So long story less long, I only just got internet running in my apartment a few weeks ago (I moved in early August), and things have been oh so busy. Needless to say… life is a beach.
So so busy in fact, that I sadly was unable to work on creating this blog until recent times. To make up for that fact and to avoid a massive info dump I am splitting up my first blog post into two blog posts (can you believe it)! This part will go over a mostly accurate (hopefully) recollection of my past first few weeks in Japan!!
To kick things off, I actually want to talk about my last few weeks in America. Its crazy to me that it doesn’t feel like much time has passed since I was doing my last summer league Ultimate Frisbee game, or going to Wildwood, NJ to play frisbee on the beach with good friends, or going to see Faye Webster, or hanging out with my bud in Philly by going to the arcade or watching that Arsenal vs. Liverpool game, or even my short stint staying at my bestie’s place in DC for the annoyingly long orientation and flight. You get the idea. Though, it also feels like everything has changed and flipped all upside down, and I have no idea how I got here.
Anyway, so my first few days in Japan were spent in Shinjuku, Tokyo as all the newbies in the program like myself had to go through another set of orientation (There was a bit of orientation in DC). The hotel we were staying was super fancy, dare I say bougie (it was bougie), and I remember just immediately going to bed once I got to my room (our flight ended up being 20 hours because of delays :( ) I kinda wish I had the energy to go explore the city or something that night but I did later, and it was a long day, so it’s fine. I actually wasn’t too too jet-lagged, or at least didn’t feel that bad all week with the help of the incredibly strong coffee the hotel had. To avoid boring you to death, I will spare all the various info that was gone over during orientation like what a guy’s gotta do to stay safe during a typhoon or the different types of health insurances in Japan. My favorite part of orientation, however, was being able to talk to all the other people among the hundreds of us that were there and also seeing what my job would actually look like. I got a really crazy second-hand high out of watching the videos of other people teaching especially teaching elementary school students, which is what I currently am teaching, and remembered feeling super stoked to start working. Also, there was an overwhelming amount of white people.
The first night of orientation I, with immense conviction and will, decided to venture out into the streets. I figured that I could get over my jet-lag quicker if I stayed up longer, and it would be nice to go on a walk after I’ve been literally sitting in a chair practically for hours. And, hey, when’s the next time I’ll ever be in this city so might as well make the most of it. So, before I left, I went to the money transfer machine and converted like 100 bucks into yen because I only had like 20 yen (given to me by friends ;) ). I actually then ended up bumping into a friend I met earlier that day during the point where they made all of us split into different rooms based on where we going. This guy is also placed in Aomori-ken so I had gotten to know him. He and someone else from the UK were going out too, and I was like “where y’all going?” and then they were like “oh we are going to do some shopping” and then I said “oh nice, i was gonna just go onna walk. can i come?” and then they said “yeah!” To yap less, I basically spent that night with a bunch of British adults since after we went to Uniqlo to buy shirts, we ran into their other friends, and in typical UK fashion, they were like “we’re gonna go get a drink” That was pretty fun: they were friendly folks and I actually had to use my Japanese in Japan for the first time at the restaurant we went to because no one at our table wanted to eat the otoshi which is a small meal given to the customers as part of the table charge (we lowkey caused a bit trouble and i wished i wasn’t so jet-lagged so i could speak properly, ugh) Also, Shinjuku is really cool.
The second night of orientation was a bit of movie. It started with me reaching out to some cool friends I made for dinner plans. These folks, contrary to a lot of other folks in the program, were closer to my age which was nice. After talking with so many different people and especially after hanging out with the UK folks who were around 30, it was nice not feeling like such a young little guy. I am actually only now realizing that I am incredibly young for this job (more in part 2). Anyway, we all meet up and hit the streets. This time we were all incredibly hungry and eventually went to this place that was very nice but also expensive. I had tsukemen for the first time which is essentially ramen except the noodles are separated so you dip them into the broth as you eat. It was soo yummy ^_^ and lowkey worth the price which was like close to two thousand yen or something (I highkey forget the price and to take photo and 2000 yen is only like 13 something dollars but its a lot for like Japan standards apparently). After that, we went to a convenience store (a Family Mart I think? or was it a Lawson?) to buy drinks because the whole plan was to go to a club that one person in the group knew about. I got like a Sapporo beer and a spiked calpico thing that was sweet and it’s pretty crazy that they sell that. I remember the club we were going to didn’t open til like an hour later so we killed time by walking around. Mind you, this is only like my second night out in Tokyo, so I am just wonderstruck by all the billboards and people just walking around or handing out flyers while I’m sipping my beer. At one point, someone had to go to the bathroom so we stopped by an arcade and waited outside. We ended up just having a bunch of conversations outside like the party scenes at our colleges and crazy times we had under the influence. I learned that night the legal age in Canada is only 18 so their colleges just throw parties on orientation which is crazy. Also, I lowkey miss college.
Okay, so we got to the club after that, and as you can imagine what a club is like when you go early, it was kinda empty. The guys in our group (3) had to pay 1000 yen to get in while the girls (2) didn’t. But, we all got a free drink which was okay. The music was a little okay, I was really really hoping they would play songs from brat by Charli XCX, but it was just like, random American songs I think. One thing about this club was that some guy gave everyone on the floor a lightsaber balloon thing which was kinda fun to play with. Another was that at some point the tv displays on the floor starting counting down to a thing called “party popper time.” So party popper time ended up being paper confetti falling from the sky which was cool. I remember a little after that we went, the group went upstairs to the other dancefloor which had its own dj. I smoked a cig with some of the friends while the others were talking to some strangers we ended up acquainting with. That was fun too, and then we were like we should prob go home because we leave tomorrow and its like midnight so we should prob go to bed soon since we have to be up early again. Then, we went home.
The next day, I got all my stuff, got breakfast, got this girl’s LINE who was heading to Kyoto Prefecture which I want to go to badly, checked out of the hotel, went to where everyone in my prefecture was supposed to meet up, got on the bus to the airport, got on the plane to Misawa airport, and met my supervisor and my co-ALT senpai. Our supervisor drove us to the city where I work, which I don’t know how much I can share about that due to legal reasons (the fate of US-Japan relations lowkey rests upon my confidential shoulders). We took a pit stop at a Family Mart so I could withdraw money from the ATM, since I didn’t do that yet. Then we got gyudon at this popular chain called Yoshinoya. That was very good. Then we drove to the city hall to get our residence cards updated with our apartment addresses, put our luggages in our apartments, and then since our places weren’t really furnished, we went to the mall to buy futons so we could have something to sleep on. And then that was about.
Ok, so in interest of not going on and on about what I did at every single moment, I will speedrun the remainder of at least the most interesting bits. I got my phone and internet set up, got my bank account created, saw the Statue of Liberty, went to Obon Odori, met the GOAT of Aomori, turned 21/went to Sendai, went to my first firework festival, clocked in to the office, met everyone in my department, met the mayor, took some pics with the mayor, appeared in the newspaper (I need to find those pics), and started teaching last week. This all under the course of the past 3 weeks give or take (I also skipped over a lot of stuff like having an insane storyline involving a group of Mormons).
So that’s about how its been so far! Enjoy the pictures and I will see you in part 2 where I get emotional??