Entrance Ceremony

So the entrance ceremony was today.  Needless to say, it was long and efficient.  Patience is a virtue in all matters here, it seems.

Firstly, I sat with all the new teachers for roughly an hour, while the school head teacher, mayor (or some such city official) the deputy head, the head of each of the departments and some specially selected kids gave speeches.  Individually they weren't long; but collectively they were taxing.  Before each person spoke we had to bow, and after each person spoke we had to bow.  This includes standing up and sitting down each time.  Tiring.

Then the new teachers were ushered onto the stage to bow in front of the students.  We were introduced individually, mine being a particularly drawn out affair.  I don't know why, he said something about me being English and from London.  That aside, it was relatively mundane.  This happened an hour into the ceremony.

We then sat down in our original positions (I don't know how long for) and waited.  After that, there was a ton of sitting around and waiting in the teachers room.  I was tasked with literally no work, so I busied myself with my university application, and asking those around for help finding local university libraries.  From a personal perspective, it was extremely productive.  From an education prospective, it was not.

I hope this trend continues, because I will be able to do monumental amounts of work here, if I'm tasked with the same workload as today.

In radioactive news; we had a magnitude 7.0 earthquake some 200km offshore yesterday.  No tsunami's that I know of.  A tsunami, for those are wondering, is caused by tectonic activity.  A tidal wave is caused by lunar or solar interaction with the ocean.

The quake lasted for around a minute all told.  It built up slowly (a trend I've noticed with the earthquakes here) and lasted for a long time.  Long enough to smash one of my glasses and force me out of bed to lay my computer and TV flat - you suddenly find out what your priorities are when something like this occurs.

Another interesting fact - before I came here I assumed earthquakes were quick events that happened over a period of seconds.  It turns out that the big earthquake a few weeks ago lasted for three minutes.  In the same way, it built up from minor shaking to become a massive earthquake.  The sixth biggest in recorded history.  That's huge.

The reactors are all being scrapped after they've been secured.  It appears that only one of the reactors is causing the headaches you can read about in the newspapers; the others are either secure or posing little risk. The one that's leaking everywhere, however, is burning holes wherever it touches.  Workers are being paid about 700 pounds a day to solve all the problems.  Of course, those workers will be dead in ten years, so, frankly, I think 700 pounds is too little.  The company in charge is taking advantage of the Japanese 'it's my fault, so I will kill myself to rectify the problem,' mentality.  On the one hand it's a crying shame that these people are sacrificing themselves for this; on the other it's amazing they would willingly choose to do so.  I don't know many people that would be willing to wade up to their knees in radioactive water to fix a leaking pipe.

The world can't run on oil forever, and using solar, wind or wave energy is, frankly, delusional.  Therefore, I guess the Japanese will have to build their power stations on top of bouncy castles or some such earthquake-proof device.

It's interesting to note that the reactors themselves were initially unharmed, it's only the cooling systems that failed.  Once a reactor is started, the cooling systems keep the temperatures at nominal levels - it's an ongoing reaction that lasts as long as the fuel does.  Once it's started, it doesn't stop.  There are emergency backups, but it would seem to me that the actual nuclear reactor technology is safer than people would imagine.  They've just got to invent a way of supercooling the reaction much faster than they were able to this time around.

Also, these reactors are forty years old.  I wonder how a reactor today differs?

P.S My water is not radioactive.

The Junior High School

I met the Junior High School head teacher today at one of the schools I'll be teaching at.  It's a middle-sized school with four or five hundred students - all of whom attend after school clubs of some kind.  It turns out that these clubs are primarily sporting, but run the gamut through to traditional Japanese particulars, such as the tea ceremony.

Tomorrow I'm picking up my immigration card thing, i.e a visa (hopefully).  I've a decision to make: should it be a multiple entry (6,000 yen) a single re-entry (3,000 yen) or no leaving permitted.  I'm probably going to choose the single re-entry, in case there's a chance to go somewhere.

It's pretty damned cold here right now.  The Japanese don't believe in insulation, so you have to heat the room constantly.  If you turn the heater off, it becomes cold immediately.  This will (I assume) lead to enormous heating bills.  I am, therefore, wearing a dozen layers instead of turning the heating on.  I'm one stop short of a woolly hat.

There's no gym here (that I've found yet) so I'm extremely worried about what I'm going to do for fitness.  There's a gym half an hour by train (the trains are worryingly intermittent at the moment, due to the earthquakes) but it ends up being an all-day affair just to get there if I use the trains.  Instead, I'll use the new bike they furnished me with (an old granny bike, with a basket on the front and everything) and cycle.  I think it will end up being about 45 minutes each way, but the benefit is that I won't have to spend half an hour on the treadmill each time I visit, which will cut the gym-time down significantly.

All my boxes arrived from Korea in one piece - except the computer.  The CPU cooler fell off, twice.  Don't use stock Intel coolers on I7 2600k cpu's, they're rubbish.  I'm not convinced it actually on properly now, but short of putting a hole through the motherboard, it's as fastened as it will ever be.

The shortages of fruit juices and milks is mostly alleviated.  There are still a few bare patches in the aisles, but I expect those to be filled within the next week or so.  We're still having earthquakes every day, usually a few.  There's been one day without any.  Most are tame, with a couple of shakers thrown in for good measure.

Someone requested more pictures, so here's the first hit when you type 'iwafune,' (the tiny town where I live) into google.

This isn't actually where I live, it's a different iwafune (in Kyoto.)  It looks nice though.

My iwafune looks nothing like this.