other than that I'm surrounded by car dealerships and parts stores - good times haha. There's a bunch of anime (minus English subtitles) on TV so that might turn out to be my only form of entertainment for the next little while... Right now there's a cheerleading pig and fox... I have no idea what's going on? Oh yeah and there's an Afro-Samurai look-alike who has gold teeth... yeah...
Alright well I dunno if anybody is actually still reading this, but if you are I'm more entertaining than I thought haha. I'll make another post in a few days with an update on my plights in Japan. I still have to figure out how to open a bank account, get a cellphone, and register with the city for my alien registration card. Oh yeah and locate my luggage and get it re-delivered!
Sayonara :)
Note: If you ever visit Japan and need to take a cab, have your destination address written in Japanese otherwise you probably won't get to where you want to go!
So this morning we dragged our luggage (the bags we didn't ship from the airport) a few blocks to the subway to try and find our way downtown to pick up our arrival packages and apartment keys from the Nova office... Anyone who knows us won't be surprised to hear that we ended up walking in the entirely direction away from Nova and only about half an hour later did we finally manged to find two guys who helped us find the building. ...This detour wouldn't have been so bad had we not still been carrying all our bags! I've never been more in need of a massage in all my life!!!
Skip forward a few hours and Amy and I have gone our separate ways. She's in Oita on the mid-north-eastern coast of Kyushu and I'm in my temporary location in Kitakyushu which is about 120 km north-east of her. My roommate has yet to make an appearance but on the brightside my futon and bedding was delivered about an hour ago :)
...My luggage from the airport however is another story. As luck would have it they attempted to deliver it before I arrived here and I was left with what I can only assume to be a missed-delivery slip in my mailbox (I *assume* because it's entirely in Japanese). My attempt to call them to locate my bags was a miserable failure because the time on my payphone call ran out before the women on the other end could find someone who spoke English... I'll try again tomorrow during the day when I can hopefully find someone to help me.
It's about 7:00 PM here right now and I'm all alone in Japan and wondering what to do for dinner (that's 5:00 AM for those of you back in Ontario). I noitced a pizza place around the corner earlier during my attempt at using the payphone so that might be a good option, other than that I'm surrounded by car dealerships and parts stores - good times haha. There's a bunch of anime (minus English subtitles) on TV so that might turn out to be my only form of entertainment for the next little while... Right now there's a cheerleading pig and fox... I have no idea what's going on? Oh yeah and there's an Afro-Samurai look-alike who has gold teeth... yeah...
Alright well I dunno if anybody is actually still reading this, but if you are I'm more entertaining than I thought haha. I'll make another post in a few days with an update on my plights in Japan. I still have to figure out how to open a bank account, get a cellphone, and register with the city for my alien registration card. Oh yeah and locate my luggage and get it re-delivered!
Sayonara :)
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