One thing that they dont tell you is that Japan is very very hot and humid
in the summer....its even worse than Brisbane if you can imagine that, if
there is no breeze in the evening it is very difficult to sleep properly.
Luckily enough there is usually a nice breeze (read wind).....last night
was amazing with typhoon inspired winds blowing around outside....it was a
little scary and I am not even close to where the typhoon is!!!

Sometimes salty seaweed soup just doesnt do it for me for breakfast!!
However, I managed to cook up some Japanese food the other night, a pretty
simple broth thing with a yummy yummy sauce....a few people in my office
have volunteered to teach me some of the basics of Japanese cooking,
starting this Friday night, so I will finally be able to find out how to
use all of the ingrediants that I bought in a proper fashion.

I think that its interesting that the word koi in Japanese means 'in love'
and carp....hmmmmmm

Japanese people have this reputation for being very polite, and in general
this seems to be the case. They are certainly very generous and giving and
welcoming and they have many customs which they consider polite, like not
blowing your nose in public...(for those of you who know me you might
realise how hard this can be at times...I hope I dont get hayfever over
here!!). However, there are of course, times when this is not true...They
never let people into traffic...i guess there is so much trafic over here
and so much time wasted getting places down the tiny alleys they call
roads that letting people in just isnt really an option!! Also, at some
festivals they throw out these yummy pounded rice cakes, on these
occassions people are quite willing to push you out of the way to grab a
mochi that landed on your foot, they get really aggressive!!!!!! When they
pass important documents it is always done with two hands and you are
expected to receive it with both hands as well....a practice which is find
is very nice indeed for no real reason apart from that it seems really
reverent.....

Sometimes it seems like spending a whole year here is going to be an
eternity, sometimes it seems llike it is going bye really quickly....this
week I start Shorinji and have been booked into learning the tea ceremony
bye my supervisor, he obviously thinks it is important for my education in
Japanese culture....apparently it has a lot of ties with Zen buddhism,
which the doctor told me is very important to many Japanese people, that
they try to cultivate a zen mind...my supervisor also does bonsai so I am
trying to get him to show me how he does that as well....

The other night I went over to the science teachers house for dinner which
was good fun, more inch long crunchy fish...they are really quite tasty!!
He also took me to the supermarket and showed me around as well as
engaging in a game of go where I learnt quite a bit about a game I hade
never played before and lost terribly!!!*laughs* When the Japanese people
decide to have a drink or two they really get pissed....man, he was
stumbling around like nothing else, and they dont care at all if there is
work the next day, any night of the week will do....*smiles* The office
boss was having a snooze in his office the other day cause he had spent
the night before drinking for business purposes.....meeting important
people or people from the office for dinner and drinks is a part of
business here and known as nomunication as slang (from nomu which is drink
in Japanese and communication)...

I have a car now which is good, though I havent had much time to drive it
around at all and to have a bit of a look around.....though being able to
go to a real supermarket last week was a bonus, looks just like the
average coles or woollies but with slightly different stuff in the
packages.

Btw, Shorinji is a martial art which is based on some secret shaolin monk
martial arts that a Japanese spy in china bought back and integrated with
different meditations and stuff from Japan..... Its principles sound cool
Ken Zen Ichinyo (body and mind are the same) Riki Ai Funi (Strength and
Love Stands Together) Shushu Koju (Defend first, Attack after) Goju Ittai
(hard and soft work only together)


They have counters for many different things in Japan, when you are
counting things the number system varies depending on what it is you are
counting, generally the first part of the number stays the same but the
ending differs....so nihon, ninensei, nisan, niko (for two long things,
2nd year school, two imaginary things, to flat thing You use different
numbers and endings for long thin things, birds, short fat things, days,
peop@le, machinery etc...

Rabbits are one major exception and they are counted with the bird
counter.....

My office boss is obsessed with the idea of eating iguana...he is a realy
joker and although we hardly ever understand each other we have a lot of
fun!!

Since I last wrote I have been to a few town festivals complete with
Yakitori (chicken on skewers) little kids
going......ooooooooooooo......ahhhhhhhhh.........oooooookkkkkkkkkiiiiiiiiiii(big)
and huge fireworks, ther fireworks here are so huge and loud!! The
festivals are great fun and have such things as a conveyor belt/roller
thing on which people sit on buckets and are pushed along them....the
person who ends up closest to the end wins, everyone else loses or falls
in the ocean (most common), a pool full of fish for the youngsters to
catch (which is absolute chaos and one poor kid got an octopus wrapped
around his arm and couldnt get it off for ages), people throwing mochi
around and the most fun of all, a pig rodeo!! I unfortunately missed out
on this due to not picking the right coloured table tennis ball out of a
box but a female jet won $750 as a first prize!!! Awesome....*smiles* I
was meant to go to mud soccer last weekend (they flood a rice paddy) but
discovered that I wouldnt be allowed to play cause an insurance list was
finalised before I found out about it.....not to mention that we are
covered bye government health insurance and JET program insurance
anyways....ahhhhh well......

I went to a coming of age ceremony, when people turn twenty they go back
to their home town and celebrate (all together at one time in the year)
and there are speeches and whatnot, I think this is a cool idea and most
'native' cultures seem to have it, I think we should do something like
this in Australia, I guess an 18th birthday party is our rite but mostly
that is just people getting drunk....

It all gets a bit random after this, not that it hasnt been so far but I
was just cutting and pasting from other emails I have sent, sorry if you
get any repeats of stuff!!

I had a cool birthday, Takeko, the older woman in my office, bought me a
cake and Kanako, the younger woman, bought me a bottle of sake...my boss
bought me an abacus and some world ncup coins...and we went out to a
Korean Restaurant for dinner where I ate such things as large intestine,
small intesting, raw liver, stomach and other strange things, most of
which were suprisingly nice!!  None of them tasted anywhere near as bad as
the sea urchin and the snail that I tried at the wedding!! YUK!

Last Wednesday I went for a swim but slipped on the algae covered slope
and cut my hand badly enough and bruised my hip such that sleeping on
Wednesday night was a bit hard....but it is all okay now...also, I went
out to the restaurant (there are two in town but one is tiny!!!) and
ordered a bowl of rice and chicken, but I met the town doctor there and
got talking to him and ended up easting a feast!! He goes there all the
time and the whole family of thew owners was there and they shared their
food with us as well....mmmmmmmm!! lots of yummy food! beef & cabbage,
tempura, fried rice, fishy bits and pieces, tofu (which I am actually
beginning to enjoy) and vegies including the crunchy and delicious lotus
root...very good! Then the doc invited me back to his house, and I spoke
to his wife on the phone (her english is a bit better than his and she
lives in another town about three hours away with the kids...he only gets
to see her about once a week and is a bit lonely AI think) and he found
out about badminton for me and tried to explain zen mind a bit...his
english is very good. I also went out to dinner with him again last night
and met the other doctor in town (who is a neurologist so we talked about
alzheimers and stuff) and one of the nurses....the other doctor wants to
go fishing with me...so I.so I think I have found a few people who I will
be friends with already!! Yay!

The latest crazy thing was the local volunteer firefighters getting
together and competing to see how fast they could shoot water at a target,
which took about 2 minutes...but each team took about 20 minutes with all
their posturing and saluting and running about in an absurd manner and
shouting...it was pretty funny!!

Hmm, I am sitting at my desk not studying Japanese cause my brain hurts
from studying it and I am doing the 5 day intensive course starting
tomorrow in Uwa...tomorrow night I am going to play badminton,

On MOnday night I went out for a drink with the English teacher...I
thought that we were going to the local big town but he went...ahhh, itsw
not big enough, lets go to Matsuyama.....so off we went, its about a two
hour drive....we ended up going to three different restaurants, one of
them was really cool with a big open grill that people sat around and
called out orders, the chef remembered anything up to 20 orders at one
time and cooked them all at once, simple nfood but it was still
impressive, and then handed them out with a long handled wooden paddle
with a great flourish.....and having a bit of a look around town, all in
all it was a fun evening though wer didnt get back until 1am, leaving me
with very little sleep....which made tuesday pretty tough at the intensive
japanese course....trying to soak up 4 hours of new japanese each day is
straining my memory and is very taxing....somehow I got put in the
intermediate group with the oither people who have been here for a year
already....I must have nodded too much at the interview or something!!
Last night I went to Badminton and realised how much I missed playing, I
played from 7:30 till 10 and was completely stuffed afterwards....there
are some pretty good players there as well so that is great!! Today when I
got back to the office from the Japanese course I got my first pay..after
paying rent and paying back my supervisor the money I owed him I have
238,000 yen...which is about $3500 AUS.

The other night I went to the local spirit festival dance, while I was
there I treid to tell someone that their kids were cute and was a bit
sloppy with my pronunciation, I said kowaii instead of kawaii
(scary/disasterous as opposed to kawaii). This poor women just looked at
me like *what the hell* and meekly asked kawaii??? cute????Oooooops!! At
times in the office I try out my new japanese and it sets everyone to
laughing...like using the negative for the wrong adjective type and
whotnot....but its fun anyway....and it amazes me how much I can sort of
understand when people are talking in class.....our whole lessons are
basically all in Japanese apart from when someone has a tricky question.

Having been going out to some restuarants for lunch, they have some nice
food over here....last night I asked the doctor if there was anywhere that
I could learn ninjutsu...he thought that the idea was very funny!! He then
said that the old guy who is the chef was a ninja...which the chef thought
was very funny and he said that the beef that we werre eating was fish
before hand and he had used an ancient ninja trick on it...

I went to the bank with a women from my office yesterday....its sort of
nice being able to know how to use the ATM.....and you can deposit money
and it counts it for you!!!

There sure are some weird foods over here....the like to put sausages
everywhere...and put curry in doughnuts and the bread is in these huge fat
slices....They dont have real chedder cheese over here which is a bit
disturbing for the pizza making scene.....and I will have to make them in
the microwave as noone has ovens..I want to check out the beaches on the
other side of the peninsula and whatnot soon...the roads in the cities are
very narrow and the country roads are quite windy and narrow but the speed
limit is often 50 where it would be 80 in aus, not that anyone drives less
than 70 or so....

I think I am going to buy a minidisk player...I have 20 10,000 yen notes
in the bank, 6 to live on for the month and they cost about 34,000 for the
top of the line one....seems cheap!! I don't think that I will be spending
much money over here.....probably just food and travel, and mostly people
dont let me pay for food....*smiles*

So far no one has decided what my schedule is going to look like yet,
which seems odd given that I am starting in a few days, so I dont even
know which schools I will be at on which days or for how long or anything
like that...I think 2 days a weerk will be at the juniour high school but
there are only three classes there so I expect that I wont be teaching for
more than 2 or 3 hours for either of those days....not sure about the
elementary school yet....today I just found out that the ALT from Misaki
is going home due to someone being sick in her family or something so I
expect that my workload just doubled as it is the next town along the
peninsula (on the end)....

Hmmmmm. I am missing home a little bit at the moment, especially friends,
email is good but just not quite the same eh?? As for making friends in
Japan, I think there are a few people that I will be able to hang out with
and chat to a little bit but none of them are around my age or have any of
nthe same interestes really....so i think it will be tough to have any
close friends here....not that those things are the only important factoes
in making friends but they sure do help;.....so does being able to talk to
people...I never thought that I enjoyed talking so much!!!! *laughs*
Having often considerd myself quite a quiet person and mostly a listener
(though of course this isnt always true, if there is something I am
passionate about I wont stop talking) it is funny to find that I really
enjoy being able to communicate an idea to someone....and over here I get
really enthusiastic and excited when I manage to do that, but then it is
even more frustrating when you forget a word or cant figure out how to say
something.....interesting!!

Most nights there is a film in English on the International cable
channel!! Yay!

Well, there are just a few snippets from my life in Japan, feel free to
email me with any questions you have, I would love to hear how you are all
doing and what you have been up to! I just found out then that the word
for 'being in love' and carp is the same word...koi....very interesting!!

*smiles and waves from Nippon*