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…
Nathan Said:
on August 31, 2009 at 11:39 PM
and everything is larger in the South.
hollie Said:
on September 2, 2009 at 1:36 AM
Almost everything, Nathan. Almost.
hollie Said:
on September 6, 2009 at 11:26 PM
and Nathan would know.