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Published: January 20th 2006
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on the plane
view of clouds, complete with plane engine. So, I'm in Japan. getting here was fairly easy. i was on the plane for 10 hours, but it left a little late, and took longer in the air, but i finally got to narita airport. great landing, but the pilot decided to circle pretty much the whole way around the airport from where we started. i don't know why the airport was set up that way, but oh well, after 10 hours what was another 15 minutes. i then had to hop on a bus for another 4 hours out to maebashi where i could meet up with graham. my instructions for finding the bus station was walk straight. surprisingly accurate instructions. i couldn't take the shinkansen because it doesn't go by the airport, so i would have had to go into tokyo which would have taken another 2 hours. so, the bus it was, a nice ride. i slept the most of the way, but it stopped at a bunch of cities before my stop. each of which i woke up in a panic and ran off the bus and harrassed the bus driver as to whether we were in maebashi yet. he must have thought i was a
hotel tiffany
some typical japanese roofs with hotel tiffany in the distance little crazy. but you know when you just wake up and you're not sure where you are or how long you've been sleeping? that kept happening to me. finally got into maebashi 30 minutes early (good work bus driver man, perhaps trying to get me of fthe bus as soon as possible, who knows). since i was early a student where graham teaches offered to pick me up. you may be thinking, ah, student, young. nono, his name was sheigaro (i think) and he was in his 70s and retired. very cool guy. he's travelled all over the world and spoke english very well. he even picked graham up from work and drove us to our apartment, a big 3 blocks from the school.
so, that night was a write off, i was pretty tired, but managed to go out for dinner with graham to 'joyfull', a great dennys style restaurant that actually has decent food, not great though. graham got the next day off work and showed me around the town. not too much to see, but i hear the next town over, takasaki, has everything. that's because the shinkansen stops in takasaki. but it only costs us
great coffee
me at coffee tonya-the good coffee placce $2 to take the train over there. i'll probably head over there in a week or so. graham and i walked all around maebashi. in the morning i took care of essential stuff, applying for alien registration and what not. oh, and found a great coffee shop with good coffee and yummy croissants. mmm, chocolate croissants. then we walked over to yomada denki, similar to future shop, and hung out there for awhile. looked at cell phones and appliances and dvds. they also have these wicked massage chairs that you can test out, but the remote was all in kanji, so i just hit random buttons. it was going pretty well until the chair clamped on my legs and started pulling then down. kinda freaked me out a little, but after awhile felt kinda good. i got a great little mini hair dryer there as well. its one of those ionic ones, but folds in half and is super small (as most things seem to be in japan), for about 20$. i was pretty happy about that. i got to see a lot of the city on the way there and back; turns out theres not much to see. we
hall
the outdoor hall to my apartment stopped by the dollar store and the 7-eleven department store, complete with grocery store in the basement. its pretty cool. then late in the evening graham took me by the 'downtown'. turns out theres a bunch of cute little stores that i could have looked at, but they were closing. i still haven't had a chance to go back there. i tried to find it the next day by myself, but no dice.
i started working at the same english school that graham teaches at. its pretty neet. the training was minimal, as in here are some cards, these are the students files. ok, teach. but graham informed me that was more training than he had gotten. oh, i got to sit in on one class as well. the school is pretty cool though. its a conversation based school, so talking with the students is the main focus. they have a 'salon', which is just a bunch of couches in a circle, where students come and sit and chat with us. there is always at least one english speaker in the salon at all times. so, you just chat with people in there. they pay a monthly fee and
entry
the entry way of my apartment. you take off your shoes here can come to the salon whenever they want to. the good thing for the teachers is that we get the same rate for teaching private lessons as for chatting in the salon. also, conversation schools used to be more popular in Japan, but 'american times' (the school) is the last one in maebashi, and other schools that are in the neighbouring towns do not always have an english native in their salons at all times. the teaching is pretty easy, for now. i have been 'selected' to do kiddy land. ah, kiddy land, sounds exciting. but no, you sit there with little kids and their moms and try to get the kids to learn foods, colours, numbers, the abc's and such. its not hard, but the kids are around 1 and 2. what the f*ck are their parents thinking? they can't even speak japanese yet! i've done kiddy land twice now. not my favourite, but maybe i'll like it more when i get to know the kids better. all in all it seems pretty cool. i enjoy the work, its pretty casual, and i get to see graham during the day. not much though, just in passing mostly. oh, and
kitchen
a small kitchen, getting a fridge on sunday. all the coffee i can drink. but when the owner makes the coffee she makes it too weak. trying to save money or something.
well, i have to go grocery shopping at the 7eleven department store.
Anni
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Tim
non-member comment
Very Jealous....
Hey Anni - glad you decided to do the blog! haha. I love the idea of the heated toilet seats!!!