Orientation! (Part 2)

Most of the Orientation was actually pretty straightforward and rather boring. If anyone has ever listened to a second language for a long time, perhaps they know what it's like, but I find it difficult to keep my concentration for too long. When someone is talking at me in Japanese for hours, it eventually just starts to drone into something like background noise. Maybe I need more coffee or something.

So admittedly, I spaced in and out. But I had my handouts and pamphlets with everything they were saying in written form so I don't think it was such a big deal. Eventually they brought out the teachers for the manga department - about 5 of them.

How can I describe them except to say, they were not really what I expected. Two of them were overweight middle aged men in suits who looked more like salarymen than manga-ka. They seemed to be the ones in charge of the department. One was a skinny guy wearing a vest and one of those NYC cab driver hats. You know the ones I mean? They kind of look like a beret, but they have a brim, and the hat part kinda falls over the brim. Anyway, he looked pretty goofy. The other two were kind of regular Japanese men in their late 40s or 50s wearing more casual clothing.

Except for Mr. Beret, who looked like a goofball, I didn't really know what to think of them.

After their introductions, which were just simple, "I'm so-and-so and I've been working here X years..." blah blah blah, they started to divide us into classes. The way it worked was a teacher would come up and call a list of students and all those would be in his class.

So, first up, Mr. Beret. He starts listing. After about 15 names are called, he stumbles for a moment. And then sort of, pauses another second.

Yep, you guessed it. He calls my name. (Though why it took him so long I sort of wonder. It's written in Japanese after all).

He calls a bunch of others and then we all head out to what will be our classroom for the year (except on Thursdays). As fate would have it, the chinpira is in in my class! Sweet, I thought, maybe this year will not only be packed full of study, but also have some fun and a chance to make friends with cool Japanese people!

We get into the classroom and Mr. Beret introduces himself again and dives right into another information session complete with handouts. At this point, I'm really exhausted. I just can not wrap my brain around Japanese anymore, and I really space out pretty hard- when the last thing I could possibly want is thrust in front of me.

A school survey. All in Japanese. Four pages long. Questions like, "Why did you choose this school?" "What manga do you like and why?" "Who is your favorite manga-ka and why?" "Did you visit the school before coming here?" "Do you have any medical conditions?" "Do you have requests for the school" etc. etc.

Man, I was struggling. Everybody was busy writing away and I'm struggling to just read through all the questions, let alone begin answering them. After about 10 minutes, I just gave up. I waited until the teacher started collecting them and then I went up to him - as low key as possible - and asked if I could take it home to work on since I was having trouble with the kanji.

"まー、それはしょうがないね。”

Basically, "I guess that can't be helped." Phew. At least he was a forgiving goofball.

But, after this huge mass of Japanese and the trouble I had getting through just a school survey, I went home wondering - am I going to be Okay?

Well, classes won't start until the next week, so I suppose I have some time to prepare myself. Nothing to do, but try my best. I'm a man with a dream, and I'll see it through to the end!

Is what I told myself, but to be honest, I was plenty nervous!