Off to my New Home!
Off to Ninohe! (3/26/18)
The Morioka Branch operates out of 3 Prefectures: Iwate,
Akita, and Aomori. The majority of new
recruits were stationed in Iwate, but as it is the second largest prefecture in
Japan by land size, we are fairly spread out.
My placement is in Ninohe, a city in Iwate.
So on Monday 3/26, I got to leave the RnB hotel and hope on
a train to my house. It was about 1 hr
and 20 minutes away from Morioka. Got
off in a completely unfamiliar place, got picked up by an Interac IC,
Mariko. She helped me, and the other new
ALT in my area, Ethan. She took me to my
house, helped me get sort of set up, took us to a grocery store, and helped us
get registered at the Prefecture Office and the Post Office bank. This went well past 6pm and we were all
exhausted at the end. BUT, here I was,
in my new home.
The two big tasks of the day were getting registered at the local Ward Office, and setting up our bank account at the Post Office. The Ward Registration is important as you must legally do so within 14 days, and you get your address stamped onto your Residence Card. This address is then necessary to set up a bank account at the Local Post Office. A highlight of the day was us being completely incompetent at filling out the mountains of paperwork required for the bank, taking us over 2.5 hours. The poor workers were trying their best to help us, but of course also had their own work to do. Not to mention we had gone fairly late in the day, just due to the timing of the prior events, and everyone probably just wanted to go home. Our IC was also doing her best to help us, but it was an incredible amount of paperwork. Even if I was in America helping a foreigner out, some of those questions would have been difficult for me to answer right away. Anyways, Ethan and I felt terrible for creating really a scene at the Post Office, and just hoped that this would not happen again anywhere else.
Anyways, back to what I could for the first time in my life, call my own place. My little apartment on the second floor of a phone shop overlooking the main road. Also, it's cold here.
The two big tasks of the day were getting registered at the local Ward Office, and setting up our bank account at the Post Office. The Ward Registration is important as you must legally do so within 14 days, and you get your address stamped onto your Residence Card. This address is then necessary to set up a bank account at the Local Post Office. A highlight of the day was us being completely incompetent at filling out the mountains of paperwork required for the bank, taking us over 2.5 hours. The poor workers were trying their best to help us, but of course also had their own work to do. Not to mention we had gone fairly late in the day, just due to the timing of the prior events, and everyone probably just wanted to go home. Our IC was also doing her best to help us, but it was an incredible amount of paperwork. Even if I was in America helping a foreigner out, some of those questions would have been difficult for me to answer right away. Anyways, Ethan and I felt terrible for creating really a scene at the Post Office, and just hoped that this would not happen again anywhere else.
Anyways, back to what I could for the first time in my life, call my own place. My little apartment on the second floor of a phone shop overlooking the main road. Also, it's cold here.
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