Rodgers-sensei: Life in Naruto

People/home - I live in a teachers’ housing apartment building (see below). There are two other Jets on my floor - Jeff and Jill. The elementary school Jet is going on his 4th year in Japan. He’s originally from Massachusetts and speaks Japanese. He has helped me so much in the last week in setting up my bank account and buying a phone and whatnot. I don’t know what I would have done without him since our supervisor is in the hospital with a broken rib. The other Jet in my building, Jill, is new this year too. She will be teaching middle schoolers like me. She is originally from Canada. The high school Jet, Mark, lives downtown Naruto. He’s from Ireland and new this year as well.

Work – I will be teaching at three junior high schools and one technical high school – kind of like MATC (WI reference, sorry) but a high school version. I get to visit all the schools this week. I’ll spend about 4-5 days/month at each school.

Climate - It’s sooooo hot here. I sweat constantly. For a while I took two cold showers a day! Most places are air conditioned but usually they are just room units rather than central air. So the hallways of buildings are just as hot as outside. It was like that at the Keio Plaza Hotel too. My apartment is small (but comfy) but it still takes a long time to cool it off with the unit. I have it set to about 80F because that feels cool. Naruto is so beautiful! It’s sub-tropical. This is the first time I’ve lived near mountains and within 15 minutes of an ocean. I really like it here so far. I loooove the plants. Nobody has a lawn here, just plants in the foot between the road and their house. The plants don’t need much care because they get enough water from the humid air and they don’t have obnoxious amounts of pollen. So I bought a ton of plants for my apartment. But anyways, I’ve experienced the outer edge of two typhoons already. Once in Tokyo where it just rained heavily as a result. The other one happened three days ago, but it just got super windy and rained at night.

Animals – There are many giant cicadas, tiny bats, stray cats, geckos/lizards, and hawks in my area. I’ve heard about monkeys and giant spiders in other parts of the island! I saw cockroaches in Tokyo. I saw one crawl up some guy on the street. The guy just flicked it off of his head nonchalantly like it was a fly. So far there haven’t been any cockroaches in my apartment, just tiny lizards every once in a while. Here's the neighborhood cat:

Navigating – I got a bike this week. All the schools are within a 45 minute biking range, so I probably won’t be buying a car. I’m very tempted to buy a tiny truck though. I live about two blocks from a train station where I can catch a train to Tokushima City or downtown Naruto.

Last week - I met the English teachers that I will be team teaching with, met the naruto mayor, got my alien registration card, and attended two welcome parties. The first party was hosted by the mayor. He welcomed all the foreigners in Naruto and told us that he would arrange for us to go to Okinawa if we were interested. He was all about the networking between sister cities and countries. His voice sounded like the godfather though. Haha Japanese godfather talk. It was great. The second welcome party was thrown by the Naruto Board of Education - basically everyone in our office except our supervisor. We went to an all you can eat and drink restaurant. It was traditional so we sat on the floor and took off our shoes. We sampled A LOT of food. Here is the mayor (front and center) and our welcome party - Jeff is in the top right and Jill is just left of me.

My apartment:

Here's the east side of the building where our porches are. My apt is the top left. There's my washing machine on my porch.

West side of our building:

My living room and bedroom are really just one big room with sliding separation doors. I was lucky enough to get a western bed. All other Jets sleep on a futon, which isn't like western futons. They are more like a long foam cushion on the ground that you can fold up. The floor is made of several tatami mats. Mine are new, and I'm allergic to the dust that came with them. I'm learning how to clean them properly though.