Monday, August 30, 2010

実る程頭の下がる稲穂かな




A rice paddie near David's apartment.
Minoru hodo
atama no sagaru
inaho kana


I recently read a description of the Japanese custom of bowing which referenced this haiku (the title of this post is the haiku in Japanese).  It translates, roughly to "Mature rice stalks bow" It essentially means that maturity brings humility and respect for others, as seen by the grace and elegance of their bow. As we walk past multiple rice paddies on the way to David's apartment, it's easy to see the connection between rice and bowing. As the rice nears harvest, which is actually quite soon, the stalks bend in the breeze with their heavy burden of grain.  It does look as though a mature stalk of rice is bowing at you.  As David and I adjust to life in Japan, one of the first things we have learned, or should I say have begun to learn, is the art of bowing.  Instead of raising your hand in thanks as you cross the street in front of a car, a nod of the head is the correct gesture.  When you greet, thank, meet or say farewell to someone, you bow.  In fact, I find myself bowing, or at least nodding my head in partial bow every few hours here in Japan.  And I am gradually falling in love with it. You can communicate so much with a bow, as every detail of the movement speaks volumes to your intent. The degree of bend at the waist, the tilt of your head, the placement of your hands, all of these things matter. During our training for Peppy Kids Club, we actually learned the style of bow appropriate for customer service; a 45 degree bow, hands at the side for men and left over right for women, with your gaze directed at the floor.  This is a fairly polite bow, though an apology bow goes to the incredible 90 degree bend at the waist. We bow to the parents as they drop off their children while exclaiming "oazukarishmasu!" which essentially means "I receive and will care for your children."  They reply with a cheery "oneigaishimas" which is a really polite way of saying "please."  With this act, we are not only greeting the parents of our students, we are also entering into a social contract that obligates us to care for the wellbeing of the children to the best of our ability.  In fact, we have a legal responsibility within Japanese law called the "Duty of Care" which essentially makes us legally responsible for the wellbeing of the students.  While this is quite a hefty responsibility, it is also an essential part of being a teacher, especially of young children, which is quickly proving to be one of the most rewarding jobs imaginable.  

I suppose I should tell you a bit about what we are up to right now.  David and I arrived in Tochigi Prefecture, our new home, on the 16th of August, 2 weeks ago.  As I am sure to be doing often, I apologize for not posting sooner, but we have been rather busy.  Teaching at our new schools, various meetings with our new boss, applying for an Alien Registration Card and settling into our new apartments has taken a lot of my free time recently. Even with all the moving-in excitement and stress, Tochigi has been wonderful so far. I have an apartment in Utsunomiya, the capital of Tochigi.  The city is bright and lively, and oddly reminds me of Denver in both size and feeling. Utsunomiya’s regional specialty is the gyoza, my favorite of all Japanese food! Gyoza are Chinese style dumplings filled with pork, water chestnuts and lots of GARLIC! They are then fried or steamed, or my favorite, fried on the bottom and left to steam the top.  Utsunomiya has gained its reputation of having the best gyoza in Japan rightfully.  There are literally hundreds of gyoza restaurants in the city and they all have AMAZING gyoza.  Last week David and I discovered the perfect late night treat –gyoza, edamame and beer at Gyoza-kan, the best gyoza place next to the train station.  Beyond the delicious dumplings, Utsunomiya has a lot to offer as a city.  1 hr and 40 from Tokyo by the local (cheaper) train, it is close the largest city in the world, yet it is nestled up against the mountains, close to great hiking, skiing , fishing and home hundreds of beautiful temples.  My apartment is 5-7min walk to the main train station (depending on wait time at cross walks) which makes getting to work easy.  Most of my schools are one train stop away from Utsunomiya Station, and once I get a bike they are all a reasonable ride away.  I am waiting on my first paycheck to get my bike, but my real reasoning for waiting to purchase a bike is that it is currently far too hot to actually ride one.  Though the temperature is gradually decreasing, Japan is still far too hot humid to be considered habitable.  In order to escape the heat, David and I have been spending most of our time in the beautiful mountain town of Imaichi at David’s apartment.  Imaichi is technically part of Nikko, a very popular tourist destination one stop past Imaichi.  It takes us 36 min to get from Utsunomiya Station to Imaichi Station and then a short 8 min walk to David’s apartment.  David lives in a Leopalace which is an apartment complex that caters to foreigners.  This means that David’s apartment has internet included in the rent, which is part of the reason we have spent more time here.  I will get internet in the next two weeks, but until then, a trip to Imaichi is necessary to be connected to the online world.  Imaichi also has more to offer than internet access.  Being further from the city, Imaichi feels more like the exotic Japan I imagined before coming here.  We walk past rice paddies and 100 meter tall cedar trees as we walk along the train tracks toward David’s apartment.  The scenery is beautiful and life moves at a slower and quieter pace. Nearby Nikko is home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, three ornate temples from the Edo Period.  Nikko is also home to the famous hot spring monkeys, a group of monkeys that live in the forest high in the mountain, and then spend the winter relaxing in the natural hot springs.  Imaichi and Nikko seem to recall a Japan further away from the Western world.  While I feel like I am in Denver in Utsunomiya, there is truly no comparable place to Imaichi in the United States, because Imaichi is inherently Japanese, from its roots to it towing cedar branches.

Here are all the photos I have taken since arriving in Japan.  I have just figured out posting slide shows, so I will be including these slideshows every once and a while to make sure everybody can see all of my photos.


Pre-Training Photos



Training Photos




Utsunomiya Photos



Imaichi Photos




I’ll be on again soon to talk about our adventures learning Japanese and all the fun that is teaching at Peppy Kids Club, but until then, I hope you are all happy and healthy! Sayonara!

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Japan at Last!

Konichiwa from Japan! David and I safely arrived in Japan about 2 weeks ago.  We have been very busy, but we are really enjoying this beautiful country.  Sorry it took so long to post, we only found free public wifi a few days ago, and it is a 20 minute subway ride to get there.  Once we move to our permanent apartments on Monday the 16th, we should be able to get the ball rolling on our own internet.  To make up for it in the meantime, I have written a fairly long blog post. Read on if you dare…
So, Japan has been a complete rush so far.  The scenery is beautiful, the culture is interesting and the people are so kind! A wonderful example of my life in Japan so far: I got lost on my way to a school for training, because the train line I was on had no English signs.  They also had no hiragana (the Japanese alphabet) signs, they only had Kanji signs (the Chinese characters).  I was pretty sure I was on the right train, but to be sure, I asked the lady sitting next to me if the train was stopping at Nagoya station (by ask I mean I said excuse me and “Nagoya?” with a questioning and frightened look on my face).  She said yes several times in Japanese and I bowed a quick thank you.  She then proceeded to tell me the name of every stop as we stopped, translating the Kanji and then walked me off the train at Nagoya station and pointed me towards the exit.  All this from a complete stranger who didn’t speak my language.  Japan is also incredibly safe.  Muggings, thievery and assault are unheard of and you can tell by walking the streets.  There is no concern about walking around at night, and you can approach anyone on the street for help.  Within our first two weeks, Japan is already starting feel like a second home! So, now for a catalog of the events of our trip over here and our experiences so far!
Our trip over got off to a rocky start, as my ticket was booked as Sarah Graham (oops!).  This was fairly quickly resolved, but we still missed our first flight to San Fransisco.  This unfortunately meant cancelling our breakfast date with David’s older brother, but we did arrive in plenty of time for our flight to Japan.  The flight over was fairly uneventful, but very long, 11 hours in the air! After being a nervous wreck about going through customs the whole flight over, it ended up being a breeze and we left the airport a mere 30 min after landing.  Now, the coolest thing about the flying to and in Japan, is that shipping luggage is the norm.  We had our luggage delivered from the airport to Peppy Kids head office in Nagoya for roughly 16 dollars a bag! Convenience is the name of the game for pretty much every service in Japan.  We then hopped on a 15 min train to Narita, the town where the Tokyo Airport is located.  Narita was a surprisingly quaint little town, but we sadly didn’t get to see very much of it.  This was because we got caught in a rainstorm and became lost on the winding streets.  We ended up walking the same route a few times until a kind lady took pity on us and using our map, gave us sign language directions to our hotel.  This all with two broken pieced of carry-on luggage (my wheel broke and David’s handle broke).  Needless to say, by the time we showed up to our hotel we looked two tired, hungry and partially drowned rats.  To make matters more uncomfortable, the lobby/dining room was full of a travelling baseball team.  25 Japanese teenagers watched two wet and dirty looking foreigners carrying broken luggage check in.  Trust me, it was quite a sight to see.  After we changed shoes and slippers the requisite million times as you transfer from room to room, we arrived at our room.  It was perfect.  We stayed at a ryokan, a traditional Japanese hotel equivalent to a Bed and Breakfast in the States.  Our yukata, light cotton kimono-eque robes, were waiting for us, as was hot green tea and crackers.  We settled down on our futons and relaxed in a perfectly Japanese space.  For our first night in Japan, it was perfect.  Now as exhausted as we were, we only managed a few hours of sleep.  The jet lag was pretty bad. However, in the morning we had another extremely Japanese experience.  The baseball team left, leaving us as the only guests.  We had a traditional Japanese breakfast served to us by the owner of the ryokan.  He could trace his lineage back to three generations of samurai and had a full set of amour and other family heirlooms on display.  After finishing our delicious breakfast, he personally drove us to the train station and explained how to get to Nagoya, which was best accessed by the Shinkansen, more commonly known as the bullet train.

Now I was expecting the bullet train to be fast.  I was expecting to get to my destination quickly.  I did not, however understand the true meaning of fast and quickly until I rode the bullet train.  Our journey looked fairly tedious on a map, crossing nearly half the country.  However, as scenery and towns whizzed by at the speed of sound, I had barley gotten settled in when we arrived at our station.  In a mere hour and 20 minutes, we were at Nagoya Station, a journey that would have taken 5 hours by car.  If you ever go to Japan- take the Shinkansen.  It’s worth every penny.
So, there we were.  Nagoya, our home for the next three weeks.  We would soon be told that it is nicknamed the armpit of Japan. This is due not only to it’s location on the island, but also to the absolutely insufferable heat.  I was told it would be hot  and humid in Japan.  I was not told it would be 100 degrees and 100% humidity.  For a week.  After adjusting to the brilliant habit of carrying a handkerchief for mopping up sweat and fan to create a weak imitation of breeze, life became slightly more bearable.  It did cool down eventually, but that first week was rough.  Here are some pictures from our tourist adventures in Nagoya.
A Mario pinata-esque thing.  There was a contest at one of the festivals we went to to make the best video game or anime paper mache replica, this one was my favorite!
That's right. A square watermelon.  Simpsons fans rejoice. This was in the upscale department store in Sakae, a ritzy neighbourhood in Nagoya.  David and I were pretty sure we didn't have enough money to exist in this store.  This is where Japan gets the expensive reputation from.  Luckily, the grocery store down the street offers food at similar prices to home.  I don't care if the watermelon has corners, I'm not paying $210 for it.
View from the top of an enclosed ferris wheel in Nagoya.  The recorded voice kept telling us we were higher up in the air than the top of Nagoya Castle. That kinda makes me wish we went to Nagoya Castle...
A temple where we saw a  taiko drumming festival and the World Cosplay Summit.  You don't know what cosplay is? See below...
Essentially, Cosplay is where people dress up as anime, computer game or manga characters and other people take pictures of them.  Some people do this professionally.  It was intense!


A lantern festival near Nagoya. It was beautiful!
Then they made the lanterns dance! It was awesome! And yes, that kid is about 11., and they really looked heavy.

Training did eventually begin.  Our first discovery from training was that we really are working a sweet gig.  We work 3-5 hours five days a week.  We get 15 days off for Christmas, 5 personal days and every Japanese national holiday off (there are a TON!).  We also get paid pretty well. Also, our job primarily consists of playing with adorable kids.  The teachers we have met have said it is the best job they’ve ever had.  Some teachers are on their 10th year, and the majority of the foreigners who work at head office are native teachers that have worked their way through the ranks, and still request to teach a few times a month.  All in all, Peppy seems like a great place to work.  This brings me to the hilarity of working for a company named “Peppy Kids Club.”  When describing anything at Peppy, one must simply put the word “peppy” in front to indicate that it is a part of the company.  Witness the hilarity that ensues.  When I got to the Peppy classroom, I grab my Peppy teaching manual and planned my Peppy lesson.  The Peppy students will arrive and I greet the Peppy parents using my Peppy phrases learned during training.  The Peppy textbooks are really useful when teaching the Peppy curriculum.  And so it goes for everything, including the Peppy fax machines.  Beyond making training sound far more ridiculous than it is, it also gives off the air that everything at work, even the most mundane of tasks has a cheerful and enthusiastic feeling about it.  Kind of like a Disney movie on speed.  I reality, the fax machine works like any other fax machine, which is fairly disappointing.  I was kind of hopping it would play a jingle and dance enthusiastically while faxing. 
Our training group is great, and we have made fast friends with most of them.  They are all around our age and though we have come to Japan for a variety of different reasons from different countries, we all want to get the same things out of living in Japan; experiences, understanding and adventure! Training has been a lot of long hours and hard work so far, but it is also paying off.  As we are starting to teach actual classes ourselves, we are really grateful for all the preparation they have given us.  I will let you know how training goes once we are finished, but right now it is mostly really busy.  Everyone says things get easier and calm down once you move to your area.  So, that is all for now, but we miss you all back in the States and hope you are all doing well! Till next time, sayonara!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

We are here!

So- we've been in Japan for over a week now! Currently, my computer is about to die, so I can't post in depth.  However, I thought I would  leave a note to let everyone know that David and I are here, safe and having a blast! More to come soon!