had four lessons and a preliminary meeting at Rankoshi elementary. I am going to no t have to do a lot of planning for the next while because i will probably be doing the same lesson for all three of the new elementary schools. For the first bit. I went to the grocery store today in order to buy all the bags needed for the separate garbage and recycling. I can't believe i spent 30 dollars on tape and 8 sets of different garbage bags put out by the city. I just hope it like lasts me for a year or so. I think i will be using the plastic a lot but not much of the combustible, styrofoam, etc. I still have to cut and tie up my stuff from all the appliances i bought. That is just the one thing that really bugs me when i buy things is that i know i have to work really hard and break it all down and separate it all for the garbage collection. I just hope japan saves a whole lot of money on manual separation and recycles more than 60 percent of its garbage.

Today i went to church in Otaru. I was surprised that they actually had a building there set up. I was expecting a small little building or some place that was rented out and did not have a sign or anything. There were some missionaries there so at least i know that there will be some people i can speak English and have them understand fully with in Japan. Its about an hour and a half drive if there are no cars slowing everybody down. There are usually only single lane highways here in Hokkaido and people will go slow, very slow, like 50 or 60 kilometers and hour. Only in the cities do two lanes exist, though sometimes there are fast and slow lanes on certain sides of mountain passages. I came home and did laundry and made dinner for today and tomorrow. I am really glad that i bought this laundry hanger stand where i can put all my clothes on it and have it inside and let them dry for two days. I finally got some bleach today and it was very weak. It was almost soapy. It didn't have any smell like regular bleach and was clear. I got some on my hand while i was pouring it into a bottle from the bag, and it was on there for about a minute while i emptied the whole thing, and it didn't burn at all. I washed my hands after and no problem. I guess i probably need to get a TV, just so i can have the news and have some more japanese practice. My japanese is okay for right now, but it really needs some improvement. The thing about the mormon church in Japan is i think they have kind of anglicanized Japanese. I can understand a whole lot more, and i notice people use englishized japanese a lot more. Like Bishoppu and purezento when talking about the gifts from God. Oh well, at least most of the Hymns and the early version of the Book of Mormon are in classical Japanese.

Today i went up to Otaru. It is a port city on the northern side, in a bay that overlooks the sea of japan. It was pretty nice, but it was constructed on the hill side into the bay. There is a famous mountain named Tenguyama that has tengu masks, but i did not go to see that. I just hung around to see the bay and went into some of the shops there. In the bay there was a whole bunch of Jellyfish just a few feet from the pier and what seemed to only go for a few feet. I found it strange that they were there. I played the slots so i could get free parking. I really do not understand the Japanese concept of the joy of Pachinko and slots. It wasn't that fun, and i do not see how people could get addicted to it very easily. The one thing about Otaru is that from November 11 to December 25 they have a thing called Long Xmas, where the town is decked out in Christmas decorations and all the stores have events that go along with it. There is even a class being offered on one weekend to learn how to make Japanese Christmas cake. I hope that it will be enjoyable. I just hope that the snow does not make it difficult to travel there. If it does, i guess i could just take the train up to it for safety's sake.

just some pics of my apartment and Rankoshi

today was planning all day. I got most of the lessons planned. But since the third year students and teachers are gone on the field trip to sendai for the week, i am not certain as to the lessons of the third year students with ms. Itou. I got done with the lesson plans around 11 or so and spent the rest of the time on the computer. Thankfully after lunch, one of the teachers, asked me to play in the gym with the special education Kobushi class. It was pretty fun, and they all just make you smile. I guess special education is more inclusive in Japan as to what exactly constitutes special education. I think it also includes behavioral and mental problems. I think there may have been one with ADHD, but they all seemed well integrated. Today the school had tests all day, so i guess that would suck for the students. Especially when the third years are on a field trip.Tomorrow i have a party at the BOE member's house for a welcoming party. i finally got my Internet at my home, all that's really left for me to do is to get my Internet payment system set up and then figure out how to correctly do my trash. It seems that i am going to have a whole bunch of different colored and shaped bags to deal with. I think that i will go to Otaru on Saturday and see how the city is. It's on the bay of the north and has some pretty fresh sushi i hear. It rained for the most part of the day, so i do not know exactly how that is going to affect how fast my laundry dries, but it seems like i can do laundry in the wash in 30 minutes, and then it takes 2 days to completely dry. I hope the winter doesn't make the time longer.

8-17
Today was a pretty busy day. I got up and met Harada san and she took me to the city office where I met the BOE people in charge of me. I also met the mayor and he seemed really nice. Then I got showed around to the other six schools that I will be working for. For lunch, I and Harada san went to this restaurant/store in the down. It was really good and had the best rice and nigiri I have had in Japan. I am happy that the rice is so good here. After that I went to the post office with Harada san and set up my bank account. Then I went back to the middle school that I will be going tomorrow to see the English teachers. Today was okay, but for the most part I did not understand more than half of the things said to me. I was a little confused at times. But, I guess that will get better as time goes on. They all seem really nice and complemented me often on my Japanese ability; though, I do not think that I am that good at it. I did not however need to resort for English except for a few times. I also went to Kutchan to buy another mattress pad and some food like flour and oil. I will hopefully get my refrigerator tomorrow, and I am now waiting for my luggage to get here. I really want to wash my clothes, hopefully tomorrow. I don’t know if I am going to buy a TV yet, but I do not think I will as soon as my internet gets here I should be okay. I still don’t know what I am going to do with my other two rooms. I hope I can make bread; I just need to find yeast in the market.

8-19
Today was my first lesson to class 3-A. it was a little slow at first, but by the end everybody eventually joined in. After that I did planning for lessons until lunch. We had this stuff called ja-ja ramen I believe. It was ground pork, onions, and I believe white asparagus on the side of some cooked ramen noodles, it was pretty good. Then after lunch I had to go over to Onari elementary to do a planning lesson with the teachers there. It was pretty nice, but the school is about 25 minutes away, and they have like only 12 students in the whole school for 6 grades. I didn’t think that that small of a school would still be open, but there are. Then I went to the BOE to get some help with setting up my internet at my home. After that I had to go to Homac and Max Value to get some more food, and some laundry hanging supplies. I really like driving in Japan, it is pretty relaxing. The car is smaller and my foot gets a little stiff, but it is very enjoyable. I still need to remember not to hit the wiper though. While I was driving, I had the radio on and there was a Spanish program teaching Japanese listeners Spanish idioms of the day. I thought that it was nice to see how people would communicate in both Spanish and Japanese in the program. Japan has many weaker products compared to America. For one, the medicine is much weaker here unless you get a prescription. The washing machines take a lot less loads and can only fit like three or four shirts at a time. Towels do not dry at all here. They seem to be made of a material that can only hold like half of its weight or less in water. Even the huge blanket size ones, called towelkets do not dry you off. I made dinner tonight; however, and I did find one thing that was stronger in Japan than in America, the propane gas stoves. The burners were very hot and like boiled a pot of water in a couple of minutes and started to cook my tomatoes and onions down in minutes for my sauce for my noodles. I hope that maybe all this cooking in Japan will be able to let me make a guide or a book or something for people in Japan to cook actual American style, or for Americans to cook the foods they are used to in Japan. I have planning all day tomorrow and no teaching, so I hope I have some fun. I have to start thinking about where I want to go for the big 5 day weekend in the middle of September. There is about four weeks or weekends in Japan that are very long, in America we do not have any national holidays that I can think of that are consecutive and have places closed on them. In Japan, they also have the happy Monday system for holidays that fall on Sunday so people get another day off.

8-20
Today I had planning all day. I got my lesson planning done for next week I think unless I am given another one. I still have to plan for things at the elementary, but they said they wanted to plan for that on Monday afternoon. It was a long day, and I had to go to the post office and the BOE after work. I still do not know why I had to go to the post office so many times to refill and fill out some more forms. I did not see what the problem was. I have to go there again soon to set up an automatic withdrawal in order to pay for my internet every month. I had to go to the BOE for my internet. Apparently the people at the internet company couldn’t find my apartment when I went to the English support center, but in the Japanese part they could, through the help of Mr. Kobayashi, they were able to and it seems that I will be able to get the internet set up faster that what the English support was saying. I am just so confused about the whole matter. I still have to fax my post office account info to the people at the company so I can get paid. I am still waiting on the people at the cell phone company to tell me how exactly I am going to pay my phone bill. This is really the most frustrating part, not knowing how I am going to pay my bills and not understanding most of the Japanese involved. I have found that Japan is a hugely bureaucratic country, much more so than America, and it can be so confusing. There is a party tomorrow with the teachers from the high school and I am going to go to that, with one of the English teachers taking me to the place. It’s going to be weird since I don’t drink. The Japanese love to drink in these types of environments. Then next week, I have another welcoming party through the BOE. I hope everything goes okay.

8-22-09
The party last night was a pretty nice look inside Japanese culture. I didn’t drink, but everybody except for the drivers seemed to. It was funny to see just how red-faced some Japanese get when they drink a lot. I have never seen that actually happen, though I have heard about it from others. The food was pretty good, though another thing that I am going to miss here in Japan is good cheese. For the most part the cheese here looks and taste like cheese products, like Velveeta or Kraft singles. Other than that it was very good. There was actually a cheese egg roll sort of thing that had cheese in the middle of an egg roll skin and then deep fried. People really loosened up at the party. I had been thinking that the people that I had seen in the school were just very quiet and the guy across from me didn’t like me too much, but after they started drinking it really changed. It was just so drastic. It was very nice to see that everyone that worked at the school was invited and like there was no class distinction at the party, or even at work. The groundskeepers and tea ladies all are treated the same as the principal or any other teacher. I kind of like that sort of job equality. It seems to be sort of like that, that even though there is job and class distinction, many people do not seem to feel superiority to them or at least I guess look down upon people like one sometimes does in America. A good example of would be people looking down on fast-food workers or garbage men. I also saw a women driving and using farm equipment. Not very strange, just the first time I had seen a woman doing that anywhere. It would not likely happen in the United States. Tomorrow I think I will be driving up to Sapporo. I want to do this while it isn’t snowy so I can see how the drive is. It’s about two hours away, but I like driving around here. The mountains and the valleys are just so beautiful right now.

8-23-09
Today I went to Sapporo. It was about a 2 hours drive form where I live, but it wasn’t that bad. It was only 100 km or so but took longer because it went through the mountains and twisted up and down. I went to the Esta building there and it was basically like a one stop building. I went to the Bic Camera store there and got a customer card and looked around. I need some blank CD’s for the car so I got those. I had to park in a complex where the cars were put into like a vending machine style that you put your car in got out and it rotated the car around for 35 others cars to get in. I guess this saves more space than a traditional parking structure. It was a little expensive it was about 8 bucks for two hours parking. I went to the 100 yen store and got a nice little plastic bowl. I got one the last time I came to Japan and it was very good and useful. On the bottom floor there was a food market with a whole bunch of different stores. They had all sorts of food from yakiniku and tempura to skewers and sushi and Hokkaido specialty products. They even had a small grocery. These floors are typical in large cities in multifloored large buildings. It was a pretty fun day. The only thing I hate about driving is that there really needs to be a turning lane in the middle of the road. There is not one here and people just stop and have others go around them. I was really scared and annoyed when I had to go around people like every couple hundred meters or so. Sapporo was built on a grid system and that made it much more likeable. I had lunch at Kentucky fried chicken to just see the difference and it was a little better here, but everyone knows that in Kentucky there is much better fried chicken than KFC.


8-25-09
I have taught more and more in the past days. I had three lessons today, and now I have done my introduction lessons to all the classes in the middle school. I have four classes tomorrow and I hope they go well. The third year students are on the field trip to I do not know where. I did not find out. They will be gone for the rest of the week. Today was okay, but apparently there was some confusion in my schedule. My company told me to spend lunch with 1B but there was some confusion and they said it was moved to Friday, but I am going to the elementary school then. Oh well. I spent some time with the students after school at some of their clubs. There was five main clubs that I saw. One was band and I played the tuba in it for a while. It was fun, but there were only girls, in it. I wonder if in Japan playing band music and instruments is seen as a female activity. I wonder if there are any third year males in the club because they are not there. Then there was the sports clubs, track and field, soccer, baseball, and basketball. I watched them and interacted with the baseball club because they didn’t seem to have the teacher close by. Then at the end I spoke with some of the girls from second I think as they were coming down the school road to go home. They asked me questions like my favorite color and singers. And I asked them about stuff as well. It was pretty fun today. I really wish I had my internet at home. Its getting a little cooler and it is getting to be so beautiful here. The cool air is great. Last night, I turned off my fan because I was getting cold because I have the windows open for aeration. I think that is a good sign. I just do not know how winter is going to be here. I looked on Wikipedia and saw the average snowfall in inches for Sapporo in like January and February and it’s like 60 or something inches in a month. I just hope that I do not have to shovel a tunnel for my car to get out of the driveway in the mornings. I think I will try the drive to Hakodate to see how the drive is. Sapporo was pretty nice, but I want to try the other city then. There is a five day weekend coming up at the end of September and I want to go somewhere or at least do something for it.

8-16
I am now moved into my new apartment. It is just so big that I just don’t think that I am going to use two of the rooms that I have. If I find out that I can have guests stay in my apartment, then I think that I could have like two other people comfortably. We still have to share one bath and toilet, but they are separate so it wouldn’t be too big of a problem. I would just need to go to the next town and get bedding. I spent more than 100,000 yen today and I feel okay about it, but I still do not like to spend a whole lot of money in one day. I guess that means that I will have a hard time buying a house one day. I met Mr. Shinya at the new Chitose Airport and then it was a two and a half hour car ride from there to shopping and my apartment. He was a really nice guy and spoke English very well. Then when I moved in I met another teacher I think her, Mrs. Sawada. She let me “rent” her heater that she wasn’t using. Then I met on of the Board of Education and his family, Mr. Kobayashi. He and his family lent me a chair, a table, and a computer desk. I am just so shocked at how nice these people are here. With all this giving of things, I hope I do a really good job. It kind of makes me feel a little uneasy taking all these things, but I just feel like I can never say thank you enough to these people. My apartment is far beyond what I was expecting. I am getting it at a very cheap rate per month, and I hope that with utilities it is not that much either. I am thinking that with the price of my apartment being far different from what I was planning, I can save a lot more than previously thought. As I said, my apartment is huge. I have a 3ldk all to myself. That is two rooms of 4.5 mats size, one of 6 mats, a large living room, and a kitchen of great size, a bath, and a toilet. The only thing I hope is that I do not get too lonely here in this practically family apartment all by myself. I can’t wait to start work tomorrow. I went driving tonight, and it was a little weird. I don’t know if my rental car and my real car are going to be different. It had a rear view camera when I was backing up and had gps as a factory installed option. I have to remember to drive on the left side and to use the right side for turning signals, because I turned on the wipers twice trying to turn.

Today we just went in to work for a little bit. We saw some videos on good and bad examples and i feel okay about teaching. I sent my bags off to Hokkaido and i won't get them till Monday night. I have the clothes in my carry on bags for the plane, but i just hope they do not mind that don't have my clean inside shoes for the first day. i will not have Internet for i don't know how long, so this will be my last post for a while. i will still keep a record but it will be posted on all once. for lunch i went to an Indian lunch buffet. It was pretty good but it was very spicy. they did have this pretty good tomato and coconut chutney that cooled it down a bit. the naan was pretty good as well. After sending my bags when i got back i went to the Ueno Zoo. It was a lot better than the other zoo i went to last year in Kyoto. The animals didn't seem as sad nor were they in such small enclosures. It was pretty good to see everyone all there for the holiday weekend. After the zoo, i wandered around the Ueno park for a bit and found a nice shrine to the Ueno Daibutsu. It was pretty nice, but it think it was even cooler because it had Bonji (梵字) on it, which is basically Japanese Sanskrit characters used in Buddhism. I think it was cool that i could read some and connect the seed syllables to the Boddhisattvas. Then i came home and went to the market for dinner. I wish i could have gone to the Egypt exhibition in Yokohama, but that is just too far away for now. I just love to learn to read. Reading is okay, but learning to read (other languages) is just very interesting and fun. It allows one to get into the minds of the people and see what kind of processes go on in their minds when they speak their own language. Korean Hangul is interesting and pretty brilliant in and of itself, but the language itself is just a little hard to make it so super beautiful. Tomorrow i am off to Hokkaido on a domestic plane. it should be fun, i can't wait.

tonight some of us went out for karaoke. Some of those who did want to go, copped out to go to a club in tokyo. oh well, we had fun, though getting the machine working the first time was a little hard. Then afterwards ii had to do some shopping for q-tips, so after that i walked around and found a whole bunch of stuff. i kid of wished i had done more of this wandering around before the last few days. I found like a pachinko parlor every block and also a strip club just right out in the open as far as advertising itself. I also found a restaurant and store that seemed to sell whale meat products. Then i found a mister donuts finally. it is so good, you just can't describe a donut that is a cross between a regular donut and mochi. tomorrow, those of us still left here are doing some things, but i hope not for long.

i wont be available for a while so contact me at esward87@softbank.ne.jp . Today we found out our placing and did some more training. i had to present a demo by myself for elementary aged kids. it went okay, but i felt rushed through it trying to do like 45 minutes in 15 or so. They said it was okay but i just needed to make the kids produce more English by themselves in my activities. My apartment looks really big and it pretty cheap. It is right near the High school in the town, so basically i could walk to some of my assignments. i will be primarily working in the Junior high there, but i have some elementary schools there as well. i am really looking forward to doing this teaching position and can't wait to actually have a kitchen and start living in Japan. We all are planning on going out tonight for karaoke before half of us leave on Saturday and the others on Sunday.

Today was another day of training. I still woke up around 5 o clock in the morning due to jet lag and stuff. I went to bed at 8 or so so i got a full night. I stayed up to hopefully get myself on the right schedule tonight. Training involved more Junior high and high school lesson plans and layouts of what to do. We have to do a demo lesson and mine is for grade on animals and food. I feel okay about it so far, i did some planning for about 45 minutes or so. I wanted to try Old Macdonald, but felt that it would be too hard for them to try it as a demo. I ate pretty well today. I did not have any Japanese style food. I had Italian style for lunch and dinner. Surprisingly it was pretty good. For lunch some of us went to an Italian place called Grato near the work building. It was pretty good. I had a Caesar salad with duck confit, and chicken and spinach risotto. For dinner i had a bolognese and wiener sausage spaghetti. I want to go out for curry, Indian style, some time soon. Japan is a pretty good place for high class restaurant food i think. Talking to the other non-Americans in the training group, they say that Japan has pretty good prices on food at the restaurants; though, i still think that the food here in restaurants is pretty expensive. Japan is a place of Japanese people; unlike America, there are barely any racial minorities so Japanese people do all the work in Japan for the most part. The effect that this has on them is pretty interesting in comparison to that of America. In America, it is common place for minorities and immigrants to take "lower-class" jobs and this adds to a racial separation in America and sense of racial ranking i guess in some ways. But in Japan, Japanese people do all the jobs from construction to restaurant work to everything in between and more. I think this is good for the people because i find this sense that Japanese people will work and have honor for any job that they do and others fell that way in the country, which is kind of different in America. I just can't wait to finally get to a kitchen where i can cook though. I have looked around the grocery stores and i think if i use Japanese native ingredients that i can cook pretty well at not a very expensive price. western style items are very expensive here. Its like 4 bucks for a few ounces of peanut butter here, and i am going to miss big roasts of meat that i could buy cheap and use the whole week. Meat is very expensive here in Japan.

Got up and left earlier than everyone else to get to work on time. Spent a little time going over policy and then we had a health check at the clinic after lunch. The Japanese health clinic was a little intimidating. They sent us to all these different stations and gave us a chest x-ray, urine test, and some other basic physical stuff. The blood pressure gauge was a little stressful, and you know that doesn't help with your results. Then after that me and a guy from the group went to Akihabara to look for stuff at Yodobashi Camera. Akihabara was interesting and in front of the store there was a whole bunch of people testing out some level or something from Dragon Quest XI on their DS's. I thought it was kind of cool to see a game system bringing people at least to the same place in a large group. Here are some things about Japan: sometimes hearing sounds can be just as important as any of the other senses. Hearing the cicadas chirping just naturally puts you into the mindset that it is hot. The train system can be very hard to manage in bigger cities like Tokyo and i wonder how much companies pay employees for transportation sometimes because to go anywhere mostly in Tokyo you NEED to take the trains, and the longer the trip the better, or at least staying on the same railroad company is cheaper. Having to switch lines and stations and companies costs more than it would just taking the longer way. Japanese bakeries are awesome. My favorite is called Vie de France. The angelsoft bread is so good and so soft. Mister Donuts is another donut shop that is just to die for. In America, it is so hard to find a cream filled donut that isn't some sort of Bavarian cream, or nasty icing wannabe cream mixture. In japan, one can find actual whipped cream in donuts and it is so good. Large stores like Yodobashi are just some awe inspiring. They are so large and have so many items. I just do not think that any store in America could ever be like this. It is a little more cramped and little space is in between items, but there is like 7 or 8 floors in each of these places all with different things. It is just like a one stop place with so many people.

Tonight i went out to Akabanebashi and went to see Tokyo Tower. It is a little bit taller than the Eiffel Tower in size but the observing area is only 150m and 250 m high, which i think is lower than the Eiffel Tower's. It's the main broadcasting tower in Tokyo so the top part is mostly broadcasting machinery. The one good thing about Japan that no one can really describe well is the smells of the big cities and stores. The food stores mainly have a certain distinct smell to them. Bakeries just smell so good and buttery, while in supermarkets smells can be sensed in all the different parts. There is always the fish smell, the fresh fruit smell, and the fried food smell. It's all so appeasing to the senses.