Well, here it goes...

[I apologize in advance for how long this post is].

Well, I am adjusting to this new life extremely quickly. I suppose visiting Japan this past summer allowed me to get the culture shock thing over with. I also think studying in Italy for a semester gave me previous experience with setting up a new life in a new country. I was expecting to be super lonely, terrified, homesick… those things. But honestly, things have been going very smoothly.

I also feel like I’m learning Japanese phrases pretty quickly. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly good at learning languages, but in the past couple days I’ve learned a lot. Already I can get around fairly well--or, at least, I am very good at buying things. Anyway, I feel good about it because only a few days ago I remember being at a restaurant when the waitress was chattering away at me. I had no idea what to say, I didn’t understand her, and I didn’t know how to say anything in Japanese that was appropriate for the situation. I also either felt it was rude/inappropriate to try using English… or, I momentarily forgot how to speak my native tongue. Either way, I was a deer in headlights. I suspect she thought I was mute. Regardless, the Japanese must think Westerners are pretty darn weird.

On another note, exploring is my new favorite pastime. I’ve begun walking for long stretches of time, sometimes up to 4 hours. I just pick a direction and start walking. If I see a street that looks interesting in anyway, such as attractively bustling and colorful, or intriguingly quiet, I walk down it. I can’t stop walking. I don’t want to miss anything. There might be something really great just a few blocks further. It’s amazing how one area or stretch of a road can be really noisy and busy and then you walk a couple minutes and suddenly the streets are empty and it’s almost disturbingly peaceful and quiet. Anyway, I love getting lost and trying to get home a different route than I came. I did that often when I lived in Florence. By the end of the semester I knew Florence like the back of my hand. I had a complete mental picture of the city in my head. Of course, Florence is nothing compared to Tokyo in size, but I was still rather proud of the feat. I’m also relieved to find that I actually have quite a superb sense of direction. For about, oh, twenty years I thought I had a terrible one. Turns out I just had a short attention span.

The guest house is pretty cool. The place is really cold, though. I have to work the heater in my room by feeding it with coins. It’s roughly $1 for 3 hours of heat. Weird. Another strange thing is if you have a guest in the building—even for 5 minutes, you have to phone the office and tell them in advance. If a guest arrives after 8pm, they are automatically considered an overnight guest. If you have overnight guests more than twice a week, the third time you are charged for their stay. There are a lot of rules. Another crappy one is that I’m not allowed to use Skype because it slows down the free Internet that barely works half the time anyway. All in all, people are pretty nice here at Big World. There are about 60 rooms. I’d say about half the tenants are foreigners and the rest are Japanese. Everyone is in their 20s & 30s and there are a bunch of us who work for ECC. There are three of us new teachers living here, so the other two will be in my training session.

On Friday night, I went to an art opening with my boyfriend. A friend of his was having a show of her work. It was really nice to be mingling in a casual setting with young Japanese artist-types. The food was also fabulous and there was an abundance of wine. The art was pretty interesting, too. The most impressive piece, called "Man Globe," consisted of a HUGE knitted globe that had motion sensors on it. On each continent, there was an eye that would open and close every time someone walked by. So basically, a huge knitted globe of fuzzy yarn that winked at you. The best part, though, was meeting a friend of my boyfriend who had learned English studying in Australia. She spoke with an Australian accent and was really bubbly and talkative. We talked for most of the opening. I learned that she has an acute fondness for beer. She has also been on the curator career track, but is slightly cynical about the art world, which allowed us to bond over being young and confused and annoyed by the art world. She also told me a lot about her confusing love life.

Let’s see... I have a kitchen in my guest house, but I haven’t really tried buying groceries, let alone trying to cook. I share a kitchen with 59 other people, and apparently I am a little apprehensive about cooking in front of other people. Perhaps it has to do with my embarrassing tendency to overcook things and fill the sink with an unnecessarily obscene amount of dishes (Hey, I’m still learning). I really need to avoid falling into the habit of picking up ready-made food at the many Konbini’s nearby, though. A konbini is a Convenience Store, such as Seven Eleven—which they have many of here. Of course, Japanese people can’t say "convenience," so they changed it to Konbini. Of course. Another thing I eat a lot here which is awesome: pumpkin. It’s amazing when fried in tempura batter. Also, my favorite seafood is officially eel (unagi), especially when it’s raw. Who knew? Sadly, eel is not in season right now. I didn’t realize that meat or fish could be in season, like a vegetable(!), but this is what Yu says, and apparently eel tastes much better in the summer. Well, fine, but I still think it’s tasty. I like to think of eel as the duck of seafood. Duck is such a rich, fatty, juicy meat, (here I go with my weird meat obsessions again, it’s just so damn tasty) and Eel possesses these same delicious qualities, in a fishier way. Another interesting development—at least to me—was that as Yu and I were sitting at one of those sushi places where the sushi goes around on a conveyor belt in front of you, I realized that for the first time I was licking my chops at the sight of raw fish. Now, when I was in Japan back in August I remember having to really talk myself into eating raw fish. I knew it might taste good, but it looked so unappetizing. When we went to the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo this summer and my boyfriend told me that even just looking at a live fish swimming around a tank was very appetizing to him, I thought he was crazy. They made his mouth water while mine, on the other hand, wanted to vomit. I also can’t stand the smell of fish, dead or alive. However, this discovery suggests that I am slowly becoming a bonafide seafood lover.

On a more serious note, training starts tomorrow and lasts for two weeks. I’m looking forward to meeting more English teachers and making more friends that I can hang out with during days off. And I’m, you know, also hoping to learn a bit about teaching... I know I always say I am interested in teaching at the high school level someday, but I'm actually really looking forward to the kid’s classes. I can’t wait to jump around and play games and be goofy with kids. That just sounds terrific. I’m also looking forward to being able to post hilarious Engrish phrases that my students come up with on here. Stay tuned.