I finally made it to where I will be living for the next year. It is official now, a year. No longer a year and a few days. My contract is finished March 20th, 2014. Now it doesn’t seem like such a long time. What a difference a few days makes. Now that training is done I have time to focus on what I really want to do while I am here. I am no longer bogged down and stressed out by the exhausting duties of training. Getting on the train to leave Osaka, I became all giddy again, just like I felt when I was boarding the plane from LAX to Tokyo. I was very excited about what was to come, and the overall mystery of it.
After arriving at the school in the morning I was allowed to do what I wanted for the rest of the day, but I was told to come back at 9 after all of the day’s lessons were finished to get together for some snacks and a little “welcoming pow-wow”. Someone decided to try and play a questioning game so everyone could get to know me and vise versa, but it turned into everyone asking me questions, which wasn’t a bad thing. I enjoyed the informality of it. Most of my coworkers seemed to have a similar opinion of training, someone did use the term “hazing” as well, which I had to laugh about. Everyone seemed genuinely happy to see me, and they all had a lot of questions for me. They also mentioned the letter I sent to them introducing myself. They said they were very impressed with what I wrote, and that they felt like they learned a lot about me from it. I don’t know what has happened to me over the past year and a half, but apparently people seem to think I have a knack for writing, which no one (including myself) seemed to know about before now. I have received several compliments about this blog too. I am very surprised, but happy to hear everyone is enjoying reading what I have to write. I am finding that I enjoy writing. Maybe this will lead to something in the future. Who knows?….Anywayyyyy, I am very happy to finally be here. For the first time in what feels like forever, I am able to set up shop and make a bit of a “home” here. Now that I think about it, I haven’t lived in one place for more than 6 months in a row since graduating college 2.5 years ago. Not that I haven’t been enjoying it, but it will be nice to not have the pressure of an eminent “big move” looming over me. Well, at least not for a little while. I am definitely going to try and make as much of a home here as I can during my time in Japan… I am laughing to myself as I read over that last sentence. I am in JAPAN, I don’t know the language, and I don’t have any family or close friends in this Hemisphere! How is this going to be any bit of a home?! I guess it is good to be optimistic though. I am ready to make the most of it.
I told everyone I would be living in Nara before I left. That isn’t exactly true. I am living in a city/town called Gakuenmae, which is actually a train stations before Nara, if you are coming from Osaka. It reminds me of downtown Towson, MD but it covers a bit more area. My office/school is actually in the same building as the train/bus station, and it only takes me 5 minutes to walk to my apartment. Very convenient. My apartment seems like it is almost brand new. It is much nicer than I was expecting. My bedroom/living room/dining room is about the same size as a college dorm room at Salisbury, but I have my own shower, bathroom, and kitchen. My kitchen is a bit small, only 2 burners on the stove, a sink a mini fridge and a toaster oven. I don’t really have any counter space unless the stove top is turned off. I have been able to manage though. I have cooked 2 of the three nights since getting here, and I am able to make eggs in the morning if I really feel like it. There really isn’t much else to my apartment, my bed is hard, just 2 futon pads on top of a wooden loft type bed. There are two steps to get up to the bed, and underneath there is a space for storage. I have a washer too, but I need to hang my clothes up to dry them. I do have a little balcony for that, I guess that is one major plus I have not mentioned. It looks out over the parking lot and over to the other apartment building, but it is nice to have a little bit of an outdoor space… to dry my clothes. It may sound a little rough, but it is just me, and I usually don’t like to stay in at home anyway. Even growing up I was always “out” if I didn’t have to be home. I think I will do just fine. The place is small but not too small for one person, even if I am a bit bigger than the average Japanese. If any of you are wondering I definitely have plenty of space for someone to crash if I should have any visitors. Just let me know if you want to come. I asked the boss and they said it is totally cool, and that a lot of teachers have guests that come, and end up staying for a month or so. So this is your invite. Just let me know what is up.
So that is basically where I am now. I haven’t had a lot of time to really explore the area yet. My first day here I decided I would just go for a run. I had no idea where to but I wanted to see what there was to see. I’m not really even a runner but it was something to do, and it got me around faster than walking. I just kept going down streets that looked cool from the end I was at. I ended up going down a few dead ends, and ultimately getting very lost. I was a little sketched out because I was told to be at my house between 6 and 8 to receive a package (that is how efficient the mail is here). Eventually things started to look familiar again. Then I got lost again. Then I found the main street which led me back to my street, which I only found by making a lucky guess of which street to turn down. Eventually I got back to my place at 5:58. Lucky me. Then I had to wait for 2 hours, the “housewarming” package of laundry detergent, Toilet paper, and soap sent from Honbu, ended up being delivered at 7:58. It was all worth it though. Getting lost is always fun. How else am I supposed to explore my new surroundings?
I actually wandered until I got lost today too. I went into Nara, just catching the train was hard. I still cant read Japanese so I had to ask a high school/college aged kid which train I wanted to take. Luckily he knew enough English to tell me what to do. Once I got to Nara I just started wandering, always uphill at first. Then I decided to take out my brand new iPhone to give me a little advice. (Getting a cell phone was quite an adventure in itself, but we wont get into that. Let’s just say thank god for the Google translate app.) I decided to wander through Nara park and eventually to some temples up on the hill. Literally, as soon as I stepped into the park, the little spit of rain that was coming down turned into hail. I don’t remember the last time I saw hail. At first I thought it was snow, but then after looking at it hit the ground I realized they were little ice pellets. It only lasted for about 10 minutes so it was cool. Any longer and I may have been less amused. The park was very cool. There are 3 or 4 temples within the park itself. I saw two of them, but it was getting dark so I decided to head back to the train. At least one of the temples took it upon themselves(ves) to guard all the deer in the area. There are hundreds of deer wandering around. They are smaller than whitetail but not so ugly like the sika deer at Assateague Island. Apparently the deer are sacred here. There was all kinds of deer art all through the park. It was kind of cool. People were feeding them rice crackers by hand and petting them, but I couldn’t help looking at them and thinking of exactly where I would send an arrow.. I guess that is just a perfect example of a “cultural difference”… There are tons of “cultural differences” I have noticed, but I will share them in a later post. I am getting tired of writing and I think these people at Starbucks are starting to get annoyed. I finished my chai tea latte about an hour ago and am still here.
I hope you enjoyed reading this. I will be posting again soon. Have a great weekend everyone. Thanks for reading.