Karaoke

Well the stop to Kobe quickly turned into a disaster. Yoshimi was going to meet me in Kobe, and we were going to have dinner before I left on the overnight bus to Tokyo. I had asked Yoshimi to show me where the bus left from because I didn't think that it was the normal bus terminal. Yoshimi was confident that she knew where I should leave from. I was already running late, so we didn't have time for supper, but I still had plenty of time to make my bus. Unfortunately Yoshimi did not know from whence my bus was leaving, and we spent about an hour looking before we finally found the place. The bus was obviously gone by then, and after examining all my options, I realized that there was no way for me to leave for Tokyo that night. It was pretty late at this point, my bus was supposed to leave at ten, so it would have been very difficult to stay with a friend. After getting some supper Yoshimi and I decided that we would go do Karaoke all night and then I would catch the first Shinkansen in the morning. So here we are singing our voices hoarse. Yoshimi claims that she is not  a great singer, and shes not, but then neither am I, and we have had great success with a few songs. Our White Christmas was great, and California Dreaming was pretty great.

Christmas in America

Well I'm on my way to the good old US of A. It's going to be a whirlwind trip, but that's what makes it fun. I get to have Christmas with my family, go to one of my best friends weddings, and see lots of people. Actually one of the things I am most excited about is going to an English speaking church. It took me a lot longer to get ready than I thought it would, and  I have to bring a lot less than I wanted to, but at least I am on my way. I will have a short stop in Kobe before I jump on an overnight bus to Tokyo. We'll see how that goes. Well that's all for now.

The Adventures of Howard and Peter Part I

Quiz results:

I forgot to include the answer to the quiz question last time, so I will give you two answers here. Genki is a word that that technically means healthy, but when applied to students it means a little bit more. Basically, if students are Genki, they are outgoing and energetic in class, which is usually a good thing, because Japanese students have a tendency to be very quiet and reserved.

It looks like no one was able to correctly guess the answer for the last quiz, so I will give you another chance to guess the two types of candy in the local supermarket. I will tell you that so far, Hershey’s Kisses, Hershey’s Bar and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have been guessed.

            When I was picked up at Yashiro I had been approached by a teacher from Kaibarra Senior high school and asked if I would participate in an English camp they were putting on at their school. I had agreed, and so I was scheduled to be at Kaibarra the 12^th and 13^th of Aug. Now as many of you have probably heard, there was a problem with my International Driver’s Permit that I discovered about this time. I’ll give you the whole story in case you missed it.

            Since I knew that I was going to have to drive in Japan I had gone to AAA to get my International Driver’s Permit (IDP). Now as the name suggests, an IDP is not a license. If you drive in another country you need both your regular license, and your IDP. Japan is particularly strict about driving regulations, and driving without a license or IDP will probably result in a fine and imprisonment, and possibly deportation. So anyways, I told the people at AAA to set the active date of the permit as August 7^th or 8^th so that I could drive when I got to Japan. Unfortunately they decided to put August 31^st on the Permit, a mistake that I did not notice, until I was already in Japan. So in the end I had to wait until August 31^st to get a car and drive, and when I tried to contact AAA to have them send a replacement they simply told me that I should be able to drive with the one I had, which as I have already told you is a very bad idea, and when I tried to tell them that, they just ignored me. (Hold on a second, I need to get my paper bag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . okay, I’m calm now). The lack of a car was very inconvenient as I was supposed to be driving places, but fortunately my school was very kind and helped me out, although I felt bad putting an extra burden on them. Okay, back to the English Camp.

            On Monday morning the Kyoto-sensei (vice principal) drove me to Kaibarra. English camp was a lot of fun. We had about 25 students, a mix of Senior high school and junior high school students. For the most part they were very responsive and ready to participate. The first day we played quite a few games. I think that my favorite was the game where the ALTs were given a picture, for example a camel, and we had to describe it in English, and the students had to guess what it was. Besides myself there were Dana Warren, and Howard Tobochinik. I had met Dana on Facebook before I went to Japan, and I had met Howard on the train ride from Tokyo. The second day we helped different groups of students plan out and memorize lines for an English skit, but that wasn’t very exciting, so I’ll skip to the end of the day. After the conclusion of the English camp Dana drove Howard and me to several stores and then we went out to a sushi bar with a bunch of other ALTs from the area. If you have never been to a sushi bar you should try it sometime; it’s quite exciting! You sit at your table and a conveyor belt brings little plates of food past you. You can take whichever ones you want and eat them! After a fun time at the sushi bar we went to a festival in Kaibarra. We saw many people dancing while a Japanese band played traditional instruments. I got to try a yummy Japanese treat called shredded ice. After an exciting night I headed home to prepare for a trip to Yashiro the following day.

Tune in soon for the next episode of the Adventures of Howard and Peter. Join our heroes as they journey to the far off land of Yashiro, there to become English teaching masters. But will they be able to survive against the evil forces arrayed against them? Find out soon in The Adventures of Howard and Peter!

Quiz: The Japanese like their mascots, and it seems like most things have a mascot. The mascot of Hyogo prefecture is called Habatan. Can you guess what he creature he is? I will give you two guesses since I think that it is pretty tough.

Respond to this question and the candy question via email or Facebook. If you have any other questions to ask me, feel free to post them in the comments section.

First Weekend

            My first weekend in Japan was relaxing and much needed. I was able to do a lot of the cleaning up and organizing that I had not been able to do before and I spent a lot time washing many of the dishes in my kitchen. I did do some things that were to me rather exciting. I went for a walk on Friday and explored some of the neighborhood. I discovered the Japanese vending machines, which are everywhere, but which only contain drinks. I worked on some of my blog posts; always a pressing task! My exciting event Saturday morning came when I decided to make breakfast for myself. I discovered several truths during this time.

1.      Japanese bacon is weird and small

2.      Japanese bread is yummy

3.      Soy Sauce goes great with scrambled eggs!

I also found the candy section of the local supermarket, and discovered that Meiji chocolates are quite good. After breakfast on Saturday I decided to go for hike up the mountain right behind my apartment. I accidentally climbed the wrong mountain first, but eventually I found my way. The videos will give you more information about my hike, but I did find that spiders are everywhere in Japan, and I was constantly walking into spider webs in the woods. The video I took of the "peak," is the wrong peak that I accidentally climbed first. The pictures are the view I had from the "right peak." As I had not yet found a church I spent Sunday morning studying on my own, and I had a peaceful time of reflection. I also spent a lot of my time watching movies this weekend and I found out that Gods and General can really bring out those tears! I guess it’s because I admire Stonewall Jackson so much, but the two saddest parts are when little Janie dies and when Jackson himself dies. Anyways, I highly recommend the movie. I leave you with this picture, and the expectation of hearing about English camp next time. Make sure to check out the videos!

Quiz: Guess the two kinds of American candy in my local Japanese supermarket. I will give you a hint, they are both chocolate.

Update: I can't get the video to upload, so you are just going to have to enjoy the pictures for now.

Tamba/Tanba

Answer:

            The “Shinkansen,” is the bullet train. Supposedly it goes at 200 mph.

It looks like Dad and Katrina get credit for correct answers this week!

            Our journey from Tokyo to Hyogo Prefecture was rather exciting. I had shipped my last big bag to Hyogo because we knew that we would not have a lot of room for extra bags on our trip, and it was definitely easier only having two small bags. All 52 of the Hyogo ALTs took two buses from the Keio Plaza Hotel to Tokyo Train Station. It made for quite an interesting sight when we left the buses and started to walk through the train station in a long line. We boarded the Shinkansen (bullet train) at about 10:00 and headed for Osaka. The Shinkansen is a great way to travel, there is lots of leg room, and comfortable seats, but to me it didn’t really feel like we were going as fast as we were. In any case we made it to Osaka in about 3 hours and then boarded two more buses to travel to Yashiro which contains the Prefectural Education Center. We arrived in Yashiro and were split into two groups, senior high school and junior high school/elementary school. I went with the senior high school teachers into a large room in which were also many Japanese people. These were the representatives of all the schools that we were travelling to. We waited as the lady in charge read off each of our names and our school name and then looked around until some Japanese person started waving at us. It was all rather awkward, but it was pretty effective at getting us connected with the right school. The person I met was an English teacher named Ms. Onishi, or Onishi-sensei in Japanese (sensei means teacher. We got in her car and headed out for the one hour ride to Tanba (the spelling of Tanba is a little bit ambiguous in English, technically it is spelled Tamba, but the Japanese people seem to interchange the names, so I probably will too!) Unfortunately Onishi-sensei had not driven in Yashiro very much, and we got lost. L The good part about being lost is that you get to see a lot more of Japan, and Japan really is a beautiful. The bad part is that you are in a foreign country, and there is absolutely nothing you can do except pray. Fortunately we were not lost for very long, and after about an hour and a half we arrived in Tanba.

As soon as we got to Hikami high school I was taken in to see the Kocho-sensei, and the Kyoto-sensei (principal and vice principal). They are both very nice men and they were very excited to meet me. We drank green tea (it wasn’t very good), and talked as much as we could, in their minimal English and my nonexistent Japanese.

Japanese Culture Break!

All Japanese people study English in school, and have done so for quite a long time, so probably anyone who has been in school in at least the last 50 years has some knowledge of English. The problem they face is that they learn English grammar and writing, but very little speaking. The reason Japan introduced the JET program 26 years ago was mainly to improve Japanese speaking ability. The Kocho and Kyoto-sensei both have a decent grasp of English, it is just difficult for them to speak it.

At the end of this meeting I was introduced to Kido-sensei, another Japanese English teacher who was supposed to take care of me, and help me adjust to life in Japan. She is a new teacher herself, only having started this year, so she has been a little bit stressed out, but she did a great job helping me get adjusted to life in Japan. I spent the rest of the week getting settled in, and figuring out what my work would be like. The Japanese use the yen, and it definitely takes some getting used to, to switch to a different currency. There was also the fact that I couldn’t really speak to anyone except for the English teachers. However, I was invited to have lunch with some of the teachers one day, and they introduced me to the wonders of Donburi. Donburi is a Japanese food that comes in a packet. You put the packet in boiling water for a few minutes, and then dump it onto rice. There are many different kinds of Donburi, but they usually contain some sort of meat and vegetables in addition to yummy sauce. There were many things to get used to in Tanba, and while it wasn’t really an easy time, I have been having a lot of fun in a new place.

Coming soon: Which side of the Mountain?, Drink till you drop, and The Most Interesting Man in the World!

Quiz: “Genki,” is a word that is often used to describe Japanese students. Some of them are “Genki,” and some are not. What does “Genki” mean?

Remember: no looking up the answer, and respond via email or Facebook.

Tokyo Orientation

Answer to quiz question:

Omiyage are gifts that are brought from someplace that you have visited and given to your friends and family back home. It is a Japanese tradition to always get some Omiyage when you visit someplace. They are especially important at work as it is almost a way of saying, “I’m sorry that I was on vacation, and I want you to experience some piece of what I did.” I also brought Omiyage with me when I came to Japan to give to the teachers here. SO, if you earn a certain amount of points you will earn Omiyage from me when I return from Japan.

Correct answers:

It looks like the Johnson family answered correctly (with the exception of Dad), however, only Jesse earned double points because he included the fact that omiyage are gifts.

The buses from the airport took us to the Keio Plaza Hotel, which is in Shinjuku, a part of Tokyo. The hotel was very nice, and I was staying on the 19^th floor with two roommates, James and Daniel. James and I had been seated next to each other on the plane and we hung out quite a bit in Tokyo. The first night we went to a local park and one thing I noticed was the noise level. Tokyo seemed to be a lot quieter than I thought a city that size should be. I’m not really sure why, maybe it was because there aren’t a lot of people talking, or maybe it was because the cars were very quiet. If the city was quiet, the park was the exact opposite. There are lots of cicadas in Japan, big cicadas, and they like to make lots of noise. After the walk I went back to my room and straight to bed even though it was only about 8:00 because I was pretty tired. The next morning I woke up at 4:30 a trend which would continue for the next few days. The worst part was that after waking up I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I had a lot of free time in the mornings. Meals were very interesting. Breakfast was a sort of American breakfast with bacon, eggs, toast fruit, and even French Fries. Lunch was a more Japanese meal and I didn’t enjoy that as much as breakfast. Supper on Monday was very interesting. It was a formal welcome meal with important Japanese officials present and there was a very large buffet. Unfortunately there weren’t enough tables, and it seemed like I spent most of my time waiting in lines or waiting for more food to arrive. My night wasn’t quite over after dinner, but before I go on let me back up and give an overall picture of my time in Tokyo.

            We, the 41 JETS from Boston, arrived in Tokyo on Sunday and stayed until Wednesday morning. In total there were about 800 JETs at Orientation from a bunch of different countries, although as far as I could tell the majority were from the USA, UK, Canada, and New Zealand. This was the second Orientation, and in total there are more than 1400 new JETs in Japan. In total there are currently 4,372 JET participants in Japan. Alright, so some terms. JET, as I mentioned before, stands for Japanese Exchange Teacher. There are several kinds of JETs. There are ALTs, Assistant Language Teachers, who work in the classroom as assistant teachers, usually of English. CIR are fluent in Japanese, and they work in offices. SEAs are sports coaches who come over to coach in Japan. The majority of JETs are ALTs, like me, there are some CIRs, and there are only a few SEAs. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about what I learned, suffice it to say that I absorbed a lot of important information, and listened to a lot of speakers, who were for the most part very interesting.

            The most significant thing that I discovered, is that there is a JET Christian Fellowship group. (JCF). I was able to meet with some of them on Monday night after the supper event, and it was great to get connected with other Christians. I hope that I can get more involved with JCF in the future. It actually took me quite a long while to find JCF on Monday night. They were meeting at a place called Shinjuku I-land Patio, which was only a short walk from the Hotel. Unfortunately their directions weren’t very specific, and I spent about twenty-five minutes wandering around before I found it. I actually found Shinjuku I-land sooner than that, but it was an oddly shaped building with a collection of different kinds of stores and restaurants. I was looking for some sort of elevated deck, but the patio was actually down in the ground in an open air circle.

Japanese language break

The Japanese word “Hajimemashite,” means “nice to meet you for the first time.” It’s a very useful word to know in Japan. The way to say it is “Ha, gee, may, ma, she, tay.” One way in which Japanese is easy to learn is that each letter has only one sound. There are only five vowels, and the other two are “o,” and “u,” which sound like the “o” in “go,” and the “u” in “blue.”

            On Tuesday night the Otsuka’s came to visit me. For those of you who don’t know, the Otsuka’s are very good friends of my family. Linda is half Japanese, and Juro is full Japanese, and they have three boys; Isaya and Shimon live at home, and Yoshiya lives in New York. Only Isaya was able to come with Juro and Linda because Shimon has to work crazy hours. Our family met them when Juro was working on his PHD at UMass about fifteen years ago, and we have been good friends ever since. Yoshiya is about the same age as me, and Isaya and Shimon are a few years younger. It was very good to see them, and we went out for supper together. We went to get tempura at a restaurant somewhere in Tokyo. Tempura is basically a bunch of deep fried fish with a large variety of toppings to put on top. I tried eel for the first time and it was very yummy. That was my last night in Tokyo, and the next morning all of us headed out to our prefectures. Coming next time! Lost in Translation, Lost in Transition, Lost in Transaction, Lost in Transmission, Lost in Transportation, and the always popular, Chicken Donburi for the Soul.

Quiz:  1 point

My method of transportation from Tokyo to my prefecture was a Shinkansen. What is it? Remember, don’t look anything up, and answer via email or Facebook message.

Narita

I am sorry for the long delay, but I have been without internet for quite some time. I am still without an internet connection for the time being, but I have figured out how to tether my phone to my computer, which should allow me to start posting again. I have many blog posts ready to go, so I will probably post one every other day, until I am caught up. I have decided that it will be fun to have a competition of sorts with my blogs. In each blog I will pose some sort of question, and see if you can answer it. Please do not post your responses in the comments section, but rather send them to me in either an email, or a Facebook message. Please do not look up any of the answers, but answer from your own knowledge or guess. Everyone who correctly answers the question will get a point, or several points. These points will add up throughout the course of my blogs in Japan. At the end of my time here your points will be redeemed for omiyage which I will bring with me when I come back. So this brings me to my first question, what are omiyage? This question will be worth two points for a complete answer and one point for a partial answer. I will probably post again in two days so please respond before then!

One other note, please feel free to ask questions about anything. I will try to respond and give you a clearer picture of what life in Japan is like! J

Here it is, the one you have all been waiting for, my first blog post in Japan, and you can’t even read it when I finish writing it, because I don’t have internet yet. Well anyways I hope that you all enjoy this when you do get to read it. I will be doing several blog posts covering my first week in Japan because so much has happened already, and the week isn’t even done yet!

I arrived at Logan International Airport at just about 10:00 on Saturday morning with my whole family (except for Andrew). We waited in line, and then finally made it up the counter where I found out that both of my bags were overweight. They needed to be 23 kilograms each, but one was 23.8, and the other was over 24. (I will try to use metric measurements from here on out. I don’t really know them that well, but it is good practice for me as that is all that they use in Japan.) After shifting some luggage from my bag to my carry on, I managed to reduce the weight slightly. It was still over the limit, but the baggage lady was nice enough to let it slide. We headed off to security, and I said goodbye to my family. :’( Now technically there is a weight limit for your carry on, but I didn’t think that they would check it, and I was right. That was a very good thing as my carry on probably weighed almost as much as my other bags. Those of you who know me well know that I can’t live without my books, and since I knew that my other bags were going to be close to the weight limit, many of my books had ended up in my backpack. (Thanks for the tip, Greg Church!)

I was flying on Japan Airlines Flight 007 (it made me want to put on my tuxedo and order a martini!) along with 40 other JETs (Japanese Exchange Teachers). We were flying direct from Logan to Narita (Tokyo). We left at 1:00 pm on Saturday, and arrived in Japan a little after 3:00 pm on Sunday. (I’ll let all of you math wizzes figure out how long we were actually in the air). The flight went very well. If any of you ever want to go to Japan (and have a little extra money) I highly recommend Japan Airlines. I didn’t have a great view out the window, (my seat was in the middle of the last row) but the little I did see mainly taking off and landing was pretty beautiful. I did have a great view of my TV screen, (I had a personal one right in front of me) and I recommend the movie 42. The in-flight meals were also very yummy, and even the bathroom was pretty nice.

When we arrived in Narita my ear was still popped, so I couldn’t hear right for a while, but we moved quickly through Customs, and also received our Foreign Residency Cards, which allow us to buy things like phones. There were lots of people there to meet us, and they helped us make a quick transition from the plane to the buses which took us to Tokyo. My first “whoa, I’m in Japan moment” came on the bus ride when I looked out the window to see a person asleep in the front left seat of a car. It took me a moment to remember that in Japan they drive from the right side!

Don’t miss the next blog post with more unforgettable titles from the same author including: The Sound of Silence, Waking up in Tokyo, To Eat or not to Eat, and an amazing new story, The Island of Shinjuku Patio.

Quiz:  1 or 2 points

What are Omiyage? Don’t look anything up, and answer via email or Facebook message!