LEGAL ALIEN

I'm now a legal alien in Japan. October 1st, the other new teacher and I walked down to a local branch of city hall (located next to the train station) and picked up our Certificate of Alien Registration - an alien card. It comes with its own plastic wrapper, like everything else in Japan. I'm surprised each of the four main islands doesn't come pre-plastic wrapped as well!

I've now been in Japan a month and getting around is definitely second nature now. I hop on trains to Kobe, Osaka, even Kyoto without much thought. Just mainly check whether I have the correct change. My first tentative trip out getting on a train my first week, I had to ask the station attendant monitoring the passengers how to get a ticket two stops down to Nishinomiya Kitaguchi main station. Coming back, I stopped in bewilderment in front of the ticket machines for a good 5-10 minutes trying to figure out which booth to use, how much to pay, HOW to to pay.

Found an international church in Kobe I like - half Japanese, half international. They put the words up for songs in Japanese script, Roma-ji (Japanese transcribed into latin letters) and English. Met an EFL teacher from Jamaica whose parents were visiting him in Japan! Two Iranians attend, including one named Paul! Paul is married to a Brazilian doing a linguistics PhD in Japanese. The pastor is a missionary kid born and raised in Japan by Reformed Church parents - Rob Flaherty, or Pastor Robu, as some call him. He can preach in Japanese as easily as in English.

Have just finished week 2 of teaching now. Have three classes of Pre-Advanced English, one of Intermediate English (a required course for Kangaku students), and one graduate course in Osaka with only one student. Poor Jun Ono! Several of us with grad offerings were fighting over him because without a student, our course would fold and we'd be given heaven knows what to take its place. But I got him for sure because the course is a requirement! This past Thursday, we talked about English dialects and accents, and I brought in a DVD of 'My Fair Lady' to showcase the Cockney dialect.

Hope to move to a new apartment in October. My current central basement one is not a place I'd want to live for four years - dark and messily damp in the hot season. I've submitted a request to General Affairs at KGU to move to a higher-up apartment, but people tell me once situated in Canaan House you're pretty much stuck in the apartment they put you in, unless you choose to find your own place.

More adventures to come in October, I'm sure ...