Wakayama - Month 3

I have been in Wakayama for three months so far, and still the people are not used to me. Several times a day people scream " Outsider!" and run away from me. I am teaching English in a rural junior high school with an extremely long name. The students seem to want a Japanese teacher, but they behave very well. The Onsen (hot springs) here are amazingly warm. After all,

Wakayama is famous for these springs. This is a picture of one.

For four months I have been here teaching the students, and still they are a bit...timid. Everybody here clings to organization. Even a school lunch is something of a ritual. It is called the triangle pattern. First, you pick up some rice with your chopsticks, and put it in your mouth. You repeat this with meat and salad, and then you eat it.

The textbooks here are also censored, saying nothing unfavorable about Japan. The books go on and on about the atomic bombs, but the invasion of Nanking is not mentioned. This happens in America, namely with some new conservative bias in Texas textbooks.