Wow! It has been a crazy month with stress and culture shock and loneliness but I am finally here settled into my new home in Japan.
I left on March 22nd, 2014 to start my new job teaching English overseas in the Japanese public education system and have been hard at work since April. I work for a company called Joytalk that dispatches Native English speakers to the various school districts around northwestern Japan, and they placed me in the Miyagi Prefecture in a town called Furukawa in the Tohoku region. I have a total of 5 schools that I go to regularly, all located around a famous resort town called Naruko Onsen. It has some of the best mountain vistas and hot springs in all of the Tohoku region so I got very lucky!
Settling in to life overseas is a new experience for me, and was certainly difficult at first. Let me break it down for you. First, after an exhausting 19 hour plane ride from New Jersey, I landed in Narita Airport in Tokyo and got a hotel for my first evening in Japan. When I first arrived, I was overwhelmed and excited by all the novelty! I immediately went to my first conbini and bought some weird Japanese melon drink with a cartoon character on it and some kind of tasty meat bun. I went out to eat at a restaurant next to the hotel, and after some social faux pas and much struggling with the language barrier, I was able to order my first meal in Japan, some seafood tempura and miso soup. Simple, yet delicious. All the sights and sounds were intoxicating and I was filled with hopes and confidence for my year in Japan.
The feeling of excitement lasted for about a week or two, before the culture shock set in. After my first two days exploring Narita and then Shirakawa, I spent a week in the Joytalk training up in the mountains north of Shirakawa. I made some new friends with the other trainees and together, we kept our spirits up through the long and often boring training week. After that, we all split up and went our separate ways to our respective prefectures. It was around this time that the reality of my situation started to set in. Once I was moved into my new apartment and on my own, I started getting a little stressed about my new life. I couldn't read any signs or menus or anything at all, since I had a very limited knowledge of kanji. I learned the different kanas before I left, the Japanese alphabet systems, but without Kanji, I had the reading level of a 5 year old boy. I also took many Japanese lessons before I came, but that didn't prepare me for the subtle nuances of an actual native speaker's dialect. I found i could not understand anyone, and for the most part, they couldn't understand me. I resorted to grunting and pointing and using a broken Japanglish to get what I needed.
Of course, it didn't help that my company had not issued my work visa, or gotten me transportation, and I was living off of my savings for the first TWO months of working here. All of this added up to be a perfect storm of stress and anxiety.
Now, it is 6 weeks later, and I am getting the swing of things. My company eventually got my paperwork in order so I got my visa. My rental car was ready by the time I had to be at my schools on April 11th, and I even got signed up for the government health insurance (which is insanely cheaper and better than anything offered back home in the States!). I have been learning kanji with a furious passion, and practicing my Japanese at every opportunity and communication is starting to become easier. I know maybe 300 kanji or so now, and can read many of the signs I see around town. I am far from being fluent of course, but I feel much more independent than a month ago. The biggest stress reliever, however, has been actually exploring and enjoying Japan! Every weekend I make it a necessity to go see one new place nearby and just be a tourist. It gives me a chance to have a vacation every weekend and once I realized how awesome that was, the stress just melted away! I have seen Sendai, the pokemon center, Matsushima, the cherry blossom viewings (Hanami), some cool Tiger and Dragon Festival in my neighboring Kami-Town, and I have even climbed a few small mountains nearby. It has only been a little over a month and I have seen so much! I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity I have had to come here, and cannot wait to see wait else Japan has in store for me!
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more updates and adventures from the other side of the world!
I left on March 22nd, 2014 to start my new job teaching English overseas in the Japanese public education system and have been hard at work since April. I work for a company called Joytalk that dispatches Native English speakers to the various school districts around northwestern Japan, and they placed me in the Miyagi Prefecture in a town called Furukawa in the Tohoku region. I have a total of 5 schools that I go to regularly, all located around a famous resort town called Naruko Onsen. It has some of the best mountain vistas and hot springs in all of the Tohoku region so I got very lucky!
Settling in to life overseas is a new experience for me, and was certainly difficult at first. Let me break it down for you. First, after an exhausting 19 hour plane ride from New Jersey, I landed in Narita Airport in Tokyo and got a hotel for my first evening in Japan. When I first arrived, I was overwhelmed and excited by all the novelty! I immediately went to my first conbini and bought some weird Japanese melon drink with a cartoon character on it and some kind of tasty meat bun. I went out to eat at a restaurant next to the hotel, and after some social faux pas and much struggling with the language barrier, I was able to order my first meal in Japan, some seafood tempura and miso soup. Simple, yet delicious. All the sights and sounds were intoxicating and I was filled with hopes and confidence for my year in Japan.
The feeling of excitement lasted for about a week or two, before the culture shock set in. After my first two days exploring Narita and then Shirakawa, I spent a week in the Joytalk training up in the mountains north of Shirakawa. I made some new friends with the other trainees and together, we kept our spirits up through the long and often boring training week. After that, we all split up and went our separate ways to our respective prefectures. It was around this time that the reality of my situation started to set in. Once I was moved into my new apartment and on my own, I started getting a little stressed about my new life. I couldn't read any signs or menus or anything at all, since I had a very limited knowledge of kanji. I learned the different kanas before I left, the Japanese alphabet systems, but without Kanji, I had the reading level of a 5 year old boy. I also took many Japanese lessons before I came, but that didn't prepare me for the subtle nuances of an actual native speaker's dialect. I found i could not understand anyone, and for the most part, they couldn't understand me. I resorted to grunting and pointing and using a broken Japanglish to get what I needed.
Of course, it didn't help that my company had not issued my work visa, or gotten me transportation, and I was living off of my savings for the first TWO months of working here. All of this added up to be a perfect storm of stress and anxiety.
Now, it is 6 weeks later, and I am getting the swing of things. My company eventually got my paperwork in order so I got my visa. My rental car was ready by the time I had to be at my schools on April 11th, and I even got signed up for the government health insurance (which is insanely cheaper and better than anything offered back home in the States!). I have been learning kanji with a furious passion, and practicing my Japanese at every opportunity and communication is starting to become easier. I know maybe 300 kanji or so now, and can read many of the signs I see around town. I am far from being fluent of course, but I feel much more independent than a month ago. The biggest stress reliever, however, has been actually exploring and enjoying Japan! Every weekend I make it a necessity to go see one new place nearby and just be a tourist. It gives me a chance to have a vacation every weekend and once I realized how awesome that was, the stress just melted away! I have seen Sendai, the pokemon center, Matsushima, the cherry blossom viewings (Hanami), some cool Tiger and Dragon Festival in my neighboring Kami-Town, and I have even climbed a few small mountains nearby. It has only been a little over a month and I have seen so much! I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity I have had to come here, and cannot wait to see wait else Japan has in store for me!
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more updates and adventures from the other side of the world!