Of Habits and Humidity (And a little bit of culture)

Thus far, there are two things that have taken some getting used to in Japan.

1. In Japan, cars are driven on the left side of the road (who knew?) While I’m not going to be driving here anytime soon, I still have to cross the street. And when I’m running, I’m not really thinking about which way to look. I never realized how instinctual it is for Americans to look left when they’re crossing the street, but that is going to be THE hardest habit to undo. Hopefully I won’t have to learn the hard way. :)

1.5 Another note on crossing the street: you HAVE to use the crosswalks. I think it’s a military thing, but it’s a big issue if you don’t use them. I hear you can get tickets. And I thought bike cops in Davis were bad.

2. It is HOT here. And not like the “oh, I’m from SoCal and its 70 degrees” hot. Like, full-on humidity, cloud cover, and SWEAT. I went running the other day and within a couple minutes I was absolutely drenched. It’ll take a couple more runs to get used to the overwhelming humidity, and I definitely felt like walking (and did) during my run. But I tried to limit the amount of walking I did after remembering I was on a navy base and I couldn’t look like a pansy while working out. Oh, the shame.

We had a lot of on-base training yesterday, with the most interesting being the cultural info we received. EXAMPLE: Traditionally, single women wear long kimono sleeves and married women wear short kimono sleeves so they can cook and clean with ease. There’s a panic button on train ticket machines, and when you push it, a Japanese person will pop out of a nearby window to help you. I love Japan and I haven’t even been off base yet (although we all want to so bad!) Aquatics gets to go to the 100 yen store today (the Japanese version of the dollar store), so that should be an adventure.

In the aquatics program, we get to lifeguard with the full time staff that is already here, including high school students and Japanese citizens. We got to meet some of them yesterday, and they are the nicest people. I can’t wait to start working with them! And the kids, of course. Sign #1 of a good job: you’re excited to start work.

One of my directors had a slack line out yesterday, so I learned a bit about how to do that. I managed to get on the thing and put one foot in front of the other. So I’ll pretty much be a pro by the end of the summer.

Hope everyone’s doing well at home! Thinking about you always. :)