Back in Japan!

I have decided to give this whole blog malarkey another go as, so far, I seem to have much more spare time on my hands than the last time I was in the Land of the Rising Sun.

So... where am I?

Well, last time I was in Japan I was in Yokohama, Japan's second biggest city (since it is pretty much attached to Tokyo), which is a huge meteropolitan area. And this time? If you haven't heard of Yokohama before then I am fairly sure you wont have heard of my new town... it's a place called Adachi which is in a city called Nihonmatsu which is in a prefecture called Fukushima... still no idea? oh well, just check out the map.

Last time I was in Japan I came as a student but this time I am here on the JET programme and that basically means I am an assistant language teacher and work in two junior high schools for kids from the age 12 to 15.
There are around 1500 new JETs sent to Japan each year and from most people that I have spoken to, I seem to be the only one who has actually started work! Not that I could really call it work yet- for this first week I have been coaching some of the kids who are entering an English speech contest, helping them with pronunciation and intonation, which essentially requires the skill of being a native speaker and not much else. All the kids are really nice though so I don't mind.
However, I finish doing this by about 2pm each day and am kind of at a loss for what to do for the last three hours of my working day. So far I have filled my time by reading a lot of wikipedia, learning about Japanese cooking and ingrediants and doing a little but of Japanese study.

The summer holidays will finish in a couple of weeks and proper school will be on again so I am looking forward to getting into the swing of things and actually teaching something- from next week I will use my free time at work more wisely and start preparing my intro lessons and get photos together for it.

So that's what I am doing in Japan answered... anything else?

I think I will leave it at that for now, will try to write something again soon