total insanity

That's the inside of my brain right now. This week has been super busy so far, and it's only Tuesday.

...But, then again, on Saturday we ship out. So I guess we're pretty close to the finale!

I've been emailing back and forth pretty regularly with my predecessor, a lovely New Zealander named Stephanie. She's been very bright and chatty, not to mention exceedingly helpful. I'm a little bummed that she'll be leaving just after I arrive, because she seems very lovely! (On the upside, we'll be sharing the apartment for about a week, and she's offered to show me around town and introduce me to people. What a sweetie!)

So, new info:

* Stephanie confirms that Sonobe is, in fact, an hour by train from Kyoto. Rad!
* I'll be working with a Canadian girl name Kristin who also seems nice.
* There may or may not be a South African JET living in my same apartment complex?
* The apartment is within walking distance of both the school and a grocery store.

Also, I have been productive!

* registered with the U.S. Embassy
* bought a pretty fair amount of omiyage
* half-heartedly began packing
* amassed a fair amount of business clothes
* bought toiletries, classroom tools, and tabasco (it's important!)
* copied important dates into my new planner
* ripped a lot of cds to my computer
* saw "The Dark Knight" twice...so far (I definitely count that as productive!)

Last but not least, the updated to-dos:

* buy a new camera
* finish transferring files from my old laptop
* set up a GoLloyds account to transfer money home
* continue packing, now and forever
* try and see people to say goodbye
* PARTY TONIGHT!

High-fives to Allison Maier, who always throws me a party. As Joanna good-naturedly commented last night, "We always have parties for this girl, whenever she does something! Anna's going away, Anna's coming back, Anna's graduating, Anna's got a haircut!" And it's true. But our friends like any excuse for a party, and I'm happy to oblige! :)

Placement!

With a slightly awkward timing that I should have expected with my usual luck, my placement info finally arrived last week. I say that because it arrived in an e-mail the morning I was leaving for almost a week's (internetless) vacation, when I needed the few hours standing between me and the airplane to finish packing and post officing and other such things. Of course, with my standard level of willpower, I completely ignored the pressing nature of all of those things, and instead spent an hour dicking around on the computer, looking for (and largely failing to find) info about my town.

Here's what was tricky. The letter they sent said, in essence, only this:

Hey, Anna, what's up? You're teaching at Sonobe Senior Highschool. Raaaaaad.

(Paraphrased for your convenience.) But, so, they didn't say where this school was. So I googled it. And found one page, written by a former JET some fivish years ago. Fortunately the school sounded neat, and it had an address, so I went looking for the town in said address - Sonobe.

And I looked. And I looked. Google, Wikipedia, Google Maps, Diddlefinger. Nothing but a train station of the same name. After forty-five minutes, I was feeling kind of crazy, until finally, in some tiny corner of the Wikipedia hive, I found this sentence:

"On January 1, 2006, Sonobe merged with the neighboring towns of Yagi, Hiyoshi and Miyama to form the new city of Nantan."

NO WONDER. Essentially, the town I was searching for no longer exists. >_<

But, I found a little bit of info on Nantan, which seems to be medium rural and pretty nice? I'm guesstimating that it's an hour or so by train north-west of Kyoto. Now I'm just waiting to hear about accommodations from my CO (contracting organization), and any info my predecessor wishes to dump in my head. Let's hope it's good.

In other news, I continue to be almost productive.

* mailed in my yakkan shomei
* mailed in my visa application / passport
* applied for a credit card

But there is a whole bunch left to do. I've gotta see about making a To-Do list.

Oh nos.

Someone on the Atlanta JET forum just mentioned that people placed only at the prefectural level so far (i.e. ME) may not know their specific town placements until pre-departure orientation, or even TOKYO orientation.

NO, PLEASE, NO. I can and will die from suspense. D:

Edging towards a verdict.

I have been accepted by the JET Program, a fairly competitive system sponsored by the Japanese government, wherein native English speakers with an undergrad degree in pretty much anything move to Japan, and help teach English in public schools. So have several of my good friends, including one Fig and one John.

According to the powers-that-be, I am to be placed in Kyoto-fu; that is to say, Kyoto Prefecture. Hopefully that will put me close-ish to Kyoto proper, but the prefecture is pretty stretchy, so I may end up out in the country somewhere. Either way, I'm pretty happy. (Coincidentally, both Fig and John are relatively close to the Kyoto area, so we may be able to see each other now and again.)

Whereas most people know their exact city, though, I haven't been placed that specifically, yet, so the waiting continues to some degree. I can't wait to find out.

In the meantime, things which need doing:

1. Buy nice clothes for the workplace.

2. Send a few things to the Japanese Consulate and my recently departed alma mater.

3. Save up some cash working for the man, a.k.a. the DeKalb County Library System.

4. Spend time with as many friends as I can wrestle to the ground.

5. Review my quickly fading Japanese.

6. Many, many more things that fail to come to mind at present, I'm sure.

As Beck might warble: "People gettin' busy."