a REALLY long journal entry!!
Sunday, 9/9/07 9:15 AM Gifu-Shi, Nippon
At “home,” it is actually the evening of 9/8/07. I have been waking here every day with the sun, around 5:30 AM, still tired but unable to return to sleep. Days are spent searching for various businesses around the city, and I fall exhausted into bed by 8:00 PM. My stamina is refreshed throughout the day by various snacks of toast, cheese and crackers (available at Circle K!), and noodles.
I realize that I should have begun keeping record of this immigration experience before I left the United States--as early as May, when I began the interview process and began theorizing with my colleagues about how this experience could possibly qualify as my practicum for graduate school. However, I was too busy, overwhelmed, and--quite honestly--frustrated.
This process all began one day back in December when I came home from my job teaching elementary school in Tucson, Arizona in tears. This was not that unusual of an occurrence; my job was quite stressful, and my views often differed from those of my coworkers. My dream of sharing my love of knowledge with my students was quickly turning into a nightmare of arguments over educational pedagogy, piles of paperwork, and frequent miscommunications between my colleagues. “Shit,” I told my partner Josh, “I need to do something different. Totally different....but I have to be a teacher now; I’m in graduate school, and working at this school is completely in line with my scholastic path. I want to change something major, but I don’t want to make it more difficult to complete my studies.”
I remember Josh’s facial expression, which revealed his genuine desire to help me resolve this stressful situation. “Why don’t we teach in Japan for a few months? You say you need to incorporate your current work as a teacher with a change in your professional situation for your practicum. This would allow you to keep teaching and would definitely include a change. We have both always wanted to do something like this, and I think that this is the perfect time!”
“Ha ha....move to Japan.....oh, hmmm, well, that actually sounds like a great idea! I mean, it would be totally different! I was kind of wary about adding another responsibility at my current job to qualify for my practicum anyway. I mean, I have tons of additional responsibilities already.....and I don’t want to stay here and take an unpaid position for my practicum. How would we pay our bills?” I paused. I couldn’t believe that Josh was actually making such a radical suggestion. I mean, we had only been dating for about three months, and he had just moved to Tucson about four months earlier. We had talked about our desire to teach English in Japan before; we both had close friends from the country and found the cultural differences and similarities to be quite fascinating. What he was saying was completely unbelievable, yet it made perfect sense.
The next few months were a blur of research that included sifting through many confusing Japanese web sites, frequently initiating e-mail correspondence with our friends who were living in Japan, and filling out hosts of job applications. One thing that I found particularly discouraging in my research was that most teaching companies that hired native English speakers were private and required teachers to commit to one year of work in order to qualify for a work visa. After some internal debate about how long I could reasonably commit to living and working in another country as well as how I would feel about working for a private corporation that charged its students large sums of money to learn, I decided to go through with my applications. Even if I wasn’t so sure about all that I was signing up for, the differences that this new experience was sure to hold would undoubtedly provide me with invaluable learning experiences about different cultures, educational systems, socioeconomic issues, values, and myself.
Now it was time to make sure that the staff at Prescott College would be as sure about my decision as I was becoming. My advisor, Lloyd, was unsurprisingly incredibly supportive and encouraged me to write a letter to my core faculty at the College detailing my intentions for my practicum term--to live in Japan and teach English with a major corporation. Surely this experience as an immigrant myself would support my tentative thesis topic of creating methods for easing cultural disparity between home and school for immigrant students in the United States. One vaguely detailed letter--based on many qualifications concerning my employment status with the intended company in Japan--later, Noel, my core faculty member, sent me her excited support via e-mail within a few days.
Feeling overwhelmed with everyone’s support and also planning for a three-month move to Alaska for the upcoming summer, I began the waiting process that inevitably comes with applying for employment. I spent this time working on school work and spending as much time as possible with my loved ones in Tucson, including my students. I worked diligently around the clock to finish many of the projects that I had begun during the school year and to pass on some of my duties and experiences to my colleagues, who may have suspected that some major changes lie in my future.
In April both Josh and I received e-mails from Nova Group, a major corporation in Japan who wanted to interview us! The bad news was that the interviews were two weeks later--in San Francisco. After some lengthy phone calls, we arranged for the interviews to take place three weeks later in San Francisco and had rearranged our traveling plans with a friend of mine who was accompanying us to Alaska from Mississippi to allow us to spend two days in San Francisco on our way to Seattle. We planned to drive from Tucson to Seattle and then fly to Alaska from there.
Then came the most difficult part after planning logistics--saying goodbyes. Announcing my decision to my students was one of the hardest things that I have ever done. So many of them did not seem to understand why I wanted to experience such a thing as moving away from the United States--and away from them. I fumbled over some explanations as best as I could, all the while thinking that maybe these kids were right; maybe they were the most important part of my life, and I was just giving them up like they didn’t matter. I spent the next few weeks attempting to show them just how important they were to me, and I like to think that they somehow grasped my appreciation for all of our experiences together. In the end there was nothing that I could do but walk away from so many people who love me in favor of my hopes for the unknown.
Of course Josh and I were exhausted during our interview. We were also overwhelmed by the amount of information we received, the cost that we incurred just getting to this interview (gas, clothes, parking fees, etc.), and the time spent in the interview (about five hours). We were also intimidated by the fast-paced high-intensity of the experience. Everything was timed, and we were asked to improvise in front of our peers on numerous occasions during the day. Needless to say, we were feeling less than confident after the interview. However, I tried not to let these feelings of uncertainty bother me. After all, I enjoyed teaching my students at the tiny community public school in the neighborhood filled with poverty where I had worked in Tucson, Arizona for the last three years. As difficult as my job was, I missed my students already and felt that maybe I wasn’t ready for such a big change after all. I decided not to pursue employment with any other companies in Japan and to let the result of this interview decide my future plans.
Once in Alaska I mostly concentrated on finishing the schoolwork of my last term that saying goodbye in Tucson simply had not allowed. Once I had finished all of this work and was looking forward to exploring my new home for the summer, I received the notice from Nova Group that Josh and I would be moving to Japan in about three months! Well, I guessed the future had finally been decided. I was bittersweetly excited but already too busy again to really think about the implications of this news.
There were extensive amounts of paperwork to fill out in order to accept the position. Important decisions had to made about things such as health insurance--which required the purchase and perusal of several books that were shipped to us--in a timely manner. Tens of papers needed signatures--official signatures that matched those on passports, not every day signatures used for signing checks. Documents were sent back to us that needed corrections; these were edited painstakingly, then mailed or faxed back to the company. More questions arose than could be answered by the extremely considerate man from the Japanese Embassy in Anchorage, as we tried our best to communicate in incredibly polite broken English. More documents needed to be submitted to the Embassy of Japan for medical reasons. These, too, needed to be corrected and resubmitted in a matter of days. The expenses of sending documents and communicating with residents of Japan increased each day.
In between this paperwork and communications with staff members of Prescott College and my friends and family about the new developments in my life, I tried to make time to meet new people in Alaska--my home for the time being. Time did permit for such social interactions toward the latter part of the summer, for which I am very grateful. Many people whom we met there were invaluable to our experience this summer, and we continue to keep in touch with them today.
After leaving Alaska in August, Josh and I flew to Phoenix, Arizona and drove almost three hours to Prescott, Arizona, where we found a lovely camp site and a much appreciated authentic Mexican restaurant right away. I spent the next two days in coffee shops, hoarding Internet access and electricity, which had become rare commodities during my summer in Alaska and my time camping in Prescott, completing research, and compiling information about the No Child Left Behind Act for a presentation that I was to give at the upcoming College colloquium.
The presentation went as well as could be expected with my mind already on thoughts of the logistics of moving to a new country (Where did I put my passport when I was packing up my tent in Alaska?) and saying goodbye to my loved ones during the next two weeks. During the presentation I was extremely nervous and lacked the visual aids that are typically necessary for effective presentations, due to physical limitations of what I could carry in my move from Alaska to Tucson to Japan in which this stop in Prescott was included. Nonetheless, I found myself speaking from my heart to a captive audience of fellow teachers and education students. I spoke about many of the challenges that educators face, many of which are compounded by the No Child Left Behind law. Maybe not all of what I said was constructive; some of my presentation was definitely evidence of a discouraged teacher who needed to vent, but I tried to generate a communal desire to advocate change in the educational system among everyone in that room. Judging by some of the feedback that I received regarding the presentation, I did not achieve all of my goals, but, overall, I felt satisfied with most of the ideas that I conveyed. I wish that I had had more time to gain feedback, ideas, and experiences from more members of the group that day, but time seems to be a continual hindrance in our lives, doesn’t it?
After a weekend in Prescott spent reviewing several logistical aspects of my practicum term with my encouraging advisor and core faculty, I returned to Tucson for two weeks, where my work visa application was waiting for me at a friend’s house. Josh and I spent these next two weeks riding our bicycles and taking buses all over the town in order to say our goodbyes to our loved ones; obtain all of the necessary materials for our trip; and submit all of the necessary documents to Nova Group, the Consulate of Japan in Los Angeles, and the American Embassy in Tokyo. We also squeezed a much-needed one-night backpacking trip with two friends to the Wilderness of the Rocks on Mount Lemmon in at the last minute. Despite devoting two weeks to these tasks, we simply did not have time to do all that we had wished during our time in Tucson--namely studying more about the Japanese language and culture and spending time with our friends.
The night before we left Tucson, we collapsed into bed around 11:00 PM after saying our final goodbyes and completing all of our packing. We startled into wake about five hours later when my alarm indicated that our friend Jamie was waiting for us to meet her outside with our luggage. I jumped up, fully clothed in anticipation of being rushed, hastily greeted Jamie, and began piling my belongings into the back of the truck outside. The ride to the airport was mostly silent except for a few profound statements about friendship and life lessons; I think that the three of us felt that this was a time for important and memorable moments, but mostly it was a time of exhaustion and anticipation of the challenges ahead (transporting all of our luggage, finding it later, changing planes in unfamiliar airports, seat backs crushing our knees, etc.)
I spent most of the time on the plane excitedly reading books about Japan, often drifting off to sleep, wishing I had charged my iPod, and remembering things that I should have done before I left. During the long flight to Japan, which included complimentary beers and movies and delicious vegetarian snacks, I looked around and picked out other people on the plane who looked like they were going to be teaching English in Japan. As it turns out when we met our guide from Nova Group at the airport, I was right about almost all of them.
Our luggage arrived pretty quickly, and going through customs took about two minutes. There was no line, and the officer looked at our passports and asked how long we would be in Japan. He looked quite pleased when we said we would be there for one year and waved us through. After studying my passport a little more, however, the officer said something to me that included the English words, “You have.” I wondered if he meant the medication that I had applied to bring and had never received any reply from the Embassy regarding the legality of this. I had packed all the medication anyway and had been prepared to abandon it in the case that my application had been rejected. I asked the officer to repeat his question, and he smiled and hurriedly waved over another officer, who held my medication application in his hand. He pointed to each item that I had written on the application and gestured to my bag. I produced the three types of medication that I had applied to bring in and pointed to their names on the application accordingly. When I finished the officer smiled and waved me forward. This process took about 30 seconds, and no other questions were asked.
After the customs check was completed, we waited with a large group of new Nova Group employees for about an hour until it was time to catch our train. After this hour-long train ride, we caught another train for another hour and then met up with our supervisor. After some quick introductions, we ran to catch our final train. This ride lasted about thirty minutes and concluded with a brisk walk to our apartment. We were left there at about 9:30 PM after 26 hours of traveling. “Did we need anything? Did we have any other questions?” our supervisor was asking us. Exhausted, we shook our heads no, unwrapped our bedding from its parcel, laid down on our futon mats, and promptly fell asleep.
The next day we realized that we did have questions, such as, “What do we do with our garbage? What is the faucet and basin on top of our toilet for? Where can we get Internet access? What trains do we take to get to our schools? Where is the library? Where is the cheapest place to buy food? What phone company should we use? Can you recommend a good doctor who speaks English?” and so on. Not all of these questions have been answered as of yet, three days later.
On our first day in Gifu-Shi, we went shopping for some basic household goods, figured out how to use the pay phones to call our families, went shopping at a quite expensive natural foods store near our apartment, bought Brie cheese at the Circle K for about $3, and slept a lot.
On the second day, we left the apartment early to find a photo booth, as we needed photos for our alien registration card that we were to apply for, and do some shopping. By late morning we met up with two other employees of Nova Group. They took us out to lunch, where I found it extremely difficult to order anything vegetarian, and gave us some general advice about the city.
After lunch it took us about three hours to obtain our alien certification forms, which we need in order to apply for bank accounts, gym memberships, video rental memberships, etc., and complete our application for our alien registration cards, which we are eligible to receive on September 27. Then we began our search for a bank so that we could expedite the process for receiving our paychecks. We found the right bank 20 minutes before it closed--at 3:00 PM. We were directed there by an employee of another bank who left his place of work to walk the six blocks to the correct bank with us after spoken directions proved to be difficult and confusing. At the bank the tellers asked us if we were American and pointed and stared and giggled while we waited to be helped. The employees were very helpful and friendly, and it only took us about 30 minutes of pointing and nodding before we had our Japanese bank accounts in order.
After some more shopping and a trip to the post office, we tried to decipher the news on our television at home. There is a typhoon headed from Tokyo to Hokkaido, and some people have died in Tokyo. I remember being surprised at the number of people who were saved by rescue crews (29) and the number of people who died (2) as well as the amused expressions of the residents shown on the news when their umbrellas collapsed in the strong wind and rain. I spent a good part of the evening reading an emergency information booklet that the ward office had given us when we applied for our alien registration cards regarding what to do in case of typhoons, earthquakes, and other fairly common emergency situations in Japan.
Yesterday I decorated the apartment and finished unpacking all of our luggage. Our apartment is very cute! Josh met the former residents the other night after I had already fallen asleep; they stopped by with some beers for us as a housewarming gift. They told Josh that our apartment was extremely expensive for this neighborhood and advised that we search for a more affordable home in the upcoming weeks. I am excited by this news because our apartment is pretty expensive ($1000 per month), but it is also quite large, comfortable, and attractive, and it is completely furnished; it was even stocked with cleaning supplies when we arrived! Decisions about moving to a new apartment have been pushed to a later time of consideration, once we feel more comfortable in our new city.
In the afternoon, armed with some vague directions provided by one of the other instructors we met, Josh and I searched for an Internet cafe near our home. After about two miles of walking around the city in the heat trying to make sense of the Japanese signs and several vague, confusing, and amusing conversations with the locals, we finally found the cafe about two blocks from our apartment! We devoured our e-mails for about two hours and enjoyed unlimited drinks served by the hospitable cafe employees for about $6 each.
In the evening we returned to our apartment, exhausted and starving. Cooking at home has proved to be easy and accommodating to our vegetarian lifestyles. We have not mastered the art of ordering food in restaurants yet. We prepared our safe meals of tomato sandwiches, toasted raisin bread, and granola before returning to the streets to head to the 99 yen store (basically equivalent to 99 cents). This store has almost everything--groceries and household goods all for a low price! The food is highly comparable to those in other grocery stores as well, not like the typical 99 cent stores in the United States. Some foods, however, are still expensive. For example, a single orange costs about 99 cents.
The streets last night were extremely crowded. There were young people everywhere, some dressed in their school uniforms of ties and dress shirts or skirts and knee socks. Others had changed into t shirts with bright colors, often expressing some strange combinations of English words such as “Super Tinkle Shine.” Older people rode by on bicycles, in a hurry to complete their errands of the day. Many of the younger people stopped to stare at us, and one little girl even grabbed her father’s hand in fright at the sight of us. Some people smiled; one little boy waved excitedly to me and said “Bye bye” in English as I passed. Feeling self-conscious, we made our way home, passing many inviting pubs but simply feeling too exhausted and financially unstable to go in.
Today we plan to try to take a train to Nagoya, the nearest big city. Gifu-Shi is pretty big and has all the characteristics of a city that I want, but there are other Nova Group instructors living in Nagoya who plan to meet today to go sightseeing together. I am desperate for companionship with other English speakers and also excited for the challenge of attempting to reach Nagoya today. Josh knows more Japanese than I do (which is not much at all), and I can tell that he is feeling apprehensive too. Even if we don’t make it to Nagoya, I am sure that we will have an interesting experience, so I am ready to go!
At “home,” it is actually the evening of 9/8/07. I have been waking here every day with the sun, around 5:30 AM, still tired but unable to return to sleep. Days are spent searching for various businesses around the city, and I fall exhausted into bed by 8:00 PM. My stamina is refreshed throughout the day by various snacks of toast, cheese and crackers (available at Circle K!), and noodles.
I realize that I should have begun keeping record of this immigration experience before I left the United States--as early as May, when I began the interview process and began theorizing with my colleagues about how this experience could possibly qualify as my practicum for graduate school. However, I was too busy, overwhelmed, and--quite honestly--frustrated.
This process all began one day back in December when I came home from my job teaching elementary school in Tucson, Arizona in tears. This was not that unusual of an occurrence; my job was quite stressful, and my views often differed from those of my coworkers. My dream of sharing my love of knowledge with my students was quickly turning into a nightmare of arguments over educational pedagogy, piles of paperwork, and frequent miscommunications between my colleagues. “Shit,” I told my partner Josh, “I need to do something different. Totally different....but I have to be a teacher now; I’m in graduate school, and working at this school is completely in line with my scholastic path. I want to change something major, but I don’t want to make it more difficult to complete my studies.”
I remember Josh’s facial expression, which revealed his genuine desire to help me resolve this stressful situation. “Why don’t we teach in Japan for a few months? You say you need to incorporate your current work as a teacher with a change in your professional situation for your practicum. This would allow you to keep teaching and would definitely include a change. We have both always wanted to do something like this, and I think that this is the perfect time!”
“Ha ha....move to Japan.....oh, hmmm, well, that actually sounds like a great idea! I mean, it would be totally different! I was kind of wary about adding another responsibility at my current job to qualify for my practicum anyway. I mean, I have tons of additional responsibilities already.....and I don’t want to stay here and take an unpaid position for my practicum. How would we pay our bills?” I paused. I couldn’t believe that Josh was actually making such a radical suggestion. I mean, we had only been dating for about three months, and he had just moved to Tucson about four months earlier. We had talked about our desire to teach English in Japan before; we both had close friends from the country and found the cultural differences and similarities to be quite fascinating. What he was saying was completely unbelievable, yet it made perfect sense.
The next few months were a blur of research that included sifting through many confusing Japanese web sites, frequently initiating e-mail correspondence with our friends who were living in Japan, and filling out hosts of job applications. One thing that I found particularly discouraging in my research was that most teaching companies that hired native English speakers were private and required teachers to commit to one year of work in order to qualify for a work visa. After some internal debate about how long I could reasonably commit to living and working in another country as well as how I would feel about working for a private corporation that charged its students large sums of money to learn, I decided to go through with my applications. Even if I wasn’t so sure about all that I was signing up for, the differences that this new experience was sure to hold would undoubtedly provide me with invaluable learning experiences about different cultures, educational systems, socioeconomic issues, values, and myself.
Now it was time to make sure that the staff at Prescott College would be as sure about my decision as I was becoming. My advisor, Lloyd, was unsurprisingly incredibly supportive and encouraged me to write a letter to my core faculty at the College detailing my intentions for my practicum term--to live in Japan and teach English with a major corporation. Surely this experience as an immigrant myself would support my tentative thesis topic of creating methods for easing cultural disparity between home and school for immigrant students in the United States. One vaguely detailed letter--based on many qualifications concerning my employment status with the intended company in Japan--later, Noel, my core faculty member, sent me her excited support via e-mail within a few days.
Feeling overwhelmed with everyone’s support and also planning for a three-month move to Alaska for the upcoming summer, I began the waiting process that inevitably comes with applying for employment. I spent this time working on school work and spending as much time as possible with my loved ones in Tucson, including my students. I worked diligently around the clock to finish many of the projects that I had begun during the school year and to pass on some of my duties and experiences to my colleagues, who may have suspected that some major changes lie in my future.
In April both Josh and I received e-mails from Nova Group, a major corporation in Japan who wanted to interview us! The bad news was that the interviews were two weeks later--in San Francisco. After some lengthy phone calls, we arranged for the interviews to take place three weeks later in San Francisco and had rearranged our traveling plans with a friend of mine who was accompanying us to Alaska from Mississippi to allow us to spend two days in San Francisco on our way to Seattle. We planned to drive from Tucson to Seattle and then fly to Alaska from there.
Then came the most difficult part after planning logistics--saying goodbyes. Announcing my decision to my students was one of the hardest things that I have ever done. So many of them did not seem to understand why I wanted to experience such a thing as moving away from the United States--and away from them. I fumbled over some explanations as best as I could, all the while thinking that maybe these kids were right; maybe they were the most important part of my life, and I was just giving them up like they didn’t matter. I spent the next few weeks attempting to show them just how important they were to me, and I like to think that they somehow grasped my appreciation for all of our experiences together. In the end there was nothing that I could do but walk away from so many people who love me in favor of my hopes for the unknown.
Of course Josh and I were exhausted during our interview. We were also overwhelmed by the amount of information we received, the cost that we incurred just getting to this interview (gas, clothes, parking fees, etc.), and the time spent in the interview (about five hours). We were also intimidated by the fast-paced high-intensity of the experience. Everything was timed, and we were asked to improvise in front of our peers on numerous occasions during the day. Needless to say, we were feeling less than confident after the interview. However, I tried not to let these feelings of uncertainty bother me. After all, I enjoyed teaching my students at the tiny community public school in the neighborhood filled with poverty where I had worked in Tucson, Arizona for the last three years. As difficult as my job was, I missed my students already and felt that maybe I wasn’t ready for such a big change after all. I decided not to pursue employment with any other companies in Japan and to let the result of this interview decide my future plans.
Once in Alaska I mostly concentrated on finishing the schoolwork of my last term that saying goodbye in Tucson simply had not allowed. Once I had finished all of this work and was looking forward to exploring my new home for the summer, I received the notice from Nova Group that Josh and I would be moving to Japan in about three months! Well, I guessed the future had finally been decided. I was bittersweetly excited but already too busy again to really think about the implications of this news.
There were extensive amounts of paperwork to fill out in order to accept the position. Important decisions had to made about things such as health insurance--which required the purchase and perusal of several books that were shipped to us--in a timely manner. Tens of papers needed signatures--official signatures that matched those on passports, not every day signatures used for signing checks. Documents were sent back to us that needed corrections; these were edited painstakingly, then mailed or faxed back to the company. More questions arose than could be answered by the extremely considerate man from the Japanese Embassy in Anchorage, as we tried our best to communicate in incredibly polite broken English. More documents needed to be submitted to the Embassy of Japan for medical reasons. These, too, needed to be corrected and resubmitted in a matter of days. The expenses of sending documents and communicating with residents of Japan increased each day.
In between this paperwork and communications with staff members of Prescott College and my friends and family about the new developments in my life, I tried to make time to meet new people in Alaska--my home for the time being. Time did permit for such social interactions toward the latter part of the summer, for which I am very grateful. Many people whom we met there were invaluable to our experience this summer, and we continue to keep in touch with them today.
After leaving Alaska in August, Josh and I flew to Phoenix, Arizona and drove almost three hours to Prescott, Arizona, where we found a lovely camp site and a much appreciated authentic Mexican restaurant right away. I spent the next two days in coffee shops, hoarding Internet access and electricity, which had become rare commodities during my summer in Alaska and my time camping in Prescott, completing research, and compiling information about the No Child Left Behind Act for a presentation that I was to give at the upcoming College colloquium.
The presentation went as well as could be expected with my mind already on thoughts of the logistics of moving to a new country (Where did I put my passport when I was packing up my tent in Alaska?) and saying goodbye to my loved ones during the next two weeks. During the presentation I was extremely nervous and lacked the visual aids that are typically necessary for effective presentations, due to physical limitations of what I could carry in my move from Alaska to Tucson to Japan in which this stop in Prescott was included. Nonetheless, I found myself speaking from my heart to a captive audience of fellow teachers and education students. I spoke about many of the challenges that educators face, many of which are compounded by the No Child Left Behind law. Maybe not all of what I said was constructive; some of my presentation was definitely evidence of a discouraged teacher who needed to vent, but I tried to generate a communal desire to advocate change in the educational system among everyone in that room. Judging by some of the feedback that I received regarding the presentation, I did not achieve all of my goals, but, overall, I felt satisfied with most of the ideas that I conveyed. I wish that I had had more time to gain feedback, ideas, and experiences from more members of the group that day, but time seems to be a continual hindrance in our lives, doesn’t it?
After a weekend in Prescott spent reviewing several logistical aspects of my practicum term with my encouraging advisor and core faculty, I returned to Tucson for two weeks, where my work visa application was waiting for me at a friend’s house. Josh and I spent these next two weeks riding our bicycles and taking buses all over the town in order to say our goodbyes to our loved ones; obtain all of the necessary materials for our trip; and submit all of the necessary documents to Nova Group, the Consulate of Japan in Los Angeles, and the American Embassy in Tokyo. We also squeezed a much-needed one-night backpacking trip with two friends to the Wilderness of the Rocks on Mount Lemmon in at the last minute. Despite devoting two weeks to these tasks, we simply did not have time to do all that we had wished during our time in Tucson--namely studying more about the Japanese language and culture and spending time with our friends.
The night before we left Tucson, we collapsed into bed around 11:00 PM after saying our final goodbyes and completing all of our packing. We startled into wake about five hours later when my alarm indicated that our friend Jamie was waiting for us to meet her outside with our luggage. I jumped up, fully clothed in anticipation of being rushed, hastily greeted Jamie, and began piling my belongings into the back of the truck outside. The ride to the airport was mostly silent except for a few profound statements about friendship and life lessons; I think that the three of us felt that this was a time for important and memorable moments, but mostly it was a time of exhaustion and anticipation of the challenges ahead (transporting all of our luggage, finding it later, changing planes in unfamiliar airports, seat backs crushing our knees, etc.)
I spent most of the time on the plane excitedly reading books about Japan, often drifting off to sleep, wishing I had charged my iPod, and remembering things that I should have done before I left. During the long flight to Japan, which included complimentary beers and movies and delicious vegetarian snacks, I looked around and picked out other people on the plane who looked like they were going to be teaching English in Japan. As it turns out when we met our guide from Nova Group at the airport, I was right about almost all of them.
Our luggage arrived pretty quickly, and going through customs took about two minutes. There was no line, and the officer looked at our passports and asked how long we would be in Japan. He looked quite pleased when we said we would be there for one year and waved us through. After studying my passport a little more, however, the officer said something to me that included the English words, “You have.” I wondered if he meant the medication that I had applied to bring and had never received any reply from the Embassy regarding the legality of this. I had packed all the medication anyway and had been prepared to abandon it in the case that my application had been rejected. I asked the officer to repeat his question, and he smiled and hurriedly waved over another officer, who held my medication application in his hand. He pointed to each item that I had written on the application and gestured to my bag. I produced the three types of medication that I had applied to bring in and pointed to their names on the application accordingly. When I finished the officer smiled and waved me forward. This process took about 30 seconds, and no other questions were asked.
After the customs check was completed, we waited with a large group of new Nova Group employees for about an hour until it was time to catch our train. After this hour-long train ride, we caught another train for another hour and then met up with our supervisor. After some quick introductions, we ran to catch our final train. This ride lasted about thirty minutes and concluded with a brisk walk to our apartment. We were left there at about 9:30 PM after 26 hours of traveling. “Did we need anything? Did we have any other questions?” our supervisor was asking us. Exhausted, we shook our heads no, unwrapped our bedding from its parcel, laid down on our futon mats, and promptly fell asleep.
The next day we realized that we did have questions, such as, “What do we do with our garbage? What is the faucet and basin on top of our toilet for? Where can we get Internet access? What trains do we take to get to our schools? Where is the library? Where is the cheapest place to buy food? What phone company should we use? Can you recommend a good doctor who speaks English?” and so on. Not all of these questions have been answered as of yet, three days later.
On our first day in Gifu-Shi, we went shopping for some basic household goods, figured out how to use the pay phones to call our families, went shopping at a quite expensive natural foods store near our apartment, bought Brie cheese at the Circle K for about $3, and slept a lot.
On the second day, we left the apartment early to find a photo booth, as we needed photos for our alien registration card that we were to apply for, and do some shopping. By late morning we met up with two other employees of Nova Group. They took us out to lunch, where I found it extremely difficult to order anything vegetarian, and gave us some general advice about the city.
After lunch it took us about three hours to obtain our alien certification forms, which we need in order to apply for bank accounts, gym memberships, video rental memberships, etc., and complete our application for our alien registration cards, which we are eligible to receive on September 27. Then we began our search for a bank so that we could expedite the process for receiving our paychecks. We found the right bank 20 minutes before it closed--at 3:00 PM. We were directed there by an employee of another bank who left his place of work to walk the six blocks to the correct bank with us after spoken directions proved to be difficult and confusing. At the bank the tellers asked us if we were American and pointed and stared and giggled while we waited to be helped. The employees were very helpful and friendly, and it only took us about 30 minutes of pointing and nodding before we had our Japanese bank accounts in order.
After some more shopping and a trip to the post office, we tried to decipher the news on our television at home. There is a typhoon headed from Tokyo to Hokkaido, and some people have died in Tokyo. I remember being surprised at the number of people who were saved by rescue crews (29) and the number of people who died (2) as well as the amused expressions of the residents shown on the news when their umbrellas collapsed in the strong wind and rain. I spent a good part of the evening reading an emergency information booklet that the ward office had given us when we applied for our alien registration cards regarding what to do in case of typhoons, earthquakes, and other fairly common emergency situations in Japan.
Yesterday I decorated the apartment and finished unpacking all of our luggage. Our apartment is very cute! Josh met the former residents the other night after I had already fallen asleep; they stopped by with some beers for us as a housewarming gift. They told Josh that our apartment was extremely expensive for this neighborhood and advised that we search for a more affordable home in the upcoming weeks. I am excited by this news because our apartment is pretty expensive ($1000 per month), but it is also quite large, comfortable, and attractive, and it is completely furnished; it was even stocked with cleaning supplies when we arrived! Decisions about moving to a new apartment have been pushed to a later time of consideration, once we feel more comfortable in our new city.
In the afternoon, armed with some vague directions provided by one of the other instructors we met, Josh and I searched for an Internet cafe near our home. After about two miles of walking around the city in the heat trying to make sense of the Japanese signs and several vague, confusing, and amusing conversations with the locals, we finally found the cafe about two blocks from our apartment! We devoured our e-mails for about two hours and enjoyed unlimited drinks served by the hospitable cafe employees for about $6 each.
In the evening we returned to our apartment, exhausted and starving. Cooking at home has proved to be easy and accommodating to our vegetarian lifestyles. We have not mastered the art of ordering food in restaurants yet. We prepared our safe meals of tomato sandwiches, toasted raisin bread, and granola before returning to the streets to head to the 99 yen store (basically equivalent to 99 cents). This store has almost everything--groceries and household goods all for a low price! The food is highly comparable to those in other grocery stores as well, not like the typical 99 cent stores in the United States. Some foods, however, are still expensive. For example, a single orange costs about 99 cents.
The streets last night were extremely crowded. There were young people everywhere, some dressed in their school uniforms of ties and dress shirts or skirts and knee socks. Others had changed into t shirts with bright colors, often expressing some strange combinations of English words such as “Super Tinkle Shine.” Older people rode by on bicycles, in a hurry to complete their errands of the day. Many of the younger people stopped to stare at us, and one little girl even grabbed her father’s hand in fright at the sight of us. Some people smiled; one little boy waved excitedly to me and said “Bye bye” in English as I passed. Feeling self-conscious, we made our way home, passing many inviting pubs but simply feeling too exhausted and financially unstable to go in.
Today we plan to try to take a train to Nagoya, the nearest big city. Gifu-Shi is pretty big and has all the characteristics of a city that I want, but there are other Nova Group instructors living in Nagoya who plan to meet today to go sightseeing together. I am desperate for companionship with other English speakers and also excited for the challenge of attempting to reach Nagoya today. Josh knows more Japanese than I do (which is not much at all), and I can tell that he is feeling apprehensive too. Even if we don’t make it to Nagoya, I am sure that we will have an interesting experience, so I am ready to go!