Well, I've now spent 7 days in my town and it's been a pretty awesome so far. It feels more like I've been here a month. I arrived here last Wednesday at night and was basically thrown into work headfirst.. well... more like being thrown into an empty pool and learning how to swim for the first time.. To be honest, I didn't have much to do for my first few days of work so I made work for myself! When they don't have anything planned for me I've mainly been studying Japanese and surfing the net all day (w00t Facebook). Since being here only a week, my Japanese skills have skyrocketed! I can listen to a conversation at normal speed, read text (well, Katakana/Hirigana) at normal speed and have basic conversations with people, even though it may sound something like this:

"In Canada weather same now?"
"In Canada weather more cool."
"Ah sou desu! How hot become?"
"Usually from 15 to 25 degrees."
"Ehhhh"

Another year here and I'll be fluent then I'll be able to understand this damn moon language. Yesterday I spent the morning at two different daycares in town... that was an experience. When I got there they were learning about the story of the Tanabata festival, which is connected to watermelon somehow...since that's what they fed me at both daycares. Then we played some games including a different version of Duck-Duck-Goose. They tried to explain the game to me but it was pretty apparent how to play just by watching it. Soon it was lunchtime so they asked me to stay for lunch. One of the girls took my hand and brought me into her homeroom so I sat down in one of their miniature tables feeling like a complete giant. My knees came up to the tabletop. While waiting for the food to arrive, the kids slowly congregated around me and were asking me questions in Japanese.. at least I think they were questions. Imagine a bunch of 5 year olds standing around you as you're sitting down, asking questions that sound like gibberish and then waiting in eerie silence for a response. All I could do was stare back and trying to furiously translate what they just said. Of course it doesn't help they're using slang half of the time. Eventually I would just say something in English or throw out a random Japanese word that I think was the answer and they seemed satisfied. A few of them were pretty cute though and would bring over parts of their lunch and say "Pan" (which means bread) or point out anime characters on their lunchbags. After lunch they went to play outside in their swimsuits with waterguns and buckets. Around that time was when I had to leave, after all, I had forgotten to bring my bathing suit.

A few days ago I was also required to attend a history lecture held at the town museum. It was part of a summer lecture series where high school teachers travelled around the area to different towns to attend lectures on different topics. It went from 9:30am until 3:00pm and was entirely in Japanese. Luckily it was a powerpoint presentation with lots of pictures so between those and being able to pick out the occasional word in Japanese, I was able to understood most of the lecture. It was also interspersed with activities such as grinding wheat into flour with two rocks, watching it bake on a rock frying pan in a fire, a tour of the museum (which was actually really interesting), trying three different kinds of rice (I'm still not really sure why we did this..), trying on traditional clothing (including ninja pants and tabi..now I understand why they wear them. Tottemo benri desu!), and doing "traditional activities" like...chopping wood! Yay! I was talking to the curator of the museum who happens to speak really good English and he explained to me that Japanese people don't do this often. Being from the land of the lumberjacks, I told him we do it quite often in Canada while camping. After that we took a tour of full-sized Jomon and Meiji period houses and then it was time to go. I actually learned quite a bit without even understanding over 80% of what was being said but I'm a hands-on learner anyways. Now if only there was a way of learning Japanese like that..

Many people who've never been to Japan before probably have a picture in their head of what Japan is like, maybe due to pictures, movies, whatever. Maybe they picture a sprawling metropolis full of people, neon lights, cute characters on anything and everything, a silhouette of Mt. Fuji, shinto shrines, moss covered Japanese gardens and painful-looking gameshows (which are pretty awesome btw). Don't get me wrong, these things do exist here...but in maybe only 25% of the country. The rest is what you would call the inaka, rural Japan.

Town of Engaru, about 10 minutes away. Population 23,000.
The rest of the country consists of rice paddies, wheat fields, onion fields and whatever else they grow (I'm not quite sure) in order to sustain the entire nation. It may not be downtown Tokyo but it's beautiful in its own way. I'm in a valley that's surrounded by small hills, life here moves at a slower pace, the countryside is very quiet, everything I need is within walking distance (my work is only 8 minutes away) and all the locals are super friendly. The sun rises at 4:00am and sets early at 7:00pm so I've kind of adapted to it and have been waking up at 6:30am and going to bed around 9-10:00pm.

Each small town around here has it's own unique features; they are all known for something that is associated with only that town. My town has one of the best onsen in the area and holds a large tulip festival each year. We also have other attractions and festivals in my town that occurs nowhere else in Japan.
I would say that the tourists who only stick to the larger cities are definitely missing out on a lot. It's definitely no surprise that the Japanese are their own biggest tourists.

This weekend was the Tanabata Festival (七夕まつり), a Japanese star festival. It celebrates the milky way and the coming together of two stars that only happens once a year. It's traditionally on the 7th day of the 7th month, but in Hokkaido it's usually have it a bit later. It ran for the entire weekend and consisted of a parade, school concerts, a food pavilion, comedian, live music, bingo (it's apparently very popular here), traditional dancing, a kids corner, hip-hop groups, and fireworks. There was also a showcase of posters made by different groups throughout the city and the entire main street was strung up with paper lanterns. Also during this festival it's tradition to write your wish on a piece of paper and tie it to a bamboo tree. It's been rainy here all weekend so it put a little bit of a damper on the festival. There were supposed to be a big fireworks display tonight but it's postponed until tomorrow night.

I got a clip of some Yosakoi dancing with my digital camera. The quality isn't the greatest and I was moving it around a bit but you get the idea. It was pretty amazing to see live.

I also tried out the local cuisine, including squid-on-a-stick... it was quite chewy.

Here are some pics of new apartment. It's a one bedroom with kitchen/dining room and kitchen. The kitchen has a medium sized fridge and a two burner stove with "fish oven" (it's like a long, flat toaster oven used only for fish). The living room fits a couch, tv, desk, coffee table and small bookshelf and is fairly comfortable. The bedroom has a big closet full of futons, a normal-sized bed and a dresser. There's also a toilet room and a shower room (I don't know what they're called in Japanese). The toilet is pretty sweet; everytime you flush, you can wash your hands with the water that refills the septic tank. Sugoi ne! The shower room is a little room that's an entire uh.. shower room... The shower head is outside the bathtub and your supposed to clean yourself before you get into the bath. The bath is narrow and deep so you can sit in hot water up to your neck. I have a washer but no dryer. Drying is done by hanging the clothes up using that rack thing in my bedroom or on the patio. Garbage disposal here is like pulling teeth. Garbage has to be seprated into their respective garbage bags (green for plastics, clear for recyclables, blue for styrofoam, etc... gah!) and taken out on designated days. So if you miss the 1st or 3rd saturday of the month for plastics your hosed and have to wait until the next month. It's a good system though compared to Calgary where everything you put in the garbage actually gets thrown into the landfill.

I'll be living here for at least a year or two. It's pretty comfortable and spacious for one person and has everything I need. I'd say it's about 600 sq. feet which is big enough for another 2-3 people to stay here temporarily. So if you want to come and visit me, I have a place for you to crash!

The genkan, where shoes are taken off before entering.

The living room complete with Canadian flag.

My toilet room and shower rooms?

My view of Japan from the patio.

The kitchen just off of the living room.
My bedroom as seen from the kitchen.

The bedroom again, with a real bed!

The living room and patio.

The garbage day schedule. It's so confusing..

My personal gym behind the couch.

I made it! I'm finally in my new town, Kamiyubetsu, and pretty much settled in. The past week has been pretty insane and busy. On Sunday, I arrived at Narita airport in Tokyo after a 10 hour flight from Vancouver. Right when I stepped off the plane it literally felt like I was in a sauna. The humidity was insane! It was around 37 degrees and luckily it was a cloudy day or the sun would’ve made it even hotter. After shipping a few of my bags to my new apartment they shuttled us to our hotel, Keio Plaza in Shinjuku, on buses which took another hour and a half. By then I had been awake for almost 18 hours (trying to sleep on an Air Canada flight is impossible, to put it nicely).

When we got to the hotel we checked in and I met my roommate, another ALT from Alberta who was also headed to Hokkaido. We went out that night to a few izakaya’s (Japanese pubs) with some other Canadians and by 11:00pm I was dead tired and crashed. The next two days were full of speeches and workshops in order to prepare us for our new jobs and for general living in Japan. The evenings consisted of more izakaya’s, tabe and nomihoudai's (all you can eat/drink) and more exploring in Shinjuku. We also visited the Canadian embassy which involved taking the subway. It was literally an underground maze. On the way back from the embassy it started to downpour and there we were in our suits and ties... but no umbrellas. Luckily, we managed to navigate the subway tunnels to get back to our hotel without even going outside. The tunnels are like a mini-city with tons of shops, stores and restaurants, it was crazy. I'm convinced you could navigate Tokyo through the subway tunnels alone.

Yokoso Japan! Tokyo from my hotel.
The next morning marked the end of the orientation and the departure to our home prefectures. At 9:00am, all 45 of us Hokkaidoans boarded a bus and headed to Haneda airport. We flew ANA airlines (which kicks Air Canada’s ass any day) to New-Chitose airport in Hokkaido, about an hour and a half flight. When we arrived they brought our delegation across the airport into a large meeting room where we met our new supervisors. Mine didn’t speak English very well so after a converstation in broken Japanese, he explained to me that we would be taking the train to my town. From New-Chitose airport it was a 30 minute train ride to Sapporo city and from there another 4 hour ride on the "express train" to Kamiyubetsu. It was 7:00pm when we arrived and I had been travelling for over 10 hours by then. My supervisor took me to his house to eat supper with his family and then I was dropped off at a ryokan (Japanese style hotel) for the night.

EDIT: If you are planning on coming to visit, this is not the only way to get to my place! It's in fact the long way. The short way would be to fly from Haneda airport to Memanbetsu airport (about 2 hours) which is only 15 minutes from my place. It's a lot faster than the trains and cuts off about 4 hours of the trip.

Hokkaido from above.
On my first day of work I was shown my desk at city hall and then taken around to see the mayor, vice-mayor, and the employees from all the different departments to do a self-introduction in Japanese o_O (a bit nerve-wracking..). I registered my new inkan (personal seal), alien registration card, opened up a bank account, signed my contract, brought my luggage into my new apartment and was left for an hour to get unpacked. That night, my supervisors took me around to go shopping for groceries, helped me pick out a new keitai (cellphone), buy everything else I needed for my apartment and then waited around with me to get my internet hooked up. After that I made supper (salmon and ramen) and then fell asleep at 9:30pm due to sheer exhaustion. Today my supervisor gave me a tour of the entire town and brought me to all six of the schools I'll be teaching at to meet the principles. All of the kids are out for the summer but school recommences on August 18th. We also went to the culture center, library and basically every other landmark in the town. The rest of the afternoon I spent at my desk at city hall trying to get more settled in and figuring out exactly what I'll be doing for the next year. I don't have any transportation right now but I am only an 8 minute walk from my apartment so at the end of the day I walked home. I should have a new bicycle in a few days though and once I do I'll be able to explore my town a bit more.

Anyways, I will be putting pictures up of Tokyo, Hokkaido, my apartment, the festival happening this weekend and I will also be posting a lot more soon. I promise!

Well, tonight is officially my last night in Canada. The whole JET Programme application has been a huge experience up until now but I'm finally glad the waiting process is over. It's a bit surreal how a paper application I filled out last year in November has led to me boarding a plane headed to Japan tomorrow. The reality of the situation hasn't really hit me until just recently. My life up until now has been pretty structured and laid out for me (not surprisingly since I just finished 17 years of school!) but I don't exactly know what my life in Japan holds for me. All I know is that it involves obtaining a Master's degree (although I still don't know how or when I'm going to achieve that yet). I also don't know what the gap between now and then holds for me either but I guess it's the whole unknown aspect that excites me. Besides, no one knows what the future holds until the second it happens.

What I'm looking forward to is stepping off the plane in Tokyo into 40 degree weather, spending the first night at my new apartment, exploring my town, meeting the locals, speaking the language, eating the food, being shocked by the culture, making new friends and experiencing something new every single day. That is what I'm really excited about.

I think a bit of wanderlust exists in my family. We all have the desire to visit and travel the world to see and experience new things. My older brother and his girlfriend left just two days ago to Thailand. They are in the same boat as me and don't exactly know what they're future holds either; they arrived in Bangkok with a pocket full of money and all the time in the world. In a few months a few more members of my family are hoping to relocate across the globe and move to Vietnam. With luck, most of the family will be in Asia by December and we'll be able to spend Christmas in Vietnam, which would be awesome. Anyways, I digress..

I plan on getting up early tomorrow morning (if I sleep at all!) to be at the airport by 9:00am. Most of my family is coming with me to see me off and my mom is coming down from Edmonton tonight just to drive me to the airport. My flight to Vancouver leaves Calgary at 11:15am and after a 2-hour stopover it's a straight 12 hour flight to Tokyo. I'll be arriving in Narita airport at 4:00pm the next day and then I board a bus for a two hour scenic drive to my hotel in downtown Tokyo. The following two days I'll be attending an orientation to the JET Programme which introduces us to our new jobs and lives. Then on Wednesday I head back to the airport and they ship me off to my home prefecture in Hokkaido. Once I arrive there, my adventure begins..

I was just reading my last post when it occurred to me I had written it over 3 weeks ago! Has it really been that long? I've been unemployed all that time, but I haven't even noticed! I've been trying to do as much as I can and I'm glad to say I've done quite a bit: I got free tickets to the Virgin Festival and saw a ton of good bands, went to few BBQ's and house parties, one of which I jammed on a friend's drum kit for about an hour (I think I am definitely going to buy one while I'm in Japan), played Glow-in-the-Dark frisbee in a park with my brothers until 2:00am, went out for sushi twice in a week, went White Water Rafting down the Kicking Horse river in what they said were some of the best conditions of the summer, went to the Calgary Stampede with Erika and almost got sick on one of the first rides we went on (we think we are getting old..), and finally a two-day roadtrip up to the Northwest Territories with Allison just for the hell of it. Now it's officially the countdown from 10 days until I leave. I am currently hanging out in Edmonton until the end of the week but when I get back to Calgary I have an intense five days of packing, more dinners, and more goodbyes. The goodbyes are definitely not my favorite..it reminds me too much of when I left Fort Saskatchewan. There were hugs and tears and faces that I still haven't seen after 5 years. I believe it's a part of life, and for me, it seems inevitable.