I'm in Japan now, and for those friends back home who might read this, the future is pretty amazing. When you're here it's like the present, only more humid and filled with vending machines and lots of bowing. It's as if people are on strings attached to their backs and something is manipulating them like a puppet master, creating a sea of bobbing marionettes. Or like those toy birds whose heads move back and forth in a dish of water. People bow to each other over and over and over again in the same conversation, even long after it ends. They bow to doors when they pass through them. They bow to faces they can't see on the other end of a phone conversation. Impressive.
I haven't started my teaching assignment yet (I'll be at a junior high school most of the week and an elementary school once a week) but I am working at the Board of Education for this month, which is really hanging out in an office practicing hirigana while waiting for instructions to meet with people (we met the mayor yesterday, pretty rad), or fill out paperwork, or travel to nearby places to fill out other paperwork, and bowing at everyone and everything. But as things calm down I'll be using the time to study or prepare lesson plans or something. Or whatever I'm told to do.
Speaking of work, people don't mess around with it. They're on time, and then a clock chimes, and a meeting begins, and then people bow a whole bunch and go to their desks and sit there until another bell - the lunch bell - chimes. Then they turn the lights out and turn on a television, and promptly an hour later the TV is turned off and the lights turned on and they're back to it. No dillydallying here in the future. I like it.
I bought a plant for my room. And sorry Mike, there will be no Japanese girlfriends.
I haven't started my teaching assignment yet (I'll be at a junior high school most of the week and an elementary school once a week) but I am working at the Board of Education for this month, which is really hanging out in an office practicing hirigana while waiting for instructions to meet with people (we met the mayor yesterday, pretty rad), or fill out paperwork, or travel to nearby places to fill out other paperwork, and bowing at everyone and everything. But as things calm down I'll be using the time to study or prepare lesson plans or something. Or whatever I'm told to do.
Speaking of work, people don't mess around with it. They're on time, and then a clock chimes, and a meeting begins, and then people bow a whole bunch and go to their desks and sit there until another bell - the lunch bell - chimes. Then they turn the lights out and turn on a television, and promptly an hour later the TV is turned off and the lights turned on and they're back to it. No dillydallying here in the future. I like it.
I bought a plant for my room. And sorry Mike, there will be no Japanese girlfriends.
A view of Sano City, where I'm living, from a mountain overlook. We biked and hiked our way to it.
And sometimes there's a Toshiba just chilling alongside the road.
And when you're 6' 1", your knees become familiar with the feeling of being pressed against a wall while you're just trying to relax.
More later.
More later.
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