Saijo Apartment

So we are out of sync now. Mostly because it’s been alternating from very busy to very tiring. So, let’s catch up with my apartment! Two bedrooms, a dining room/kitchen and balcony.

So far the biggest issue has been working out what to do with that second room. I’m really unsure what to do with it as it lacks aircon and I need that to survive.

It’s been a bit perpetually messy, for much similar reasons this blog is a little oddly paced, a combination of very busy, very lazy, and very tired.

 

Artnia: Slimes and Chocobo unite for your you to eat!

So, day one wasn’t quite over! While the official celebrations had stopped it was time to explore Shinjuku a bit! Luckily the podcaster and academic, Anne, @apricotsushi on twitter, was in Japan at the same time as me, in Tokyo even! While we’ve only talked on twitter, she has some great guests on her podcast over at chic-pixel, particularly her one on localisation with Ben Bateman who has worked on several well regarded localisations. I highly recommend it

We had decided to go to the Square Enix Cafe Artnia, which is an attempt to combine the sounds of Art, Area and Near. It’s this bizarre white capsule like place, with two rooms, one white, pristine and filled with somewhat affordable Square Enix goods, the other… much more expensive although just as interesting.

I was thrilled to find in the menu a souvenir Dragon Quest cup, with crème brulle, which I had decided was worth getting.

AND IT WAS WORTH IT… It was quite a nice Creme Brulle, very tiny, but the cup was cute, as was the coaster. So I’m not disappointed with the outcome here at all.

All the while having a wonderful conversation with Anne about games and Japanese media/culture and merch. If you are ever in the northern hemisphere particularly close to Shinjuku, I recommend the cafe greatly.

Orientation Day 1

Everyone was suited up and ready to go! We were here! It was all happening! We were all recovering from international travel! It was the ideal day for a series of lectures!

The started with a series of show welcomes from various Japanese officials. Some in English, others translated, all made me feel very proud to be a part of JET. Followed by an explanation of various things in regards to the orientation and program itself. During this talk, we were informed that suits would not be needed for this, at which point, the sound of about 1000 people trying to take their jackets off was interrupted by “After this talk.”

Following that was a series of lectures on how to teach the main schools we were working with, an explanation of foreign language teaching in Japan, brief simple Japanese classes and finally work place etiquette.

All the lectures I felt were well presented and the lecturers understood we were quite exhausted from flights the previous day. However, as much as they tried I think everyone was exhausted after and struggled with the last two lectures particularly.

Finally, we had a lovely welcome reception provided for us by the JET Programme and met with people being sent to the same region of Japan as ourselves. The dinner was just wonderful.

I must apologise for being somewhat non specific and photo-less. There weren’t many chances as any time not doing a lecture was spent introducing myself to the largest collection of super nice, interesting and interested people I’d ever met in my life. So many names! So many places! But so many great conversations!

Days -1 and 0 of JET

The plan was to write this as things happened, but this first week has been quite draining… So lets catch up since this is the very first post of the blog!

Hi! I’m the Love Princess: Carmichael, also known on the internet as link6616 (the 2000 IQ Killjoy Gamer). Many descriptors could apply to me and you’ll discover some of those as we progress through the blog. I’m an Assistant Language Teacher through the JET Programme that has been placed in the small city of Saijo, on the island of Shikoku in Japan. Lots of green, mountains and rivers about the place. Much like me, you’ll learn more about Saijo later, so for now, lets move onto the super interesting stuff!

… Like 9 hours of flying! It was a relatively pleasant flight, as much as it can be for someone both quite fat and tall (high spacial preference). However the food was edible, I managed to squeeze in some good conversation with the people in my row, friends of mine from Tasmania. They were placed in different parts of Japan. And additionally get in some episodes of Pushing Up Daisies a great murder mystery romantic comedy series written by some of the people behind Dead Like Me.

After that 9 hours we arrived. By we I mean I mean my 2 friends, myself and about 97 other Australians. All coming from winter, which if list the temperatures would seem trivial to anyone else but going the humid sticky head of Japan it’s quite a shock. Luckily we had the day to ourselves since we couldn’t check in to our Shinjuku hotel until later.

It was very difficult in a sense, as we were all tired, and didn’t want to buy too much stuff… nor waste money. So, the obvious thing to do was hit up Yodobashi Camera. And proceed to not buy games there.

Or Dragon Quest themed Keyboards…

And to check power adaptors… But that keyboard…

And afterwards we hit up the Arcade! I beat a Japanese person at a fighting game… I was so happy. I’ll talk more about games in a separate post!

After all this it was time to leech internet from the hotel since it was check in time. The hotel was amazing. Customer service is always amazing in Japan however at a really nice hotel it’s just insane. I didn’t really take many photos of the hotel or Shinjuku.

The rest of the day was really just hanging out and talking with other JETs, the refrain of hi, where are you from and where are you going was pretty constant and would be throughout the entire 2 day orientation.

Well, that’s Day -1 and 0 of JET. Time to talk about day 1, next post!