Deer in the headlights of life

At our predeparture in Chicago, one of the alumni who was running the proceedings turned to us at the end, and reminded us "at the end of every day, just remember: you're one day closer to the end. And that goes for the good ones, as well as the bad."

I did not plan this week well, basic problem. The world is full of labor and time saving conveniences, Japan perhaps more so than many other parts. I, in my infinite wisdom, ESCHEW THEM ALL for my first week in this country. Whatever compelled me to decide to start cooking all my meals from scratch right out the gate...

The experience has been good, although I am currently about 30 seconds away from curling up in a ball on my for-fucks-sake-finally clean floor with my army of ant roommates, and letting them eat me. I really do think I can cook 3 meals a day, relatively functionally. The issue is entirely one of planning. You see, Bento-lunches require mostly everything that goes into it to be tasty at room temperature, since you don't refrigerate them, and thus I have been largely flying by the seat of my pants on what the hell to do every morning. Also, preparing two meals at once is...surprisingly difficult. So lessons for next week! Sit down on the weekend, figure out what you're eating for the week, and when you're going shopping for what ingredients, or you will probably snap and throw yourself on the nearest daigumo web. (dai = big, gumo = spider, my isn't Japanese logical?).

P.S. they are enormous. I threw a 1-yen coin at the web out behind my house and it stuck. Now 1-yen coins are about as substantial as jello is nutritious but still man, what the hell!

I am starting to understand the whole shopping thing though. Another JET alumni I talked to at my interview had done a similar route up to the program, the whole home stay in college, veteran of seedy Tokyo underbelly, can sleep through dense traffic on a public park bench, "I get Japan, of course I do" mindset. But right before I actually went in to the "interview" portion of the show he started telling me about how he still went through culture shock, not because Japan was so foreign and different, but because he thought he understood Japan, and it turns out there were whole facets of the culture that his host family was always taking care of for him. He went through culture shock, because he didn't realize that living in Japan, and just being in Japan, require two entirely different levels of effort. There is an entire aisle at my local supermarket for various types of seaweed. This being a tropical island, there is a fish section containing a bright blue fish literally the size of my torso (I'll get a photo if the big blue bastard is still around tomorrow when I go shopping).

I also did my first round of laundry yesterday and today, which is a whole new set of time management challenges. Japan doesn't believe in dryers. Just doesn't. Why use a dryer when there's a whole bright shining world of free air and sun to do the drying for you? They do have a point. But what this means for the intrepid newly minted citizen of Kikai island, is that suddenly the weather becomes fascinating, because you have to time your laundry for days with a) no rain and ideally b) no cloud cover, so that you can get the sun involved. Yesterday I did pretty well. Stuff was dry by the time I came home from work. Today...not so much. My predecessor seems to have just used one of her spare bedrooms for drying clothes. I'm using it as a fallback for now, but there is just something so seductive about line drying in the great out doors.

Life has become, in very short order, one great big time management puzzle.

I'm exhausted, despite it only being 8:30ish and having skipped my daily swim because I am suddenly TERRIFIED OF THE OCEAN after reading about stonefish and black-headed sea snakes. Basically, the former is a little poisonous landmine, and the other is perhaps the single most poisonous things floating around out there. Now neither is overtly aggressive, and they really don't pose much of a threat unless you actively, well, poke them. But accounts of people who have accidentally stepped on stonefish, while rarely fatal, usually go something like "subject requested that his leg be amputated, rather than have to deal with the pain for a moment longer". It is apparently just about the most painful thing ever. The sea snakes aren't really an issue. Apparently they're 2-10 times more venomous than cobras, but god or evolution has a sense of humor, and put their fangs way in the back of their mouthes, so that 9 times out of 10, even when they do bite you (which is rare to begin with) the poison doesn't even get near your skin.

Oh but the ocean is so fun. Literally teeming with things that want me dead (didn't even get started on the sharks), but just so so pretty, and warm. I still don't think I'll be back in the water for a few days.

Work is. Complete thought. Would kill everyone in the office if it would bring me any closer to not having to be in the office. Because the kids are all on break right now, my time is spent stuttering around in Japanese trying to make small talk in a culture that somehow manages to keep it even more superficial. What did you do this weekend? Blink. Blink. Also there is still an alarming amount of panic everytime I open my mouth, and it's making me panic in turn. I don't function well in Japanese when my brain is screaming instead of thinking. And the worst part is everyone is so damn nice that I know they're probably not talking to me because they're afraid of disturbing me. But in the words of my sainted mother: "this too, shall pass."

Also, if anyone has any productive suggestions for what to do with myself now that I've read enough ESL games to fill 5 years of class, all of my predecessor's notes, and god help me even the huge pile of materials JET publishes (which are about 50% legitimately helpful, and 50% lowest common denominator), I'm all ears. I've started translating the constitional mandates defining the Japanese education system. I'm arguing that this classifies as "Japanese practice", but my brain and I aren't really fooled.

I might bring my laptop in, and start putting together my self-introduction materials for the kiddie-poos. I'm sifting through my photos and picking out the ones most likely to elicit giggling, and make me look foolish. As another wise JET alum once told me "Elementary school kids: you have absolutely no leverage. They don't get graded, and they don't really care about English. All you can do is make things as fun as possible, and try and trick them into learning." Which I've been told is suprisingly easy, as long as you're willing to make a fool of yourself, and break down the "I AM YOU TEACHER" dynamic. For now though, it's alllll academic. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Ok! I've successfully killed a fair chunk of the time I seriously don't have. I may skip making lunch tomorrow and just bike down to the supermarket, and buy something. I could use the break. Getting up tomorrow and hopefully hopefully going running, or at the very least doing some situps and jumping some rope (found one in the closet. win!) I am beginning to putrify, from the lack of excercise.

But to end on a good note: I am so tan right now. So so tan.