The real work has started, and yet I often catch myself thinking, “I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this”. I adore my coworkers and have trouble wrapping my head around the extreme level of kindness they have showered me with. My students are, for the most part, normal sixteen and seventeen year olds who try to sleep during class and take the path of least resistance.
That’s not to say this little adventure hasn’t been a cake walk-certainly there are moments when I am frustrated, although usually at myself. Some of my shyer kids occasionally get to me, but I’m learning to shrug it off the way I used to shrug off nasty clients at the animal hospital. ‘You can’t please everyone’.
There are certain moments that I’m falling in love with. When I first arrived, despite not being on nearly as tall a cloud as some of the other JETs I’ve met, I was nonetheless ecstatic and thrilled to be back. Some of that euphoria has rubbed off, but it’s been replaced by the happiness by experience; eating lunch every day with a teacher, the contented quiet of a cup of tea when I wake up in the morning (My coworker has taken it upon herself to ‘make a proper Englishwoman’ of me yet, and she’s succeeding in more than just tea consumption), the way the (newly) crisp, autumn morning air smells like burning leaves, the looks of shock and worry when my students realize I understand everything they’re muttering and cooing over, and a thousand other moments that last for only a second.
In other news, I survived my first direct typhoon hit. In all honestly, I wasn’t expecting much considering Saitama is one of the few prefectures without a coastline, but things still got quite blustery. Scratch that, the wind was positively howling.
School was cancelled for students at noon, and they were told to go home. Teachers, however, had to stay. Some sort of ‘public servant’ thing, but I just shrugged and went with it. I was told I could most certainly go home, but I’d have to take Vacation Time to do so.
Eventually, as the skies got darker and the wind began picking up, the vice principal finally told me to go. He was worried that my trains would shut down and that I’d be a sad, stranded foreigner. I later found out that while most of the metros and trains in Tokyo shut down, the sturdy ol’ Nobu Line smashed through the storm like a boss. Poor Ryouta waited it out with his coworkers in a bar- classy.
It is with a heavy heart that I admit I did not have a hurricane/typhoon party. Although I spent it in a relatively festive manner: dinner, tea, and Sabina from upstairs for company. Oh, and I found a giant toad hopping across the road on my way home. Like any good animal lover, I of course picked him up, debated kissing him to see if he’d magically transform into a prince, then safely deposited him in a garden on the other side.
All was well.
