Genki Again!

Hey, I’m back. In more ways than one. It’s been a bit of a crazy week since I last wrote. I traveled from Tokyo to Maebashi with the other JET ALTs, met my new supervisor in a funny, little, semi-official ceremony (I say “semi” because the official appointment ceremony is this Friday), I started a new job, moved into a new house… and then, moved again.

My goodness, what a nightmare the housing situation turned out to be. I arrived at my new house on late Wednesday afternoon with my predecessor, V, who was getting set to leave for Thailand the next morning. She was supposed to show me the ropes and help me settle in. I was to take over the house next door to the one she had been living in. Her roommate, R, also an English teacher was going to stay in her place (a situation that was the source of major stress for me while things were getting sorted in the months before my departure.) D, again an English teacher was in the house I was to inherit and getting set to move in with R. Got it? It’s kind of like that puzzle game where you have to move one square at a time using the one empty space until you complete the picture.

Okay. So I arrive Wednesday night, have some lovely tea with the landlady where she tells us she’s almost done cleaning for me and only has to finish up in the kitchen. Bye, bye, and my supervisor and school vice-principal are off, down the hill. And me? I am left behind in the dirtiest house I have ever been in. It was disgusting and so packed full of garbage, I didn’t know where to begin. Honestly, I must have stood there for an hour in my dress cloths, just staring, panicked.

The landlady walked over with the contract for me to sign and I burst into tears. Her daughter comes over to try and translate and, sobbing, I tell them I am not sure I want to stay there, and I must have said something about all the stuff. What stuff? Okay, here’s a bit of a breakdown. There is ripped and broken furniture everywhere, towels and hangers in the doorways, cupboards FULL of dirty and moldy blankets and futons, toothbrushes and personal hygiene products in every corner (the desk, the kitchen), broken appliances, a mattress with a chunk burnt out of the side, layers of old tatami mats, half eaten food items of all kinds strewn about the kitchen, and a layer of grease like nothing I have ever seen covering the cooking surfaces. (I later found a cupboard full of shoes, brown puddles in the fridge, and baskets full of old linens stashed in strange overhead places, but these things were not an immediate source of stress because I didn’t even know they were there.) That night, we manage to remove what amounted to more than three van trips to the dump the next morning. I counted. Oh, and also that night, we encountered a couple of the largest cockroaches I have ever seen in my life. And, they weren’t just in the kitchen either.


I woke up the next morning at 4:30 am and spent another 3 hours hauling shit out on my own and making attempts to clean up. To be honest, I was pretty sure I would try to tackle the dirt and stay. I even went with one of the teachers from the school that day to purchase cleaning supplies. But, that afternoon, when it was time to head home, I just suddenly felt so depressed, so unhappy about the situation.

It wasn’t just dirt, it was damage too. The screens dividing the rooms were full of holes, the paint had been peeled off the walls in places, stickers on the wood doorways, a burn mark in the tatami. The place was a disaster: the victim of years of short-term, foreign tenants. And, when I realized that I couldn’t even bring myself to eat my granola bar snack in the house, I knew I was in trouble. I hid from the landlady and resolved to speak to my supervisor the next day.

But, when I realized my supervisor was going to be away until Monday, well, I just couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. I started to cry in the teachers’ lounge, right there in front of my new co-workers. They sprung into action. And less than three hours later, I had found a new place. If only the paperwork took the same amount of time. For a new gaijin (foreigner) there were many hoops to jump through. So, while a school staff member, who I think is named Jimmy Joe (sounds that way, anyway), went over the many, many papers, I was whisked away in a chariot – not a joke, that’s a car model – to get special papers from city hall and obtain a cell phone which is a prerequisite for just about everything here. In the end our attempts to get everything done in time for a same-day move were unrealistic. I even had to redo my application for a cell phone after the first company decided my temporary gaijin papers weren’t sufficient.

For approximately $10 CND a night, I spent five nights in the house. Finally, move day arrived and an amazing coordinated effort from the teaching staff once again.

I’ve had the keys to my new aparto for about 29 hours now. I am unpacked and happy to be setting up my new, spick and span home. It’s not ideal. It’s very small, there’s no outside space or traditional Japanese touches like tatami mats, and there are all kinds of weird fees for things. But, it’s very clean and it’s mine. I’m home, finally. No more tears. I am now ready to tackle life in the land where bunnies pound rice nightly (a special prize for the first person to guess that reference, excluding people who’ve lived in Japan and my parents.)

It’s a shame you know. That little house had its charm. It was a real, traditional Japanese house perched on the side of a mountain. It could have been really nice. If any JETs, or other foreign teachers are reading this, please take care of the place where you live. It may be only temporary for you, but someone else will have to live there after you, and after that person, and so on. Neglect is cumulative.

Anyway, on to new adventures, like firework festivals that go on for hours, electronic toilet seats, and grocery stores where I recognize less than 50 per cent of what’s on the shelves.