Golden Week and catching up

Well, my training is over and I am now teaching at the Kumagaya Az branch of AEON. This has been a wild ride so far and I have made so many friends along the way. Training was a lot of fun. It demanded a lot of attention but it was worth it! The only down fall was having to wear suits even in training! Oh well. Life goes on. After training was completed on a Friday night, we all went out and went to Izakaiyas. Those are places where you pay like $15-20 and its all you can drink for about 2 hours! They are awesome and well worth the money! After we drank and ate a ton of food, we went karaoking. I love how they have karaoke set up here in Japan. You get a private room with your friends and you sing and sing and sing! They have many American songs available to so its even easy for us to sing!

The Cherry Blossom Festival, aka Haname, was ending as we were arriving! During training we got to see the last day of the blossoms. It was spectacular. The trees are so pink with the blossoms and it is amazing to see so many in one place. The Japanese way to celebrate is to get some adult beverages and sit at the park, then drink your frosty beverages and pay no attention to the blossoms! It was a lot of fun. I went with a group of people from the training house. We had a blast. This Japanese man came up to us and asked us to join him and his friends. We didn't want to be rude so we went and sat with him. The gave us a lot of sake, and plenty of good food. They were all so nice. After the festival we decided to go an Izakaiya! Basically you drink all day during Haname. Sorry mom!

I left Omiya (where I trained) and took the bullet train, aka shinkansen, to Kumagaya. It took a total of 13 minutes to arrive here. I was in my city before anyone else left the train station back in Omiya! I was greeted my manager and my head teacher. That whole day was a whirlwind of events. I had to go to City Hall to register for my Alien Registration Card. My friends from training and I all call it the "gaijin card." Gaijin is the word for foreigner in Japanese, sometimes with a negative connotation. Then we went shopping for my start up supplies. I got rice, cereal, milk, fruit, oranges, etc. The necessary stuff to survive. I went to my apartment at 3:30 to have the gas and electric put in my name. That is also when I received my futon. Everything went smoothly so I was happy about that.

That whole first week went by so quickly. I observed quite a few lessons and taught first lesson on the my second day there. It was kinda scary and there were only 2 students but it went very smoothly. I started teaching full time on the third day I was there. That was a scary day. But I got through it and now I am used to the lessons.

Everyone at the school, staff and students, are incredibly nice. Everyone introduced themselves to me, but I can't remember all the names right now! Its just way to much at one time! I am starting to remember more names but its still going to take me some time. My classroom is very small. It seats 6 students plus my desk and myself! I have decorated it a little bit with pictures of my family, my friends, and postcards from Oil City. I am going to need to get some Buckeye memorabilia to put in there as well....hint hint to yall in Columbus!

Now we are in Golden Week. As far as I can put together its a couple of festivals around the same time so we get the whole week off! I don't know what the festivals are about or anything but thats ok! I went to Yokohama which has Japan's largest China Town and ate Chinese food off of a conveyor belt. I walked around and saw plenty of shrines. I will be posting pictures soon. I have to wait til I get the internet at my apartment before I can do that. I went to a party that night and met some more gaijin and locals. Everyone was very nice. I spent the next day in Funabashi. I met some friends and we got lunch and what not. I finally found Ketchup here! and it is Heinz! I was so excited about that! The rest of Golden Week I have explored my city and seen some amazing sites around here. Once again I will have pictures eventually, just have to wait for that internet connection! I am going to try and have some different sections like food, travel, festivals, etc on this blog. I am not exactly internet savvy so it may take some time to figure out. I will try to update this blog at least once or twice a week.

Hope all is well in the US of A. I miss everyone like crazy! Oh yeah, I would kill right now for a real cheeseburger, with bacon and mushrooms, just like one from Thurmans! Damn does that sound good!