Post III
5.30 am: get up, have a banana and some bread, get showered,
get in to my shirt and trousers, prepare for one hell of a sweaty day, because
it’s yet another orientation. I was given a lift to the ferry in time for 6.30
am, and the typhoon hasn’t quite materialised enough to stop transport – that happens
tomorrow so I keep hearing. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but ask my supervisor
why the ferries had no life boats. She told me that the inland sea is very
safe, and so they do not need them. She then said immediately: ‘actually there
was a horrific accident once when two boats crashed and 400 people died’ ‘But
do not worry, now the ferries have to wait outside the port when there is fog’.
Oh. Great. Now, they could have just put some lifeboats on board – which seems to
me the logical change in behaviour – but
instead they simply acknowledged the source of the crash, and vowed that that
very same thing would never happen again. Oh well, I didn’t press the point.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but worry a little bit given that on my way back
from orientation the typhoon was due to be picking up a bit of force.
The ride home quickly made me realise, though, that this is
Japan. The sea, even in the storm, was remarkably calm, and in all seriousness
there is so many other boats that you wouldn’t be bobbing about in your life
vest too long before someone came and helped you.
Speaking of helping, at orientation I heard a crazy amount
of stories of Japanese kindness to us poor foreigners. One girl was driven all
the way to the city from the countryside by an old ladies grandson (who, by the
sounds of it, ended up in this arrangement rather against his will). On the
other side of the prefecture, a good friend of mine stayed in the house of one
of his neighbours who spoke no English at all, because his bed did not arrive
and he only found out last minute.
In fact, I remember a great story from the Tokyo orientation
of a man getting the last train, but the wrong way. He travelled for an hour in
the opposite direction from his house. So he gets off the train, now at least 2
hours away from his house, and starts panicking. Luckily for him, there is two
men loitering in the car park (it is 2 am let me add). He explains his
situation and they drove him all the way home! Now, I don’t know about you. But
if I got on the wrong train back home, and somehow ended up in Scunthorpe, and
saw two men loitering in the car park at 2am, my reaction would be: I better run,
they are either crack heads or try will try to rob me, or be crack heads who
want to rob me. There is no way in a million years I would get in their car
even if they offered, which they wouldn’t.
I also found an arcade today, after orientation, which had
street fighter 2 in it. Well, I now know where the change from my beers will be
spent. A quick few games, struggling to get past Guile (the pesky all American character),
then I had to hurry back in the torrential rain to the last ferry, 6pm.
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