Summary of the last 8 months

So here's a quick timeline to catch up to this point on my experience.

August 2004
So, I left my good job with the opera, all my good friends, my family, northern New Mexico and Sarah to come do something completely strange and new. August 1 we arrived in Tokyo for the new ALT orientation. There are 6000 ALTs in all of Japan, and a couple thousand new every year. I flew out of Portland after spending a couple of days there doing more orientations, and arrived into the hottest wall of muggy air I've felt since Sydney, Australia. They put us up at the Keio Plaza hotel in Shinjuku district, which is a very upscale hotel and very, very nice. It was basically three days of strange meetings, teaching workshops and how-to-live-in-Japan talks, none of which were all that helpful. I was just more into the experience of being there and trying to meet some new people at the time. We went out once as a group when all the Niigata prefecture people got together, and finally we all shuttled onto the Shinkansen and headed up to our respective towns.

I arrived in Yuzawa town which is a ski town with a shinkansen station. My predecessor Alex, who is fluent in Japanese, met me there with my supervisor Mr. Hayashi. I could only say hello in Japenese and nice to meet you, but I managed to fumble it as we were both nervous. I was disoriented as they drove me to town and tried to show me around, get my hanko stamp (like a signature in Japan), and feed me some food. I was tired out so they took me to my apartment which is about a 45 minute walk from the center of town and a 10 minute drive, but still in town in Nakajo district. It is the teacher's housing for one of my Junior High schools (Nakajo Junior High) and is not that nice but not that bad either. There is a little bamboo forest and it is fairly quiet and off the main highway. There are busses that run once an hour nearby and a train that runs once every 2 hours (though no one ever told me about it so i didn't learn about it until the fall). When we got to my apartment, it was still being cleaned (by the financial officer for the BOE) and was still a mess from the previous tenant, but they left it to me and I had to assemble the rest of the furniture. I had expected to move out anyday into nicer apartment in town because Alex said that might happen in the next week. But when I later asked about it after being tired of living out of my bags for a few days, they changed their story and said I had to stay there.

August also had the Earth Festival on Sado Island, which was a really great music festival on a famous island in the Japan Sea. We took a ferry out there and Annie talked me into coming. It was a good way to relax and see some incredible Japanese drumming and folk dancing, and get crazy with the rest of the JETs. The rest of August was all just a strange blur of trying to figure out my town, my schools, my apartment and just plain living. I remember a lot of sweating, walking about, confusion and frustration, but mostly excitement at being there and having everything be so strange and new. After a couple weeks I met the other ALTs. There are four ALTs in Tokamachi with a few more in neighboring towns. The local ALTs are Debs and Martin - Brits. Aimee, Nate, Annie - Americans. I met Martin at the conference so I knew him first, then I met Nate cuz he ended up in the hospital with a bug bite, then the rest at the Niigata City prefectural orientation at the end of August. We really stuck together a lot after that and did everything together. I met the rest of my teachers and Alex showed me around a few times before he left. August also had a few more festivals, including the end of August main Tokamachi festival which was a really fun intro to Tokamachi and the insanity of drunken summerfests here. We met Keiko who is now Martin's 'friend' and she helped us settle in a bit too and introduce us to some other Japanese people.

September 2004
September marked the first classes and meeting all my students and other teachers. There were lots of opening ceremonies where I had to wear a suit, stand up in front of the entire school, and make a speech which I could only do in English but I threw in a few Japanese greetings and well-timed bows. I sorted out my desks and tried ot figure out my schedules (which i still don't understand). There were lots of introduction lessons which I really enjoyed and I met probably 800 students in those first few weeks. They seemed to like me and were intrigued that I couldn't speak Japanese, which is good for their English education because my predecessor only spoke Japanese with them. September included a million more enkais, which are office parties, and welcome parties for me. By October I had had 8 welcome parties from my various schools, all of which were a nice way for Japanese people to drink away their reservations and get up the guts to try to talk to me and sing some karaoke together.

September also marked a happy time as I bought my car, a Suzuki Wagon R miniwagon thing. It is a tiny, 3 door box with a 660 cc engine, but I got a killer deal on it and it's been awesome. It's a 4x4 with a 10 CD changer and it came with a set of mandatory snow tires too. I got it just in time too because the typhoon season was in full swing and was driving me absolutely nuts. I would show up late for school cuz i took the wrong bus, and had to walk forever and would show up so wet that people gasped when they saw me...but were unable to help me figure out what went wrong with the buses (I still don't understand the buses).

Having the car gave me the freedom to roam around the area a little so I discovered all the mountainous areas nearby and some beautiful little side roads that end up way in some mountain rice fields with shrines. I also started to get more involved with school events and went to some sports festivals and school cultural events, which are big in September and October.

October 2004
The first parts of October were marked by some side trips into Nagano, Nagaoka city and Ojiya, exploring Onsen hot baths for the first time, exploring local towns, and a couple more JET parties and school enkais. Adjusting more to school life and figuring out how to work with each of my 10 or so Junior High english teachers. I started getting more comfortable with my lesson plans and how to relate and have a good time with the students. October was still super rainy and a huge Typhoon hit around October 21, which soaked everything and killed a lot of people down south. I continued to have some frustrations with my supervisors as my bills still hadn't been set up and my phone and internet had just recently been set up.

Earthquake

On October 23, a huge 6.8 earthquake ripped through my area. It was epicentered just outside of Ojiya which is a town about 2o minute drive from here, or 10 miles away. It was a 6.8 but was only 10 km deep, which means were were basically standing right on top of it which is what made the shaking so violent and intense. I later read that it was the most intense earthquake in Japan's modern history as far as how fast the actual ground accelerated when the fault shifted. I was in my apartment at the time and at my computer, and when i felt it start to shake i just ran to the doorway. It was dark by then so I ran outside into the darkness but all the other teachers were gone because it was a Saturday so the all returned home to their families by then. I found some neighbors because the power was out and i didn't know what to do...we finally ended up at the school where we ended up in my other school's music teacher's car with a 7-11 clerk. The aftershocks were insane and there was a 6.5 or so aftershock that was centered in Tokamachi and did a lot of damage there. I couldn't reach the other JETs and the phones were down so I spent the night only with Japanese people in the car. It was pretty tough and scary. Anyway, I found the rest of the JETs and we spent the next few nights in a shelter at Tokamachi High School (luckily we were given a small room of our own for most of the time) and stuck together a lot. Then we all returned to my apartment becuause the damage wasn't much beyond a few cracks, and stuck together for four days in my apartment. We just sat through aftershocks for about a couple weeks and after two weeks, school resumed. I started my first Elementary school on my first day back to school, but in the middle of my first classes we were hit by a 5.9 aftershock and had to evacuate the school. After that, life more or less resumed but we were tortured for a long, long time by daily or weekly aftershocks.

The whole thing sort of put my experience on hold and really jumbled things around for me. But I feel I came out of it with a good story and a hardened attitude that I can go through anything in this country. The damage in my area was just overwhelming, especially towards Ojiya, and a lot of those next few weeks were spent just wandering or driving around with my mouth agape, amazed at how screwed up my new home was now but impressed that it was getting back on its feet.

November 2004
November had more aftershocks but became mellow. The only real interesting things were a few cool places I discovered, ski area scouting, a nice thanksgiving dinner at Annie's place with tons of JETs, and Aunt Susie and cousin Mia visiting from Okinawa. They came up for 3 days and one night we stayed in a real mountain Snow Country ryokan, which is a very Japanese style inn. It was pretty neat and had a really nice outdoor onsen bath and some pretty wild food. Mia thought it was mostly pretty weird and Susie was way into it and I was just happy that they came to visit me and that I had a car to drive them around and see some stuff. We checked out Naeba ski area which had a little man-made snow and I saw a big fat Japanese monkey. The other night they stayed in my apartment and slept on some futon.

December 2004
December was mostly just a busy teaching schedule. A group of us also went for English earthquake trauma counseling in Nagaoka which was interesting but useful I suppose. The rest of the time was waiting for the first snow which should have fallen in November but never seemed to come...it was a rainy December. I had been planning on heading to China or Thailand over Christmas. Rowan invited me diving/snorkeling with him to Thailand but I declined because I wasn't sure I wanted to go there because I wanted to see Gary in China (turned out I would have been right in the middle of the big tsunami. Rowan was underwater at the time on their island, and our friend Emma got smushed around by the wave but came out OK). I was all set to go see Gary in Shanghai, even if I knew I'd be homesick, because I couldn't get home because the prices shot up and I wasn't able to make my reservations in time because of the earthquake. But I couldn't go to China because my passport got lost in the mail and they couldn't process my visa, so they refunded my plane ticket and I was at a loss for what to do. Then, around December 22 my passport showed up and Aunt Bonnie said she'd give me my one-shot travel money then. So I used it and bought a ticket on December 23. On December 24 I flew out of Tokyo and headed home. Between the travelling and everything, it was by far the longest Christmas Eve of my life. Actually, it was really like 38 hours long officially because I gained a day as I flew over the date line. It was so strange coming home not only last minute like that but after being in Japan and going through so much trouble in 4 months. It worked out really well and I was blessed that night to be at the Abrums for the xmas party, have a regular Christmas morning with a healthy family, meet Zen for the first time, see Amelia, Mom, Jacob, Aurora, and all my friends. I saw Anna, Ely, Kim and Ian, Yvonne, Jill, opera people, ski buddies, and I went skiing in Taos and Pajarito too. Spent time in Santa Fe and enjoyed the good old Norteno cooking. It was awesome. Spent New Years at Jacob's and Sarah came down for a few days too which was special (though difficult sometimes). I wasn't sure if I would see my Dad cuz he was back in Mexico. I was set to fly out on January 8, but he changed his ticket and flew in late at night on January 7. So I picked him up, we crashed in a hotel for a few hours, and I flew out at 6 the next morning. It was a short hello but nice as well. All in all, it was a great trip that really refreshed me to head back to Japan and tackle it in a positive way. It really helped get over the earthquake, and by then snow had been falling and I was ready for a good winter.

January 2005

After so so long of a travel day, I ended up in a real Niigata blizzard getting stuck on trains and got back to Tokamachi at midnight. My car had been parked at the station for two weeks and was completely submerged in snow. My keitai battery was dead and I had to get to a pay phone to have people come dig me out. After that, I just started skiing through all January and went to a great fire festival in Nozawa Onsen village in Nagano, which would soon become a favorite place of mine. After that I started trying new ski areas on the weekends and teaching all week. I wandered through massive piles of snow and tunnels that used to be sidewalks. The snow by January was about 7 feet deep. School was fun and I taught 65 Minami Junior High kids how to make tortillas and burritos from scratch. That was a blast. My birthday party was held together with Martin's and about 20 ALTs came to Tokamachi for a snowy, drunken birthday party complete with cake and beer and snowball fights and karaoke in a velvet draped Philipinno bar. The end of January closed out with a stupid mid-year ALT meeting in Niigata City.

February, 2005

February was both an awesome month and a depressing month. The awesome bit really had to do with the incredible powder skiing that had been missing from my life ever since I was robbed of my ski-bum year by a low-snow winter. I had a few days at Ishiuchi Maruyama and Nozawa Onsen that are called "snorkel days". The snow was so deep and soft that every turn I took I disappeared into a cloud and could neither see nor breathe. That was a great boost to my soul and kept me very happy.

The depressing part came in having problems with Sarah and in early February we broke up. It was a really difficult thing to do from so far away and after being together for four years. So that was really horrible.

Also, the Tokamachi Snow Festival took place but on a much reduced scale because it's theme was basically being sad because of the earthquake. The town's budget was hit so hard they had to have a small festival and couldn't even pay for fireworks. Then, on top of it all, it rained all over the snow festival and melted all the awesome sculptures. But overall it was fun and I look forward to next year's.

March 2005

March continued with some pretty good skiing, and the end of the school year for the students which meant more free time at work for me. Graduation ceremony for the 3rd years was held with lots of pomp and formalities. I was sad to see those kids go because I really liked the 3rd years and I hope next year's kids take their place well. Otherwise, there was also the Hina Matsuri girls' day festival, where I went to Kanako's (private student) family's house for a traditional sushi dinner and sake-drinking fest. That was great to be invited into a Japanese person's home for a more traditional meal. I hit up Ishiuchi Maruyama, Nozawa Onsen and Joetsu Kokusai for some more snow and had a couple good days with Debs and Martin too.

So that catches me up more or less to April. Of course I can't cover my entire 8 months in those paragraphs and I did a million other cool things but I'll just have to keep up on my new experiences now.