美味しい！！！

Sure enough, this morning, I was taken to the mayor’s office, the offices of the principles of all four of the schools that I’m going to be teaching at and the offices of a few other random bureaucrats in the ministry of education. It was pretty exhausting, as it was hot outside and I was fairly tired. I gave my formal introduction in Japanese to the mayor and he said my Japanese was very good (although I’m sure that’s a fairly standard compliment to give to a foreigner). Elly and Alexis were also there, as well as Charlie, who has been here for a year so far and is my assigned “big brother”. I was quickly whisked away for my next engagement by Kondoh-San (my supervisor), so I was unable to talk to these people at all, but I did manage to get Charlie’s phone number before leaving.

One of the bureaucrats I met looked kind of like a Yakuza boss or something. He had a stuffed owl in his office. There was also this guy there named Kamera, who was a pretty funny dude.

One of the schools I went to has a stuffed alligator in a glass case in the entrance to the school, I’m not sure why. Taxidermy seems to be far more popular in Japan than I had anticipated.

Well, after all of this, I was taken to the bank to set up my bank account and then to the grocery store to buy some food. The grocery store was in Shimoda, the next town over and was located in a huge mall. The mall is actually really close to my apartment (probably about a mile or two away). After I got home, the first thing I did was set up my speakers so that I could listen to some tunage while I set things up. I busted out my step-up voltage converter that I had special ordered for $100, as well as my 120V power-strip and my beloved (and brand new) Creature II speakers. Well, halfway through Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs the speakers inexplicably died. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get them to power on. I now found myself trapped in a strange place without either a computer or music.

Adding injury to insult, I somehow managed to stub my big toe pretty badly on my 70 lb. suitcase and it started bleeding like a madman. Luckily, after some minor surgery with my nail clippers, it was back to (somewhat) normal.

Having destroyed just about everything of value to me, I decided to set out on my bike to explore what I could and maybe walk around that mall a bit, just to see what it was all about. Well, the entire time I’ve been in Momoishi, I haven’t really been gawked or stared at by anyone, which I found rather surprising. Well, I soon found out why. I was informed by more senior Aomori JETs that the Shimoda Mall is “gaijin central,” although I wasn’t really sure what was meant by that. There’s an American military base in Misawa (just north of this area), so I guess a lot of the military personnel come down at night and on the weekends to hang out in the mall. And there were definitely a number of obvious Americans walking around in the mall, much to my surprise. So much for being the only gaijin in town.

The mall has pretty much everything I’ll need to survive on a day-to-day basis; huge grocery Store, a 100￥ store, a movie theater, Baskin Robbins, Mos Burger (a Japanese, not really “fast food” burger chain somewhat akin to Culver’s), Tower Records and a small electronics store. Contrary to my expectations, I was able to find size 12 shoes very easily. I’ll probably wait until my first paycheck to pick up a sweet pair of Tigers, however.

Having thoroughly worshipped at the altar of consumerism, I returned home to make dinner. I thought that for simplicity’s sake, I would start with that old standby, the grilled cheese sandwich. Well, somehow the Japanese managed to make this usually mundane task incredibly frustrating (something that I’m increasingly finding that they’re quite adept at). I had bought individually-wrapped slices of Kraft cheese but I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how to remove the cheese from its cellophane prison. In the end, I had to rip small pieces of cheese off of the wrapper, which yielded only about half of the slice of cheese and an unnecessary mess. I later found that freezing the cheese makes it somewhat easier to remove from the wrapper, although I still get the feeling that I’m not doing it quite right.

Having nothing better to do, I wasted the rest of the night watching Japanese television. There was this funny show on about “gross foods” where they made various celebrities try foods that they deemed gross. There was a ring above the main stage where a bunch of random people sat and commented on the proceedings. One of them was a black woman who said that she was from Jamaica. When they brought out Kim-Chee she said that she really liked it, so they brought some up for her.

I officially have a favorite Japanese TV show now, by the way. I can’t remember exactly what it’s called (delicious something) but it’s so funny. Basically, these three guys go to restaurants and order like whatever the famous dish is there. Then they take a bite and (if it’s good) start yelling “OOOOOOH! DELICIOUS! DELICIOUS!” (with their mouths full of food). The head guy wears this clock-like meter around his neck (Flava Flav-style) which has various gradations of delicious on it. He then spins the meter until it reaches the appropriate rating and if it’s good, the waiter bows and thanks him profusely.