Actually settling in

Now that my schedule has mellowed out a bit, this past week I finally found the time to get the most important things for living in Tottori, and probably for living in Japan. I got a bike and a rice cooker!

After searching through a few different shops, I finally lucked out in finding this used bike, which is in pretty good shape, has straight handlebars, and came with the added benefit of 6 gears. Most of these cruiser bikes are single speed, which can end up either being taxing on the rider, or just slow.






I also went to the IKEA of electronic stores to pick up a rice cooker. Apparently an everyday appliance that everyone in Japan uses is substantially more expensive than in America. I was half tempted to have someone mail me my rice cooker in the US. After searching through the shelves I found a personal rice cooker with a steamer (also apparently a rare thing) at a reasonable price of around $90. I say reasonable because the high end rice cookers encroached $700, and the midline ones sat at $300. Oddly enough, the capacity did not greatly increase with the rising price. Apparently they just have fancy features like automatically factoring your room's temperature and humidity to ensure consistently perfect rice. But I am happy with my little steamer purchase, although that means I cannot prep food in advance the way I would like to.



Also, a few of the teachers decided to show me the school farm. Since the school has an food industry focused class, they actually have a plot of land by the school where students get to practice for their professions. They have a lot of greenhouses, as well as some plots for growing both crops and decorative plants. The gardening focused class also has land there, where they learn to build gardens like Japanese style gardens as well as European style arrangements.  It was impressed to see such amenities available for students to use.

They also just installed fancy projectors in every room which allow you to draw digitally using digital pens synced to the projector, and also have the added feature of being positioned in a way were you are not blinded while standing in front of it. So it sounds like I have the tools to do my job, now all that is left is to teach well.