School Orientation Round Two

Today was orientation round two. So I woke up around 6:40, dressed in my uniform, and left for the station. This was obviously way too early to rise. But I didn’t want to be late on my first day so I built lots of leeway. Next time I’m getting up 5 to 7. I look like a complete and utter idiot in my uniform. The whole getup, tie, short sleeve white t-shirt, weirdly stripped grey pants; they’re all designed to be as dorky as possible. Each school competes for dorkiest uniform. They’re all winning.

I got to school so early that I sat in a really pretty park nearby and memorized words. I find myself doing it more and more often, and I’m realizing that my level of Japanese is exactly equal to how much work I put into it. So I’m putting a lot into it because I want to get a lot back. I’m focusing far more on speaking than reading or writing, but I suppose with school I’m going to have to start working on those aspects as well. I find speaking and comprehending more rewarding. I’ve been keeping a piece of paper in my pocket but it started ripping so I’ve switched to a really tiny spiral notebook where I write down words throughout the day. Then I memorize them later, on the train, in the park, in my room. I try to use as many of them as I can right away so that I remember them better.

When I got to school there were lots of funny looks. “What is that American white boy doing in our uniform?” I was thinking the same thing. I entered through the teacher’s entrance and met Ishijima Sensei. He’s the home stay coordinator and the school counselor. He’s also and English teacher for the 3rd grade (seniors). He went over a bunch of start of school items with me: uniform (I’m not allowed to wear my bracelet), schedule, shoes. The shoes thing bothers me. They told me not to buy indoor school shoes in America. They said I needed to buy special shoes and they would have my size. But now that I’m here they tell me that any shoes will do. Except that Japan doesn’t sell my shoe size. I’m at least a 29.5 centimeter, preferably a 30. They only sell 28. Ugh. So I’m going to have to so some serious shoe shopping next week in order to find ones that fit. I don’t want to resort to sandals because they're frowned upon and I can’t wear my orthotics in them.

Ishijima Sensei brought me to his classroom and had me introduce myself to his English class. Then he had me answer questions about myself, my family, and where I live. The students were not very good at speaking, but I saw their reading material and it was quite advanced. They can read very well but have a lot of trouble pronouncing English words. The Japanese only have 5 vowels, and the English language has a lot more. We have many more sounds to produce. They have trouble with ‘see’ which they pronounced shi, ti is turned into chi, vee is turned into bee. Then there’s the whole r vs l problem. The pronunciation is overall extremely poor, even though their comprehension level is very high.

I got a great tour of the school, saw all the classrooms and took pictures the whole time. I was very impressed with their facilities, even though they are far inferior to every American high school I’ve been to. The building looks like it’s falling apart. Peeling paint and dripping walls, and it’s all poured concrete giving it that prison feel. But all Japanese schools are this way, every one that I’ve seen. So the fact that this one had lab rooms was really cool. They’ve also got a pool, which they're very proud of, and a pretty extensive gym wing. The one thing that they did have that Evanston doesn’t was Judo, Kendo, and Karate rooms. After my tour I had lunch with some of the students. They’re very friendly and anxious to befriend me, which I think is awesome. There are even several that live very close to me.

I left the school and returned home, to read some news. I crave news because I’m so far away. I’ve been following Gustav and it looks pretty bad, I bet it’s all the hype back home. Here the big news is that the Japanese President just suddenly resigned. In Japanese culture the resignation has replaced suicide as a way of extreme apology and saving face. Some sort of bad political thingy. It’s hard to understand. After checking up on America, make sure she’s doing alright without me, I went exploring. Today I visited the Tsuchiura City Athletic Park and I was fortunate enough to catch the last two innings of a baseball game. Super cool. I think it was a high school game. I found the track next door and was so happy. I timed a lap to see how much I’d slipped off. 60.64. Not bad for no warm-up, no competition, flats and cargo shorts. I tried to find a Japanese sweets shop but my search proved unfruitful. So I went shoe hunting but the shoe outlet that sold nothing but shoes didn’t have my size. Shocker. All they had that kind of fit me were $100 knock off Air Force Ones. Then I tried the library to see if they have wifi but they’re closed on Mondays. So I went home to walk the dog. I’m the only one that walks her, and I’ve done it every day for five days. I’m rapidly becoming her favorite person in the house.