My First Few Days and Life at School

So far, things have been going pretty great for me here in Japan. And, as I predicted, I have fallen a bit behind in my blog posts. Oops. Well, let’s do a quick catch up with a focus on my school related life, because aside from a few small adventures I’ll share in another post, my out of school life is pretty uneventful.

Let’s start off with my first week here in Ikusaka, which was pretty just a week of introductions and adjustments. The day after I arrived, they allowed me some time to sleep in and start unpacking before they picked me up to go to the village hall to register as a resident. When we got to the office, they took me to meet the mayor, which was pretty cool. However, it again involved people just sitting there talking about me in Japanese. Honestly, my motto here has been “smile and bow” because I understand nothing. I hope that by the time I leave Japan, I’ll be able to understand a lot more. After meeting the mayor Kyoto-sensei (the Vice-Principal) introduced me to all the staff in the village hall, which involved me just standing there smiling while she talked about me in Japanese. A little embarrassing, but definitely not the worst thing I have been through. After registering me they dropped me back off at my house and I had the rest of the day to myself.

The next day was my first day at the school. When I arrived my JTE, Minemura-sensei, showed me around the junior high school, which is the primary school I will be at. I thankfully remembered to grab one of my pairs of indoor shoes. In Japan, it is very common that you have to take off your “outside” shoes and put on a pair of shoes that you only wear indoors. If you are just a visitor, they have little slippers for visitors to wear. I recommend wearing socks because you don’t know who has been wearing those slippers before you. I made the mistake of wearing flats without socks my first few days. Let me tell you, that was not fun. In a few words, summer = heat = sweat. Enough said. Bring socks. You definitely won’t stand out because I’ve seen so many Japanese people wear socks with sandals here, so you shall not be judged.

Anyway, the tour around the school was nice. It’s a pretty nice looking school, and its pretty large for only having 30 students. It’s bigger than the Catholic middle/high school I went to. After the tour I was introduced to the wonderful thing known as desk-warming. Unlike in the U.S., when the students have summer break the teachers still have to come into school. For us ALTs who often don’t have much to do, especially as a new arrival who has no idea what is going on, it can be pretty boring. I’ve been using the time to work on my Japanese and look up some activity ideas, but it is definitely a struggle. Thankfully, today was my last day of that since school starts up again tomorrow. It is, however, not the start of the school year. The school year actually starts in April here, and I believe the summer break is much shorter. They for sure don’t have school in August.

Most of my time at school has been desk-warming, but I’ve done a few cool things with the teachers. The first was going to see the school’s brass band perform in a competition in Matsumoto, the closest city to Ikusaka. Kyoto-sensei invited me to come along with her, so I jumped at the opportunity to see some of my students perform. She even introduced me to some of them, which was nice. The competition was very nice and I was pretty floored because all the bands were so darn good! They sounded better than any high school band I’ve gone to see. They take activities very seriously here.

After our school performed we went into Matsumoto to go to the mall so I could do a little shopping for some stuff I needed around my apartment and to get some groceries. It was really nice to hang out with Kyoto-sensei because she’s so energetic and nice. I seriously love her. Even though we have to communicate with Google Translate, she is always so helpful and nice to me. She got me a really cute gift at the mall, which I did not expect at all. Today she got me baking soda because I said I wanted to bake for the teachers but couldn’t find baking soda. She definitely goes the extra mile to make sure that I am enjoying my time here and I am so grateful for her.

Another really cool thing I got to do with her was to do some singing. I told her and some other teachers a couple days before that I love to sing and I pointed out some songs that I liked that were in the textbook. Kyoto-sensei used to be a music teacher, so she also loves music. She had the music teacher photocopy some of the songs I said I liked, then unexpectedly took me to one of the school’s pianos the next day to sing them. It was so much fun. I love getting to sing along with someone playing the piano, so it was an awesome time. We sang We Are The World, The Sound of Silence, and Take Me Home, Country Road. She also taught me a Japanese song, which was also really cool to sing along to. I really hope we get to do it again because it is so therapeutic for me.

Finally, one other nice thing that I have gotten to do with the teachers happened this past Friday. It was a day with a variety of activities, and I started off by tagging along to CPR training with the other teachers. Though I didn’t understand what was being said since it was all in Japanese, I understood the basics from watching. I’ve never done life saving training, so it was good to have a rough idea of what to do. After the training I helped the teachers do some school cleaning, which wasn’t too bad. After that the elementary school teachers came to the junior high school for a meeting, so I was introduced to them. I had to give a little self-introduction in Japanese, which I think went pretty well.

Thankfully, they didn’t make me stick around for the rest of the meeting, because I wouldn’t have understood anything anyways. Once they finished their meeting it was time for some friendly competition between teachers. I signed up to play badminton with about half the teachers, with the other half playing table tennis. It was a lot of fun, and definitely a good workout. The school has a badminton club, so I am going to see if I can play with them.

After the sports activity it was time for the barbecue, which was a really nice time. Even though I can’t fully communicate with most of the teachers, it was still fun. By now most of the teachers definitely know about my aversion to vegetables, but I actually tried something I hadn’t eaten in years: watermelon. And it wasn’t too terrible actually. I think if I tried eating it enough times I would start to like it. Bet you’re real proud of me Mom!

Overall, I am really enjoying my time here in Ikusaka. The people I work with are really nice, and the students I have met so far are really nice as well. I think it is going to be a good experience for me. There are certainly challenges ahead, but thankfully I have a great crew of teachers around me to help if I need it. The beautiful mountains surrounding the village also help. Stay tuned for more posts! And feel free to leave any feedback or post requests in the comments!