Hard&Soft Landing

I believe I said I was going to do a Part Two of the JET application process, and that post is indeed mostly written in the drafts section totally not going to get posted, but let me jump ahead in the interest of actually doing this thing, and please look for Part Two to come sometime soon look back at Part One for a chronological breakdown of the application process.

Today is August 10th, and I have been in Japan for slightly over a week. Three days for orientation in Tokyo, which was a marvelous, climate-controlled all-you-can eat buffet of information and fresh new faces. The Keio Plaza Hotel is a lovely accommodation, even three to a room, and although I slightly regret only once venturing outside the hotel, I do not at all regret sleeping more than most in the lovely cool hotel room. The whole thing went by in a blur and then it was time to go.

On the third day, the Aomori group got up extra early, dressed in full business suit attire and boarded a bus for Haneda airport. We had a short uneventful one-hour flight to Aomori airport, picked up our luggage from the carousel, took a deep breath and headed out in thirty different directions. My supervisor took me to lunch upstairs in the terminal, and then we headed off in his car for a full itinerary of first day activities in Hirosaki. Highlights-

• Registering at city hall, where I received six packages of instant rice as a welcome gift
• Opening an account at the bank, where I certified that I am not in fact a member of the yakuza
• Opening a cell phone account after several days with no internet access, which is kind of like going grocery shopping when you are starving. I am a bit afraid to see my first month's bill.
• Watching many documents get stamped with my hanko (name stamp). Maybe one day soon I will actually get to stamp it myself...
• Meeting the Principal (Kouchou-sensei), Vice Principal (Kyoutou-sensei) and many other teachers and staff at my base school.

I've also spent some time settling in to my apartment and the JET community over the last few days. The apartment is quite large, and I've spread out and made a big mess right off the bat. The first few days in I took full advantage of the air conditioner in the living room, but over the weekend I tried to get by without it, relying instead on the ample cross-breeze when the windows are open. In the first week of August, cities all over Aomori put on the Nebuta Matsuri (festival) with giant lighted paper lantern floats called nerimoto, and I managed to get out and see a bit of it. A few more highlights-

• Attending the Hirosaki Neputa parade in front of the station with my supervisor and his wife and sons, who were a bit afraid of me (his sons at least)
• Driving up to Goshogawara in a car full of JETs for the Tachinebuta parade, with massive five-story-tall nerimono and lots of drumming and flutes
• Catching a magnificent sunset behind Iwaki-san (岩木山, Mount Iwaki) while running to the konbini for dinner last night
• First all-japanese conversation with my new neighbor (a little rocky, but it can only go up from here, right?)

One note in favor of jet lag. Right off the bat, jet lag caused me (and probably everyone else in the San Francisco departure group) to wake up around 5am. Normally that might be a really inconvenient thing, given my preferred schedule of 1am to bed and 9am to rise. However, with my new school day schedule, it's actually really good to wake up at 5am. I am going to try to keep it up.

There's a lot more to tell, and I hope to be able to stick a couple photos in here in the near future, but I don't yet have internet in my apartment so it's a bit of a process. Sit tight, please check back soon!

お先に失礼します...

Backside of the Momotaro nerimono in the Goshogawara Tachineputa parade

Another fierce nerimono at Goshogawara

Sunset behind Iwakisan as seen from the konbini

Updated (slightly) 2016-02-10