Because people are curious about Japan, and have requested an Elise-blog.

I'm absolutely in love with this country.  It took me all of two days to realize.  Well honestly the bus ride from Tokyo to Ryuou was when I felt it.  I was exhausted after my 15-16 hour plane ride, yet I couldn't shut my eyes.  My face was glued to the bus window unable to take everything in fast enough.  All these foreign symbols whizzing by with some familiar sprinkled in.  Isn't that funny?  I cant think of very many countries that embrace another language enough to title some of their stores solely in it.  For example:  a salon called "Hair and Make"  which made me laugh.  What were you going for there?  Hair and makeup maybe?  Hair and manicure?  Does it even matter since a high majority of your population can't understand it?  I think it looks "cool" to them though.  They really do seem to love our culture... well... certain aspects of it anyway.

In a place where technology is flourishing the people of Japan choose to dry their clothes in the sun. They don't have dryers to conserve energy.  At the same time for road work, instead of cones and flashing lights to detour traffic away, LED screens can be found with a construction worker flagging people away.  Seems unnecessary sure, but the lanes here are so narrow... maybe these outlandish LED screens are for good measure.   I saw a gas station with no bulky pumps to drive up to.  Just a large open platform for cars to pull up to and gas pumps hanging by their tubing from the ceiling.  This gas station and the LED screens and other various details I witnessed made me feel like I was in the future.  Or in a crappy 90s movie set in the future. hehe.

The airport was harder than I thought to get through.  Maneuvering my 150 pounds of crap that I brought with me....  I was expecting more English pointing me in the right direction.  I had to go up to a couple cops to ask them where to go to ship my baggage to the school Id be working at... when they looked at me blankly... not understanding a lick of English... I tried to talk more slowly pointing to baggage and the address on it.  Nope.  Let me try that same thing again.  Nope. One more time with a little different phrasing.  They talk amongst themselves. One of them has a look of recognition on his face and points me in the right direction. Phew.  Step one complete.  Now I get to the shipping counter.  I look at all the prices (first time dealing with Yen)  a Japanese worker comes up to me and tells me that to ship my two 50 pounders will be 3900 yen (around $35 not bad...)  So I take out my newly converted money count it out and give it to the girl at the cash register.  Next mission... call my boss and tell her I've arrived ok so she can pick me up from the bus stop.  I give the girl 4000 yen and she gives me a 100 yen token back.  I ask her if this is enough to make a phone call (again extremely slowly and making a phone gesture with my hand and pointing to it very deliberately.... I feel like an idiot.  I feel like the people in Miami or Ft Lauderdale who refuse to learn English but insist on shouting at you in Spanish.  Because increasing your volume is going to help me understand a word you say...)  She kindly nodded and said yes.  I couldnt tell 100% if she understood me but I took it and went to find the phones.  Found the phones.  It ended up being enough.  Melony was shocked I got in so early.  Yeah early... 12 hours later. 

Next step: Get on the bus.  This was my first strike of frustration.  In my email from Melony before I got on the plane she said that the plane landed in terminal 1 and that's where I get on my bus.  (these instructions make sense to me now... at the time however I thought she meant something else)  I leave the airport to where the buses are.  There's 30 terminals numbered around a giant culdesac.  I go up to the bus routes and take a look.  Mostly Japanese but some English. I look at 1.  Nope... no Kofu or Ryuou.  huh weird.  I start to make my way through the other 29.  Nope. No sign. Good Good.  Let me just stand here for a little while staring at this stupid thing hoping for the city names to magically pop up. Two Japanese girls around my age walk up to me and one of them asks me if she can help me.  I tell her I need to go to Kofu (and at the time I couldnt pronounce Ryuou so I pointed to the paper I had it written on)  She looks at my kindly and says she doesnt understand.  I repeat that I'm trying to get on a bus for Kofu and Ryuou pointing to the names writen on my paper... which she probably cant read.  The sweet girl has a look on her face like "I want to help you but I dont understand.  We stand there in our language barrier trying to figure this out for a minute when a guy (again he looks around my age....) comes up to us and asks me if he can help me.  And he doesnt have a Japanese accent.  I tell him where I need to go.  He tells me where to go inside to get the ticket. My final step of the night complete. It felt really good after that. Listening to my i-pod waiting for the bus to take me to my new city  I felt relieved.  I can do this. ; )  With kind people like this that are willing and want to help me... being almost 8,000 miles away from all the people and places I love wont be so bad.

I'm going to skip through dinner with Melony...  My boss is the coolest sweetest woman though.  She gave me my new Japanese phone, set me up in my Japanese hotel told me everyone at the school is really excited to meet me and let rest my tired head to sleep, FINALLY. 

This is going to be a long post.... haha I'm going to just go through everything now.  Mostly so I can look back here remember what my first couple days of Japan were like... and how I felt. 

Next morning I wake up.  My computer cord wont plug into these outlets with only two sockets.  I need a third.  Melony told me the night before to try the electronic store ("Hard-off"! hahah the one in my blog picture.  Electronics do make me hard-off so I guess I understand the concept of their naming?) conveniently located right next to my hotel and go up to one of the guys working there and point to the plug and shrug and say something like "won't work" or  "won't fit".  And she said "They'll probably trip over themselves trying to help you out."  So I woke up and adventured out to the store wanting to skype with family and friends that were anxiously awaiting.  I do exactly what Melony suggests.  The guy understood what I wanted right off the bat "adapter?" he says in a heavy accent. "YES!" I say truly not expecting to get this adapter for awhile.... he briskly walked off down one of the isles labeled in Japanese then under it in English "Junk".  HEHE.  He comes back a second later with two adapters in his hands both labeled 100 yen (a little under a dollar.... after the airport I understood the yen conversions which surprised me.  I didn't expect to get it that fast but I did.  I mean its a pretty simple conversion... but nonetheless I still felt proud)  I buy both of them and go back to my hotel (which by the way wasn't a cramped small room.... people were asking me that.  All the TINY TINY CRAMPED living spaces you hear about are because of HUGE cities like Osaka and Tokyo. In fact my hotel room was pretty western looking.  A big flat screen t.v. that didn't help me too much since I couldn't understand anything on it.... I bet they had a caption button on the remote... but again, couldn't understand anything written on their remote, so i gave up on the prospect of watching tv real fast.  Didn't matter too much since I came over with 3 seasons of pirated weeds to keep me occupied on my external. Their toilets here are WAY more advanced.  My first experience with one was in my hotel room.  I sit down to a really warm comfortable seat.  I look down to my left and there are a lot of buttons.  First one with a simple picture of a butt that says in japanese then in english "back".  The next button is one with a simple picture of a WIENER hehehe and its labeled "front" and then a button that says heat... which explains the really comfortable warm seat.  Most toilets in japan are like this.  Ohhh the front and back buttons rinse your areas off.  ; ) "Did you use them?" -Ryan and Lindsey "Everytime! Uhhh if you have the option to be THAT clean?  Why the heck not?") Ok ok ok so I get back to my hotel and skype with some people... I'm in the middle of talking to my mom and dad when my new cell phone rings.  The only numbers I have in it are Melony's and the kindergarten... and its neither of them. huh.  strange.  I answer and its one of the other english teachers.  Her and her Bilingual teacher are going to go out to lunch and explore and they knew I just got in, but they wanted to meet me.  Was I up for it?  Yes.  I was surprised at how awake I felt because I was expecting this ridiculous jet lag being 14 hours ahead of what I'm used to.

They pick me up.  They being Nalette one of the English teachers that got to Japan in January from New Jersey, she's Phillipino.  And Megume (meh-goo-meh) one of the schools bilingual teachers who's actually paired up with Nalette.  Megume was born and raised in Yamanashi.  Four years ago she studied abroad in Montreal where she learned English and since she's been back she's worked at the Bambi Bilingual Kindergarten.  We clicked right away the three of us and we ended up going to a shabu shabu (HELLL YEAH) restaurant in the mall.  I'm no Shabu Shabu virgin thanks to Ryan and Lindsey taking me to my first Shabu Shabu restaurant in Little Tokyo in L.A.  SOOO good.  While we were waiting for our table in the Shabu Shabu restaurant the three of us sat in front of it talking watching people walk by with shopping bags in hand.  Theres a cute little 'drop your kids off while you shop' place right across from us filled with cute little asain babies crawling around.  A mom and son are walking by, the son around 4 skipping when he sees me.  He stops dead in his tracks and stares.  He slowly raises his hand with an awkward little wave.  I smile from ear to ear and wave back.  His moms been walking so he runs to catch up.  The girls and I laugh about this.  Megume explains to me that since Minami Alps is a smaller city (and by 'smaller' city I mean a population of ~70,000... thats a small city in japan.) there really aren't very many ethnically diverse people here.  One of the other English teachers Rachel once walked into a 7-11 here and a woman who was walking out saw her and walked back in.  She went to the magazines where she poorly pretended to read a magazine but would stare at her over the pages.... pretty funny shtuff right there.

After lunch Megume takes us to this Japanese video rental store.  Since going to the movies here is around $20 most people just go rent movies.  And in a place where vending machines are so popular I was kind of surprised to hear they didn't have a redbook... or what are those things called that we have?  Whatever you probably know what I'm talking about... but anyway Nalette wants to sign herself up for a card so she can go rent movies.  Since I wouldn't understand any of whats going on (even though half of the movies to choose from are american... they're going to be Japanese dubbed) I politely decline on the card.  Before she signs up we all walk around the store (which by the way has way more than video and music rentals.. its also a book/computer/phone store) and the three of us are pointing out movies we've seen and liked and disliked.  Agreeing and disagreeing, Megume has seen just as much as Nallette and I and has good feedback on all of them.  We come up to the Japanese section.  Megume asks us if/what Japanese movies we've seen.  Silence.  Then Nalette says she vaguely remembers hearing about this one movie and describes it.  Megume knows what shes talking about.  We move on to the kids section.  Megume points out to us pokemon and dragonball Z which we know about, and she tells us about a couple new ones we hadn't heard about.  Nallette and I see the 'Up' disney cover and both say we like it when two little girls shopping with their moms right next to us are transfixed with our English.  Staring from Nalette to me.  Pretty adorable.  I wave, they look away shyly.  We go up to the front for Nalette to sign up for this card.  I decide to check out Japanese phones.  I feel the jet lag kick in pretty hard.  I also feel people glance at me a lot. I walk back to the girls.

They ask if I want to go on another errand with them and I tell them that I'm in desperate need of a nap.  Its around 4pm now which is 2am in the states.  Not too bad but still I was tired.  They drop me off at the hotel and say that they'll see me at work Tuesday.  They say the other teachers are going to be jealous because they got to meet me first ; )  (I'm only writing little details like this and the Melony saying everyone's excited to meet you bit because I want you to get a sense of how welcome this school has made me feel)  This is sunday and they both had work on monday.  I still had monday to settle in. 

So this is basically it for my second day... except for me waking up at 9pm hungry and walking around trying to find food. a little scary...  Ended up finding some mediocre shrimp tempura at a fast food looking place.  I find it extremely necessary to go grocery shopping soon so that something like this eh-tempura incident doesnt happen again and my money doesn't completely vanish due to eating out every meal.

Next morning I wake up, today the school is moving me from the hotel to my temporary apartment which I'll be living in for a month.  Real fast: I work at Bambi Bilingual Kindergarten who has a sister school called English Plus which I work at three days a week.  The Kindergarten is just that a kindergarten but its private and has a really good/well known  English submersion program.  English Plus is like a private lesson school? Um kids that go to EP have primary schools elsewhere but come once a week to get their foot in the door with English.  So Tuesday-Thursday from 3-6 I teach kids that don't understand as much english as the kids at BBK.  EP is located in a city called Showa and BBK in Minami Alps.  The schools are like 4 miles apart.  My temporary apartment is in Showa right next to EP.  In showa (since its a little bigger than minami) the apartment sizes are smaller.  I'll post pictures of my apartment right now.  Its really good sized and adorable.  I just dont have a guest bedroom in my temporary apartment and the bathroom is pretty small.  But my bedroom is spacious.  I can hoop in it (though I've decided I have to stop till I buy an area rug because everytime I drop a hoop it makes a loud echoing noise and I don't want my neighbors to come over asking about it when I'll just end up slowly telling them something they'll never understand....) Ok so I don't know how easy this paragraph was to follow.... hopefully I explained it well... moving on.

Miyumi (meh-you-me) picked me up from my hotel at 10:30am (8:30p.m your time) to A.get my foreigner registration card and B.move me into my new place!  Miyumi is the accountant (just like you mom!) of BBK and she also helps with the kids daily cooking lessons.  Miyumi looks older, in her 50s.  Again, another really nice experience with a future co-worker, she asks where in Asia I've been before which I reply "No where... Other than the bahamas I've never left the states."  She's shocked.  She says that most people come to Japan for the first time have a look of nervousness about them, and I'm completely laid back and at ease.  This again makes me feel good.  I think that I've been so at ease though because my last two months in America.... welll.... if I wasnt out partying with my friends saying goodbye.  I was having little panic attacks wondering if I made the right choice.  Once I actually got to japan and realized this really isn't as scary as I built it up.... It's beautiful and these people are the sweetest, well now I just feel great.  Anyway... after we finish some pretty simple/fast paperwork at city hall I ask if Miyumi can drop me off at the supermarket thats near my house.  She does. 

Frustration number two.  I walk in.  Don't see food anywhere.  I see suitcases and purses to my left.  Bedding and furniture to my right.  All kinds of clothing in front of me.  All very open, all of it.  No isles.  Just one HUGE room.  I start walking.  Walking through the clothes.  On my left there are no longer baggage and purses but a KFC, McDonals, Baskin Robins. Strange.  Havent seen any sign of KFC or Baskin Robins up till this point in Japan.  Keep walking.  Cosmetics.  Keep walking.  The grocery section!  Yes.  I start in the Vegetables and fruit since I don't need any kind of labels here. Grab bananas, avacados, tomatoes.  Looking at a lot of foreign vegetables wondering what I could do with them.  Put them down.  Start looking at all of this food I have no idea what to do with.  Breath breath breath.  Lindsey told me to go to an asain supermarket and try to start practicing to cook some of this stuff when I was back in america........ kept meaning to get around to that.... ok so I see some gyozas (dumplings)  I've been serving those and know the gist of how to cook them.  grab them.  Look around blankly at all of these other REALLY ODD looking foods that I couldnt even tell you WHAT the heck type of food group they came from.  Pick up a package of multi colored ball things that could be meat or a vegetable.  Put it down.  See some packages of noodles that are refrigerated.  Pick it up and look at the back. I see pictures that say you put the noodles in boiling water and then empty the little package of liquid sauce/seasoning into it.  huh, kinda like ramen.  Looks better than ramen though.  really simple too.  Grab two packages.  Decide to go get some mushrooms to put in my soup too.  Dont really recognize these mushrooms, but grab one of the cheaper variety. 

ok.  Meat.  I'm not much of a cook anyways.... dont really know what to do when it comes to certain meats : / sooo I kind of looked at all the meet not sure when I saw corndogs.  Ummm thatll work.  Kind of weird.  Not really something I think of when I think of Japanese meat but ok, I'm doing it.  Alright.... so I get eggs, shampoo, conditioner, facewash, butter, bread, orange juice, oil, seasonings, ummm and some other basics to start me out, tea sugar etc etc.... I'm listing all this stuff because I'm not going to continue writing the step by step process of each one.  But trust me this whole trip took a while.  I cant read anything.  Nobody there knows really what I'm saying to help me.  So I had to patiently look around and go off sight, which is easy for things like eggs but some of them were a little more difficult.  I finish getting everything I need and decided to browse the japanese desserts (like I'd forget dessert?  pfft) as a little  pat on the back Elise.... you did it. Don't recognize any of it.  I see a lot of round ball looking cake thingys.  huh.  I'm tempted to go grab some of the american looking cookies I saw earlier but decide to be brave and try something new.... I mean its dessert.... it can't be THAT bad. (It ended up tasting pretty damn weird.  Now I know to avoid those)  I check out. The lady only bags one group of my items and puts the rest of them unwrapped in the stores cart.  I look at her and point to the one bag and say more? She starts talking Japanese to me really fast.  Smiling.  I smile back.  ughhh you just heard me speak English to you slowly like an moron.... don't you think that if I knew Japanese I would have broke that out?  I point to the bag and say "some more?" and then point to the other items.  Same deal, really fast japanese, but this time she points to the side.  I look.  There are other customers bagging their own items at these table/kiosks.  OHHHH OK.  I gotttchuu lady I gotchu ; ) hahaha I say "arigato" (thank you) and bow and she smiles really big saying what I only assume is your welcome. Bag my stuff.  Realizing I GOT A LOT OF STUFF TO WALK HOME WITH.  Doable... but its going to be a little tight elise..... so I'm walking out of the store feeling pretty accomplished when I see its raining.  boooooo.  BOOO.  UGHH Luckily this SUPER MARKET has every little thing I can think of.  grab an umbrella.  Buy it.  Leave completely loaded down with bags.  Back hurting.  Trying not to think about how I'm not going to remember the route back.  The route I saw Miyumi take ONCE.  Its a fast one route, a left and a right.  Which left and right though.  Walking back in the rain, loaded down barely able to keep my arm up to hold my stupid umbrella.  I decide half way through to call Melony.  She tells me really easily how to get home.  YES thank you thank you thank you.  ARIGATO MELONY SENSEI!  I get back.  ughhhhh that was the worst of my trip so far.  I was starving at this point so decide to make one of my soups... which ends up having three (sun) soups per package.  So I have six (rock).  Well five (go... showing off that little bit of japanese I know so far) since I started making one.  Then I get a ring on my doorbell.  I go to my little monitor thing that's built in my wall and turn it on.  Yeah instead of a peephole, its a camera and monitor, which I think they have in america too I just have never had one. Its Miyumi again, she brought some toiletpaper (which I just bought) and japanese regulation garbage bags.  You need these special bags and your trash needs to be sorted correctly or you'll be fined.  Which seems intense but I don't mind it.  Some of the people in america really should be forced to recycle or waste less.  She sees my mushroom ramen soup and seems curious.... I get a little embarrassed and shuffle in front of it.  I thank her and she leaves.  Welll I end up eating my soup and it tastes pretttty bad.  : (  And lucky for me I have five more to go. 

And that brings me to my first day of school.  I'll blog about that later since I just wrote a book.  But at least I got all of that out.  I really cant wait to write about school because its AMAZING.  I need to go to bed.  Goodnight.  Hope this isn't grammatical error city.... because I really don't even want to go back through and proof read.