Today was a very big day. Us Hyogo-jin had to meet up at 8:30 (which means 8:20 Japan time), and then it was time to depart for our new home – the Hyogo prefecture. First step was to get on the bus to Tokyo train station (Tokyo-eki). We went past a big palace in Tokyo (the Imperial Palace? The emperor lives there, anyway) – when Tokyo land was going through a big period of boom the land was said to be worth more than the whole state of California! From there it was very close to the train station, where we were marched to Platform 16, carriage 14 area. We got to go and buy some lunch (tonkatsu rice for me), and then waited in the air-conditioned rooms on the platform for the train to show up at precisely 10:30. We caught the shinkansen from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka (Nozomi 27). The trip went very fast, as I was chatting the whole way. We went past Fuji-san, but it was very misty/smoggy, so we didn’t see it. The countryside was pretty awesome, though (although I couldn’t see very much out of the windows). When we got to Shin-Osaka (1:06 pm), we got straight onto a bus and then drove 1 hour to the BOE headquarters in ??? town. It was very funny when we got to the room with all of our new bosses in it – we were lined up in town order, and then our names were called out to be picked up. It felt a little like we were dogs or orphans or something along those lines. Ito-sensei and Tanaka-sensei, my new handlers, came to pick me up and we drove back to Akashikita High School in the Ito-mobile. I was so nervous and excited to meet my new workmates, and I couldn’t stop smiling at everyone. I think that they think I’m a little silly (although they did call me genki a few times). I met the Kancho-sensei (principal), and he showed me a really nifty little cup that he had made. I was very nervous and I think I made a bit of an idiot of myself, but the cup was a really clever little thing – you tipped it upside down and all the water came out. That sounds dumb, but seriously – was awesome.
After a few slightly awkward meetings with a lot of the teachers from Akashikita, Ito-sensei and Tanaka-sensei brought me back to my new place – 108 Totaku Heights, 505-6 Okubo, Okubo-cho, Akashi-shi, Hyogo-ken, 674-0051, Japan. The place is a little bigger than I had though, which was a relief. The gas man came and connected the gas with Ito-sensei, while Tanaka-sensei checked that my air-conditioner worked (it did), and after a while of looking worriedly at me (I must have looked pretty scared), they left me to my own devices. After a bit of aimless wandering around the house and crying, I started to get a bit organised – unpacking my bag, sorting through the stuff Johnna (my predecessor) had left and finally going for a bike ride to the MaxValue supaa (supermarket) nearby to get some food and drink. Just so you know – the saying about never forgetting how to ride bikes is totally untrue – I was useless! I wobbled all around the place, and I think I definitely need more practise. I loved it, though, and thankfully the supaa is only half a block from my house. After I got home, I wasn’t really hungry so I didn’t end up eating dinner, but instead took a video of my half packed/half unpacked apartment and put all of my stuff away. 23 kg of clothes don’t look like very much when they go into a big cupboard. The biggest challenge of the night, funnily enough, was trying to turn my computer into an alarm clock. Eventually I used automator to create an iCal event trigger to make iTunes start playing. Once I was happy that an alarm actually would wake me up at 7 am, I fell asleep for my first night of sleep on a futon.
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