Day 1 in Kambara

*Deep breath of air…*

It is not quite 10pm and I am exhausted. My first day arriving in Kambara has been very long- I met my supervisor and several of the other senseis at Ihara High School including the principal, vice principals, the baseball coach and most of the English teachers. The introduction ceremony was a little nerve-wracking because we each (the ALTs) had to memorize a 5 sentence introduction in Japanese. I think I got most of it right the first time, but I definitely got better throughout the day as I repeated it to the principal and a couple other teachers as well as a couple of neighbors.

I took a lot of pictures of my apartment. It needs some cleaning. Ok, that’s an understatement. It needs to be washed down with a hose. Luckily I can do just that in the shower room/bathtub room because the shower is mounted outside the tub. In a Japanese style bath, one is supposed to fill a tub with water, fire up the heater underneath, rinse, soap and rinse with a shower outside the tub, and then climb in when one is totally clean. The bath is more for relaxation and several family members will use the same bath water. Luckily for me the utilities guys came over to the apartment this afternoon and turned the hot water heater on at my house so I can have hot water out of the tap any time I want it. This is not necessarily common- I’m living in a (newer…kind of) house.

The rest of the house smells kind of moldy or something. I can’t smell very well, but I know it doesn’t smell good. I think it has to do with the very humid and wet weather? I do have an air conditioner unit in one of the corners of one of my 3 rooms- I have it running right now with all the windows open to get some air going through it and to make sure it doesn’t poison me my first night in Japan. I also have a dehumidifier that was quite crusty, but I cleaned out the filter a bit and have that going. I do realize that with the windows open I’m kind of dehumidifying the whole world, but again I’m kind of seeing what it’s going to do if I let it run. I’ve already got almost a cup of water in it and it’s been running for 30 min. now.

Everything is really weird here. I’m still not used to the cars driving on the left side of the road. I keep thinking that cars turning left from our right are going to smash right into us. Everything is much smaller too. The glasses at dinner are pretty small, so I think I haven’t been drinking enough liquids and am a little dehydrated. My supervisor (I still can’t remember his name tho I’ve been told at least 10 times), Oeda sensei, Yamaguchi sensei, another JTE who I forgot her name and Sarah (the other ALT I’ll be working with at Ihara High) all went out to eat and out shopping. They all led me around and made suggestions about to buy and let me browse a bit- I’m going to have to go back and spend a few hours in the 2 stores figuring out what is buyable for a 23 year old American boy. Both the Mega Mart (kind of like a miniature wal-mart) and the grocery store are open 24 hours, so that will be nice. I didn’t really know what to get at the grocery store because I can’t really tell what anything is. I ended up getting some eggs, a loaf of bread that is only 8 slices big (as big as they get), some kellogs corn flakes with katakana written on them, some soy milk and some ham. I also bought some me-ronpan or melon bread because Mike was always so nostalgic about it. It was pretty decent. I also tried some melon flavored Fanta at dinner tonight which wasn’t so subtle- a brilliant green color and sharp taste.

Sarah is really nice and showed me the route to bike to get from between the train station and the school. I hope I can remember the way tomorrow morning as I have to be at work at 8:00…

My eyes keep closing so I have to stop typing, but more will definitely be on its way. There’s just so much that it takes forever to write these overviews- maybe I’ll just stick to a few of the details and explain them more in depth next time…

Luther