I Anticipate Your Questions

You may be wondering at this point: Chris, what's the climate there like? You made a silly comment yesterday about the rain that intrigues me ever so much. I've only been here during the height of summer so far, so I just know that it can get quite hot, probably around the high 90s pretty consistently, and the persistent humidity makes it much worse. Bananas, while a personal favorite, do not keep very well. Fortunately, I consume them with vigor. Even more fortunately, I have air conditioning (a wall unit that is sufficient to cool most of the apartment quickly and even get me quite cold on the couch), but it can get expensive to run that consistently. A woman in my office who seems mostly in charge of my expenses and living arrangements approached me yesterday to inquire about anything the apartment may be lacking. In hindsight, this may have been a passive test to which I was supposed to answer, "nothing". But given the laid back nature of Kagoshima denizens and my propensity to second-guess the intentions of others, it was likely just good will. So I said an electric fan would be nice, and we bought it today. It has a remote control. I like it. I do not like that it came in a box, one of the most troublesome items to dispose of. To get an idea of what I mean, take a look at the attached photo. From left to right, front to back, these are the items: bag of trash that I cannot categorize, bag of plastic beverage bottles, rinsed after having the caps and plastic rings removed, another bag of the same, bag of hard plastics and said caps and rings, can with bag of burnable food waste, paper products, etc., large diagram explaining how to separate all trash and recycling into over a dozen categories, two bags of soft plastics, a bag of white styrofoam, and a bag of colored styrofoam. Not pictured are empty milk cartons which I am yet to cut open and flatten before tying them together. Most of these bags must be taken by hand to a collection location on specific days. Burnable trash is collected regularly, and some plastics are collected at home once a month. It's kind of rough, but if the system lives up to what it purports, they are saving a lot of materials here. What they are not saving is wood, as demonstrated by the tens of thousands of pairs of disposable chopsticks that are used every day to be burned later. There seem to be efforts to raise consciousness about this, and one way to do so is to bring your own chopsticks everywhere. It's a passive reminder to others and an active effort on your own part. We can do it, world!
Classes start next Monday, and so I have not been teaching, but I just visited one of my two schools for the first time today and met some teachers and students. It was a positive experience and small test of my conversational Japanese with teachers. It also introduced me to the first impressions that many male JET teachers experience. Male students tried to act very cool around me and busted out some fairly impressive English phrases (which unfortunately don't translate to actual communicative ability), while the girls mostly stared and had no qualms about loudly saying a range of comments about my face or overall appearance that ranged in translation from "cool" to "pretty" to "handsome" to "your face is small" (which I've never heard and is apparently a compliment). So let's deviate from that before it develops into stereotyping. To give the kids some credit, there are very few foreigners that ever get involved in their lives, and when a new one comes around, it's got to be quite a shock to the system. They'll probably be bored with me soon enough, but I am going to do my best to avoid that. So that's what today was, plus some grocery shopping in a massive store larger than Wal-Mart (of which there are 2 in the prefecture and go figure, one is in my little town) that sells everything from cucumbers to cars. I only bought one of the two there. So today sounds eventful, but I just wanted to shed some light on the hip happenings in rural Japan. And perhaps there were some deep cultural insights mixed in there somewhere. I can't find them. Maybe you can!

To everyone, I miss you.
To my family, I love you.
To fellow '08 Yetis, make money money, make money money money.
To those still at Lafayette, how are classes going? This year started pretty early, eh?

Hey, also check out the recently posted video of my stand-up comedy piece from last month at a comedy club in Philadelphia. It was my second time at a club, and while significantly better than the first, was a baby step on the track to earnest development as a comic. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPnNtsCJf2s

Later, America!

Chris

Let me begin this blog by noting that I was going to embed a video of myself and my humble yet adequate apartment, but I noticed first that I needed some pants and then later that I needed a microphone. So maybe next time. It's coming up on the one month mark since my last post, and I am horribly tardy on an update. Now that I actually have internet, however, these can be as frequent as possible. For anyone who actually visits here, thank you. Now, onto the update. It's difficult to catalog all of the important events in the last month. It's honestly been a strange balance between minor culture shocks and a little too much English. There's a significant amount of hand-holding that all of us in the program receive at the outset, and rightfully so. Many of us are beginning with little to no knowledge of Japan or its language. And when you have to live here and pay bills that come in the mail with your name as the only English on it, some help is appreciated. Still, I have yet to settle in entirely, and each step gets me a bit further. I have to already take a vacation day soon so that I can go into the city and take a test for a moped license (do you need a license for these in the US?). All around, they are the best cost-efficient option, given the license fees, insurance, gas efficiency, and so on. And I have a short distance to travel to get anywhere I want to be. After that day, actually, my life might settle down. I can be a bit more independent and go to the gym or beach or karaoke or anywhere here without a hassle, unless it rains...which it does. And I don't think I've ever seen it "sprinkle" here as much as I've seen torrents of rain somewhat reminiscent of the worst rain I've ever seen in my life, which was coincidentally two days before I came here in Philly. So enough of the future; what have I done? I rode my bicycle for a few hours last weekend to find a beach. I stopped in a fishing port city on the way and played baseball in a park with a couple of little kids. I later exchanged phone numbers with their mother (not what it sounds like), and I got a pleasant call the next morning from all three saying thank you for playing and let's maybe do it again sometime. Oh, to trust people. Then I went to the beach and hung out with some incredible bugs. They came en masse out of the ocean and onto the rocks around me. They were little segmented creatures not unlike giant pill bugs that skittered away at the tiniest commotion near them. It was an exodus. I was scared. So I then rode / walked my bike back through the mountains for another few hours and caught some unwanted rays. I visited another beach the weekend before that, and have done some sightseeing around various mountaintops in the region. I am cooking a lot for myself, but I can't acheive a genuine Japanese flavor on my own. Nonetheless, sometimes I need to eat several hundred grams of chicken and yes, the metric system is starting to grow on me. Also, I only have a few TV channels here as of now unless I want to pay more, but it's still enough to watch the Olympics (with interesting Japanese narration), coverage of Obama's running mate, and an interview with a boy who has a nearly sexual fondness for cold water all in one evening. Ain't Japan great? I don't know, but I intend to find out. Leave me some questions, and for now I'll leave you with some pictures. 1 and 2: some views of the landscape in Nagoya, where last week's orientation was held as my modem waited for me at home. It was pretty desolate, in a good way. 3 and 4: views from a mountaintop. 5: I try to find my keys in Daniel's kimono during a workshop. 6: "Oh sunset, now you're making me feel romantic", a quote similar to the one half an hour before, which was, "Oh jellyfish, now you're making me feel significant pain in my leg". 7: The very same beach with the sunset, viewed on a different day from a mountaintop. 8: Is it racist if it was my first one ever? 9: Fukiage Beach, the same one as the other pictures. I never bothered to snap photos of my bicycle adventure. Also of note, a couple weeks ago witnessed the 30th anniversary of a Japanese man's disappearance via Korean abduction at no location other than Fukiage Beach. And finally, 10: As far as volcanoes go, this one is active. Hey! Leave comments. Let's talk.