First days in Miya

The day after we arrived, Thursday Aug 2, Mr. Mitsuhashi took me to Miya Junior High to meet my coworkers. It is a very small school, and quite old, but it is very beautiful. There are only about 80 students at the school. I don't have any pictures of it yet as I was busy trying not to make any horrible culutural faux pas. So far I think I passed... my English teacher there, Ito-sensei took me to lunch that day in Takayama and then he and his wife Yuki took me out to dinner that night. Ito-sensei, aka "Tom" for his love of Tom Cruise in Top Gun ^__^, is amazing. I absolutely adore him. We went to dinner in a tiny little place in Takyama and had okonomiyaki, which was described to me as Japanese pizza. They cooked it on this little hot plate in the center of our table, and it's basically a mixture of egg and rice fried like a giant pancake and then you can add things to it. He suggested seafood, and not wanting to look like a wimp I said "sure!".

And it came with WHOLE SHRIMP. Head, legs, tail.

Also, they put mayonaise on it. The Japanese seem to put mayo on everything x_X

And I ate it.


And we had beer.


Incredibly enough, they also treated me to dinner. Ito-sensei is well on his way to becoming my favorite person in Takayama ^__^ Afterwards they took me on a driving tour of Takayama and THEN took me to the big grocery store in Takayama, Asumo. Where I found Frosted Flakes!


While I'm at it, I'll go ahead and mention the cantaloupe Kit Kat I found.


It was actually pretty good! Kit-katty, with a bit of a fruity taste.


The next day I caught the train, which is right behind my apartment (yeay convinince!!!) to the next town south of here, Kuguno, where I will be teaching as well. Kuguno JH is a new school, only 2 years old, and very beautiful. And larger than Miya JH with about 112 students. I had to bring my lunch to Kuguno, and ate with the other teachers who were there. The head English teacher there, Ms. Mano, helped to translate, but I think we did quite well with my broken Japanese and their broken English. I had to have the Japanese language teacher cook my udon for me as I couldn't read the packaging, lol Also, Kuguno is known for peaches and apples and someone had brought by a big box of the most enormous peaches I've ever seen. They were really juicy and AWESOME.

So far I have only been spending a couple of hours a day at school, since classes are out and I don't really have much to do other than meet the staff and wave and say hi to the students who are there for extra summer classes and baseball practice. It was my only opportunity though to get online since I didn't have internet at home, so I relished my time there. On the day I was in Kuguno, my supervisor called me and told me to head up to Takayama to get some more paperwork and also see about getting a cell phone. Kyle and Theresa were already there, and after everything we decided to wait on the phones until we had a chance to look the manual over.

Theresa has to ride a bus to get to Takayama from her village Akigami, and it stops in Miya. So we took the bus together from the city, and then JUST as I walked in the door, like literally had just opened the door, my phone rang and one of the 4th year ALTs from Takayama, Katie, called to see if I was free for dinner. LOL, I had just gotten home, but decided I didn't want to pass up an opportunity to get out and meet people so she agreed to come pick me up later.

It turns out that there is an amazing hamburger place in Takayama, that you would never know was there unless someone took you to it. Kyle joined us (Kyle lives in Takayama and I am fairly close so I get to be included when the city peeps do stuff), and it was really good!



This is Katie, our savior! She has been helping out so much, getting us used to the town and including us in activities. Plus, she speaks Japanese fairly well so is a great person to have around :D


And the next day Theresa and I took the train to Gifu City for the fireworks festival, which will come in it's own post!