Moved In

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I am finally at my permanant place, so no more moving around and living out of a suitcase unless I'm travelling of course. I am in Kawagoe, Saitama, which is part of the greater Tokyo area. I am only 20-30 minutes away from Central Tokyo which is great. Woohoo.

Been in Japan for a month and 5 days now and discovered quite a bit about the country and culture, some good and some not so good, like every country and culture. I love the area that I'm in. Everything is at my doorstep, so no need to take a subway/train/bus. From restaurants, to bars, to clubs, to kareoke (which is huge here), to shopping malls, grocery stores, etc., it's all at my door step, so definitely can't complain. Transportation here is very expensive. Prices are based on the distance of your travel. On average I spend $25/day on work related travel, but no worries, cause I get reimbursed for it.

Not so great things... It is common to see vending machines that sell underwear. Not any old underwear, but used ones that have been worn once by a girl. To top it all off, a picture of the girl who wore the underwear is displayed as well. And if you haven't figured it out by now, these are for men to purchase. Also, the Japanese culture has a school girl fetish. Firstly, all the older student here roll their skirts up so high that you can see their unmentionables when walking up the stairs or bending over. Back home if you walk by a strip club you see photos of women in bikinis. Here it's photos of women in school girl uniforms. It's also very common to see people reading and looking a porn in public, especially on the train. Anime (cartoon) porn in very popular. I was sitting beside someone looking at it and on the other side of him was a little girl, but it was all out in the open, cause it's common practice here.

One distrubing thing I discovered was that there is an organization that wants Japan back to the way it use to be. In other words, no foreigners, no anything that is not Japanese. They want to close it off to the rest of the world and go back in history pretty much. It's somewhat of an anti-foreing organization. They drive around in black vans with the rising sun flag on it yelling out stuff through a loud speaker. Us foreigners have been warned to walk the opposite way or go into a store when we see or hear it coming, as worse case scenario, there have been foreigners kidnapped. Good to know huh? I stand out here more so than the typical white foreigner, cause it is not common to see brown skin people here. I did however meet a guy a couple of weeks ago, while waiting for the bus, who was attending University in Japan. Guess where he was from. Sri-Lanka. Yay.

Met all the teachers with my company this week and made lots of friends. Still keep in touch with my original group of teachers from the first few weeks. I am fortunate to be in the Tokyo area, cause everyone I met from before is going to go to Tokyo at one point or the other and guess who gets to see them all? Me. Yay.

So much more to share with you, but can't remember it all now, so will catch up later. Will upload more pics when time permits. Take care and miss you all.

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