I’m Fine, Thank You. And You? - October 2010

I haven’t talked much about school life in Japan, and now might be a good time to do so. I teach junior high school, which is to say grades seven through nine. Unlike in Hong Kong, the school year begins in April, which means that I arrived at the beginning of the second term. Like Hong Kong students, Japanese students all wear uniforms, but only from junior high on; my elementary school kids all dress like normal people. Unlike me when I was a teenager, the students generally stay in one classroom while the teachers move around. You may have heard that Japanese people always take their shoes off when going indoors. That is true; all the students and teachers wear one pair of shoes to school and change into a different pair when they enter the building. You may also have heard that Japanese students are responsible for cleaning their own classrooms; that is also true. Every day ends with the students sweeping and mopping the classrooms. They also take turns serving each other lunch. One thing I’ve heard that hasn’t proven true is that discipline at Japanese schools is rigid, and the students rigorously well-behaved. As a matter of fact, the atmosphere here feels as relaxed as in a Canadian school. Perhaps more so: I don’t remember when I was growing up students routinely poking their heads into the staff room to ask teachers questions. My students are fairly well-behaved, but they may be the exception; I’ve heard some quite scary stories from other ALTs about students at other schools.

As far as English goes, second language acquisition clearly isn’t stressed as much here as it was at my Hong Kong school, or even at my own high school growing up. Formal English instruction doesn’t begin until junior high school. Recently, elementary schools have started setting aside time for foreign language activities (for "foreign language”, read “English”), but it isn’t considered a proper course. English classes in elementary school are lead by the regular teacher, with the help of an ALT (i.e. me). Junior high schools have designated English teachers, but the classes are still conducted mainly in Japanese.

This month I had my introduction to regular high school English classes, and it was a nasty surprise. I work along side the local teachers, who usually do most of the planning and teaching. Sometimes one of them will ask me to do a warm-up or prepare an activity to practise the grammar point, but my biggest role in the classroom seems to be modelling pronunciation. There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself; I am, of course, the expert on pronunciation of English words. But some of the things we do in class are truly appalling.

Here’s how the teachers teach “reading”: First the local teacher has me read the passage to the students. Then they have me model pronunciation of the difficult words. So far so good. Then I read the entire passage again, sentence by sentence, and the students repeat after me. Then we do it again! Then the students practise reading the passage in pairs. Finally the teacher has some of the students (usually the five or so brightest in the class) come up to the front and write the passage translated into Japanese, then explains the difficult grammar points to the class.

That’s it. No engagement with the subject matter. No attempt to work out for oneself what the passage means. No comprehension questions. No skimming, no scanning, no circling the difficult words and looking them up in the dictionary. Fifteen minutes of each class are devoted to speaking the text out loud. Which is a great way to kill time while making the students suffer enough to feel like they must be learning. But it teaches them nothing. I’ll admit I’m not a professional teacher, and it’s always possible (though unlikely) that the students do much more productive activities when I’m not present. But all the teacher’s training I’ve had, not to mention my own second-language learning experience, tells me that this is a waste of time, and that there are a dozen more useful things – and at least a half-dozen more fun ones – the students could be doing.

The most frustrating part is my own culpability in all this. I have, of course, heard lots of stories about foreign teachers in Asia feeling like “human tape recorders”, but I naïvely assumed that a well-established institution like the JET Programme would know how to make good use of its teachers. Unfortunately, I don’t work for the JET Programme, I work for a Japanese junior high school, and evidently there are junior high schools in Japan where backwards teaching practices still persist. It’s hard to see how the students can learn anything under this system, and except for a handful of studious ones they don’t seem to be learning much. Most of them can barely string a sentence together, and I’ve more than once asked a student, “How are you?”, only to get a reply of, “Huh?” To a friend: “’How are you?’ wa nan desu ka?”* This despite the fact that every single English class begins with the teacher asking, “How are you?”, and the students chorusing, “I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

I’m going to do what I can to alleviate this situation. Truth be told, it in some ways makes my job easier; the bar has been set so low that almost anything I try feels like it must be an improvement. Since I get asked to prepare warm-ups and activities, I’m doing that with an eye to filling in some of the gaps in what the students are learning. Speaking practice is the biggest one; most students are reluctant to speak in English, and when they do they use as few words as possible.

Me: “What does the magic box do?”
Student: “Three wishes!”
Me: “What do they wish for?”
Student: “Big dinner!”
Me: “What are they going to do now?”
Student: “King!”
Me: “Yes… it has something to do with the king… Could I possibly trouble you for a verb?”

It didn’t help that the first time I ever did a model reading, it was of a passage about the bombing of Hiroshima. Nothing ruins a poignant story like hearing thirty students parroting the words, “…but the girl never moved again.”

I suppose there are really two ways I can look at the situation. If I think of it in terms of my own work ethic, my duty as a teacher, and my responsibility to help the students learn, then clearly I’m a failure, and part of a failed system. Much as I might like to think that I can make a difference and inspire the students and teachers to change their attitudes, I know that my school had an ALT before me. And one before her. And one before that one. And none of them managed to change anything.

The other way is to think in terms of my own experience, and what I hope to get out of my time here. From that perspective, I’m doing really well. I’m getting paid good money to do a fairly easy job, while living and travelling in a foreign country. As long as I can focus on that, I know I’ll enjoy my time in Japan.

I am enjoying myself, too. At the beginning of the month I went to a work party for the “fourth year” teachers. That is to say, everyone on the staff who isn’t a first, second, or third year teacher: the principal, the vice principal, the school nurse, various support staff, and me. I was afraid it would be frightfully awkward, given that none of those people speaks much English, but it ended up being a good time anyway.

Later in the month we had a weekend given over to school sports competitions. Since nobody told me how to get to any of the events, I spent several hours sitting at my desk making work for myself before someone had pity on me and offered me a ride to a baseball game. It was nice to be able to cheer for my students, and the game was interesting enough, although I don’t know much about baseball.

I’ve put up a new English board, the subject of which is emotions. It’s designed to give the students some more options for answering the question “How are you?”. I’ve also been going around the school asking students that question and demanding an answer other than “Fine.” I’ve started making coffee in the morning with my coffee maker, and am now bringing my lunch milk home to have with it.

For Thanksgiving, I invited a bunch of the other Canadians over for a potluck dinner at my house. It was nice to be able to celebrate the holiday despite being so far from home, and since two of the Canadians are vegetarian (not including me) it ended up being an all-vegetarian Thanksgiving.

Shortly after that, one of the Singaporean ALTs invited me to go to a Domoto Koichi pop concert. It was my first ever Japanese pop concert, although I don’t exactly feel inspired to go to more. The songs were up-beat enough, but I didn’t go home humming any of them. I couldn’t understand most of the lyrics, except for the few lines in English, and those tended to be super cheesy. Still, it was a good experience to have at least once, and now I can tell my students I saw Domoto Koichi live.

Another day, we went on the “Loople” bus, which goes around the interesting sights in the city. The first stop was the mausoleum of Date Masamune, revered as the founder of Sendai. Then we went to the site of Sendai Castle, which is to say the hill where Sendai Castle used to be. It wasn’t much to look at, but there was a statue of Masamune and a small gallery. Then we spent an hour or so in the museum, looking at historical artefacts, including old suits of armour. The person I was with told me a story that Darth Vader’s look was supposedly modelled on that of Date’s armour, and the more I looked at it, the more plausible the theory sounded. We finished up the day with “gyu-tan” (beef tongue) at Sendai Station. It’s one of Sendai’s signature dishes.

I went to a Japanese tea ceremony workshop, where we were shown the art of making tea. Then we participated in a tea ceremony where we sat on tatami floors and were served green tea and Japanese sweets.

My Japanese neighbours took me on a day trip to Matsushima, a coastal town famed in song for the beauty of its island-studded bay. As with most over-hyped attractions, Matsushima suffers something of a backlash, and I’d been warned that it was a big disappointment. I went with an open mind though, and found it quite pleasant. Besides walking along the water-front and seeing the islands, we also took a stroll through the garden of a Buddhist temple, which was lovely. Then we went to visit Ishinomaki and other neighbouring towns. Ishinomaki’s attractions included an intriguingly random replica Statue of Liberty, and an old Japanese church with an absurdly steep staircase.

My school’s tea lady and another teacher invited me to go with them to Jogi-san temple, a Buddhist temple a short drive out of the city. The main building is a beautiful wooden structure with gilt decorations and stained glass. Compared to the stone work of a lot of traditional churches, it was a very warm-feeling place to worship in. We attended the service inside, which I didn’t understand, but which was still interesting. We had to kneel through the whole thing, but fortunately it didn’t last too long. Afterwards we walked around the complex. I tried sankaku aburage (a kind of fried Tofu) for the first time, and also dango (a kind of mochi) with miso sauce. Both were quite nice. We looked at the five-storey pagoda, and fed the koi.

When we were done at the temple we paid a visit to the Nikka Whiskey brewery. Alcohol doesn’t much appeal to me in general, but it was interesting to tour the facility and learn a bit about the whisky-making process. The tour was mostly in Japanese, but they had a pamphlet in English, Chinese, and Korean, so I could at least follow some of it. At the end of the tour we got to try free samples. Ironically, since I was the only one not driving, I was the only one who could drink anything. (The blood-alcohol limit for driving in Japan is zero.) I had some apple wine, which tasted quite nice, and tried some of the candy in the souvenir shop.

On the way home we stopped at a fruit and vegetable market, where I bought six normal-sized apples for $3.80. I was so happy I wanted to cry.

The hot weather left us at the end of August. September was a cool month, but now that we’ve gotten into October it’s turned downright cold. It’s not that the temperature is unusual for the time of year. But here’s another way in which Japan is reminiscent of Hong Kong: they don’t believe in insulation here. Despite the fact that this part of Japan gets four seasons, including occasional snowfall in the winter, I feel like I’m living in a cardboard box. Every evening I come home to a freezing apartment and sit here shivering. I’ve turned my summer blanket into a floor-rug and piled all three of my fleeces onto my bed. If it gets much colder I’m going to have to pull out my winter comforter. Fortunately, I have three heaters plus my air-conditioner, so hopefully even when it gets colder I’ll still be able to keep warm.

* “… wa nan desu ka?”: Japanese for “What is … ?”

Gambarimasu!* - September 2010

Summer break ended at the end of August, and I finally got my first taste of teaching in Japan. All of the English teachers allowed me to take an entire class for a self-introduction lesson, and I basically gave the same lesson to every class. First I showed the students a bunch of pictures and asked them to guess what they were of: me, my family, my friends, cities I’d visited, and things I liked. Then I had all of them write letters to me, in which they could give me similar information about themselves. I think it went reasonably well. The first-year students were really shy, and barely wanted to say anything. Surprisingly, the third-years were also pretty quiet. My favourite classes were the second-years. Since the classes get split in half for English lessons, they’re relatively small, which seems to generate a more relaxed atmosphere.

Since then I haven’t spent much time in the classroom. The students are writing tests, and the teachers have been focusing on review and correction. Sitting at my desk all day has gotten a bit boring, but at least I’ve had things to do. I got lots of letters from my students, and I’ve spent long hours reading them and writing responses. Most of them are very basic, even those from the third-year students, so I know I’ll have to keep my lessons simple.

At the beginning of September my school had its annual Culture Festival. It was on a Saturday, but we all got a day off in compensation. I set up a table on Canada featuring all the tourist material I had brought from home. The day also featured some traditional drumming, a traditional Japanese dance, and boys doing synchronised swimming. In the evening I attended my first work party, which was both an after-party and a welcome party for me.

While I haven’t been teaching much at my home school, I have started making elementary school visits. I visit two schools, one on Thursdays, and one on Fridays. I was really nervous about the prospect of having to teach elementary school students, but I’m actually enjoying it a lot. The lessons come pre-planned, so I don’t have to make any activities. I just model pronunciation and play games with the kids. It’s boring and repetitive, but the students are worth it, especially the first- and second-years. They’re so cute, and they all love me, just because I’m tall and I talk funny!

As part of our training, all of the new ALTs also had to deliver two model lessons at an elementary school. My American partner and I gave a lesson on Canadian and American culture. Unfortunately, the students at the school were much higher-level than the students we were used to, so we ran out of material early and had to improvise. We were better prepared for our second lesson, where we taught emotions.

Two of my students participated in Sendai’s speech competition. One of them read a story from a book; the other wrote an original speech. My predecessor had worked with them a lot before she left, but I helped with their training in the last few weeks leading up to the competition, and I also went to watch them. The first half was fairly repetitive, with several students delivering the same speech, but the second half was interesting because we got to hear them give their thoughts on various subjects. One of my students was one of five third-place winners in her category; the other came in first! I was very excited and proud of them, even though I know I didn’t have much of a hand in their success. The girl who won got to go on to the prefecture-wide competition. I helped her practise her speech more in the intervening weeks. Sadly, when the day came, she didn’t end up winning anything. She handled it well, though. I was proud of her.

This month I began taking Japanese classes. They go for two hours every Tuesday night. Several other ALTs are also in the class, as well as a few other foreigners. Although I am immersed in the language, I figure I won’t improve very quickly without some formal education. The JET Programme’s correspondence course doesn’t start until November, and it’s nice to have speaking practice with other beginners.

This would probably be a good time to make some comparisons between Chinese and Japanese. Although I know very little about Chinese, I’ve learned enough about it to recognise some differences and similarities. As most people know, Japan imported its writing system from China, along with several words. The languages also share some grammar patterns, such as the tendency to put modifiers before nouns, the absence of count-nouns, and the use of “counters”.

That being said, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered two more different-sounding languages. Chinese pronunciation is as complex as English, and completely different. Besides unfamiliar consonant sounds, it has many vowel sounds that are entirely unlike English vowels, as well as the alien concept of tones. Because of this, Chinese is a very difficult language to pick up. When I was in Hong Kong, I was terrified of saying anything, for fear that I would use the wrong vowel, or the wrong tone, and accidentally say something obscene. Japanese, in contrast, may have the single easiest pronunciation on the planet. It has fourteen consonant sounds and five vowel sounds, most of which have English approximants. With a few exceptions, every syllable consists of no more than one consonant and one vowel. The trade-off is that there are only about a hundred possible syllables that can be used to make words. Chinese pronunciation may be difficult, but you have to give it credit for allowing a lot of information to be compressed into a single syllable. Japanese words, in contrast, combine many syllables and tend to be quite long. Compare the Japanese, “Watashi wa anata o aishiteru,” with the Cantonese, “Ngo oi nei,” or the English, “I love you.” Another unfortunate result is that while it’s relatively easy for English-speakers to pick up Japanese pronunciation, the reverse does not hold true. Japanese-speakers learning English have to cope with unfamiliar vowels and many more consonants than they’re used to, and trying to fit a large number of consonant sounds together without any vowels between them presents a real challenge. To see this, all you have to do is look at transliterations between the two languages. Every sound in Japanese can be represented in the Roman alphabet, with letters to spare. Conversely, in katakana, the English “r” and “l” look the same, “s” and “z” double for the soft and hard “th” sounds, and the same vowel gets used to represent the short “a” and “u” sounds, as well as the schwa. Moreover, a single syllable of English that contains several consonants can get stretched out to something much longer, which is why “straw” comes out as “sutoroo”, and “ice-cream” is “aisu kuriimu”. I’m beginning to get an idea of what it must be like for Chinese-speakers to see Chinese words transliterated into English.

In terms of learning the language, the simplicity of the pronunciation is a big help. Now that I’ve learned both the hiragana and katakana alphabets, I can read a lot of things, particularly all the Japanese words that are really borrowed from English. It feels a lot like I’m learning to read all over again; I have to sound every word out slowly, and often say it to myself several times before I figure out what it is. I spent long minutes in an aisle of the supermarket sounding out the names of spices, and was very pleased to discover that they had everything I needed to make curry. Structurally, Japanese is very different from English; as often as not in Japanese it feels like you’re saying everything backwards. But though it’s unfamiliar, I do admire Japanese for the coherence of its structure. Subjects, objects, and indirect objects are all clearly marked with particles, and verbs always come at the end of the sentence. In fact the structure seems quite similar to Latin, not that I’ve ever studied that language either.

The night class has been a valuable opportunity for speaking practice. In most other situations, my Japanese is so weak that it’s best to speak in English or not at all. At school, I rarely speak to any of the teachers. When I first arrived, I was able to speak to many of them under the pretext of interviewing them for a presentation, but that only generated very short conversations, and, apart from the English teachers, few of them seem interested in flexing their English skills or dumbing down their Japanese enough to chat with me. There is one surprising exception: my school’s tea lady has been really friendly since I got here. Even though her English is quite poor, she does have enough vocabulary to express many ideas. Moreover, unlike many of the people I’ve met here, she has mastered the art of talking to allophones. Whenever she talks to me, she speaks slowly, with several pauses to check my comprehension. If she knows the English word, she’ll use it. If she doesn’t know the English word and I don’t know the Japanese word, she’ll try to think of a different word, or use gestures to explain what she means. She’s also quite patient with me and my feeble attempts to speak Japanese to her, and I’m grateful to have someone I can practise on.

I was warned before I arrived here that it could take about a month to get internet, and it did indeed prove to be a lengthy process. Fortunately, I have my own computer with a connection at work. Unfortunately, there are no internet cafés near my house, which means I had to take a train into downtown Sendai if I wanted to send personal e-mails. I found a nice one that’s quite comfortable and provides free drinks, but, like most public establishments here, it allows smoking, and even though I sat in the non-smoking section the smoke would usually start to get to me after a couple of hours.

Different people suggested different providers I could go with, but I was also warned that some plans wouldn’t work as well for me because of my location. In the end, I just got in touch with my predecessor and asked her what plan she had used. I printed out the information, found the appropriate counter in the electronics store, and told them, “This is what I want.” They were nice enough to call in someone from another department who spoke English so we could get the details sorted out, and I signed the contract that day. That was at the end of August. The following week they called me to set up a time to connect me. Of course the call was in Japanese, so I had to hand the phone off to my head teacher. What followed was a long series of calls back and forth between my head teacher and the internet company. I have no idea what they talked about, and she only came to me a few times with questions or information, but eventually they set up a date for someone to come and install my internet. In the week that followed, I received several packages containing passwords, installation software, and my modem. Finally on Saturday a man came to install the modem. Everything seemed to go well, and the modem worked properly, but when he tried to install the software that went with it, it wouldn’t run. Neither of us understood what the problem was, and we couldn’t communicate with each other without a common language. Finally, I resorted to calling Sendai’s Information Support Hotline. It’s a free translation service for foreigners in Japan, which is extremely helpful. I’d resisted calling them before because I didn’t want to clutter up their phone lines with trivial matters, but the situation seemed to merit it. After a lot of back and forth they explained that the software couldn’t be installed because my computer was running on a foreign operating system. Note that Windows itself wasn’t the problem; most Japanese P.C.s run on Windows. The problem was that I had the wrong version of Windows. So I had a modem, but still no internet. I again got my head teacher to help me out. She called the company back, and arranged a time when they could send a technician to fix the problem. She ended up coming along too, just to make sure everything went smoothly. In the end, the technician didn’t even install any software on my computer; he just did something to the modem, and all of a sudden my internet worked fine. I had to pay $80 for this additional consideration, but by that time I was happy just to be connected. If they want to make foreigners pay extra just for being foreign, I guess there isn’t much I can do about it.

So now I have internet, which should make it easier to keep in touch with people. It also means I can listen to the radio from foreign countries, although unfortunately it seems none of the video sights I normally use will work here. So I have The Current, but no Doctor Who.

In the middle of September we had a long weekend, and I joined a group of Sendai and Miyagi ALTs for a trip to Bandai-Asahi National Park in Fukushima. Mount Bandai is a now inactive volcano that blew its top in 1888. The eruption caused the creation of hundreds of lakes in the surrounding area. We stayed for two nights in cabins on the shore of one of the lakes, exploring the area by day, and enjoying barbecue and s’mores by night. On the day of our arrival I took a walk around the “Five Coloured Lakes”, each of which has a different colour thanks to mineral deposits.

On the second day we climbed Mount Bandai itself. I thought I was pretty tough, having mastered the Grouse Grind three times, but this proved to be the most gruelling hike of my life! The guys who lead the hike claimed that the whole thing would take about five hours, but I’m clearly not as fast a climber as they are. It took about three and a half hours to reach the summit. The really brutal part was the climb down. Grouse Mountain had in no way prepared me for that; I’d always taken the cable car down the mountain, having been warned that the downward climbs are far more strenuous than upward ones. I now know why. After a stop at a small café near the top for a rest and some hot ramen, we began the two-and-a-half-hour descent. The path was steep and slippery, and it’s a wonder that I managed not once to fall. It was hardest of all on my toes, which bore the brunt of each downward step. You wouldn’t think it, but banging one’s toes against the front of one’s shoes repeatedly over the course of several hours has the same cumulative effect as stubbing them hard once. After the first hour or so every step became painful, and I was amazed when I eventually took my shoes off that my toes hadn’t turned purple. By the time we got back to the camp site it was dark. Every part of my legs ached: my thighs, my calves, my heels, and especially my toes, which felt like they must have been broken. I guess I feel a sense of accomplishment having completed the hike, but I never want to do another one like it again. I never bought an “I Survived the Grouse Grind” T-shirt, but had they been available I would definitely have bought an “I Survived Mount Bandai” one. Incidentally, the couple who run the café apparently have to do the hike every day, both ways, with supplies on their backs. Incredible!

On the last day I visited a nearby museum famed for its collection of works by Salvador Dalí. I’m not a fan of Dalí; I find his work unsettling, and during my visit I was suitably unsettled. It was definitely an impressive collection, though, and well worth the trip.

My Japanese neighbours invited me over one night for the Autumn festival. This seems to be the Japanese equivalent of the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, but doesn’t seem to be as big an event here. I also went to a Japanese sound concert, which featured musicians playing various traditional Japanese instruments, predominantly the koto.

I’m settling down a bit more into Sendai and into my apartment. I gave my microwave away to one ALT, and got a coffee maker from another. It’s still too warm for hot coffee in the morning, but I’ll appreciate it when the weather gets colder. I’ve also figured out how my toilet’s supposed to work! Apparently the reason that there’s no sink in the room with the toilet is that the toilet itself doubles as a sink: when it’s flushed, water flows through a tap into the toilet tank, and one’s supposed to wash one’s hands in the water as the tank fills up. Now that I realise that, I think it’s actually a very smart and efficient system.

At school, we’ve started getting school lunch every day. They deduct $50 from our paycheques every month for it, which seems cheaper than bringing my own lunch would be, and I figure it’s an opportunity to see what kind of food is popular in Japan. As you might guess, rice is a staple; every meal includes a bowl of white rice, except once a week when they substitute bread. I’m not a huge fan of the rice, which is usually served and eaten plain. To my mind, plain white rice is about as interesting as… well, I really don’t know what to compare it to; plain white rice is pretty much my definition of “bland”. But my co-workers made fun of me when I tried mixing it with other things. There are exceptions, though. The curry is really good, and can be eaten with rice. I’m also learning to like more unusual things like konyaku (a tasteless jelly-like substance used to add bulk to dishes) and little dried fish (a popular snack food). Unfortunately, the meals are not vegetarian-friendly; every one contains at least one form of meat, and often two or three. Every meal also comes with a small carton of whole milk, which tastes good but probably isn’t that healthy. The one thing I truly dislike is the battered fish: whole fish chock full of mealy white eggs with no meat to speak of on their little bones. Yuck!

I’m not putting much effort into vegetarianism here. Vegetarian options are unusual in Japanese restaurants, and between eating out and school lunch, meat is a major part of my daily diet. I have been impressed, however, to learn that there are a few vegetarian ALTs in Sendai, and that they plan to stay vegetarian during their stay here. One of them organised a vegetarian dinner at the beginning of the month, and introduced the newbies to a nice Indian restaurant. Although I plan to sample to full range of Japanese cuisine, it’s nice to know I can get a vegetarian meals if I want to, and most of my cooking is still vegetarian.

I don’t eat out often, but I thought it might be worth it to try some of the restaurants in the area. My predecessor recommended the ramen shop across the street, and I’ve taken to eating there on nights when I have class. The staff there are very friendly, and always eager to chat with me, despite my language difficulties.

In the news this month, Canada has a new Governor General. There’s also been a lot of talk about the census, and whether completion of the long-form version should be mandatory. I’ll certainly acknowledge that making the census mandatory greatly increases the chance of the results being accurate. On the other hand, it’s debatable whether we really need accurate statistics on all the things surveyed therein. I’d have to look at the form to know. For my part, it doesn’t concern me, as I’m out of the country. Instead, I participated in the Japanese census!

* “Gambarimasu!”: A Japanese expression meaning, roughly, “I’ll do my best!”

Japanese to Me - August 2010

My school offered to let me take a holiday on Friday, but I was anxious to get into the work routine, and I wasn’t about to waste a day of leave without knowing what I wanted to do with it. Fortunately, my predecessor (the person who worked at my school and lived in my apartment before me) left me a bunch of papers and two notebooks full of information, so I was able to find the right bus to my school. Even so, it was a good thing I gave myself some extra time and caught the early bus, because I managed to miss my stop and had to walk back for half an hour in the sweltering heat, but at least I got there on time. I was glad I chose to work that day; it gave me a chance to go through the material left to me by my predecessor, take a tour of the school, and meet some of my fellow teachers. Besides, I had spent the last three months receiving things from the JET Programme, and I wanted to start actually earning them.

I spent the weekend unpacking my stuff and cleaning my apartment. My apartment has been held by several generations of JET participants before me, and the good news is that it already contains lots of the thing I know I’ll use. The bad news is that it’s full of random pieces of junk, much of which is probably useful, but which I’ll have to sort through. Although the place is basically tidy, there are lots of corners where layers of grime have built up, and I keep finding cupboards and shelves full of stuff that needs to be organised.

I guess I should start by describing my apartment. My place is fairly large for a one-person dwelling. I have two rooms with tatami floors. Tatami is a kind of Japanese reed mat that gets used for the flooring of traditional Japanese houses. I like it, although it can’t be washed and doesn’t bear heavy furniture or shoes. One of the two rooms is my bedroom and the other is my living room. They are separated from each other and from the rest of the house by sliding doors. The rest of the flat has vinyl flooring. The front room contains a small kitchen and dining area, and leads onto the bathroom. The bathroom is the oddest feature of the place. Separated from the front hall by a curtain is an alcove containing a washing machine and a sink with a vanity. Off this are two doors. One leads into the shower cubicle, which also contains a bathtub. The other leads into a closet containing the toilet. Over-all, the whole thing feels as though it was put together by an alien – who knew what all the requisite components were but had no idea how to combine them. I mean, I have to open a door to get from the toilet to the sink, and there isn’t even a proper door separating the sink from the rest of the flat. What gives?

As I said, I have not a bed but a futon, and this has to be folded up and stored in the closet every day, leaving the room almost empty. In my living room I have a T.V. and D.V.D. player, which, thanks to region-coding, I’ll need if I want to rent any movies here. I also have a kotatsu, a kind of square coffee table with a small furnace in it. The idea is to drape a blanket over it and turn the furnace on so that it keeps you warm. Not that I need any help keeping warm right now, but I look forward to trying it out in the winter time. My kitchen contains a small fridge, a microwave, a rice-cooker, and a gas stove, but no oven. That unfortunately will limit my cooking a bit, but I coped without an oven in Hong Kong, and I’m sure I can manage it again. I would like to get a toaster-oven though, so that I can make toast and maybe experiment with some mini-baking.

Though annoying, exploring the various corners and cupboards has been something of an adventure. I keep finding things that at first look like rubbish, but that I later discover have a very practical purpose. All those flashlights lying around? They’ll be useful if there’s an earthquake, or if the circuit breaker goes. That plastic thing that looks like a giant clothes pin, and that other plastic thing that looks like one of those swatters they used to beat mats out a hundred years ago? The clothes pin is for hanging out my futon to dry, and the swatter is to beat it, which is apparently something I’ll want to do every week or so. And those bags hanging up by the doorway? They actually contain emergency supplies I can use in the event of an earthquake, including a bag of ten-yen coins for the public phones!

My place is in a suburb of Sendai, fairly far out from the city centre. Over-all, I’m quite pleased about that. On my JET application, I requested a semi-urban placement, and my location is definitely semi-urban. Sendai has the amenities of a large city, but my neighbourhood is quiet, and my schools are practically semi-rural! The trade-off is that I’m somewhat isolated from the rest of the city, and getting around is difficult. I don’t know if it’s just Sendai, or just the area I live in, but I’ve been less than impressed with public transportation here. It’s a twenty-five-minute train ride to get to downtown Sendai, and a fifteen-minute bus ride to get to my school. That wouldn’t be so bad if the services ran more often, but the train only comes about three times an hour, and the bus comes once an hour – if I’m lucky. Every morning I have one bus that will get me to school on time (as opposed to forty-five minutes early or half an hour late) and if I miss the bus to go home I have to either wait two hours for the next one or pay for a train ride. I feel like I’m back in elementary school having to catch the school bus! Transit is also expensive. A single ride usually costs around $2.00,* which seems reasonable in itself, but makes no allowances for transferring. The result is that a round trip involving, say, a train, a subway, and a bus can cost upwards of $12.00! Nor are there unlimited monthly passes available. I’m half regretting that I didn’t bother to get an international driver’s permit before I came here, although I know cars are expensive too.

Our first full week in Sendai was devoted to orientation. We started on Monday with a welcome ceremony, and spent the rest of the week learning basic survival, discussing what to expect from our schools, and touring the facilities at our disposal. Our advisors sent us home nursing fears about mould (it’s a problem in Japan’s hot, humid climate), cavities (they don’t fluoridate the water here, which seems reasonable, or the toothpaste, which seems excessive), earthquakes (Japan is on the Ring of Fire, after all), and sexual assault from our students (apparently Japanese children don’t get the “Good Touches/Bad Touches” lesson). Most memorable was the turn in the earthquake bus, where we got to experience – safety belts in place – what it would be like to be in a severe earthquake. It was pretty scary, not because we were in any danger, but because I wouldn’t want to experience one of those without being strapped to a bolted-down chair! Apparently Sendai is overdue for a major earthquake. We’ll see if one happens while I’m here.

When I came back to work the following week I got a nice surprise: my own school laptop! This is actually a first for all the teachers, not just me, and I’m very grateful for it because I know it will make planning and preparing lessons much easier. Of course, everything is in Japanese, which is a difficulty, but there are two mitigating factors. One is that the computer runs on Windows, so I’m already familiar with most of the programs, commands, and short-cuts. Say what you will about the Microsoft corporation, but I’ve never been so grateful to have grown up using their software! The other factor is that many of the major commands aren’t so much written in Japanese as in “Ingrish”, which is to say English words written in katakana. I’m sure if I was a Japanese-speaker I’d find that quite silly, but as an English-speaker I’ve found it very helpful. It’s also been good katakana practice; I spent a good long while on my first day just sounding words out and trying to figure out what they meant. “Do-ki-yu-me-n-to… dokyumento… Documents! Ma-i-pi-ku-chi-ya… mai pikucha… My Pictures! O-pu-shi-yo-n… opushon… Options! Shi-ya-t-to-da-u-n… shattodaun… Shut Down! Ki-ya-n-se-ru… kyanseru… cancer? Can sell? Cancel!” And so on and so on.

I arrived at my school in the middle of the summer holiday, but despite the suggestion that this would be a good time to use up some of my vacation days, I’ve found plenty of ways to keep busy. I spent my first week planning my first lesson, organising a display for my school’s upcoming culture festival, and creating my first English board. I had to bug a teacher for a place to put it up, but she was very accommodating, and found me a board I could use. My September board is all about Canada. I’m going to try to put a new one up every month. I’m enjoying work a lot so far. It’s nice to have the opportunity to be creative and to share my culture. Of course, it also helps that I haven’t done any teaching yet, and that I’ve done most of my work by myself, at my computer. This is the best kind of work, after all: the kind that doesn’t involve any actual human interaction!

In terms of adapting to life in Sendai, one of the biggest initial challenges has been the heat. It doesn’t feel quite as hot as Hong Kong did, but I’m not sure if that’s because it’s actually cooler here, or just because, having weathered one Asian summer, I’m better prepared for my second. As in Hong Kong, it’s not just the heat but the humidity that’s oppressive. What I notice most of all, though, is the sweat. This is the kind of heat where beads of perspiration literally roll down your face, and you can work up a sweat just sitting still. Where you drink several litres of water a day, but need surprisingly few bathroom breaks. Where you keep the air conditioning on all day and only feel a little bit guilty about it. I sleep without covers every night, and still need a shower in the morning to wash the sweat off, and often another one in the evening. Even the teachers at my school have commented on how hot this summer has been. I notice that they all have little towels that they use to dry their hands and mop their foreheads. It seems like a very good idea!

Another huge challenge is obviously the language barrier. This is my first time living in a non-English-speaking country. In Hong Kong, English is the minority language, and most people speak Cantonese, which can make it difficult to get around or talk to people. But English is an official language, and all government services and most large businesses are accessible in English. Many services in Japan are also available in English, and of all the foreign languages, English is by far the most commonly spoken. (Which is kind of baffling given the close proximity of China and Korea, but I’m not complaining.) The difference is that, whereas Hong Kong is a bilingual country where English is the language of the minority, Japan is a unilingual country, where English is the language of foreigners. So if being an English-speaker in Hong Kong is like being a Francophone in Ottawa, then being an English-speaker in Sendai is like being a Francophone in London, England. Or a Hispanophone in New York city. Or a Cantonese-speaker in Vancouver. There may be lots of signage in your language, and many people may speak your language, and it may even be a required subject in schools. But it isn’t the national language, and people are in no way obligated to use it when they speak to you. You are the foreigner, and the onus is on you to learn the local language, not the other way around.

With that in mind, I’ve been doing what I can to improve my Japanese, but acquiring a new language isn’t easy. I never succeeded at learning French, and though I plan to make a game effort here in Japan, I know it’s going to be a long and frustrating process. I was pleased on my first day in Sendai when I was able to successfully ask for and buy ice-cream, but the truth is my functional vocabulary is pretty much limited to “Do you have…?”, “Please”, “Thank you”, “Excuse me”, and “I don’t understand.” It’s a bit depressing. At one point, I got so sick of saying “wakarimasen”* that I just took to smiling stupidly at people and shaking my head like an idiot. I was feeling pretty bad about my prospects of picking up the language at that rate, until it occurred to me that I had been in Japan for all of one week! That gave me some perspective, and I started to cheer up.

One of the differences between Hong Kong and Japan that surprised me is that, whereas in Hong Kong people will generally just look at you and assume you speak English, people here will actually address you in Japanese and expect you to understand. Which is nice, in a way. I’m glad they don’t think foreigners are stupid and incapable of learning the language. But it doesn’t do me much good, since I don’t (yet) speak it. The other thing that surprised me is that many people don’t seem to know how to deal with allophones. Maybe it’s partly my ESL training, or the kind of people I hang out with, but I feel like in Canada we generally have a sense of how to talk to foreign-language-speakers. Speak slowly; use small words; avoid idioms. Complement your verbal communication with gestures, and rephrase if the person doesn’t understand the first time around. While lots of people here also do those things, many seem completely clueless. Several times people have tried to engage me in conversation by rattling off a complete sentence at a normal speed. When I tell them I don’t understand, they simply rattle off another, equally complex sentence, and then look to me for comprehension. At that point I can only look apologetic and try to make them understand, as gently as possible, that it’s all Japanese to me.

The good news is that I have lots of resources to help me. I’m in Japan, surrounded by Japanese people, working at a Japanese school. A couple of people gave me Japanese study material before I left Ottawa. The JET Programme offers free Japanese courses to its participants. And there are lots of programmes here in Sendai for people who want to improve their Japanese skills. At this rate, the only thing standing between me and learning Japanese is me!

My cooking has been fairly rudimentary so far, but at least I’m managing to cook for myself. Our orientation included a survival cooking class, and I’ve been experimenting with the recipes they taught us. So far I’ve been living on stir-fry, Japanese curry, cold soba noodles, onigiri, and miso soup. Our instructors recommended that we make miso soup with red miso, which is a lot tastier than white miso, and for the first time I’m actually discovering that I like miso soup. I’m also learning to love umeboshi, the pickled plums that get used in onigiri.

Despite discovering new Japanese foods, I do find myself missing certain things. I haven’t felt the need for cheese yet, but I was surprised to realise, after a few weeks of living here, that it simply isn’t sold in the regular grocery stores. Or rather, the stores sell almost every variation on cheese you can think of, including cream cheese, parmesan cheese, Kiri cheese, shredded cheese, cheese strings, and cheese balls, but go looking for something as mundane as a block of orange (or, preferably, white) cheddar, and you’ll be completely stymied! One thing I have been craving is fruit. Not that there isn’t plenty of fruit available here, it’s just that it’s almost comically expensive. You know how in Canada apples usually cost one to two dollars a pound? Well here in Japan, they cost one to two dollars an apple. A tray of four can cost you five or six bucks; the same money can get you three peaches. Granted the fruit is about four times the size of Canadian fruit, so I suppose it evens out, but I don’t see how it benefits me to pay more for a bigger apple. I only want a regular-sized apple; getting a bigger one just means I’m either going to make myself sick trying to finish it, or have to throw half of it away. It’s not like I can cut a wedge out of it and save the rest in the fridge for later! (I mean, I guess I could do that, but it wouldn’t taste very good!) Peanut butter is also a lot more expensive than I’m used to. I paid a few dollars for the first 140g jar I bought, and counted myself lucky when I found a 350g jar for $4.00. (Although I wanted to rant at someone, “Do you know that in my country I buy this stuff at $3.00 a kilogram?!”)

In terms of socialising, my situation is very much like the one in Hong Kong. I’m one of seventy ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) in Sendai, and together we form a kind of instant gai-jin* community. This group is a bit more diverse than the Hong Kong cohort, though. Although most of us are fresh out of university, there are also several ALTs in their upper twenties and thirties. We also come from a much broader range of countries. There are ALTs here from all over the Anglosphere: Great Britain and Ireland, Canada and the United States, Australia and New Zealand, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, and Singapore.

Still, nice as it is to have fellow foreigners around, it’s also important to me to meet local Japanese people. In this respect, my predecessor has been very helpful. She left me the names and numbers of a couple of her friends, and when I had some free time, I decided to call them. They’ve both been very friendly and helpful, and have offered to show me around Sendai and teach me about different aspects of Japanese culture. They also introduced me to a church in my area, for which I’m very grateful. Finding a church is always an important part of moving to a new city for me, but in Sendai the churches are sparse, and most of them are in Japanese. The church I’ve started going to is also in Japanese, but in other ways it’s quite welcoming. Although the congregation is small, there are many young people there, and a surprising number of English-speakers. Besides several Japanese people who speak fluent to passable English, there is also a group of American missionaries who speak varying levels of Japanese. The structure of the service is basically familiar. I don’t understand the songs lyrics, but I can usually follow along with them, and indeed I’m finding them very good reading practice. And sometimes people translate the sermon into English for me. Although it’s always nice to experiment with different churches, I think I’m probably going to keep going to this one on a regular basis.

I expected to arrive in Japan and be both fascinated and horrified by all the differences, to go through highs of euphoria and lows of depression. The truth is, I don’t really feel like I’m in a foreign country. I don’t know if it’s just where I am (a city too big to be really traditional but too small to be really touristy), or the fact that I’ve lived over-seas before, but for the most part, Sendai feels like everywhere else, except that the food is different, and I’m on the wrong side of the language barrier. So, with neither the excitement of being a tourist nor the stress of massive culture-shock, I’m basically just focused on settling in.

There is one respect in which Japan differs from anywhere else I’ve been: the bowing. Everybody here bows to everybody. I actually rather like it, and I’m trying to embrace it whole-heartedly. I find that it works very well as a kind of all-purpose gesture of respect, and it can very easily be fine-tuned depending on how much respect one wishes to convey. Not only can it take the place of a handshake, a wave, or a smile, but it can be used in many situations where there is no good alternative. For instance, if you want to express gratitude to someone who is out of ear-shot (say, a driver who has yielded to you) then a bow is a clear and convenient way of doing so, whereas in North America you would probably have to resort to a wave or something. And if you want to convey a great depth of gratitude, there’s no more satisfying way to do so than with a good, solid, “Doumo arigatou gozaimashita!”* coupled with a bow down to waist-level, whereas in North America one would be reduced to awkwardly babbling, “Thank you! Thank you very much! Thank you so much! I really appreciate it! Did I mention ‘thank you’?”

The bowing does feel excessive at times, though. I was surprised that when my principal walked on stage to give a speech, he actually stopped and bowed to the podium first. Greetings often involve a long series of bows, and leave-taking can similarly drag on for a good minute or two with all the bowing that takes place. At one of the restaurants I’ve been to, the staff always follow me out the door, bowing and thanking me repeatedly for my custom, and I’m never sure whether I’m supposed to return those bows or let them have the last word on the subject. And, although I know Japanese people are physically reserved, I was surprised that this even extends to the greeting at church. In most churches when the congregation greet each other they usually shake hands, and more demonstrative parishioners will even hug each other. Here in Japan, a bow is apparently considered sufficient for sharing the love, which feels a bit less than warm and fuzzy to me.

* “$2.00”: Since the exchange rate is, very roughly, one hundred yen to the Canadian or U.S. dollar, and since Japanese prices are similar to North American ones, I’ve elected to simply think in terms of dollars, and to talk in them whenever possible. If you want to know the price of something in yen, simply remove the decimal point from any figure I state.

* “Wakarimasen”: Japanese for “I don’t understand.”

* “Gai-jin”: Japanese for “foreigner”

* “Doumo arigatou gozaimashita!”: A respectful Japanese term for “Thank you very much!”

Japanese Tourists - August 1-5, 2010

On the last day of July I woke up early and made the trip to the airport. I got a ride with some family acquaintances; I’d actually had a lot of people offer to give me a lift, for which I’m grateful. I checked my luggage without much difficulty. The overweight charge has gone up from $75.00 to $100.00 since the last time I travelled overseas, but at least I’ve got the art of packing polished enough that I didn’t have any weight surprises. I went through security (including one of the new and much-discussed body-scanners), and then joined the other JET participants from Ottawa. The first flight was a short one to Toronto. The JETs all stuck pretty close together as we made our way to the international terminal, grabbed a snack, and took advantage of the airport’s free wi-fi. At 1:00 we boarded the plane and began our thirteen hour flight west. It was my second flight to Asia, so knew how to handle it. As on the trip to Hong Kong, we got well fed. I chatted with my neighbours, whom I’d gotten to know pretty well thanks to all our pre-departure seminars. I made use of my personal entertainment system, figuring it might be my last chance at movie-watching for a long time. I tried to avoid sleeping, but I did doze a bit towards the end. And then, almost before we knew it, it was time to land, and we were touching down in Tokyo.

I arrived at Narita Airport on Sunday, August 1, at 3:00 in the afternoon. Needless to say, I was there for a good long while. We had to walk from the terminal to arrivals, spent an hour or two lined up at customs, claimed our bags, divided our luggage into what we wanted to keep with us in Tokyo and what we wanted sent on to our host prefectures, and were finally put on a bus to our hotel. The bus ride took about an hour, and by the time we got there it was dark. I was given several packages full of information, which I accepted without much thought, found my room, and went to bed as quickly as I could.

You would think that having been awake almost continuously for twenty-four hours, I would have no trouble sleeping, but my first night in Tokyo was actually the first of several restless nights. Somewhere in the early hours of the morning I woke up, and couldn’t get back to sleep. It was as though all the tricks I’d tried to get my body onto Japanese time hadn’t worked, and it was as convinced as ever that one o’clock in the afternoon (Eastern Daylight Time) was a ridiculous time to be asleep.

The result was that I was pretty wasted throughout Tokyo orientation. Far from giving us a day or two to acclimatise and recover from our jet-lag, the Programme threw us into activities right on the first day. Breakfast was bright and early on Monday morning. After that, we had a welcome ceremony and watched the first of several speeches and presentations. This was also our first opportunity to meet some of the other JETs from our designated areas. After lunch, there were more presentations, and then workshops on specific aspects of living and teaching in Japan. The day concluded with a reception and buffet dinner.

As we shuttled ourselves upstairs and downstairs, backwards and forwards, from one room to the next, something occurred to me. You know those tourists you sometimes see? If you live in a big or important city, you probably know what I’m talking about. They travel in packs. They never stay anywhere long. They spend their days going from place to place, obediently following the lead of their guides. They carry their cameras around with them, and frequently stop to take photographs. They comment excitedly whenever they see something interesting, even things you consider perfectly ordinary. And they rarely interact with anyone outside their group. Since they don’t speak the language, they don’t talk to any of the locals; they just stick close together and chatter in their own tongue without any regard for the people around them. You know tourists like that? Well, that was us. All through our three days in Tokyo, we stuck together, conversing in English and having very little interaction with anything truly Japanese. We had so little free time that there were few chances to go exploring, or even to leave the hotel. It hardly felt like we were even in Japan!

At the end of the first day I decided I needed to get our of the hotel for a bit, even if it was only to stroll around the area. I took the map we’d been given, and ventured out on my own.

This might be a good time to make some comparisons between Hong Kong and Japan. Besides certain obvious things, like the fact that most people are oriental and everything is written in Chinese characters, there are lots of little ways the countries remind me of each other. In both countries sit-down toilets are common, and in Japan they often come with extra features like heated seats and water sprays. However, squat toilets are also common, although the ones in Japan are shaped differently from those in Hong Kong. In both places you can usually avoid them, but not always. In Japan, as in Hong Kong, they drive on the left. The sidewalks all have yellow strips with bumps running down them, a very practical device for assisting blind people with canes. Many of the restaurants feature plastic imitations of all the dishes they offer on display in their front windows, for convenient browsing by potential customers. They print everything on A4 paper, which is almost like 8 ½ × 11, but a bit longer and thinner. They also use two-hole punches and binders, for reasons that defy comprehension, as they leave sheets a lot more mobile and vulnerable to tearing. And, of course, the food is similar, though by no means the same.

I also noticed plenty of differences. In Hong Kong, they aren’t big on recycling. Rubbish almost never gets sorted by the people throwing it out, although lots of enterprising old people will go through garbage cans afterwards, collecting anything they can turn in for a profit. Here they’re quite conscientious about it: paper, plastic packaging, and glass, metal, and plastic containers all have to be separated from the other household waste. There are special bags for each type of item, and everything comes clearly labelled so you know where it goes, with symbols that are much easier to understand than those on Canadian packaging, despite the fact of all being in Japanese! The tap water is perfectly drinkable, so there will be no regular trips to the grocery store for jugs of distilled water this time. The electrical outlets are also similar to those in Canada, except that they rarely have a hole for the third prong, so I still need to use my adaptor with my computer. They use American English instead of British English, which surprised me at first, but makes sense considering the close relationship the U.S. and Japan have shared over the last half-century. It still seems like an odd choice, but if I can learn to say “rubbish” instead of “garbage”, I’m sure I can handle spelling “color” without a “U”. Finally, Japan is a lot more expensive. Compared to Canada it’s not so bad; a couple of things are actually cheaper. But there are none of the ridiculously low prices like those you find in Hong Kong. I may be making more money, but I’m going to have to budget hard if I want to meet my savings goals here.

Anyway, I wandered around a bit, and eventually found myself in a Japanese bookstore. Curious to see what kinds of books were available, and which western novels had Japanese translations, I browsed for a while, but I found it difficult to understand most of the signs and the labels. This was not because they were in difficult kanji; they were actually mostly written in katakana, the Japanese phonetic alphabet for writing foreign words. I’d already learned the hiragana alphabet (which is used for Japanese words), but I’d never gotten around to learning the katakana alphabet, and could only recognise some of the characters. Standing in the bookstore, staring at words that were probably English, but written in a foreign script, I felt really silly. Lots of people had told me to learn katakana before I came to Japan, because with it I could read all the Japanese words that were really borrowed from English. It’s exactly the same system as hiragana, just written differently, and only forty-six characters long. How could I not know it yet? Frustrated with myself I returned to the hotel and began studying. As I knew from practising hiragana, there isn’t much to leaning a new alphabet. It can be done in a couple of hours; you just copy it down a bunch of times until you have it cold. Before I went to bed I knew half the characters, and when I again found myself awake in the small hours I sat by the window and practised some more, so that by morning I had most of them.

On Tuesday we had yet more training seminars. In the afternoon we met some of our prefectural supervisors, and were told a bit about what we could expect from our arrival in Sendai. After that we had to sort our luggage and decide what things we wanted shipped from the hotel to Sendai. I’d already sent one suitcase and bag from the airport, so I just packed some of my heavier items in a box and mailed that.

In between all these activities, I took some time to look through the packages I’d received on my arrival. There was stuff from the Canadian embassy for Canadians living in Japan. There were guidebooks about Japan. There were booklets about emergency procedures and coping with natural disasters. Best of all was my JET diary! It’s is a smart little agenda-type book, made specifically for JET participants. That means that it includes all sorts of information that JETs would need, such as information on the programme itself, useful web sites and telephone numbers, conversion charts, instructions on making telephone calls and sending mail, information on natural disasters, maps, and a short dictionary of medical and nutritional terms. It made me realise, not for the first time, just how much trouble the JET Programme is going to for us. Over the past three months we’ve received piles of papers, orientations, classes, a free trip to Japan – and we haven’t done a single day’s work yet. I can’t help wondering what their rationale for doing this is, and whether it’s really worth it to them, but I’m not complaining.

In the evening I met up with a Japanese acquaintance from university. I’d tried unsuccessfully to call him several times, but I eventually figured out the phones and the dialling system, and he agreed to meet me at the hotel. First we went up to the observation platform on top of one of the neighbouring buildings for a panoramic view of Tokyo by night. Then we went out for dinner at a small restaurant. I decided to take the opportunity to try sake, since I would probably have it forced on me sooner or later. I had two different kinds, one of which was sweeter than the other, and that one I actually rather liked. Still, after two small cups I decided it was making me tipsy and that I had better stop. I was really glad to be able to get out and see even a little of Tokyo before I left. It was also nice to have a Japanese person to show me around a little. Unfortunately, he’s going back to university in the United States in the fall, but hopefully I’ll be able to see him again while I’m here.

On Wednesday we departed for our prefectures. We had breakfast, bid farewell to our compatriots who had arrived with us, and packed our things together. I took some time out to go up to the top floor of the hotel for a daytime view of Tokyo. The area we stayed in was called West Shinjuku, which is apparently one of the city’s major districts. Right across from us was a very interesting and creative-looking building. I would later learn from my guide-book that it’s the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office building, and that it’s really rather well-known, but at the time I just thought we had a pretty cool building outside our window.

After check-out, or prefectural advisors met us in the lobby and guided us to the subway. The subway took us to the station where we would catch the shinkansen (bullet train) to Sendai. While we waited for the train, we were allowed to go and buy a lunch to take with us. I considered several of the Japanese bento boxes, but decided that I was feeling queasy and had better not shock my digestive system with anything too foreign, so I just bought a sandwich. I tried to find some juice to go with it, but the apple juice I eventually tracked down turned out to be carbonated. ‘Cause, you know what a tasty, vitamin-rich, and thirst-quenching beverage needs to make it even better? Fizz!

I’d slept a bit better the previous night, but was still pretty tired. I rested a bit on the train, but it only took a couple of hours to get to our destination. We were introduced briefly to Sendai Station, and then taken on the subway to our hotel. We got put up there for our very first night in Sendai, which I really appreciated. We even got private rooms with our own bathrooms. Our luggage that we’d shipped was there waiting for us, and I used the extra space to unpack and re-arrange things a bit. In the evening we got taken out to a restaurant for a welcome party. I checked out of the party pretty early, partly because I was still dead tired, and partly because people started lighting up, and the smoke was getting to me. Yes, another similarity between Hong Kong and Japan is that they haven’t banned smoking in public houses. I’m definitely going to be avoiding bars while I’m here.

I walked back along a street called the Ichi-ban Chou, a kind of pedestrian mall, similar to Ottawa’s Sparks Street. I successfully used my very limited Japanese to buy an ice-cream at a small shop, and ate it quite contentedly as I walked – at least until I remembered that eating on the go is supposed to be bad form in Japan. And since they’re not big on rubbish bins on the streets, I had to carry the cup all the way back with me. On the way, I took note of some of the more interesting stores. One caught my attention right away: Sendai has a Baskin Robbins! And they serve mint chocolate chip ice-cream! (Okay, they call it “chocolate mint” here, but it tastes the same.) I spent some time in the HMV, which had a comfortingly large foreign music section. I found surprisingly few Byan Adams C.D.s, but quite a lot of Neil Young. There’s also a Miyazaki store, by which I mean a store that sells exclusively items based on characters from Miyazaki films. My favourites were the key rings with the little soot-sprites from My Neighbour Totoro on them. I’ll definitely have to buy something there before I leave.

That night I finally got a relatively decent sleep, which was good, because on Thursday we were introduced to our head teachers. Our advisors had given us all an introductory speech template to practise, so we could look like we were making an effort. After a short ceremony, we received information on our individual schools and apartments, and also our hanko, or Japanese seal. This is an item of vital importance, which basically functions the same as a signature. Mine has my last name written top-to-bottom in katakana. After this I loaded my luggage into my head teacher’s car and let her take me all the places we needed to go. First, we went to the local municipal office to apply for an alien resident card. Then we went to the bank to set up an account. Then we went to get a cell phone; this was an especially gruelling process that required a lot of translation and took about an hour, even though all I wanted was a cheap phone with a relatively simple plan. Finally, we went to the school, where I signed (or, rather, stamped) a bunch of documents.

A different English teacher gave me a ride to my apartment, and I finally got to see the place I’ll be living for the next year. She took me to the local grocery store; my flat came pretty well stocked with cooking and eating utensils, so all I had to do was buy food. Fortunately I’m pretty comfortable with Asian grocery stores from my time in Hong Kong and Vancouver, so I knew what to look for. Onions, vegetables, tofu, rice, soy sauce, rice vinegar, peanut butter: these are the things I need for a basic stir-fry, and they were all available. The one thing I was worried about was peanut butter, and I was very pleased to find it, even if it did come in a tiny jar. The teacher I was with laughed at me for seeking out low-fat milk (yet another similarity to Hong Kong: milk here tends to be of the “whole” variety), but at least I found it. I was also excited to find real apple juice (non-carbonated), brown rice (I was afraid I would have to spend a year eating only the white stuff), and tea. There was no whole-grain bread, but I did find a rye bread that had whole grains of rye in it, and the teacher recommended a soy bean spread to go with it that ended up being quite good. I’ll have to do a lot more exploring before I get comfortable with all the things in Japanese grocery stores, but I have brown rice, and I have peanut butter. I will survive my year in Japan!

The teacher gave me a lift back, and then left me. I cooked my dinner, and then went to my bedroom to sort out the brand-new bed that my employers had thoughtfully provided for me. I had to unwrap it first, and then I spent some time figuring out what all the different pieces were. Instead of a western-style bed, I got a futon, which goes on the floor. It also came with several blankets, including a nice fuzzy fleece and a soft downy comforter that I know I’ll appreciate when winter comes along. For now, though, it’s sweltering hot, so I just went with the piece of terry cloth that I took (correctly) for a summer blanket. Oddly, the only thing that the bed didn’t come with was a pillow, so I wrapped a towel in my spare blanket and settled down for my first night in my new home.

Oh, and by the way, it turns out it’s pronounced “fh-to(n)”, not “foo-ton”.*

Movies I’ve seen this week:

Alice in Wonderland – A surprisingly bad movie, considering the director and source material. I actually rather liked the contrived plot-line – it was the world onto which it was superimposed that didn’t work for me. It’s tempting to say that I resented it for diverging so sharply from the books, and that someone who hadn’t read the originals would be able to appreciate the movie on its own merits. The problem with that is that the movie makes so many jokes based on content in the books that I suspect anyone who hadn’t read them would feel completely lost. So it ends up being neither a good adaptation nor a good original work. (Two stars)

Iron Man – Reasonably diverting super-hero action film. Light enough to be amusing in places, but without the gravity needed to be truly engaging. (Three stars)

The Secret in Their Eyes – A gripping and well-made mystery thriller that I quite enjoyed for its first three-quarters. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in the ending which gets a bit crazy and far-fetched. (Three stars)

* To clarify, the “F” sound in “futon” is really half-way between an “F” and an “H”; the “U” is barely pronounced; and the final “N” is almost silent in much the same way as it is in French.

The Story So Far

As I begin a new adventure, it seems like a good time to give you a bit of background on myself. If you’re reading this blog, you probably know a lot about me already, but even if you don’t, this quick summary of my life should get you up to speed.

The first seven years:

I lived with my mother, father, and sister in a small house in London, Ontario. I remember this as a mostly happy time in my life, although, as so often happens, I may just be viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses.

The next seven years:

My parents split up. My mom, sister, and I spent another year in London, then went on an extended vacation to England and Europe. Although my memory of this period is pretty vague, I credit it with instilling in me a love of travel and of exploring new cities. During the six months we were abroad, we visited Cornwall, Stratford, the Lake District, Scotland, Denmark, and Austria, besides spending a great deal of time in London.

When we returned to Canada we moved to Ottawa, and I started going to school again. I had to start learning French, which I didn’t understand and resented. I didn’t have any friends, and everybody teased me. Life was hell.

Around grade six, I started watching Sailor Moon. It was one of my first experiences with Japanese animation, although years later I would discover that many of the cartoons I’d watched as a child had also been anime. In my last year of elementary school, I saw Star Wars and it ruined my life. I developed a consuming obsession with the trilogy that eventually evolved into an passion for in movies in general.

High school:

I still didn’t have any friends, but people stopped teasing me, and some of them even started hanging out with me. Life sucked, but was notably not hell anymore. I developed a reputation as a film buff, and since I’d never been good at anything in my life, I decided to cultivate it. Some of the people I hung out with watched anime and studied Japanese, and in my last two years I began watching anime too, although I didn’t think very much of it. I kept taking French, and by Grade 13 was surprised to discover that I’d grown to really like it. Sadly, high school was also where my French education ended, and my fluency has been declining ever since.

University:

I moved back to London and completed a four year B.A. at the University of Western Ontario. I initially enrolled with a major in Political Science, with an eye to possibly applying to law school. However, in the interest of keeping up my reputation, I took a few film courses, and liked them so much that I decided to add Film Studies as a second major.

I joined the school anime club, although it was the people more than the shows that attracted me to it. Eventually I warmed to one or two of the series we watched, and in my third year I even wrote an essay on the films of Miyazaki Hayao.

Around this time, I also made a couple of friends, thanks to which my life no longer completely sucks, and I even allow myself to entertain the romantic notion that it might actually be worth living.

The last four years:

As the time for me to graduate university approached, I became increasingly aware of the fact that I still had no career path chosen. I had more or less dismissed the idea of going into law, and neither of my majors suggested an obvious course of action. I didn’t think I had what it would take to be a filmmaker, and government jobs are notoriously difficult to land. A trip to my guidance counsellor was not very helpful. The personality test he had me take revealed that the job I would most enjoy was that of university professor. I laughed out loud, and then made a comment about “those who can’t”. In fact, I think a part of me was secretly expecting that answer, but the thing about pursuing a career as a professor is that first you have to decide what you want to be a professor of. And if there’s one thing I’ve always found difficult, it’s choosing one academic discipline over the others.

At this point, something else was becoming painfully clear to me: I had spent the last nineteen years of my life in school, and they had taught me to be really really good at being in school! But occasionally, one hears about a different world, a world that exists beyond the walls of academia, a world referred to, rather intriguingly, as “real life”. And it occurred to me that for a truly well-rounded education, I might want to try experiencing this “real life” thing, at least for a little while. And so I began to zero in on a less ambitious plan. While I was still studying, an acquaintance told me about the “JET Programme”, an initiative that allowed English-speaking university graduates to spend a year teaching in Japan. During my last year of university, I heard similar suggestions from several people, including my counsellor. In fact, there are several countries, particularly in Asia, where you can get a job with a good salary and benefits just for being a native English speaker. Most of the better jobs also prefer that you have a university degree, but that was no longer something I needed to worry about.

Besides the fact that it was one of the few jobs I was qualified for, the idea of teaching English overseas appealed to me on a couple of other levels. First, in the area of real life experience, it would force me out of my comfort zone and into a more self-sufficient lifestyle. Second, it would give me valuable job experience, which would be good to have on my résumé. Third, as mentioned above, I have always had a love of travel, but since moving to Ottawa my international experience had been limited to a week in Austria, a week in Washington, D.C., and two weeks in London and Paris. I had never been to Asia at all, so the opportunity to go there was especially enticing. Moreover, another thing my travels as a child had instilled me with was the notion that it wasn’t enough just to visit a country for a few days. To really experience it, you needed to live there for an extended period, allowing it to become part of your daily routine, and seeing not just the big sights but the small oddities.

So I decided to take a break from school and do a stint as an English teacher. I took a TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) course, with the idea of applying to the JET Programme right away. Unfortunately, I missed the deadline, and spent a year working at Shoppers Drug Mart and applying for other positions in east Asia. I eventually got hired by an agency in Hong Kong, and spent ten months teaching in a Chinese-language high school there. When I was done, instead of moving back to Ottawa, I decided to try living in Vancouver for a while. There were a few reasons for this: I wasn’t ready to stop travelling, but I still intended to apply to the JET Programme, and needed to be in my home country to do it. The clincher was my experience in Hong Kong: it seemed that everyone I met there had either been to Vancouver, or knew someone in Vancouver, or had family in Vancouver. Having to admit that I’d never so much as been to B.C. made me realise how little I really knew my country, and I resolved to learn a bit more about it. I spent fifteen months in Vancouver, during which time I worked for a total of nine months in three different language schools. I applied to the JET Programme and made it to the interview stage, but was ultimately rejected. I was disappointed by this, but undeterred. Having spent over a year in Vancouver, I decided to move back to Ottawa and apply again.

In retrospect, I’m really grateful things worked out that way. The intervening year gave me a chance to get re-acquainted with Ottawa and spend time with my friends. I re-applied to the JET Programme, and this time I got accepted! Now, four years after graduating university, I am finally leaving Ottawa to begin a year of living and working in Japan. I hope to continue this blog as a chronicle of my experiences there.