Experience Is What I Call My Mistakes

This is a picture of the squatty potties that I am staying away from.

This is the steps leading down to the big onsen bath.

This is the vending area of the onsen I am staying at. Where I spend lots of my time.

This is the counter that sells things you might need while you are staying here.

This is my station where I sit and wait patiently for internet connection in the vending area.

Opposite view of the vending area with the swing.

This is a shrine that is directly behind the onsen on a hill.

Crab, meet spaghetti. Spaghetti, meet my stomach. Food from a delicious restaurant nearby.

Buddha!

I have been working really hard at school. Today, I have officially learned half of the hiragana alphabet and I finished reading Lady Windemere's Fan, a play by Oscar Wilde. It's a tough life that an assistant language teacher leads, I must say. I have to keep myself looking busy in the midst of the Japanese passersby, and they can't read English, so I assume it looks like i'm preparing a lesson plan or doing research in between classes. Either way, my current job is much less stressful and depressing than some I have had in the past. The students are just delightful with their classroom ignorance and I think my lessons have been a little too challenging for them so far. I am in the process of toning it down. I just knew my Disney lesson would be a big hit, but in reality these kids have difficulty pronouncing the word 'car', so trying to get them to say Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was a bit impossible.
The teachers have been really helpful and one has even started bringing me a bento filled with rice everyday because I am incapable of making rice myself due to the fact that I have no rice cooker or microwave. I did try to cook rice in a pot the other day with my gas stove, but the attempt was a little too close to disastrous for me to repeat. I even tried bringing my own rice to work that just needed to be microwaved, but the school does not have a microwave either. I guess it is just ill-mannered to neglect to bring rice with you for every meal. It wouldn't bother me if everyone would stop making such a fuss about it.
I have been patiently awaiting my new room to become available, as the one I am currently in is in the colder part of the onsen and the corridors often have a smell of fish that pervades through the air in the late evening. My new room will be closer to the heater, the onsen, and the exit. It is being reconstructed on the inside, so it will seem somewhat new. It will also have a small patio and an actual door that you can lock from the outside.
After some language barrier issues despite my efforts to prepare myself for the task of going to the city office to apply for mandatory National Health Insurance, I had to call my coordinator to have him translate for me in order to complete my task. In the end I was successful and celebrated by means of a Teriyaki McBurger, shaka shaka chicken, and fries.
For some reason, everytime I bite into something that I think is chicken, I discover that it is fish. Interestingly enough, I am finding that I like fish more and more.