Oh hi! Looks like you’ve
stopped by for this month’s installment of The Michael in Japan Show!
I guess I should start with Tokyo! We arrived at 5:30 am, well before sunrise and
went to Tsukigi fish market. I had been
there before, but I must have been either half asleep or still drunk from
partying all night, as I didn’t remember how huge and utterly fishy it
was. There are literally thousands of
people running, yelling, arguing and frantically trying to buy the best of
whatever had just been unloaded from the boats.
The fishing industry in Japan is huge and hyper-competitive. After our visit, I am content in returning to
experiencing it through educational TV programs.
After Tsukigi we did a couple of famous temples and then
tried to go up Sky Tree, the tallest building in Japan, but it was so overcast
that we were advised to return the next day.
Then we decided to have lunch at an owl café, only it wasn’t just owls
there, and it wasn’t a café at all. It
turned out to be a weird sort of petting zoo with exotic pets that had been
discarded by their owners. And there was
a vending machine and bench. I don’t know
why you would want to call your petting zoo a “café” as that would seem like a
health department red flag, but that’s what showed up on google. So after petting some owls, a monkey and a capybara,
we drank our free vending machine coffee and went off to a Mexican restaurant
for lunch (actually a first in Japan.)
That afternoon we explored a forest in the middle of Tokyo (Meiji
shrine) as well as Shibuya, which has the famous world’s-busiest cross
walk. We crashed in a crappy hostel and
went back to Sky Tree the next day. (It’s
worth the $20 to get to the top. You can
see every neighborhood of a city of 30 million). After that I met an old friend for lunch,
strolled around the imperial gardens, and took the bullet train home. It was by far the most sightseeing I had ever
packed into two days. I'm still a little tired out from it...
So, since then (it’s been a month hasn’t it?) I’ve been mostly
working and thinking about my next break in 2 weeks and my new work assignment. Starting next school year (April) I am
completely abandoning all of my branches and starting again, mostly working at
two Hello’s schools a mile from my apartment.
It’s a much needed fresh start, as the experiment of renting me out to
our parent company has pretty much failed miserably. The trend of bad behavior and little support
has continued, and at this point most of my students don’t want to be in class
and most of my coworkers barely talk to me (they don’t really talk to each
other much either). It’s a night and day
difference compared to my last time in Japan.
Hopefully my move back to Hello’s will set things straight. This week is my last on my current schedule,
then I train for a week, and take over new classes after the April
vacation.
What else? I’ve been
to a few movies lately- I enjoyed Beguiled and Black Panther (especially the
first ever token white character!) I also worked the last two Sundays, one
training and the other teaching a free lesson for prospective students. I taught four classes with 5 students and two
of them singed up on the spot. Not bad
considering I didn’t even know where the books and flashcards were when I showed
up!
Other than that I don’t have much more to report. I am happy that so many of you keep reading
despite my relative lack of adventures/ run-ins with law enforcement. Hopefully things start getting more
interesting soon. Happy spring
interneters!!
