My Apartment

Or as Lauren affectionately calls hers, my shoebox.  If hers is a shoebox, though, mine is toddler-sized, or maybe one of those little boxes you get jewelry in. Don’t get me wrong, I like it – it’s functional and easy to keep clean, if rather unattractive, and there’s a nifty loft that will be very nice to sleep in once summer ends and the darn heat stops rising.  You’d be surprised how quickly you get used to preparing dinner in your living room on a table the comes up to the middle of your shins because the only space in the kitchen that is not burner or sink is the top of the microwave. 

…my kitchen is a little small.  But we’ve made peace.  I agreed not to badmouth it to the other, bigger kitchens, and it agreed not to toss my dishes off their precarious drying stack or hide things behind the refrigerator. 

It took me three days to get up the courage to go near the washing machine, and at the rate I was sweating through clothes the first week, it was no small pile forcing me to do so.  Japanese washing machines are mysteries of nature, lacking water temperature gauges and easily identifiable start-stop buttons, but possessing a plethora of kanji-labelled buttons and no apparent place to put detergent.  Two hours, many google searches, and a bit of screwed-up courage later, I had clean, wet clothes.  Clean, wet clothes.  And nowhere to dry them. 

Japanese houses, almost universally, lack one thing Americans find essential – dryers.  The attitude is very much “we have these wonderful things called time and a clothesline that together dry our clothes for us - why should we spend money and space on a machine to do it for us?”  So my apartment after laundry day looks like a transplanted Minnesotan’s autumn wardrobe fashion show – which is to say, a lot of long sleeves.  (Bad call on my part).  With the addition of an outside clothesline, however, life has gotten easier. 

And then… I got a bookshelf!  And a rice cooker.  Apartment complete.  Pictures later, after I’ve cleaned.  >.>

Today, Or How I Ended Up Getting The School A Second Pool

…not really.  But I did drag in so much water this morning it looked like I had.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it – sorry!  Everything has been either crazily busy or a precious bit of downtime I’ve taken full advantage of.  Today marks almost the end of my second week of school, though, and life is becoming a routine instead of a series of minor panics.  This post is going to be devoted to today’s crazy, and if my motivation doesn’t run off on me, next will be updates on my school, apartment, and general life.  がんばろう！

So…today’s crazy.

The weather in Gifu, when I got here, was in the upper 90s with nigh on 60% humidity – not exactly the most welcoming climate, and we quickly learned the reason for the shelves and shelves of cute waterbottles in Japanese department stores.  The temperature, after a baking two weeks or so, has dropped into the mid/low 80s- and the rain has made it’s way over the mountains and is now desperately trying to make up for those two weeks of baking hell.  There was a typhoon last week; this week, the forecast called for only a minor thunderstorm, and it wasn’t supposed to really start until 9AM today, at which time I would be safely at work.

Forecast fail.

Three minutes into my twenty-minute ride around mountains and over bridges to my little inaka school, the heavens OPEN, and me in my Japanese-sized kappa (plastic rain poncho) which doesn’t cover my legs, feet, or head fully.  Despite pedaling as fast as I could, by the time I got to school my shoes were full of water, I was soaked clear through to the skin, and the Japanese weather gods had been cursed every which way from Friday.  The clothes I’d brought tucked inside two plastic bags were damp, but wearable, and luckily my pants were long enough to cover up the fact that I went barefoot - because wringing out my socks would easily have filled a good-sized water glass.   

The staff and students have made a sort of guessing game, trying to figure out what method I took to school that day – I’m usually greeted with either 「自転車？」 “Bicycle?” or 「バスで？」 “By bus?” depending on the weather.  The day of the aforementioned typhoon, I took the bus. 

As I in came the door, dripping and fuming, a student coming in at the same time caught my eye and asked “チャリ？” (Bicycle today?)  I answered affirmatively, and his only response was a rather matter-of-fact “Poor thing.” （かわいそう） The response from the teachers’ room was much the same – a few gasps when I shuffled in through the door, dripping from every hair and hem, and quietly, from the back of the room, a tentative “So, by bicycle then…?”

Yes, sensei.  Right in one. 

Alternate plans?

Alternate option to consider – instead of taking three days to wander around Tokyo, maybe I can go straight to Gifu and move in early?  That would solve the “ohgodwheredoIputmystuff” problem. 

Hm.

Enter the whirlwind!

Plans are finalized, but somehow this has failed to resolve anything.  I know where I’ll be on each successive travel pivot point, but not where my luggage (read – clean clothes) will be.  This would be less of a problem if the timespan in question wasn’t ten days, with four of those days being training and one being a meeting with my future Board of Education.

  Traveling in Japan with luggage is an unappealing prospect.  Japan agrees with me on this, offering five or six different luggage shipping companies conveniently located right outside of customs.  These companies, for a nominal fee of around ￥5000 ($50), will ship your bulky, heavy, absolutely unmanageable luggage to anywhere in Japan. 

“But I travel light,” you say. 

“I don’t mind dragging around suitcases,” you say.

<—not exaggerated, nor unusual.

You will.

 

My getting-to-Japan schedule currently looks like this:

• 8/18 – Portland to Seattle, leaving at 9:30 am
• 8/18 – Seattle to Dallas, leaving at 12:15
• Overnight in Dallas
• 8/19 - leaving Dallas for Narita at 12:10 (first class!)
• 8/20 - arrive at Narita at 3:05PM (Japan time)
• 8/20-8/22 – Tokyo!  With Lauren and my host family, hopefully.
• 8/23 – off to Gifu, to meet with Gifu’s BOE
• 8/24 – ?
• 8/25-8/28-ish – teacher training in Nagoya with the company
• 8/28(9?)-ish – back to Gifu and the beginning of work!

Looks busy but manageable, right?  Except.

1. I cannot carry my luggage with me throughout Tokyo.  Normally, what would happen is that I would ship it from the airport to my final destination, except:
2. There are ten-ish days between the day I would ship it and the day I would have access to it again.  Normally, I’d stuff a backpack full of easily mixable and matchable clothes, like jeans and tshirts, except:
3. Meeting with Gifu’s BOE and training in Nagoya are business formal and business casual, respectively.  While my suit might survive ten days in a backpack if it was by itself, I’m pretty sure stuffing in jeans too would be a disaster.
4. I am not wearing a suit for ten days.

And I haven’t even thought about lodging for all this. 

In sum,

Help?

Momentous choices

Gifu City or Aisho Town, created by merging two smaller towns?

The difference?

380,000 more people, 22 other new-arriving ALTs, and a rich history and cultural tradition, on the one hand - and $2700 more a year, plus a taste of non-city Japanese life on the other. (I'd add Japanese friends to the list for the latter, but I know the realistic chances of developing close Japanese friends in the - relatively - short time I'm there.)