So my flight to Japan left from NYC, since you had to fly out of the same city you had your interview in, so I flew down there on Sunday and stayed at a hotel near the airport. The flight left Monday afternoon and would be arriving Tuesday afternoon: 14 hours of travel, and 13 hours of timezone difference. It was a direct flight from NYC to Tokyo, so a giant plane and no messing around with connections.
The flight itself really wasn't that bad. The first thing is that it was some special occasion for the airline, I forget what exactly, so all the employees came out on the tarmac and were holding a big banner and seeing the plane off. Then the next amusing thing was that the flight actually deviated from a direct NYC to Tokyo route slightly in order to fly over Niagara Falls. You could only see it out of the windows on the other side of the plane though. Finally, I noticed that the flight tracker thing on the seatback display had a black mouse cursor showing rather than a white one, so I'm assuming in ran Linux, which made me happy.
The flight passed pretty quickly. We got two bigger meals and one of just sandwiches, so I did fine for food. I read some Sherlock Holmes on my phone and some manga that I had brought, and then flipping through the movies on the seatback display, saw that they made a couple of live action movies of Chihayafuru, so I spent a few hours watching both of those. I took a couple naps of a couple hours each, and I must have timed them perfectly or something, because I wasn't jetlagged in the least after arriving in Japan.
So after getting off the plane and getting my luggage I went to the customs line and pretty much all the signage was in Japanese. There was a guy doing some kind of precheck of everyone's documents in the line, and after flipping through my passport he pulled me out of the line and had me just stand against the wall for a few minutes while he went to talk to someone else or something I guess. Then he took me over to sit in a corner where there was some other white guy sitting and waiting as well. Then after a few more minutes he came back and took both of us to this little room tucked away apart from the customs line where there were just a couple rows of seats and a counter. He gave our passports to the person behind the counter and we just waited our turn. I felt like this was where they brought everyone who didn't have proper documents or whatever, and there was a couple, an old white guy who didn't speak Japanese and his Japanese wife, and she was being an intermediary between the customs guy and the old guy, who had apparently lost his passport once a while back, but there was apparently still some alert out on it or something.
So anyway, eventually I got called up to the counter and they had me take off my glasses and took a picture, then had me fill out this short form with a few entry-related questions that I don't remember, except one asked about a criminal record, so I had to check that, and then he gave me another form where I had to check another box on the type of crime and put the date and the punishment, so I put that on there, but then that was it, no other issues with that, and I didn't see how it got made, unless maybe it was already made and waiting for me, but I got my official residence card right there, an actual plastic card with my picture and holographic text and all that, and then they took me right past the regular customs line and let me go.
So I exited into the terminal and a couple people from the travel agency met me out there and took me to send my big suitcase ahead to Nikaho, and then we met up with another guy who had apparently arrived not too much before me, and they took us to the bus that took us out to the hotel, got us checked in, showed us the dining room where we'd get breakfast the next morning, and left us to ourselves. The hotel had free wifi, but the outlets here don't have the hole for the grounding plug that my laptop needed, so I went to the hotel desk and they had a bunch of adapters, so I was able to watch a little Youtube before going to bed at about nine. Also, the vending machine by the elevator also sold beer, so I bought an Asahi to drink along with Youtube.
So in the morning I got up about 6:30 and went down and got breakfast and figured I'd try the infamous natto for the first time. It wasn't bad, but the stringy, sticky texture was fairly nasty, so I won't be eating that plain again. Someone later told me that it's more common to put it together with other things though, like to mix it with rice, so maybe I'll try that later. Then we met up with the travel company people again just before eight to head into Tokyo for the orientation. (Narita is actually about an hour or so from Tokyo proper.)
There were actually a decent number of other late upgrades with us, maybe about a dozen of us, so we went in two shuttle vans. Rather than the big hotel venue that the normal orientation took place in, this was just a small meeting room in the CLAIR office (CLAIR being the government organization that manages JET). There were just a couple of CLAIR people there and they just gave a little overview of how the school hierarchy is organized and the basics of how the schools work and what kind of daily information you'll find on the board in the teacher's room, etc. There were also a couple little things like the organization of the JET program and some emergency preparedness stuff.
Towards the end they said they'd be taking us to the airport to fly out to our prefectures and the presenter specifically called on me and said that my city's Board of Education had told them they were sorry they hadn't been in contact with me and that they'd have someone waiting at the airport for me. Apparently other people had gotten lots of useful information from their BoEs about things like an address to send luggage ahead to, or about how much cash they should bring, or things like that. But I was just in go-with-the-flow mode at this point, going wherever people told me, even though I didn't know what was going to happen next, so I always assumed someone would get me to my city somehow, even if I didn't know exactly how ahead of time.
So then they got us back in the shuttle vans and took us to Haneda airport, which is actually in Tokyo, so it wasn't a long drive. Then the travel people just handed us a paper with flight confirmation info and dropped us right inside the doors and left us to navigate a Japanese airport alone with no English. Well it wasn't too bad, and after going through security the three of us that were flying out shortly got some lunch at a noodle place on the concourse and hung out for the hour or so until my flight left. As we were sitting there there was a tiny earthquake that you could barely feel, and I thought it was just all the kids jumping around in the play area right behind us until I heard one of the Japanese people sitting nearby say "jishin" (earthquake).
So it was a short flight into Akita City, and when I got out into the terminal there were a couple of guys from the Board of Education waiting for me, one who had halfway decent English, so we went over to his car and drove the hour or so down to Nikaho. We made chitchat in the car, to the extent that we could, before arriving at the BoE. They took me to meet the superintendent who was saying how "kakkoii" (cool) I was, but I don't know if he was referring to my suit, or my long hair, or what. I also met the woman who had emailed me way back after my placement was decided, who also apologized for not getting me the contract earlier or being in contact.
They had given me the contract in the car which I had read through, so they gave me the personal stamp that they had had made up for me, which is what Japan tends to use instead of signatures, and had me stamp the contract. It was already getting late, so that's about all we got done on Wednesday, so one of the guys took me to my apartment where we dropped off my luggage and he showed me around it, showing me how the hot water heater worked, where the futons were stored, and how the stove worked, then took me to a little family restaurant for dinner where he picked up the tab. Then we stopped at the grocery store quick so I could pick up some stuff for breakfast, then he dropped me off back at the apartment, told me he'd be back at 9 tomorrow morning, and left me to my devices. I found a extension cord that I could plug my laptop into, even though it didn't have the hole for the ground pin either (which just sat on the outside of the plug) and I watched a little anime that I had downloaded on my laptop which I had specifically stocked up on to last me until I got internet.
So Thursday the guy from the BoE showed up again at 9 and we spent Thursday going to the bank and getting the bank account set up, then filling out all the paperwork for direct transfers to pay the water, electric, and gas bills. Then we went to the grocery store again to pick up a box lunch, then we met with the landlord and I signed the lease and filled out the paperwork for the bank transfers for that, and they asked me if I wanted to get insurance for the apartment, and it was cheap enough, so I figured I would, and then we went and bought some indoor shoes for me to use at the schools, since you swap shoes when you enter the school (similar to what's done with slippers in houses) to help keep the floors clean.
Then Friday one of the ladies from the BoE took me out to get my cell phone plan, which took all morning for them to get working, and sign up for my internet, which I actually had to buy a wireless router for since my laptop doesn't actually have an ethernet port, and then we went back to the grocery store to pick up a box lunch, then during lunch the insurance people came by and we went over that and did all the paperwork, then finally went to the two schools I'd be working at, just to see where they were and meet the principals.
So at the middle school, where I'd be spending four days a week, I met the principal and vice-principal, then we walked around the school and they showed me where everything was, including the classes, which both English teachers happened to be teaching at the time, so they had me quickly pop in and do an introduction right off the top of my head, but it was fine. Then we went over to the elementary school, where I'd be teaching Thursdays, which was about fifteen minutes outside of town, and did the same thing pretty much, except there are no dedicated English teachers there, so I didn't have to do any off the cuff introductions there.
And that was all for Friday's schedule, so we went back to the grocery store one last time with the guy from before where I bought the ingredients to make curry for dinner and then he walked with me to the middle school and back, just to get an idea of the route, and then I got dropped off back at the apartment again with instructions to show up at the middle school at 7:30 on Monday (just for the first day, 8:00 after that).
So my biggest worry about having not been in contact with the BoE at all was that I would get to my town on Wednesday, and then have to be giving some full self-introduction lesson on Thursday the very next day, so it was really relieving that we just took a couple days to do our running around and I could start to get used to things and even have a whole weekend to explore the town and everything before starting at the schools. So that completes the whole process of how I got here, and the next post'll be about what the town and schools are like and my first impressions of Japan.
