Everything Old Is New Again – Part One

The weather has turned colder, autumn is rolling in, the first batch of leaves are starting to change their color and I have started my new teaching block. Everything old is new again. And so it was as the chilly now autumn wind batted against me I found myself walking to Unebi station, stooping down to pat Skimbleshanks and boarding a train to start teaching again on a nice, crisp white page. Unlike my previous schools where I had train choices, the first new school in the block has no such option. I have to take one of those old, rickety trains on the JR line. This creates some minor problems and one major annoyance. The problem that now manifests is that these trains only run once per hour so unlike the Kintetsu line that runs every few minutes I have to be precise with my departures or I could find myself late for a lesson which is the ultimate Company sin. I call this a minor problem as I tend to arrive an hour or two before each lesson anyway so this is just furthering a habit I’ve already formed. The annoyance comes with the return. Again, with trains leaving on the hour if I happen to miss a departure or things don’t gel with the end of a lesson I will be stuck waiting around a lot longer then I used to. Even worse, as I discovered, trains don’t run the same every hour. What I mean is, one line may be going in the direction I need to be going in but won’t go all the way leaving me to change trains a few stops away from home but despite being so close I’ll sometimes have to wait an extra hour for the next line to pull in. So, in some instances, I could be stuck waiting two hours to get back home if things are no timed perfectly. This means late parents will become larger boils in my ass. The train is a strange one. Two stops away from my home city station the train pauses and the first time it did this I am unsure if I have to get out and change trains or what. Then the train proceeds to head back into the direction you just came from and suddenly I am panicked. Damn it, I internally scream at myself, I knew I should have got off and asked! But wait…where are we headed to now? The train has changed tracks during our stop at the station and is now veering left. My rail map is pretty useless at this point and this is the line where almost everything is in Japanese. I find myself matching up Kanji come the next stop and it appears as though I am heading in the right direction. Plenty of opportunities to mess up with this train so I will have to be on my guard. The train is also a busy one for school kids and the cars are packed with uniformed Japanese students horsing around and being exceptionally loud. I feel like such an old man being annoyed by such things but I redeem myself by blasting some Metallica on the MP3 player. The first new city I teach in is called Gojo which is one letter removed from Gozo. I like that. It is pretty remote considering the more populated areas I had become used to and from looking out the windows on the train it is surrounded by mountains with not much else around but the train tracks and a highway. The train station is manned, which is more then I can say for my own, but when you step outside of the gate you really see how sparse this place is. At least at the outset. Beautiful, but sparse. All around you are mountains and this week they were clouded at the peaks looking pretty spooky. From the first short walk I took there is not much to this place. Lots of farmland, a few small restaurants and a shopping mall. Oh, yes, a McDonald’s so it can’t be exceptionally remote. I found my classroom with ease. It is really about three minutes away from the station which is a choice local considering the wacky train times. I do no have keys to the place yet, a little office mistake, so I utilized my Cat Burgler skills. Mailboxes in Japan are really easy to bust into if you have the slender woman hands that I was blessed with. Thanks mom! I just slip my hand into the mail slot, reach about for the keys and then I am in like Flynn. This classroom is not just a classroom. It’s a class-building. The entire building is a walk up apartment converted into a class making it the largest place I’ve taught in. The main teaching area alone is bigger then my entire apartment. There are two bathrooms, another large side room that I suppose was going to be a bedroom but is now a storage area. There is a kitchen complete with fridge and then there’s that door that is locked making an extra mystery room a possibility on the other side. You step in to an entranceway where the class slippers await. Over the weekend they had gathered some cobwebs and when I slipped one on a spider crawled out the toe hole. Yikes! Steep steps are hard to walk up in slippers. At the top of the steps is another door leading into the classroom. Outside the places had it’s own vending machine. Yup, I’m digging this class. It was very well organized. There was a nice note from the Japanese teacher in the communication book that gives me hope that there will be no issues here. I was used to twelve kids lessons. This school would cut those in half as I don’t think I push over seven. The kids were a little shy of me at first but by the end of lesson number one they started to come around. At the outset no alarm bells for all out Terror Kids but there is one or two rugrats that may give me hassle. It was expected. Like the guy who ran up to me during a game, took a slide and crushed my left big toe. Tears welled up in my eyes it was so painful. I’m still feeling it and will be gingerly stepping for the next week I imagine. It was a mixture of excitement and nervousness meeting the first of Generation 2. I put some of my best games forward to break the ice and I’m thinking things will go smoother next time as they grow more accustomed to me. All in all, a good start. Now to put some ice on this toe. Ouch!