Meet The New Town, Same As The Old Town

As of March 1st, Momoishi Town and Shimoda Town are no more. What now stands in their place is Oirase Town; a towering colossus among cities and a beacon of civilization in the far east. Well, okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. However, if I told you that two small towns of just over 10,000 people combined to form a small town of just over 24,000 people, I wouldn’t expect you to be very interested (by the way, there was an excellent article in the Times a while back about why all of Japan’s small towns are suddenly consolidating; unfortunately it is now only available to TimesSelect members).
If there’s one thing that there’s no shortage of in this country, it’s official ceremonies, so it should come as no surprise that the merger was rife with them. On the night of the 28th, Momoishi’s bureaucrats gathered outside of town hall to retire the Momoishi flag and the sign outside of town hall (the latter was a bit of a farce though, as the new sign had already been installed, so a foam decoy sign was simply rigged in front of it).

Then, the next morning at 8:30, all of the bureaucrats of Oirase Town stood outside on a cold, snowy morning to observe the unveiling of the new sign. Exciting stuff.

Well, right about now you’re probably asking yourself, "What does this town merger mean for our humble narrator?" Good question. I will present the answer to you in three parts:

1.) For months the Shimoda mall has played a large part in my life: giver of nourishment (in the form of overpriced beer, frozen pizzas and fast food), killer of time, my own private parking lot away from home. However, there was always something eating away at me in the back of my mind every time I bit into a Mos Burger or watched the latest Hollywood movie with Japanese subtitles. And that was the fact that I knew I could never truly claim the Jusco as my home turf. Well, now that both the mall and myself are proud residents of Oirase Town, all you Nambu area punks had best pay your respects to me when you visit Jusco or you had best watch your backs.

2.) Thanks to the merger, Charlie Mac and myself have now joined the ranks of ALTs who are based out of an office with more than one ALT. This might not sound like a big deal but in the past few months, sitting around in the office with the same four people everyday had started to seem less like a job and more like one of Sartre’s plays. So moving to a new office was a quite welcome change of pace for me. In addition to Charlie, I can now also count a number of ex-Shimoda bureaucrats among my co-workers, many of whom are somewhat young and pleasant to be around. Perplexingly enough, various co-workers have been saying things like “Oh, you and Charlie are very good at English” or the more confusing “You and Charlie always speak in English!” I’m not sure exactly what language they had expected us to converse in but a few people have seemed quite surprised by this.

3.) About a week before the merger, two guys from the department in charge of the new Oirase town office network came into the Momoishi board of education to ensure that our computers were up to spec. After checking out everyone else’s machines, they stood next to Yayoi-San’s desk and stared in dismay at my Powerbook. Clearly qualified network technicians, they asked Yayoi-San, “Why is there an apple on the front of his computer?” When she told them that I speak a little Japanese, they came over to my desk to ask me a few questions. “Do you run Windows on that?” “No.” “Can you run Windows on that?” “No.” “Oh, well then I’m sorry but you won’t be able to use the new network, it’s Windows only.” While I was a little bit skeptical as to whether or not this was really true, I must admit that I was at least a little bit worried. For a JET, being told that you will no longer have access to the internet at work is comparable to a diver being told that he will no longer have access to oxygen underwater. Luckily, when I showed up at my new desk last week, I was greeted by this:
That’s right, all of the members of the Oirase board of education received brand new laptops and for once, the ALTs were not excluded (almost all Japanese office workers use laptops as opposed to desktops, the reason is probably that they get shifted around quite frequently). As the story goes, the new superintendent fought pretty hard for us to have them, so my hat goes off to him. Viva Oirase!