So I've been in Japan a few days now! I arrived on Friday evening, and this picture is from our arrival at the airport; Dan and Karen (who were also sent here through the Phoenix Sister Cities Commission) and I were so happy to see our names on a sign in the airport! Iizuka-san and Honda-san are our liasons here in Japan. They both work for the Himeji City Board of Education, and have been very helpful in getting us settled in. On the far right is Kevin, another Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) from San Francisco.
Friday night I went out to dinner with a few of the current teachers in the building, and then I started unpacking a little bit (it's Tuesday afternoon and I'm still not entirely unpacked). I decided that I should at the very least just get my sheets on the bed because Mac was having a party in his room, and I didn't want to come home too lazy to make my bed and have to sleep on a bed with no sheets! The party was nice because it showed how kind and outgoing everyone in Shirasagi Residence is, how happy they are to be here and how much help they have to offer in the adjustment process. I went to bed around 2AM and woke at 9AM with no signs of jetlag.
On Saturday afternoon, Dan and Karen and I went out walking. We knew we wanted to find the big mall a few kilometers south of us, but we didn't know quite how to get there. However, there's so much to see when you're out walking that it never really matters how long it's taking you to get where you're going.
So we ended up in a small little neighborhood, and realizing that we had lost our bearings, I asked a bicycle shop keeper, "Sumimasen, Himeji-jo wa doko desu ka?" (Excuse me, where is Himeji castle?) I only asked because we had lost it behind the rooftops and it is a good landmark for knowing which side of town you're on.
He pointed us to the castle, and a man getting on his bicycle twenty feet down the road hollered to the shopkeeper and asked us where we were going again. I think he just really wanted to speak English with someone. So he gave us directions to the castle in English and we were on our way.
When we were maybe 200 feet down the road, the same gentleman caught up with us and ended up taking us all the way to the castle. He showed us a shortcut and told us a lot of things about the city on our way. His name is Nishikawa-san, and it turns out that he's a teacher at Hakucho elementary school and knows our program coordinator, Iizuka-san. He gave us his phone number and offered to help us with whatever we needed! And it turns out that everyone here is that friendly.
We finally found our way to the mall and spent a few hours looking at all the shops and buying things from the dollar stores. The Hundred Yen stores are the best things in the whole world!!! Truly, they're 85 Cent stores when you take conversion rates into consideration, and you can find ANYTHING you need in them! But trying to read labels in Japanese is interesting. It's really fun trying to pick a laundry detergent when all you can do is hope there's no bleach in it. But anyway, we decided to take a different route home (going north and then east, as opposed to east and then north), which was probably an error in judgment...but a fun one!
It took us forever to get home. But every person we stopped on the street or talked to in a supermarket got us closer to our destination. The postal delivery guy got on his cell phone and asked someone, then drew a map for us. A woman with two kids on her bike spent five minutes looking up and down the street and reciting the street names aloud to herself. She then apologized profusely and told us to ask someone in a shop. Two girls in a convenience store pulled out a city map and drew another map for us, telling us which lights to turn at and which landmarks to look for...and the ONLY Japanese I understand is "Excuse me, where is (blank)" and "Thank you so much!" But it works!
Later that evening I went out to dinner with Mac, Avi, Steve, Karen and one of Mac's Japanese friends...I think her name was Mao (but I don't remember). Mac is from Phoenix, Steve is from Seattle, and Avi--from Australia--is Rosie's daughter (Rosie is our designated Filipina "den mother" who reminds me of Nana). I ate sashimi and raw prawns and squid and it was all really good! Surprisingly, deep-fried chicken cartilage is also quite tasty (I feel like Nana would be so proud).
Then we went to a gaijin (foreigner) bar, and then to a nightclub called Roxy, and then to a karaoke bar. When you do karaoke in Japan, you get your own room to share with your friends, and all you can eat food and drink are included in the price! The Cranberries and songs from The Little Mermaid were definitely the hits of the evening. And then we went to a curry restaurant and didn't get home until after 2am. They're crazy here! Avi said that's why you see people fall asleep standing up on the trains.
On Monday afternoon, John (yet another neighbor) took Karen and Kevin and me on a bike ride through the city to help us get our bearings. It turns out I can follow the canal all the way through the city and through the beautiful Himeji Castle park, and you end up at the shopping center we had tried so hard to find a few days earlier. The shopping center is called the Miyuki Dori, and it is the location of the train and bus stations, and it is also where Egret is, the foreigners' community center where they offer really cheap Japanese lessons. It's definitely the city's hub.
Soon I will write about my humble abode!
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