Kakegawa Orientation (and Onsen experience)

New Pictures:

http://uwec.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2095443&l=c0fdd&id=59501063


See me crawling next to you
And you pull me to your side
Knowing maybe that this is the last time
We’re doing it right
‘Cuz maybe, baby, we are through

Laying for an hour or two
Listening closely to the dark
Waiting for that moment when we
Both fall apart
Over, it’s over, baby we’re through


Things are so strange here. I cannot help but laugh out loud. I got into my “hotel room” at the conference center here on our business trip and it cannot be more than 12 ft. X 7 ft. with a bed, a wardrobe and desk and a chair. It is tiny. And the bed wasn’t made. It had a weird sheet thingy, a what-I-assumed-to-be mattress pad, a large comforter and another oddly shaped sheet. Oh, and a pillow filled with beads or marbles and a pillow cover. So I guess the comforter goes inside the giant pillow case with the hole in the center and the other sheet goes on top of the mattress pad- or it could very well be that the mattress pad goes on top of the sheet in order to soak up ones sweat. I believe the pillow is designed for just the thing because it doesn’t retain moisture like my down pillow back at my apartment. The sweat kind of either seeps down or is wicked away by the superior air flow.

The food continues to be interesting. I keep eating everything I’m served. Not because I necessarily think it tastes good, but because I want to experience what people normally eat here. I have found too that a lot of entrees or boxed lunches are slightly above room temperature at best when served. There aren’t heat lamps for the meals to sit under while they wait for someone to pick them up. So I eat a 35 degree (Celsius mind you, c’mon, we’re in some other country than the US now) meal when I’m not ordering it straight off the menu.

The conference is great- I have learned a lot of helpful things about what to be expecting as far as teaching goes. Tomorrow we present our self-introduction lessons as a run through or rough draft. I’ll have even more time to revise it/add pictures/print out lyric sheets for the song on guitar I’m playing (which I still haven’t picked out yet. Maybe the one I just wrote the other day printed above). Or maybe a recognizable American song.

I had my first onsen experience. At least a hotel’s version of an onsen. An onsen is basically a communal showering/bathing area where people clean off and relax. There are 3 main rooms in this particular onsen. In the first room patrons take off their shoes and place them in a locker. Then they proceed to a tatami mat room where they place their clothing and towels in an individual basket. Then they slide the Japanese style doors and enter the bathing room. Here is where the action takes place. In this particular onsen there was a line of showers on one side of the room and the large bath on the other. Being my hajimette (first time) experience, and not a soul being present, I walked over to one of the showers, turned its mechanism and began to bathe. The shower head was kind of low so I had to hunch over. Below me were 2 neatly stacked plastic bowls. I had no idea what they were for, so I decided to ignore them. After scrubbing myself with a washcloth (I was reminded by a Japanese man before entering that I needed my washcloth- I had to run back to my room to get it) I climbed into the crystal clear hot tub like pool and settled into a relaxed soak. Pretty soon a third year ALT entered the bathing area and approached a showering station. Except his bathing method looked completely different from mine. Apparently patrons are supposed to flip over one of the bowls, sit on it, and use the other bowl to fill and pour over one’s head. This would have eliminated much hunching if I had known better. Deciding to do things right I returned to my station and continued to model the behavior of the other people who knew what they were doing. A lovely time in all, however it did little to stop the sweat from pouring down my brow as I left the onsen area.

No fear- pictures to follow. I snuck back into the onsen this evening (the showers close down supposedly between 10:30pm and 8:30 pm. Yeah, only open for 2 hours) to snap some shots at a time when I wouldn’t look like a perv only to be met by a Japanese man who was using the area after hours. It was kind of embarrassing, but he spoke great English so we talked for awhile until he started to take off his clothes at which point I stopped the conversation, had a drink at the fountain and left the room.