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.