Arakawa-machi! (荒川町!)

Greetings from western Japan! The silence wasn't as long as I feared it might be, and I'm back in business after only a couple of days. A lot has happened since then, though, so you may want to grab some coffee or something before you read this post.

That said, here goes.

We arrived in Niigata-shi (Niigata's prefectural capital: the "-shi" suffix designates a decent-sized city) at about noon, with adrenaline running high, and were greeted by our supervisors and by an English teacher from Arakawa middle school (presumably there to help translate). The other two Murakami-shi (Arakawa and the surrounding environs were recently integrated into the city of Murakami- a town of about 60,000) JETs speak passable Japanese, and were able to converse a little with their supervisors. I do not, so my supervisor and I launched into what has become the standard way for us to communicate- an awkward kind of Japanese-English creole (which I like to to think of as either Eihongo or Nihonglish).

They took us out to a sushi restaurant of the conveyor belt variety, and we sat and spoke little as we watched the plates of sushi slide by on the conveyor belt. The highlight of the experience was almost certainly the hamburger nigiiri sushi, which I would have tried on principle except that it looked absolutely unpalatable.
We were also served the equivalent of Japanese truckstop green tea, which was far and away better than any green tea I've ever had in America.

Following this, we were taken up to the village of Asahi where the head of...something was. I don't know if he was the regional governor, or the head of the board of education, or what, but he was obviously THE MAN in charge. I showed my respect by butchering my Japanese and giving too shallow a bow, then listening intently to his Japanese welcome speech. I couldn't understand much if any of it (Naomi- one of the other JETs, graciously translated for me), but I listened so intently that a clap or a firecracker would have sent me through the concrete in the ceiling.

After this, I was taken to the office where I was to work (and from which I am writing this post), and introduced to everyone, then taken shopping, and finally shown my apartment. After all of this began the cultural exchange in earnest, with a trip with my new boss, supervisor, and office staff to a local restaurant. Some of the offerings were familiar: Sapporo (which really helped to put my new, non-English speaking boss and I on more comfortable social footing), and rice. Niigata is famous for its rice, although prior to going to this restaurant I didn't see what all the fuss was about. How much can you improve on an essentially flavorless little starch packet? This question was answered with a bowl of easily the best rice I have ever tasted- subtle, sweet, almost pillow-y texture, and cooked just right. I could happily sit and eat the stuff out of a pot for a week. The other offerings were less familiar, and required more of an open mind. Cow tongue, grilled, was actually quite delicious. Raw ground beef with vegetables and a raw egg on top didn't taste half-bad, but persuading myself to dig in took some doing. Same for the slices of raw cow liver. Cow stomach, cooked, was odd if not necessarily disagreeable. Cow uterus was probably the strangest offering, even though it was cooked- it had a consistency like lumpy elastic.

After eating, I got a short night of sleep (not because I had trouble falling asleep, but because my jet-lagged body refuses to sleep much past 5:00 a.m.), I was taken on a whirlwind tour of the three schools where I would be teaching, and introduced to the staff at all of those schools as well. Everyone was very friendly and went out of their way to put me at ease (I think that Homasan, my superior who was driving me, noticed I was starting to flag a bit- I found iced coffee in front of me rather than green tea at the last elementary school), but my nerves were still pretty much frayed by the end of it all. Come to that, my nerves are still frayed. Jumping into a fairly professional office environment, as someone who learned how to tie a tie the night before departure, in a field I am not formally trained for, in another (difficult) language, is a crazy mind detonating egg plant with volcano-sauce supernovas on LSD in Jupiter's Red Eye surfing wearing a radioactive moo-moo overload. My brain is currently one of those loading hourglasses without the cursor attached- the one that says the computer is busy, and please come back in a minute. When I finally have some time to myself, I will probably collapse in a pile of gelatinous goo on my apartment floor for a bit. I also helped to allay some of the tension last night by with a good game of Moonbase Commander.

I'll wrap this up with some words about "rural Japan." I use quotation marks, because rural Japan is densely populated, making Newton Kansas look very small and remote by comparison, even though in terms of population Newton is bigger than the town where I now reside. Arakawa also has a gaming and media store downtown, which makes it seem bigger to my American eyes (sayonara paycheck...). In any event, the difference between towns here in one of the most rural parts of Japan are more akin to the differences between Newton and North Newton (Kansas readers), or between Denver and Golden (Colorado readers), than to what we would normally think of as distinct little rural hamlets.

In between the clumps of houses that comprise the individual towns are smallish rice fields and gardens. Everyone here seems to be an avid vegetable gardener, whether they actually farm or not, so the whole district is almost stupidly picturesque- topped off with traditional Japanese roofs on all of the houses (except on my apartment building, which came out of the concrete block school of architecture).

I'll end with a plea to the good people of Newton and Kansas in general- I'm realizing (now that I'm here) that the locals would probably be intrigued to see pictures of a place more inaki (rural) than where they live, and of rural America in general. If anyone should feel inclined to send me some pics, I would be most appreciative (jesswrem@gmail.com - send big attachments- the only way to fill a gmail inbox is by sending a feature-length movie every day).

P.S. I'm at work right now, and my camera is not along. The next post I place will just be pics and captions of Arakawa-machi, so that you can see what its like.

Radio Silence

Greetings again! Today I will be boarding the Shinkansen (bullet train- known affectionately as the "shink") for my small farming town where I will actually be living and teaching in Japan. This also means that I will have to working such things out as my alien registration card (erstwhile known as gaijin card), post office account, et cetera.

Until I'm a properly registered gaijin, I won't be able to sign up for internet in my new apartment. I also do not know whether I will have access to internet at all while I'm waiting to get set up- so if I'm not responding to comments/emails and so on, that's why. With any luck I will have periodic access to a cybercafe or some such place, but if not it will be a while here.

Stay tuned!

Tokyo! (東京!)

I'm still not quite savvy enough to put pics where I want them, but here are a few to get you going. From the top- the view from my hotel room window (20th floor), Takashimaya: Tokyo's times square (sorry the image is a bit out of focus), and the arriving JETs all lined up at Narita.

We arrived at Narita International airport early, at around 3:30 p.m. local time. Clearing customs/security actually proved to be remarkably painless, and we were then herded onto buses that took us to the four-star Keio Plaza Hotel, where the orientation is.
Observations about Tokyo:

1. It is big. Huge. Jigundimous. It dwarfs any notion of large city I had heretofore held- the bus took 2 or 3 hours to get us to the hotel from the airport- driving through Tokyo metro area the whole way (I'm not sure how long the ride was- the 12 hour flight, sugary drinks served thereon, and feverish excitement had pretty much made me delirious at that point).

2. It is humid. Stepping out of Narita is like having a big, warm, wet sheepskin blanket draped over you.

3. It is intense. The parts that we saw during the bus ride were fairly unremarkable- squarish concrete buildings with company names on the sides, harbors, and such. Once we had a chance to explore outside the hotel, however, we ran into an intense labyrinth of lurid neon signs and turbulent crowds. Imagine standing there in your sheepskin, and then being beaten by a 7-foot transvestite with a fluorescent shovel.

It probably didn't help that we had accidentally wondered into Kabuki-cho (歌舞伎町), a district notorious for its Yakuza, bars, and porn stores (we did see at least two of those, and I imagine some Yakuza as well, although I wouldn't have known how to identify them). What looked like a normal busy shopping district quickly became more freaky the farther we wondered into it, and we had to fend off the advances of a man in African dress (don't ask me which country- but definitely from Africa), who spoke perfect English and VERY much wanted us to go check out his club, whatever was inside. I don't know what kind of club it was, but a lot of the other establishments on the same street had beckoning girls in miniskirts standing outside their storefronts, and after exhausting excuses (I don't have any money, for one), we had to flat out tell him that we were not interested, and flee for a street that would take us back to the more sane parts of Shinjuku where our hotel is located.

The orientation started today, and was 8 solid hours of information absorbtion. Fortunately, I won't have to since much of it is printed in the roughly FIVE KILOGRAMS of printed material given to us by various JET-associated organizations. I am completely exhausted, and will remember half of what I was told if I am lucky. Everything was covered from activities to do with elementary school kids to the stages of culture shock (it was strange to watch a keynote speaker stand on stage and dissect my future psychology- with any luck my culture shock won't be very bad). Following this was a traditional banquet kicked off with a traditional toast (kampai!) with Sapporo and octopus a-plenty.

The night after the orientation (tonight) was spent with my future Niigata co-JETS, who seem like a good group. We visited Takashimaya, otherwise known as the Times Square of Tokyo (much more safe and impressive than Kabuki-cho), which had insane crowds and a bronze statue of a loyal dog (whose name escapes me) who was fabled to have waited each day for his master's return from the train, even after his master had died. The sensory experience was completely overwhelming- and we got a lot of odd looks from passing Japanese (I guess that even here in Tokyo foreigners are still something of a novelty). After that we went into a Karaoke establishment for drinks and bad singing.


Karaoke places in Japan are quite different from what we know in the U.S.: back home they are mostly a bunch of equipment set up on a bar stage, which serve as a friday night attraction at (name of watering hole here). In Japan, they are multi-story buildings with private rooms where your party can drink and create dissonance without interruption from anyone you don't know. Up on the sixth floor we had some gin and tonic and sang songs for an hour, concluding with "You've Lost That Loving Feeling."

Overall I am thrilled to be here, although I will probably be able to make a more level assessment after the neon-funhouse-madness of the Tokyo orientation. I also need to sleep, so this is where this post concludes. Stay tuned for what's next!

oyasuminasai!

In the Beginning...

...the blog was a formless void.

Konichiwa everyone!

Here begins the first post of what will (hopefully) be a meticulously edited and updated blog about my adventures as an English teacher (and foreigner in general) in Japan. I'm not actually in Japan yet (T-minus 5 days to arrival!), and this set-up post is just to outline some general information about me, my new job, and how the blog will work.
First off- the general info. I will be teaching in the Niigata prefecture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niigata_Prefecture)(Here I confess some basic computer ignorance- I can't get links to work in this blog for some reason. I will paste the URL of relevant websites into the text for now. With any luck I'll have hyperlinks working soonish.), in the small village of Arakawa-machi.

Arakawa-machi has about 11,000 people, lies on a fertile plain, and is bisected by railroad tracks (ringing any bells, Newton readers?). It is a short distance from the ocean, mountains, and prefectural capital of Niigata-shi. The main industry in the area is agriculture, and the region is famous for its excellent beef, salmon, and rice (and therefore, sake).

I will be boarding the plane for Tokyo on Saturday at 7:45a.m., and arriving 15 hours later in Narita International Airport. I'll probably post from the orientation hotel, and then there will probably silence/sporadic updates for a few weeks while I get internet up and running in my apartment.

Finally (thanks for baring with me), I welcome everyone's comments and communications- you can post on the blog, or my email address is jesswrem@gmail.com. I'll be happy to respond to any personal letters anyone wants to send my way.