Week 3

It’s been an interesting week. Last Tuesday I went to Kanazawa for a two-day prefectural orientation at the Jyosei Center. It was essentially designed to give us info on life and work specific to Ishikawa. I found it on the whole a lot more helpful and pertinent than the orientation at Tokyo, plus when combined with night outings it was a pretty fun time.

Upon returning to Daishoji, Anna and I were taken on a tour of the Kaga area by a local ESS teacher and some elementary school 6th grade girls. They drove us around and brought us to various museums and temples, doing their best to provide explanations for everything in English. Even though the kids were deathly afraid of using English or even engaging us in conversation, they were good sports and seemed to enjoy themselves after a while. They go to Sakumi Elementary, a school that I’ll be visiting two or three times a month, and overall it was cool to finally meet some of my future students. They seemed a lot older than I would have expected elementary-age kids to be, and did a decent job of showing me their too-cool-for-school attitudes, but we’ll just see about that. Can’t believe I’m saying it, but I’m definitely looking forward to school!

Let’s see…on Saturday the Kanazawa JETs took the train down to Daishoji and got a taste of our neck of the woods. We showed them around a bit and then headed off to Kaga Onsen, where we met Issei. You see, our buddy Issei was throwing a huge BBQ party, so I’d inadvertently invited a bunch of foreigners (8 in total). Thus, showing up at his BBQ with what must have looked like a UN delegation was more than enough to shock the pants off of some of the Japanese guests. But after a couple of drinks and some yakitori everyone loosened up, so despite difficulties in communication, everyone to my knowledge had an awesome time.

On Sunday I went with my friends Ai-Chih and Akiko to Kanazawa and saw some of the traditional samurai housing district, just south of the city center. It was comprised of narrow, winding streets with high walls and small, old-looking residences. For lunch we went to a world famous cross-cultural restaurant that boasts some of the most popular food in the world: McDonalds. The guy serving us was all smiles and we even had a chat in English about all the places he’d been in Canada and how long I’d been studying Japanese. Could you imagine that taking place in Canada or the U.S.??? In the afternoon, we went to the Geisha district, which used to have lots of traditional entertainers, plus a gold leaf museum and various tea houses.

On Monday my supervisor took me on a driving tour of the nine schools I’ll be visiting. We entered them, and amid shocked gasps at how young I was, I had a chance to meet various staff members at my schools. It hit me by the end of the day just how many schools I’ll be going to. Nine!!!! Just learning the names of my school supervisors and relevant English-teaching faculty will be difficult—students’ names, impossible. But all in all, it was good to actually go to the schools and see where they are, that they physically exist. It makes it a bit more real…

Oh, I also got a mobile phone through the company Softbank. Calls and messages are free between members from 1am to 9pm, so it’s a pretty sweet deal (although the phone itself cost an arm and a leg). It does a whole lot of cool stuff, including TV, but I have pretty crappy reception in my area. I did manage to catch some Olympics though, pulling out of the station in Kanazawa, but sadly, nothing at home. But--I was able to call my momz from my cell phone for free!