The Talandis Family in Japan

Live blogging my 1st day of work on the new job

Here’s a running account of my first day of work at Toyama University. It’s not often I have days like today, I’ll take time to capture and reflect on what’s happening when I get some spare moments.

9:15am

I leave home with the car packed full of boxes containing books, notebooks, and other various office supplies. Today I have the following tasks to complete: 

• Meet the president and get my official notice of employment
• Move in to my office and get set up
• Check out the classrooms where I’ll be teaching
• Figure out the computer system here
• This and that paperwork/admin stuff as it comes up

I’m really feeling excited and ready to go back to work after a long spring break. The sun is shining bright, and it’s a cool crisp early spring morning. 

9:35am

The drive to work was smooth and clear. Officially the work day runs from 8:30 to 5:15, but those hours are not enforced. Teachers can come and go as they need. Since I won’t have any 1st period classes (thank God), that means I won’t have to deal with the morning rush hour. Great! 

I found a great parking spot, right near my building’s side entrance, with good access to my 2nd floor office. This is the Faculty of Humanities building, where I’m situated. I wonder if I’ll ever get to play tennis? 

9:45am

I meet the teacher next door, Daikuhara-sensei. She is very kind and guides me to the admin office in this building (Faculty of Humanities) so I can get my office key. When I open my door for the first time, here’s what it looked like: 

It’s a very old room that has seen better days, I’m sure. Bill, my predecessor, did a nice job of cleaning up. He even left me some presents, such as an old eMac and while MacBook laptop. Won’t be using those, so I’ll need to find a place to move them. I’m going to need Shinobu’s help to arrange this place; it’s going to be my home away from home, so I want it very nice and comfortable.

10:05am

I head over to an administration office building to meet with the president and receive my official notice of employment. That’s not until 10:30… Nakamura-san, an office guy, stops by the little waiting room where I’m at to begin the orientation process. He gives me an envelope full of paperwork. I expected this, but not a full centimeter thick pile!! Holy Toledo. I have until Thrusday to fill all this out, in Japanese. It’s important stuff, like my bank info for where they will deposit my paycheck. Shinobu will be busy helping me! :-)

10:30am

Nakamura-san takes me over to this very fancy room to meet the president. It’s the kind of place with wood paneling and big, soft chairs, the place where important people sit and chat about important things.

It’s kind of intimidating, and I feel my heart speeding up. I breathe deeply and relax… Then this underling guy comes in and announces formally that the ceremony will begin. In walks the president. I heard from Nakamura-san that he was a brain surgeon… Wow. I stand up, bow, and we shake hands. I say ohayo gozaimasu [good morning] brightly, then we get to it. He reads off a prepared script from a paper, then hands me the official document. I receive it with both hands, then bow and say, Domo arigato gozaimasu. Ganbarimasu! [Thanks very much! I’ll do my best]. We then shake hands again, and he says that he would like to stay and chat, but that he has another meeting to get to. He would like to meet again, however. I tell him likewise, and hope he really means it.

Judging from the big Tomidai promotional poster featuring him spandex on a bike, he looks like a real cool guy. I know just where this photo was taken… I would like to get to know him. We shall see! And that was that. Took about two minutes!

10:45am

Nakamura-san takes me across campus to meet with the Dean of Humanities, Yoshida-sensei. It’s a bright sunny day, and we chit chat along the way. I’m feeling loose and relaxed, and the Japanese flows out more easily than usual. I notice this and feel happy. Something about being here makes it easier to speak in this language. Always before at work I’ve been in a very English focused environment, but here, as the lone English instructor, I’m just another regular teacher. The English taught here is basically literature and English-American studies. As a result, Japanese is the main lingua-franca. In a way that helps, believe it or not. I don’t feel so tight about making mistakes and just let what I know fly. I happy to confirm that I can cover basic communication. I can tell my new Japanese colleagues appreciate that. I’m looking forward to improving as the years go by, especially with reading and writing…

Here’s the approach up to the Humanities building, on the left. The library is on the right.

10:53am

I meet with Yoshida-sensei and another guy from the Humanities admin office. Since we had gone out drinking a few days ago, this was a re-meet! After that, Nakamura-san said good-bye and I went back to my office. Here’s my view. The tennis club was practicing all morning, making a big racket! Ho ho ho! :-)

11:01am

After a few minutes of looking around, my next-door neighbor Daikuhara-sensei comes by. She takes me on a grand tour around campus. We visit all the classrooms where I’ll be teaching, tour the library (and get my library card), learn how to use A/V equipment, meet office staff in various buildings, and end up at the IT center, where I find out about the university’s computer network system.

It’s a long story, but bottom line I was able to see where I’ll be working and began the process of getting connected computer-wise. I was told to return at 3pm to get my password. So far so smooth. Daikuhara-sensei was very patient and kind. I’m feeling grateful for her help. Here’s a view of the campus from the 6th floor computer room where I’ll be teaching a class: 

1:16pm

I’m famished! Time for some lunch. I head on over to the bakery/convenience store at the Student Union, but the pickin’s are slim, so I change my mind and go over to a cafeteria next door. It’s in an old building, but who cares? I’m SO HUNGRY. I chow down on the lunch below: 

Rice, butajiru [pork vegetable soup], tofu, kabocha [pumpkin], and some fried fish. It’s a very simple and satisfying meal. Half-way through, Sakai-sensei joins me. I had met him several years ago when I did a presentation here. I also helped edit an English paper for him. He was glad to see me and was happy that I got the job. His English was totally fluent, and it was nice to be able to use it! We had a good talk. I look forward to working with him.

2:07pm

After lunch I went back to my office, chilled out a bit, then began loading all the boxes from my car. This was a heavy job- I had to lug six boxes and my printer up a flight of stairs. But the weather was cool and brisk, so it was a rather invigoration bout of exercise. 

Last box! Yataa!

3:01pm

I head back over to the IT center to meet with Kobayashi-san. He gives me my email account addresses (one for work and one to use with students), shows me how to connect them to my regular email accounts, then configures my Macbook to receive the school’s wifi signal. Great! I’m all set now. 

3:48pm

I get back to my office, look at that stack of boxes, then sigh. I don’t have the energy to open these up today! I’ll save this fun for tomorrow.

I look around my spare and slightly dingy office, wondering how I’m going to set it up. Where should I put the desk? How can I arrange the shelves and chairs? How can I get rid of stuff I don’t need? 

Suddenly, Daikuhara-sensei knocks on the door. She comes in and tries to show me about the online university course management system, but I’m not able to log in. She calls IT and finds out that it’s going to take a little while before I can access that. No biggie. Then we head downstairs, where she shows me how to use the security card I had received earlier to enter the building during off-hours. Likewise, I learn how to use my copy card for making photocopies. I poke around the menu of this copy machine and discover I can change the language to English! Cool beans. 

We also head over to the admin office, where we negotiate with the manager about acquiring some headsets with microphones for my conversation classes. I’ll have all my lessons in a computer lab (CL), where I want to use various online resources such as Quizlet and EnglishCentral during class. I really need those headsets, and I was bummed when I found out they didn’t have any. I told Daikuhara-sensei that I was willing to use my kenkyuhi [research budget] to acquire them, but she said I shouldn’t and convinced the office manager to buy 25 of them! Sweet!! I probably won’t get them until May, but that’s okay. 

4:07pm

Back in my office. I’m pooped! I’m spending my last hour writing this blog entry up and taking notes on all the various things I learned, people I met, and stuff I have to do. I’m really happy that I was able to accomplish everything I wanted to get done today. Tomorrow I’m going to work on setting up the office of real and then get down to preparing my lessons. I begin teaching classes next Monday, but I have to start at Chukyo this Friday. So there is much setting up and planning still to do. Overall, I’m really psyched and looking forward to rocking this job!

5:00pm

I leave for home right at five. Gotta get home in time to pick up Max at kindergarten (she started her new year today, her last one) and take Luke to swim practice. 

Papa’s driver’s license renewal

I’m at the Driver’s Education Center in Toyama, getting my license renewed. I’ve just gone through the processing process, took a simple eye test, had my photo taken (darn, I should have shaved this morning!), and am now waiting in a lecture hall for a 30 minute driver safety presentation to start. While we wait they are showing us a video promoting the benefits of wearing seat belts and using child seats. I’m watching crash-test dummies fly through wind shields after crashing while going only 40kph. Here’s a small child dummy, wearing no seat belt in the back, flying through, getting its head smashed. Now the scene changes to live actors: it’s a family of three, on a Sunday drive. Oh no! They get side-swiped at the intersection, and the car flips over! Are they okay? The music swells… Suddenly, the young child, in the back, starts to cry: “mama… mama…” Mama and Papa are still alive… All is okay. Papa says with great relief, “thanks to the child seat our baby is okay!” Violins swell…

Wow.

That could be my child!!! Okay, okay! From now on my kids will always wear seat belts in the back! Sheesh.

Highly effective video! 

TFiJ36: Winter 2011-Yuki Oroshi

Hey everyone! Long time no message. Hope you all are well, wherever you are. As I type it’s nearly March, and the snow from this record-breaking winter is melting away fast. Before it all goes away, I’d like to put out a series of videos that chronicle some of our experiences during this favorite season of mine. What with all the snow, it’s been an amazing ride.

This clip features a fun chore that quickly got old after two days- shoveling snow off of our roof. In Japanese, this is called “yuki oroshi”. Yuki means “snow”, and “oroshi” is a verb that means “to fall”. Here in Toyama, and on the west coast of Japan in general, the snow comes down wet and heavy. A typical season has about three or four storms, which can dump anywhere from one to 100 centimeters of snow. In recent years we’ve seen less and less snow, and the melting cycles between each storm have grown in length. A couple of years ago we almost didn’t get any snow at all! Ski areas had to shut down in January, which is crazy. Anyway, all this is set up for this winter, one for the record books. It started snowing on Christmas Eve, and for the next month it basically didn’t let up! We’d have some days with out much snow, but the normal melting between storms didn’t happen, and as a result, snow built up and up until it reached crazy amounts. Naturally this caused some havoc, as travel was made difficult and roofs creaked under the immense weight of the wet snow.

When we built our house, we designed the roof so that snow would slide off easily. This was to prevent snow from accumulating and then potentially damaging our home. Problem was, we put the front door in the wrong place! Snow sliding off the roof would block the entrance and make getting in and out a pain. Finally, several years ago, we put these “snow stopper” rails on the roof. These blocked the snow from sliding off too quickly and saved a lot of work. Everything was cool until this year- with all the snow, too much accumulated, and we had to get up on the roof to shovel it off. This was a tremendous amount of work. It started off fun, as the video shows, but after two days it became old! After five consecutive days of shoveling, I was exhausted. Still, the experience was a memorable one, and I’d like to share it with you all here. In subsequent videos I’d also like to share some of the other fun stuff we did this winter. We really did have a good time. Until next time, take care!

TFiJ26: Papa gets a new job

Great news! I have a new job. From April 1st I’ll be working full-time at Toyo Gakuen University, near Tokyo. My schedule runs from Mondays thru Thursdays, so that will enable me to come back to Toyama each weekend and during the spring, summer and winter breaks. I’ll be a long-distance papa for the next few years, it looks. This is a huge change for us, and I’ll be writing about it in more detail in the weeks to come. For now, check out this diary-style video which chronciles the day I went for my interview. You’ll see what it’s like to travel across Japan by train, take a tour of the Togaku campus, and hear my thoughts on what happened after the interview. Please ask me questions or leave a comment below!