On July 7 (Tanabata), I woke up after 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep around 5:30am, but stayed in bed until 6am. I had the morning free until 1:30pm, so I unpacked and organized all my belongings. It seems that the only redundant thing I packed was my alarm clock, which seems to be nearing its expiration anyway. This will be the second electronic device that I have purchased in Japan that has decided to end its "life" when I return. I bought this clock either in summer 2003 or spring 2005 when I visited Japan from Korea. The first device to go kaput was my CD walkman which I bought when I lived in Japan in 1999 and it stopped working when I was riding the shinkansen on my visit in the summer of 2003.
After unpacking and showering, I decided to write yesterday's blog entry offline as I didn't get an internet connection until last night. That took nearly one hour because I had the luxury of time. This morning, I only have about an hour to write before I have to head off to more orientations. After writing the blog posting, I took a short walk outside around half the campus and about one block off campus. It is indeed a rural area. The town of Urasa is about a 30-45 minute walk from campus or a 10 minute bike ride. I have yet to attempt this easy trek.
Here is one photo I took just up the road one block from campus. I'm facing northeast whereas the town of Urasa is northwest. As you can see, it was a little hazy outside and a little muggy. The humidity was more of a problem than the heat. One special treat outside, however, were the multitudes of tiny tree frogs that are everywhere.
After my walk, it was near lunchtime as the cafeteria opens at 11:30am. I walked through campus again and found the cafeteria nearly empty. I found one of my fellow teachers there, so I introduced myself and she introduced herself as Gretchen. I ate some soba and spicy tofu as we talked about ourselves. I found out that she got her MFA in electronic music, a genre that I am very fond of.
At 1:30, our meeting began and I met all the teachers of the Intensive English Program plus a few others. It's been a while since I was introduced to a new group of fellow teachers, but I found this group to be overall pleasant. Because my research is on the experience of expatriate teachers, I was paying extra attention to our interactions. I also kept in mind that my jet lag was about to hit its hardest in the afternoon, so I couldn't completely trust my judgments. Perhaps most of us were jet lagged, which for me made some of our introductions and discussions a little awkward but very polite. I am trying my best to keep my biases at bay when comparing this experience to those of Korea. I feel that my biases are making me jump to conclusions, which I will refrain from making here as I may discover soon that these conclusions were foolish.
Most of the orientation was a general glossing over of the summer program as a whole. The most interesting topic of discussion was the "English only environment," which is a bit controversial in the literature addressing world Englishes and Engish as a lingua franca. The downside to an English only environment is that it can establish a hierarchy of languages with English on top as it is most desired. Of course the purpose of the program is to learn English, but I'm only summarizing a very complex debate here.
After our meetings and filling out a bunch of legal forms, we picked out our bicycles. I chose mountain bike number 5 because in Japanese 5 is "go." I only rode on it for a bit because most of us were going on a caravan tour to the biggest shopping district in the area, which wasn't much compared to my previous shopping experiences in Japan. I'd compare this experience to people from Westby, WI going to the Wal-Mart at La Crosse, WI for shopping. The Wal-Mart of the Minami-uonuma urban area is Aeon, although everyone still calls it by its former name Jusco. I only needed to buy a week's worth of breakfast and some basic cleaning supplies. Most others bought much more as a lot of them wanted to do some home cooking. Although I did some home cooking in Japan, it wasn't more spectacular than the cafeteria food I can get here for a reasonable price.
Apparently only two of us were hungry for dinner after the shopping spree, so Alex and I went to the nearby Sukiya for some gyudon. Like me, Alex is new to the summer intensive English program and also like me, he lived in Takasaki for a few years. So we talked about Takasaki and our lives after Takasaki. It doesn't seem that we had much more in common after that. He currently lives in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. The closest I've been to that area is Ocean City, Maryland, which is a bit further north.
We got home around 8pm, so I had time to set up my new internet connection and to post yesterday's blog. Then I got the exciting opportunity, to talk with my wife and daughter who are visiting her folks in Maryland. Later, I will write how this new interconnectivity has changed my perceptions of living in Japan. I find this phenomenon quite interesting.
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