Some Pictures...

I was finally able to upload some of my pictures from the past few weeks...

This picture was taken at Pearson Internation Airport in Toronto before I left for Vancouver. Just some random Air Canada Jets but I thought they looked really nice as they captured some kind of Patriotic feeling I had the time. And yes, I do realise that Air Canada is a company that consistently goes bankrupt, there was just something about seeing the maple leaves that made me feel like 'Aww...I'm leaving Canada'



This picture was taken in Ikebukuro, which is near where Roberta works. It is one of the busiest transport hubs in Tokyo as many train lines connect here. This picture is decieving as there are many more people and vehincles than can be seen.








The entrace to Shinjuku Gyoen National Gardens, located in Shinjuku, one of the busiest places of Tokyo. Right outside, you can see many high rise buildings and shopping centres. It cost 200Y for admission and there are different types of styled gardens (French, English, Traditional Japanese) and a green house














I'll post more pics later, Blogger is being whacky.. I promise :)

Initial Feelings

Japan is a really interesting place to live. Everything is so convenient as on the walk home there are two grocery stores, a bunch of restuarants, 2 bakeries, a drug store, a convenience store and alot of other random stuff....and its only a 10 minute walk home. This is really awesome, but bad for my wallet as I can just randomly buy food and such all the time. So far, I really love it here, but damn... all the walking! There's so much walking, I don't know how people can stand it, and I'm wearing sneakers all the time but I always see ladies wearing high heels... Seriously... they have to WALK in that ALL THE TIME?!!? That's just painful. Walking in the heat is the worst thing ever here. I've never felt so HOT in my life. Its BLOODY hot.. You know that episode of Friends where Ross is wearing leather pants and he has to use the washroom? He takes his pants off and struggles to put them back on cause they are literally stuck to his body. My jeans aren't as tight as leather pants but I've definitely had that ROSS PANTS feeling several times. When I told Roberta, she just kinda gave me a really weird look cause my pants are usually more form fitting but she did agree w/ me after it happened to her ;) The weather is cooling down now, so its not as bad. The annoying thing is most of the company's branches are near train stations. So the minute you get off the train, basically you see the location. Not my branch, there's a good 15 minute walk to where my location is... in long sleeve business wear under the hot bright sun. The weird thing is... It seems as if I'm the only one sweating buckets, all the Japanese people seem unphased by the heat, but you'd thing that they probably be wearing short sleeves.. but NO!!! They are wearing more clothes than I am.. sweaters and the like in boiling weather and don't look bothered by the heat at all. How is this possible?? There's always a humid type of sticky weather going on.

I've also come to experience that flash rain happens in Japan. It rains all the time but one minute it can be perfectly sunny and the next minute, the rain is just pouring down on you like there's no tomorrow. I always laughed when watching Japanese drama since it would suddenly rain at a dramatic moment when the sky was perfectly beautiful the previous scene and it also always seemed like the characters could get umbrellas out of nowhere all of a sudden to shield the female heroin from the rain. THIS IS SO TRUE. It rains for no reason at all, it will be perfectly nice outside and it will just start raining. Umbrellas can be purchased EVERYWHERE... convenience stores, grocery stores, any store on the street basically and they are SO CHEAP. You can get good umbrealls for 100 Yen ($1) and the ones that cost $20 in Toronto at the ONE in pacific mall... $5 here. Its no wonder, it rains so much... for a while, I couldn't even see people having portable umbrellas cause apparently they wouldn't work very well in this type of rain. I've also heard that typhoon season is upon us, and that no methods of water proofing oneself will work against that type of rain. We'll see tho.... Even at our house, we have a whole bucket full of umbrellas, there's so many! I guess people just buy umbrellas on the street when it rains since they have to walk everywhere otherwise they would get soaked. I know I've had to do that on two occasions :S

Arrived!...

I know it's already been a week but I'm just posting to show that I have safely arrived to Japan and am still alive.

The plane ride was definitely an interesting experience as the first leg to vancouver had us (Roberta and I) stuck on a flight with a bunch of high school kids. VERY ANNOYING. What's worse is that our travel agent lady promised us that we would get the window and aisle seat on the side of the plane... Definitely got screwed and shoved in the middle, which is bad cause if you've seen me sleep while sitting, you know my head will slowy fall to one side and there is potential for a little drool. I'm sure this freaked Roberta out... but has I understand it, i woke up before I had the chance to fall on her shoulder. Luckily the other side of me was an empty seat. Otherwise it would be a lose lose situation. I did wake up once to find someone sitting on the empty seat tho, which really freaked me out!!! When we stopped to vancouver, we went looking for something to eat. We heard tehre was a Wendy's or Burger King somewhere but couldn't find it and started wandering around the airport. We walked toward a security guard thinking there was food beyond him but thought that he was at a special checkpoint and couldn't walk further so we started to turn back around. He definitely looked at us and said 'where are you going' REALLY SLOWLY and 'do you have a ticket? TICKET? TICK-ET' while miming the shape of a ticket. He was talking to us like we didn't know english!! We told him we were just looking for food and he still seemed to think we didn't really understand english and asked where we were headed and what we wanted to do. It was like two different conversations were taking place. We kept saying FOOD and he kept asking where were going :S But clearly, Roberta and I were speaking in plain english... but I guess he just looked at us and assumed that we were confused or something. On the plane to Japan was funny, Roberta and I kept wondering if the cabin crew would speak to us in Japanese or KNOW that we were non-Japanese. Some would speak to us in english all the time while others would ask us things in Japanese. Again we got shafted and had to sit in the middle section of the seats. Roberta near the aisle, and me on the inner part of a set of 4 seats. Again Igot lucky and the next two seats next to me were empty. It's like I was avoided in advance or something on both flights. I thought that was pretty funny. Some man came upto me and started speaking to me in Japanese... turns out he just sat down on the empty seat and stayed there for the rest of the flight. I didn't know you were allowed to do that.

When we got off the plane, a man named Cookie from our company came to meet us. Roberta thought she heard cookie but we both thought that can't be right and thought that she also heard Bobby. I finally got ir confirmed that it was Cookie yesterday. Its the weirdest thing, an Asian person with an british accent. I mean, I know it exists but its just that I've nvr heard it before. It was so HOT when we landed. We stepped outside and it was BLOODY hot... never sweated so much just sitting there waiting for a bus. After we landed at Narita, we still had to take a 2 hr bus ride to Kawagoe... I didn't know this but apparently Narita airport is really far from Tokyo. Then we had to take the train to Tsuruse from Kawagoe which was 20 more minutes and walk an additional 10 minutes to our apartment. It was definitely hot and miserable. Our apartment is really nice even though it was pretty small. Its very strange, the toilet has its own little room and the seat is heated. There's also two modes to flush 'big' and 'small' and when you flush, there's a little faucet and sink on top to wash your hands. Its very strange. There there's another room w/ the sink and washing machine and inside this room is the shower w/ a lock on the door. So strange. My room is kind of small, just big enough to fit a futon. I 'll post some pictures later, I just don't have access to acomputer that I can upload them on.

Lots of weird stuff has happened already...and I'll post about it later. I think this rant has been long enough. Pretty random stuff, I know..

24 Hours

In less than 24 hours away, I will be on a plane heading to Japan for the start of my English teaching adventure. Am I excited? Yes, but if you look at me, you'd never be able to tell. More than anything I am a little nervous as I haven't been on a plane for about 10 years and never to another country without my family. I will be going with my WLU housemate Roberta, so those who know us, prepare for a series of whacky and weird stories :)

When we get to Japan, I will be staying in Saitama Prefecture, in a town called Fujimi-shi. It's in the Kanto region of Japan, which is the in the same region as Tokyo. Its about 40-minutes ride from Fujimi to Tokyo by shinkansen.

Not many more details really, I will post more when I get there :)

This blog is just to chronicle my 1 year experience to keep in touch with those at home. Please leave comments, I'd be really happy to hear from you. And if there are weird questions that you always wondered about Japan, feel free to ask :P