So I’ve been in Okazaki for almost a full week. The move in went fine... aside from having to lug around a ridiculously heavy suitcase, carry on, bag of semi-wet laundry, and purse across train platforms and through stations.... most of which DID NOT have elevators :S I was exhausted by the time I got to Okazaki-Higashi station but thankfully my PS was there waiting and he took over the lugging :)
My apartment is.... cozy? It’s actually not too small. The main room is a good size and the bathroom is fine. The kitchen completely sucks to be honest. There’s one electric burner that takes a very long time to heat up and no counter space whatsoever. Storage is also severely limited but I’m moving stuff around to see what works best. The fridge is small but manageable and the toaster oven is grimy as hell but works great! I’m extremely thankful for the plug in kettle because boiling a small pot of water takes about 15 mins on the burner (this is not an exaggeration). I’ve managed to pick up a wireless signal on one side of my apartment which is the only thing that has kept me sane over this last week. Between talking to people and watching Dexter, there’s not too much else to do but wander and I’ve managed to do that almost everyday.
In fact, I managed to find a shopping mall type of place with an awesome 100 yen store today which was great! They also had this kitschy shop with the funkiest stuff.... Xmas presents anyone?
I was gonna be a cat for Halloween but all I could find were bunny ears. Thankfully they were black like my cat ensemble so there won’t be too much adjusting :) I’m still not sure what I’m even doing for Halloween if anything at all but there are 2 options at this point and I hope I can pull at least one of them off. Wouldn’t want to spend Halloween all alone.... I’m not that strong :S I really need to start meeting people in this area before life gets too depressing ;) Can’t wait until I get my new British neighbor! At least then I have someone I can bother.
Work.... work is good thus far. All my kids are sane for the most part and behave well :) For now of course.... I’ve team-taught with some other teachers and one in particular has thee worst behaved child that I’ve seen thus far. Ignore my complaints about any children prior to this because this kid tops it all. He gets to class a half hour late (for a one hour lesson) and then proceeds to run into the wall kicking and punching it. He runs into the room on the side and starts dumping stuff out of boxes at which point the teacher picks him up. Not only does he hit the teacher in the face but he also spits in his face. To top it all off, he then takes off his pants and proceeds to run in front of the teacher exposing himself to the other students. He remains pant-less for awhile and then when its time to go home he seems to want to stay all of a sudden. It was nuts watching this and then having to restrain the child for a bit so that the teacher can actually teach a bit :S I feel horrible for this teacher.... absolutely horrible.
At this point I’ve also met the high school students that I’ll be teaching and they are great! They’re really smart and the class is pretty laid back which is nice. One of the guys is OBSESSED with origami. My boss taught the class last week and confiscated the origami paper and so this week, they guy kept looking for it and even contemplated using tissue to origami. When we handed out scrap paper for them to write on he started to cut it down to size.... obsessed! lol The only thing that sucks is that this class is every Saturday evening.... there goes my social life :P Not that it exists currently but there is potential! :)
In fact.... continuing on this blog since my internet all of a sudden no longer works so I wasn’t able to post yesterday :S I did end up going out for Halloween. I went down to Sakae with a teacher that I taught with and we met up with the girl from my training group and her set of friends. On the way down, we also met a Brazilian guy dressed as a character from X-Men and he brought us to a gaijin (foreigner) bar that was completely rammed :) We stayed there for about 5 mins before heading to the Hub (another gaijin bar) to meet Frish and her friends. X-Men guy left but re-appeared a few times throughout the night. We hung out at the Hub until about 5 am, only leaving to go eat. There I met a guy from New York and Mao, my new Japanese friend. Mao has the coolest job selling guitars and drums all over the world and he had just gotten back from Moscow the night prior. He is also in charge of distributing to a bunch of European countries including Poland. He was there a few weeks ago and had receipts to prove it. We became fast friends :) See.... potential social life developing slowly! Too bad I don’t live in Nagoya though.... so many English-speakers there!
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