First Impressions

This post is mostly going to be a lot of little things I've noticed since I got here, or stereotypes that have been confirmed, or just little differences in daily life that make being here a little different than the US. The very first thing I noticed was right after arriving and getting to the airport hotel, was beer being sold in vending machines, where any kid could just walk up and buy it, if it weren't for the fact that people just tend to follow the rules here.

Driving from the airport into my town, there's a bunch of wind turbines on top of the mountain ridges on the way over, so that's a thing that's happening more here too apparently.

At the Board of Education my first couple days, before starting classes in the schools, I asked if there was some sort of map of the town, because I wanted to plot out my route to school, and mark down the locations of stores, etc. Well they dug out every thing in that office that could possible qualify as a map, but most were just sightseeing or tourist type maps, although one was a really detailed surveying map or something, but none of them were exactly just a simple city map like what I was looking for. Eventually someone just printed off a screenshot from Google Maps, which was actually pretty much the exact thing I was looking for, and everyone was quite relieved when I was satisfied. So that very much played into the stereotypes of customer service and treating guests well.

And speaking of treating guests well, it's so awesome to go into any office to meet with someone and get served a cup of tea as a matter of course. Not just every time I went to the BOE, but when we went to City Hall, and each of my schools, and even now at the middle school there's a woman who one of her major jobs is getting everyone tea when they come in in the morning. It's just such a nice little thing to look forward to.

Also at the BOE those first couple days, we were setting up same tables and presentation boards for some event that was coming up, and as we were doing it, there was one board that just didn't seem to want to hang properly. So everyone in the room working pretty much (maybe about six of us) goes over to this board and is standing around watching and trying to hang it and discussing what the issue is. It was just sort of strange to see everyone drop their own work and go over to try to help when they saw someone else was having some little problem.

They were asking me if I was planning on getting a car, and I said I didn't really plan to, but I would be getting a bike, and it turns out the Vice-Superintendent had one laying around he wasn't using, so he cleaned it up and pretty much just gave it to me. Aside from that, I later noticed that my supervisor's name is written on the tag of the futon at my apartment, so that was probably a hand-me-down to my predecessor too.

When we went to the grocery store the first couple times, the cashiers ask a couple questions after everything is rung up, which he explained to me, one was just whether you have a point card, but they ask if you need any bags too. So like in the US where they sometimes encourage you to bring your own bags, it's the same here too, but the default is more to assume that you're not going to need them, than that you are. And then depending on the grocery store you get some small discount or surcharge if you don't or do need any. Also, there's no conveyor belts, you just put your basket up on the counter and they scan everything and put it in another basket, and then you take that over to another counter and bag it yourself, like at Aldi pretty much. I don't think I've seen any store with a conveyor belt at the checkout yet, although it's only the grocery stores where you have to bring your own bags and bag your own stuff.

Also at the grocery store, I noticed that a lot of the vegetables are smaller here. Eggplant are only about eight inches long and the green peppers that the store sells aren't that much bigger than jalapeños, although they have red and yellow peppers that are American-sized, so maybe it's just because the green peppers are locally grown and there's a short growing season here. Also along with everything being smaller, the Japanese have really small feet. Guest slippers here barely fit me, and there were only a couple of pairs of shoes at the shoe store that I could choose from. Also, the tops of door frames are lower too.

I first noticed the town-wide PA system when it played some kind of "kids go home" music at 5PM. It was nice to know that there was such a PA for disasters, but more annoying than the daily 5PM music is the daily 7AM wake up music, even on weekends and holidays... They're fond of broadcasting music in the schools too. They play the Radetzky March and the Clarinet Polka while preparing for lunch, and another couple of songs I don't recognize during cleaning time. At the elementary school the lunch preparation music is Vivaldi.

Going around town, one thing I noticed was that the things they use to block the roads for construction, rather than just being boring metal grates or concrete barriers, they use plastic stands in the shape of various animals, like monkeys. It's just some silly cutesy thing, but like with the tea it feels like even if they can go a little out of their way to do something small like that to even slightly brighten your day, they'll do it. Also going around town, the main spiders here make those same round webs that we're used to, but the spiders themselves rather than just being a little quarter inch brown thing, are these terrifying two-inch orange and black things. Also related to the road blocks, at least in the cities, it seems like they do a lot of the road work at night so as not to be in the way during the day when the roads are actually being used.

The other thing I noticed going around town was that there's stuff by this artist Shuzo Ikeda all over. There's stuff at the train station (and speaking of the train station, even though this town is only about 8,000 people, it's still about the size of and with all the amenities of Buffalo's Depew station), the schools, city hall, and even a lot of the little private shops around town. I really like his style, so I'll have to find someplace to buy some of his prints at some point. He's one of the main things this town is known for, the other two being the mountain, and the fact that this is the furthest north that famous haiku poet Matsuo Basho came when he toured northern Japan. That's because there used to be a cove of pine-clad islands here, much like still exist at Matsushima, but a giant earthquake in 1804 raised the land and now the entire modern town is built on land that used to be underwater until then. So hopefully there's no big earthquake that does the opposite anytime soon...

The cityscape is pretty different here too. Within the town pretty much everything is paved, so there's no lawns or much green space at all (although there are some trees), but there is a little park with a playground near the middle of town. But then around the edge of town, the town just abruptly ends and there's just rice fields. Instead of lawns though, people just buy lots of plastic planters for flowers and stuff and put those in front of their houses. There's also no sidewalks similar to the ones in the US, although the larger roads do have a curb and an asphalt-paved sidewalk, but the smaller roads just have lines painted for the shoulders, and that's where you walk (and sometimes park cars). And the towns are mostly not laid out in grids, so the roads are pretty random, and also very narrow. Usually two cars can squeeze by, but despite how narrow they are and the lack of sidewalks so that cyclists and pedestrians are practically in the street most of the time, people drive pretty fast down these streets and around curves, so it's kind of scary sometimes.

About the cars here, one of the things I noticed is that at stoplights a lot of the car engines are always going off, and starting back up once the light goes green. At first I thought it was people just stopping the engines themselves, but then I remembered that my dad has a car that does the same thing, turns off the engine when stopped for a bit, so that's a really popular feature here. Also, the cars announce a lot of things to the driver. My supervisor at the BOE's car always tells him to make sure he didn't forget his phone when he starts the car, and someone else's car will warn if you're tailing the car in front of you too closely. And the styles of cars are different here too. A lot of the cars have the boxy shape like the Nissan Cube, and the pickup trucks are all the snub-nosed
Kei trucks, so these two styles make up a majority of the vehicles on the road.

Going along with the energy efficiency thing, one thing that I'm loving so far is that they don't over-condition the air here. I hated back in the US freezing during the summer and sweltering during the winter just because I dressed for the weather. Not that you don't freeze and swelter here, but at least it's during the appropriate seasons so you can dress appropriately for both inside and outside at the same time.

When talking with people they do try to use some English, which is nice, except that the only English they can come up with is stuff I already have no problem with in Japanese, so it doesn't actually end up helping at all. But the thought's there at least. That said, there are more foreigners and more English speakers here than I would have thought. One of the former JETs at my school a couple decades ago stayed here and opened up an English school, and there's a woman from New Zealand also working there and living here with her husband and kids. And then there's another guy from the US whose wife is from this town, so he lives here with their daughter, who goes to the middle school now, but was raised in the US, so also speaks English. Then there's just the people who have decent English for whatever various reasons, like studying overseas or whatever, and a bunch of them come to the weekly English conversation class at the community center that I head, so I get a decent dose of English from that too.

So those are some of the things that influence my daily life here. I'll talk about the schools and my apartment in separate posts later.