Training: Episode Two or Indiana Nighthawk and the First Crusade

Online searches for The Company brought forward much praise and very few complaints. These cyber accolades, prior to meeting Mog, were the driving force behind my decision to choose this particular organization over the slew of other possible choices. Out of the minority of gripes and groans one stood out as it was often repeated: Training is HELL! Back in Canada I thought: “Well now, how bad could it possibly be?” Today I experienced just where the Training Prophets of Doom were coming from. There have not been many times in my life where I can site that, come day’s end, I was exhausted to the marrow of me. There was one night, at the end of a particularly arduous week working on The Tuxedo where I just could not function. My limbs just did not want to live and somewhere Friday afternoon they all committed mass suicide and by sunset one of the location bosses found me passed out snoring against the large silo I was supposed to be looking after. He warned me that I should be keeping my eyes open. Obviously. I yawned and went back to sleep the moment his taillights disappeared. Then there were those days, working three jobs, where I don’t even remembered how I got home at night but somehow I would find myself there in the morning undressed and in bed or, in once case, in the hallway. That night, I guess, I couldn’t quite make it. Now, I am not going to compare today to those days but I mention them to say that today as certainly close and that sometime during training I will reach this plateau.

It all starts in the darkness before sunrise when your still jet lagged body wakes you up a 5AM and toss and turn and are about to nod off again when your hotel room phone rings and it is the friendly morning wake up call recording so you pull yourself out of bed, shave, dress and organize your materials before heading out to breakfast with the group (a traditional Western breakfast Japanized: Eggs, one sausage, salad with potato on top and a large piece of toast with coffee) and, afterwards, it is back to the hotel to meet your trainer who takes you for an hour and half romp through the confusing Osaka rail system, packed in the train car, now, unable to move and the heat just smothers you --elbows in your side and back-- and nausea sets in with the train motion and the jarring jolts sending you into the frail old woman behind you, and then you are herded off the train and you have to keep up with the group because you are now walking to your classroom where you spend the next 5 hours being hammered repeatedly, like a rusty nail, with more information that you can possible cram into your cranium in such a short period of time, (did I mention you have to sing and dance around as well?), and a short break for lunch where afterwards you are sent out with a partner to another class in the afternoon, thus you have to search for it and move from one platform to another in a rushing crowd because you went to the wrong area, now stressing over the train lines until you finally get the right one, and it is a an hour and a half ride but the train is delayed for an additional 30 minutes but you eventually make it to your stop where you walk to the next classroom but, shoot, you took a wrong turn and now have to walk quicker to make up for the lost time but you make it to the class where the current teacher had no idea you were coming and was thus unprepared but you sit quietly in the back to observe for two hours and then back on the train and another hour and a half jaunt and ten minute walk but you do get back to the hotel where you find some of your group chatting in the lobby and you snag a much needed free coffee and join in, not wanting to be unsociable, until the group disperses and you crawl into bed but you cannot sleep because one of your group members has had a touch too much to drink and is singing a song about being yellow right outside your door and it is only after he passes out in a drunken stupor, somewhere around two o’clock in the morning, where you sink into heavy sleep to end your twenty hour day trying not to think about how you have to wake up in 4 ½ hours to do it all again. Yeah, hell may be too gentle a term to describe the training process.

It was somewhere in the middle of all of the above where I lost my map. I had packed my carrying bags in my suitcase (which would not be arriving at the hotel until later that evening) as I did not think I would need. Wrong! We were giving a stack of paper, reading materials and various manuals we would have to cart around with us throughout the day. Leaving without a bag and opting to carrying my bundle was my first mistake. At the end of a morning spent being overloaded with information, we were placed into groups of two and sent off to find a classroom where we would observe the current teacher. We of course were not sent out into train system alone and were given maps. I instantly tucked mine into the sleeve of the binder I had been given where it would remain safe, or so I thought, with easy access for when I would need to refer to it. My partner was a girl who had lived in Japan most of her life and this was both a blessing and a curse. Whenever I lost sight of her finding her again as not an easy task as she looked like everybody else. She was able to ask the station guards and other people on the platform of help in locating where we were going but this did little to ease my navigational anxieties. If somebody who has been here for years had to ask for help how am I going to be able to fair? Still, when the train was delayed she was able to translate why (some accident on the train itself that required a stop so an ambulance could pick up the injured person) and it was nice to have somebody who could read the digital display outputs in Japanese on the train platforms as they stuck around on the board a lot longer then the split second timing you needed to catch a glimpse at the English listings before they flicked back to Japanese. She had had her schedule altered and because of this did not have a map of her own. No problem, right? I had mine and we could rely on it. We did quite well in finding our class and arrived an hour early even though we made one wrong turn in our hunt for our first map landmark to class: a KFC. I was looking for good ol’ Col. Saunders. My traveling companion called him Santa Claus.

Observing the class was the best thing for me so far because I am a much more visual learner. The teacher we watched was a fellow Canadian and former day care teacher so she was able to provide many interesting slants on how to do the job. Back out on the road we decided to stop at the McDonald’s outside of the train station and it was there that I misplaced the map. I didn’t realize it until we were on the train bound for home. I figured I would just get another from the trainer but the pratfalls of having to latch yourself onto a partner is they will more then likely not be thinking in the same way you do. She wanted to get off the train, which we did. She wanted to call the trainer to let him know we lost our map, which we did. She wanted to return to the McDonald’s to find the map, which we did not. I had to draw the line somewhere and the trainer agreed. I apologized and he assured me that much worse has happened and I had nothing to worry about. The map was easily replaced. Again, it was good to have my Japanese knowing partner (this is the Malaysian girl I mentioned earlier but I found out today that she has been living in Japan for many years and, because she could speak English, was offered the job) to read the train schedules and guide me along. I will honestly be happier, though, when I have to do it on my own because this is the only way I am going to be able to tackle this system which, right now, is my biggest worry. The Osaka train map is not as terrifying as Tokyo but it is still very hard to understand, especially if you don’t know the language. Saturday I am on my own and will be giving myself a large buffer zone before having to arrive to my first lesson so I can try to figure out the train system. Believe me, folks, I’m going to need it.

My luggage was waiting for me at the hotel and the first thing I took out was my bag in which I quickly tossed the next days materials. Tried to sleep at this point but as I mentioned one of the Canucks in our group (and this guy was the quiet one until that point) had too much to drink and was singing loudly one of the songs we had learned to teach the children, only supplementing other lyrics for the ones he couldn’t remember. With the ruckus outside preventing slumber I flicked on the television to see if there was any anime, commercials or game shows to watch. There were none but I pressed some button on the remote and as was presented with the previously mentioned blurred Japanese pornography. Bizarre. As I flicked off the tube a message on the hotel’s channel read: PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH FIRE. Sound advice for any occasion, kiddies.