Orientation

8 April 2009

Yesterday was a siege. We had a two hour orientation from the EICS and NUPACE office staff and administration. Then we went on a campus tour, led by ACE students. The one woman (I am going to have to find a way to remember people’s names) spoke English with an Australian accent. At first I couldn’t place it, but then she started telling me about her time there. She said when she arrived the ground was still smoldering from the wildfires. She just returned two weeks ago.

We all ate lunch in the student canteen/cafeteria. During lunch I tried to explain the term “old school” to some Japanese students looking for new American slang. Anyone who would be so kind as to contact me with their personal favorite slang terms should do so: am afraid I blanked out after “sick” and “sick and wrong” (both of which are hardly current, anyway).

After lunch two incredibly cute Japanese women--one around 50 and the other older--from the YWCA helped the twelve of us who live in Omeikan get our paperwork for alien registration and health insurance in order, and then took us all to the government offices in Gokiso to apply for registration and insurance. There was a lot of waiting around and counting heads. She was great, though--she reminded us that we were going to have to make the journey ourselves in a couple of weeks, and that we should take note of the directions. All I remember is that we have to change trains to the blue line, and get off at Gokiso. And once we are at the subway stop we go to Exit 8, take the elevator up, and the office is literally right there. I think I’ll be able to find it again. The guy from Indonesia is really nervous about going back; yesterday was his first subway ride ever. I think we’ll go together next time.

The subway is REALLY clean and nice. And it’s so fun to look at the crazy advertising there. I took a few (blurry) pictures of our journey.

(later on)

A very interesting aspect of life here is sorting garbage. Some of it is familiar: sorting cans from plastic, paper, boxboard, etc. But plastic from wrappers is also recycled, and everything else is either combustible or non-combustible. Food waste is combustible; plastic bags from Lawson’s are not. So while in the US we have de jure recycling--it is available and strongly encouraged that people do it--de facto, we always have the option of just throwing everything in the trash. Here, there is no “catch all” receptacle, and one is forced to actually figure out where everything goes. Indeed, I did not know that I had to wrap my banana peels in newspaper before putting them in the combustible can. But before the day was out I heard about it--albeit in a very polite manner.