Well, I guess the first thing to get out of the way is the fact that I
have been sick as a dog for the last 4 weeks or so...with a cold, and
sinus infection or something like that. In total I have had to take two
weeks off school to get better and I am just feeling like I am recovering
now though I think it will be another week or so before I will be staying
up past about 7:30 at night. The people in my office have been amazing,
bringing me food or coming around and cooking for the days that I have
been at home sick. Typically I have been sleeping about 16-20 hours a day
on the days that I didn.t go to work which is just ridiculous. Luckily I
have had a few books and videos to keep me from going completely insane
cooped up with myself for that long!! *smiles* I can.t wait till I am well
enough to get back to going to Shorinji and parties and things again!!

Talking about sport, I was in the local restaurant talking to a guy from
the office (well as much as I can talk in Japanese!!) and he told me he
was on the local softball team. I mentioned that I was interested in
playing and a few days later he dropped by the office to say that the
manager said that it would be ok for me to play!! Yay!! I consider this to
be one of the more important cultural experiences that I will have in
Japan as baseball and softball are the kings of sport over here!!

The rest of the email is unordered, mainly stuff taken from other emails I
have already sent!?I am sorry if much of this is stuff that you have
already read!! *smiles*

On that issue, I went out to dinner with the ALT from the next and last
town on the peninsula, she only got back the other day and is leaving next
Monday...anyways...after dinner we were wandering about and I saw a video
shop and went...lets go have a look in there!!! I walked in and was
immediately greeted by a bunch of porno videos...hmmmm, so I thought,
ooops wrong section and moved on....only problem was it was all porn....no
warnings or anything!!!! So that was quite a shock indeed....then today at
the restaurant at lunch my supervisor is reading the paper and what is on
the middle page but a half naked women?!?!?!? Apparently it.s cool to read
porn in public here...well...at least socially acceptable for the
guys...haven.t had a chance to suss out what any women think....who would
have thought eh???

Went to Shorinji Kenpo for the first time last night...it turns out that
my sensei has been doing it for 40 years and will be the director of the
world Shorinji federation for the next 3 years!!! Coooooooooooooool! I
think it is going to be great! (when I get back to it that is!) *smiles* I
think it will take a little getting used to being punched and kicked and
rolling around on wooden floors though!

O my god.....today was sooooooooooooo boring...I had two lessons in a row
teaching which were fun....though there is a big difference in the
behviour levels between first and second year...first years are all quiet
and eager, the second years were a bit reticent and there are about 5 guys
who sit up the back of the class or walk round outside who pay no
attention. One of these kids was asked to leave the music class the other
day cause he wasn.t participating and he went into another room and threw
desks around, which apparently is quite normal. Many of these problem kids
come from broken homes and the like, and I have found them to be nice
people and they have great relationships with the teachers, they just cant
handle school very well..its hard to think of the best way to help people
like this. so I think the teaching will be fun?but that only takes up 3
hours of an 8 hour day leaving me slightly bored....watching the sports
day practice was ok...maybe it will be better when more of the kids talk
to me but even so I think I will have to try really hard to find things to
do!

Man, in Greece they have banned all computer games...the government could
not think up a law to ban illegal online casinos online so just banned all
computer games and all handheld game playing machines as well with fines
up to $45000 and a year in jail!!!! UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE!!!

Guess they arent too big on freedom over there....can you imagine them
trying to do something like that in Australia or America??

*smiles* On Shikoku there is a religious pilgrimage that includes visiting
88 different temples...apparently the walk takes about 2 months if you are
quick but there is a place that you can go which has some dirt and bits
and pieces from each of the 88 temples in the same room so that you can
visit them all in about an hour....how stupid is that??? Small things
suck...Australia has the right idea when concentrating on BIG tourist
attractions.....all they need now is a BIG LEMON!! *chuckles*

My first day of teaching was on Friday and it was mostly doing my self
introduction where I wrote things on the board like 193 and Pizza and got
people to guess what they were....it was fun with the first years cause
they are all fresh and genki (energetic) but a bit strained with the
second years who mostly didn.t seem to care...well some of them did but
the others wandered around and talked and stuff....*shrugs* One year and
they are ruined. Doing my introduction at the elementary school was good
fun cause I had time to show them my books about Australia and the money
and whatnot..the other day when I was showing them the strength of our
plastic notes one of them ripped in half..guess I had done that a few too
many times.

Went to a nice place called Nametoko Gorge (seems like ages ago now!)
Well, it was about 2.5...maybe 3 hours away but it was hard to tell cause
we stopped at three convenience stores on the way there and an Indian
Curry restaurant on the way back.....the curry was awesome and apparently
it is one of about 4 places that serves lamb on Shikoku, apparently most
people in Japan haven.t ever tried lamb, and those that have don.t like
the smell. The gorge was beautiful, really nice rocks formations and pine
trees and mossy rocks and little shrines (I mean really little like one
meter across) and it was just beautiful....spent most of my time hiking
around or swimming in the water holes and sitting under little
waterfalls....there was this hug rockslide in one place....maybe 20 meters
long and going down that was quite an experience!!!! Crazy!! A couple of
New Zealanders bought a cricket set with them so we played cricket and
then the Americans made us play American Football...both were great
fun!!!! The guy who drove us there was really funny as well so we spent
the whole way back cracking jokes cause the others had fallen asleep in
the back seat....it was an absolutely fantastic weekend all up!!! The only
bad thing was me stepping into a drainage ditch after walking away from
the bonfire and not being able to see in the dark properly and skinning my
ankle really badly....ouch!

I went to the supermarket in Yawatahama....the bigger town, and it is
about twice as big as the one in Honai (Honai is 25 minute drive,
Yawatahama is 35)...I have turned into a inaka (Rural) hick, I was
wandering about going this place is bloody huge!! LOOK! THEY HAVE MORE
THAN 2 TYPES OF JAM......so that is pretty funny.....just turning into a
country person...and they had 1lt chocolate milks for 100yen ($1.30)

....after dinner at the bonfire I tried to meet everyone, however briefly,
which was quite a challenge and good fun...something I haven.t tried to do
before....on the way around I met someone who was an alto and she knew
.Four Seasons in One Day. (Crowded House) so we started singing that, then
a soprano came over and finally the guy who drove us?(Dave from England)
said he was a tenor. They all knew the parts so we ended up singing it
about 5 times with great amount of cheering and whatnot from everyone at
the end....it made me realize how much I miss singing with people...I
think we will probably all get together at some stage for a bit of a sing
along!!

In Japan most of the mobile phones have small digital cameras on them and
you can take pictures and send them to other people....awesome!!

Today I taught in preschool for the first time. I was either sitting on
the floor with the kids or walking about carrying a few of them around or
having them climb up me....It was fun just playing with the kids after
introducing myself, Didn.t have to teach them or anything....then after
lunch they made this huge bag full of decorated boxes and origami for me
and they spent ages saying goodbye....they are very fun and cute, and for
the most part hardly needed any supervision and just went on with playing
with each other or making things on their own....it was amazing! Next time
I will try to teach them some songs and stuff. For this month I get the
afternoon off at preschol cause the kids go to sleep in the heat of the
day....*smiles*

Went to Yawatahama with Katherine last night and wandered around the
shopping malls and ate dinner in a little place....found a bunch of
'snaks'. Iinteresting concept, you go in and are provided with a nice
young women who sits on the other side of the table or bar and pours you
drinks and pretends to be interested in you. Apparently there are over 100
of these places in Yawatahama so there must be an awful lot of men who go
to them! There are also quite a few adult bars with one of them
interesting named 'live horse'??? We found that all the restaurants are
hidden, not on the main street...and we found this rather large covered
mall which was all closed but looked cool....We also met this israeli guy
who was selling jewelry and chatted to him for quite a while about the
Yakuza (organised crime), and places to travel overseas and stuff....I was
going to buy this necklace with a fishhook like design which I really
liked but he was charging around$80 for it...absolutely nuts...still, I
had been complaining that I hadnt seen any yakitori (skewered meat)
restaurants in our area and I found one last night which is cool!!!

Today I did my self introduction three times.....was good fun with handing
out money to look at and pictures of animals and my pictures from home and
whatnot....played with the kids after lunch, was all good fun, even
finished at 3ish so its all good......man those kids can yell loud when
they want to!! Apparently there is some sort of welcoming dinner for me
tonight in the apartment next door to me and then another party on Friday
night at a JETs house in Mikame (45 min drive) then another party after
sports day on Saturday, crazy.

A few of the teachers at the school can speak reasonable English which is
good, especially the headmaster, who is quite friendly, and doesn.t have
any teaching or anything to do...the school only has about 60 kids but it
is pretty damn big....if they spread out there would only be about 5 kids
in each room!!!

Sports day was good fun!! I participated in the tug of war and a kicking
the ball relay and a running relay, there were some really weird sports
like kids running over each others backs and this one with a hoop
connected to a rope, where each person in the team ran into the centre of
the field and had to grab the hoop and pass through it, they then threw it
away from the other people trying to get through it....what else....ahh
various dances and acts and relays and it was quite fun to watch..

Last night I went to ocha...tea ceremony practice, where the women sit on
their ankles with their knees bent as some horrible angle the whole time.
I managed that for about 3 minutes before it became to painful...it was
very interesting, and complicated and ritualised and quite beautiful but I
don.t think I would really get much out of learning it seriously...still
it was fun to try and at least I will know what to do if I go to a tea
house somewhere....since then one of the teachers at a school I visit has
given me a tea ceremony cloth and is going to give me a fan next time I
see her and everyone is bugging me to do it...so methinks I will try it
for a bit longer, maybe.

My welcome party was fun...in the apartment next door to mine!! The people
there cooked home made tempura (veggies, octopus and fish) (fried in
batter) and boiled fish stew and sashimi (raw fish)...it was a bit fishy
all up but really yummy food really!!! And the teachers, as usual at such
things, got really really drunk and were quite amusing to watch and try
and talk with! Got to meet the music teacher at the junior high school so
maybe when I am bored I can go hang out with a music class...there are
only four things I figure that I can teach here...music, maths and
English, and sports the four languages I understand

Went to Matsuyama yesterday (biggish city) looking for an md player but it
was about $75 more expensive there than in the local bigger town...which
is a bit sad. Going to buy the new one coming out next month which is even
smaller and quiter. Bought some plastic containers and a copy of The Ghost
in the Shell Manga in English.....it is one of my favorite films and the
manga is really cool, fills in a bunch of gaps and explains what is going
on much more....got a can opener and a peeler and batteries...all those
sort of domestic things at a hyaku yen shop (100 yen shop)....these places
have most of the things you need for everyday life and everything is only
100 yen....ridiculously cheap...*smiles* bought a Thanks! stamp to stamp
on the kids or their books...went out to dinner with some people from
Matsuyama so that was fun. Next time I will go see the castle and the big
ferris wheel (about 10 people fit in each carriage and it takes about an
hour to go around!!

*smiles* I had a plan to go visit someone over the other side of the
island (a Japanese women who stayed with us in aus) but I am sick and it
takes about 6 hours to get there by train she found out yesterday so
wasn.t worth it for such a short period (also costs about $130 one way!!)
eeek, travel here is so expensive! Bought some videos in English
(Highlander, Salute of the Jugger and 10 Years in Tibet) for only $15 or
so for the whole lot the other day....its weird, some things are cheap,
some expensive.

I am sure that there will still be plenty of things that surprise
me...Japan just seems that way inclined!! The other night we had a moon
viewing thingie where we cleaned up the town hedges and ate together (a
bunch of about 25 people) and watched the moon come up...its was an
interesting peach colour (apparently it is the best moon of the year) for
most of about 2 hours and a few of us went squid fishing in the bay on a
boat which was great fun....getting on the boat was cool....was just this
big feeling of 'fuck all of you poor bastards who are stuck on the
land!!!' *smiles*

Junior High was a bit boring today....I was a music teacher for 2 lessons
(well, I helped out with the singing) but there was no English classes
cause the English teacher is off on a week long excursion with the third
year kids...wish I could have gone to that!

Had a few small earthquakes the other afternoon....it was like someone had
started a big rumbly motor in the basement, nothing really shook at
all..but still..its pretty cool!!!

At my flat there is a small garden out the front ( I call it the front
cause it faces?the road but then the only way to get into the house is
through a door at the back!! The garden has all sorts of veggies in it and
is kept by the school children...never been much of a gardener myself....I
have two rooms upstairs which I don.t use....the bathroom has a small but
very deep bath (which I think is hooked up to a water heater but they told
me not to use it) and a tiled area with a drain where I use one of those
handheld shower thingies, but the hot water is either too hot or too
cold....weird system....you have to turn the hot water on at a switch in
the hallway when you want a shower....there is a little two burner
stovetop in the kitchen with a griller but no oven, so there is a
microwave as well, and a big fridge, and a small square kitchen
table...the living room is all tatami which is comfortable to sit on and
quite nice....it looks out on the mountains. I want to cook fruit cake and
pizza for Christmas so I will have to use the oven at the community centre
cause no-one has ovens over here!

I just finished reading my first non-science fiction books. .Memoirs of a
Geisha. which was pretty interesting and really well written as well I
think....its my first non-fiction book which wasn.t science fiction or
fantasy!!! Also most of the way through a book called .People of the Deer.
which is the story of a guy going to visit an Inuit tribe in Northern
Canada which lived on deer, of which there are millions (takes the herds
many days to go past) but the tribe has died out.....its a very
inhospitable land and hard to live in, a great book really! I am really
enjoying it....so this foray into the world of other books is paying off!

*drools* Roast! Well that is something I wont be having here.....on TV the
other day there was an ad for big chunks of meat, the size we would roast
and the idiots went and boiled it. Eeeekkkk! what a waste! Boiled meat is
not really that tasty compared to a good roast!

On my desk i have a list of the people in the school office.....one of the
women is listed as the school servant! Interesting! And that is seriously
her job....which is pretty scary. At the school there is only one women
teacher out of the 12 teachers there. Apparently most women here can look
forward to being office ladies who serve tea or whatnot if they decide to
go and work. I am sure it must be different in the big cities but all of
the TV shows and films generally depict women as being ditsy, cutesy and
not very intelligent. Its pretty sad, it seems like they still have a way
to go before they are considered as equal as they might be in Australia.

I am sucking on a beer flavoured lolly and, you guessed it, it sucks ass!
*smiles* Wont be having another one of those methinks! Had my first lesson
today where I had planned everything and run everything and elementary
school and it turned out to be the most fun I.ve had teaching since I came
here!! Was really good and the kids loved it as well, and I heard them
singing the songs during lunchtime as well so that was really cool and
rewarding! So, I think I will be looking forward to them from now on. The
day before I was with the preschool kids and we mucked around and then
went picking seeds off the trees in the park which was good fun as well,
thankfully after lunch they let me go home, maybe cause I was sick or
maybe cause I was starting to look bored.....still going to sleep at about
8pm every night, by that time of day I am utterly wrecked and have a bad
case of the hanamizu (water nose). Got invited to a teachers house for
lunch on Sunday Apparently she wants her daughter to meet me?!?!?!
probably for English lessons as she is in high school! Played a bit of
sakka with the kids at lunch which was fun as well.

You should have seen the looks I got when I went barefoot into Japanese
supermarket.....horror/shock/amazement, the whole lot!!!

And now for more recent things. The weekend before last was the local
Autumn Festival. I was woken up at 8am on the Saturday morning by some kid
yelling, Sensei, come and watch, come and watch!!! So I quickly got
dressed and went outside, there were two kids in a dragon costume dancing
to the music being played by three kids on the drums. It was really cool
and these little kids drumming had to learn the rhythms and the proper
actions that go with them and they were just little kids. I followed them
into town were there were a number of groups going from house to house,
one of them had 5 people who had replica deer heads on and little drums
under their costumes that they played and chanted to.another group was a
bunch of girls dressed in Kimonos with white face paint doing this dance,
again set to drumming and with little bell things in their hands which
they rang. The pre-school kids had made a dragon thing as well and were
walking all over the place. After a while walking around a guy said, hey
come with me! I ended up in the house of the leader of the .East. team and
drinking beer at 9am in the morning! They invited me to help them and not
knowing what they were going to be doing I agreed! At 11 we went to the
park and started out work which involved about 12 of us carrying this huge
dragon thing around for the next 7 hours (with many breaks) to all of the
houses in town and yelling Choyasa choyasa choyasa
fuuuuuuuyaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! At the tops of our voices! It had a head set on a
long poll which was controlled by a guy underneath. Following us were a
huge cart thing with kids sitting in it playing the drums, and 2 other
smaller dragons, and about 5 other little shrine carts, and everyone was
in costume and it was amazing! Each group went to all the houses and
people gave gifts of money in little paper envelopes to most of the groups
( we collected about $4000 all up!!). I went out for dinner to the house
of one of the women from the office whose father is a chef so the food was
great. After that I went to see the Japanese acting which included a
dragon thing (which was acted so well it really did seem real and a demon
which scared all the children). The next day there was more carrying of
the dragon and this time we fought with the big cart, which involved us
trying to put the dragon on top of the cart and pull the front down and
people standing on the two poles at the front of the cart trying to push
the dragon off..only two or three people got hurt!! Was crazy stuff. Went
out for lunch and dinner to different peoples houses and ate heaps of
yummy food including some wild pig!! All in all it was an amazing weekend,
great fun and great to see and I was so glad to have been included in
everything! I ended up taking about 20 pictures over the weekend of the
beautiful costumes and dragons and shrines!

Every week I teach at junior high school for two days, elementary school
for one day (different school each week rotating amongst four schools),
pre-school for one day and one day in the office. I think I will be
teaching cricket and come Australian cooking and Christmas things in the
next few months so if you have any ideas for the Christmas or cooking
things they would be much appreciated.

Got my first Japanese study book today so I will be back to studying again
now. Flicking through it though I think I have picked up most of it
already! So I guess I am learning pretty quickly but its frustrating being
able to talk a bit but not very much.

I play a bit of DiabloII every day as a sort of .normal. thing to be
doing.

Well, that.s probably enough for now! Hope you are all having fun. Let me
know what you are up to!

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on
laughter silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling
mirth Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things You have not dreamed
of . Wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hovering
there I've chased the shouting wind along and flung My eager craft through
footless halls of air. Up, up along delirious, burning blue I've topped
the wind-swept heights with easy grace, Where never lark, or even eagle
flew; And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed
sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.