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.