Some Stuff to Look At

Okay, so now I'm back to Blogger, from WordPress. Don't go back there. It's like a wasteland over there.

I'm a little less organized about this thing this time around, and have sometimes depended on other people's cameras during outings and such. Consequently, I'm not entirely ready with travel posts with pictures blah blah. But I have a few shots from miscellaneous recent experiences.

Okay, here's me in my totally cool sunglasses and "leather" jacket, both of which I snagged from the lost and found box at my Brighton job (after months of abandonment, I swear), and both of which make me very popular with the students here.

Here is a particularly ugly part of Kagoshima. It seems to be a power hub of some sort. I can assure you that the rest of the town does not look like this.

The day we went out to look at cherry blossoms, there was some sort of Korean festival happening outside Amu Plaza, with these traditional dancers.

Inside Amu Plaza's food court, you can get these ring cakes. I don't know what other people call them.

In case you were wondering how they're made, this is the end of the process. The cylinder of cake is rotated on a metal bar as the woman uses a long knife to cut at regular intervals. She then presumably slides the rings off.

On Easter, I went in to my office to use the Internets, because I hadn't gotten it installed in my room yet. As I was leaving, the nun in the main office stopped me and gave me an Easter egg that she'd made and painted all pretty. I know it looks like it says PLRP or something, but she told me that's "Hallelujah" in Japanese. This was verified by the students who say my egg.

Then when I got back to the dorm, there was another egg, made by the nun who runs the dorm, taped to my door. Aren't they sweet around here. Actually, the eggs were so pretty I felt a little bad eating them. But I didn't want them to go to waste.

Finally, here are a couple Engrish signs. I'm sure there will be plenty more where that comes from.

 My favorite is the above squid (above).

Don't forget your crutches.

Cherry Blossoms and Around Town

When I got here was just about the time the famous cherry blossoms were going to come out. I managed to fire off a few shots of them around town a couple weeks ago.

Here are some shots of the trees by the river. This park is apparently a major spot for viewing cherry blossoms on regular days and during whatever cherry blossom festival the city has, and I guess other festivals, too. I'm told that people will camp out here the night before (or chief officers will send their underlings) to hold their group's spot for the next day's festivities. Jeez.




In the park is this kind of hideous statue, which is a memorial to the major eruption of Mt. Sakurajima in 1914, where a rare lava eruption occurred after some wicked earthquakes, and the lava kept flowing for months. Eventually it connected the island the volcano is on to the Kyushu mainland, swallowing up some smaller islands in the process. Don't worry, though. Although the volcano erupts almost daily, it's just ash. I'm safe.



Cherry blossoms much?




A kind English-speaking Japanese woman stopped us while I was taking Louise's picture and asked, "Shall I take your picture together?" Louise is the other dorm teacher, who is also new. She's from Gold Coast, Australia, one of the cities I considered going to grad school in.



Across the river you can get a good view, too. The picture on the right shows a museum that I'll probably end up going to.




Here are some cherry blossoms right outside my dorm room.



And there are a few blossoming trees in front of the school.



Down in the suburb of Toso, from my window, you can see the one lonely tree.



The cherry blossom season is a fleeting one, which is why the people love it so much. There have been heavy winds and rain over the past few weeks, so they'll be gone soon. Until next year.

It's like, how much more formal could this be?

And the answer is none. None more formal.

When I first got here, I was told that after a few days I would have to attend a formal employment ceremony. At some point later, I was told it would take about an hour, and there would be some paperwork involved. But unfortunately that's all I was told. For some reason, what I pictured was sitting at a desk with someone, filling out tax forms and information forms and so forth, either in English or with a translator helping me, and maybe something like someone saying some official welcome, blah blah blah.

I was kind of wrong, though. I think I just didn't grasp the notion of Japan and ceremonies before I came here. There were no ceremonies in Korea for me to attend. Anyway, that morning I was like, well, I'll wear my black suit just in case, and if I'm overdressed, I can just take the jacket off. Ha. I think it's possible to never be overdressed over here, especially if you're foreign. I was not only one of only two people not wearing only black, white, and grey suits/shirts (I felt a certain kinship with the Japanese woman wearing a bright red blazer), but I was also the only person not wearing black leather shoes. My shoes were green tweed. Jeez.

Anyway, I was escorted to the conference room by one of our English secretaries, and there were like thirty Japanese people in there, some sitting around a big conference U-desk setup, and others just in a row of chairs at the back. There was a podium and a few chairs set off to each side at the front. I then realized it was a formal ceremony for the whole damn school, all new employees, and then I got very scared.

At first I didn't know if we could sit anywhere, or at a designated spot, so I picked a chair and used nonverbal communication to ask if we could sit where we wanted, and the emcee went over to check the name on the giant envelope full of papers. By chance, I'd chosen the one with my name on it. Then once all the people and officials got there, we started a few minutes ahead of schedule (though, actually, I was told that that's a rare occurrence. Even if everyone is present ten minutes prior to start time, they tend to wait until precisely the scheduled time to start).

First, some high-level nun gave a bit of a speech, with lots of bowing back and forth between herself and us, the audience (we stayed seated while bowing). Then she called each of us up to the front in turn, where she presented an official certificate of employment. I was fifth, and I'm not sure if that was a strategic decision or not, but it did allow me to see what the hell to do, but not have to wait so long to go that I freaked out. So the procedure was this: the nun calls your name, you stand up gracefully (most people said "hai" as they got up, but I forgot), walk to the front and off to the side a little, bow somewhat deeply to the college officials off to the other side, walk to the front of the podium, bow to the high-level nun, and step forward. She says whatever is written on the document, then hands it to you. You take it, first with your right hand, then left, step back, bow again, and then turn to bow a final time to the officials. Jezum. Then  you return to your seat. Some people snuck in an extra bow, and others chose to do one fewer, but I managed to get the average number of bows in.
After that, there were some very long speeches that of course I didn't understand at all, done by the college president, another nun, the emcee dude (whose position I don't know), again with the other high-level nun, and maybe the vice-president of the school. I blocked a lot of it out. After all those speeches, replete with bows naturally, the people in the back row got to leave. And I was like double ewe tea eff. Why do I have to stay?

Anyway, until then I had managed to not get really, really scared, because we were mostly just listening. I was the only person fidgeting a lot and not sitting with my feet together and pointing directly in front of me, though. This thing was so damn boring. But once those ten or so people, including my kindred spirit daring to wear A color, left the room, I felt like it was about to get seriously frustrating. And it did. Some other dude got up to the podium and started referring to all the documents. At first I was trying to look at the page he was referring to, just to be polite, and was helped by my Japanese neighbors, but after a while it seemed like a total waste of time. So I just sat there, hoping really hard that we weren't expected to sit there and fill out those forms right away. What made the whole situation worse was that I was told that it would last an hour or maybe less, so I was looking at the clock going, okay, just 15-20 more minutes, blah blah blah, but then we didn't get out of there until about an hour and 15 minutes.

Luckily, we were all sent to do the forms on our own time (with some deadline unknown to me), but it seems to me like a special concession could have been made, like tell Pugh sensei that she can go with the first group of deserters so she doesn't have to waste tons of time getting explained shit in a foreign language. But they seem to be sticklers here. Maybe they were expecting me to be like, hey, can I go? But of course that level of formality can be quite scary to people who are casual 24/7, and I didn't want to do something like violate the Prime Directive. Create an international incident.
This was the worst of the formal ceremonies I had to endure during my orientation here, but it wasn't the only one. There was also the faculty meeting, where the new teachers were introduced and had to make a small speech, a welcome ceremony for the new students where we had to sing a HYMN in Latin, a faculty welcome lunch where again the new teachers were introduced and had to make a speech, and an awards ceremony for the second year students (though this last one was decidedly less formal). In coming months we'll have formal ceremonies like the Procession of Our Lady (this one sounds like the biggest drag ever), parents' orientation day, probably some others, and then what I imagine is the longest and most formal, graduation ceremony. Joy.

My New Living Quarters

Actually, I got this job at a pretty good time, because they were just finishing a renovation of the dorm when I arrived. Consequently, my room was not ready for the first couple of days, so they housed me in an apartment used for visiting international teachers and visiting clergymen and so forth, located in one of the academic buildings. That place was like a palace compared to what I'm living in now. I took some pictures just for comparison's sake. Sorry all the photos are sideways. I took these from my iPad because my camera used up its batteries and I didn't have a chance to get more within the first couple days here. So even though these photos are rightside up in my computer, apparently WordPress is really, really stupid. I might actually switch back to Blogger if I don't figure out how to deal [[editor's note: done and done]]. Anyway, this was a two bedroom apartment, but one of the bedrooms was locked to me. The apartment had a huge living slash dining room area and a decent sized kitchen with a stove, oven, toaster oven, etc. and a little laundry room. The genkan--the little foyer where you leave your shoes--has a cabinet full of Dior house slippers. Posh.



This is just the hallway, with the locked bedroom on the right (top), and my bedroom in the back.

The living room furniture is kind of ridiculous.

I think the dishrack-looking this is actually some sort of dishwasher, dish sanitizer, or dish quick-dryer. I didn't ask.

 

There were enough dishes to feed an army on, for some reason. In the living room above, you can see a whole giant cabinet full of dishes, plus there's this one in the kitchen. There was only one bed in my room, and I assume it's the same for the other one, so I don't know what they're thinking here.

 

Notice that even in the place where nuns and priests and stuff stay, there are cute things. It's Japan.

But the place was also kind of like a museum. There were glass cases in the bedroom and living room with all these figurines and stuff like that with little labels.

The bathroom had a Western bath/shower and toilet, but the toilet actually had a cover that not only covered the lid, but also the seat, so you sit on nice fuzzy cloth instead of on the plastic. Seems unsanitary, but I guess they only expect one person to use it at a time, then they wash it before someone else visits.

These photos are bit out of order, but you get the idea. Wordpress no bueno.

Here I made a little floor plan of my permanent room in the dorm with my iPad. Not to scale so much, but pretty close.

So the new dorm rooms are all IKEAed out, with no more tatami mat floor, just fake wood, and very simple but sleek storage closets and drawers, bookcases, cabinets, and desks. Also new light fixtures. Some of the rooms didn't get renovated and are now used for storage, and they look waay dated. I'm glad for a nice modern room. The only downside of the renovation is that the Japanese bath that I was so looking forward to in my bathroom was taken out. The reason for this, I'm inferring, is that apparently because Japanese people don't BATHE in the bath, they only soak with already clean bodies, so it's impossible to put the shower head over the bath, like we do. So the only other place to put a shower (imagine the bath taking up the lower third of the bathroom I've drawn above) where the "dirty" water won't get into the bath is in front of the sink, on the left wall there. So I guess that's what they did up until this year. But the problem with THAT, for Western teachers, is that on that wall is a window (which I forgot to draw), so the shower head is only at like waist height, under the window. So that's bad for us.

This is turning into a bathroom blog, but I'm interested in bathrooms, so neener neener. Anyway, the solution was to remove the bath and put in a new shower on the right wall. But let me tell you why that's retarded. The shower on the right--and by the way, as in my Korean bathrooms, this bathroom is just a wet room, with no separation between the shower area and the sink, no curtain/door, etc.--anway, the shower head on the right is set up at the right height for a proper Western shower, but it also happens to be connected to the building's main water supply, and the hot water is only turned on during the students' bath time, from like 7-9pm or whatever, and during the dish-washing time after meals. So the two teachers would either have to take evening showers and go against their Western routines, or take a cold shower in the morning. Because of teacher complaints about that situation in the past, though, they finally set up an independent water heater for each of the teacher rooms, but of course those are connected to the old showers, the ones set below the window. Ner. In my bathroom, however, there is a shower mount high up on the wall by the lower left corner there, and the independently heated shower head does reach over there, so that's how I manage a hot shower in the morning. I don't know what the deal is with Louise, the Australian teacher, but she was telling me she's had shower troubles so far. Hope she gets it all squared away.

Right.

So.

Pictures of my new dorm room.

The genkan has room for all my shoes, and having a clothes bar above it is handy, also, for jackets, and now I've got an umbrella hanging there, too.

The toilet is special. It gets its own room. We actually had that in my college bathrooms, too, but the students don't get their own bathrooms here. Just the two teachers.

So here's that whole shower setup I was talking about. You can see where the shower head used to be, under the window, but now I've got in high enough in the corner. That placement would not be acceptable in Japan if there were a bathtub underneath it. I assume. The other shower is on the wall opposite, but I didn't bother to take a picture. It's the same type of shower.

There is a seriousass amount of storage in this room. The two closets on the left are proper closets with a clothes bar in each one, and the big one on the right has a shelf in the middle, and it's got a vacuum and all my empty luggage in there, plus linens. And then there are drawers below the closets and cabinets above. Except for the drawers, these units are all wicked deep, like three feet back. This is not to mention I have a desk, a tall bookcase, and a little cabinet. There's no way I could ever have enough stuff to fill all this.

Two of the walls are floor to ceiling windows or glass doors that lead out onto the really narrow balcony that runs along the whole building. It makes it really bright in here, especially since the front wall (the short wall with the doors) is facing directly east.

Here are some views from my room. I'm on the fifth floor, so it's quite a view, especially of Mt. Sakarujima across Kinko Bay. It's one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and it spews ash pretty much daily now. More in the summer.



The brown and white building on the right below is my school. You can see a the side of a statue of Mary at the top.

Finally, here are a couple shots of the city at night. There are quite a lot of lights, and even ol' Mary is lit up.