We got Internet!

Hello hello, we are now up and running, and have many things to share. Colleen and I decided to each do our own on-line journals about our adventures, as from time to time we discover that our perspective on things differs a little. Or in Colleen's words "You're insane!" If you also read Colleen's journal you will no doubt see and read some of the same info but her site is very funny and I hate funny things, therefore I will try to treat my journal with the utmost seriousness.

On that note, we went to our first Japanese drag show last night. Some of the teachers from my school were going, so Colleen met me after she got off work and we went to check it out. What we didn't realize was that the reason they were going was because one of my fellow teachers was in the show, lipsynching to songs and appearing in three different outfits.. Yikes! But we got a few good pictures. The guy next to Colleen is my co-worker. Yikes again!

We have done many other cool things since we have been here, including cherry blossom watching, Sumo watching, sunset watching, drunken businessman watching. Come to think of it we have done a lot of watching, but that is mostly because we don't speak the language. Anyhow, my first post really is just about our first night here. I typed it up that night, but since we didn't get internet for a month (it takes about 3 weeks to set up here) I couldn't E-mail it to anyone. So here it is in all it's glory. With a few editors notes of course. I have logged a few other journals as we have been here, and will post them at a later date, and soon my posts will be a little more current, rather than stuff that happened a few weeks ago.



March 16

Well one of my wishes has come true. Riding on an airplane full of Japanese school girls. Now if I could just get on a airplane full of Swedish bikini models I'd be set. Seriously though, I don't know if any of you have ever spent 11 hours in the air all in one go but it was butt numbingly fun. Also never gave it a thought before but when you fly international to another country and most of the people on that plane are from that country they kind of cater the meals that way. For the first time ever I had raw fish on an airplane. Very cool...if you are into raw fish that is. Also coming into Japan a very excellent view of Mt. Fuji. It is much larger in real life than it is in pictures, cause in pictures you can fit it into a photo album, but in real life, no way.
After getting off the plane and 45 minutes in line at immigration we got our bags, met our rep, gave our suitcases to the delivery service and were then informed that while all of the other teachers were going to a hotel, Colleen and I were going to be directed to the train station where we would be on a 45 minute train ride on our own, until we met our next rep who would transfer us to another train and take us to our apartment. Very strange. We had to walk through this alley to get there. Even the alleys have vending machines in Japan. Our apartment is right next to a cemetery, all the apartments are outside access and the elevators to get us to our floor have windows in them. I don't know if any of you have seen "The Grudge", but it's pretty dang close. Inside the apartment we've got two small rooms, little futon mattresses, an air conditioning unit with digital controls in Japanese (which I am learning to use pretty dang quickly), a two burner gas stove with a fish grill in it, a washing machine (no dryer), a love seat (blue leather), TV (no cable yet), oh yeah and a toaster oven with pictures of the different foods beside the cooking times (so far I can only identify three of them, but you guys might have better luck).
After our intro to the apartment, our liaison left us on our own. We immediately left to roam the streets at night in a foreign country. Wow. We saw city workers gathered in a courtyard, stretching and chanting, then we walked by the site where they were doing roadwork and it was lit up like Vegas with flashing lights and whatnot. There are vending machines on almost every corner, and hundreds of stores with signs advertising things I cannot read. We then ventured into a restaurant for food. It is a very different experience sitting down and ordering food in a place where you just point and hope for the best. We got some kind of fruity carbonated drink, an appetizer that was to my best description, a open topped dumplingy kind of thing filled with chunky mushroom, green stuff and mayonnaise, topped with onion skin that moved like it was alive cause of the steam from the food. (editors note: we later discovered that was not mushrooms, it was squid and the dish is called Takoyaki and is a special dish in Osaka, and can be found absolutely everywhere, and they use a lot of mayonnaise here in almost everything) After that came a crunchy noodle dish with shrimp and squid, which was much more like something you could get in Canada. Paying the bill was a learning experience, we sat and waited a long time and then got up to leave, at which point they rushed over to give us our bill, which is good because asking for our bill would have been a sign language feat neither of us were capable of.

That's all for now, Carl.