The Eye of Patrick

Today is the 11th of September and I will be updating about my arrival in Shimokawa, Hokkaido, Japan.

After the orientation in Tokyo, the group of Jets that were heading to Hokkaido hopped on a bus and road to Haneda Airport. Haneda airport is the second airport that is associated with Tokyo and from what I gather it is actually located in Tokyo. It is an airport that is mostly used for flights within Japan. I have heard the flight between Osaka and Tokyo is one of the busiest flights in the world.

The thing about the day that we got to the airport was that a hurricane or typhoon as they are called in the Pacific Ocean was coming Tokyo’s way. This means that some flights where canceled. Flights that were heading to southern Japan, like Kyushu and such may be canceled. But we were kind of lucky because we were heading north and we could probably just miss the typhoon.

So the flight starts to take off and we head into a large amount of cloud cover, as the hurricane had caused the weather to change in Tokyo from hot and humid to cool and rainy. I have flown many times in my life, but I found this flight to be the most turbulent and most scary. I do not know, I think it might just be the knowledge of a typhoon was coming that scared me the most. Also another passenger on the flight had a bad experience previous flying and was getting very nervous, like shaking and sobbing and that freaked me out a little too.

Though all that turbulence ended when we got to Hokkaido. When you fly from Tokyo to Hokkaido you notice the cities becoming less common. Hokkaido is one of the largest prefectures in Japan, but it has a fairly small population for its size.

This meant that there was a lot of green. After we picked up our luggage and moved on to meeting our supervisor or the person that our board of education had sent us. They had them all in one room and we entered one at a time and met them. Some people ended up with people who spoke English and others ended up with people like mine who spoke a little English. At first I was nervous to talk to him as this was Japan and I worried I had to be formal. But he was a very kind and welcoming person and we started to talk. I tried to speak the Japanese I knew and he tried to speak the English he knew and those both combined helped to make the trip from Sapporo to Shimokawa pass quicker then I thought it would be.

When we arrived in Shimokawa it was late evening and I was introduced to my apartment and went to the board of education and met up with some people from the office and introduced my self. Then it was off to my apartment, it was strange walking into my apartment as I had seen photos of it for a long time. But now I was going to live in it. My first impressions were that it looked smaller then I imagined. But then I enjoyed the fact it was all mine, no more sharing my room with people. I could go to my house and be alone. For someone who has been sharing his place of living with others since he was born this was a welcoming experience.

The weather at the time was very hot, so I was wondering what I had gotten myself into. It was later in the evening that I met up with two of my bosses and the sections (education) accounting for some dinner. I had mentioned that I like Yakiniku a lot and they kindly brought me to the local yakiniku shop and we had some yakiniku. I love that stuff so I ate it up like their was no tomorrow.

The conversation at time would end in laughter as we both tired to communicate. I had at that time not spoken Japanese in a long time so it was kind of rough, but with the help of a dictionary that someone brought and the Japanese lady from our section we got through.

After the main party is the second party and that was karaoke and snacks. This was not a normal karaoke room where you had rooms for each party. This was a bar that had karaoke machine and TV screen. So I had to sing in front of a large audience then I am used to. I sang horrible as I had grown up in Canada where Karaoke is not a big then and people don’t really sing. So my voice was fairly bad and the Japanese in my party were good because they had grown up doing it and if you watch Japanese TV and the music videos will always have the lyrics running across the bottom for you to practice at home.

We did some songs and left because I was tired from moving to my town and all the events that happened. From this point on I am in Shimokawa and all my stories will originate from here, I look forward to sharing my experiences with you all and look forward to meeting new friends in my posts.

Take care, Patrick