Allen's Adventures Abroad

Well, this is the week it finally happens. After nearly a full month of various orientation seminars and retreats, social networking, and studying Japanese at the Satsuma-chou Board of Education, I’m about to take the plunge and actually do the job I was hired to do. Although I still have two more “office days” by the end of the week I’m scheduled to head straight to local middle or elementary schools to perform my Assistant Language Teacher duties. Honestly, I can’t wait, although I’m going to be leaving the crutch that is Colin’s Japanese fluency. Thus far, while the kids have been on summer vacation, everything work-related has been at the BoE where Colin and I have adjacent desks. The nice thing about that is he can translate anything my supervisor needs me to know. This week, that’ll not be the case anymore. I’m hoping the majority of my JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English, with whom I will be ‘team teaching’) speak English well enough that language barriers will be not be insurmountable, but it’s definitely going to be a little less smooth sailing than having Colin along. So far, I’ve only met on of the many JTEs I’ll be working with, and from that experience I know that at least at Miyanojyou middle school, where I’ll spend the majority of my time, I’ll have a fluent English speaker around, but the rest is yet to be seen. The elementary schools, especially, are likely to have much less fluent English instructors.

I’m still rather amazed at how well this transition has been facilitated with contributions from tons of organizations. From the Nashville Consulate to the national AJET (Association of JETS) and CLAIR (Counsel of Local Authorities on International Relation) level orientation in Tokyo, to prefectural level information provided in separate forums closer to home, I feel that I’ve yet to be thrown into anything that I couldn’t handle. Not only have the formal organizations been supportive, other ALTs such as Colin and KAJET (Kagoshima AJET) members have been great for offering advice and/or lending an ear. Research and conversation before applying made me realized on of the best aspects of the JET program is a support network, but I feel it’s necessary to vouch for the truth of that in my experience thus far. It’s like I’ve been wading slowly but surely deeper into Japanese culture and work expectations at a comfortable pace. Now I feel poised to take that final step out into the deeper water. If it hadn’t have been eased in the way it had, I think I could have hit a wall of culture shock very easily, so I’m definitely grateful for the way things have gone thus far.

Anyway, that’s about work, but I’ve been up to much more than that. I have a car, an apartment, and a life here now. This past weekend I spent hosting a BBQ with Colin at our duplex, celebrating a new friend’s birthday properly (with Karaoke), and joining in on a mexican style get together with amazing home-made mexican food. I’ve kept myself going full tilt so as not so stop long enough to think about home, and so far the strategy has been working. There are the occasional moments when I realize I’m further into the process of adjusting than I’d even noticed. For example, I had one moment of clarity in a hotel room last week when I realized I’d gotten used to separate toilet, shower, and sink rooms, rather than western style rooms that are all together and another when I was given a fork to eat with and realized I’d gotten used to chopsticks. It’s definitely a different feeling living in a country with he expectation of staying for quite some time. I’m forced to consider new ways of doing things and finding out that I find some of them quite pleasant. I looked at pictures from a trip to San Fransico earlier this year and thought “wow, look how big everything is.” Although I experienced looking at my American life through different eyes in Europe, living in an Eastern country magnifies what I may have already noticed. Nothing makes you realize how deeply your cultural context runs in your mind like immersion in a culture that quite obviously plays by different rules. It’s definitely been illuminating thus far…

The dust is starting to settle (literally, but I’ll get to that in a moment.) I’ve been living based out of my new apartment here in beautiful (and tiny) Miyanojo in Kagoshima prefeture for nearly two full weeks now, which have completely flown past.

On the whole, I’m doing quite well, although going from being a reasonably intelligent individual to feeling illiterate has been a “bit“ of a transition. Japanese is still quite difficult for me, but until students return in September I get to spend my weekdays at the local board of education with plenty of time to study up on the language. That being said, I won’t have much to say about teaching English for a while yet, because I’ll have a rotating schedule around the local schools and won’t actually make it to all of my various students until several weeks into September. For now, I’ll talk about my experience moving into a new place in Japan, more specifically, my apartment.

I’m living in half of a duplex owned by my employer. Moving in has been a bit of an adventure, thus far. I had some time on my hands and, rather than leave well enough alone, decided to be what appears to be the first person since the 90s to go through all of the many closets in the place and throw away the accumulated junk. Although the place is in good condition, after nearly 20 years of frequent change-overs (all of the JET participants the Satsuma-cho BoE employs stay here or in the attached place where the other local JET, Colin, lives,) a fair amount of junk had piled up, especially in the closets. This is especially true because of Japanese rules about trash management. Every item has to be sorted based on their (slightly confusing) concepts of burnable and non-burnable rubbish and recyclables. So, along with a whole lot of very useful items, such as furniture and a well-stocked kitchen, I also inherited about 10 years of tucked away junk.

I have always had allergies, but in the US a simple OTC drug can usually take the edge off. I ended up cleaning out a massive amount of old dusty stuff and one closet that had a molding basket in it.

Side note: my apartment is now filled with little moisture collecting products to avoid a repeat of the mold incident.

Although, slowly but surely the place has been shaping up, I did manage to kick up tons of dust and mold particles. As a result, I was reduced to a puffy-faced, red-nosed, sneezing, wheezing mess for a couple of evenings, and come to find out, OTC drugs in Japan are pitifully weak. The only antihistamine I could find was night use only and none-too-strong anyway. So, for the past two weeks (save for weekends when I’ve been traveling,) I’ve been fighting what I considered a war against my apartment, or, more specifically the allergens in my apartment. This has kept me busy when I’m home, and also sapped a lot of my energy in conjunction with JET lag, which is one reason why this blog post was so far in coming.

Although the war isn’t quite over, I feel like I’ve pretty much reclaimed the apartment from Kagoshima allergens. I’m starting to settle and, as the dust settles (or gets thrown out), I am growing to love the place. Pictures will be up once I finish cleaning and organizing, as it’s a bit topsy-turvy at the moment, but will provide a brief description. The apartment is very Japanese. The entrance is about a foot below the rest of the house, my guests and I can remove shoes before entering. I have a hallway that leads to a Tatami mat living room attached to a Kitchen and dining area, with another small hallway that leads to a shower/laundry alcove and steps to the upstairs. Upstairs, I have a balcony (which is currently covered in drying laundry) and two more Tatami-mat rooms, which I use as my bedroom and closet/storage room. The place is cozy, but also gives me plenty of room to entertain, and has some very Japanese elements, between the sliding doors, tatami mats, futon closets, and Japanese style bathroom. Once I’ve got the place looking how I want it, I’ll take pictures to post on the blog.

Well, thanks for checking in on me, I’m having a blast here in Kagoshima. Besides cleaning my apartment and studying, I’ve spent time at the beach, checked out the two closest cities, and continued to meet lots of interesting other JETs. Also, I’ve eaten tons of delicious food. As soon as I get my phone I’ll start taking some pictures of meals I eat to talk about the local cuisine.

Until next time, peace.

The following post is not going to be about the plane flights or orientation (both of which went smoothly,) but rather is dedicated to the many people who’s support has been invaluable to me. Disclaimer: It’s also a bit sappy.

Tomorrow I’ll be traveling to my new home in Kagoshima-ken, in the City of Miyanojo, which means that as soon as I get out of the airport terminal in Kagoshima I’ll be meeting my Japanese supervisor at the Board of Education I’ll be working for, most likely along with everyone else in the office over the course of the day. It’ll be a long day, which may involve traveling, a mind numbing number of introduction, possibly a formal welcoming ceremony, possibly an “enkai” (office drinking party) and many more small and large errands. It’s likely that by the end of it I’ll be completely exhausted, overwhelmed, (maybe intoxicated) and frantically formulating half-baked plans to get out of Japan as soon as possible. Stressful as this all will most likely be, I am thoroughly looking forward to seeing my home and work environment for my stay here in Japan. The most comforting thoughts I have right now are from the very recent memories that gave me a palpable feeling of love to take with me to Japan.

One of my wonderful friends back in Tennessee made me an amazing playlist to listen to on the plane, which I’ll admit made me cry while I listened to it after take off, and as I’m re-listening to it, allowing myself to mourn the temporary loss of close proximity to all of my favorite people in this world, I can’t help but focus on how amazing the past  few weeks have been for me. At a going away party a week and a half ago I mentioned that the problem with associating with truly amazing people is, quite simply, that amazing people do thing and go places. This time it’s my turn, but the knowledge that even if I were to stay put, other people would be heading off to pursue their respective dreams is a comfort to me. Thankfully, I was able to see and say goodbye to a long list of my favorite people, including a number of individuals I am still wondering how I’m going to live without. To try to be concise, I want to let all of you know that in the past weeks, to a greater extent than I could have imagined, I was able to realize how much I mean to so many people who mean the world to me. I felt that the end of the semester through the end of last month was a period of time that provided some necessary closure for me as I prepare to pursue this amazing adventure I’ve signed up for. The support of so many people, friends and family, both recently and throughout my life has, I believe, given me the strength and self-confidence that will serve me as I go through what is likely to be a both rewarding but trying time. I am nearly floored by the amount of love I feel accompanied me here to Japan, and I know that it is going to be a source of strength for me in the months ahead.

Thanks to all of you who made this past summer a compete blast. I’ll miss you all and you mean the world to me.

Peace,
Allen