I have time to post. How 'bout that?

Here we go, the long-awaited post about my trip to Okayama, and subsequent first weekend at work. I've been very busy this past week or so, and it's only now that I can post this.

Monday the 6th started early for me. I got up at ...too early an hour to really remember. There's a site that'll calculate the fastest route by train between two locations, and because the company wasn't too thrilled to have to pay for a Shinkansen trip (at least 12,000 yen), I got to suffer 4 hours inside of the train system. Not a terrible fate, and food/restrooms are easy enough to find, but 4 hours in transit'll take something out of you, especially if it's 4 separate trains. I did eventually get to the Okayama station, and the hotel was close enough that I could leave my luggage there – except there are two Toyoko Inns near the station, and the staff had maps on hand for my benefit. I wasn't able to get into my room at the time, but they checked my luggage, so I got some lobby coffee – sorry, that should be “Lobby Coffee”, if you know the sort – and headed to the Okayama-station NOVA school. Whereas the Hiroshima-eki school had the impression of being stuffed into 2 floors, the Okayama branch felt a little more spacious (and if someone from work is reading this, I challenge you to contradict me), and actually felt like a school, albeit one with cubicles for classrooms. There were three others getting trained at the same time, two Canadians and an Aussie, the latter of which works at my branch. The first day was fairly uneventful until we tried practice lessons on actual students, and I don't think I've ever felt like I've let someone down as much as then. We got out at 9, and the hotel room turned out to be about the size of a large dorm room – the “single” picture on the website is remarkably misleading. Still, it had all the basic necessities, and I remain suitably impressed. Good Internet connection, pretty good breakfast (missing only the heavy protein I was expecting), hot water dispenser on the first floor and a boiler in the room. The bathroom was the same modular design as the one in the hotel we stayed at our first night in Japan (see below), but comfier when not sharing it with someone else.

The second day was more of the first, only with some free time in the morning. We started at 1:20, so that left me plenty of time to get some tea and eat hearty. Again, I crashed and burned during the student sessions, but felt a little better about it. Since the company picked up the hotel tab, I ended up with more money to spend than originally planned, so I had enough to eat out for each meal. I had to eat cheap, but 15~2000 yen a day isn't so bad. Got out at 9 again, went back to the room, surfed the net and went to bed.

Day three started early, at 10, so I had enough time to pack up and eat before training. It went better than the first couple of days, but not too well. I couldn't find my game with more than 2 students at a time. Still, I wasn't crashing and burning too badly, and the trainer assured me it would get easier. We got out at... 5:40 or so, and the first of my two trains back left at 6:09. The wait time between them was about 10 or 15 minutes, and I still got back at 10:00 or so. Rachel picked me up from the station (again, about 8 km from home – why?!) Went straight to bed and fell asleep.

My peculiar work schedule left me with a day off inbetween the training period and my actual work. During the interview, I let slip that my circumstances were such that, were I to be hired part-time, I would prefer working as few days as possible – full, 8-hour days, of course – in order to cut down on transportation costs. By bus, it's 960 yen one-way to/from Hiroshima, so even over the course of a 3-day work schedule this comes out to 5760 yen a week. Still cheaper than owning/renting a car, though. I can't take the train (840 yen one-way) because it transfers the costs to Rachel's gasoline budget, and because it's rough on her too. The primary advantage of the bus is that it basically leaves and arrives right in front of our apartment building, for which the cost is an acceptable tradeoff. Also, the bus pass system here (as far as I know) is such that, if you put up 1, 3, or 5000 yen, you get a 110% bus card – so 5000 yen gets me 5500 yen on the bus. Which means that it could actually cost me 5260 yen per week, compared to 5040 yen plus gasoline by train. BUT, back to what I was originally talking about, I have a Fri-Sat-Sun work schedule, and essentially get paid around what I got at Retail Lockbox. (1600 yen per lesson) x (max of 8 lessons per day) x (3 days per week) = 38,400 yen/weekend. Minus 5260, and that's 33,140 per week. We get paid monthly, and that works out to... enough for the two of us to live fairly comfortably, given the increased cost of living (this is something I'll talk about in the future).

Thursday, aside from some last-minute panic regarding my dress shirts, was uneventful – oh, and we got our Internet connection that morning. We worried about it at first, because it came with an instillation disk (my computer doesn't have a CD drive), but as it turned out, all we have to do is plug in, and we've got 100 mbps at our disposal. So yeah, things are better now.

I got to work on Friday at 1:20, left on time, and rolled into bed at around 11 PM. I still felt like my best game was in one-on-one (we call it “man-to-man”, something that doesn't quite make sense when 80~90% of our students seem to be female unless you know that “man” isn't as gender-specific in Japanese as it is in English – look up “Super Sentai” on Wikipedia and note how many of them use “-man” as a suffix), and was almost hopeless in 5-person groups. Still, I got through the day, and no one faulted me. Because I didn't have the time to do it myself, I had to ask Rachel to iron one of my shirts – she was nearly done with the second one when I got back. Actually, since I got to Hiroshima a good 3 hours early, I took my time eating an egg sandwich in a station Cafe – I've never quite had an egg sandwich like that, where the sandwich is 3 cm thick, half of which is egg. Had to scoop up more than I ate as a sandwich. Started a new story idea too, one that's been in mind for years, but until I looked up “Mobile Suit Human” on TVtropes I didn't think it was feasible – it apparently IS. W00T!

Saturday was more of the same, except I started earlier. This meant getting up earlier, but wasn't too big a deal. I talked Rachel into giving me a ride to the station – she's not a morning person like I am, so she made it very clear to me that I ought to be taking the bus – and made it to work early enough to prepare for lessons. I had to run to the station to make the early train back after work, but ended up missing it by 20 seconds or so – they'd just closed the doors when I got there, and the driver had already blown his whistle. Rachel was a little more annoyed picking me up, because it was so late, which lead me to...

...Take the bus Sunday morning to and from Hiroshima. It's bumpy and annoying and it makes it impossible to do anything other than look forward for most of it if I want to arrive not-carsick. That aside, work was a little better, and after a lesson with four higher-level students I'm finally starting to feel like I can do this job. (Because of my specific background, I'm fairly good to have around, both from a student and corporate standpoint, and I suspect that's partly why I'm even working for them now.) So I'm pretty confident, even looking forward to the job.

Also, we went to a little island off of the coast (10 minute ferry) colloquially called Miyajima (it's the right link, trust me) this past Monday the 13th. Deer walk around freely and eat paper, something one of Rachel's NZ coworkers rather amusingly confirmed – the official English site notes that “Deer may eat paper and cloth. Please be cautious of approaching deer. JR PASSES WILL NOT BE REPRINTED OR REPLACED.” We had an okay time. There's a park there, where the beach isn't a beach so much as an accumulation of broken shells and coral, and Rachel had a good time there. We took an uphill path back to the ferry dock, that felt a bit like a hike through the Olympic National Park, then made our way through a tourist-trapy souvenir village on our way to the gates – the “torii”, one of the more famous examples in Japan, as it's built on tide flats and thus has the appearance of “floating” on the water during high tide. We got our photos, waited for Rachel's coworker (he has a knack for either getting lost or somehow ending up where he isn't quite supposed to be, mostly due to his not knowing much Japanese – he's pretty good with Chinese, I understand, and can pick his way through Kanji though) then got back on the ferry and made our way home. No one at the ferry took our tickets, so we basically got a free ride back. On the island, I discovered a love for “Nikuman”, poofy steamed bread with beef in it, and learned at a mainland 7-Eleven that I was greatly overcharged for it. We had dinner at a restaurant in the Hiroshima station (Rachel's coworker couldn't join us, as he's a Vegan and can really only eat out at Buddhist/Indian restaurants, both of which are in short supply) and I made sure to get a glass Coke bottle this time. We had dessert before getting back on the train at a little station shop. My pudding came in a little glass cup, a bit larger than a shot glass and with a lid, which I kept. Rachel had cake.

I'm not a great cook, but I know how to use a stove and related appliances. We've had this “Shrimp Pilaf” more often than we probably should, but it's mild enough for Rachel to eat so we have it at least once a week. I can also make Corn Rice – eggs, corn, and rice, all fried together – and Miso-shiru/soup, so we're in no danger of starving. Sandwiches are daily fare for us now, especially when ham goes on sale, and I've been eating frozen vegetables as a snack (try it – it's pretty good, especially on a hot day). Our only problem is that, if we want something to keep, it's going to be cold the next time we eat it, since we don't have a microwave. The stove itself is the size of a largish briefcase, with a small oven intended for fish-frying, so it's the bare essentials we need. As I've said before, if you turn the gas on medium here, it's like turning an electric range to its highest and then frying a lit match in gasoline – it's freakin' powerful and the fan is adjusted accordingly.

It occurs to me that Japanese music is incredibly useful in learning how to speak it. Not so much in grammar or vocabulary, but in stress. For that, kid's music, the kind of Tokusatsu songs I listen to, is good – they can't have them learning the wrong stresses, can they? Plus, they sound good. I'm listening to Engine Sentai Go-Onger's OP far more than I should be now. I recommend it, if only for the guitar riff and horns at the beginning.