The New Kid at School

So the last few weeks have been relatively good I guess. I am poorer than dirt right now and really hope that I can make it to payday on September 10th. If not I might have to withdraw some money from my American bank account which is both expensive and currently the yen is worth more than the dollar causing more losses.

Anyway, I started teaching this week. On Tuesday I gave a speech to about 600 students, which was quite frightening so that took a lot of courage, but everything went relatively well. I then began teaching, and well all I can say is that it was a new experience. I am basically just giving my self introductions but it seems harder than it should be. I am not sure if the kids enjoy it or if they are bored to death! The unfortunate thing is that this is the only time I really have a chance to dazzle the kids since the rest of the things I teach will be based off of the pre-existing curriculum. Surprisingly too, I still feel uncertain about my duties. I am not even fully sure of what will happen in each class. One thing I am getting used to is the lack of knowing what lies ahead of me though.

School has become a lot busier, but for some reason the weeks seem to have gotten longer. I taught 4 classes today which was actually quite tiring. I also have been grading tons and tons of tests and homework assignments which is interesting since the English is sometimes so incomprehensible that I almost would rather be reading Japanese.

Soon there is a sports festival and it seems like a lot of the students are preparing as well as the teachers, but I usually just sit in the teachers' office like usual because I have no direction when it comes to these things or even if I am suppose to be doing anything. I know I was told by JET before to be proactive about things at school, but honestly I don't know when to ask because teachers are always buzzing about and if it isn't an English teacher I really don't feel I can get my point across. So I guess I will just play it out and see what happens. Hopefully they just don't expect me what is going on in a new school, job, country and language.

So as it turns out my town is pretty small, about 23,000 people. It is fine for everyday living such as going grocery shopping etc., but to do anything with my spare time is another thing. As I said before I am running low on money, but for a while I tried to do some exploring in my town for a hang out spot. In japan cities of about 100,000 people are considered to be small and "rural." Even Kumamoto which had 600,000 people was considered a more rural city. So I guess 23,000 people is really out in the sticks! I was hoping to do Iaido (a sword martial art) or Kyudo (Japanese long bow archery) but alas, my junior high school doesn't offer it. They offer Kendo (another form of sword fighting) which is the only thing I have heard of so far that I would be remotely interested in. Honestly Kendo doesn't interest me much, but it will probably beat going home after work and watching TV, taking a 2 hour nap and then eating dinner and watching some more TV. It seems like TV is a good way for me to passivly learn Japanese, since my brain is usually pretty tired by the end of the day so I can vegge out and also try to pick up what is being said.

But most of all, I think it is just pretty lonely being out in the middle of nowhere, isolated due to a different culture and language. I really don't know how to meet people and make friends here. Although I have been in Japan before, the university setting was much easier because you were constantly around people your own age. I actually deeply regret that I didn't take better advantage of that situation last time I was in Japan. So I really hope that I can find a few people in my town to do stuff with. It would even be better if I found people my own age. Honestly, I think it would be impossible for me to stay here longer than a year (I planned on 2 years) if I can't have a social life with people my own age. But, only time can tell.