Go Carps!

I have no idea where to begin!  I finally have one of the two things need to make a blog worthwhile.  Somthing interesting to write about.  Now I just need to become a good/clever/interesting writer and I will be all set. 

 

I have been in Japan for almost two weeks now and it has certainly been an interesting couple of weeks.  There have not really been any "Oh my god, this is so amazing/so wierd/so oh my god" kind of moments, but it is certainly different here.  I wanted to come to Japan to expereince a culture completely different from my own.  Now that I am here I realize that the culture is not as starkly different as I imagined it would be, but I am kind of glad. It is still pretty overwhelming.

 

Being the social person that I am I am finding it difficult so far, not having any of the language to communicate so far.  I consider myself a good non verbal communicator, but it is hard to make friends simply with hand gestures and smiling.  The fun has definately out weighs the frustration thus far. 

 

We have acctually spent the majority of time surrounded by other JET's in conferences, meetings, induction ceremonies and other things getting us prepared for the year ahead of us.  With those other JET's we have gotten out and experienced some of the the things that Japan has to offer.  Some of the above mentioned conferences were in Hiroshima City (45 min train ride from my apartment) earlier this week.  While there, we went to a Hiroshima Carp baseball game, which was pretty fun consiering it was a baseball game.  the crowd was super into it and the game was really close. You could bring your own food and drink into the stadium, which was very un North American, even if you did elect to go with the ballpark food your options were all rice and noodle based. 

 

Japan also has what is called (insert japanese word here, i can't remeber) which I think means all you can have????  On the first night of the conference the JET's had a party at the bar that was all you could eat and drink for two hours, for the equivilant of 35 bucks. I got my moneys worth.  After that a group of us headed out to kareoke. In Japan kareoke places have individule rooms for each group so only the people I went with knew how bad I could sing, another upside is that you get to sing as many songs as you want.  It was pretty fun.  I had a bad hangover and sore voice the next day.

 

Even if I had the capability to put up some pictures with this post, I can't because I am on a computer at work.  Unfortunatly my camera has been decomishioned for many of the last 14 day due to a variety of things.  I am back on the picture taking train (which is different from my commuter train that I took a picture of today) so hopefully I can take 1000 photos in the next little while and have a couple decent ones to show for my efforts.

 

I also plan on doing a "MTV cribs" expose of our apartment once we get it set up a little better. 

 

I just realized that the title of this blog has become only half accurate.  I have a little time in my new "routine" for excersise, the heat robs me of all motivation.  Especially the motivation to go for a jog in 34 degree heat with 79 percent humidity (i guess i could go in the middle of the night when it is cooler (27 degrees 90 percent humidity))