This Round's on Me.

This Round's on Me.
Originally uploaded by tastefulTN.

I survived the 19 hour Journey from Clinton, NJ to Tanabe-Shi in one piece. It was too bad, and was more or less without incident. Other than watching Madgascar once in English, and once in Japanese, I have nothing interesting to report. The worst part of the trip was landing in Osaka and the odd things that happen in my ear. I my ears got real used to the low pressure at 33000 feet and refused to pop well into the train journey from Kansai International. My dampened hearing added greatly to the sureality of KIX itself, very large, very sterile and for what I had seen of it, mostly empty. Going through immigration, baggage claim, and customs reminded me heavily of something out of Brazil or 1984. Then again it might have just been the jetlag.

I have a job already, actually have had it since Saturday. I'm just good like that. My legend proceeded me and they just couldn't wait to give me work and pay. Like many of my friends I am now a teacher, though specifically in the English language, but wider in scope. I'll be teaching at EVI, which is a small english language school based out of Tanabe-shi, whose main office is only about a 15 minute walk from my apartment. Right now I'm teaching there mostly, but get to Shirahama every Friday to teach at their school there. People I'll be teaching range in age from 5-40, it'll be interesting.

I'm told that as of 2 years ago there was a 120 to 1 person to vending throughout Japan. I'd say in Tanabe the figure is more like 50 to 1. There's three right in front of our small apartment building. Mostly drink machines though, good amount of cigarettes, and I've seen two beer/mixed drink machines. Yes, mixed drinks come in aluminium cans in Japan. My beer experience thus far shall be chroniciled in another post.

This is it for now, I'll give a geography lesson in my next post.