Return to Okayama, Part 1

~Hello, readers! I have survived my follow-up training in Okayama, albeit narrowly. Several weeks before the trip, company headquarters dispatched me a packet of information, including a checklist of items to bring on the trip. While going over the checklist with the staff at my school, my manager asked me why "casual clothes" were on the list. I explained that some people might want to leave the hotel after-hours to check out the town. This made my manager laugh...because, as she put it, the convention center that I'd be staying in is known among company staff as 'Alcatraz'. She said that it was on top of a mountain, surrounded by a shark-filled moat, and there was nowhere worth going to for several kilometers.

She was right:

^ A picture taken from on top of the mountain, outside of "Alcatraz'. In the center, you can see the moat-like river that surrounds the mountain. I could be wrong, but I think my manager was joking about the sharks.

^The name of the convention center that I had the dubious pleasure of staying at is called 'Yu Ai no Oka'. Wow, you get more than one Word of the Post! 'Yu' means friend, 'Ai' means love, and 'Oka' means 'hill'. You may remember from a previous post that 'no' means 'of'. Thus, 'Yu Ai no Oka' roughly translates to "Hill of Love and Friendship". Yu and Ai are also girls' names; there are several at my school (it's a lot of fun to say, "Hey, Yu!").

The more observant among you may notice that 'Oka' also appears in the word 'Okayama', the city that the hotel is technically located in. 'Yama' means mountain (we're up to four words now), hence 'Okayama' means 'Mountain Hill'. My theory is that the land around it wasn't tall enough to be considered mountains, but was too tall to be hills, so the founders compromised and included both.

^During the training, I got to see a lot of the people from my initial training group, which was a lot of fun. Still, the intensive training left us in 'zombie mode' most of the time. As I watched my comrades shuffle out of the room after one particularly gruelling training session, I had a disturbing thought. Here, we had hordes of mindless humans, inside an isolated, mountaintop hotel, with narrow corridors lit by with dim, naked lightbulbs. I realized that I was, in fact, on the set of...

^ RESIDENT EEEEVIL! I'm telling you, the setting was perfect. I half expected to wake up to a massive horde of bloodthirsty undead battling it out with Jill Valentine:

^YOU are next (redeye effect intentionally uncorrected)! Actually, to be honest, I wouldn't have minded some zombie madness to break up the monotony. I'm sure we could have MacGyvered some weapons out of locally available materials.

^After the speeches and model lessons were over, we did find some time to relax a bit. I heard a story about last year's training at this same location, when the trainers called a taxi, drove down into town, and loaded up on beer. When I asked them about this story, they would neither confirm nor deny it.

^Yu Ai no Oka was a bit ghetto for a hotel. For example, the showers were independent of the rooms and were only open for around two hours in the evening. The air conditioning in my four-person room was on the fritz, and you had to make your own bed and had to step outside to get to the closest bathroom. But I will say this: the food was fantastic, especially the breakfast. And it was free, which never hurts.

Another bonus was that the hotel provided yukata, which are Japanese-style light robes worn in the evening. Naturally, all of the guys put them on and began simulating lightsaber fights. Hey, we're teachers. We take our humor where we can find it (right, Stef?).

Here is some Japanglish I spotted while riding the bus back to the Okayama train station:

^ I think this sign was for a bar or club of some kind. Apparently, it's a cool place. Unfortunately, you can never see it. Oh well.

Tomorrow's post will be Part 2 of my Okayama trip, complete with more insane antics and pictures! Oyasumi~