In Japan, there is a common practice of wearing a facemask when you are sick so that you do not spread your germs to others. This starts as soon as kids are able to walk, i.e. around 2 years old. When I saw pictures of this, I thought, “Aw! What a cute idea!” But then, starting in the middle of October, it was like the plague had come out and suddenly one-third to one-half of my students were wearing the masks. I was shocked and couldn’t understand why they would even come to school if they were so sick they needed to wear a mask. And then I realized that it could be anything from a sore throat to a small cough to a stuffy nose to a full-blown cold.
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When I had been to Japan before, it was always summer. And I knew it was hot and that I got sweaty, but I was usually walking everywhere or taking the train, so I did not get my heart rate up like I do when I ride a bike. So this time, having to ride my bike to school was quite a different experience. I got sweaty. And I arrived to school sweaty. And it was gross. And all of the other teachers drove to school so they could blast air conditioning in their car so that they could be nice and cool by the time they arrived. And then there was me. Luckily, Japan has a thing for little hand towels that you carry everywhere with you (in case you need to wipe your hands off in the public bathroom after wash your hands because there are no paper towels or hand dryers) and I used mine for wiping the sweat off of my neck and back (in the bathroom, of course). When I first moved in to the apartment, the bath system I had was one that I had never seen before. I wondered if it hadn’t come with the apartment when it was made back in 1950. It was (and still is) a gas lit water heating system for the shower/bath, however it was also slightly mechanical in the way that I had to first turn the knob for the gas, then crank a handle while pressing down on another button to get the gas flowing for a count of twenty seconds. Then I turned another knob and then pushed down a lever to finally get the water flowing. That was all well and fine, but the water temperature could not be changed. If I did not light the gas, then the water would be cold, but if I did light the gas, the water would be scalding hot.
Monday I started “work”. And by work, I mean cleaning off the desk I was given and sorting through all the previous JETs’ paperwork, games, and worksheets. Not to mention all the past textbooks that were piled everywhere. It made me wonder if there was a sort of packrat mentality to these teachers since it did not look like anything had been thrown away for the past ten years. It would be a few months into my work when I finally threw away the gigantic pile of crap papers that lingered on my desk, though. However, the cleaning process took up most of the morning and then Sakuma came to get me so that we could continue the process of me becoming a resident of Iwaki by going to countless offices and filling out unending amounts of paperwork. Luckily, I also received my phone that day. Unluckily, it took four hours. However, after reading the rants from other JETs on Facebook, I can consider myself lucky it only took me four hours and I got my phone so quickly after I arrived. Some did not receive a phone until a month or more into their work, and others had to make multiple trips to the phone store with their JTE before they could receive a phone. Now, for most JETs, their predecessor will have left a week earlier than their arrival. However, that wasn’t the case for me and mine. She and her boyfriend were still living in the small apartment. I was not sure how well that would work out and if it would be awkward at all (for me it was, I am not sure about them). We pulled into the narrow parking lot for the apartment and we drug out my suitcases. I felt bad about having Sakuma lugging my suitcase up four flights of stairs; so, I had her take my small carry-on while I took one of my big ones up for the first trip. The stairs were concrete and slightly on the steep side. I was winded by the time I got to the top. Sakuma had entered before me, so I was able to go in through the open orange metal door and into my apartment. I said a quick hello to my predecessor and excused myself as I left again to get my second big suitcase. I guess whenever someone asks me, “Why did you want to come to Japan?” or “What made you interested in Japan?” my answer goes back to my time in middle school when I was passing notes in class. I did not want anyone else to read them, so I was constantly coming up with new secret codes to write my notes in. I think at one time I even wrote in Elvish script using the back of The Lord of the Rings as guidance. In either 7th or 8th grade, we were told to do a report on a country of our choice. For some reason, I chose Japan. And while I was making the poster, I decided to write some kanji on it, too. The kanji I wrote was the word for telephone (電話-den/wa) and I could easily picture how they had come up with those characters to mean telephone since I sometimes used pictures to indicate a single letter for my own secret codes. I saw the first character as an old rotary phone with the receiver cradled on top and the cord coming out of the bottom. The second one I saw as sound waves coming out of a mouth and a person standing up. The real meaning of the two characters is electric and speaking/talk. Once I found out that the high school I was going to enter offered Japanese, I of course took that as my language option. The teacher was Japanese herself and because the language course was relatively new to the school, they only offered 2 years of it. The first year was spent painfully writing all of the hiragana and katakana multiple times—as is the Japanese way. I did not mind it, but for others it was enough to turn them off. After the first year, a new teacher came and was the Japanese teacher for the school. |
Myself
Video blogger and now a blogger as well. My life in Japan has changed me for the better. However, it wasn't easy... Archives
September 2016
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