Day One - Tales of Terror in Toba

Where do I even begin? I left off on my train ride to Toba. As I mentioned, it was a BEAUTIFUL day even though we were supposed to be getting hit by a typhoon. After getting off the train in Tsu (which is the capital of the province that I'm living in) we walked to the Mie Prefectural Board of Education. It was 38 degrees farenheit, so needless to say, the whole group rolled up just DRIPPING sweat. Attractive. At the BOE we were greeted by our supervisors and carted off by car to our respective cities. My supervisor is a very nice woman by the name of Kae. Me, Kae and another co-worker Okuyama passed the hour and half car ride by asking each other introductory questions, but mainly we all sat silently. I didn't know what to say...I don't think they did either. When we arrived in Toba I was informed that we would be going directly to a hotel where the teachers from Toba High were having a meeting. Great, I'm dripping sweat and completely exhausted and I'm going to meet all of my co-workers. We find the room where the meeting is being held and Okuyama knocks on the door, sticks his head in and then ushers me in. I walk in to find a room of middle aged Japanese people silently staring at me. Ehhhhhh...akward. After a few seconds of silence I turn to Okuyama and say out of the corner of my mouth, "what do you want me to do?" He looks kind of concerned and says, "introduce yourself." At that moment I couldn't think of a SINGLE word in Japanese, so I turned to him again and whispered, "in English or Japanese??" He replied, "Japanese is better." I turn back to the group of people who have been silently watching this odd exchange between Okuyama and I and begin, "Konnichiwa gozaimasu, watashi wa Kurisu Janca desu. I am very happy to meet all of you and I am very glad to be teaching at Toba High this year."....Silence falls over the room again. They all continue to stare at me blankly. I turn to Kae and Okuyama for support and Okuyama says, "that's it?" I reply coyly, "yep, that's it." He then turns and translates the world's worst introduction to all of the teachers. As soon as he does, the look of recognition flashes over their faces and they all smile and nod. Okuyama pulls me out of the room and says, "okay, next room!" Dammit. This is going to be a long year. After butchering my second attempt, the teachers all leave the meeting and begin to smoke outside of the hotel. There are only about five who speak English, so they're all speaking Japanese, laughing and then looking at me. Great, I'm making friends already. As we're standing there waiting for Okuyama to finish his cigarette, one of the teachers starts talking to me in Japanese. Since I have no clue what he's saying I turn to Kae for an interpretation. She looks at me, half laughs and says, "he says that you are beautiful." Hmmm...I'm guessing from the cold and unwelcoming look on his face that his comment was somewhere along the lines of calling me a pretty-boy. Nice...I'm REALLY making friends now. AND THEN, Kae says to me, "he is the fencing instructor...he says that he would like to fence with you." This is DEFINATELY going to be a long year. After escaping death at the hands of my fencing friend, we proceeded to Toba High, which is the school I will be teaching at. Upon arriving, I met the rest of the staff and spoke to the teachers that I will be teaching English with. There's one guy, who has to be the friendliest person on earth. He's very considerate of other people and speaks fairly good English. There's a young guy who's only a year older than me. He sits beside me. Should be pretty good, he speaks English, Japanese, Swedish, German and something else. I'll probably rely on him to teach me Japanese. Then there's another guy who comes from Malaysia. He's an interesting character as far as I can tell. He spoke very little to me, but he invited me to his place to speak English with him and meet his family. Additionally, there is Kae and Okuyama and another teacher who I didn't meet. After picking up the rest of my luggage at the office we finally headed to my apartment for the first time. When we get there, the key won't open the lock. At this point I just grab my bike out of the car and start assembling it in the parking lot with the younger teacher, Sugimoto sensei. After a while they figure out the lock and we begin to load my things into the apartment. The other teachers work on unloading the car, while I head inside to find a place to store everything temporarily until I can unpack. As I head out to grab a second bag, I notice that Kae and Sugimoto are staring at me as though they are horrified. I look at them and say, "ummmm...what's up?" Kae responds distraughtly, "Janca-san, in Japan we do not wear our shoes in the house." I look down and realize that I had just cruised through the whole apartment with my shoes on and they had been watching me the whole time in disbelief. Great, now I'm infringing on their customs...what's next? I accidentally light a Japanese flag on fire? After everything was loaded into the apartment Kae and Sugimoto were waiting around for Okuyama to return with some lock grease before we went to grab a few groceries. They kind of stood in the doorway and watched as I jostled around inside of the apartment. Kae called in to me, "Janca-san may we come in?" I half-laughed invited them in. They politely took off their shoes and took about two steps into the apartment and looked around. I was continuing to move everything around and Kae calls to me again, "Janca-san can we sit down somewhere?" These people are serious about being polite. I turned around again and said to her, "of course! Come in, make yourself at home! You've lived here as long as I have." I don't think they saw the humour in it. I had better get used to that. Okuyama returned shortly with the lock grease, fixed the lock and then took us grocery shopping. After the teachers dropped me off, they said goodnight and I spent the rest of the evening unpacking and setting up my apartment to my liking. As I unpacked a million thoughts raced through my head. "What the hell am I doing here?" "This is not at all what I had expected." "I thought these people spoke English?!?!" "How am I going to survive for a year here?" "Why didn't I learn Japanese?!?!" Eventually I became completely exhausted and went to bed, hoping that the next day would be better...it got worse before it got better...but it got ALOT better!!

I'll leave you with a few images of Toba at night, more pics and stories to come...for now it's off to bed so that I'll have energy for another adventure tomorrow!