I know it's been a couple of weeks since my last post about my first weekend in Japan, but here is the final part in the series; training week at Souken.
You may remember me mentioning Souken before, and now I'll attempt to explain what souken is. First; Souken is the channel through which all AETs are employed, they hire us, they pay us, and they train us. An easy comparison would be a school district office in the US, but souken is a little bit more than that here. To be honest, I don't know the full extent of what happens at souken, but I know they develop curriculum, train teachers, do educational research, and about a million other things to make the schools run well in Mito. Hopefully that clears things up on the matter of Souken (maybe?).
Monday morning, the new AETs all met up with the Souken staff (Mr. Hosoya, Ms. Haginoya, Holly Reeves, and Annalisa Briggs) at City hall to register as residents and sign a bunch of papers. I remember sitting at the counter being told repeatedly to sign and initial and initial and sign and having a small anxiety attack over what on earth all these papers I had signed said (This anxiety has dwindled with each stack of papers to receive my signature). After getting everyone squared away at city hall, we all walked to Mito station to catch a bus to the Kencho building (Prefectural Government building) to set up our bank accounts. I'm sure you could have guessed, but setting up our bank accounts required even more signatures and hankos. A hanko is basically a bamboo stamp of your name in Japanese, it's the Japanese version of a signature. Each AET received a hanko prepared by the Souken staff in the morning at city hall.
Once our bank accounts had been set up we walked to the Souken building for an overview of the week's training schedule.
After Monday's training I went with Josh and Yukiko, some of my AET buddies, to get a cell phone set up (more signatures). This was relatively painless, except that the cell phone companies in Japan have decided to stop allowing people with a one year visa to pay for their phone on a two year monthly contract. This meant I had to pay $700 up front for my phone, but hey, at least now I own it!
We finished off the night with some great ramen at the station before catching the bus back home.
Tuesday I rode my bike to the souken building, not too bad on the way there; it's about 3 km away from my house, and mostly downhill. We had training from 8:30-5:00, but because of Jet lag and the east facing window in my entryway/kitchen/bedroom, I was up and ready to go quite a bit early and made it to souken with plenty of time to hit the local Konbini for some breakfast.
After training I made the 3 km bike ride (mostly uphill this time) back home and went with Daleth (Neighbor, AET buddy, all-around cool dude) to meet up with Mason (former roommate, AET, buddy, all-around cool dude) for some star gazing. When the stargazing didn't work out, we made our way back to my apartment and watched Japanese TV and talked for a while.
Wednesday was our shadow day, probably my favorite day of training.
I got to shadow Jordan Powell who is in his 3rd year as an AET at Sannomaru Elementary School. As you can guess, shadow day means we got to observe and follow Jordan around all day. This was by far the most helpful part of training in terms of learning how to be a teacher and putting my mind at ease as to whether or not I knew what I was doing. Two other new AETs were shadowing Jordan with me; Lisa McIlroy, and Nathaniel Nalley. Jordan taught several classes and had us join in teaching introductions by giving examples and practicing with the students. In between classes he showed us some helpful tools, talked through what he was doing in class and why, and taught us some playground Japanese. I was pretty nervous as to what I was going to do when training ended and I was standing in front of a class full of students with no teaching experience, but seeing Jordan teach and his advice really made me feel prepared.
Thursday was another training day at souken. I forgot to mention earlier that I was wearing a suit for this entire week of training, which made biking that much more intense. I definitely do not recommend biking in a suit ever.
We started with small group discussions about our shadowing experiences, and then shared tips and ideas with the rest of the group.
Today Holly (AET leader), who was training us with the help of Annalisa (AET leader), asked if anyone would be willing to give a speech in Japanese on behalf of the new AETs to the board of education in our entrance ceremony the next day. For a while nobody said any thing or really even moved, so I went ahead and raised my hand with brazen Wheat family unsubstantiated confidence and volunteered (as tribute). NOTE: I did not then, nor do I now speak Japanese; much less well enough to give a speech to the superintendent of Mito city schools and other top school board officials.
After training I met up with several of the other AETs to go to an onsen for dinner and relaxation. An onsen is basically a public bath house with a bunch of different types of baths. They have a sauna, a cold pool, a silt pool, individual tubs, an electro-pool (not sure what to call it), a scented pool, a carbonated pool, some jet pools, basically all of the kinds of hot tubs you can think of. they're divided by gender, and everyone showers before and after bathing to keep the water from getting disgusting. It's definitely one of the more relaxing experiences you can have in Japan, also, it's the cleanest I think I've ever felt (2 showers and 2 hours of bathing).
Friday I took the bus to Souken for training and the entrance ceremony.
This ceremony was all in Japanese and involved us receiving a certificate from the superintendent, Honda-Sensei and bowing a lot.
I gave my speech during the ceremony and everyone seemed to be following along and understanding what I was saying, a good sign. Seeing as I don't speak Japanese, I was reading a speech I had written in English, and our boss, Mr. Hosoya, had translated into Japanese for me. Luckily, Japanese pronunciation is relatively simple, each character representing a syllable that more or less always sounds the same (Unlike characters in the English alphabet that can represent whatever sound they want).
After the ceremony, we had our final training session before being picked up by some of the administrative staff at our schools. I got picked up by my Kyoto-sensei (Vice principal) and driven to my School. Most of the teachers were still in class when I arrived but a few were in the teacher's room to show me my desk and then give me a tour of the school. When all of the teachers returned to the teachers room after the students went home, we had a meeting concerning the PTA day coming up on Sunday (I think) at the end of which I introduced myself to everyone in Japanese. After a quick meeting with the fourth grade teachers to plan out our first lesson, I walked home. My first time at my new school!
Mason picked me up for dinner that evening, we had Indian curry (possibly Nepalese) at Ram's and had a great time of catching up. After dinner we stopped by WondeRex, which is basically a thrift store (They're much cleaner here) and I found a game boy color for $5.
Saturday I went on an expedition to Hitachi Seaside Park to find their disc golf course. In order to get there, I took a bus, then a train, then another bus. The course was pretty fun, though it seemed really easy until I found out from the only other disc golfer on the course that day that I was cheating. Japanese disc golf courses are made for 150 class discs, I was throwing much heavier 170 class discs. I asked him where to buy 150 class discs and his best suggestion was the internet. Hitachi Seaside Park is a really beautiful place, after disc golf I hiked to the top of a hill covered in blue flowers and had a great view of the mountains to the west and the ocean to the east.
I bussed and trained back to Mito station then walked to the post office to pick up my bank card. I figured I'd wait for the bus at the stop across the street from the post office, but when I had been standing there for 10 minutes with no bus in sight decided to walk to the next stop. About 100 steps after leaving the bus stop, I saw my bus go by. So I figured I'd wait at the next stop for the NEXT bus; once again though, after ten minutes or so I decided to walk to the next stop again (the bus schedule said a bus should have come by then) and yet again, a little bit after leaving the bus stop, there goes the number 3 bus. At this point I was starting to get slightly frustrated, and in the shadows of the buildings it was getting kind of cold, so I decided to stop in at a coffee shop and roaster I had seen from the bus to renew my strength and resolve. The coffee was great and they even had Côte d'Or chocolate imported from Belgium! (This is my new favorite coffee shop). When I left Maruni (coffee shop's name) And continued down the street towards the next bus station I kept hearing my name from what turned out to be the disc golfer from earlier, he had seen my name on my discs. We talked for a little bit about where we each lived and what our jobs were. Note: This would not be the last time I'd run into someone in Mito (a city of nearly 300,000) I had just seen way out at Hitachi Seaside Park. Anyway, as I was talking with him I saw the number 3 bus go by again... I went to the next stop, and then the next, and then stopped at 7-11 for some water (Bus went by as I came out of the store). Until finally (almost half of the way home) I just decided to call Mason (who was planning on picking me up at my house to play Catan with some others at his house) and ask if he could pick me up where I was instead. The end of this ridiculous 2 hour ordeal. Lesson learned: patience, young grasshopper. Busses come to those who wait.
I finished off the week playing Settlers of Catan with Mason, Carmon, Jordan, Abby (AET), Julia (AET), and Anna. As always, I lost, but it was tons of fun and a great way to finish off my first week working in Mito!
Thanks for reading! This is the end of my series about my transition (which is still ongoing) to Japan, but just the beginning of my adventures here! I plan to write frequently about my life, travels, and faith while in Japan! I hope you'll stay tuned!
