When I was in Niigata, one of the things that got me through three years was the weekly gathering of the handful of teachers in my area.

Every Wednesday the five of us would meet on the train platform at Itoigawa station and take the train to a nearby onsen (hot spring bath). The ladies would head to one side and the gentlemen would head to the other where we’d go through the ritual of stripping naked, cleaning up, sauna, cold bath, jacuzzi bath, outdoor bath and then cleaning up again. We’d do this pretty much rain, sleet or snow–the onsen was actually at its best when it was snowing lightly. We enjoyed this so much we even invited visiting family members to join us–although we were requested to leave names out of all future discussions.

After that, we’d recover with a beer and then head to Naojiro’s, a bar run by a terrific guy who spoke English and was very patient with us and our loud English speaking foreign ways. We’d eat and drink as a group until a couple of us had to run for the last trains and that pretty much got us through the rest of the week. Even as an introvert, I was energized by these gatherings. We also were suspicious of one of the new guys (after several staff changes) when he didn’t join the Wednesday gatherings.

This is in contrast to the Peace Corps which holds that you should be looking to locals for your support group and they do their best to force that by dropping you off by yourself in a site and saying “do something photogenic that we can use in promotional materials” and “don’t embarrass your country.”

If you were near groups of other volunteers, you had to hope you weren’t near the purists who sought to so thoroughly immerse themselves in the local culture that they would barely speak English to you when you saw them. To make matters worse, their pronunciation was much worse than they seemed to think it was and they thought speaking soft and fast made them sound native. (All it really did was make them harder to understand than a native.) A typical conversation with a purist went something like:

Me–Hey, dude, long time no see!
Them–Frdap, holtan mikentanan, Doayayne. Kratt kratt moltantan brackan?
Me–Dude, I have to speak that crap every day, let’s relax a bit.
Them–Doayane, makartely hop hop shi makartely sey. Krappat nikata fortan nikto.
Me–Sorry, dude. Gotta run. Great seeing you, though.
Them–Krdap, mikenora, Doayayne.
Me–Fuckez-vous mikenora, dooshbackan.

(Note: this language was created purely in the mind of a madman for illustrative purposes only. Any resemblance to any language, living or dead, is purely coincidental.)

Now it’s true that most Peace Corps gatherings involve lots of complaints about being in the Peace Corps (it’s the toughest job you’ll ever love having completed but completely hate while you’re doing it.) This makes a lot of the gatherings tedious versions of the Four Yorkshire Men:

A–My village elders set fire to me every night and make me run around fetching gasoline.
B–LUXURY! At least they provide you some heat. Mine make me sleep on blocks of ice, even in winter. With no blanket, either, I tell you.
C–In my town they give me a blanket and then kill me and take it away again.
D–My town makes me teach without textbooks.
A–Stop talking nonsense, D. No one could ever be that cruel.

The same thing usually happened in gatherings of teachers in Niigata, too. But for our Wednesdays, we could usually keep the complaints in check. It was enough for misery to have company. And no purists around, just great people.