I’m thinking that instead of just writing about what I’ve done every single day (which is what my Word-file journal has consisted of lately), I’m just going to directly start posting in here about my actual experiences and thoughts about the country and culture, because that’s what I really want to come away with and hang onto for years to come. And I think that was one of the original aims of this journal that I’ve since overlooked.
In the last month or so, I’ve experienced:
- my first classes (2 eikaiwas, which are adult conversation classes and fairly casual, and 1 elementary school lesson, which I can reuse for the other 5 schools…no junior high classes till next week)
- language barrier issues (minoring in Japanese does nothing for you unless you get out there and actively use the language…I wish I’d realized this while I was still in school, but at least I still know enough that I’ve been able to get by just fine)
- 2 enkais (employee parties, one for my Board of Education staff that welcomed me and said goodbye to my predecessor and that I didn’t have to pay for, and a start-of-term one for the teachers at my junior high school that was a lot more expensive than I realized)
- half a typhoon (it veered north and we only got a really windy rainstorm last night)
- some homesickness, and feeling pretty isolated and a bit depressed and out of sorts (weird, because I do have 2 other ALTs in my building, but they have people here they’re already close to and I miss having really close friends near by)
- Japanese roads (no driving yet, but plenty of riding, which is more than enough to keep me from learning how to drive…though my job’s requiring me to learn now)
- food difficulties (I’ve eaten egg in some form or another on an almost daily basis…I’m really worried about where my cholesterol’s going to be once my time in Japan is finished)
- massive use of public transportation (pretty much unheard of in Atlanta, which is a very car-heavy city, but here I take buses and trains everywhere, and I love it!)
- humidity, humidity, humidity (…enough said)
- fame and fortune (er, sort of…I’ve been in the town newsletter, and when the Tokushima JETs had orientation several weeks ago, we attended a ningyo/puppetry demonstration and were allowed to play with the puppets afterwards, and someone was there videotaping us–it turns out he’s with the Tokushima news, and they got a close-up of me from below, so I evidently looked extremely tall…I heard about this from my eikaiwa students, fellow teachers and BOE/community center employees, and even my landlord, though I didn’t witness it myself. So fame, but not much fortune, unless you count my getting paychecks)
- making international reservations (I’m going to India in December! The ticket vouchers and visa paperwork are in the mail)
- the requisite stomach problems (it figures that Pepto-Bismol was the one thing we didn’t pack–but we found the Japanese alternative)
- intensely beautiful natural surroundings (mountains all around, and when doing a homestay in Kamiyama we hiked up to a waterfall, and the weather’s either been hot, cloudy, or rainy, but nothing worse, and it was all beautiful)
- compliments on my chopstick usage
- a culinary faux pas…you apparently do eat the pits of the tiny bean-like plums that come with your food, and you do not take the pits out of your mouth and put them back on the plate; this one actually elicited a gasp from our host. Nice.
- impromptu and planned speeches (the planned one was to the 130-odd students and dozen or so faculty at my junior high school; the impromptu ones were at enkais and teacher meetings)
- repeated issuing of my jikoshoukai (self-introduction)
- inquiring about vegetarian food, to the point that I have my spiel completely down pat because I do it once every several days
- that I’m already getting tired of what little Japanese food I actually can eat, and I miss really robust and flavorful foods
- some of the best Italian food I’ve ever had, courtesy of a restaurant in town with a cook that actually was trained in Italy (of all the places to find an authentic bistro, it’s in our town!)
- amazing, amazing authentic Sri Lankan food on my birthday
- a huge outpouring of warmth and support from the other ALTs in my prefecture, specifically on the north side–despite all of us being strangers, 11 of us got together on a Monday night (last Monday, in fact) to celebrate my birthday
- many, many stares (the vast majority of which dissolve into warm smiles and bows once I greet them, bow, and smile, but they almost always expect me to do it first), and cars slowing down so the drivers can take a look at me
- the huge impact baseball has had over here (they air every single game involving a west coast team, I swear, but they’re all American League, so I can’t watch the Braves in action)
- a strong feeling of patriotism for Atlanta, and a strong(er) wave of disdain and disgust for the Bush administration, now that I can view them from non-US-media-influenced eyes
- an acute helplessness at not being able to help others in my country out during a time of need (I’m of course talking about Hurricane Katrina), and outrage at how poorly the situation was handled and the depths that the people themselves sank to, in and outside the affected areas
- guilt and helplessness over trying to not seem like I’m slacking off at my job (I have nothing to do…my eikaiwas right now involve minimal planning since I’m trying to get the hang of them, and I only really have to plan one elementary school lesson and then tweak it for all the different schools I go to, and I’m an assistant teacher at my junior high and the teacher doesn’t plan the lessons till the night before)
- realization that Georgia is indeed a lazy and lax part of the country (Lindsay and Hannah, the other ALTs in my building, are from the Pacific Northwest, and they have very conservation-oriented mentalities, much more so than anybody from home does)
- realization that not all parts of the US shut down on Sundays the way Georgia does
- realization that the world really isn’t such a foreign place, and while basic customs might be different, the same warmth and generosity is prevalent everywhere, though especially in smaller and more personal/personalized towns, as compared to big mega-cities like Tokyo or Osaka
- realizing how much I love and miss my friends and family
- realizing that whenever I do return to Atlanta, many of those friends won’t be there anymore, and I’ll have to essentially start over, the way I started over when I came here
- realizing that I’m probably not going to get around to taking my GREs in time to get started on applying for masters programs in the fall of 2006, and staying for an extra year in Japan doesn’t seem like a bad prospect at all right now
…and if I think of anything else, I’ll jot it down and add it here later.