Waaaa, the jet lag really hit me yesterday. D: Towards the end of the day I felt like I had been hit by a bus.

My day started yesterday with the free breakfast provided by the hotel. I decided on "washoku", which is the Japanese-style meal. So I had fried fish, rice, miso soup, tea, and something I dont remember... lol. Oh, a fried egg. OMG the fish was amazing! The skin tasted like bacon! And I don't even like cooked fish! I'll take a pic today...

Then we met in the lobby to go to work. I really shouldn't have worn my high heals. I didn't have work flats... I have cute sketchers, but I wasn't sure if that was okay, so I went with the heals. >.> Yeah, it was painful. I have two blisters already. I'm gonna use my intended school shoes as work shoes today. (You have to have inside shoes for school.) I'll just buy new ones later.

Work/Training was... eh... affirming and scary. At one point I was thinking "what did I get myself into?" I will be a lot more confident in teaching but the policy training was kinda scary. Japanese respect and social expectations are a crazy delicate dance that make no sense at times. I'll just have to try my best. We gaikokujin, or foreigners have it difficult and easy in both respects. On the one hand, it is hard because we don't fully understand such things we can run into trouble, but on the other hand, as one trainer said, they don't expect you to fully understand it because "you are not Japanese, and you will never be". That is such an interesting concept for an American to wrap their mind around. It is easy to become an American no matter who you are!

Teachers have a crazy hard time in Japan. Not me, I am a foreigner, so I don't have essentially any responsibility, but Japanese sensei have crazy responsibility. They are essentially the third parent to their students. They approve the students home workspace, and are responsible even for their student's moral decisions. When a second year student at one school was caught counterfeiting yen, all of his teachers were transferred to another school, because they were held "responsible". (The question I ask is, what about his previous teachers?) Another set of teachers had to call their student at 6am every day to wake him up and make sure he got to school. Why do people still become teachers here? lol



P.S. Its so darn hot and humid here! I don't know how people survive the summer.

~Stephanie