One Month In...

Thanks to the help of a few good friends (namely Tim and Mariko) the last two weeks has been a lot less lonely than the first two :) and Ive managed to slowly make some progress on setting up a life here.

Cellphone
Spent a whole day (when you include breaks for okonomiyaki and Haagen Dazs) with Mariko checking out the different deals of the big three companies (AU, Softbank and Docomo) only to find out they were pretty much the same with a Y2835 (NZ$50) charge to set up a contract, text plans ranging from Y1029 (NZ$17) to Y4410 (NZ$72) per month depending on how much you use, and a Y10,000 (NZ$165) penalty for cancelling the contract before the standard two years is up. I looked seriously at getting an iphone but because at the moment Im only going to be here for a year and would only get half of the 24 month "cash-back" deal it works out quite expensive and theres a one month wait. At the end of the day I ended up choosing the prettiest "free with contract" phone that I could which happens to be a purple AU model with a 12.2 mega pixel camera but because I dont have my alien registration card yet we had to set it up in Marikos name and will have to pay to switch the contract into my name in a couple of weeks - but at least now Im contactable :)











Playing house
Last Monday it was finally time for me to get some essential appliances off my predecessor. Four of us from work showed up planning for it to only take the morning to pick things up from his house, drop what I wanted at my place and take the rest to the dump but.... his place was such a mess (thats what you get for a boy living on his own in a small space I guess) that it took us the whole morning just to load up the truck up at his end! After a quick break for lunch and getting everything to my place we had to spend the whole afternoon scrubbing out everything because we couldnt have put it into my clean new apartment in the state it was in. So it was a pretty physical Monday at work but awesome to finally have a fridge and a washing machine - especially in the height of summer - around 35 degrees most days! Once Ive got the few finishing touches in Ill take some photos of my place to show you all.

Enjoying Osaka
Even though Im the only JET in Sakai Im pretty lucky that Im only about a 15minute semi-express train ride away from Namba (the heart of Osaka and where Tim lives) so can see myself heading up there at least one day most weekends. Caught Tims first DJ Gig at Suite on Sat the14th, went to an Osaka AJET Welcome evening at the Hard Rock Cafe on Wed the 18th and was up there again on the Sun the 22nd to watch the Phoenix beat the Central Coast Mariners FC 2-0.

Getting out and about
With Mikunigaoka being both on the JR and Nankai Koya lines its pretty handy (although I have to go north a little bit to change on to the other Nankai Line) to get around the area. Seeing as summer holidays are almost over (they finish at the end of August) most of the outdoor summer pools also close then :( so to make the most of them Tim organised a day trip down to Misaki-koen to help us cool off from the intense summer heart. On the Southern (サザン) express train from Namba it only took 45 minutes to get there but we had a great day enjoying the shallow river ride and the 6 waterslides :)

 
Hunting for a gym
So once all the summer pools close it doesnt look like there are any public pools within walking / cycle distance of my house and even though Im doing Pilates every morning (thanks to Caroline and Alexey) with all the delicious food here its quite dangerous so suddenly stopping swimming, gym, boxing, handball etc means that I seriously need to get back into some exercise so have spent quite a few evenings after work hunting around for a gym with a pool but Im not having my luck so the hunt continues...

Enjoying Sakai
I guess the one good thing about hunting around looking for gyms is that Ive been able to get out and explore a bit of Sakai - having bought a bike of my predecessor helps quite a bit (although its not the most amazing bike in the world it still gets me from A to B faster than walking). Went for a big cycle around the waterfront trying to find some of the Wellington vibe but the closest I found was one statue and a bunch of industrial areas...

 

 

 

Work
There are three sections to the International Division - the ASEAN team, the International Relations team and the Foreign Affiliations Team so I help everyone (as well as anyone else in the whole of City Hall) with their translations and do a lot of "native english" checks. The last couple of weeks they have kept me pretty busy at my desk with translations for an upcoming ASEAN Festival, Booking forms for the newly opened International Plaza, Letters from the Mayor to recepients of a Peace Prize, the Ambassador of South Africa, and the Head of the Shanghai Expo Steering Committee and Letters of Demand from the Debt Collection Office as well as a FAQ on Privatisation of Daycare in Sakai - so quite a range of documents and sometimes they even get me to translate from English into Japanese so have been working on some short term exchange students (from Newlands and Wellington College) impressions of Japan from 2008 (maybe they were just saving up little things for me to do in case they were worried there wouldnt be enough work...ha!)

Another big part of my job is interpreting at events - even though Im sure Im not quite up to that level yet, its a bit of baptism by fire. Last week we had a group of exchange students from Russia come through and meet the Mayor so I had to interpret their teachers ideals that these kids will become the future leaders of Russia (at least thats what I think she was talking about, her accent was a little thick...) into Japanese for the mayor which was a little intimidating and Ive just come back from the 65th Indonesian Independence Day Diplomatic Reception at the Hotel Hyatt Regency in Osaka where I was helping the General Director of the International Division with any translation assistance he needed. It was quite a interesting evening with a group of speeches in Indonesian and Japanese, and then not being able to eat all the delicious foods on offer because I had to run around and be introduced to the Consul Generals from most of the ASEAN Countries - which was nice, but hoping my jobs becomes a bit more grass roots level as the months go on. Although Ive finally got business cards and am becoming good mates with the Mayor so at least things are heading in the right direction....

 

The first two weeks

Well I'm here. After what seemed like forever of goodbye coffees, lunches and dinner it was finally time to head off for Japan (again!) although this time its going to be quite a bit different....Heres how my first two weeks went down.

Tokyo Orientation
This was a couple of days (with about 800 foreigners in Keio Plaza Hotel, Shinjuku) of "what to expect and how to deal with it" lectures, roleplays, panel discussions and meetings - which were useful but it was a bit intense getting back into the swing of Japanese. Also managed to find a little bit of time in the evenings to catch up with a bunch of my uni friends in Tokyo on Monday night at a little izakaya and met Juliette for cake and mojitos on Tuesday night after a "good luck, do NZ proud" little event at the NZ Embassy. Good to get to know a few of the other kiwis and a bunch of Brits, Canadians and Americans on the programme (who are all scattered around the country now)

Leaving for Sakai
On Wednesday morning (4 Aug) Junya showed up at my hotel room door at 6:30am (luckily my roommates were already awake as they were heading away earlier than me) on his way home from work, so we sat outside in the blazing morning sun and had a beer and a nice catch up. That day we were all heading off in our seperate directions and because Im the only JET in my city it was just my supervisor (Tsuda-san) and I taking the shinkansen (bullet train) to Shin-Osaka. The ride was nice, and much more comfortable than the night bus which Im more used to taking between East and West Japan from my student days. Arrived at 3ish, quickly dropped my bags at home then it was off to the office to meet everyone.

My apartment
Because the CIR before me is still in the Osaka region for a little bit (and he's moved up to Namba to be closer to his girlfriend) Ive ended up with a completely brand new apartment. Its very pretty and has lots of awesome features like "autofill" on the bathtub but other than that there was nothing inside when I arrived. Luckily on my first Friday I managed to get a few things off a friend of a friend - bed, little table, TV (without aerial), rice cooker (without inner bowl) and menu style microwave (which doesnt let you cook something for 2 minutes but instead lets you choose to cook one microwave pizza). Went shopping on Saturday to pick up a little sofa, spare mattress for visitors and duvet covers and inners for when it gets cold (although still need to pick up sheets). On Monday hopefully I will be able to get a fridge, washing machine, bike and a few other house bits and pieces off the old CIR and I'll put up some pictures of my place in my next blog post.

Food
Without a fridge, and with only one pot, meals have been a little bit limited but at least I can boil water now and heat up microwave rice, curry and instant noodles. Luckily I was out to dinner most of last week; Sushi (Wed), Okonomiyaku (Thur), Izakaya (Fri), Buffet (Sat) etc - check out my food album at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026477&id=220000480&l=00a42d4377  hopefully it will soon be filled with all kinds of Japanese deliciousness


Work
Its about a 15 minute work from my place to work (or a Y150 train ride one station if its raining or stupidly hot), Im on the 4th floor of the Sakai City Council Building which is pretty from the outside but feels like people are a bit crammed in on the inside. Most people work on laptops (apart from me because the person two before me spilt coffee on it) the desks are tiny and the chairs non adjustable (the health and safety HR side of me is screaming out so I have rearranged my desk so Im not going to cause myself permanent injury and have adjusted the height of the screen by piling some old books under it) and there is one telephone between each pod of 4 people. There is no staffroom or microwave just a little room with a sink and tea making facilities (everyone chips in to pay for the tea, coffee etc). Women eat their bento at their desk and the men often go out for lunch which is from 12-12:45 (no flexitime) with a bell at the start and end (kind of like school) and you have to clock in and out when you start / leave work. 

In terms of workload, things have been pretty busy considering its my first week and a half. Have had lots of translating to do for the Sakai Soccer National Training Centre brochure, letters filled with technical feminist words to people in the UN, pamphlets for the Fire Service and some Wellington schoolkids impressions of Japan from a school trip in 2008. Also had a night of interpretting at a 9 course dinner (we were just sitting behind, not eating) for some people from the South African Embassy in Tokyo who were in town for South African Womans Day

Technology
In a country where I can autofill my bath to whatever temperature I want by pushing one button, for some reason its too hard for my work to give me an email address (I think mainly because it takes a lot of signoff and they just cant be bothered) so I have set up a gmail to use at work which is nice because it means I can check personal emails to that address at the same time, although my computer is so old trying to get some information off a CD the other day crashed it. It took us four visits to the bank to get me an account, and seems cellphone shops have become more distrusting of foreigners since I was here last as they wont let me order a phone until I have my alien registration card (which takes a month) or my National Insurance Card (which Im still waiting for) so will check out some big electronic stores in Osaka this weekend and I havent looked into internet yet because Im hooking into someones unsecured wireless at the moment which is nice because Skype is my lifeline to the world for now.

So the first couple of weeks have been a bit up and down with a few frustrating moments due to Japanese bureacracy and the limitations of working in local government where penny is accountable. It has been tough getting off the train and starting straight into work that afternoon with little time to explore the area and needing to furnish my flat / set up my life here on the weekends. Havent had the chance to really meet anyone here yet so the evenings have been pretty quiet but Im sure I'll get into the swing of it soon enough :)