Pics pics galore!

Well maybe not quite galore. In abundance perhaps or copious amounts maybe-but not quite galore. So I just finished my first full week of teaching. I'm not sure if that makes me a veteran or not. Wednesday I have to head to another branch for a day of kids training and then I get to start teaching kids. Little kids. Which means playing games and singing ridiculous songs and stuff like that. Hopefully I enjoy it-the teaching I mean.

Sunday night after coming home from work, a couple friends and myself headed out to the local community centre to play some indoor soccer. One of the teachers has a contact who rents one of the gyms so we got to play two hours of soccer in an awesome gym for only 300 yen each. Talk about a great deal. That's a heck of a lot better than paying approximately $10 for one hour of soccer back home in Toronto. Anyways it was all good fun and I found out that I definitely need to start running again so as to get a little stamina back. After the game we got together for a team photo. My roommate Adam is crouching behind me and on the right is Jamie, a teacher who lives right beside us. In the back row from left to right are, some white guy, Jason, Crazy Kevin and Felsy the nextdoor neighbour.

Last night I went back to the community centre with Jamie for an aikido lesson. It was fairly interesting but in the end I don't think it was really for me. If I was going to do something once a week I'd rather be playing soccer.

Here are a few more pictures of Hibarigaoka. I took them from the top of a large department store right next to the train station. The first picture shows the train station itself and kind of the 'main square.' This is where all the bus routes begin and all of the taller buildings are kind of built up around the square. The second picture is overlooking the train station. I live out there somewhere in all that big jumble. The third picture is of the Parco department store. My school branch is here up on the 5th floor of the building. So I never have to go far if I feel the need to buy something. The last picture is of the train crossing that I have to cross every day to get to work. The Parco building is just on the other side. The only reason why I bothered to take this picture is because you never see these back home. But they're all over the place here as most of the trains are above ground. During the peak periods of the day, the barriers will hardly reach the top before the warning bells start to go off again. The Seiyu department store in the background is where I took the other pictures from.

This is the funniest thing I have seen since I got to Japan. Ben my roommate gets the credit for finding this gem. Unfortunately it was kind of tough to take a good picture of it. Those of you from Toronto may find more humour in it than others. I don't know why, but the idea of a submachinegun-toting, mask-wearing panda defending the homeland against SARS from behind a fort made of laundry bags makes me laugh like crazy.

By the way if you happen to be visiting Japan right now then you could be forgiven for thinking that there is some kind of mass pandemic going on in the city. When I first got here it seemed like 50% of all people were wearing those masks over their mouth and nose. My first thought was that people sure must get sick a lot here, but then I discovered that it's the middle of hay fever season right now and the pollen from all the cedar trees surrounding Tokyo really hits the Tokyites hard. I think they also wear them when they're sick though and I think some people wear them to prevent getting sick. It's quite strange really-especially when coming from Toronto, the first thing you think when you see those masks is SARS. I doubt a Westerner would ever wear one of those things even if we were sick-too concerned about our image.