Friday, August 28, 2009

The saga begins...finally.

Sorry about the delay on getting this blog up and running! I’ve just now been in Ogaki for about a week and still have a decent bit to do before I feel properly settled/moved in. But let’s start from the beginning...so rewind a couple weeks. I found my time in Madison being cut short and rushing to see everyone before I headed off. I have spent a decent chunk of time in Madison and although I knew I was excited to go back to Japan, I was also sad to say goodbye. So between a mix of laziness and putting of the finality, I was procrastinating packing (sorry Mom and Ad!). This led to me pulling an all nighter to pack the night before my bus left. I was aiming for the 7am bus. I was certainly cutting it close and in a rush, but I was watching the microwave clock and left at 6:50am. Turns out the microwave clock is slow, so missed the bus. Instead I caught the 8:30 bus, then hit the shuttle bus from O’Hare to the hotel with enough time to change. Orientation was less than enthralling, which left my friend Erica and I making sarcastic remarks to each other (force of habit, my bad). The one highlight was getting the plane ticket, which made it start to sink in that I was hopping the pond again. It was fun to meet people, but weird since most people were obviously not headed anywhere near me. After the speeches and logistic BS was overwith, we had dinner and were grouped by region, so here I finally met the one other person going to Gifu from Chicago. More speeches and…we’re free, for now. I hung out with my friend Alaina from UW-Madison (3 out of the 6 CIRs from our group A in Chicago were from Madison and couple ALTs on top of that, yeah Badgers!). I hit the hay, woke up the next morning and headed down to drop of my luggage at the shuttle truck to O’Hare. I simply asked a fellow JET in passing where to throw the luggage, and they kindly told me. What I forgot to realize was that our group was split between two flights, and yup, you guessed it, that person was on the other flight. So I was pleasantly surprised when I got to the airport where we all waited for the luggage truck, only to not find my luggage. So I had to run to Terminal 3 (where the AmericanAirlines flight was departing from) with one of the coordinators and then back to terminal 5 to hit my Japan Airlines flight. Thankfully the JET folks factored in extra time into the schedule for cases of idiocy such as this. Yeah, I felt like a complete and utter dolt. So I finally met up with everyone else at our gate and waited with Alaina and another girl whose name I can’t remember. The flight was decent overall. Movie selection was meh. I watched “He’s just not that into you” seeing as Rounds (my roommate this year) had claimed I would like it and it was different from your average romantic comedy. I disagree, it barely strayed from the standard formula, if at all. So you were wrong, Rounds, I’m not a fan. Just another example of your poor taste in movies. It was not, however, as bad as The Brothers Grimm, so that trophy still belongs to you Maria. Thankfully, the food was very solid. I actually enjoyed eating it. Plus, since it was Japan airlines, they had special a Yuzu juice (a Japanese citrus fruit that I’m a fan of) and even Umeshu (Japanese Plum wine-quite possibly my favorite alcoholic beverage). The umeshu made me particularly happy. It tasted like Japan and was like a veritable “Okaeri!” (welcome back!). Thankfully, Erica was only a few seats over and we killed a good hour and a half chatting in the back of the plane. It served as a nice stretching opportunity-13 hours in one seat leads to muscle cramps and a horrible case of swamp ass.
Finally the plane was closing in on Narita, and I have to say that was the fastest speed at which I’ve had a plane land. We hit the ground and were still cruising. After a little uneasiness , the brakes kicked in and it was all good. After getting out of immigration/customs, there were purple-shirted (yes Courtney, purple!) JET welcome people literally every 10 feet in order to herd us all to the proper place. Like a happy little heifer I huffed my heavy luggage to the drop off point and kept one big suitcase and shoulder bag for the couple days o’ orientation. Then we had an hour and a half bus ride to the hotel. I sat with Erica, and her placement in Chiba city was along the way, so we got a brief preview of her placement. We also saw a bit of Tokyo Disneyland, which was pretty neat. After arriving at the hotel, I took advantage of the free 5 minute Skype calls that AJET was providing in order to contact my friend Justin Voss, who was just ending his year studying abroad. We met up for dinner, and I had black miso ramen…and it was to die for. I absolutely love miso, and had never had the black variety. It was another one of those “Yes, I am back in Japan!” moments. Those are lovely, by the way. Then we headed to a pub to grab a drink that Justin had told me about. It is called Tengoku e no kaidan (Stairway to Heaven) and is made by pouring a bunch of sweetened icecubes into a martini glass and then pouring in Absinthe. Yeah, absinthe. I had never tried the stuff, but wanted to give it a shot. The stuff is super strong, and unfortunately tastes like black licorice (a flavor I don’t care for at all). It got better as the ice cubes melted simultaneously diluting and sweetening it. There wasn’t a ton of Absinthe in the drink, so I didn’t experience any of the supposed hallucinogenic properties, but someday it’d be fun to give it a shot (or seven). It was fun catching up with Justin, but I had an early day so I soon went back to the hotel. The next day was an overly formal opening ceremony (CLASSIC Japan), an actually entertaining keynote speech from an ex-JET, lunch, and then what ended up being horribly useless “workshops” put on by AJET. First, JET as professional development. Apparently, the scheduled speaker had to bail, and was replaced by some head hunter foreigner who works in Japan. Far to business-y for my taste, plus he didn’t say much of anything. Then Cooking in Japan, which was basically an introduction to Japanese cuisine. It was a bit boring, and then completely mis-identified one of the foods, so they lost my interest for good after that. Then Travelling as a JET-I got a few useful URLs out of it, but a snoozer overall. The JET lag didn’t help my mood for any of this, either. We had a welcome dinner/reception that night and were grouped by prefecture, so I got to know my fellow Gifu-JETs. They all seem like a cool bunch and a number of them are gamers/nerds in general, one of whom ended up not only in the same city as me, but also lives the building next door. The next day we had the same breakfast spread we’d had the day before, which oddly enough included French fries. I passed. A fellow JET did clue me in on the awesome combo of yogurt and corn flakes, though. As long as you eat it while the flakes are crunchy, it’s amazing. Then more workshops *yawn* and then that night we had our Gifu-JET outing. We hit up an izakaya, where we basically plunked down $30 for a two hour, gazillion course dinner and all you can drink alcohol. Now, I was sure as hell going to get my money’s worth, so everytime the guy came around, I put in another drink order, regardless of whether I still had ¾ of my previous drink left. Plus they had umeshu (plum wine), so it was game on! I probably had 5 glasses of plum wine, a grape sour, black current liquor soda, sake and then a non-alcoholic drink consisting of carbonated black vinegar and honey, which was actually quite tasty. I quickly realized how much living in Wisconsin skews one’s view of alcohol consumption. I had put back about 7 drinks compared to everyone else’s 2-4, and was not feeling it very much. So I properly represented our state, but figure maybe I’ll cut back a bit. That last week of goodbyes in Madtown involved an inordinate number of nights out drinking, so my tolerance must have shot up a bit. Level up! Woo hoo! Oh wait... Anyway, we then hit karaoke where I busted out a favorite of mine Love Shack by the B-52’s (yeah Maria, you know you love it!!). A generally good time was had by all. The next morning we headed out to Gifu city for our prefecture specific orientation. Boring but necessary tax/contract info, etc. but then we got to watch various videos made by our respective RPAs (regional prefectural advisors-bascially the folks we can run to if we have a problem or a mental breakdown). The video for my region, Seino, was by far the funniest. Rock, my RPA, has a deep, smooth voice and his deadpan humor while narrating the video was priceless. I’ve since met him, and he’ll be fun to hang out with, plus he’s a gamer (they’re everywhere!) That night we piggybacked onto another group’s event and watched a demo of cormorant fishing. Gifu prefecture is famous for this traditional style of fishing. Small metal rings are placed around the bird’s neck and then they dive into the water, catch the fish, but then aren’t able to swallow it due to the clamp-esque thing on their neck. Granted, the demo was done in a little swimming pool, but it was cool to see. I had randomly ran into the dude doing the demo while he was getting ready in the bathroom. He struck up a conversation, and then later during the demo, he apparently remembered my name and called me out to get the fish from the bird’s mouth. That was a pretty neat experience. I talked with him a bit more after the demo, and he seems like a pretty chill guy. And for those PETA hardliners crying about this being inhumane, it doesn’t choke the birds, plus it’s an ancient tradition, so bugger off. That night I got to experience another favorite of mine, sento, which is basically a public bath where you sit on a little stool and get your shower done and then there is a massive piping hot bath (think a tame Jacuzzi). While onsen (natural springs) are the best, this was a nice re-introduction, and proved quite relaxing. The next morning we finished our orientation and then met our supervisors and parted ways. My supervisor, Mariko Taniguchi, has a decent sense of humor and was complaining about not wanting to go back to work. Nice, that’s my kind of supervisor. Turns out she’s not high up in the office hierarchy at all, but still, she has the right attitude. Plus, I found out she loves cheese. So at some point we are just going to have a freakin’ cheese party. It’s going to be epic. She actually just had a medical check-up today (Friday the 7th) and she had decided to not eat cheese for two weeks beforehand in an effort to somehow lower her cholesterol and blood pressure so as to not get a lecture from the doctor. And she was talking yesterday and today about how she was for sure eating tonight after the exam. I like how she thinks. The guy I’m replacing also came to pick me up from orientation, and so it was the three of us in the car on the way back. I was somewhat relieved since I soon realized my Japanese (at least spoken) was at a higher level, so I knew I’d be able to cut it for the job. If he made it through a year, I should be just fine. And I have been thus far, for the most part. My listening could still use some work, although part of it is just getting used to my co-workers individual voices and the local dialect. The first day I just introduced myself to everyone in the office, and then at the faculty meeting that day. I work in the educational affairs office, which is connected to the general affairs office (I also get some work from them), and then down the hall is the Center for Media Culture (who I also get work from). The first week has been relatively slow, although I did have an interesting project I worked on with Kyle (the dude I’m replacing) the second and third day. The artist’s brain works a little…differently than everyone else’s it seems. And I’ll get into that next time…cliffhanger!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Test post

So I had intended on uploading my first post. Unfortunately the computer at the net cafe here has Office 2003 and handle the pure, unbridled awesomeness of the Office 2007 .docx extension. It's that extra x that makes allllll the difference. Maybe I'll take my jump drive to work tomorrow and sneak the post in on the down low.