The Solo Adventurer Part 1

When embarking on a solo adventure there are of course ups and downs to this type of endeavor. The ups may seem less obvious than the downs, but I would submit they definitely outweigh the downs. It's all a matter of perspective!

One of the best things about traveling alone is your timeline. You only have to follow the schedule of one person! I set out to go to Kamakura and Enoshima which are both about an hour and half from where I am in Kawagoe or an hour south of Tokyo. My goal was to leave at 9ish to arrive there by 11. I had 6 places to visit in Kamakura and then at 4 places to visit in Enoshima. I won't go into the list because, suffice it to say, only 1 thing on my entire list happened that day, BUT because I was no one elses' timeline there was no stress.

How did none of it happen you ask....well everything began all well. I took the train from Kasumigaseki to Ikebukuro (in Tokyo) and then found the train to go to Kamakura.  Well.... I got on the wrong train. It was going north instead of south and I didn't realize until I'd been on the train for an hour. Again, luckily I was by myself so the only person to be mad or irritated or laugh was me, and since I didn't care, I chuckled to myself got off at the next stop and transferred trains.

I made it to Kamakura at about 330 pm, quite a while after I wanted to be there. Since there was only one MUST SEE place I wanted to go to in Kamakura that day I headed straight for the bus stop to head up to Daibutsu or "giant Buddha". One of the largest in Japan, I originally thought one of the largest in the world...Ha!  Google "world's largest Buddhas" you'll be shocked! Anyway, this is the one thing I really wanted to see so I went to the bus stop...where I proceeded to wait for 45 minutes, all the while listening to this couple prattle on the entire time! Good thing it was just me...no one to judge me for the continuous eye rolling I was doing to the sky. The bus finally arrived and about 65 people crammed onto a bus built for 30 and then we went to stop and go for less than 2 kilometers for an hour! You might be asking why I didn't just walk, and I would have, but I didn't know where it was and my phone was dying so I wasn't able to just google map it. Again, luckily I was by myself I could just doze in and out and ignore the woman next to me who was sitting with her back to me, with her backpack on and, said back pack, practically sitting in my lap or shoving up against my left arm repeatedly.

Finally I arrive and every single moment of the trip was worth it. What a site.

After spending about 10 or 15 minutes walking around (and charging my phone for 5 minutes in the bathroom) and taking pictures I headed down the hill. Now that I knew exactly how far away it was from the station I felt perfectly comfortable walking back to the station and stopping anywhere that struck my fancy on the way. 

First stop was to get some food, I was starving, so I did the only logical thing you do in a tourist town. I bought what I saw everyone carrying around with them. A big ass rice cracker. It was 250 Yen, but well worth it. Yummy!

As I was walking down the street, peeking into various storefronts I saw a sign for a shrine. It was about 5 and everything would start shutting down around 6, but it was enough time to look around. The shrine I found was called Hasedera Temple, it was beautiful! What a find. As I was planning this trip I kept getting confused looking at the map because of all the swastikas all over the place, before I remembered that before Hitler took the symbol and nearly irreparably harmed it's meaning. The swastikas I kept seeing meant there was a Buddhist temple or shrine there! It didn't click until I was at Hasedera Temple and saw this:

After I left Hasedera all of the temples and shrines were closing. I walked into a couple of shops (again benefit of being by myself) and then found myself at the beach! I didn't realize I was that close! What a find :)

                                        

I got to stop and chat with a young couple, maybe the same age as my students. They needed someone to take a picture of them. That was probably one of the greatest highlights of the day. I miss talking to random strangers (yes I do that) and making small talk. This gave me the opportunity to actually speak with someone! 

By this time the sun was setting and I was starving and exhausted. I was going to have to forgo my trip to Enoshima and do it another day. There was a Turkish restaurant I saw when I got off the bus, so I went there. I've always wanted to try Turkish coffee and I was determined to also try lamb again, even though I've hated it every time I've eaten before. End results Lamb - 0, Turkish coffee - .5 But the owners were really nice the hummus was AMAZING and the beer was good. So with a full stomach I made the 2+ hour trek home. Mostly without incident and before midnight. 

So those positives and negatives...well as long as I'm not with someone who gets irritated about getting lost, I guess the trip would have been better with someone; however, that will not discourage me from taking another solo trip. Stay tuned for Solo Adventurer Part 2.

10 observations and life saving tips.

#1 Right, Left, Right. If you don't want to end up like an opossum, do it.

#2 The yellow line on the platform is not a suggestion. Stay behind it or you will be yelled at by invisible  
      people.

#3 Teenagers texting and walking (and biking) is not unique to the United States. The Japanese teens have    
     risen it to an art, get out of the way because they won't.

#4 Walking on the left side is a myth. You will have to dodge people no matter which side you try to stay on.

#5 You might believe there is an invasion of body snatchers here (think The Host). Girls wear the strangest
     contact lenses.

#6 Never assume that a store will take credit cards. Always check.

#7 Once you finish paying for your groceries be prepared to grab your basket and quickly move to the island
     and pack them up. The lovely cashiers will not wait for you to get out of the way before moving the next
     person along.

#8  The giggles when you speak Japanese to Japanese teenagers never goes away. No matter how many
      times you use it with them. Don't take it personally.

#9  There is a epidemic of sleepiness here. Students are either "fine" or "sleepy."

#10 If you don't like rice, fish and fruit you're screwed.

The day-to-day events.

As most of you know I currently work at Tokyo International University in Saitama Japan. This is a very small private university which focuses on 5 areas of education; School of Language Communication (SLC), School of International Relations, School of Economics, School of Business and Commerce, and the School of Human and Social Sciences. Within the School of Language Communications there is a new program called the Global Teaching Institute which is where I and 9 others were hired to work within. As a teacher in the SLC I am teaching freshman students in their first year of college. There are 16 sections that these students are placed into based on their proficiency of the TOEFL (or Test of English as a Foreign Language) score. Students pay about 670,000 Yen a year for tuition. If you don't know what the current exchange rate is, that's about 67,000 a year. Just for tuition. This is a commuter campus, which means there are NO dorms. Students either live at home with their parents and travel anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours, one way, by train, bike or walking EVERY day, or they have to pay extra for an apartment nearby. Yes, I live in the same complex as some TIU students. Suffice it to say, these students' parents are paying a premium for them to come to the school....a school for many, was not their first choice. Be that as it may, they are now in my class and I'm having a blast making them crack up every day.

I am teaching the Section 1 and 2 students. These are the students who have the lowest test scores and generally also the lowest speaking and listening skills. People ask me "So how do you teach students who can't speak English when you can't speak Japanese?!"  The answer is, it's not easy, but with patience and a sense of humor it is an adventure! These students reading and writing skills are better than their speaking and listening, so if all else fails, I write it down and they look up the words they don't understand in their dictionary. Since we are trying to get away from the translation method of teaching Japanese speakers to speak English that can be a bit of a conundrum. I want them to try and figure out how to say what they want to say, but you can only spend so much of a class period waiting for an answer to formulate.

Those who don't know, the reason we are trying to get away from the translation method is because translating Japanese to English is one of the MOST difficult languages to translate correctly. The Japanese language is so vastly different from English that there is almost never a direct translation and many English words to not translate into English. What you end up having to do is sum up what you want to say in Japanese into something that is accurate in English. So it's almost like teaching an adult to speak. Not a new language, to just speak. Period.

Back to school... My schedule is as follows...Monday.Wednesday and Friday I teach Section 2 and 12 Listening. Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach Section 1 Reading. Those are the only classes I teach more than once in a week. I also teach Speaking to Section 2 and 12 and Writing to sections 1 and 11.

Additionally I go and sit in the English Lounge Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for an hour and a half each day to help students practice speaking English, I have Office Hours Monday, Tuesday and Friday from 5-6 we have a staff meeting every Friday at 3 and occasionally I got to the Freshman Seminar group on Fridays with the students I will be chaperoning in May. Once the real English Plaza opens at the end of May I will also be throwing in some hours to tutor students and help to design a schedule for other faculty members to tutor students and run a study hall that my Plaza partner are putting together. At some point in the next year I'll need to start doing research for the paper that I'm required to have published before the end of my contract AND finally in May I start my graduate level courses to maintain my teaching license in Oregon. Try and draw that schedule....I dare you. It took my several frustrating days and many many hours before I finally was able to put it together to make sense. I still don't know that I have enough hours in the day to do all of it, but we'll see how it goes.

So that's me for now. It's April and I've been here almost 3 weeks now and I'm sure I'll discover very quickly what I'm able to handle.

Survival of the quickest.

I believe that Darwin wasn't really talking about birds...it was an analogy and he was in fact thinking light years ahead of his time when he came up with this idea of "survival of the fittest."  He was thinking to a time when 25 million people would live in an area so small, they would be living on top of each other, literally.

Picture this, a paved 2 way road, 12 feet across that has no sidewalks and needs to allow cars, bikes and pedestrians to move from place to place. Now, where I'm from the order of right-of-way is pedestrians, bikes and then cars. Sort of makes sense....but here in one of the most populous countries in the world. Watch out, because if you expect to be given right-of-way as a walker, you just became filler for that pothole you just tried to avoid. Cars do not stop for people and bikes expect you to get out of the way. In a land where they drive on the other side of the street, they also expect you to duck and run if you see a car coming.

Survival of the fittest just became a reality for me in this urban jungle. Lions and tigers and bears oh my? Forget it. I'm worried about teeny tiny cars that my nephew could probably push around his yard in a real life game of Cars.

from a shoebox to a hat box...

Ever shared an office with 9 other people? Even if you love them all, which I do...when even one person is having student conferences, another is having conversations with other teachers to collaborate on lessons and the rest are plugged in trying to work, it's chaos at it's best. Better learn to work in a tornado quick.

The Shoebox a.k.a The Apartment

Okay. I'll be fair. It's bigger than a shoebox....it's more like the size of a large office. Well no not a large office because frankly I've seen offices twice the size of my apartment. Alright then it's the size of my college dorm room, plus my next door neighbors closet....yeah that sounds about right, and if you never lived in a dorm well it's about 250 square feet, if that helps.  It's sort of like living in a camper trailer. I walk in the door and need to take my shoes off, I don't want to be charged a fee for scuffing up the hardwood floors with my giant, very non-Japanese sized feet. I can put my purse and coat on my washing machine, I trip over the other 4 pairs of shoes I have at the door, fumble for the light switch because it's pitch black in my apartment (unless I have the curtains open) pass by the sink that reaches the tops of my thighs, my back hurts already, the door to the my toilet room and shower/bath room (which I have to duck through everytime I take a shower because I'm afraid I'll hit my head )and go into the main room. Really I should say "main room" because it's the only room. I have a computer desk only slightly smaller than my "dining room table", two smallish chairs, a closet that would be the envy of no-one,  anywhere, and the ladder that goes up to my loft bed. Yes ladder, I am once again 10 and I climb a ladder to get to bed at night. In between the computer desk and that ladder I have 3 steps ( I have freakishly long legs for Japan remember). I have managed to get a carpet, 85cm x 185cm. Yes, that's right I'm already operating in the metric system, it's also about 800m to the school from my apartment, which takes roughly 6 or 7 minutes.  It only took me a train 3 stops away (roughly 15 minutes) a 30 minute walk and a search through Viva Homes (superstore) where everyone is running around as if there is a fire sale going on before I found the rug, coffee pot and power strip I needed before I began the 30 minute walk back to the station, this times my arms loaded with items and then an hour going back and forth on 4 different trains trying to get back to my station. The Saturday schedule is difficult to figure out to say the least. 

But really I love it. I have a lot of fun walking around, getting lost on the trains (as long as I don't have anywhere to go) and searching for just the right item in just the right store. 

All I need now is a couch and I will be perfectly cozy in my cupboard under the Japanese sky. 

...and in another country across the ocean.

It's the little things...Oreo cookies, Skippy peanut butter, Hello Kitty, McDonalds and Starbuck. These are some of the things that make me feel like maybe I haven't moved so far from the country I've called home for 34 years. But then there are all the signs I can't read, the orientation meetings I sit through with very little understanding about what is being talked about, the teeny tiny cars driving on the wrong side of the road (oops the left side of the road) and all the umbrellas! The umbrellas! I really know I'm not in Kansas, errr Oregon, anymore when I look out onto the sea of umbrellas! No Goretex to be seen, not a wet head, or soaked coat in sight, nothing but a sea of bobbing umbrellas. These are just a few of the things that remind me daily I'm in the opposite side of the world from everyone I know and love, but it's all worth it because everyday I wake up and I'm excited that I'm here.

P.S Those umbrellas don't do you any good when the wind is swirling around you and pulling it out of your hand. You'll wish you'd grabbed your jacket on the way out of the door when that happens.