Interlude 2

Today, I was supposed to go to my Prefectural JET Orientation. Sadly, Typhoon Number 10 had other ideas, and early this morning I received a call from my school (my first official telephone call on my newly connected phone!) informing me that it had been cancelled.

Of course, that meant I needed to go into school.

I called a taxi-cab, and as I chatted up the driver, it turned out that he was the driver that often drove my predecessor to school. We talked for basically the entire trip, which ended up costing about ¥1200, or about $12. I leapt out of the cab after saying my thanks and dashed for the front door.

The sky is a light grey, and the rain that falls alternates in medium showers and heavy torrents. The only constant seems to be the wind, which shakes the trees outside the teachers’ office windows. At 9AM this morning, the Vice Principal announced to all that the reports said that around 3PM the storm in our area would peak. A-sensei, whom I got to chat with extensively when we were the only teachers in all day last Tuesday, said that he was going take a ½ day paid vacation to get home early, and suggest I might do the same.

So here I sit, having submitted my form that informs the school of my intent to take a ½ day off, leaving me with 19.5 more days this year. There is a form for everything here, from taking leave to taking business trips, and oddly enough many of these requests seem to be approved well after the fact. I guess this is not so strange in a society that treasures the collective over the individual. It is assumed, I think, that such things like vacation and leave will be taken at time that will be minimally disruptive to those around you, or will not interfere with your normal duties.

I also had to fill out the remainder of my business trip form, which I had filled out over a week ago, to explain that today’s JET Orientation was cancelled. Had it gone on as scheduled, I would have also had to write a report detailing what I did at the orientation.

Japan, it seems, is a country obsessed with bureaucracy. And like all bureaucracies, they move slowly. For my phone line, it took almost a week for a technician to toggle a switch and connect it. My Alien Registration card will end up having taking some 12 days to process, delaying my acquisition of a 3G phone. My internet, when I try to set it up, will take almost a week before a technician can come by. It’s an odd dichotomy in a society so advanced in many other aspects.

Ooh! Even if it’s coming out of my paid vacation days, I have a 2.5 day weekend!