Inasa Jinja

photo info: at the Inasa Jinja (jinja means shrine) in the mountains just west of here. I just got a car today, so I’m excited to go back here with Cassie soon. It’s a lovely place.

Things are very busy here. We were at a beach party in Karatsu this weekend, which was enjoyable. And the night before that we celebrated the end of our Japanese lessons with nomihodai (all you can drink) and karaoke, which was naturally quite fun. Before that of course was a whole week full of afternoon Japanese lessons in Saga City, which got better and better I guess, culminating in me playing Banzai on the guitar and everyone thinking I was awesome because of it. (awesome). I’m afraid I’m minorly bi-polar or something. I tend to get very up and very down very easily. But generally things are okay. Cassie hurt her foot in a tragic walking accident. It’s probably just a sprain, but it’s bruised and swollen quite hideously. She needs to take some vitamins or something. I gave a speech today at our Saga 2006 Welcome Party. One of the guys in charge was just like, “You do me favor? You give speech at party?” and I was like “Okay?” It turns out he gave me a pre-written Japanese speech and then wanted me to come up with my own English version. So I did. I was all “I am Colin. I am from Iowa. Saga is nice. There are 37 new JETs. We like Saga. We will try hard. Thank you for being so awesome, Saga. Good night.” Everybody said I did a good job. That, plus the whole guitar thing, has I think given me a reputation as something of a stageman. We’ll see where that takes me. Probably not far.

Across The Street

These Dances Are More Fun Than They Look (And They Look Pretty Fun)

Some pictures from the festival in Saga City a couple of weeks ago. I’ve seen a lot of these kinds of pictures cruising photoblogs, and they never interested me very much, but it’s a lot more fun in person. I went to a similar thing in Kashima a few days after this which was even more fun, and involved me actually dancing in the parade of people (somewhat against my will initially).

Cassie has got a new blog (which may or may not be quite set up yet). She also has, apparently, a job sometime next week. I won’t say much more since it seems to be a bit up in the air still, but things are looking good. My Japanese class got cancelled on Friday, thank god, because of tropical storm Wukong. It sounds worse than it was, which was basically just a bunch of wind and rain. Not even lightning and thunder, really. I’m hoping for more serious but not quite life threatening weather in the future.

Insert Coin For Religious Satisfaction

Still hanging out at Saga Shrine. Annick is surprised by mechanical prayers and many stones say many things. I’ve started my japanese lessons in Saga City and they fuckin suck. I’m in the “advanced” class. Our teacher just talks at us in japanese about high school baseball and shows us videos about evil boys who scan people into computer games and then kills them (seriously) and no one learns anything. Plus it’s a long hot commute everyday. Blah. Whatever, it’ll be over eventually and then I’ll start teaching, which is more or less what I came here to do, so I’m hoping things’ll pick up then.

Cassie is here and Cassie is good. Cassie has lots of bad bad mosquito bites, but they are slowly getting better. Job prospects are slow, like everything else in this crazy backwards place, but they do exist and they are moving forward. One day at a time, eh?

Serenity

photo info: at one of the entrances to saga shrine in saga city.

I’m feeling kind of burned out. I’m pretty sure I got more or less 8 hours of sleep last night, but here I am at work feeling like I’m going to fall over. I’ve not even been “working” hard, either. It’s just the sheer amount of doing things, whatever they are, that I’m not used to. I’m used to sitting around and playing video games and watching movies (god how I miss them both) and sometimes driving to get my plasma drawn or whatever. At worst, my brain was tired from thinking too hard. I’m not used to taking the train 4 times a day, waking up at 7 in the morning, eating strange food, and hiking up and down bloody mountains to frolick about on rocks and under waterfalls. I realize that last part sounded kind of nice, and it kind of was, but it was more than kind of exhausting. Today I’ve got to come into work (done), then go back home, then take the train to Saga City, then sit through a (apparently) 4 hour long Japanese lesson, then take the train back but oh wait I’ll stay on it until Kashima because I forgot my damn cell phone box and charger etc. there last night. Repeat for the next week, add a couple of parties, and then I don’t even know what’s going to happen but I think it’s going to involve a lot of biking to mountains and back for school visits.

I should probably stop bitching. Once in a lifetime experience and all that. I just think I’m going to sleep for a couple months once I get back to America.

The Gang

#1: Chris, Jonathon, Marianne

#2: Marianne, Lizzie (Prefectural Advisors)

#3: Matt (in the background), Nirav, John

From the Loop bar in Saga City one week ago, I present the gang. Not everyone is present in the photos of course, but I’m sure they’ll make appearances later. The burden falls on them to be in a good picture, though. And Cassie comes today, completing our merry foreign bunch. I had a dream last night that I was saying goodbye to all my family at a train station because I was going off with my big suitcases on a big long journey. When I woke up I realized that had already happened more or less, and that I’m currently in the middle of a big long journey in a foreign land. It was a weird feeling.

Train Is Its Own Language

Today I’ve been working out the logistics of going to meet Cassie at the train station in Fukuoka, and as such I’ve been looking at a lot of train guides which my supervisor has so kindly printed out for me. But it’s just a bunch of crazy hieroglypics as far as I’m concerned. I have been making a bit of headway, and all in all I think I’ve got it pretty much figured out. Just glancing at it though gives me a headache. So yeah, anyway…Cassie’s coming Sunday!

Karaoke And Dancing:
In Which Words Appear Serendipitously On Screen And Strange Men Are Very Enthusiastic About Getting Their Pictures Taken With Me

Karaoke in Tokyo was quite fun, and I won’t lie, I got up on a chair at one point. The dancing that followed was also fun, and was host to a number of crazy characters, this fellow in the picture being but one of them. I would like to point out that the match up of lyrics and persons in the first picture is duh a coincidence (I am not nearly that good of a photographer, especially when drunk) and not, I assure you, some kind of Freudian manifestation. Thank you.

Tokyo Night

I feel bad talking to Zachary, reading the New York Times online, and posting to my website at work…but I don’t have any actual work to do! The only thing they suggested is studying Japanese, but I don’t have any textbooks and I mostly just need to speak it to get better anyway. Yesterday I went on a tour of Shiroishi and saw some of the lovely shrines and mountains in the area. Then last night I took the train to Kashima to see the odori festival (which may be redundant), which was exciting. I met up with a couple of other ALTs in the area and we drank with their Japanese supervisors afterwards. Apparently I look like Nick from the backstreet boys. At the train station, waiting for the last train home, I talked to a hyper school girl in English about various things. For example, she loves Americans, but hates other Asians like Koreans and Chinese. I asked her why, and she said “Dangerous! Kusai!” which means smelly, I think. I tried to teach her the word “racist", but then the train came.

Biru, not Biiru

In Tokyo, there are many tall buildings. I must have looked like quite the yokel almost falling over looking up at all of them. The Keio Plaza hotel where we stayed had 45 floors (I was on the 22nd). I was pretty much constantly dizzy and suffering from my own personal earthquakes the entire time just because of the damn elevators.

I’m in the office now. I just asked my supervisor for some pills because my back hurt, and the ones she gave me supposedly had ibuprofen in them, but my back still hurts and my sinuses feel remarkably clear.

It Was A Pretty Nice Park

Bootleg internet + nothing to do at night + America is 14 hours behind so everyone is asleep = two posts in one day!

This is some old sign that indicated, you know, something in Japanese in Shinjuku Park. Not pictured: bum towns made out of blue tarps (they seemed very organized); giant probably man-eating crows that made uncannily human noises; strange looking stray cats, one of which attempted to attack one of the aforementioned crows, which elicited a giggle from yours truly. It’s not often you see one of nature’s most Platonic rivalries in action.

To come (tomorrow at lunch time likely): big buildings, karaoke and dancing in downtown Shinjuku.

Hello World!

Hello world, I’m in Japan. Here’s the statues to prove it. This picture was taken in Shinjuku Park, just a short walk from the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo. Currently I am in the Board of Education in Fukudomi, the next village over from mine. It’s lunchtime, and the section chief is playing Go with his buddy, while everyone else is playing solitaire or just relaxing with the lights off after eating lunch. Things’ll go back to normal in about 20 minutes when it hits one o’clock.

I don’t have the internet in my apartment, but I should get it in about a week. Last night I managed to bootleg some wireless, but it was pretty touch and go. I had a rough first day or two when I got here a few days ago. I think that I just wasn’t prepared for culture shock of being in rural Japan with no easy way to contact the outside world. But it’s all good now. I’ve made some good friends with the other Saga JETs and I’m getting a lot more confident striding about the town and office chatting in abysmal Japanese. I have no real work duties at this point. I just have to show up, basically. Once September starts though I’ll have tons of work to do. I’ve got a junior high school, three elementary schools, a kindergarten, and I believe an adult conversation class.

Cassie is coming this Sunday, which is tremendously exciting. I hope that I can extend to her a sense of know-how and it’s-really-pretty-okayness that others have shown to me that makes the transition to living here a lot easier. I ought to get back to work now. I’m meeting up with Mark, a guy from Canada who’s lived in the area for about 6 years teaching English. He’s going to help me get a cell phone.