The first day was mostly spent traveling and then meeting my host family and fellow JET volunteer who was also staying with them. It turns out my host sister lived in Georgia for 9 years, which is a crazy coincidence because she was also in a place super close to my house, my host parents do ceramics, just like my mom, and my fellow JET house buddy was somebody I met at our mid-year conference! What a small world.
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| Ishigaki's brand new airport! |
The next day we had our volunteer training with the resident Ishigaki CIR and a courtesy visit to the mayor! It was kind of cool to be on the guest side rather than the interpreting end, though it was also very short. Then all the (visiting) interpreting volunteers went out for yakiniku (of the famed Ishigaki beef) - we were all JETs from basically all over Japan, so it was great to meet everybody and get to know them a little better. The afternoon was just spent wandering around Ishigaki City, where we discovered the Shinei Park World Peace Bell and learned that Taiwan is only 270km away, among other things. I thought it was amazing how different it felt to be in Okinawa though - you could definitely tell that we were on an island (even though the weather was not ideal). And then I went to the airport to welcome some triathletes from South Africa!
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| The World Peace Bell |
I had all of Wednesday free, so a couple of volunteers and I went to the nearby Iriomote Island! It's the only Yaeyama Islands I'd heard of besides Ishigaki before coming, because it's the home of the Iriomote cat, which is a wild cat (not much bigger than a housecat) that's only found there. Apparently there are less than a hundred of them left and some people live there their whole lives without seeing one, though our bus guide had seen them 5 times! Anyway, our day in Iriomote consisted of a short cruise around the mangroves and a short ride across to Yubu Island via water buffalo (ours was named Yumi-chan), where we had lunch and saw things like a butterfly house. And then we went back to Ishigaki for a welcome party with all the interpreting volunteers, including Ishigaki residents!
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| An Iriomote cat! |
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| A very cool tree |
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| Yumi-chan! |
The next morning was free for me too, so I took the opportunity to have my first scuba diving experience! The weather wasn't the greatest (cloudy and not quite warm) and the water was a little cold even with a wetsuit, but it was definitely worth it. After stopping to snorkel a little, it was time to try scuba diving! I'd never done it before so I was a little nervous (especially since I'd always thought you needed to go through proper training before scuba diving), but they explained everything clearly and I didn't run into any problems (other than occasionally tipping over from the weight of the tank being imbalanced), which was awesome. We saw a bunch of fish and also a group of cuttlefish (I think), which was really cool.
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| Trying hard to breathe properly |
Then I went back to Ishigaki City Hall to prep for my next volunteer job: interpreting at the World Cup welcome party! The three of us were originally supposed to use the time to translate prepared speeches, but we found out that one of them didn't have a written copy, and because one of the other volunteers wasn't a native English speaker and the other had never interpreted before, I agreed to do it on-the-fly (which is always terrifying). But it actually went pretty well (he kept it short and sweet), so I got to enjoy just being at the welcome party. I didn't actually talk to any of the athletes, but I watched some performances of traditional dances/music by local high schoolers and ate some yummy food!
And that's all I'll recount for now - stay tuned for part two (hopefully shortly)! :)
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