Two months and counting...

I got the chance to attend one of the many fall festivals the weekend before last.  There were interesting parades, lots of delicious food on sticks (and sweet potato ice cream!), and some pretty decorations for sale.  I took pictures but I haven’t yet figured out how to get the pictures from my cell phone to my laptop, so those will have to wait.

There was another typhoon this past Saturday, although I didn’t know it was a typhoon.  (I thought it was just raining a lot.)  I had wanted to go back to Kawagoe to have another look around, but I spent the day in my apartment except for some much-needed grocery shopping.  It was still a pretty nice day—one of my coworkers introduced me to the joys of fresh udon noodles paired with cream cheese, which doesn’t sound like a combination that should taste good but it definitely works.  After the typhoon the weather was gorgeous, so on Sunday I went to a concert given by the school band, which is nationally renowned I hear, and with good reason.

I’ve now been here for more than two months, and I’ve been thinking a lot about things that surprised me when I got here, but now seem pretty normal.  There are no paper towels in any public restrooms I’ve encountered (except for one English-style pub in Omiya), and in the older bathrooms, like the ones at both of my schools, or train stations, there are no hand dryers either, so I usually end up using my cardigan as a towel.  Most people think ahead and bring a small hand towel with them everywhere, but I haven’t gotten into the habit yet.  As far as the classrooms go, I was surprised to see a sort of stage in the front of the room where the teacher stands.  At first I thought it was so I could tower over students menacingly, but now I think it’s so that the students in the back of the very-crowded classrooms can see the teacher.  In any case, I’m convinced that someday I’m going to fall off the stage and injure myself and/or the poor students sitting in the front row, but so far so good.

One of the hardest things to get used to has been the distinction between indoor and outdoor shoes.  I thought indoor shoes would be like slippers or sandals that I would change into whenever I entered the school, and take off whenever I left the school, but it turned out that the slippers and sandals I brought with me were not proper indoor shoes.  Indoor shoes are actually exactly like outdoor shoes, except that they either haven’t been worn outside or have been washed before being worn inside.  And it also turns out that there are situations in which indoor shoes can be worn outside without getting strange looks from people.  At one of my schools, the vending machines are located outside the school, and everyday I walk through a series of covered walkways to get my chocolate milk without changing into my outdoor shoes.  But the distinction between indoor and outdoor shoes is so strong that when we had a fire drill at school today, everybody (myself included) changed from their indoor to their outdoor shoes when they exited the building.  In fact, we were all informed in advance that there would be a fire drill so we could bring our outdoor shoes with us to class.  However I was happy to hear that if it had been an actual fire, we would not be expected to change our shoes before escaping the building.  Not that I would have stopped to ask about etiquette during an actual fire, but still.