August 17th

The Gifu orientation was pretty fun. We finally got a few good lectures where I learned some techniques really applicable to teaching. I’m getting really inspired to do the best for my students that I can! I tried an Onsen (public bath) for the first time, too. Luckily not a mixed one. It was the only option at the Sports Centre where the orientation was held and another first-year girl and I acted as moral support for each other. It’s really more like a hot tub that requires you to bathe first and has no gross chemicals.

I just got home from Gujo dancing! It’s this amazing evening town festival (matsuri) held over most of the summer. The big event is the folk dancing which happens around a lovely tower in the centre of a town square. The people in the tower have instruments and drums and sing five different songs for two hours and everyone rotates slowly around the tower doing one of five different traditional dances. I was totally awful but just went ahead and tried to learn the steps anyway. Luckily it was fairly simple and all of the dances had some sort of sequence that I decided started at the clap(s) and then ran for five to ten moves past that before repeating. It was really fun!

Ashley and Brandon’s supervisor (such a nice guy) drove us and two other ex-JETs and their lovely girlfriend and wife respectively out to Gujo. I haven’t managed to find a yukata (summer kimono) to fit me yet but I plan to look consistently for the next month and then check into custom-ordering one if I have no luck.

The drive was almost two hours each way so we had some great conversations in the van as we traveled. When we arrived we had enough time to visit the Food Replica Workshop before the festival started and I bought a Hershey chocolate square dangly with an H on it for my keitai (cell-phone) when I get it next week! It looks so real I’m almost afraid it will melt on my fingers! I also tried fish chips of some sort that are a full, gutted fish that’s been sliced into cross-sections then breaded and deep-fried. It was... interesting. Eating the fins and bones kind of freaked me out although the taste was okay. Seeing heads left attached to things I might eat still makes me squeamish. I had partially mashed and grilled rice on a stick with sweet miso sauce after that.

Before I left home I was really uncertain about where I was being called to go and if I was making the right choices but now I’m certain that I’ve found exactly the right place to be at the moment. After eating and dancing and talking with everyone this evening I just felt that comfortable sort of rightness that makes me almost drowsy and lethargic. I’m just so in love with my town and the nature around me and I like all of my new friends so much that I couldn’t imagine leaving.

I haven’t even been in Japan for two weeks and already my new house feels like home. Being so far away from family and friends is difficult and makes me sad and I’m not sure if I could be much more nervous about teaching and working with my new teachers but just existing here really feels right, something I haven’t felt in a really long time. I don’t even have the time or desire to think about the things I couldn’t get out of my head before.