As I mentioned briefly in a previous post, I've been working in Hyogo prefecture since the beginning of January, and I'll be finishing up here (and go back to my apartment in Kanto) by the beginning of next week. For privacy reasons, I won't name the specific city that I am working in.
Where I am working, it's pretty rural. Having worked in rural cities in my time as an ALT for a number of years, this is nothing new to me. What is new to me is having to stay in a hotel for an extended period of time. Before this, the longest I was staying in a hotel for work was 6 weeks, so three months is a little bit harder. Fortunately, my hotel room (covered by my employer) is pretty big, and its location is fairly convenient in that there's a cafe, supermarket, pharmacy and a few petrol stations are all really close by, plus to get to my work place from my hotel is not that much of a drive luckily. However, the crappy thing about living in a hotel for so long is that I'm not able to really cook anything. Sure, I do have a kettle and microwave, but there's only so much you can do. On the other hand, I have learned from my previous experiences in that I am not having a big breakfast or dinner, purely because I have a big lunch at my workplace. Plus, the company provides a daily allowance for food too.
On the other hand, compared to other rural cities I have lived or worked in, there isn't all that much going on around here. My regular gym does not have any branches anywhere near me, with the closest perhaps being Himeji, and that's quite a distance just to go for the gym - though I have found an alternative small gym to get me by. It seems to be the only gym in the city, as the members that come seemed to be pretty tight knit and know each other well. The owner is a body builder, and is nice enough guy, and I spotted in the local newspaper that one of his members won a body building contest recently. As for the gym itself, it's not an Anytime Fitness, but it has most of what I need. I was going three times a week initially, but with things getting busy recently, I have only been able to go twice, maybe three times if there's a public holiday.
Another thing I noticed is the lack of a Don Quijote store in the city or nearby cities, and having lived in other rural cities that did have one, I thought this was really weird. There's a nearby Aeon Mall (as small as it is), but I have to take nearly an hour train trip to the nearest ドンキ.
Despite the shortcomings, there are some upsides. As mentioned in a previous post, Himeji is a little over an hour away, and Kobe is about an hour and a half away, both by train. I did go to Himeji to watch the Gundam SEED Freedom movie, and I went to Kobe a few times for shopping and to celebrate my birthday by myself by doing everything I wanted to do: Go shopping for gunpla and games and catch up on IIDX.
I have also tried the local delicacy recommended by my coworkers, which is the local ramen - unlike ramen I usually have, it's a mildly sweet and salty soup that is used which works surprisingly well. When people told me it was sweet, I was worried it was going to be overpowering, but it wasn't. On the other hand, I'm not sure if it's just a Kansai thing, but the menu for ramen I was looking at came with rice of various sizes. At the time, I had set menu that included a small serve of rice (the amount you would get for school lunches), plus mince katsu and croquet of a pretty decent size which made for a sizeable meal - keep in mind that this is the smallest set menu you could get, and even I thought that was already big.
Despite it being 3 months out here, the last 4 weeks or so went by really quickly. While I did go back to Saitama back in mid-Feb for bills and see my girlfriend, it will be nice to return to Saitama, and not have to worry about having to go back again. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed working here, and I would probably enjoy it more if I was actually living in this area - though this part of Hyogo is definitely not for everyone, especially if you're not used to rural areas that lack key Japanese things like a Don Quijote among other things.
No comments:
Post a Comment