I’ll post again when I’m back online.

It’s lost a lot of freshness in the day since then, but the short of it is that while I was asleep the night before last, there was an earthquake. Nothing broke or even fell, and it wasn’t very strong. Still, it was long and rolling; it lasted at least five minutes.

That’s according to the people I live with, at least; I was back asleep by the time it ended. The only other interesting thing that happened that night was that I dreamt that there was a dramatic change in the exchange rate between the yen and the dollar: they traded 50 yen for the dollar, instead of 107. This meant that all my living funds until my first paycheck in yen were suddenly halved, but once the paychecks started coming, my student loan would be effectively halved as well. Mixed blessings in abundance…

Today was occupied with administrative training, in the rules and regulations of the company, and other forms and paperwork and things. The rest of the week will be occupied with actual training in teaching pedagogy; next week consists of observations of the current teacher. After that, I’m on my own, the only American teaching in a small town in Japan. It’s a bit intimidating, but I’m getting used to this feeling; I was very intimidated with the prospect of my previous job before it started as well.

With any luck, I’ll have an incredible time and want to stay in the country. One of the impressive statistics about this company is that the teachers here have, on average, been here for over three years. This is an impressive statistic when you consider that every single teaching contract signed here is for a single year, with the option of renewal only if both the teacher and company are satisfied with the arrangement. Hopefully, I’ll find myself enjoying things enough that I decide to stay as well.

For those people who have looked at coming to Japan, Narita is a familiar word. It is, in fact, the town containing the airport with the most flights to and from Japan; the airport is also called Narita.

I went there this morning with two other people from the boarding house: a couple who came to Japan to teach together. We all had need of the internet, and they were familiarizing themselves with the area, as it’s where they’ll be posted after their observations are done. I finished with the internet first, and they sent me on to Narita’s tourist attraction.

It turns out that there is a temple in Narita. It is the second (or third; sources disagree) largest temple in Japan. It turns out that it is a very large temple indeed. More accurately, it is a temple complex. You enter the front gate and walk up a winding road, with carvings and stones with words on them flanking you on both sides. I’d say that it was a graveyard, but the spacing of the stones and the terrain they were on made that seem unlikely.

I’m going to number the next paragraphs, because this is the best way to describe my experience exploring the temple complex. After each paragraph, roll a normal, six-sided die. Then go to the paragraph of that number.

1. At the end of the road, you find a large, impressive temple building. You can go up the stairs, and look past barriers at the interior, which is impressive. Then, because that seemed a bit too quick, you walk around the temple to see it from all angles. From the back, there is a path.

2. At the end of the path, you find a courtyard, with shrines scattered throughout, some of which are burning smoky incense. In a far corner, a truck is crunching over the gravel and flagstones, carrying gardening equipment. There are many paths leading from here, some of which obviously go to temples.

3. You walk along the path, which plunges through deep and silent forests. The shade here is a wonderful relief, and the scenery is astounding. A stream chatters by, and you walk to its source: a waterfall. There are stepping stones across the stream. Past them, you find a secluded, open-topped room. It is formed of mortared stone, but it is built directly into the hillside. A small trickle of water drops from above; the little brother of the waterfall 20 feet to the side. It has no apparant purpose, and no explanation. You move back to the path, and continue on.

4. You walk down a steep, stone staircase. At the bottom is a beautiful fountain, which might well be gravity-fed. There is a small area around the fountain, apparantly just to watch it. Unfortunately, it is very hot at the viewing area in the direct sun, so you continue on.

5. The path passes by a number of small, ornate buildings. These look like smaller versions of the big impressive temples, but they are completely closed to the public. There are big signs in Japanese, and smaller ones in English which have obviously been translated by the lowest bidder, telling of the name and works of the saint interred in each one.

6. The path here is wide and modern. Discretely concealed behind some greenery, there is a small building with two doors, and the international icons for *MEN* and *WOMEN* beside each. Beside the building are four vending machines.

I suppose you can say that the entirety of Japan is a weird mixture of the modern and the traditional, but this temple really brought that home for me. In some respects, it’s incredibly templey: people speaking quietly and dressed respectfully, shaved monks in bright robes occasionally walking past, and an incredible ambiance. Everywhere, there were wonderful sights, smells, sounds. On the other hand, all the main temples were wheelchair-accessable. There were restrooms and vending machines, discretely concealed, everywhere. There was an active gardening staff, complete with trucks, leaf-blowers, and other power tools.

After wandering around in the temple bit for a few hours, I decided to take the train back to Yotsukaido, which is the town with the boarding house. This turned out to be a surprising challenge. From the train, to the internet cafe, to the temple was simple and direct. The way back, however, was not. I believe the problem was that instead of retracing my steps precisely on the way out of the temple, I just left the first exit I saw. The short of it is that I spent about an hour and a half of the hottest part of the day walking back and forth, occasionally accosting random passers-by and asking “Excuse me, where is the train? Densha wa doko desu ka?”

I did finally make my way back to the train station, but by the time I got there, school had apparantly just let out. There were any number of children in uniform wandering the streets, from the very young ones with round yellow hats to the older ones so often seen in anime.

As I passed one such group, which happened to be composed of four girls that I would estimate to be in high school, one of them called out: “Haro!” I said “Hello!” back, and the group of them broke into giggling at the audacity of whoever it was who attempted English on the gaijin.

It’s true that I stand out here, and that people take notice, but it’s much subtler than I would have expected from just reading guidebooks and accounts of people who’ve come here. It’s true that I’ll occasionally catch someone staring at me, but it’s actually pretty uncommon. I have not yet heard any child scream “gaijin!” and run of. The vast majority of people I’ve seen here, children or not, take no notice of me, just as you would expect were I traveling anywhere else.

It’s worth noting that I’ve basically given up trying to figure out what I eat, when I eat things here. Next time you’re in a grocery market, pretend that none of the writing made any sense at all to you. See how much you could figure out just from the packaging. Don’t forget to ignore all canned goods, as there aren’t any, and remember that fruit is grossly overpriced. It just isn’t worth the effort to plan things in advance. It works almost as well to just browse the isles, stop randomly when attractive packaging catches your eye, choose the nearest thing with the lowest approximate unit price, and move on.

Unfortunately, it seems that my tourest days are drawing to a close: I got an email today laying out my training schedule, and it eats the rest of this week. Furthermore, Saturday I’m meeting the teacher who I’ll be replacing, so that he can show me all the points of interest in the local area. It’s therefore unlikely that I’ll have much interesting to write about until next Sunday.

Until then,

After 12 hours of sleep, I woke up, made myself human again, and decided that as there wasn’t anything to do in the guest house save watching TV, I would head to Tokyo. One of the other teachers staying in the guest house was willing to guide me there, and on the way give me a brief lecture about how the train system works. Once we got to the city, he left me to my own devices. I chose a direction, and started walking.

The first place I got to was the Imperial Palace. The way you can tell that it’s imperial is that it’s several acres of land, more than half of which is private residence, in the city with probably the highest real-estate prices in the world. My first view of it turned out to be in the ‘fountain garden’, an area with a number of beautiful and varied fountains. From there, I walked the circumference of the moat for 3 km before finding one of two gates which allow you into the ‘eastern gardens’. These are large areas of parkland, with occasional fountains, sitting areas, parks, and so forth. Overall, I’d say that it’s all very impressive, and quite pretty, but some parts just seemed strange. There was a section, for example, of wide path with trees planted to shade the way, and stone benches encircling the trunks of the trees, such that people could sit and relax in the shade. However, every second stone bench was roped off. I have no idea why.

After touring the palace gardens for a few hours, I decided to go to Tokyo Tower. This is a duplicate of the Eiffel Tower built in 1958, apparantly to spite the Parisians. It is identical in just about every way, except that where the Eiffel Tower is 320m high, the Tokyo Tower is 333. Apparantly, thanks to improved metallurgy, this one is also 3000 tons lighter than the original. I went to the second observation deck, 250 m high. On a clear day, you’re supposed to be able to see all the way to Mt. Fuji; today was not clear. I did, however, see the giant Ferris wheel, which I had previously seen only in anime. I intend to visit it at some point, but I don’t think it will be today. The same applies to Akihabara, the electronics district. After some wandering in search of a subway station, I happened across an internet cafe, which is where I am now.

Coming to Japan feels oddly familiar. On the one hand, it’s a strange and alien environment where many things are just different. On the other hand, I’ve watched a ton of anime, and many of the things which would otherwise be bizarre are much less so.

One thing I hadn’t been expecting, however, is the amazing amount of Engrish (that being English words and phrases misused in strange and often amusing ways). I had the impression that it was something you might see once or twice per week; instead, I’ve seen more examples in the two days I’ve been here so far than are worth counting.

I feel like I’ve had a lot more experiences that I intended to recount, but I can’t think of any. One thing I should have brought, had I thought of it, was a small notebook and pen, to keep track of the strange and wonderful things as I see them. Another would have been a digital camera. I thought I would just use the camera in my cell phone, but it has the dual problems of low resolution and a battery life measured in hours instead of pictures. Its battery died last night, to my disappointment, and I’ve missed any number of fascinating photographs so far.

My time allotment here draws short, so I have to wrap this post up. In closing, I’d like to list the items included in the “American Style” breakfast listed in the menu here at the internet cafe:
Toast
Salad
Boiled Egg
Corn Soup

It’s just like home here.