My Pilgrimage to Mecca - Round 2

July 30, 2017

It's official. I've made the pilgrimage back to my mecca.  After a 13 hour flight, going through immigration and customs, shipping extra luggage forward, and taking a two hour bus ride to the hotel in Tokyo, I've made it back to Japan.  Everything on the way to Tokyo from Narita Airport looks exactly as I remember.  It's so surreal being back in a country I was in just five years ago.  It seems like a very long time, but it's not as long as it seems.  It's surreal to eat onigiri again, as if it was just yesterday.  It's surreal to experience all the sights and sounds that I've not experienced in such a long time.

Onigiri for dinner my first night back in Tokyo.

At this point, I feel more excited rather than nervous.  I'm in Tokyo, somewhere I'm familiar with.  I think the nerves will hit once it comes time to start working, once I'm in Nagasaki, once I'm in Sasebo, once I'm at the front gate staring down my school building.  Then it will hit that I actually have to teach, I actually have a chance to make an impact on these children's lives for better or for worse.

I don't think I'm used to the fact that everyone speaks Japanese here.  For the next few days I'm going to be in a conference learning about my job from presentations in English.  I won't need to know Japanese.  However, once I'm outside of this little JET bubble, I will have to face reality.  My Japanese is not that good.  I will need to step up my studying in order to make it in my life here.  Yes, I am a foreigner so they won't expect much of me, but I don't want to be stuck in foreigner mode.  I want to improve my language comprehension and speaking ability so that I can make the most of my stay here.

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Since writing the above at the start of Tokyo orientation, so much has happened.  I have moved into my new home here in Sasebo, I'm making friends with my fellow JETs, I'm making friends at church, and I'm making friends at work. My home is slowly coming together in terms of livability.  I've had a phone and home internet since day two when I was able to open my bank account, register at city hall, and get to the phone store.  I'm learning how to get around using the bus system and I'm getting more comfortable shopping alone.

I want to explore my neighborhood, but when the weather says 85 degrees with 90% humidity it means a one mile walk turns into a personal sauna where you're sweating waterfalls in shorts and a tank top, looking at the old ladies walking by with their long pants, long sleeve shirts, gloves, sun hats, and umbrellas wondering how you can get on their level.  It doesn't help that Sasebo is very mountainous. I walk uphill going between home and work both ways.  At least my legs will stay nice.

So high up that the peaks are covered in clouds on a cloudy day.

As much as I feared teaching right away, school doesn't start until August 21st and even then, I won't be teaching until September because the students are preparing for their Sports Day and Culture Festival.  However I have been introduced to the students.  On August 9, all the students and teachers came to school for an assembly to commemorate the drop of the atomic bomb.  At the beginning of the assembly I was introduced and I had to give a short speech.  I didn't go into too much detail about myself, but I did tell the students that I would look forward to teaching them and that I hoped they looked forward to having me as a teacher.  Before the assembly no one knew who I was, but afterwards the students were more comfortable greeting me and talking to me.  One girl even came to my desk afterwards and gave me a cookie while one of the boys came just to talk to me.  I can't wait to get to know the students better.

Hopefully by my next posting my apartment will be presentable enough for a house tour.  Right now I'm missing some curtains and I haven't done laundry yet because spiders have taken up residence on my laundry line.  But, eventually I will feel like I'm at home here on my adventure in the land of the rising sun.

Japanese Apartments

Japanese Apartments
 Since there aren't any other girls here for ACA I get to have an apartment all to myself.  When I heard that we'd be living in a Japanese family style apartment I really had no idea what to expect.  I'd heard that their living spaces are small and there's not much room for anything and I'd seen that their tubs were so small that large Americans like myself couldn't fit in them properly.  However, living in a Japanese apartment really isn't so bad.

First off, it's got a (mostly) full kitchen.  I say mostly because the oven isn't much of an oven.  It's more like a toaster oven, so I'll probably only use it to make toast.  It's not like I need to bake a cake or anything anyways.  The apartment runs on gas, so that means both the stove and oven run on gas.  Not only that but you have to push a button to turn on the hot water before you can use it in the sink.

A Japanese bathroom is uniquely different from one I'm used to in the States.  Every component that you would find in an American bathroom is separate with the addition of a washing machine.  The toilet gets it's own room, the shower and tub have their own room, and the sink shares it's space with the washing machine.  This is done, I believe, for hygiene purposes.

What I find interesting about Japanese bathing is that they don't bathe in the tub.  You must first clean yourself either with the shower head or by using a bathing bucket and the spigot that comes out of the tub, as seen here, or the wall.  Then you soak in the small but really deep tub.  It's quite relaxing.  What else is interesting is that you can start filling up the tub by a push of a button.  You don't even need to be in the bathroom to fill the tub.  You can do it from the kitchen if you so desire!  This way you don't have to wait for the tub to fill up when you're done taking a shower and can just hop in.

The bedroom is pretty decently sized.  It fits four desks and two bunk beds, has a balcony and an A/C unit.  It does not, however, have a closet.  Fortunately, there are drawers under the beds where you can put your clothes and standing clothes racks (seen on the left of the second picture) to hang things.  And since I'm the only one living here I can use as much space as I want, not that I do mind you.

The interesting thing about the beds is that they each have two curtains on them, one along the long side and one along the side facing the desks, and there's an outlet on the wall for each of them.  The curtains are useful for if you want to sleep but your roommates want to stay up so you can just close them and shut out the world.  The outlet would be useful if I had brought my alarm clock or could use my phone, but for now I have no need for it.

The balcony isn't there for kicks and giggles.  It actually serves an important part to Japanese apartment life.  On the balcony is where you dry your laundry.  A long pole runs the length of the patio where you hang clothes either on hangers or using clips for them to air dry.  This means that you can't just wait to do all your laundry at one time or you won't have any dry clothes.  Just from walking around the neighborhood here you can see clothes hanging outside most of the time.

That's basically it for my Japanese apartment.  It's not very big, but it doesn't need to be.  It has everything I need and it's comfortable living for one person.  Now, if only the trash system wasn't so complicated.  But, I'll save that for my next post as I continue on my adventure in the land of the rising sun.