First Day

Well, Friday was my first day at Kasahara Junior High, picture below. It has around 400 students, all of whom participated in the event on Friday. It turns out that it was a choir competition between all of the classes. In Japanese Junior High Schools, students stay with their homeroom class in the same classroom all day as the teachers come in to the rooms to teach the different subjects. Each of these classes sang one song, which took quite some time as there are 16 classes total and many of the 3rd years (equivalent of 9th grade) sang pretty lengthy songs. Not surprisingly, the third years were the most impressive. Of course, these weren't select choirs so everyone had to participate, which guaranteed that there were a couple students in each class that couldn't sing who stuck out quite a bit. Still, I was very impressed. My Middle School didn't have that high of a percentage of kids who could sing.


Anyway, that's it above. I hope to get pictures of the inside sometime, but I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to do so without it being too odd. Below is the Ibaraki Prefecture office. It's just a few blocks north of me, so it's a good way to be able to where I am in relation to my apartment when I'm out and about.

Just across the street from the school is my favorite restaurant so far. It's called Hamazushi and is a conveyor belt sushi place. (They make sushi in the back room and put it on plates on a conveyor belt that runs by where you sit and you take whatever you like. At the end they charge you based on the number of plates you have stacked up in front of you). It's pretty good considering it's price (usually runs about a dollar for one plate with either two nice sized pieces or six of the kind of rolls that you get in the US).

I apologize for the poor picture quality. It's a busy intersection with a long wait for pedestrians and cyclists if you miss your light, so I took this while riding the opposite direction. I'm mostly surprised I was able to get it into frame.

I only taught one class on Friday, so I'll be able to comment on the students more next week after I've had all of them in classes, so more coming then.

My First Apartment

Well, after getting accustomed to my area and in the middle of a week of training, I'm finally getting around to posting about my new place. I'm in what's called a "Mansion Style" apartment, presumably named by someone with a sense of irony. Generally they're a single room with a bathroom. I'd say this one is at the nicer end. I'm on the first floor. Below is the view as you enter through the door on the left and my kitchenette on the right.

The size of the kitchen area is the biggest drawback I've found so far. Well, that and apparently the walls are thin enough that I can hear the tenant above me snoring at night. I guess the walls are as thin as I was told to expect. Also, having no counter space is kind of a pain. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with it. Moving on, below is the view if you turn left after entering the apartment. As you see, it came with a washing machine and utilities are included in the price, so that's a definite plus. The toilet is the door on the left and the shower is the door on the right.

Next is the main room. This is taken from the doorway next to the kitchen.

The bed about three feet off the ground to make a nice storage space underneath. Accordingly, they built in steps between the bed and desk.

The table leg is on a wheel so it can roll under and the table can fold up to be out of the way for more floor space, which will be useful if I ever have guests staying over. The wall behind it would be blank were it not for the mirror, the garbage schedule, and...

...a little something I found at the dollar store and thought would make a good wall decoration.


So that's my apartment. My first day at the school will be Friday, which will have an unusual schedule to accommodate some sort of singing competition the school is involved in. I probably won't know more until the day of, so more on that later. Also, I wanted to get some pictures today, but today was so overcast that it was practically dark enough by the time I was coming home, so hopefully I'll have time to do that this weekend. Until then, I suppose that's all.

Mito it Is

Well, after quite a bit of waiting, it turns out that I will be in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture. This was the one I preferred, as Yonezawa would have required a car and rotating between schools every two months. Mito, on the other hand, will only require a bicycle and I will be at the same school every day for the entire contract.

I will start on the 22nd of October after a week of training starting tomorrow. Tomorrow I will go up to Mito and sign for the apartment and the contract for the job and stay the night at a hotel. Friday I will move into my apartment and visit an Elementary school English class so I can have an idea of what my students will already know. Next week's schedule was a little more uncertain other than work beginning on Friday, so I will post about it later when I know more. I may or may not have to wait for internet access to be set up in my apartment, so I'm unsure if I will be out of contact or not for the first week or so, but I'll try to find an internet cafe if so.

In any case, I'm looking forward to having my own place for the first time, as well as my first full time job. As for now, I need to finish packing and run a few errands to get ready for tomorrow. Now I'm off to the post office to use their ATM. 'Til next time.