Helping Out the New Guy

This time last year, I was making preparations to leave Oita, and helping my successor, Josh, get settled in.

It’s amazing how time flies. Now Josh has finished out his year in Ajimu and decided to head back to Australia, and there is a new person, Chris, in the position.

For about a week and a half, all 3 of us were in the area at the same time. We joked about having “3 generations of Ajimu ALTs” all gathered together. And then we had a good-bye party for Josh, and he left to go back to Australia.

Josh already did a pretty good job of helping Chris to settle in, but now that Josh has returned to Australia, I’ve been taking Chris out and showing him around.

It gives me a certain amount of satisfaction to make sure the new ALT gets off to a good start. My predecessor was long gone when I first arrived in Japan, so there was no one really to show me around or teach me the ropes. As a result the first few months I was in Japan were very lonely.

When Josh came last year I tried to make sure it would be different for him. From the moment he arrived I did my best to introduce him to people and show him places to hang out. And Josh did the same for Chris. But now that Josh has gone home, I’m trying to pick up where he left off. The other day I took Chris out on a tour of Ajimu to show him all the interesting stuff.

I’m beginning to be quite an old hand at this Ajimu tour thing. I’ve done it for both Chris and Josh now, and when I was actually living in Ajimu I did it countless times whenever someone came over to visit. There are a couple waterfalls that are good to swim in this time of years. There are a couple look out points where you can get a good overall view of the whole Ajimu basin. There are some historical temples and stone carvings of Buddha. There is an underground cave filled with statues of hell, which leads out into a hillside that is supposed to represent heaven. There are some interesting cliff formations that apparently were formed millions of years ago when the whole basin area used to be a lake. And there are the Ajimu grape fields and the Ajimu winery. Shoko, who used to work at the Ajimu winery, helped show us around there.

But I must confess that I am not motivated entirely by altruism. Showing Chris around gives me an excuse to get off my ass and stop wasting my summer vacation stuck in front of Shoko’s TV.

It also gives me an opportunity to play the expert, dispensing pearls of wisdom to the new comer as I see fit, and enjoying my status as the all-knowledgeable Ajimu veteran. The 3 years I spent in Ajimu may seem wasted in other situations, but showing the new guy around is the one time where that knowledge is suddenly pure gold.

And I do make the most of it, giving expert opinion on everything from the weather to the office environment. We swung by my old apartment (now Chris’ apartment), and I tried to make the most out of that as well.

“Let’s see, what stories can I tell you about this place?” I wondered. “Oh, see the large stain on the floor? That is from me. I didn’t clean air out my futon for 3 years straight, and all sorts of mold grew on the floor.”

“Yeah, they all ready explained that to me,” Chris said.

“It’s perfectly sanitary now,” I said. “We really scrubbed it when I moved out. We used all sorts of disinfectant and stuff, and we even re-stained the floor, but it just never got back to its original color. I guess the lesson here is not to leave your futon out on the floor all the time.” I looked around and noticed that Chris had already put his futon away. “Well, I guess you’re ahead of me on that one, huh?”

“Wow, this place looks really clean,” Shoko said. “How come it never looked this clean when you were living here?” she asked me. She found a broom and dustpan and other cleaning supplies. “I gave these to Joel for his birthday,” she said to Chris. “But he didn’t take them with him to Gifu.”

“Well, you can’t take everything with you,” I explained. “I had to leave a lot of stuff behind in this apartment.” I looked around. “Actually a lot of the cooking and cleaning stuff in this apartment is from Shoko.”

“Yes,” Shoko agreed. “I bought this, and this, and this…”

“But not these mats on the floor,” I said. “Those were from my previous girlfriend.” Shoko glared at me.

“What about these canned blackberries in the cupboard,” Chris asked. “Whose are those?”

“Are those still around?” I said. “I bought those ages ago. I was so exited to find blackberries in Japan. Paid through the nose for them too. And then I discovered I didn’t like canned black berries, so I never opened up the other cans.”

“You can have them back if you want,” Chris said.

“No, I had a whole year to eat them, and I decided I didn’t want them.”

“Are they still good?”

Shoko checked the expiration date. “They expired last month,” she said. “But canned food lasts for years, so I think it should still be good within a few months of the expiration date.”

Shoko did her best to communicate with Chris as well, even though she’s not used to speaking English. (Chris is fresh off the plane, so he doesn't speak a lot of Japanese yet.)

“I thought when I got an American boyfriend, my English would become so good,” she said to Chris. “But instead Joel speaks to me only in Japanese. I thought he wanted to practice his Japanese, but then last night I caught him speaking in English to Keika.”

“Oh, yeah I got in a bit of trouble for that,” I broke in. “But Keika’s English is quite good, so it just seems naturally to talk in English. I just naturally slip into whichever language makes the conversation easiest.”

At one point we were swimming at the waterfall, and Chris noticed a bunch of small rocks stacked on top of each other. “Does that have any significance,” he asked, “or is that just kids playing around?”

“I think it’s just kids playing around” I said. “Let me ask Shoko a minute.”

I asked Shoko in Japanese, and she began talking very fast. “I don’t think it has any significance. I think children like to place the rocks on top of each other. Because it is not very easy to get the rocks to sit like that is it? So it’s a bit of a challenge for the kids. They get to test out their balancing skills. Those rocks weren’t like that the last time we were here, were they? So I don’t see how it could have any special significance. At least none that I would know off. I’ve never heard of rocks stacked like that having any sort of meaning. So the only thing I can think of is people stacking them for fun like that.”

“Yeah, she says it’s just kids playing around,” I translated for Chris.

“Oh,” he said. Then after a few seconds of silence, “Did you ever see that movie ‘Lost in Translation’? You remember the part when the Japanese guy goes through that whole long speech, and then the woman just translates it into a couple sentences for Bill Murray?”

“Uh, yeah I suppose this does resemble that. But Shoko repeats herself a lot when she talks, so sometimes I can sum it up in a sentence or two.”