And so it begins.

Today was my first full day of teaching, so I suppose I'm officially a Nova Drone now. I've completed 14 full classes now (8 of them today) and am getting more comfortable with things. Things went well, but it was a long day. I left for work at 11am or so, and got home around 9:40pm. Tomorrow is likely to be even longer as I have to travel across town for it. Even though I've only been at Honko for a few days, I'm going to miss some of the people. I was just getting to the point where I knew some of the students and japanese staff by name, and now I'll need to go learn an entire new batch of people. The kid classes are still daunting, but I'm sure once I get a couple out of the way I'll get used to them just like everything else. We're going out for some fancy Korean barbecue party tomorrow as a going away party for somebody leaving Japan, but I'll write more on that tomorrow.
The titled instructors finally got paid yesterday, which makes me slightly more optimistic about my chances at getting paid in 2 weeks.

Japanese Bureaucracy

Let's begin with an omg. Trying to get the basic necessities for working in Japan is turning into an obstacle course. Payment is done by direct deposit - so clearly to begin I need a Japanese bank account in order to get any pay. I had the Shinsei Bank recommended to me, because it allows ATM withdrawls for free and has ATMs running 24/7 (which isn't the norm here). So, I go to Shinsei Bank and they're like - "You can't open a bank account without a mobile phone". So I then go to the major mobile phone company in the area, and tell them I want to get a mobile phone - "You can't get a mobile phone without a bank account". Huh? Ok, so that wasn't going anywhere. Luckily a few days ago I had muddled my way through opening a postal savings account across the street. I'm told that I can't have my pay deposited into it, but it should be perfect for getting a phone, which will then let me get a real bank account, which will let me get paid. I find that they tried delivering my pass book yesterday (pass book being what I needed to actually use the bank account for the phone), so I went to the post office with my little notice of delivery slip and my passport, and got my passbook. I then proceeded to walk all the way back to the phone company with all my papers in hand, and set about getting my phone. I picked out the phone and the plan and what number I wanted, and then was told that the Certificate of Alien Registration or whatever that I got wouldn't be enough, and I would need to wait for my Alien Identification Card. The entire point of the certificates is to sub in for the card until you get it!! Arrgh! So, as things look now, I need to wait until my Alien ID card is ready, which will be another week before I can open a bank or get a phone. That means any chance of getting my pay advance is pretty slim, and I will have to remain a social invalid without a phone. I had to pay for those certificates so that I could use them to open bank accounts and get a phone, and it turns out they serve absolutely no purpose at all.

Anyway, on a happier note, I'm now done my children's training and begin teaching regular lessons tomorrow, and kid lessons the following day. I don't think the kid ones will be too bad, as long as I don't get stuck with any chibiko classes (2-4 years old). Just because it amuses me, here is the basic template of a chibiko class:
1. Entering the Room - High Five!
2. Hello Time - Hello Song
3. Numbers Time - Numbers Song, Counting (1-10) Song, Incy Wincy Count Song, Blast Off!
4. Cards Time - Touch and Mime
5. Color Time - Color Mad
6. Rotating Element
7. Music Time - Music Song, Shake Shake Shake
8. Cards Time - Four Walls
9. Movement Time - Movement Song, Move Move Move!, Move In Move Out Song
10. ABC Time - ABC Twist Song
11. Story Time
12. Goodbye Time - Goodbye Song
...yeah

Last night we went out to a bar called The Shack for a hamburger eating contest. Sadly, there was only one entry allowed from each continent, and there was already an American signed up, but there were 3 other people in it from Nova (New Zealand, England and Mexico). The Kenyan eater stole the show though, and won with relative ease. We just sat around playing pool and drinking after that. Everybody is scrambling to come up with backup plans if Nova folds, but I'm kind of caught in limbo. It's bad enough that I have little money and no japanese language ability and next to no contacts, but I'm also still waiting for a phone, and it's pretty impossible in Japan to look for jobs at all without a phone. Hopefully once some of this administrative stuff clears up I'll be able to forge ahead and try to find some work.

Orientation (Day 3)

Finally finished orientation. I had 4 full classes scheduled today, but everybody cancelled for one of them. Mentally and physically exhausted right now, and I have a day of training for kid classes tomorrow. I still need to go and pick up a phone too, but I have a flyer with all the different phones and plans to look through now at least. Sorry that these posts have been pretty dull this week, I'll go do something fun on Friday when I have the day off and post something exciting.

Orientation (Day 2)

Day 2 complete now. I taught 2 full lessons by myself, one of which was one of the weakest level of class, which was a bit rough, but good practice. My schedule got shifted a bit so that instead of having Thursday off this week I'll be doing training for teaching kids classes (should be interesting). Things are going smoother, and hopefully the lessons will become more automatic the more practice I get.
On my way home I stopped in at a 100 yen shop (i.e. dollar store) to buy some pens. It was full of bright signage and really loud, repetitive music, but the store itself is sweet. Besides just the usual stuff I'd expect in a dollar store, it had tons of instant ramen and other foodstuff all for 100 yen, so I might stock up on some cheap instant food there for snacks at home.

Orientation (Day 1)

Had my first day of orientation today. It was a pretty long day, but everything went pretty smoothly. There were 4 other instructors going through it with me, and a good chunk of the day was just practicing different parts of lessons with them. We also observed a class, and performed half of another class. We need to do 2 full classes tomorrow, but everything seems pretty straight forward and the students so far have been really friendly. I need to get up early tomorrow to go open my bank account and maybe get a phone.

Hiroshima Castle

As promised, I headed off for Hiroshima Castle. The baseball stadium and a big swimming complex/park were along the way, so I wandered through that area for a bit. The park was full of all these little subcultures which was neat. One corner would have all the guys freestyle biking and skateboarding, and then under a little walkway you'd have another group rapping and dancing, and there was a group of people doing Tai Chi over by one of the fountains. A couple of blocks further in I came to this big long walled in area that stretched the entire block. I couldn't see over the wall, but I could see big lights overhead, and kept thinking "tennis courts? tennis courts? tennis..." and was rewarded when I finally found a way to sneak in. Now I just need to find some people to play with.




My sports expedition complete, I marched onwards towards the castle. This is just the outer wall near where the bridge is. Just a side note, but before I actually crossed the moat, I stopped at a vending machine and got this grape drink, and was a bit surprised when I discovered it actually had grapes floating in it. It was alright, but the texture was unusual.

On my way across I encountered the ferocious guardians of the moat. There were big white fish as well, but the pictures I took didn't turn out (it's hard to take pictures of things in the water as it's getting dark out).

Wandering around the castle complex I came across a bunch more crabs, and as I had my camera equipped this time, I thought I'd take a picture of one, since I mentioned them before.

Finally, after crossing 2 bridges and ascending a few staircases I got to the main castle itself. I couldn't actually go in, but it was interesting anyway.

After the trip and some dinner, I went out with various people to a little cafe and had drinks and dessert crepes. A bit pricey for what it was, but the crepes were great.

Yay for air conditioners. I've spent a fair chunk of the last two days in my room, mostly because outdoors is so hot and humid that it's like walking into a sauna. Yesterday I finished my explorations of the peace park. I didn't check out the museum at all, but I did find a part of the park where all the old men sit and play go and shogi. There were only two go games going on, and I was too shy to go watch, but it was my first go sighting, so still exciting. I actually went and tried to find a cheap go board in this Value Village-esque shop below the bookstore, but they only seemed to have boards, no stones. I've become addicted to this type of candy, which I'd tried before at some conventions, but now I can get it for 80 yen, which is dirt cheap. There's a 7 eleven down the street, and even though it's not all that culture embracing, I've been getting lunch there a lot because I can just buy a sandwich or whatever for 200 yen, which is cheaper than most other things I can find. For my walk this morning, I followed one of the nearby rivers south. I had some food I was going to eat for lunch, and was trying to find an unoccupied bench, but eventually just gave up and found some stairs that descended to the river and sat down to eat there. There I discovered that the rivers here are loaded with crabs. They were crawling all over the stairs and riverbed. I would have taken a picture, but I didn't take my camera today. I'm getting a better feel for the city - well, at least for Naka Ward, which is where I'll be spending almost all my time now anyway. I've been taking different routes home to get a better feel for the surroundings. This evening I'm planning to the north more, and check out the Hiroshima Castle and the big sports complex near it. Orientation begins tomorrow. I have all the paperwork done that I'm supposed to have done, so we'll see how that goes. I don't want to be rude, but it's so tempting to just go in and be like "So - do I really need to do this orientation stuff, or should I just assume I won't get paid anyway, and go enjoy the day doing something else?" Well, I realize this post is pretty disorganized and hops around a lot, but I felt I should write something new.

From a Whisper to a Roar

I haven't really spoken about this, because it's depressing and I'm sure people already worry enough about me, but it's getting too critical now to not say anything. I mentioned earlier on before I left how there were concerns about Nova going under. When I first got here, the people I spoke to were of the impression that it was a concern, but that Nova would probably pull through, and that it wasn't too huge a worry. Now as things have gotten worse though, it's looking more and more possible that Nova might not be able to come back. It's particularily frustrating for me, because should it go under and should I decide to stay in Japan, I'll be competing with a huge market of other abandoned Nova employees, all who have far more connections and far more experience than I do. Really, the best bet is that Nova either gets bought out and rearranged by somebody else who has money to spend on them, or they scale things back, cut their losses and just try to stabalize things. The problem is that either of those still might result in me losing my job, or having to go without pay for a considerable amount of time - and I don't really have the financial support to survive that. I'm hoping to learn more when I go in for my orientation Monday, and hopefully get a feel for where to go from there. I'm partly just frustated at myself, for my own hubris in assuming when I first heard whispers of problems right from the start, that Nova was big enough and had enough resources that I didn't really need to worry about it. Oh well - in the worst case scenario, I'll get to hang out in Japan for a few weeks, and even if I return home broke and jobless, it's not like I haven't been in that position before. I plan to make the most of things while I'm here though, and save what money I can to either survive until I'll be able to get paid, or to spend travelling a bit around Japan before heading home, should things work out that way.

Further Wanderings

Sorry for all these posts. Blogspot only lets me upload 5 pictures per post. I'll figure out some better way of doing this later, but I'll just brute force things for now.

Shot of Hiroshima across the Motoyasu-gawa River.

...and in the other direction.


A shot down Hondori Street. It stretches further in the other direction. Some day I'll talk a bunch more photos from it, since it's such a neat place, but this will have to suffice for now. It's kind of hard to read it, but the big banner in the middle is for the Hiroshima Carp baseball team.

Wandering Hiroshima on Friday

When I was wandering around yesterday and got lost, this is part of the reason why. I was looking for Handori Street, which I was just told was a covered shopping arcade street, so I figured this was it. It wasn't! Handori is way bigger anyway.


This is just some restaurant along the street shown above. I just find it so funky how there are all these random traditional-looking shops and restraunts stuck in random places.

This is just a random shot of Rijo-dori Ave which is the major street nearest to where I live, and where I walk to get to most things.

I just took this picture because I thought it was kind of strange how they have a kid's playground just stuck in the middle of a stone pathway. There was a bunch more playground stuff around the corner too.

A little park/relaxation area near where I live along Rijo-dori. There was this homeless guy there feeding pigeons - one of those motifs that defies borders I guess.

My Apartment

My bedroom - minimalist, but roomy enough for my needs!



Views from the balcony. Yes - I live above a graveyard. It's actually part of a shrine nearby. If you take the stairs down instead of the elevator, you actually come out right into the graveyard.


Another balcony shot - lots of apartments all around.

I'm going to try doing this in 2 parts, first with my account of today, and then posting all the backlog of pictures from yesterday.
Today turned out to be pretty strange. On further inspection I found that Nova recommends I just fill out some paperwork and then get them to help me open a bank account during orientation, so I decided to leave that for now. I went to the big computer/electronics store and couldn't find the cable I needed, but they had just regular SD-card readers, so I bought one of those for really cheap. I then headed to the Peace Garden/Park, and started wandering around. Shortly in, I got to the children's peace monument which is surrounded by glass cases with thousands and thousands of colourful paper cranes.





So as I was standing there checking things out, this group of middle-aged Japanese women accosted me, and asked me if I'd mind sitting with them and speaking to them for awhile so they could practice their English. I thought it would be cool, as I could get to know some people and learn more about the city. So we spoke for quite awhile about random things, and were eventually interrupted by this group of young kids that were just starting to learn English and were on a field trip requiring them to practice English and get responses about a variety of questions. A lot of them were pretty shy, but it was great practice for when my teaching starts, and I ended up helping probably 5 or 6 of them with their schoolwork. The group of women I was helping with ended up treating me to lunch at a nearby coffee/pastry shop where I had a sandwich, some cheese/sesame seed big rice cracker thing, and an iced coffee (which are supposedly really popular here). They were extremely friendly, and it was nice to meet some locals and get a free meal! Supposedly I have very pretty eyes and they're envious of my eye-lashes (??) In the end, I didn't get to see much of the park, but it's super close, so it just leaves more to do for later.


Assuming this post works properly, I'll post the pictures from yesterday next.

Kanpai!

Just in response to somebody's comments - I have indeed eaten! I just ate some easy packaged stuff I bought at a convenience store yesterday for lunch, but for dinner I went out with one of my roommates for okonomiyaki, which is a specialty of Hiroshima. It's a really neat experience. The restaurant we went too, which is one of the bigger ones, was 5 or 6 stories high, and each floor had a bunch of different eating stations at it. They just have these big oval grills that look kind of like a bar, with the cooks in the middle of them, and people sitting on stools around the outside. They just make the okonomiyaki on the grill/table, and then you just cut off pieces and eat it up. The top and bottom of the okonomiyaki are very much like thing pancakes, and then you have layers of cabbage, soba noodles and cheese, and the entire thing is covered in some sort of sauce. It was quite good, and it only cost ¥1300 (around $11) for the okonomiyaki and a beer. I mentioned to my roommate how I was still a little rough with chop sticks, and he told me that they had quite a few tourists so they'd probably give me a fork if I looked to be struggling too much, but I managed to troop through and eat it with enough competence that I was spared that humiliation.
On the way I had a few other food hotspots pointed out to me. There's one place really close which was described as the McDonalds of Japanese cuisine, where you just go in, put your money in a vending machine, push the button which has the picture of what you want on it, and then go sit down, and they bring it out to you shortly after. I have a feeling I'll be eating there a lot to begin with, beause of the minimal language interaction and the use of pictures to determine what you're getting.
My luggage came in last night, and I got everything unpacked and hung up, so I'm officially settled into my apartment now at least. Going to have a shower now and then head - plan for today is to open a bank account, visit the peace gardens, get that cable for my camera, and maybe buy a cell phone and some groceries, although those might get pushed back if anything else comes up.

Hiroshima Explorations

Well, I'm back from my wanderings for the day, and am going to cool off a bit and then maybe head back out later for dinner. My goal for today was to get my alien residency stuff done and get some residency certificates. In order to do that, I needed to find a place to get photos done. I asked one of my roommates if he knew of any places this morning, and he said there was a photo booth in the train station hidden somewhere around Hondori Street (which is where I do my training next week). Anyway, I sort of had a map, and tried following it, but because I'm spatially incompetent and all the street signs are written in Japanese, and my map was written in English, I made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up going in the totally opposite direction. It was still interesting though - Hiroshima is on a river delta, so there are all these different rivers that cut through the city as they branch apart, and I wandered along a path alongside one for awhile, which is about when I realized where I was and that I had gone the way. It was right near the Red Cross/Atomic Bomb Survivors Hospital though, which I thought was a bit interesting. After wandering a bit more, I turned around and now that I had aligned myself properly found Hondori Street pretty easily. It's really cool - this big broad street that is covered from above and is all just pedestrian traffic, with tons and tons of little boutiques, shops, arcades, coffee shops, etc. Supposedly it's one of the main shopping destinations in the area. I stopped in a book store and looked around a bit, and checked out this huge game store to see if I could find a go board cheap, without much luck. They had a huge video game section at the top floor, but I'm too poor still to get into any of those. I found my photo booth and got my photos though, then went to the Naka Ward Office and after a short communication struggle managed to fill out the necessary paper work and get my documents. I already knew this before coming, but it's amazing how much more customer oriented the employees here are. I first noticed on the bullet train how whenever a staff memeber came into the train car they would bow first, then walk through it, and then bow again before leaving, even though everybody's back was too them. At the Naka Office, the employees would -run- from computer to desk to filing cabinet to computer. Another cool thing - it's supposedly rude to offer a tip to somebody, which is fine by me.
I should have mentioned this before, but Hiroshima is HOT. Supposedly the weather is a bit atypical right now, but today was 31C and very humid. I'm sure I'll get used to hit, but walking around for 3 or 4 hours today was pretty exhausting. My room is air conditioned though, so at least I have a small refuge.
Oh, I tried my first vending machine. Japanese Mountain Dew != Canadian Mountain Dew, but it was close enough, and still very refreshing.
Anyway, I took some pictures today, but found out that the cable I brought to upload them to my computer is the wrong size, so I'll need to check later and see if I can find another one to buy, or find a card reader or something. There was a giant computer/electronics store on Hondori, so I'll go check it out tomorrow and see what I can find. Hopefully my luggage gets delivered okay tonight, because I want to unpack and finish settling in.
-Richard

Follow-up and Initial Impressions

So far, things haven't been quite as alien as I thought they might be. There are still a lot of differences from home, but a lot of things aren't as different as I'd feared. The entire public transit system has everything written in English as well as Japanese, which is going to make finding things way easier. A lot of the really different cultural things so far are things I expected, or at least certainly don't surprise me. There are a lot more bright colourful signs and cute cartoon animal logos (mostly bears/pandas so far, although the Nova pink bunny seems to be showing up quite a bit as well), the different style vending machines everywhere, the techiness and organization of everything, etc.
I used one of the public washrooms at the Kansai Airport, and it was so neat. The toilet had something like 15 buttons on it (including multiple strengths of bidet, "shower", different seat heat settings, 3 different volumes of flush sound, and so on), all the soap and faucets were run by motion sensor, which I know we have in Canada some places, but they're still neat. The unit to dry your hands was like a box that you stick your hands in, and it glows red and blasts them from both sides like a jet engine, cleaning them far better the oldschool ones I'm used to.
I was alone with this other new student named Fionna getting on the bullet train, and we almost got on the wrong section because we didn't really know what we were doing. They have different train cars for reserved and unreserved seating, and the unreserved cars were 1-3, so we just ran until we got to 3 and managed to get on before it took off on us. Shortly after, we discovered that 3 was the smoking car, which was about 98% male, and did indeed have considerable amounts of smoke wafting around. There was a Japanese guy a few seats away that was flipping through some porn magazine, which I found funny.
A few of the Nova staff met us at the train station in Hiroshima and took us by street-car to our place. This apartment is the main residence for Nova staff, and has probably 15-20 teachers living in it. Despite what I said last night about getting ready for bed, I ended up staying up for considerably longer, because a bunch of other people from both our building and other nearby people came by and we had some drinks. Everybody seems friendly, and it was a good chance to get to meet a lot of the people around. I'm going to be working in the Diamond City Hiroshima school, which is one of the smaller ones, and probably the furthest away in Hiroshima, but one of my room mates works there, and Fionna is going to be working there as well. Supposedly where we live is a really central location though. I'm a 10 minute walk from both the peace park and A-bomb memorial, and there seems to be tons of shopping and food close by. Today I'm going to go try registering as a Japanese resident (which is in a building just across the street), and then just wandering around and checking out the park - I'll take some pictures! One of the people I met last night who is moving out soon has offered to show me around tomorrow, so hopefully that will help for figuring out where everything is. My luggage delivery is supposed to show up 8-9pm today, so I need to make sure I'm back then, but otherwise I've got free time until Monday when my 3 day training begins.
I have my work schedule now, and will be working Sunday 10am-5:20pm, Monday 1:20pm - 5:40pm, Tuesday 1:20pm-9:00pm, Wednesday/Thursday off, Friday 1:20pm-9:00pm, Saturday 10:00am - 5:40pm. Anyway, last time I ate was on the plane from San Francisco, so I'm going to go wander about and see if I can find somewhere to buy food.
-Richard

Yikes! I survived!

Well, I've now been up for something around 30 hours, and it's been a looong day (or a short 2 days, I suppose), but I thought I'd write something here so everybody knows I'm alright and made it over okay. Flights from Toronto to San Francisco and then to Osaka went pretty smoothly, although I was pretty sore by the end of all that flying. I got to know quite a few of the other teachers heading over as well, so that made it a bit easier. Things to a bit more hectic in Osaka, and one of our shuttles was late, which caused us to miss the train we were scheduled to take originally, and caused me to nearly trample a little girl to death as we dashed madly through the station to try chasing down a train. Anyway, it took a bit longer, but I finally got to my new place around 10pm local time (which is 9am in Canada), and am just settling in a bit before I got to bed. Anyway, I'll write more completely tomorrow when I'm a bit less tired.

Uncertainties

As if moving across the world to a foreign country wasn't cause for enough concerns, it appears that the company I'm going to be working for is on the verge of collapse. They were late paying some of their employees this month, and it sounds like both teachers and students are losing faith in the company and taking off. I've already heard that some of the people I was scheduled to be going over with are backing out, and it certainly makes me worry about the future, as I'm scheduled to leave in 2 days. I've put the last 6 months into planning this out, and I don't intend to back out now, but I have no clue what I'm going to do if I get there only to have them shut down shortly after. At least I have my passport and work visa, and if the worst happens, I can always look for work elsewhere in the country. Hopefully I'll get a better idea of what exactly is going on when I get there and can speak to some other people working for the company.
-Richard

I know where I'll be living!

Thinks are slowly coming together now. I got my new laptop, my visa is all done, and most exciting, I found out today that I'm going to be living in Hiroshima! It would have been nice to be a bit closer to Tokyo, but Hiroshima still has over 2 million people in and around it, so I'm sure there's still going to be lots to do. I need to come up with some sort of schedule though, so that I can plan when I want to make excursions to other parts of Japan for weekends or holidays for various events and festivals. Just 8 days left now.

Hello!

Just thought I'd write a brief introduction to get something written on here. I'm kind of assuming that anybody here understands the purpose of the blog, but I'll give the basic details anyway!

In 2 weeks I depart for a year (at least) to teach in Japan, as so many other young graduates have done before me. As of yet, I still don't know where in Japan I'm working, I don't speak any Japanese and I don't know anybody there. To make things potentially worse, I was reading through reviews of employees that had worked for the same company before, and they're mostly all negative, and some are just downright scary.

All that aside though, it's Japan - the country where the past and the future intersect. I'm sure I'll face my fair share of adversity, but you'll find that just about anywhere, and when it's all said in done, hopefully I'll have a blast and come out a better person for it all.

Sayonara,
Rich.