8-17
Today was a pretty busy day. I got up and met Harada san and she took me to the city office where I met the BOE people in charge of me. I also met the mayor and he seemed really nice. Then I got showed around to the other six schools that I will be working for. For lunch, I and Harada san went to this restaurant/store in the down. It was really good and had the best rice and nigiri I have had in Japan. I am happy that the rice is so good here. After that I went to the post office with Harada san and set up my bank account. Then I went back to the middle school that I will be going tomorrow to see the English teachers. Today was okay, but for the most part I did not understand more than half of the things said to me. I was a little confused at times. But, I guess that will get better as time goes on. They all seem really nice and complemented me often on my Japanese ability; though, I do not think that I am that good at it. I did not however need to resort for English except for a few times. I also went to Kutchan to buy another mattress pad and some food like flour and oil. I will hopefully get my refrigerator tomorrow, and I am now waiting for my luggage to get here. I really want to wash my clothes, hopefully tomorrow. I don’t know if I am going to buy a TV yet, but I do not think I will as soon as my internet gets here I should be okay. I still don’t know what I am going to do with my other two rooms. I hope I can make bread; I just need to find yeast in the market.

8-19
Today was my first lesson to class 3-A. it was a little slow at first, but by the end everybody eventually joined in. After that I did planning for lessons until lunch. We had this stuff called ja-ja ramen I believe. It was ground pork, onions, and I believe white asparagus on the side of some cooked ramen noodles, it was pretty good. Then after lunch I had to go over to Onari elementary to do a planning lesson with the teachers there. It was pretty nice, but the school is about 25 minutes away, and they have like only 12 students in the whole school for 6 grades. I didn’t think that that small of a school would still be open, but there are. Then I went to the BOE to get some help with setting up my internet at my home. After that I had to go to Homac and Max Value to get some more food, and some laundry hanging supplies. I really like driving in Japan, it is pretty relaxing. The car is smaller and my foot gets a little stiff, but it is very enjoyable. I still need to remember not to hit the wiper though. While I was driving, I had the radio on and there was a Spanish program teaching Japanese listeners Spanish idioms of the day. I thought that it was nice to see how people would communicate in both Spanish and Japanese in the program. Japan has many weaker products compared to America. For one, the medicine is much weaker here unless you get a prescription. The washing machines take a lot less loads and can only fit like three or four shirts at a time. Towels do not dry at all here. They seem to be made of a material that can only hold like half of its weight or less in water. Even the huge blanket size ones, called towelkets do not dry you off. I made dinner tonight; however, and I did find one thing that was stronger in Japan than in America, the propane gas stoves. The burners were very hot and like boiled a pot of water in a couple of minutes and started to cook my tomatoes and onions down in minutes for my sauce for my noodles. I hope that maybe all this cooking in Japan will be able to let me make a guide or a book or something for people in Japan to cook actual American style, or for Americans to cook the foods they are used to in Japan. I have planning all day tomorrow and no teaching, so I hope I have some fun. I have to start thinking about where I want to go for the big 5 day weekend in the middle of September. There is about four weeks or weekends in Japan that are very long, in America we do not have any national holidays that I can think of that are consecutive and have places closed on them. In Japan, they also have the happy Monday system for holidays that fall on Sunday so people get another day off.

8-20
Today I had planning all day. I got my lesson planning done for next week I think unless I am given another one. I still have to plan for things at the elementary, but they said they wanted to plan for that on Monday afternoon. It was a long day, and I had to go to the post office and the BOE after work. I still do not know why I had to go to the post office so many times to refill and fill out some more forms. I did not see what the problem was. I have to go there again soon to set up an automatic withdrawal in order to pay for my internet every month. I had to go to the BOE for my internet. Apparently the people at the internet company couldn’t find my apartment when I went to the English support center, but in the Japanese part they could, through the help of Mr. Kobayashi, they were able to and it seems that I will be able to get the internet set up faster that what the English support was saying. I am just so confused about the whole matter. I still have to fax my post office account info to the people at the company so I can get paid. I am still waiting on the people at the cell phone company to tell me how exactly I am going to pay my phone bill. This is really the most frustrating part, not knowing how I am going to pay my bills and not understanding most of the Japanese involved. I have found that Japan is a hugely bureaucratic country, much more so than America, and it can be so confusing. There is a party tomorrow with the teachers from the high school and I am going to go to that, with one of the English teachers taking me to the place. It’s going to be weird since I don’t drink. The Japanese love to drink in these types of environments. Then next week, I have another welcoming party through the BOE. I hope everything goes okay.

8-22-09
The party last night was a pretty nice look inside Japanese culture. I didn’t drink, but everybody except for the drivers seemed to. It was funny to see just how red-faced some Japanese get when they drink a lot. I have never seen that actually happen, though I have heard about it from others. The food was pretty good, though another thing that I am going to miss here in Japan is good cheese. For the most part the cheese here looks and taste like cheese products, like Velveeta or Kraft singles. Other than that it was very good. There was actually a cheese egg roll sort of thing that had cheese in the middle of an egg roll skin and then deep fried. People really loosened up at the party. I had been thinking that the people that I had seen in the school were just very quiet and the guy across from me didn’t like me too much, but after they started drinking it really changed. It was just so drastic. It was very nice to see that everyone that worked at the school was invited and like there was no class distinction at the party, or even at work. The groundskeepers and tea ladies all are treated the same as the principal or any other teacher. I kind of like that sort of job equality. It seems to be sort of like that, that even though there is job and class distinction, many people do not seem to feel superiority to them or at least I guess look down upon people like one sometimes does in America. A good example of would be people looking down on fast-food workers or garbage men. I also saw a women driving and using farm equipment. Not very strange, just the first time I had seen a woman doing that anywhere. It would not likely happen in the United States. Tomorrow I think I will be driving up to Sapporo. I want to do this while it isn’t snowy so I can see how the drive is. It’s about two hours away, but I like driving around here. The mountains and the valleys are just so beautiful right now.

8-23-09
Today I went to Sapporo. It was about a 2 hours drive form where I live, but it wasn’t that bad. It was only 100 km or so but took longer because it went through the mountains and twisted up and down. I went to the Esta building there and it was basically like a one stop building. I went to the Bic Camera store there and got a customer card and looked around. I need some blank CD’s for the car so I got those. I had to park in a complex where the cars were put into like a vending machine style that you put your car in got out and it rotated the car around for 35 others cars to get in. I guess this saves more space than a traditional parking structure. It was a little expensive it was about 8 bucks for two hours parking. I went to the 100 yen store and got a nice little plastic bowl. I got one the last time I came to Japan and it was very good and useful. On the bottom floor there was a food market with a whole bunch of different stores. They had all sorts of food from yakiniku and tempura to skewers and sushi and Hokkaido specialty products. They even had a small grocery. These floors are typical in large cities in multifloored large buildings. It was a pretty fun day. The only thing I hate about driving is that there really needs to be a turning lane in the middle of the road. There is not one here and people just stop and have others go around them. I was really scared and annoyed when I had to go around people like every couple hundred meters or so. Sapporo was built on a grid system and that made it much more likeable. I had lunch at Kentucky fried chicken to just see the difference and it was a little better here, but everyone knows that in Kentucky there is much better fried chicken than KFC.


8-25-09
I have taught more and more in the past days. I had three lessons today, and now I have done my introduction lessons to all the classes in the middle school. I have four classes tomorrow and I hope they go well. The third year students are on the field trip to I do not know where. I did not find out. They will be gone for the rest of the week. Today was okay, but apparently there was some confusion in my schedule. My company told me to spend lunch with 1B but there was some confusion and they said it was moved to Friday, but I am going to the elementary school then. Oh well. I spent some time with the students after school at some of their clubs. There was five main clubs that I saw. One was band and I played the tuba in it for a while. It was fun, but there were only girls, in it. I wonder if in Japan playing band music and instruments is seen as a female activity. I wonder if there are any third year males in the club because they are not there. Then there was the sports clubs, track and field, soccer, baseball, and basketball. I watched them and interacted with the baseball club because they didn’t seem to have the teacher close by. Then at the end I spoke with some of the girls from second I think as they were coming down the school road to go home. They asked me questions like my favorite color and singers. And I asked them about stuff as well. It was pretty fun today. I really wish I had my internet at home. Its getting a little cooler and it is getting to be so beautiful here. The cool air is great. Last night, I turned off my fan because I was getting cold because I have the windows open for aeration. I think that is a good sign. I just do not know how winter is going to be here. I looked on Wikipedia and saw the average snowfall in inches for Sapporo in like January and February and it’s like 60 or something inches in a month. I just hope that I do not have to shovel a tunnel for my car to get out of the driveway in the mornings. I think I will try the drive to Hakodate to see how the drive is. Sapporo was pretty nice, but I want to try the other city then. There is a five day weekend coming up at the end of September and I want to go somewhere or at least do something for it.