Bill Murray you ain't seen nothin....

Konnichiwa everyone. How sad it is that I've been here over a week now and the first time I use that word is in a blog to a bunch of (mostly) Canadians. Don't get me wrong, I have been using broken Japanese (hereafter known as 'Japenglish') for quite a bit of my travels, but I haven't really come into a situation where it would really be appropriate (for instance I have yet to really meet any of my Japanese neighbours.)

I actually hadn't planned on writing anything so soon after arriving because I didn't think I would have much access to the internet and I didn't know how badly I would be hit by cultureshock/homesickness and I didn't want any of those feelings to bias how I write. As it turns out my roommate has an internet connection and I seem to be managing pretty well so far so therefore I am updating my blog as soon as I am.

I'm trying to think of how I can possibly recount my entire past week's activities without going into one long essay that people will get tired of reading after 2 paragraphs. I may try to seperate it into more than one post over the period of a couple days. The flight was awfully long at 15 hours-the farthest I've ever gone so far. It was when I reached the airport terminal and heard the announcers over the PA that I came to the full realization that that charming language that always followed the english announcements on the plane was now the language and I wasn't likely to hear anything else for the next year. The next leg of my journey involved a painfully long (2 hour) bus ride across the city where I met a representative of the company. We eventually got everything sorted out and I was guided home by a fellow teacher who happens to live in my building.

All I can say is thank God I had a guide and my heart goes out to anyone who didn't. The streets of Tokyo are far and away beyond anything I had imagined. My neighborhood is a actually just a little outside the main city of Tokyo although there is no real border or any kind of seperation between the two. In my neighbourhood there are few buildings above three storeys high. Now I admit that I have some kind of unhealthy fascination with streets. Everywhere I go it's the first thing I notice. Some of you may remember all the complaints I had about the streets in England. My neighbourhood is something else all together. All the streets are little more than a single carwidth wide and there are no sidewalks. There are no streetname signs and as far as I can tell no discernable stop signs. The roads twist and turn and intersect with each other at weird angles. It's both charming and disturbing at the same time. I haven't seen a car/bicycle/pedestrian accident yet but surely they must happen all the time-there just isn't enough room for everyone!

I'm currently living with both a Brit and an Aussie. Both are very cool guys and have been more than helpful. There are actually quite a few teachers in the apartment that I'm staying-I'd say five different apartments' worth at least. Everyone seems quite cool and hangs out with each other. On Sunday we all went to Kuchi-jogi for the cherry blossom festival thing. The cherry blossoms hadn't really come out yet but there was a ton of people who were all sitting on tarps that they had brought and eating and drinking (and drinking and drinking.)

Now for a piece of current news-I just had my first full day of training today. It went pretty well. I'm kind of exhausted because the training is fairly intense. There's only three days of on the job training (OJT) before they throw you out to the wolves. I actually taught half a class today. It went fairly well I think. I was super nervous at first (think important job interview x 50) and I forgot a few things that I had learned but the two girls I taught had obviously done this before so were kind of used to the routine so we didn't get too lost. After managed to get rid of the nerves things went pretty well and I found that I actually really enjoyed it. Loved it even. The students were very enthusiastic and quick to laugh. My biggest worry wasn't that I wouldn't be able to do the job but rather whether or not I would like it. Fortunately that doesn't seem like too big a deal now and now that I've passed that initial teaching "hurdle," hopefully I can go into my next lesson without the stagefright

Let me get to sleep