Arriving in Ono

We took the shinkansen from Tokyo to Gifu city which was pretty darn cool! They told us it didn’t feel like we’d be moving, which was wrong since it felt like any train ride, but the thing was it didn’t feel like we were going near as fast as we were. About sixteen maybe 40-foot long cars passed another train in like 2-3 seconds. We got to see the ocean and the bumpy mountains, too. And Mt. Fuji! Although by the time aw came around to a better view it was covered with clouds and no longer visible so I didn’t get to take a picture.

Ryan came with one of my new officemates from the BOE office to pick me up. This is good since very, very few of my coworkers can speak more English than, ‘Hello, how are you’ and the like. We had pizza for lunch after the drive into town and then puttered around town and to my school for paperwork/meet-in-greets. I met my base school Principal and Vice-Principal and the awesome, fluent English teacher who I hope can give me a major hand this year, and the second-highest boss in my BOE office.

I got all tucked into my apartment and Ryan took my grocery shopping and then we went out to dinner with one of his friends who is also totally awesome. She’s a teacher at an unregistered English immersion kindergarten. We had the sushi that comes around on a little conveyor belt and I tried many new things including cuttlefish, salmon sashimi, and a new type of inari-zushi. Actually, really delicious! The cuttlefish was a little too chewy for me though.

I love my apartment. It’s bigger than I expected and as soon as I get my stuff settled in I’m going to take photos. The bathroom is super-tiny and made of all one molded piece of plastic but I really have no complaints to speak of. And my fridge is a full size instead of the beer-fridge I was warned almost everyone gets! I even have a freezer (two actually, since the fridge has a freezer drawer), which kicks some major butt. Tatami mats rock, btw. Super-nice to the feet.