Japan E-mails: September 2, 2001

 (retrospection)

I'm going to have less e-mail time in the future than I have been accustomed to, because school has just started. So no more sitting in the office and e-mailing all day. But I'll figure something out and still do my best to keep in touch with everyone. I gave my introduction to the students on Saturday, and today is the first day of real classes. I'm a bit nervous because I don't have a clue what I'm supposed to be doing. That's the way everything is around here. I don't know what's going to happen until it happens. I think it's because of the language barrier mostly. Anyway, I hope I'm not supposed to have any lessons or anything prepared for today, because I don't.

Oh, hey, and while I'm e-mailing you, we've started up a new project at Media Mouse (who I have been corresponding with via e-mail) for a radical book review section. Pretty neat huh? So if you have any radical books you would like to review for the Mouse, just sent it along to me, and I'll make sure it gets to the web guy.

*************************************************

 unfortunately we don't get a long weekend over here. In fact, until you reminded me via e-mail, I totally forgot labor day even exists. No one seems to celebrate it over here. And, not only did we not have a long weekend, but the first day of school was Saturday September 1st. That's right, the first day of school was on a Saturday. What a country!

I went to a tug of war festival the other day. It was fun, and they had lots of tasty food. Some one gave me little bread balls with kind of BBQ sauce and a chewy center. "These are good," I commented. "What's inside them?"

"Octopus," my Japanese friend answered. Well, naturally I was a little disconcerted to find out I had just eaten an octopus. "You son of a bitch," I yelled out, grabbing him by the throat.

******************************************

Since I last wrote you, I bought another car. It was hard for me to drive the manual, but I think I was beginning to get the hang of it near the end. The thing is though that Japan has a bit of a weird system concerning cars. Every two years the car needs to be certified as road worthy, and sometimes the process of getting the car up to code can be so expensive that it is cheaper just to buy a new car. This was the case with me, so I got another car for roughly the equivalent of $1500, and I don't have to get it certified for a whole year now. And it is automatic, so driving is basically a piece of cake, although there are a few things that are still problematic. Driving on the left side of the road isn't too bad usually, but every so often I catch myself automatically turning into the right lane, and I have to hurriedly correct myself before I cause an accident. (No accidents yet though). What really gets me is that the roads here are so damn narrow. But I'm getting used to it.