Tasty Ions, Calories Off

Just got back from my orientation in Sapporo; I can't believe I got paid to do that. They put us up in a sweet hotel located right downtown, and we each got our own room! I feel badly for the people who live close(r) to Sapporo, who had to commute to/from everyday; they really got a raw deal. Anyhow, the first two days were orientation, which consisted of former JETs doing presentations about various aspects of life in Japan. I would say there was a 1:10 signal to noise ratio; most of the stuff they told us you pretty much would have already had to have figured out on your own to be able to survive for a month here. The latter three days were language classes, which were moderately helpful. Learned a bit of grammar I didn't know, but I think the most useful part of it was just hearing people speak Japanese at a pace I can understand. I learned a lot of conversational vocab and expressions just from listening to the other JETs talk to the teacher. Also, we learned some Hokkaido-dialect, which I'm sure will impress the locals here in Muroran. People in Hokkaido speak very close to standard (Tokyo) Japanese, but they nevertheless have a handful of idiosyncratic expressions. I gather people in the vicinity of Osaka often have borderline unrecognizable accents.

There was something to do every night, but I only really partied with intensity the first night. We started out at an all-you-can-drink / all-you-can-eat affair at the Kirin beer garden, and we then proceeded to some club in Susukino. It's funny how quickly a group of foreigners will drive virtually every Japanese person to vacate the premises. The DJ spun some pretty good pop music, so I had a great time dancing. Best of all, since we started drinking at 6:30, even after drunkenly dancing for a solid 2 or 3 hours, I was able to walk back to the hotel and have a decent night's sleep. I met a few new people, but mostly I hung out with my friends from Muroran and Kita-Hiroshima. I've decided that my initial reservations about all these people were ill-founded, and I'm glad I have friends who I feel comfortable around, even if we're not on exactly the same page. I'm also coming to realize that I have a *long* way to go in learning both Japanese culture and language before I'm at the point where I can get along with the natives here without feeling perpetually awkward and stressed out.

I retract my earlier remarks about shopping in Sapporo being unimpressive. In the Sapporo JR station alone there is a city's worth of cool clothing stores. The more time I spend in Sapporo, the more I like it.