It's Been a Month...

I arrived in Japan near the end of March, had training in the first week.  It's been one month since I settled in my city, and one week since I started teaching.  It's been nothing but stories and highlights.  And yea, there's also the daily struggle, mostly with the language, but I assume it'll get better.

Some highlights include:

• Went through a basic training style program for the 3rd time in my life (one of them was actually Army basic training)
• Bought my 1st Japanese cell phone with a contract, only to have it taken away 3 hrs later (residency issues)
• Had an hour-long nonsense conversation with an old drunk Japanese man
• Went skiing for the 1st time
• Caught panty shots from 2 different Japanese girls at a mall (pretty easy with the way they dressed)
• Walked 2 hours up a mountain for a great scenic view, only to find out on my way down that I could've driven up there
• Spilled green tea all over the place at a power meet-and-greet at my city's Board of Education
• Got fiber optic internet hooked up in 3 days, with a massive service discount, when normally it takes several weeks
• Had my face put on a pizza restaurant poster
• Drank multiple umeshu (plum wine) cocktails laced with copious amounts of tabasco at a hanami after-party, and chucked one (about the size of a rum & coke in the States)
• Went to a craft beer festival
• Molested/boob-grabbed by a drunk male Japanese friend at the same beer festival
• Managed to explain my lesson plan to one of my principals in (broken) Japanese
• No one had been able to guess my age correctly... no one

Some stories from schools & kids:

• Was introduced to my 3rd junior high Japanese twin
• On my first week at junior high, during the self-introduction lesson, one of the kids said "I like meat!" for his likes.  I was fighting so hard from yelling "That's what she said"
• Sat in an afternoon-long student body meeting.  It's amazing how the students in Japan govern themselves and all the ritualistic protocols (e.g. bowing) that they go through
• Had a lunchtime conversation with a student on the anime Evangelion
• Had a short conversation with a student (a girl, surprisingly) about guns.  And no, not about gun control
• Graded almost 100 junior high papers about a school field trip to Tokyo
• One of my 6th graders made me an origami frog
• Taught a bunch of grade-schoolers how to do secret handshakes

Some quirks & impressions of daily life so far:

• Amazon standard shipping in Japan is super fast, on par with expedited in the States, and I can find anything there (except for a snow brush for my car)
• Some things like paying bills are convenient (literally can be paid at any convenience store), but banking is a pain in the ass (no online banking available in the area)
• Spent too much time at Homac (the local Home Depot) & Seria (the local 100 yen store), like everyday at one point
• Drank a lot of milk tea and melon soda

Some challenges ahead:

• The language!
• Lessons beyond self-introduction
• Small talks with other teachers
• Kuroneko (a.k.a. Yamato Transport, the UPS of Japan)

I'll try to be faithful about the blog, whenever something awesome happens.  Stay tuned!