Shichinohe JETs

AH and I took the bus to the office on Friday. (T-sensei had showed us the stop in front of the City Hall on Thursday). M-san, one of our office ladies, met us on the bus, so we didn’t have to worry about what to do or where to get off. The bus system is actually pretty interesting. When you get on, you take a ticket from a dispenser at the front and it will have a number on it. At the front of the bus, there is a number board that lists all the numbers and shows the updated fares as it goes along its route. For example, our stop was #3, so when we reached the office, it said 490 under number 3, meaning that was how many yen we had to pay. If we had gotten on one stop earlier, though, we would have had to pay 510 yen.

When we got in, T-sensei said we could leave around lunch time to go back to the City Hall to pick up money for our “business trip” to Aomori City (for our prefectural orientation). We would also have Monday and Tuesday off to get things in our homes organized! She also offered to pick us up on Monday and to take us to experience obon (paying respects to ancestors) with her family. Then she had to go for a seminar, so AH and I were left just kind of kicking around the office.

After eating our bentos for lunch (a bento box is available for order each day for 400 yen), we headed back to City Hall. Thankfully the lady who had helped us with our alien registration cards was expecting us, so getting our travel expense money was quite simple.

I took a leisurely walk home, taking pictures of the Kanchogai-Dori (Horse Street) and a bit of the shrine in front of my house before my batteries died. Then I just hung around the house, randomly organized things and/or just lounging around.

City Hall (Shiyakushou) pictures:

Pictures of Kanchogai Dori:

For dinner I was planning on just making onigiri or something simple, and had the rice all made when the doorbell rang. There on my doorstep were a bunch of JETs from Shichinohe—K and R, CH, CD, and T—plus my fellow Towada newbies.

They gave me all their contacts and information about upcoming JET events, and invited me out for dinner and possibly other fun things to follow. I felt kind of gross (after hanging around in the sticky humidity of the house, with just one fan to keep me cool) but after checking to make sure my rice cooker was turned off, off I went with them!

We went to Tijuana Pizza where I had a tasty pork and (Aomori!) apple pizza and enjoyed some good conversations about anime, life in Japan &etc. Then we went to a Lawson’s to buy ice cream and to decide where we would go next.

 

After loitering quite a while in the parking lot of the Lawson’s, they decided to go bowling. Since I wasn’t wearing any socks (and I don’t even like bowling when I’m in Mississauga) I opted to go home early with CD and CH.

Oh, and R and K were super nice and offered to take us (AH and I) shopping at the Aeon Supercentre if we still needed to buy things.

Back at home, I made my first onigiri! ^_^