Lost in Lofty

Hi! My first week of work was great, but exhausting! I have a wide variety of students of different levels and abilities, which keeps me on my toes. Now that I've settled back into life in Japan I thought it was time to let you know about my trip to North America. It is strange to think of it as a trip: when I went through Canadian customs they made me check off 'visitor' instead of 'resident'! San Francisco was wonderful. The first five days I was there were sunny and gorgeous (the rain started on the day of the wedding). Camille had everything under control so instead of frantically helping with last minute wedding details I got to relax and be pampered. Camille referred to us as "lady's of leisure", since we spent our days ... read more

Hi Everyone, I'm finally getting to see more of Japan! My mom arrived last week and it started snowing an hour after we picked her up and didn't stop snowing until the day we left Morioka! It snowed a foot the night she arrived! Travelling with her is definitely a different experience, the main difference is everywhere we go people offer us special treats, help and sake! We shared a boat trip through Geibikei gorge with a tour group who insisted that we eat most of their elaborate lunch and drink sake and beer. It was 11am so of course they were loaded. One of the men sat beside my mom and kept calling her 'mama san' (Mrs. Mom) and when we had to walk through part of the gorge he took her arm to walk ... read more

Hi! Well, I haven't gotten lost so far, but I've only driven to the internet and I followed Yuriko in her car! We are renting a car for the month! It is a super cute, white, two-door, 4 wheel-drive, manual Daihatsu, Mira. Today was my first time driving in Japan and I love it! (Colin's company wouldn't let me drive any of the cars they lent us...) Even though I've only used it to go to a place that I go all the time, it is great knowing that I have the freedom to go anywhere! Driving on the left side of the street is fine, changing gears with my left hand is a little strange but the hardest thing to get used to is having the controls for the turn signal on the opposite side. ... read more

Merry Christmas everybody! A little late, I know... I hope everyone is warm and toasty. Here in Morioka it's been snowing like mad for the past few days, probably about 3 and 1/2 feet in the past 3 days, and it's snowing just as hard today. I borrowed a car from a co-worker while he's on vacation back to Canada so getting around hasn't been too bad, although driving is slow (I'm a Vancouver Island kid). We went out for dinner and a movie the other night and returned to find a foot and a half of snow covering our car! We started digging it out and 10 minutes later we could leave the parkade. We pulled up to the pay machine and found it was going to cost us about $25 for parking (we thought ... read more

Wow, I wish we'd tried this in Canada before everything on the computers was in Japanese! We've been here just over two weeks and are settling in. We survived 3 earthquakes in our first four days (only one was big enough to wake us up, magnitude 6.9), I've had one job offer, Colin's survived two company parties and we still have no clue when it comes to the Japanese public transit system--it is not comforting to know that they can't figure it out either. We had our first onsen(hot spring) experience last week. It was very relaxing, Colin was nice enough to tell me on the way there that no swimsuits were required, in fact they are banned. Thankfully the men and women have separate onsens because I don't think I could've handled all the Japanese ... read more