Sometimes My Life is an Aerosmith Song

Wednesday was my mandatory medical exam.  That was so much fun, I think I`m on a fun overload and therefore can never do it again.  I love being poked, prodded, bled, and asked questions in a language I don`t speak.  Not to mention being clamped to a table.  I had to have an electrocardiogram.  I`ve never had an electrocardiogram before, but I figured it was just a matter of sticking things on me for a couple minutes.  Right?  Wrong.  Before the sticky things happen. you get clamps around your wrists and ankles.  How does this not automatically send anyone`s pulse through the roof?  It`s like the beginning of a horror movie, no matter how brightly lit the place is.

 (In reality, the whole thing is not as bad as I make it out to be, minus the blood sample because that`s always bad, but it`s really stressful when you have to keep having everything interpreted because they`re asking you complicated medical questions you don`t have the vocabulary for.)

After that joyous experience, we went to Mie University Hospital.  I`ll be working here about once a month with the inpatient kids.  I got to see the hospital classroom, as well as meet some of the kids in their rooms.  I`m really excited for this experience, because even though the kids are shy, they seem like they will be a lot of fun!!!  One girl in particular is going to be great fun.  Her room is cluttered with Disney stuff, and art that she`s done (much of which is Disney art or food art).

 As much as I hate Will Ferrel, this is accurate.

My supervisor and I had an interesting experience when we walked into the hospital, though.  We were supposed to be meeting the teacher from the hospital school in the lobby, and all we knew was that she said she would be wearing black pants and a black top.  So we`re standing awkwardly in the lobby, trying to figure out if she`s already there or not, and there`s only one person in the area wearing black clothing.  But it`s biker-punk type black clothing, including a sleeveless shirt to show off multiple arm tattoos, they`re wearing a mask (making them more likely a patient), and their long hair is looking like it`s never seen a brush.  So we decide this is probably not her, and continue to wait.  As we wait, a lady comes up to tattooed patient, they stand, and walk off.  We both watch for a minute, blink a few times, and then my supervisor turns to me and says, `Oh... It was a man...` And then we grinned and had a giggle fit that lasted pretty much until the teacher arrived to greet us a couple minutes later.

Once we finished up at the university hospital (including a lunch at the Chinese restaurant/cafe with an oceanview on the top floor, I kid you not), we went to visit the special needs school I`ll be visiting every Tuesday once classes start (except the times I`m at the hospital).  The teacher who showed me around had excellent English, and was really nice.  He showed me all of the school buildings, since I`ll be working with elementary, junior, and senior high students here on different weeks, and explained what types of special needs the students at the school often have.  It was a little overwhelming, and I`m not really sure of much at this point, but it seems like a great school and it`ll definitely be interesting to see how Japanese schools deal with special needs students.

Thursday.  Last day of summer holidays.

Last day to (easily) pretend that I`m doing work when I`m really not because the staff room is only about a third full.  Nothing much happened, really.  I realized halfway through my bike ride to work that I forgot my lunch in the fridge, so I had to hit up the conbini (convenience store) down the street from the school for food.  Breaded pork chop with sauce and rice.  Not bad.

I also learned that paying bills here is complicated.  Not the actual act of paying them.  Once you get the bill, you bring it to the convenience store (seriously), they scan it in, and you pay there.  The complicated part comes in when you don`t speak/read Japanese, and you didn`t know that prior to sending you the bill, they`re going to send you a separate notice to let you know how much the bill is going to be when you get it (the trees are crying).  If you`re like me, you`re under the impression that this is your bill, and you try to bring it to the convenience store to pay.  Awkward...

Today was the first day of school after summer holidays (though not the first day of classes; I won`t have a class until September 8th, due to other activities happening in the school).  I brought maple cookies for the staff (that I bought at the foreign food store last night, but we`re not telling anyone.  They`re Canadian cookies, so it totally counts), and my supervisor wrote out how to say that I brought them and to please help yourself.  And then the VP called me up to introduce myself during our morning teacher`s meeting and I completely forgot the sheet.  Fail.  So I had to write it out on another paper and my supervisor wrote it in kanji for me.  After that was a brief respite while the students cleaned the school (it`s a thing here, I`ll explain it at a later date), and then it was time for the opening ceremony, where I had to stand up in front of the entire school and give a longer introduction.  I brought a paper along for this one so that I didn`t forget anything/stumble over my words/stand there like a deer in headlights.  I was still terrified, but I think I did okay.  At least, my supervisor said my Japanese was fluid and and the teachers said it was a good speech, so I`m basing my thought that I did okay on that.  I am SO glad that`s over! 

The rest of the day was spent working on lesson plans, pretending to work on lesson plans, and trying to figure out how to use the computer lab for my self-introduction lesson because the PC in the language lab (not the 80s monstrocity, the other computer in the room, which might be from as late as the early 2000s) is broken.  All of the teachers I`ll be working with and I took a trip up to the computer lab with the tech teacher to learn how to work the network up there.  It`s a basic closed network set up with screen sharing, so I had no problem understanding how to work it, even though the tech teacher only speaks Japanese (we had to go through it a couple times for the other teachers, since they`re not used to working with things like this).

Also: My school has a song.  True story.  It has a theme song.  Like Hogwarts.  Except that it has a definite tune, and it`s super happy and cute and I have no idea what the hell it`s saying.  Sometimes I forget that I`m in Japan, and obviously everything has its own mascot and theme song.

Since all the teachers were back today, I got fed more.  Omiyage is a fabulous thing.

The First Couple Weeks (Or, What Am I Doing With My Life?!?!)

Well, I`ve been here a week and a half now, so I`ve had time to process things and adjust (except to the heat.  The heat in Mie [pronounced like me-yay] is disgusting.  You don`t even understand how hot and humid it is.  I thought I would be fine after my time in Florida.  I was wrong).  Now, sit back, relax, and bask in the glory (aka alternating boredom and panic) that is my re-telling of my journey here.

So we got on the plane in Toronto and flew for almost thirteen hours.  Joy.  I traded for a window seat, and both my seat buddies were cool, so that was all good.  The meals were okay (I always go vegan/veg on flights now because a) rubbery chicken skeeves me out, and b) it`s safer with my egg intolerance on flights that serve breakfast), but the ones to and from Denmark were better. I was my usual movie-obsessed self, watching Age of Ultron (because how could I not watch that if it`s offered?!), The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (still quality, but not as good as the first), Big Hero 6 (again, how could I not?), and The Duff (this was when I had reached the point of pretty much just staring blankly at the seat in front of me, I wanted something I hadn`t seen before, but not necessarily something I wanted to pay much attention to).  I also kicked ass at the hidden object game when the three of us in my row played together, thus proving yet again that I really need a life.

We got to Tokyo and the `air conditioned` airport (this is a lie).  Customs took only about 30 seconds longer than it normally does when I`m a tourist, which frankly scares me a bit, but I have my residence card, so whatever.  Collected luggage, and had to haul it halfway to bloody China outside in the heat and humidity to reach the buses, whereupon one of my suitcases was mysteriously whisked away to be sent to my school (but without really being labelled with anything other than a JET card with my name on it, so I was worried about it actually making it here), and the other was loaded under the bus.  During this trip, multiple people stopped to ask me if I was alright because I had to keep stopping and readjusting my grip on my suitcases/wiping the excessive sweat from my face.  Yes, thank you, I`m fine, just horribly out of shape, uncoordinated, and unused to the heat.  Please disregard my burgundy face.  It looks worse than it actually is.  Finally got to the hotel, checked in, collapsed on the bed for a few minutes, met the roommates (equally awesome ladies), and connected to the internet to let everyone know I was alive and to write the previous post.  By this point, it was about 8PM and we were starving, so it was down to the konbini (convenience store) in the hotel basement for a quick dinner.  We were super lame and went to bed between 9-9:30PM.

I`ll spare you most of the actual orientation stuff, because it was excessively boring, mostly common sense, and stuff you`ll only understand if you`re already here, doing this.  If you`re leaving from Toronto, you get at least 75% of this information before you go.  Dinner the first night was a reception with finger foods, and we were organized according to our prefecture so that we could socialize with the people we`re likely to see the most over the next however many years.  After that, again I was lame and went to bed.  There was a tour and drinking party organized for the Toronto JETs by Japanese people who had visited Toronto in the past, but I was tired and lazy and therefore skipped out.  Plus I`ve been to Tokyo before, so it`s less of a big deal for me.  The next night, however, was a reception for Canadians at the Canadian Embassy, which was awesome because there was PIZZA.  There was also beer, but PIZZA.  I have issues, I`m aware. 

We traveled as a group, of course, to Mie on the train.  This was an interesting trip with a 27lb backpack and probably 20lb purse.  But I made it!  My supervisor and one of the other Japanese English teachers (JTE) picked me up when we got to the Board of Education office in Tsu.  They brought me to my apartment, to my high school to meet with the principal (for which I wore my jacket and thus was sweating an embarassing amount, but at least my clothing was appropriate), and to the mall and supermarket to get things/so I knew where they were.

Since that time, I`ve mostly been at school, introducing myself to all of the teachers (98% of whom I don`t remember now), touring the school (I know where the teacher`s room, washroom, and front office are; everything else is a blur), and trying to figure out what the hell I`m doing.  I found out that we`ll be having an open house for potential incoming students on the 25th, at which I`ll be expected to do a demo lesson with one of the JTEs.  He came up to me on Thursday and asked if I had any ideas.  Uh, no.  In a big way, no.  I have zero idea what I`m doing right now.  This was followed on Friday by a meeting with him and one of the other JTEs to let me know what parts of the lessons in the textbook I should be concerned with.  Great.  I still have zero idea what I`m doing.  I`m just going to make this up as I go along.  So now we have a meeting set for late next week to discuss what I`ll have come up with by then.

On the weekend, I went to the mall and the grocery store by myself (scary!).  I`d just like to point out that I didn`t get lost on either trip.  Probably because I was using the Maps app on my phone, but I`ve been known to get lost before even with a GPS, so it`s still kind of a big deal. 

The beginning of this week was Mie Prefectural Orientation, which was infinitely more useful than Tokyo.  We learned practical things, like what a lesson plan actually is, useful Japanese phrases for the office (ie, how to ask for cake/vacation time), how to prevent and deal with pests (mukade are the most terrifying things in existence), how to use an ATM, and how to not die in an earthquake (probably).  There was also a Mie JETs party for both new and returning people.  Conveniently, this took place in my neighbourhood, so I could just walk there and back.  We played an icebreaker game where we had a list of words we had to try to get people to say in conversation without obviously soliciting the word, which led to a lot of really interesting and odd conversations.

And now I`m back at school.  Many of the teachers are off right now for their summer vacation, especially because it`s time for Obon (kind of like the Mexican Day of the Dead; it`s about honouring their ancestors, and there are huge festivals and stuff), so mostly I just sit back here in my corner and don`t talk to anyone because no one who is in the office can communicate with me.  It`s a little awkward.  But there was one funny interaction around lunch time, involving a teacher I hadn`t met yet because he was on holidays last week.  The following takes place entirely in Japanese.

Teacher: (Comes into the teacher`s room, looks at me. Squints, looks closer at me.  Turns to the Japanese teacher sitting across from me) Who`s that?
Japanese Teacher: The new ALT.  Mel.  (She turns to me) Right?  Or, Melanie?
Me: Yes.  I`m Mel.  I`m from Canada!  Nice to meet you!
Teacher: Ah, Canada.  And...sorry, the name was...?
Japanese Teacher: Melanie.  Mel.
Me: Mel is okay.
Teacher: Ms. Okay??
Me: No, no.  Mel. (Cue internal facepalming)
Another teacher who`s been listening to us: Man, it`s a good think you teach math!

So I`m sitting here, typing this up, trying to kill time.  With no one to talk to, I`m blazing through my work.  What I planned on taking me from now until Friday at least to work through is already about 85% done.  I can hear a bunch of sports teams practicing outside, and I`d love to go watch them for a while, but I don`t actually know how to ask that...  It`s not really a thing to just up and leave your desk to wander without letting someone know where you`re going (unless you`re only stepping out for a quick minute, like the washroom, or it`s really obvious where you`re going because you have a class to teach).  Plus who knows if the sports teams want some random foreigner watching them (they probably do; apparently it`s a big deal when ALTs show up for sporting things), so I`d like to be able to check with the coach/manager first.  And I can`t.  I will look it up for tomorrow, because I don`t think I can take another full day of `busy` work, and there`s only so many lessons I can plan without guidance from the JTEs as to whether or not what I`m planning is remotely what they want.  I should have taken the rest of this week off.  They tried to tell me to, but I was all like, I don`t know what I`m doing and I want as much time in school as possible to figure it out and plan.  That was stupid.