HOLY CRAP, JAPAN!

 When I was a junior in college, sitting in Dr. Richard Bohr's Japanese history class, it seemed like this moment would never come.  At first it seemed like the sort of casual remark professors throw out there all the time, 'Oh hey Andrew, you should really think about going abroad after you graduate,' or, 'You know, you'd make a really good teacher, why don't you think about getting into education after graduation?'  Then, instead of writing your history paper, you start thinking, maybe that could happen... maybe I should look into this?  Then before you know it, you're signed up for you second semester of Japanese language classes, you  have two job interviews for two different schools in Japan, and you're going to graduate in a couple of months, but it is still just something that you only might do.  Then it gets a little more real when you get accepted to a program, then a little more real when you buy your one way ticket to a foreign country, then a little more real when you graduate, then a little more real when you start packing, and you think, 'I can't believe this is actually happening!'  Then you get to the airport, and you spend 24 hours traveling and you go through customs and immigration, and it still hasn't really sunk in yet that you are actually there, that this is actually happening.  I figured, once I woke up the next day and looked out the window of my apartment that it would sink in.  


Well, I woke up that first day and well, it didn't really sink in.


During that first full day, my fellow newly arrived English teach John and I walked from our apartment to Gotemba Beach to join the teachers we would be learning from and eventually replacing at the Orden Bunka Center in Tsu for a beach barbeque.  We sat on the beach, ate delicious food and drank delicious beer for a couple of hours, and it still didn't really sink in that I was looking at the great Pacific Ocean from the wrong side!  Not even seeing a pair of freshly caught squid on the grill really brought home the fact that I was going to be in Japan for a whole freaking year!  


Well, that was Saturday, and its Tuesday night now, and I wish I could tell you that it has finally sunken in, but that would be a big 'ole lie.  John and I just finished our second full day of training, we have sat through several teaching lectures, observed several different classes, and are well on our way to official becoming teachers at the Orden Bunka Center, and I still can't wrap my brain around the fact that I will be here for more than a year.  That concept is as foreign as the country in which I'm writing this post.


Forgive me for a moment while I go all Minnesotan for a while here and talk about the weather.  Tsu is HOT!  Ludicrously hot.  Crazy hot.  Waaaaaaay hotter then I expected.  I knew I was moving south, and I knew Tsu was right on the Pacific, but I was totally unprepared for just how hot and humid this place is.  Tomorrow's forecast is 86 degrees F, with 80% humidity.  Minnesota is hot and humid in the summer, but this is just ridiculous.  It is so hot here, that we sit and sweat in our apartment with the air conditioning on high!


John and I don't yet have bikes, so we walk everywhere we need to go, so the heat and humidity make for pretty sweaty days.  Its so bad that we wear gym clothes to walk to work and change into work clothes when we get there because even early in the morning we'd sweat right through our clothes.  The plus side is the society has developed to the point where wiping one's self down with a towel is perfectly acceptable in public and fans are the new fun accessory.  So thats cool.