Garbage

So I’ve been in the town of Shimizu for about 2 weeks and feel pretty settled in for the most part. One factor of my day-to-day living in Japan, which I am still trying to understand, is the complexities around garbage. Japan has what must be the most complex garbage system known to mankind. To start off, Japan requires that you divide your garbage according to the make of it. I guess we should be used to that: paper, plastic etc. But Japan takes it one step further, paper and plastic is taken every Thursday, then you have your plastic bottles, which are put into one bag with the label and cap in two separate bags. Milk and juice cartons must be washed, cut so all 6 sides are laying flat and dried, before being tied up in a bundle and thrown away every other Wednesday. Then you have your food scraps, which are thrown away on Tuesday and Friday, yet must be thrown away in the designated red bags, not the blue bags; blue is for broken appliances, which can be bought at your nearest 7-elevin in two different sizes. Don’t mix the two colours up! That’s the easy part. Now if you have oversized garbage such as a broken air-conditioner, TV, refrigerator, or washing machine, you’re screwed!!! For the oversized garbage, there are set days when you can do this. In some towns, you have to pay a set price to buy a designated ticket to put on the oversized garbage. Some of these larger items have to be taken back to the retail store you bought it from and they will take it, but you have to pay them a recycling and handling fee. Wow, if that doesn’t sound overwhelming for someone who doesn’t speak very much Japanese, a language of 3 alphabets totalling over 30,000 different characters, I don’t know what is. So the next time you throw something out, think about how fortunate you are for not having to think about it… (did that make sense?)

Week One

This week has been awesome so far. After staying in one of the nicest hotels that I’ve ever been to right in the heart of Shinjuku, Tokyo, I, along with a group of around 40 people, flew up to Hokkaido to start our new lives.

This week has been awesome so far. Me along with 2 other Winnipegers flew to Calgary to join a group of other JETS from Montreal, Saskatchewan, Edmonton, and Calgary. All of us were invited to the Japanese Consulate Generals house for a really nice sushi dinner. The next day, all of us flew together to Tokyo to join a larger group of around 900 JETS from Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Ireland, the UK, the US, and South Africa. We all ended up staying at the beautiful Keio Hotel in downtown Tokyo in the Shinjuku district. After 2 days of orientation and workshops provided, everyone split into different groups, which corresponded to the district that they would be going to. The group of people from this orientation that will be living in Hokkaido is around 40, with a total of around 210 JETS from around the world living in Hokkaido alone. I believe that there’s around 4600 JETS living and working throughout Japan; just to give you an idea as to how large this program is. On the 29th, me along with the 40 other JETS flew off to Hokkaido to meet our supervisors who will be taking us to our own designated communities and assisting us in getting set up to live in Japan.

When arriving at the Chitose airport near Sapporo, I was greeted by my supervisor, Abe Sensei, one of the English teachers that I will be working with. He was nice enough to buy me an ice-cream before we headed off to Shimizu-Cho, the town that I will be living in. The 2 ½ hour train ride was one of the nicest train rides I’ve had before. Hokkaido is so beautifully lush and not like the rest of what I’ve seen of Japan. It’s so open with lots of little farming communities and small mountains, yet still maintains the Japanese essence. What I really like about it, especially after being in Tokyo, is it’s cool weather. The rest of Japan gets extremely humid during the summer months, where as Hokkaido is much cooler and more comfortable. The disadvantage is that it will get quite cold during the winter months, and will limit my cycling. Which reminds my. I brought my bike to Japan. I’m so excited! I thought it was going to be a lot more difficult than it actually was. I just put it together, but haven’t had any time to ride it yet.

When Abe Sensei brought me to my house, I was really surprised to find out that I have three bedrooms, all lined with tatami mats! I also have a really disgusting yet comfortable couch in my living room, so if anyone wants to visit… J. I also have a shed to store my bike in and any other junk that I will collect over the year. I’m going to have to get used to ducking under my doorways all the time though. These Japanese houses are net made for “giants” like me.

I’ve now been in the town of Shimizu for one whole week, and so far I love it. This town is, for lack of a better word, cute. Everything seems miniature size, even my house. I always have to duck underneath all the doorways. Japan was not designed for people over 6 feet.
I have about 2 weeks before I start teaching. The students are on there summer break, yet all us sensei’s are stuck at school with a variety of tasks. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and trying to brush up on my Japanese. Wow, I’ve forgotten how complex this language can be. I’ve memorized 2 out of 3 alphabets, and have almost no trouble understanding one of them, yet the third alphebet will take anyone a lifetime to learn. I think I’ve memorized around 50 or so characters out of 30,000+. You thought I was joking, didn’t you. Lately I’ve been working on my survival Japanese, which mostly entails being really really polite, and apologizing a lot. Japanese people often express gratitude through apology. Half of what I hear in the staff room is, excuse me, thank you, sorry, I apologise that I’m leaving earlier than you, excuse me as I enter the room, excuse me as I exit the room, etc. I feel like everyone must think I’m the rudest person ever for not knowing all the different time of when to say which one! There is also a lot of bowing. There’s three bows that I know; there’s the 30 degree bow, the 45 degree bow, and the 90 degree bow. The lower you bow is in accordance with how important the person your greeting is. For men, there hands have to be at there sides while they bow, and for women, its infront. Japanese people are amazing at it too. I said good afternoon to an oldman working in his garden, and he was still able to do an amazing bow while crouching in the dirt. I don’t think I’ve shaken one Japanese persons hand since I’ve gotten here.

Since I’ve gotten to Japan, I’ve constantly, yet inadvertently, been comparing this experience with my teaching experience in Indonesia. About 4 years ago, I went to Indonesia for one year to teach English to Elementary school students. I have been reflecting a lot on my Indonesian experience and am so impressed with the way that I had survived at 19 years old, with no teaching experience, and not having lived abroad by myself before. At the time, I was living with two girls, both from Winnipeg. I now realize what a blessing this truly was. I don’t know how I would have survived that year without having someone else to speak English to, and the fact that they were both from my city was a plus. Looking back, I also can begin to appreciate the things that I have here in Japan. My main school is only 2 minutes walking distance from me, which is awesome. In Indonesia, I would sometimes take an hour in a half to get to school in the morning. I would also have to wait for my housemates to finish their classes, at different schools, so I would wait in the hot car with my driver until they were finished, which was sometimes 2 hours, and then it would be another hour in a half to get home.
I will be teaching at 2 other schools in the next towns once a week, yet I think that I will be taking a train there. I am hoping that this won’t be too much of a problem in the winter. Hokkaido apparently receives a lot of snow in the winter months, and can get pretty cold, yet compared to Winnipeg, it’ll feel like spring!
I have also taken by bike with me to Japan. This has been awesome for getting around, buying the things I need for my house, and just seeing and experiencing the amazing landscape here. In Indonesia, I bought a brand new bike for around 50 Canadian dollars, which was also great for getting around on, yet it just wasn’t the same. I think that’s what really compelled me to bring my own bike this time. No regrets!
As far as housing goes, I’m really content. Its quite a bit bigger than I expected, and actually pretty big for a Japanese house (for one person anyways). I have a living room, shower room, toilet room, kitchen connecting to the living room, and three bedrooms, all lined with tatami mats. They are traditional Japanese (washitsu) rooms, with the exception that there are no traditional paper windows (Shōji). To make the room complete, I bought a Japanese style futon. This isn’t like the futons that we’re used to at home where the couch folds down into a bed. Instead it’s just a foldable mattress that lays on the tatami mat floor. Tatami is amazing by the way. If you ever want to cover a floor in anything, tatami is the way to go.
The staff at my school have been very friendly and helpful. So far I’ve met the music teacher, two of the English teachers that I will be teaching with, the agriculture teacher (I didn’t know you could take agriculture in high school…) the Japanese teacher, the calligraphy teacher, the home economics teacher, she’s hot! (did I just say that?), and the science teacher, who sits beside me and loves trying to have conversations with me, despite our lack of comprehension in each others respective languages. Tomorrow I will be going to the town hall to introduce myself and tell everyone how great I am… We’ll, maybe not the latter, cus I’m not that good at Japanese yet…