The opening gambit....

Well, I’m here…

I’ve been here about a month and I’ve decided to get the blog up and running. It’s gone by really quickly, but quite slowly at the same time. Lots done and my head has almost stopped spinning. I’ll try and bring you up to speed as quickly as possible…

Arrived in Tokyo in the 17th of August. Got off the plane and hit a wall of heat. Summer was in full swing and the humidity was intense. Luckily most of my time in Tokyo was spent in an air-conditioned hotel. We had a two-day orientation, which basically reviewed a lot of info that was already in our handbook, just to make sure everyone was “on the same page.” It was nice to meet some other new JETs and see how their last month had been. I had about four weeks notice to sort myself out, but some people only had two weeks! I can’t imagine how stressful that would have been.


The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices, opposite the hotel

We had the chance to go out and explore in the evenings. The streets were hot and humid – about 27C even at 10pm. I’ve never seen anything like Tokyo at night. It was like walking through a theme park, all flashing lights and strange writing. The streets were immaculately clean and not a spot of graffiti anywhere. I had to remind myself that I was actually there and that it wasn’t a dream. The whole experience just seemed very odd.


A tourist friendly menu outside a restaurant

We ended up in a little noodle shop on the first night, but on the second night we splashed out and went for drinks on the top floor of the Hyatt hotel (where Bill Murray did his drinking in Lost in Translation – a bit cheesy I know, but the views were incredible, the lights just went on and on). On the way back we popped into a pachinko parlour (basically a vertical pinball game). It’s hugely popular in Japan. Apparently the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) launder a lot of money through them – good to know.


If you like noise and flashing lights, Pachinko could be the thing for you

Headed off the next morning (Friday). A lady from the “Niigata Internationalisation Team” came to pick me up from the hotel. The Shinkansen (or bullet train) pulled into Tokyo Station and a squad of cleaners were waiting for it. They all bowed as the train went past. Once the passengers had gotten off the train they ran onto the train in a cleaning frenzy. To my delight, it was not just a bullet train, but a double-decker bullet train at that! I was mightily impressed; I didn’t even know they existed. The ride was very smooth and slept like a baby all the way to Nagaoka where I got off to meet the Japanese Teacher of English (JTE) for my school. He and his colleague were holding a sign saying “Welcome to Joetsu, Colin,” a lovely touch.

It was about another 40 minute drive to Joetsu City, where I met up with my supervisor and some of the other ALTs for the region, about 16 or so. They were all expecting me and I got a big round of applause when I arrived, which was a bit overwhelming. They are all really nice – a good mix of Brits and Americans (Brits have the edge in terms of numbers). We went out for dinner that evening and then I unpacked some of my things.

On Saturday morning we took the three-hour ferry out to Sadogashima. It wasn’t like the Stornoway ferry, there were no seats inside, just carpet (no shoes remember!). It was perfect for sleeping on and the three hours flew by! The kids on the ferry had a great time running around.


Not sure what this was about, but it was worth a snap

The reason for going out to the island was the Sado Island Earth Celebration festival. It’s a three-day music, dance and art festival. The Kodo drummers are the big draw. These guys tour the world eight months of the year, but they live in a compound just north of the port of Ogi on Sado. They have to adhere to a strict physical, mental and spiritual training regime. These guys are insanely fit. Try http://www.kodo.or.jp/ for more details.

From Ogi we got a bus out to a beach, the name of which escapes me, and we set up camp on the sand. Some volleyball and a swim was followed by a few beers and sake around a campfire. One of the Japanese blokes we had played volleyball with came over later in the evening and said, “fire, now” and walked off. We figured that he wanted us to join his campfire, so we followed him with a few beers to be polite. Oh how wrong we were! What he meant was that a couple of the fire dancers who would be performing at the festival on the Sunday night wanted to give us a show. It was truly awesome. There were about 15 of us watching it, so it was quite intimate. It worked so well with the pitch-black background of nighttime, the flames illuminating whatever they passed – a head, a leg, the sand. Some mad heat lightening over the sea topped off quite an interesting first full day in Niigata.


Awesome, in the old-fashoned sense of the word

The heat of the early morning sun woke me up at 6am. Myself and a few of the other guys went for a swim before we packed up our things and headed back into town. I then had my first onsen experience… It’s basically a mineral hot-spring spa and they seem to be just about everywhere in Japan. Get stripped off, have a good old wash and then slip into a big pool with lots of naked men you’ve never met before. Oh, and I’ve discovered that if you’re a little sunburnt then the water will feel hot enough to peel the skin off a rhino. Onsen veterans had their own “modesty towel,” but newbies such as myself have to settle for the old birthday suit. This onsen was really nice – perched on top of a hill overlooking a bay. It had several pools and a couple outside (suitably private of course). To top the whole thing off, a couple of eagles cruised past us only about 30m away. Had a rinse down and a shave before passing out in the communal tatami (tight woven matting) room for about two hours.

Back in town we bought our tickets for the Sunday night show. A Spanish chap called Carlos Nunez was on the bill – believe it or not, but he played Celtic music and it was the most amazing bagpipe playing that I’ve ever heard in my life! If Jimi Hendrix had played the bagpipes it would have been like that. The main event, however, was Kodo. The speed, timing and power of the drumming has to be seen to be believed. The drums are huge and they use drumsticks the size of rolling pins. A couple of guys had baseball-bat-sized drumsticks. Their part culminated with the big man being wheeled out to do his 20-minute solo on a massive drum. He was an absolute beast of a man. Even when he finished his solo, he just jumped down from his drum and got stuck in with 30 minutes more drumming with 5 other guys – and they don’t mess about!


The big-yin

Camped again that night and then got the 6.30am ferry back to Joetsu in time for our day of seminars with the Joetsu-shi elementary school teachers. The aim was to tell them how to use an us, the native English speakers, effectively. I got to meet my elementary school teachers – I’ll be teaching at Hari ES, Kakasaki ES, Miyajima ES, but will be based at Itakura JHS.

On Tuesday I finally went to my Junior High School – all of 100 yards from my house! I can here the band practising when I’m eating my breakfast. I met all the teachers. I had to give a brief introducion of myself, which was translated by the JTE. All of the teachers are very friendly and welcoming. Only my the principal and my JTE speak decent English, so trying to communicate with the other teachers is great fun – try doing a 9 – 5 though the medium of charades!! It’ll help my Japanese, but my eloquence in English might ware-off!

Itakura is the village I live and it’s tiny. The population is around 2,000 but that's spread over quite a large area. Stacia, an American ALT who lives in my building, went to the post office to collect a package that was delivered while she was out – all the staff excitedly ran out to greet her. They then lined up and introduced themselves to her. It is proper countryside here – just rice fields and mountains. There is a great panorama from the 3rd grade classroom. There’s also a 2500m mountain nearby called Myoko, which is a great backdrop. I’m about a 15 minute drive to the nearest big town, Joetsu-shi.

This is apparently one of the best areas in Japan to ski. I’m about 50km from Nagano where the Winter Olympics were held in 1998. There are other slopes about 20 minutes drive from my house. Snowboarding will be the way to go – apparently it’s pretty much the only thing to do in the winter… well, it could be worse. The weather just now is about 30C+ most days, but come November it will get much colder – they had 2m of snow at one point a few winters ago.

The food has been ok. Much less fat in the cuisine here, but I’ve realised that even the most inconspicuous bits of food can have fish in them. A couple of the veggie ALTs are having difficulties. Food shopping is a real treat here, especially if you can’t read kanji (characters taken from Chinese). My thinking is that if in doubt, it probably has fish in it. It’s is basically a bit of a lucky dip at the moment – although I have developed a bit of a penchant for their sticky rice, which you can buy in huge cement-sized-bags for £15. Interestingly, you can buy three squid for a quid (and I mean an entire squid, eyes and all); it’s probably three quid per squid in the UK…

My Japanese just now involves a few phrases that are needed to be polite, some very random vocab (acquired as necessary) and some basic phrase structures – do you have, I would like, what is this, etc.

Well, that's a summary of my first few days in Japan. I'll try and fill you in on the rest of the month when I get a chance.