Brian’s Japan Adventure

August 31st, 2007

The plane landed in Okayama at 3:50, about ten minutes early. We had to go through the immigration lines, and then fill out a customs declarations form, which we did. Then we left the building and met Mrs. Y, the person who handles all the interns here. Marc changed his dollars to yen here, and he got a better deal than I did; I should have waited. No biggie.

We got on the Kansai airport shuttle train and rode it for about an hour, then connected to the Shinkansen bullet-train which we rode for about 45 minutes. Both trains moved really fast, but it was dark by the tome we rode the shinkasen, so it was hard to just by the electric lights zooming by. We then took a taxi the last couple of miles to the apartment. We dropped off our bags and quickly looked around. Then Mrs. Y took us to the grocery store in her car to buy some started supplies and food. I spent 3018 yen, around $25. Not a lot, but I didn’t get all that much either.

After the grocery, we ate at the Royal House, which felt just like a Denny’s back home. We had some kind of Indian curry dish there; go figure. At this point Mrs Y gave us our schedules for the next month and told us how it was going to work. On our first time teaching somewhere, she will go with us on the train to make sure we get to the place. After that, it’s up to us. She gave us train schedules, but they’re mostly unintelligible to me.

She’s going to take us to register as aliens on Monday. You need this card to buy phones and many other things, so the sooner we get that out of the way, the better. Marc has a meeting with someone about his teaching next week on Monday as well. I teach in Hiroshima on Wednesday, with three kindergarten classes in the morning (15 to 30 minutes each), followed by some adult classes in Hiroshima from 1-3 and 6-8. That means I’ll be coming home in the dark. That’s pretty much it for next week. Monday and Wednesday are it. That’s good, because it looks like I have a lot to learn before then. More classes will be added as the universities go back to school on the 20th. Until then, it looks like we have a pretty easy load. Fine with me, more time to practice learning my way around.

We briefly unpacked a few things and watched a little TV. We get around 12 channels, but none of it looked interesting. Naturally, it was all in Japanese. The after getting most of our stuff organized we went to our rooms and had no trouble at all getting to sleep.

And now I guess I should talk about the apartment. It’s on the ground floor, just a few feet from the road, although the road seems quiet and little traveled. There are two doors, one for the living room and the other goes straight to my bedroom. We do have two bedrooms, and they are good sized; I had seen videos on Youtube showing some really tiny little places. These rooms would be fine in any American apartment. The wallpaper is a little yucky, but it’s clean enough. The living room has a couch, a table, and a TV and that’s about it. The kitchen is really tiny, useful for one person at a time, as is the bathroom. The bathroom feels a lot like the one I had back when I lived in a mobile home several years ago. Small and cheap. It is very clean though, and that’s important. It’s fully furnished, and the previous students here left a ton of teaching books and materials that we will be able to use n our own classes. They also left all the usual kitchen equipment and supplies. The coffee maker is too small, but everything else will do just fine.

The only two problems I have found is the alarm clock n my room seems to be broken. I’ll look for one when I get to go shopping. That’s easily enough fixed. The other problem is a litle more difficult. Despite what I was told, there does NOT seem to be Internet access here. The nearby university does not start back for another two weeks, so the area is very quiet now. Maybe when the area starts getting busier I can pick up someone’s stray wireless signal. I can only hope.

5:15 Pacific time. I’m not really sure what time zone we are in, so California was the last time I set my watch.

OK, as I write this, I am currently about halfway though the last and longest leg of the trip. The connections in Washington DC and San Francisco went smoothly and without incident. One surprise we had not expected was the need to go through security in San Francisco in addition to having done it first thing this morning.

The flights and landings have been especially smooth and easy; I remember flying as being a bumpy white-knuckle affair, but it has been several yeas since I’ve flown, certainly not since 9/11. I have to say the security screenings were a joke. They never even looked at my checked luggage, and it was up to me to unpack my carry on bag-they never bothered to see if I actually unpacked everything. I could have had anything in my backpack.

Airport food is ridiculously expensive, with really crappy salami sandwiches selling for a mind-boggling $7,95. I guess what is really mind boggling is that I bought one anyway and so did Marc. Still, the weather was good and there were no delays, so all the connections happened as planned, which was my biggest worry.

Maybe I was just half-starved after the long day, but the lunch they just served on this flight was really good. Some kind of chicken stir-fry with rice, a roll and butter, salad, and some kind of little cake, Afterwards they served green tea, which was not something I imagine happens on most American flights,

Each seat has a built-in monitor that shows your choice of movies, TV shows, music or a map of the trip. In my earlier flight the controls didn’t work, so I ended up watching Spider-man 3 twice. It was hard to sit through even the first time. There was wayyy too much drama with too little action.

But the screen and controls work on this flight, and as I look at it right now, the map functions tells me that we are approaching the International Date Line. The map is one of those horribly distorted Mercator (?) projection maps, so scale and distance are hard to judge. Every once in a while it will tell me that we have traveled 5 hours and 40 minutes, that our projected arrival is 3:50, our altitude is 36,000 feet, and our ground speed is aroun 560 mph (wow!).

It’s incredibly boring, I guess they want people to sleep, so the windows are mostly shut and the lights are out. We’re over the ocean so there isn’t much to see anyway. The map tells me now that the temperature outside is -58 degrees Celsius. That’s pretty darn cold, yet the windows feel warm from the sunlight.

They just pushed a drink cart up to the front of the section, so it looks like it’s complimentary drink time again. I had a headache earlier, and it went away right after I had airplane coffee. My schedule is so screwed up, I think I’m having morning coffee withdrawals already, and I haven’t even seen a real morning yet! OK, they’re done now: Diet Coke, Ruffles potato chips, an almond cookie, and a little mini-Twix bar. Good haul!

The Japanese lady sitting next to me has spent the entire flight either sleeping or reading books of sheet music. I guess you can do that if you are musically inclined (I’m not). She had not spoken to me until she saw the Palm Pilot I am writing this on. The folding keyboard fascinated her, and I had to demonstrate the whole thing (Yes, I brought the computer, but the Palm is much smaller and the battery lasts far longer, so it seemed like the better choice for airplane writing), She asked me what I do, and I told her I was an English teacher and writer. That sounded pretty good in my opinion. Since then she has been offering me candy, Good grief!

Bottom line: all is going well. I’m just writing this to keep myself from being bored to death. I just set my watch to Japan time; 10:28am. This is the third time since I woke up that I’ve seen 10:28 am. It’s getting a little monotonous. If I keep traveling west long enough will I travel forward in time? It’s starting to look like it actually DOES work like that :0. So from here on out, I’ll be talking in Japan time. Just a bit of trivia: Japan is big enough to cover two time zones, but they cheat for simplicity and only use one. While it gets dark in the eastern half at 8pm, it doesn’t get dark in the west until an hour later.

It’s been a few days, and I finally have a bit of a break to fill everyone in on what’s happening.

I finished and turned in my final big Independent Master’s Portfolio, and assuming all goes well with that, they will send my Master’s degree right after Thanksgiving. If they DON’T like it, then they’ll tell me to make some revisions, which will be difficult overseas without my books and research stuff. I have some notes online, but it would be difficult if not impossible to do any serious rewrites. Let’s just hope they like it; I put plenty of time and thought into it, it think it’ll be fine.

Other than that, there were no great dramatic happenings over the past few days. I filled out various forms for graduation and bought some traveling supplies.

The only news of interest here from Japan is that I will be teaching THREE kindergarten classes on Wednesdays as well as two groups of adult students Wednesday afternoon and evenings.  I don’t know for sure, but I think that’s all I am going to be doing next week. They will add more courses gradually as various other schools return from their breaks. So that sounds pretty easy for a first week. I’m sure there will be plenty of adjusting on my end, so easy is good.

The other bit of good news is that two of the Japanese exchange students who came here to Dayton last week will be meeting with me on Saturday. For those readers who met them here, it’s Lui and Shingo.  That’s really neat go go that far away to someplace I’ve never been and have friends waiting.  Hopefully they can show me the good places to shop and get settled.

I have to be at the airport VERY early in the morning, and I’m pretty sure it will be a waste of time to even TRY to sleep tonight, so I have a long one ahead of me. That’s OK, it’ll make the long leg of my plane ride that much easier if I sleep through it.

And so this is my last posting from the Western Hemisphere until sometime in March.  My next posting will be straight from the “land of the rising sun.”

Sayonara!

What the heck, it’s fun!

OK they’re gone. Over and out!

Or so I thought. As soon as I got home, there was an additional surprise. Before they left, a few of them had little gifts. One gave me a little Japanese towel with writing of something on it. It’s nice, and I’ll try to translate it later. But they also handed me a card, and I didn’t look at it until I got home.

And I have the full size scan here if you can’t make it out: Link.

A couple of these students are located in the town I’ll be staying in, so I hope I really do get the chance to see them again. Maybe as soon as next weekend.

The End.

Next time… The final countdown begins!