From Epilogues to Prologue

So it comes to my attention that I have essentially been a liar for the past year or so, given that I never got around to posting the pictures and information I promised in my last entry of August 2007. So, in order to get things off on the right foot, here are a few old shots and explanatory notes below.


Yes, this is me looking absolutely ridiculous in wizard school robes at Kinokuniya at about 7:55am July 21. The girl next to me will remain anonymous, due to the fact that she is holding a movie promotional poster of Lucius Malfoy, brazenly ripped from the wall of a subway station. (I still can't believe you got away with that, Allison.) The Deathly Hallows anticipation had all of us a little crazy I guess.


This is the exterior garden area of the kimono museum I visited with Emiko. The whole outdoor area was rather oddly furnished if you ask me-- doors leading nowhere like above, seats the shape of saddles but with random spikes-- but I suppose the people running the museum are the aesthetics experts, not me.


I think this photo perfectly captures the personalities of each of the primates in it. From left to right: "I'm just waiting until I get offstage." "Sometimes I wonder how I got into this job, but hey, it's fun." "I YELL TO MAKE LOUD NOISES." "I'm confused."


This picture is from a local festival held in my neighborhood (Koganei!) shortly before I left. There were huge crowds of people gathered on and around the streets and train station to watch their friends and family dance and play music. I thought of it as a nice kind of going-away present from the place I called home for four months.


If I remember aright, I took this picture from the hotel where my mother, my aunt, and I stayed at the end of my time in Tokyo. The Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka featured a breakfast buffet on one of the upper floors, which offered a great view of how incredibly smoggy Tokyo air can get in the summertime. I seriously wondered about the veracity of all those photos showing Tokyo Tower or something with Fuji-san silhouetted in the background, but apparently the winter air is not so bad as it is in summer. More to the point: the buildings in the center of this photo comprise Sophia University.


I brought my mom and aunt to Koganei, so they could see where I'd been spending most of my time the past four months, and realized I didn't have that many pictures of the area-- I guess at the beginning I didn't know what to take pictures of, and at the end I thought I had already taken pictures of everything. If that makes sense. The staircase to the left leads up to the dormitory, and directly ahead (and with a slight jaunt to the left) is the alleyway to the train station.


Yeah, I have no idea what this is either. It was on display at the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno though, so it's obviously important to someone.


The TCVB (Tokyo Convention and Visitor's Bureau) tells me that the Rainbow Bridge is named for its colorful lights, but it's looking rather monochromatic in this photo. Much more interesting was the veritable armada of sightseeing boats out in Tokyo Bay, as seen from our restaurant perch on the island of Odaiba (which I described previously.) And since some people I have talked to are apparently still confused, teleportation is NOT REAL. Go directly to grade-school science. Do not collect $200.


The bus ride from the hotel to the airport was very nice, kind of a "highlights of Tokyo" tour going around a bunch of the big landmarks. If I remember correctly, this shot of Tokyo Tower is out the back of the bus; oftentimes we would pass by things too quickly to even see on the right and left.


This was the last picture I took in Japan. It was pretty sad for me at the time, but this gigantic mural was just so striking that I had to take a picture of it as we passed. I could probably figure out where it was, and its name, etc. (yes, I can read the word "hotel" on the roof) but I think it's kind of a poetic last photo, a good encapsulation of my Japan experience. Weird stuff happened, and I often didn't understand everything that was going on, but it was pretty much all cool: my four months in a nutshell. I had no idea when or whether I would find my way back, but I was satisfied with the experiences that I was privileged to have in this strange and beautiful country, Japan.

BUT WAIT!

As most of you reading this already know, I have signed up for the JET Programme to teach English in Japan, and I am soon to be placed in 北海道・泊村 Tomari-mura, Hokkaido so that I can make a fool of myself in front of the junior high school students there. Some quickie fun facts about Tomari:

• Its (self-appointed) nickname is "The Hometown of Energy"-- appropriate, given that Hokkaido's only nuclear power plant is located on the coast less than five minutes from the village center. Did I mention Tomari is primarily a fishing village? Watch out for the mutant three-headed carp, everyone. (Just kidding.)
  
• The population of the village, according to the Tomari bulletin of July 2008, is precisely 2,031 (living in 999 households; 939 men, 1,092 women; etc.) I hope to find my own +1 duly noted when the next bulletin is published.
  
• My rent, if converted using current exchange rates, comes to $93 dollars a month. Given that I spent $900/month for a space the size of a closet in DC, I think I am willing to endure a few rattling windows and stinkbugs (which my predecessor warned about) in exchange. The wonders of government-subsidized housing in the middle of nowhere.

I think that gives a brief taste of what is staring me in the face for at least the next 12 months. It goes without saying that I am pretty nervous right now, especially about constructing and executing effective English lessons, cooking food that will be both inexpensive and palatable, deciding how and to whom to give my omiyage gifts, dealing with the potential risk of my toilet water freezing solid in the wintertime (of which I was not even aware until my pre-departure orientation here in Nashville), but hey! This is why we blog, right? To complain about our lives, so that everyone else can commiserate?

Of course, I hope this new iteration of Southern Barbarian (SB 2.0?) will be more than that. I cannot promise as frequent updates as I made before, but I will post when I can, and when I have something interesting to share, rest assured it will be here. My flight to Tokyo leaves tomorrow morning, following which are a couple days of JET orientation there, and finally our dispersal to our Contracting Organizations (COs) on August 6. I hope to write a bit along the way, so be watching for posts here: the return of the Barbarian is at hand.