First day on the job

This post will have to be short because I'm sitting in the office room of my base school. I forgot to bring the SD adapter for the sony stick, so no pictures until tomorrow. However, a quick summary of what happened today.

I woke up around 6 am and took a nice long shower. I spent that time perfecting my self introduction, as well as trying to recall various teachers' names. I was ready by 7:25 and left for the bus station. Urahama sensei met me at my bus station, telling me which bus and how to read the chart. It didn't make any sense to me because all the locations were in kanji. I just figured to use the audio announcements when I got on the bus.

When the bus came I made my first mistake, I forgot to take a ticket. I asked the bus driver if this was the bus that went to the school and to help me identify the stop I needed. He gave me a hai-o and we went on our way. The bus was pretty empty, with just me and a old man. The old guy left a stop later, leaving me alone with my thoughts. As we got closer to my designated bus stop, I saw Urahama-sensei waiting for me. I got off and fumbled through the communication to find out how much I needed to pay. I didn't have change so I spent the next minute trying to decipher what the bus driver was explaining to me on how to get around that. A minute seemed like an hour when you have an non-existant japanese ability trying to listen to Goto-ben/Japanese. The word bus is actually something completely different in Goto-ben. It turned out all I had to do was put in some coins in a slot that gave change. I probably gave him more than what was asked.

My desk

When I arrived at the school, I hazily retraced my steps from last Thursday on getting to the teacher's office. From there, I was met with the Kyoto sensei, or head teacher. The only people here are the principal, vice principal, english teacher, special ed teacher, and me. So the office was pretty empty.

I was taken by the Kyoto sensei to the nearby port where I spent the morning watching the school having their annual boat race (perron). It was broken up into several heats: elementary, jr. high, high school, and ladies team. The english teacher came by later to check up on me. From what I understand, this is part of the Odon (one of Japan's 3 major holidays). At the end of this Odon, they have a special island thing of the boat racing. It is such a big thing here that people lined up along the shore just to watch. I lucked out and got to sit in the teacher's tent near the announcers. The races lasted until 11:30.

These are various shots of the first heat of every class. The elementary students didn't do a race, just paddled over by the crowd where they were cheered on.

The english teacher then took me to the local convenience store where I picked up lunch. After lunch, he took me around the school showing me all the rooms. For 63 kids, it's a fairly large building. They only have 3 homerooms, but they also have music, art, industrial art, cooking, home ec, etc rooms. This activity lasted until 3:45 ish where I'm writing this thing now.

I want to get internet at home, but I dont see where I could call the company before 5pm, I guess I'll have to manage.