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hawaii 2 kawaii

Furnishing! (3/27/18)

So day 2 of my new home.  My lease car isn't slotted to arrive until April 4th.  So in the meantime I'm completely reliant for rides and/or walking.  My home is off Route 4, which is like a main road in Iwate, but not Ninohe.  I'm slightly detached from the main section of Ninohe, not much but just enough that what is a 5-10 minute drive is a 30-45 minute walk.  Luckily, there's this Nicoa Shopping Center here, which has a large grocery store, a 100-yen store (essentially a dollar store), and some other various shops.  This shopping center is a 5 minute walk from my house!  So I go down to get some very basic things like groceries, and other basics like a plate, bowl, chopsticks, and towels from the 100 yen store.


Later, Ethan had arrived a few days before me and been shown around a bit by the IC since on his first day he didn't do all the registration stuff.  He also had a car.  So he took me to go more grocery shopping and go to the Home Center, which is as it sounds, a store for all your home needs.  All in all, I spent 56,000¥ today which is over $500.   My home had been furnished with a rental fridge, washing machine, small tray/chair, and a bare futon.  So I had to go out and get a lot of just everyday small things which added up real quick.  I got a rice cooker for over $100 which I don't think was the best deal, but it was immediately accessible and I needed to eat.  I was also unsure of exactly what was in my area or when I'd have a car again.

He later showed me this cool park near his house.  There's this massive river flowing through Ninohe, and I think Iwate, which is just beautiful to see.  There's also a row of trees which may or may not be Sakura.  Hope to see those when the time comes!

All in all, it was an exhausting day, and I think I'm getting sick.


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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.
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 So bright and early the next morning after Karaoke, the new recruits from my branch are hopping off on a shuttle to head to Morioka.  Morioka is the main city of Iwate, and also where our branch is based out of.  Luckily, Interac has shipped our luggage ahead to our houses, whether we know where our houses are or not.  I personally had been informed only 2 days prior.  When I looked it up, it looked pretty far from everything, and I was pretty sure it was on top of a phone store (it is). 

Anyways, got on a shuttle to Tokyo Station, then hopped on a Shinkansen.  It was my first time ever riding one, and it’s honestly one of those times where I realize how much technology can be taken for granted.  Here I am hurtling along at a potential 170mph, and I’m just really tired and trying to sleep. However, I did appreciate how fast the scenery was changing.  Just the rate at which everything was changing was a good reminder of how fast the bullet train is.  Meaning, we were getting very far from Tokyo, very quickly.  It was over 3 hours I believe, to get to Morioka.  After which point, we were whisked off to the branch office to pay the hefty 3 months of rent, and go over some more paperwork/orientation.  I forgot to mention, the guy leading us is our Managing Consultant, Shane Menza.  He’s an awesome guy with an awesome background story, but most importantly, he’s also a Shane and he’s also from Hawaii.

So, 3/22 – 3/23 are pretty painful corporate such and such.  But Shane is determined to make this fun for us.  On the Thursday night, 3/22, he takes us all to a Wanko Soba shop.  It’s this cool little concept where they continuously feed you bite size portions of soba.  You’re supposed to eat it in one bite, and essentially see how many bowls you can eat.  It’s honestly a bit stressful as there’s a lady just standing over us just continuously dropping soba in and continuously shouting encouragement.  I got managed 60 bowls before I thought I’d burst.  Shane was the champion of the group with 132.  I asked our server what the highest number she’d seen was, and it was over 250, and it was a girl!  Whether I believe it or not is one thing, but I sure want to.

3/23, we are officially done with this orientation.  Shane shows us this Indian joint with bottomless naan bread.  We then head over to this bar which Shane and some other veteran ALT’s who have tagged along dub, the Foreign Embassy in Morioka, as all the Gaijin congregate there.  They honestly had a wide selection there, and I definitely wouldn’t mind going back.  Moving forward, he takes whoever is willing to karaoke.  $40 or so for all you can drink all you can sing till the sun comes up.  I tapped out around 3-4ish though, apparently some stayed till the end and went out to breakfast after, not many though.

The next day, Saturday, I definitely just lay in bed all day.  I missed the free breakfast at the RnB hotel we were staying at, so I only left my room to go get food.  We were right by the station which had a bunch of restaurants inside, but as we’re not receiving our first paycheck till May 20, and I had just paid nearly $3,000 for my initial rent and deposit, I held back my spending to eat more…soba!  Otherwise, I survived off the nearby conbini that day.

I went out Sunday with some of the people to go see some Castle Ruins and just walk around the city.  It was nice to see, but everyone was now just waiting to be dispersed to their various locations.  We all had various departure dates, and were all probably feeling the financial pinch.  Also, we’d all been stuck with new faces for over a week and I think everyone was ready to just go to their house and have some peace and quiet.

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Week 1: Narita Training

So the first week was pretty rough.  I went from near 3-month vacation mode (I count constant restaurant work as vacation mode) to an intensive 4 days of training from 3/18 – 3/22.  The schedule was essentially 8:30am – 6:30pm. 

Training was…interesting.  They were definitely preaching to the lowest denominator. However, that is not to say that I didn’t gain any value from the various lessons ranging from teaching to just how to live in Japan without Gaijin stomping all over the place (ie. learn the rules of the land, and not just be a foreigner who does whatever you want and probably get in a lot of trouble).  I especially appreciated the practice sessions we had for mock lessons.  Everything sounds so easy in my head when I’m watching the teachers, or other students perform.  Actually getting up in front of everyone was quite a different story.  Though, I was praying that teaching in front of Japanese kids would be a little more fun than a bunch of adults.  I did what I could to learn take in as much information as possible, because I really do want to do as well a job as possible.

During this time, meals were.... The lunch and dinner bentos tasted like they had been sitting out all day.  HOWEVER, the breakfast buffet was amazing.  I got my last taste of foods such as bacon and pastries, since I knew I probably wouldn’t be having them (Not gonna buy/cook such luxuries!) for a long long time.  The hotel had a conbini inside, and another 711 about 15 minutes walk away, or a 30 minute shuttle to the city.  However, the hotel was warm and I wasn’t too keen on leaving it. 

Interestingly, there was no WiFi provided in the rooms, and we had to share with a roommate.  The WiFi problem was managed by leaving my roommate to go to the lobby where there was a modest WiFi connection. My roommate’s name was Jack, though I kept calling him Jeff the first night, sorry Jack if you ever see this.  Anyways, I thought it was a brilliant idea to give us roommates.  As most people are probably setting out on their own in a foreign land and need others to connect with. Shoutout to Tiff though, another Hawaii girl, for going through this ordeal with me because it was real nice having a familiar face throughout training.

Shoutout to Maya too for coming all the way out to Narita on the 18th night! Since I came up to Japan on March 17, but my birthday was on March 14, she made a special 2+ hour trip AFTER work to come hang out.  I bought a separate room at the Hilton (where WiFi was provided free of charge?), and had a nice little conbini dinner (onigiri and cup noodle) and shared a cake she bought me from Tokyo Station!  It was my first time seeing her since she left in October so that was real nice.  Unfortunately, we were both exhausted from a combination of a long work day and travel fatigue (bus/jetlag).  The next morning was bright and early but again, shoutout to Tiff for sharing her extra ticket she randomly had so that Maya could join us in the buffet!

Anyways, 3 days of training, 1 day of presenting a practice lesson + a few lectures.  Some of us went out the last night to see the city and celebrate.  The shuttle was absolutely packed leaving the hotel, but the skilled bus driver handled the narrow turns with ease.  Got off the shuttle early after seeing a karaoke place, popped into some random yakitori restaurant for drinks then went to sing!  Got back tired and ready to leave the next day.



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So it's actually 4/18 today and I've finally (sort of) got the internet up and working in my house.  I've had access to internet before but never got around to this.  I have some journals loaded ready to upload!  ! So here's my first post in 4/18, talking about a post written on 3/31, talking about my time from 3/17....Here we go!


First off, this is all being written in hindsight.  I’ve got one journal entry from 3/26, but nothing else written before then.  This honestly feels like it’s destined to go the same path as my last blog…but we’ll see how it goes!
So today is 3/31, and to be honest, it’s been a bit of a blur getting here.  I arrived in Japan on 3/17, began training from 3/18 – 3/22, went to Morioka (the main city which my branch operates out of) from 3/23 – 3/25.  On 3/26 I moved into my new house, and got sick almost immediately, I’m still fighting the last traces of the cold. While it is minor, coupled with the constant cold around me, has been enough to effectively put me out of action for pretty much my first week.

I guess to start off, why am I doing this? Besides my half-heritage, and a pretty close following of Naruto since Middle School I’ve never really had a huge interest in Japan growing up.  However, a series of events led to me being in the most rural area I’ve ever been in my life in the middle of Japan:


x


TBA
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