Japan - Day Four

March 19, 2009

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Joan is out for a run right now, on a slightly chilly, cloudy, and windy morning, a little different from the wonderfully warm last few days. We are going to bike over to campus to use the Internet and then run some errands.
Today is a national holiday – Spring Equinox Day? – so the kids are out of school, but the banks and stores are open. We don’t have any plans for the weekend, but as most of the current teachers are returning, there will probably be something going on.
We had a little party at our place last night. Steve Kostecke, my old Peace Corps Fiji buddy, who helped me get this job, got back the night before, so he came down the hall for a visit. Kristina, another current teacher, came down and loaded a Japanese language program on to our laptop. Then Josie and Dan, the other new teachers who live in the Arms, came up to chat. And finally, Kris, our new vice director, who also lives in the Arms, came over with some cans of “fruit alcohol pops” – a carbonated, sweet, slightly alcoholic drinks. I hopped on my bike around rode down to Lawson 100, the 100 yen grocery store and grabbed a couple cans of Asahi, Kirin, and Yebisu beer. So we actually managed to stay up past 9 pm! We were still in bed by 10 but slept in till 6:30 today…
Yesterday morning, the new teachers met with Steve and Kris to go over our schedules, grading, attendance, etc.. It seems like a pretty good system with a lot of flexibility built to accommodate different teaching styles and philosophies. I think this will be different than most of my stateside teaching in that the majority of students are required to be in class. In America, most of my students really wanted to be in class and desperately wanted to learn English; I had no problems with discipline and attendance.
With our freshman students fresh from the regimented high school system, it apparently can be a rough transition to the freedom and subsequent responsibility of university – should be interesting…
Poor Joan – the weather just took a turn for the worst and has started raining. I’d better turn on the automatic hot water kettle for tea.
After lunch of soba (thick, ropy noodles) and tempura in a tasty broth with seaweed, we met with the president of the university. He seems like a very nice man, but I think we will probably not see much of him in our time here. Our CELE faculty seems pretty insular and independent. He talked for awhile about the goals of the university and the English program, and then asked us some questions about us.
Then the new teachers who are new to Japan (Josie, Dan, and me [and Joan]), went with Terao-san, the KKB staffer who was our e-mail liaison during the application and stateside process, took us to the Musashino city hall. His English is quite good from working with all the CELE teachers and from studying in America. He also has a cool little cell phone upon which he was watching Japan play Cuba live in the World Baseball Championship. You’ll be pleased to hear that Japan beat Cuba something like six to nothing!
We took our first train ride two stations away and then hopped on a bus to city hall. With Terao-san translating, we filled out the forms and waited for our paperwork that proves we have applied for our alien registration cards, in case we are asked by the police for ID. I don’t have a real feel for how likely that is to happen, though… However, we need those cards to get bank accounts, cell phones, etc.. We will have to return sometime in early April to pick them up. We aren’t too worried about cell phones and such.
Since the apartment is already furnished and we can use the Internet at the school, we are holding off on buying any larger furniture, like a couch, or getting a phone/Internet at home. We are not sure what our expenses will be, and since I don’t start receiving my salary for a month or more, the $1000 or so in yen we brought is all we have for now.
Yesterday, after our 5 am start, we finished up our coffee and breakfast by seven, looked at each other, and said, “Well, now what do we do?” So we went grocery shopping. We went crazy and bought about $30 worth of groceries, including a tube of wasabi, that very hot, green radish/mustard that goes with sushi. We had it this morning with our fried eggs, onions, and rice – oh, the burn was good! The highlight of the grocery trip was when trying to figure out if Japan actually has pints of coffee creamer. I tried to ask the dairy person about it in my broken Japanese, but we were getting no where. He raised his hand in a ‘just a minute’ way and took off behind the scenes. A few moments later, he led an apprehensive young man back to us. It turns out that he spoke more than enough English and was able to help us figure out there was no creamer of the type we were looking for. We talked a little longer with him and found out that he was not Japanese, but, in fact, Mongolian, and was studying Japanese language and culture at another nearby university. It was a really cool international incident. The first man kept scurrying away to find other store employees and bring them to see our little drama play out. I think the young man’s name is “Bhurr-khet,” and we hope to use his translation skills in the future…

Japan - Day Three

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Ugh. It's 5:10 in the morning on Thursday. I woke up at three or so and had been tossing and turning fitfully for the last couple of hours. I guess we have not quite gotten away from jet lag, yet... I decided to write because it is a quite activity, and we are trying to be considerate of our two downstairs neighbors who are graduate students from China.

Yesterday was the first day of orientation for VFM's (Visiting Faculty Member). Those of us who live here (three new VFMs) met with Kris, the new vice director, who also lives here, at the mail boxes in front of the Arms to walk over to the university. We also met with Dan, the other new VFM at the Arms who had just flown in the night before from Chicago. It is a very pleasant 20 minute walk along shady sidewalks; we also passed the school playground which is to be the evacuation site for our neighborhood if there is an earthquake.

At the university, we met with the six other VFMs. They are already living in Japan and have come from other jobs, so they already have apartments, and most of them have spouses and children. It is a quite diverse group, although seven of us are American with one British and one Irish teacher. The experiences range from a lifetime of teaching in Asia and other countries to fresh of the boat. Overall, everyone seems nice. Throughout the day, we also met some of the current VFMs as they came in and out of the office to catch up on paperwork and other details.

First off, we met with the office staff of KKB, the international affairs of Asia University (AU). AU has about 500 international students, mostly from China, and also sends many students to study in America through exchange programs at sister schools, mostly in Washington state. Some of the staff speak excellent English and often serve as interpreters for VFMs who need help with paperwork, both for school and for living in Japan. Everyone is very friendly and seems very approachable.

The rest of the morning was spent meeting with two people from the administration office, filling out paperwork for ID badges, bank accounts, health insurance, and other bureaucratic things. Between their difficulties with English and our not being able to read the forms, it was quite an entertaining experience.

For lunch, we went to the school cafeteria and ate some uninspired food. You may have noticed in some of the random photos linked to the blog some shots of prepared bowls and plates of food behind glass. At most restaurants, there are displays of the dishes in these cases, all made in exact detail but from plastic. At the cafeteria, I picked one that looked pretty good; however, like most institutional food around the world, it left me wanting. Joan had been using the AU wireless Internet on campus and joined us for lunch. She went with some of the teachers to a local grocery store to bring back some bento boxes: prepared meals in plastic containers ranging from sushi to sandwiches.

The afternoon was a tour of the CELE offices. It is a really nice office with cubicles and computers for each teacher. There are a lot of teaching materials and supplies available. We have many more days of orientation that will focus on the nuts and bolts of teaching at AU. At first glance, though, it seems like a very professional set up and quite a step up from other ESL teaching situations. I also understand that because there is a total of 22 ESL teachers at CELE, it has created its on little faculty with a great deal of independence and flexibility. At most schools, there are not many ESL teachers, and they can feel isolated and under-supported.

We finished up around 4 pm, and some of walked over to Don Quijote, a bright, garish, tacky discount store – sort of a mix of Big Lots, Wal-Mart, and a video arcade. I guess it is the best place to get a majority of things. We have not been to enough stores yet to have a real feel of the different qualities of stores and prices. We have been really lucky to move into a almost completely furnished aparment; we have not had to go out and buy all the bric-a-brac of life. Also, we don't actually receive any of our salary for a month and a half, so cash in hand is at a premium.

After dinner (a wonderful meal of savory tofu, brown rice cooked in our cool automatic rice cooker, and a salad – Joan found red cabbage!), we took a bike ride to a local park I found the other day while out running. We inherited a detailed map, and when looking at it, I found what looked like a bike/walking path from near our apartment that led to a large open park. The path cuts through neighborhoods and stays off busy roads, giving an interesting look into people's backyards and gardens.

Still no work on the community garden plot we applied for with my vice director. We are still hopeful. Joan has already bought her first plant: a young Swiss chard and is babying it on the balcony. There is talk of expanding the operation to the front hallway/balcony where there is some public space that is not used by anyone and gets a lot of sun. Already the word has gotten out about Joan's crazy gardening skills, and some of the VFMs have come up to Joan and asked her to help them improve their container gardening on their own balconies. Kris, the vice director, is going to ask our landlord, who owns a lot of property in our area, if he might have a patch of dirt that we might use, as well...

After the bike ride, I tried to study Japanese but soon got drowsy. So I laid down for a little while on the futon bed around 7:30 pm and that was it. Hence, you understand why I am up before the sun.

Today we go back to AU to meet the president and then to city hall to apply for and receive our Alien Registration cards (we make little alien beeping noises every time we say that phrase). Without these cards, we can't do anything like open a bank account, register our bicycles, get a cell phone and Internet, etc.. Also, I guess the police could stop us at any moment and want to see our paperwork; however, I don't know how often that happens or what the penalty would be for not having the card.

Friday is free, so we have a three-day weekend. There are no plans as of yet, but everyone is getting excited about cherry blossom season which is soon to happen. People are talking about some serious cherry blossom viewing parties! In fact, on the news last night (I did wake up long enough to watch it...), they had the cherry blossom forecast for Japan, which looked like a pink tide advancing up a map of the islands!

Japan – Day Two

Photos for Day Two - click on this link!

We tried to stay awake last night, at least until 10 pm. The hope is to get over the jet lag as soon as possible. Joe left a note that mentioned there was an English language broadcast of the news at 9 pm, so we figured out how the TV worked and settled down with cups of tea and channel surfed until then. Wow, what a bunch of weird TV shows. QVC is the same, of course, as well as the historical soap opera show. However, I could not figure out why what appeared to be celebrities were watching a documentary about locust swarms.
The news finally came on, and it was nothing but coverage of how Japan beat Cuba in a round of the World Baseball Championship, translated/read in English by some man with the most sleep-inducing voice ever. Soon, we were slumped over, drool running down our chins. 9:30 pm –bed time!
We woke at 5 am, bright eyed and bushy tailed. A couple of cups of coffee and a bowl of yogurt and granola later, and we were off to the university to take advantage of their wi-fi Internet access on campus. After catching up on email, skyping with my mother, and posting photos on our blog, we were starving by 10 am, so we decided to go grocery shopping. We really wanted to get some rice to try out our rice cooker and some vegetables. Our last couple of meals have been at restaurants, and we were craving some home cookin’. Although, last night, we got really tasty sushi to go, brought it back to our apartment, and had a little dinner party with Josie and Katrina, a current teacher who lives down the hall.
While our street is very quiet with little traffic, there is a larger street about 150 yards away that has many restaurants and a convenient 24-hour grocery store. Almost everything is wrapped in plastic and printed in Japanese. It took us over 15 minutes to find rice! Just in front of the store is a little sushi stand that is popular with the CELE teachers. For 450 yen (about $4.50), we got six sushi rolls with egg, some kind of fish, and sliced cucumbers, as well as three sweet tofu-skin rice balls. We also bought some type of bok-choi greens, onions, and garlic; we whipped up a quick stir fry to go with the sushi back at the apartment.
Today, on the way to the one store where we saw brown rice, we found a farmer who was selling some produce from the back of his truck on the sidewalk in front of a bank. Our area has many large gardens (almost small farms) where people seem to grow a great deal of vegetables. The veggie selection in the supermarkets is not varied, expensive, and wrapped in plastic. This farmer had a great selection, cheaper prices, and no plastic! We happily bought a bunch of stuff and tried to learn the Japanese names.
We also stopped in what appeared to be a specialty rice store that sold rice from different areas of Japan. With our dictionary and lots of pantomime, we communicated with the shop owner and learned about the different types of rice. Surprisingly, rice is expensive in general in Japan… Not sure why yet.
We also stopped at the 100 yen store (The Dollar Store in the States), where they sell a little bit of everything. We bought an apron, a bamboo spatula, and a garlic press for 315 yen…
Out of time! Off for a quick run…

Walk around town photos

Click on the this link to see photos of a long walk around town we took yesterday:

Photos from walk around

Japan - Day One

For photos to go with this post, click on this link!

It is about noon on our first full day in Tokyo. The bags are unpacked; items are stored in various clothes and containers; and we’ve been puttering around the Arms (what the apartment building is called), learning where storage is located and how all the systems work. This afternoon we are biking over to the university to see the office and use the Internet. We are doing a lot of new stuff with Josie, another new teacher who we got to know by email and on the phone. Luckily our flights arrived at the same time, and we were able to meet in the passport control line.
The flight yesterday was long and uneventful. Thirteen plus hours is a long time, and in-flight movies and books can only occupy so much time. Looking out the window at snow covered Alaskan mountains and the frozen Bering Strait was pretty cool, though…
So, how’s Japan? Perhaps the best one-word answer is efficient. Stereotypes aside, Japan is also tidy, organized, polite, and compact. With less than 24 hours under our belts, we are thoroughly enchanted and pleased. Our apartment is far better than we expected: spacious and well lit with two south-facing windows and two large sliding glass doors on the west side. Other teachers who have the small one-room studio apartments make us feel guilty. I have included a couple quick photos.
An example of efficient… We landed at just before 4 pm, and it took us less than 30 minutes to clear passport control, get our luggage, go through customs, purchase bus tickets, and on the way in a comfortable Greyhound-style bus. We excitedly peered out the windows, looking at the people, cars, and buildings. It is not very exotic, but there are just enough differences to keep it interesting.
The bus took up to the Kichijoji train station and took about two hours, eventually arriving in the dark. After some confusion with taxis, we loaded up two with our four footlockers and Josie’s two suitcases and were on our way. After discovering that our taxi driver had family in Los Angeles and that he had heard of Detroit, we ran out of common vocabulary, and we rode in silence for awhile.
After a few minutes, my stomach grumbled loudly. There was a long pause, then the driver leaned over, patted my stomach, and asked, “Hungry?” We all laughed as I answered, “Hai.”
Upon arrival at the Arms, no one was expecting us, and it took us some time to find one of the current teachers in her apartment. I think there was a little bit of a communication break down somewhere in the system. Apparently everyone was at different graduation parties, so after some phone calls to inebriated staff people, keys were on the way.
We met Kris, the new vice director of CELE (Center for English Language Education), and she, along with the teacher, Kristina, volunteered to take us to the nearest grocery store so we could stock up on coffee, creamer, yogurt, and other items for breakfast. What the heck? How can you tell if it is milk or creamer if it is all written in Japanese? Very inconsiderate…
Then we stopped at local restaurant/take out to order “guidon,” a rice dish with a beef/chim chi topping. Back at Kristina’s apartment, we wolfed down the tasty food, surprised at how hungry we were.
At that point, Shugi, the director of the international department, arrived with the keys and a hastily gathered bag of groceries as a welcoming present. He apologized profusely for situation, which of course we made us feel bad because it was just as much fault.
Finally, with everything squared away, we retreated into our apartment and closed the door, exhausted. Then, we could not figure out how the futon mattress, sheets, and blankets combination worked, so we just threw them down on the tatami floor of the bedroom, brushed our teeth, and went to bed around 10:30.
After a good night’s sleep, we woke up and started our day. To our horror, the gas was not turned on, so we could not boil water for coffee! Luckily, we figured out how to boil water with the automatic tea water boiler and soon had a French press of coffee ready to go. A little breakfast of yogurt and granola, and then on to unpacking, sorting, and storing. The apartment has lots of storage closets, and the former occupants basically left us all their non-personal belongings: cleaning supplies, dishes, guide books, office supplies, and everything else. It feels very strange to move into a completely furnished place. We felt like we were snooping when we opened all the drawers and cupboards and cooed over all the things we found. Joe and Takako have excellent taste!

Tomorrow is the day!

We fly out at 7:30 tomorrow from Madison, WI, to Chicago for a long lay over, then a direct flight from there to Narita Airport in Tokyo.  We hope to meet another new teacher that we have gotten to know over Skype, a program that lets you talk/video over the Internet.  The plan is to take a coach bus to a train station near our apartment building on the west side of Tokyo and then take a taki to our apartment.  The former occupants sold us the contents, so we will be moving in to a pretty much fully furnished living space.  Probably a quick meal with a nice long sleep...

Here are some photos of our aparment...

So what's the deal?  I have an old Peace Corps Fiji friend who encouraged me to apply for a teaching position at Asia University in Tokyo.  After some talking with Joan, we decided that I should apply.  The short version is that I was offered the job.  I don't know all the details yet, except that it looks like an excellent job with wonderful benefits and perks, including an apartment.

It is a one-year contract, renewable each year for up to five years: one to five, like a prison statement.   Don't know how long we will stay; it depends on so many considerations.  However, we are really excited about it.  It has been ten years since we lived overseas in Kazakhstan.

The house is rented; the chickens went to friends' farm; Yezik is chilling with my mom in Ohio; and Gooby will stay with Joan's mom in Wisconsin.

Our email will stay the same.  Our skype name is richandjoan, so feel free to skype us when ever you want.  We will be able to use skype to call people back in the States, so we won't be completely out touch.

Everyone is welcome to visit!

Departure date...

Leaving on March 14th!