Training Day 1: I fail to sleep in, find coffee

What is like to be in a bathroom in Japan?

I am Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians. I am the Incredible Hulk in a clown car. I cannot take a shower without feeling like I'm about to pull a Kool-aid Man move and bust through a wall. And the directions on the toilet don't make a lot of sense:

I hope you can read that. They're instructions for the dials on the toilet seat.

I'm not complaining, by the way. It's just so new.

Woke up at 5:30 this morning, dashing my belief that I'd already beaten jet lag. Wanderd around the neighborhood early in the morning, realizing that Tokyo is completely like New York in the fact that everything shuts down between 2 am and 7 am.

Honestly, I couldn't get this until 7 am:

Thank you, globalization gods.

TRAINING AND ACTUALLY FIGURING OUT STUFF

Began going over company policy today, haven't gotten into teaching style yet. The most important news I learned today is that my situation in Aomori proves as wonderful as it is intimidating.

It's kind of Yin & Yang. I drive a company car (wonderful) over about a 100 kn stretch of highway (intimidating). My position is in a beautiful, remote area (awesome) where the company has never had a contract before (the contact for the closest branch office, whom I met today, gave these instructions: "Please, let us know you're alive"). My board of education offers government housing in a [ta-da!] house of my own, but, um, I don't think anyone on the board of education speaks English.

It feels somewhat like speeding down a slope, aiming my snowboard at a huge kicker; exhilirating but scary. I'ma ctually really lucky though, because in light of my situation the head of my branch office, a native Japanese, will be the one escorting me to my town.

Anyway, I'm wiped. I figure if I can stay up two more hours or so I'll have a better shot of getting on nihon no tokee [japan time].

Oh, one more thing: the japanese can make a damn good hamburger.