ね、知ってる？-- Did you know?

Happy New Year, February... Ok, that's a month fail. I didn't realize I forgot to include that in my last post!

In an attempt to take a break (who am I kidding) from posting about various trips mostly because I can't access my pictures on my work computer, I decided this should be a post of its own.

The fun facts below are randomly assembled from my everyday life and experiences, when I remembered to jot them down, and although some of them can be applied to most of Japan, I'll just add a quick disclaimer: most of these might only apply to Hokkaido and/or the Sorachi prefecture, or possibly just my town.

Did you know that police cars always flash their lights?

色々の初め -- A lot of firsts

After too long (which seems doubly long to me), I'll finally be writing about my firsts. First impressions and self-introductions, first days, first job, etc, so please forgive the lengthy post.

It's been two months now that I've been living here, in Hokkaido. It's also been nearly two months since I've been going to the schools. Time here seems both extremely slow (mainly because I still have no internet access in my house, apparently the internet company forgot about me, which I was told was unbelievable) and fast, because no matter how slowly each day passes, the calendar days fly off the page. I can hardly believe it's already October!

First meetings

Back to the beginning, on August 3rd. Walking out of the baggage claim with two friends, all of us in our suits and being unreasonably hot in the humidity, we were led to a meeting room on the second floor of the airport. We realized at once that it was filled with our supervisors, all sitting and waiting for us! Without pausing, we walked in, one after the other, handing our nametags and hearing our cities being called. That's when I first saw my supervisor, and greeted him in English before remembering he didn't really speak any. I followed him to the end of the room where two more people got up, one of them obviously the other Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) that I'd been communicating with for the last month via email and knew only by name (I'll refer to her as S from now on). We walked out, and then I remembered I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to my two friends. We were all waltzed out of the airport when we began our journey to our new town.