J-A-P-A-N

We've made it in 1 piece to Japan, and after a very long flight followed by several trains, we arrived in our small but perfectly formed apartment in the Kanagawa Prefecture in Greater Tokyo (just West of Tokyo itself). We haven't quite explored our area completely, but we found a sushi place, various authentic looking japanese restaurents and a 99 yen shop - amusingly enough we didn't realise it was a 99 yen shop until by the 2nd aisle it dawned on me that everything cost exactly 99 yen (plus tax). FYI 99 yen is about 41p and 60 eurocents. Other than that, yesterday we went to the city council to sort out alien registration cards etc. It also gave us a chance to meet some of the company's other instructors who live in the same area - most of them are around our age and seem like a nice bunch, certainly a very different group from most of the teachers we met in Thailand!!

We've only been here 2 days now but so far we love it - although we'll have to get used to not being able to read anything, people cycling on pavements and car parks that whisk cars away instead of people driving to a parking place (watch Tokyo Drift, you'll understand). The campus that we will be working in, along with another guy called Ricky, seems nice enogh. Fairly modern and green.. and it has a resident goat for some random reason. We'll tell you more once we actually start work there on Monday. Tomorrow and Saturday we've got training so we'll have to wait until Sunday to do some more exploring!