Life after Tokyo

Instead of giving a painful detailed account of my first moments in kasukabe, I will show you these pictures.

Below is the first meal I cooked in my apartment. Broccoli and cauliflour of course! Broccoli is very common here but cauliflour is rather hard to find. I've only even seen it at one store. It comes in very small heads and I find it is not really worth it the money to buy it.

I think my apartment had been cleaned before I arrived however, it was still really dirty. One of my first orders of business was to buy whatever cleaning implements I could and scrub everything. For example, the picture below is the sponge I used to scrub the kitchen shelf. It was covered in a stick grime, as if it hadn't been cleaned in 20 years... Ugh.

I did the deep cleaning in stages. The next thing I attacked was the shower/bathroom. Luckily scrubbing bubbles is available and relatively cheap in Japan. That's what I used to clean my shower. It was not completely effective though because there was tonnes of mildew remaining on the wall. To clean that I needed kabikiller. In other words... Bleach. I bought some kabikiller (bleach) and it very effectively removed the mildew but I also got some burns around my nose from inhaling all the bleach... Not fun. Hopefully it will never be that again. Japanese cleaners are very strong. One of the other ALTs that arrived with me got burns on her hands from cleaners... That's why you see in the picture I'm wearing gloves.

These pictures are from the funagawa fireworks in Tokyo. They were the last fireworks of summer. There were actually two sites where they were setting off fireworks. The whole thing lasted for about 1 hour. It was gorgeous!!

I went to the fireworks after going to BBoy Park, a big break dance jam that was held in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo. My friend Natsumi and I went with one of the tokyo Bboys I met when I first arrived in Tokyo.

More later :)

Japanese flower arrangement

Recently (yesterday) I joined a club at school. On Monday afternoons I now learn how to do Japanese flower arranging. Today was my first day. Each time we will work with different kinds of flowers. Unfortunately there is only 4 classes in this term because of the messed schedule.

The basic premise of flower arranging is to form a triangle with three branches or flowers. Each point must have a certain length. The art of the arrangement is in how you fill in the space between the three main points.

Today's flower arrangement was in honour of fall, so the flowers and branches were oranges and reds. Below is a picture of my finished product. It didn't take very long to complete. I think I will read up on flower arranging before the next class to have more of an idea of what I'm doing.

Worst morning

I've got a bad case of the Monday's today however, it is actually Tuesday.

This day has started off so badly I feel I must record it so I never forget. For those not in the know, I had a 3 day weekend because Monday was a national holiday. The last thing I expected was to have a case of the Monday's today, especially since I never suffer from them.

This morning started off wrong when I began waking up throughout the night. It was the worst in the hour before my scheduled wake up time, from 6 am on. I just kept waking up. When it was finally 7 am, I got out of bed and began to make breakfast.

All of the sudden, a rapid flurry of movement confused my tired and unawake eyes. A cockroach. Noooo! Ugh! Disgusting! Luckily I had the wherewithal to spray it with poison, lucky for me it stayed in the sink. I thought those things only came out in the night! *shudder*

The morning wasn't ruined by this point because I won the battle with the cockroach. The next thing to go wrong - allergy attack! Probably caused by the damn cockroach. After dealing with my dripping faucet of a nose, I looked at the time and realized that I should be leaving for work pretty soon.

I rushed around dressing and packing. I have no fresh veggies for my lunch. So today lunch will be terrible.

I finally got out of the door when I realized I forgot my wifi. Now I have no Internet at school. :( it was too late to go back so I left it. This morning I elected to take the train crossing instead of the overpass on my way to school.

Terrible choice. The train crossing was blocked for 20 minutes with crossing trains and I was late for work. Ugh. To go back and take the overpass would have probably been quicker, but when you're waiting for the trains, you always figure that as soon as you leave, the crossing will be clear. Not so today.

So that brings me to this moment. Late for work, and really really sweaty. Surely things can only get better... I hope.

Nostalgic for home

I'm starting to miss home a lot!! Maybe it's the The Starbucks on a Wednesday night or fall clothing or being slightly afraid to stay home... But I miss home where there is no cockroaches, and lots of delicious and cheap fruits and vegetables, yogurt, frozen yogurt, family, friends, smarties, dance, etc.

The pictures in no particular order are of me and my bike, my strawberry and broccoli toys from Ikea and the coffee that started this whole post.

Tomorrow is the school's sports festival. That should be interesting. Will post more later.

Love you and miss you all!!

I've been here a month!

Wow. It's kind of hard to believe that I've been in Japan for a month. I still don't think that it has set in that I'm actually living here. It still seems like some kind of dream.

Every day is a new adventure. Shopping in the grocery store is challenge sometimes and doing financial things is really hard. I still don't have a cash card for my bank! It's crazy.

I officially have furniture! Hurray. I have put my chairs to really good use. Surprisingly, I haven't sat on my sofa very much. I should start doing that to make sure I get my money's worth out of it.

Here are some pictures from Tokyo (prior) to my arrival in Kasukabe.

 This is the hotel room at the Keio Plaza Hotel. It was very swanky and nice. The beds are not terribly comfortable though...

These are my clothes post flying... Wrinkled! Luckily the wrinkles fell out of the shirt.

 Shinjuku is the area that the hotel was located. There are many convenience stores, shops and restaurants here. But then again... The rest of Tokyo is like that too.

Some foods for sale at 7-11. Pretty normal for Japanese food.

This is interesting though. I have been saying "interesting" way too much lately. This is seasoned octopus tentacles. Pretty pricey too.

More octopus tentacles. Yummmy. Oishii... Ha ha ha.

 This is the SOMPO building where I practiced break dancing :)

 Jet lag is so wonderful isn't it? To bed at 11:30, up at 4 am to see the sunrise. It was beautiful.

This is melon soda. They also have a summer flavour of pepsi that is called Sour Melon Pepsi (I think) and it's pink in colour. It didn't taste very good.

 This is the SOMPO building in the light (at 5 am). Because of the jet lag I went for a walk around deserted Shinjuku at 5 am.

 These are the JETs from various places that arrived with me and went to cities in Saitama prefecture. All the girls are very tall (except the Japanese woman on the right).

In the next entry I'll post some Kasukabe pictures :)

On the weekend I went to Utsunomiya, a city in Tochigi prefecture, to practice with some different Bboys and for a third time, was told by someone that they are a rich man. Ha ha ha. I asked Yuki (My Russkie-Japanese buddy) about this and he first said "They're probably Koreans". Ha ha ha ha. I assured him they weren't and he said it was weird.

Last weekend I went to Asakusa and the Tokyo Skytree (a brand new very tall tower in the heart of Tokyo) with Natsumi and Akiko (who I know from Vancouver). Asakusa is famous for its shrines and temples. It was lots of fun.

During the past week it has been very rainy and stormy, but no more earthquakes :) I like the change in weather. Since it has been stormy, it has been cooler, a welcome reprieve from the hot hot hot hot hot hot days I have experienced so far.

I'll write more later.

Love and hello to all!