6:15am Birthday Call. Goodbye Sanjo, Hello Agano! [阿賀野市, 新潟県]

So, after falling asleep at around 4:30am, I was woken up on my 24th birthday by a phonecall from Interac at 6:15am.

The moment I heard a Scottish accent, I know it was David in recruitment and my heart sank. I’d read about placements changing quite often on ALT forums, and I knew what the phone call would be about. David told me that the ALT I was meant to be replacing in Interac had decided to stay on, and that I wouldn’t be able to go to Sanjo. But, they had a new placement offer for me.

Imagine my relief to find out that I won’t have to prepare myself for a big change all over again! I’ll be in exactly the same style of placement -rural, driving, teaching JHS and ES, in a city called Agano, in the same prefecture of Niigata. Of course, I accepted. So now, here is a crash course on what I could find out about Agano!

Agano is a pretty small place with a population of around 48,000 people. It’s slightly North-East of Sanjo, but borders the huge Niigata city, with a population of 800,000! Niigata city is only 30 minutes drive away from where I will be. So, although Agano is half the size of Sanjo, I have the biggest city in the prefecture right next to me!

The city flower is the Cosmos [コスモス]

The city tree is the sakura [桜]

The city bird is the swan [白鳥] – When researching my original placement of Sanjo, I’d just heard about the death of my very good friend Rodger Swan. I kept seeing the Swan Lake near Sanjo popping up and deliberately ignored it. I’d like to think my change of placement wasn’t a coincidence.
A beautiful and famous part of Agano is called Hyoko Lake [瓢湖]. So looks like I’ll be surrounded by Swans

On top of all this… Agano is only a 30 minutes drive away from Niigata city! There are other ALTs in Agano, apparently one is a British guy. So hopefully I’ll have some friends to play with in Niigata!

But for now… it’s my birthday! I’m off to eat birthday cake. Let’s hope it’s second time lucky with the placement

My New Home – Sanjo City, Niigata [三条市、新潟県]

I’ve been keeping myself busy today by attempting to research in both English and rusty Japanese about my new hometown – Sanjo city in Niigata prefecture.

Niigata prefecture is 2 hours North of Tokyo by Shinkansen, and Sanjo is pretty much in the middle of the prefecture. It seems that the winter is about the same as those that I’m used to in the UK - with added SNOW.  The summers will be warmer than England, so that’s something I’m glad about!

Here’s an aerial photograph of Sanjo… pretty, right?

The population of Sanjo is around 102,000 people and I’ll be teaching at both Elementary (age 5-12) and Junior High Schools (age 12-15). I think I have the age ranges right, anyway!

To give you an idea of the scenery I’ll be driving through every day, here are some pretty pretty pretty shots I *finally* found on the internet after a lot of searching:
  

 

This is an image that crops up every time you search for Sanjo on the internet, this is something called Yagigahana. I say *something*, because I’m not entirely sure what it is? Does it count as a mountain? It’s a lonely mountain if it is one…

As you can tell from this post, I don’t know too much about Sanjo other than the facts. According to a JET website, there is constantly a Canadian CIR, as the city of Sanjo is twinned with Vaughan, Ontario. On top of this, there are 3 other ALT positions, none of which have been offered to JETs since 2008. So there are three other people who’ll be living near me. I’m looking forward to finding out who they are! I hope I have a girl to go shopping with, though

I’m lucky enough to have experienced the Kanto region during my time at Keio, and I feel I exhausted my tourist options while I was there. Don’t get me wrong, I love Tokyo and Yokohama. My heart will always secretly be in Shibuya, I could go there again and again, and I have many friends there. But I’m honestly looking forward to exploring a different side to Japan. I like being slightly in the dark about what to expect!

In other news… it’s my birthday tomorrow. I’m almost 24! As my friend Jenn pointed out to me yesterday, I’m the year of the tiger, and this is the year of the tiger. It’s started off badly, but this has to be my year!