Invasion of the Origami 折り紙 animals of dooooooomm...

When we last left our hero, he was battling the evil forces of endless Japanese, red-tape, government-issued forms and documents with his awesome Kanji writing abilities and killer inkan stamping skills (in Japan, rather than signing your name, you use a little seal/stamp called an ‘inkan’ with your name or part of your name engraved on it).  

After I wrote my new Japanese address about a million and one times (in case you are wondering, it is Kumamoto-ken, Amakusa-shi, Amakusa-machi, Takahamaminami 2577 Banchi or 熊本県天草市天草町高浜南２５７７番地),  I was finally free to do what ever I wanted at work.  This meant going through the mounds of paperwork I picked up at Tokyo Orientation, the boxes and boxes of teaching materials left by my predecessors, and the massive amounts of origami animals that my most immediate predecessor, Travis, left behind in all of his desk drawers. Really: there are two desks, one in the middle school and one in the city office, and both of them are overflowing with origami animals.  I just realized today that they are perfect a.) prizes for kids and b.) for an English lesson, since the first chapter that I will help teach in the middle school contains a dialogue about origami (thanks Travis!).  Moving my stuff into my apartment and transferring furniture from Travis’s place to mine was also on the list of things to do.  

Sometimes my time at work would be a little mindless/tiring, and I would have trouble focusing.  Luckily, thanks to the wonderful traditions associated with the Japanese office environment, coffee is served promptly at 10 and green tea is served with lunch and at around 3 PM.  So that’s how the Japanese get so much work down: caffeine!  

The city branch office where I work has about 30 people total, and all of them get to pass by my desk when going in and out the door.  This means that everyone gets to stop and say hi to me, ask me about everything that is going on in my life, and comment on whatever I am doing at the time.   I love it .  No seriously; I am not being sarcastic.  If I was in some room by myself or if my coworkers completely ignored me, it would be awful.  

My neighbors Arai-san and (host dad) Horiguchi-san are great.  Though when at home Horiguchi-san speaks normally and a little bit comprehensibly, at work he seems to speak with his lips puckered and in heavy dialect only, except when he answers the phone.  This makes me rely on Arai-san, my mother figure at work (she likes to make me bento lunches and give me candy sometimes), to convert the utterances of some of my coworkers into standard, grammatically correct, Tokyo-dialect Japanese.  This is especially problematic when the branch office boss comes over to my desk every day and shoots the breeze: I can barley understand a word he says and I have to rely completely on Arai-san to ‘interpret’ for me.  

Horiguchi-san also spent a lot of time with me as I went around to all of the schools I will teach at introduced myself to all of the teaching staff.   I tried my bo give a good self-introduction each time, but I am already exhausted of saying the same jikoshokai 自己紹介 over and over again that sometimes and shorten to just “Hi, I’m Erik.  I’m the new ALT.  Nice to meet you!”  The full introduction includes where I am from, my college, major, and age, but whenever I say that I’m 22 people always go’ WOOOAH??! WAKAI!!!!’ (young!).   I always retort that if my agohige 顎髭 beard wasn’t there that I would look even younger.  I guess I should have said goatee instead, yagihige 山羊髭.

Just a few of the dozens of origami animals that live in my desk.

So I thought I was going to be able to write about my first two fireworks festivals, welcome BBQ, and my second host family all in the same blog post.  It doesn’t look like that is going to happen, as this is already way too long.  Oops.  Sorry. Not an exciting blog post, but there are plenty of exciting parts yet to be posted.  I only have your convenience in mind, reader, and that it why I am trying to split up my story into bite-sized pieces.