The bus dropped me off somewhere in the middle of Sapporo, and of course, never having been to the city, I got lost pretty much right away. Quite a fail moment considering the hotel was only supposed to be a few blocks away. See, there’s this huge tower in Sapporo with a clock on it. Very big, very easy to see. Ah, must be the clock tower that is labeled on my map. But no. That is the TV tower. The clock tower is much smaller and hidden behind trees and is in the opposite direction I started walking. Awesome.
Either way, after dragging my suitcase all over Sapporo and looking on as the wind basically tore apart my map I eventually made it to the hotel. I wasn’t there more than a few minutes when a fellow JET from the area and proposed that we go get lunch. I had had coffee for breakfast that day and then sat on a 4 hour bus ride, so I was all for that.
We went to the station and ate some Italian food (after wandering around trying to figure out where the heck the restaurants are). After that we retraced our steps back to the hotel, grabbed some Starbucks (yaaay~~!), and waited to meet another girl from our area. She has been in Hokkaido the past 2 years, so she took us around to some stores in the area. There’s a foreign foods store in the station where I got some flavored teas and sharp cheddar cheese (didn’t realize I was missing it until I took a bite of it. Guess I’ll have to lead up when I go back in November). Then we went to the bookstore since they have an English/bilingual section where I was able to get some books for the new, revised JLPT exam. Luckily my old ones look like they’re still valuable for the new test, but more books (especially ones with some English clarification) don’t hurt.
Then we once again went back to the hotel and picked up some more people into our group. The herd of us walked down to an Indian restaurant where I had some butter chicken curry and garlic nan. It was quite awesome. I’d definitely go back.
Several hours passed there as we all rejoiced at being able to speak English with other people who understood our slang and faster speech and whatnot. It was a good time, but eventually we decided to get out of there and wander around a bit more. We stopped at a convenience store to pick up some drinks and ice cream (I got some delicious chocolate monstrosity called Black Thunder… or something like that anyway, but I think that was the name). After wandering around we ended up on the main grassy park area before the TV tower, where a couple of dudes were belting out tunes with their guitars and a harmonica. It was pretty cool, so we just sat there for awhile with the little crowd that had gathered and listened.
After that I headed back to my hotel room to crash. It smelled like cigarettes, but it had AC. I cranked that thing up about as high as it could go, finally happy to not fall asleep sweating because of the heat.
Monday started orientation.
(The building orientation was in.)
I ate some stuff I had gotten at the convenience store the previous night for breakfast and then met a bunch of people in Starbucks for coffee (since I have yet to find a really effective way to make coffee at my house and have been too lazy to get a real coffee pot, I’ve been drinking these “meh” instant flavored things on weekday mornings). Then I went to several hours of orientation and heard lots of info. I just wrote a report on it all for my BoE and don’t really want to repeat any of it, and it’s not overly fascinating for this blog anyway. I heard a lot about Hokkaido, the winters, community events and clubs, etc.
Then a bunch of us walked to a Subway for lunch. Yay avocado shrimp sandwich and French fries covered in basil.
Then more orientation! Yadda yadda…
Then we were free around 4. I had found a fellow anime geek and we had a small group go with us to some geek stores not too far from the hotel (not surprising, everything is in the center of town and it’s not that awfully big). I picked up a couple small nerd things (which I can actually use: one is a mug for my many coffee and tea breaks, and the other a dispenser for my conditioner since I’m too cheap to buy the ones in the bottle, only the bag).
After buying nerdy things we took the elevator up a couple floors to a cosplay shop (costumes and wigs and whatnot). It was fun to look around, but the best part was all the costumes they had ready made which you could try on and get your pictures taken in (rather, purikura, or print club… basically those photo booths you go in, pose for pictures, decorate, and then print out as stickers to put on your cell phone/notebooks/whatever). We did that (and somehow I managed to fit into one of the outfits even though it was in Japanese sizes), which was lots of fun.
Nerd:
After that we got in touch with the other half of the large group that seemed to be hanging out together a lot, since one guy knew a local who directed us to a famous ramen restaurant. It was pretty small and our large group of gaijin basically took up the entire counter, but the butter corn miso ramen there was indeed quite tasty. Sapporo is known for miso ramen, after all.
Sapporo at night!
After that everyone seemed to split up again. I ended up with three other girls, one the anime fan who went shopping with me and the other two the two girls who live near me, and we went to karaoke… where I once again tried to avoid singing alone as much as possible (singing along when everyone is doing the same thing isn’t as bad). After that we picked up snacks and beverages at a convenience store and hung out at the hotel before sleeping… in AC.
Tuesday involved… more orientation. Started off with getting lost trying to find the one room separate from the others for a Japanese class, followed by seminars for teaching at different levels.
But the real fun was going with my anime buddy to the Pokemon Center for lunch. You don’t need food when you have a magical store like that. I tried to resist but that store took some of my money away, and while rushing back to the conferences we quickly grabbed some convenience store food for “lunch.”
Then more orientation, etc, etc…
That afternoon I ended up travelling along with the two girls from my area… and we ended up back at the pokemon center since one of them was sad to have missed out on the fun. This was followed by more purikura picture-taking fun (as there was an arcade-type thing next to the store), and then more wandering around the city.
That night we happened to stumble upon an event for the Bon festival, which involved stands of yummy things to eat and a large collection of people doing the bon odori (bon dance) around a decorated, raised stage full of singers and taiko drums. It was fun to watch everyone for a while (including this one middle-aged dude wearing a pink wife beater and dancing to his own dramatic version of the rather simple dance), and before leaving the two girls I was with and I danced a lap around the stage (if you can call it that anyway. I was trying to follow the lead of the woman in front of me but kept stumbling at parts. It’s a simple dance too…).
After that the three of us wandered over to a restaurant chain called Freshness Burger. It was indeed pretty good, and my burger had loads of onions on it (yay!), but the burgers in Japan just miss some of that deliciousness that makes me adore certain American burgers. I’m looking at you, Portillo’s. Still, while the regular burgers are good, so far nothing beats the katsu burger at Mos Burger for me. It’s tonkatsu on a bun and is therefore pretty hard to beat. I grabbed one of those while I was in Sapporo since I have none within walking distance here.
Then we finally got in contact with the people who knew where the ice cream bar was located. Unfortunately there weren’t enough seats when they called our massive group in, so me and the three other girls I’d spent most of the time with waited a little longer but got a nice table in the corner of the restaurant next to a bunch of Christmas decorations. Now, I don’t like bars since I don’t like booze, but this place was pretty darn cool. What you do is order a set, which generally comes with a mug of ice cream (with a free refill!) and your choice of 2 or 3 liqueurs. The sets we got also came with little crepes, crunchy thingies, and piecrust bits to add to our ice cream, as well as a little sample of some amazingly rich yogurt. So, with the 4 of us ordering the set with 2 liqueurs and the additional topping things we were able to pick 8 liqueurs to share. They deliver your ice cream and topping things along with a spoon with a notch on the handle designed to rest securely on top of the mug. This is because the tiny liqueurs you are given have itty bitty ladles that you use to drop a little on to your ice cream-filled spoon, followed by toppings. Then you taste your concoction. The ice cream looked vanilla but had a rather fruity kind of taste to it, which went well with our choices since a lot of what we got was fruit flavors: peach, pineapple, coconut, blackberry, mango, passion fruit. We also had chocolate and caramel liqueurs, which of course didn’t suck with ice cream.
Then they give you a handmade animal shaped cookie and coffee to finish everything off. It was pretty cool.
Once again, more convenience store snacks and hanging out at the hotel before sleep. With AC.
Then there was the last day of orientation, which was a “scavenger hunt” around Sapporo. We had to ask people on the street where certain places were and then walk to them, which would have been more enjoyable if it wasn’t so darn hot out. At least that was quite a break from sitting in presentations.
Then came the end of orientation, where I dragged my suitcase across the city, briefly into a Mos Burger, and over to the bus station. Four hours later I was back in my home city.
So that’s Sapporo for you! I enjoyed it, looking forward to going back.
The next Friday I had my formal introduction at the junior high, where I got to stand awkwardly in front of 200 students by myself and talk to them both in English and Japanese for a few minutes. And… that was pretty much if for that day. Afterwards I went to a meeting with the teachers at one of my elementary schools, but after that I was free to go home and stress about my upcoming lessons. As in I basically made dinner and went to bed early because I was pooped. Whoo party animal, that’s how I roll on a Friday night.
Saturday I was roped into being on staff for the town’s fireworks. A week or so prior I had gotten a break from mindlessly sitting at my desk doing nothing to go with my supervisor to try making potato dumplings for the fireworks.
That was fun and they were successful, so I was called back again for the real deal, where a number of volunteers gathered to make hundreds of the things, as well as an onion/fish flake salad. Making the dumplings was simple and entertaining enough, but good heavens did my eyes just about give out on me when everyone in the room started slicing onions. It was kind of embarrassing really, and I kind of got shoved out of that activity since I could barely see the knife/onion anyway. Luckily they had other stuff for me to do.
Then, despite how busy she had been the whole day, my supervisor took me aside to dress me up in a yukata (basically a kimono for summer) that a woman from the library let me borrow. Unfortunately she didn’t have the shoes for me, so I walked around in a beautiful yukata and my nasty old sneakers for the evening, but it was still pretty cool. I handed out dumplings and salad for a while and was then relieved to go spend my tickets on festival food.
Or so I thought, I hadn’t gone very far before someone recognized me and pulled me away to sit with a bunch of others on the grass. I knew these people, it wasn’t like some random dude just dragged me off, but it was just kind of surprising how quickly I got pulled into the fun.
Eventually a woman from my eikaiwa walked around and got food with me, and then we sat back in time for the fireworks. It was indeed quite a nice show, and I really enjoyed it. Afterwards I found my supervisor who appointed someone to help me figure out how to get out of/appropriately put away the yukata, and then sort of got dragged to an after party despite being so tired. There some very outgoing guy (who can’t remember my name so just keeps yelling “Catherine!” every time he sees me) struck up conversation about whatever American things he could think of (“Americans hug ALL the time, yes?” “Sort of…” “Do you hug your father every night before bed?” “Uh?” “WHAT DON’T YOU LOVE HIM?” He’s pretty much the town comedian and is quite vocal, hence he was the announcer at the fireworks). But alas, I pooped out quickly and another girl who was feeling the same took me back home. After all, I had to be up bright and early for the following day’s sun festival!
So, the next morning I walked on over to the community center (since, to be social, I had like half a beer with the people at the fireworks… which therefore made it illegal for me to drive my bike home, so I just left it at the community center for the night). At the festival I got to don some festival attire and meet up with the mayor and, uh… vice mayor and… well, I don’t actually know who all of those guys were, I just know that I was at the bottom of the list but I still got to go up on stage and fling tiny bags of mochi at the crowd. That was fun.
After that I pretty much just got to walk around with my supervisor and enjoy the festival. They had an event that lasted most of the morning involving a log over a pool of water, where two people straddling the log had to knock each other off with big inflatable bat things. That was fun to watch. Some local student brass bands and little girls with dance routines took up the stage for most of the morning, but then I got to see the city’s yosakoi dance group do their thing. I hadn’t heard about yosakoi until I went to Sapporo, but I guess towns and cities all over the island have yosakoi dance groups that prepare routines for a big event/competition in Sapporo. Their outfits were very pretty and it was a lot of fun to watch.
We continued to watch all this from the grass while cooking up some yakiniku, the summer meal of choice. I also had some more salt yakisoba to go with it. Good stuff.
After a while of that the woman from my eikaiwa found us and we joined up with her group. More yakiniku, yay! Around afternoon though I headed back home since I hadn’t really had any time to prepare for my upcoming lessons. Unfortunately somewhere between me leaving my bike and me picking up my bike somehow the chain fell off and it’s completely enclosed by some screwed-on metal case. So I got to go for a walk home with my bike. It’s fixed now, but for a couple days I did a lot of walking.
Monday I had my first class with the junior high students. That was pretty terrifying since it was my first time actually doing any teaching. The classes were really quiet (Not that I blame them, I was a pretty darn quiet student), and even with explaining everything in Japanese first I think the puzzle I gave them to do during my self-intro was too hard for their level. Doesn’t help that the teacher suddenly decided “Everyone remember this puzzle since I’m putting it on your next exam!” They must love me for that. Thanks for the oodles of candy, mom, I might need to use it to make friends with a few dozen first year students now… (At least walking around some students were able to do it all, so it wasn’t impossible or anything…)
However, yesterday I went to one of my elementary students, and that was actually a lot of fun. I kind of like that the kids were loud and energetic, and it was easy to laugh off any loud interruptions. I had lots of doodles and stuff to show everyone, so I think even in English they understood some of what I said. Then we pretty much just played games. Some related to new vocabulary, while the other classes just played heads up 7-up. Then I was done by 2, and my supervisor just let me go home. It was awesome.
That night I had my first eikaiwa. There are three members so far, and so for an hour and a half it was pretty much just the four of us introducing ourselves and whatnot. I didn’t really have anything cool planned, I just brought a bunch of stuff with me (especially my laptop since it’s full of pictures) and talked about anything to fill the silence. Hopefully I’ll be able to think of something more interesting for next week.
Today I had my health check. Lots o’ fun. My exam wasn’t until 1 and I couldn’t eat anything for lunch, and then they got my blood taken (at least they got my vein in one try. I always dread the needle thing), got all wired up to an EKG machine, and then out to a bus for an X-ray (yet another chest X-ray. They’re awfully popular here it seems). I also talked with a doctor who knew very good English, which was kind of cool since unless anyone else there spoke English my exam was the only “private” one. The doctor’s office was basically a sheet held up by some clips.
They also spelled my name wrong on all the forms so there was a scramble to fix it followed by many apologies, and I hit (read: barely tapped) my forehead against the vision exam machine, which made the nurse all panicky and start looking at my forehead asking me if I was OK. Occhokochoi, yes.
Oh, also I had my welcome party with the BoE a couple weeks ago. HAd some amazing fish/sashimi/tempura/other stuff I didn't know but liked, and then went to the second party where I ended up singing Beatles songs with one of the guys from the office. Here's a small sample of what was for dinner:
What with deliveries from America and not having a weekend to just clean everything yet, all I've got pictures of are my bedroom. Ta da!
And am I eating properly...? Well... I'm not good at cooking, but I have managed to make omuraisu (omelette over fried rice):
And katsudon (fried pork, onions, egg over rice):
And then I just sort of make whatever else I can concoct. But it's ok, because I have the help of some nice garlic.
And… yeah I guess that’s about it. Finally got a cell phone, but my electronic dictionary still hasn’t shown up yet. I really miss that thing.
Off to think of more lessons…
No comments:
Post a Comment