Home and Work - My Everyday Japanese Life

After my first full week of work, and ending my second week in Japan, I already feel quite at home. Japan really is a lovely place to live, with so much variety in what it has to offer. Even Tokyo is widely varied - Hino City, Tokyo couldn't be more different to the Down town area.

The train station is the life-blood of Hino. Supermarkets, dry cleaners, and convenience stores are crowded around the area, and are scarce anywhere else. Here in Hino, the residents are friendly, and the landscape green. Most housed have spectacular gardens squeezed impossible into minuscule lots. Everything is very clean, and, though there isn't a Starbucks, I can buy coffee on almost every corner from a vending machine (enabling a growing addiction...). It's quiet, calm, and quaint. Yet, just a short 30 minutes away, the Tokyo Metropolis looms.

Work is one hour away, door to door. The Tokyo University of Technology is a small university, with around 5.000 students and an oddly large amount of nude female statues. Shalvin, my co-worker, and I believe this to be due to the nature of the school. Being a technology-focused school, most of the students are, to be kind, slightly awkward males. We believe that the university is using the statues to give these men a social education they most likely are not receiving at the moment.

My classes, an extra curricular conversational English course, average about 4-5 students. It's a basic level, so they don't speak very well yet. Everyday, though, I see them improving, which what I love most about teaching. I really enjoy my students, and we get along really well. We laugh a lot - the Japanese are very quick to laugh, and laugh loudly. It's on of the things I love most about their culture.

All in all, I'm loving everyday. Japan was a GREAT choice!