January 25

Sunday January 25, 2009
5:50pm
Okayama, Japan- Friday night I moved into my actual apartment. It is small, but very comfortable and well kept. It’s not unlike a small hotel room. I work at 2 different locations during the week, so I have a bike that I can ride to work and around town. I worked with a really cool guy named, Dave, who has been sub teaching my classes for the last 2 months. Yesterday I observed all day as he taught and began thinking about planning my own lessons. I do feel more confident about everything now (not that I was doubting myself before). I also met the rest of the staff at the school who are all extremely nice. After work last night they all took me out to this amazing Izakaya restaurant. We all ordered and shared a load of food (soba, gyoza, deep fried bananas, amongst so many others) and drinks and everything that I ate was absolutely incredible. Afterwards we ended up at this really hip bar down the block. It reminded me of an old basement with a huge screen that was showing really old black and white Miles Davis footage. After that, a few of us ended up at this gallery that hosts monthly parties with a dj and film projections and we didn’t leave there until, uh, 6am. It’s been fun so far.
Oh, by the way- perhaps the most shocking discovery is the presence of Mister Donuts over here! Remember them? I haven’t seen one in about 15 years or whenever the one in Stroudsburg turned into a Dunkin Donuts.
There will be pictures up sometime soon, hopefully by the time you all read this. I don’t know when that will be because I still need to figure out an Internet account, which is apparently going to be a bit difficult due to the language barrier. English is very minimal over here and I still have an extremely low Japanese vocabulary. Talk soon
-love ian