I am writing today from my musty smelling but very roomy apartment in Noheji, Aomori Prefecture, Japan. I don?t know why it is so humid in my apartment all the time, although it might have something to do with the fact that it has rained every single day in Noheji since I got here. It has been about a month now since I was first introduced to my new apartment and it?s already starting to feel like home. I?ve moved all my furniture and electronics into one room which now somewhat resembles my old bedroom in Toronto. I hardly notice how terrible my apartment smells anymore, and even the Japanese milk doesn?t taste as disgusting as it once did. After a month of running all over town, filling out dozens and dozens of forms I can?t read with my supervisor I finally have pretty much all the red tape taken care of. I have my residency card, my personal hanko stamp, a bank account with ATM card, a DSL Internet connection, utility bills automatically paid from my account and a car with legally required parking spot. The shear volume of red tape in Japan is astounding. Every possible thing you might want to do beyond buying a doughnut requires a form, and most forms require other forms just to get the certificate you need for the first form. Each of these forms usually requires a small payment of somewhere between 100 to 500 yen. I kind of feel bad for my supervisor who always gets stuck filling all these things in. Worst of all, in Japan if you make even the slightest error on a form they make you fill the whole thing out again from scratch. One time the bank wouldn?t accept my application form for an ATM card because my supervisor printed my name on the form instead of me.. not signed mind you.. she just printed out my name where it asked on the form for ?name?E The anal retentiveness of Japanese administrators puts most Germans to shame. This is why I am very nervous about the prospect of moving into a NEW apartment in the coming weeks.. but more on that later.


I guess you?ve been wondering what I?ve been up to for the past little while. Lets see if I can remember. I spent about 15 hours on what was no doubt the worst flight of my life. Needless to say I flew Air Canada. I was stuck right in the middle of the plane between two other JET teachers with big mouths and absolutely nothing interesting to say. The plane was an old 747 with no neato built in TV screens or any other cool stuff like that. In fact the only screen it had in my section was one of those overhead projector deals, except the color green was burnt out so the movies looked horrible. It didn?t really matter much because the movies weren?t worth watching anyway. I can?t even remember what they were anymore because I didn?t bother to try to watch most of them. I finally caved and watched ?How to Loose a Guy in Ten Days?Ejust so that I wouldn?t have to listen to the idiots next to me anymore?Eat least that was the plan. The idiot to the right of me was some Waterloo computer programming graduate nerd who I will hence forth call ?Fair Enough?Esince that is what he said after anyone said anything to him. For the whole movie he laughed hysterically at every stupid joke in that horrible, horrible movie. He only paused from his laughing to turn to me and say something like, ?Boy this movie is dumb, huh??E It wasn?t that he was enjoying it on some weird ironic level, I think he was just ashamed to admit he liked the movie or something. The whole plane was silent during the movie as most people were trying to sleep. The only noise you could hear was the purring of the engine and my buddy ?Fair Enough?Elaughing in my ear at top volume. If I had a box cutter on me at the time I would have probably hijacked the plane and plunged it into the ocean just to make the pain go away.


I spent the next three days in Shinjuku, Tokyo at the 5 star Keio Plaza Hotel. I was scared to death at check in that I was going to be placed in a room with my old friend ?Fair Enough?Ebut thankfully they placed me with a couple of decent guys from Hawaii that were also going to be stationed up north in Aomori. The orientation was pretty boring and I don?t remember much about it. I also skipped most of the sessions except for the most important ones which is also probably why I don?t remember it anymore. I remember eating at McDonald's a whole lot while in Tokyo. After orientation I flew to Aomori City with my fellow Aomori JETs and was thrown into my first welcoming ceremony just outside of baggage pick-up. If you?ve ever seen the movie Mr. Baseball, it was much like the scene where Tom Seleck first lands in Tokyo to awaiting crowds and dignitaries. I was formally introduced to my Vice Principal and one of my school?s teachers Mrs. Yamagucci who handed me some flowers and then drove me to directly Noheji High School to meet the staff. They then took me to my previously mentioned musty apartment and helped me get settled in.


The next few weeks were spent mostly sitting around at my desk at school doing absolutely nothing. The kids were away for their 4 week long summer vacation, and so were most of the other teachers. I spent most of my weekends in Hirosaki hanging out with my friend Hugh and all the Hirosaki JETs that should rightfully have been my neighbors. For those of you who don?t know, I requested to be placed in Hirosaki City when I applied to JET, however due to some administrative mix up (from what I hear) I was sent off to the small fishing village of Noheji instead. Noheji is a town of supposedly 15 000 or so, with no fast food restaurants or any other western amenities. It does however have plenty of liquor stores and probably more barber shops per capita than any other place on earth. There must be well over 150 barber shops and hair salons in this town.. don?t ask me why. Noheji does have a few half way decent grocery stores however. I?ve been surviving mostly off of toast, weird tasting milk, orange juice, frozen pizza and chocolate Frosted Flakes (called Frosties over here). My TV gets 5 channels of Japanese programming, with the occasional English language show like ?Boy Meets World?E ?Sabrina the Teenage Witch?E and ?I Was a Teenage Werewolf?E The news here is really boring with just the same stories every night about how evil North Korea is, and how well Japanese baseball players are doing in the major leagues. I prefer watching all the weird children?s shows that always involve large numbers of small kids dancing in choreography with some sort of monster. Everything else is about cooking. There is even a cooking show where a bunch of kids cook and dance in choreography with a giant yellow hippo.


Like I said earlier, I?ve spent pretty much every weekend with so far with my adoptive Hirosaki City friends, either in Hirosaki or here in Noheji. There is actually a fairly large and tightly knit community of JET teachers in Hirosaki this year, and my friend Hugh?s apartment (much to his chagrin) serves as their social focal point. The ones I probably see the most often include Hugh of course, Erica a French teacher from Maine and neighbor of Hugh?s, a Brit named Luke and his sort of Japanese girlfriend Akiko, Jenny who you can read more about at her website, Keiko & Nalko (more J-girls), and Stephanie (another American). There are lots of others, but I?m sure you don?t really care who they are anyway. Notable things I have done with my new found friends include:

I was actually feeling quite sick while at the show in Misawa. In fact I?ve been battling a terrible cold for over a week now. I even lost my voice for a while which made it quite hard to fulfill my duties as a human tape recorder for my classes. Teaching English in Japan so far has mostly consisted of a Japanese English teacher asking me to read a passage from the text book and then seeing if his students could understand me. I actually teach at three schools in Aomori. My base school is Noheji Senior Highschool (ranked 5th from the bottom academically of all high schools in this prefecture) and I also work at two small schools of roughly 100 students in the towns of Rokasho and Yokohama Bunko. The last two I think are ranked even lower than Noheji. Aomori is kind of like the Newfoundland of Japan. Most of the English teachers I work with are about my age or younger. They seem to force new teachers over here to work in the rural towns nobody else wants. Some of the teachers have been at it for a while, but many are quite young and inexperienced. Lukily my supervisor Mariko is a great teacher and speaks terrific English. She is also studying English with Nova in her spare time.


Anyway, back to my cold. So I was feeling pretty sick this Monday morning with a really bad cough and soar throat. I decided to call in sick and take the day to recover. I knew I was invited later that night to a party one of the other teachers was throwing, but I didn?t really feel up to going so I didn?t show up. My supervisor called me several times during the day to make sure I was okay and to see if I needed a ride to the hospital or any medicine. The next day I was feeling better and didn?t want to cause any more worry for Mariko so I decided to come in for work at 8am like usual. At the morning staff meeting the principal Mr. Takenaka came up to me to see if I was alright. I told him I was still kind of sick, but was feeling a little better. I?m never sure if he understands anything I say as he has some English speaking ability, but I can never tell exactly how good it really is. An hour later I was called into a special meeting with him, the vice principal, the head administrator and my supervisor to discuss my sickness. Apparently they were all aware of the musty smell problem of my apartment and were worried that this was somehow responsible for my illness. They now want me to move into another apartment in a different building that isn?t as musty. This is fine with me as I don?t really care for the smell, but I?m really not looking forward to the paper work that this is going to take. It basically means taking all the work I did with my supervisor over the past month on all these documents and flushing it all down the toilet and starting over. I think she nearly had a heart attack when they told us their plans. I don?t know yet if I am going to move into the new place or not. Maybe I?ll just buy a dehumidifier or something. Anyway, I saw the teacher today who invited me to the party. He asked me in broken English why I didn?t come and I explained with various hand gestures that I was sick and couldn?t make it. I felt sort of bad since I had promised to come, but then I felt really bad when I got home later that day and saw a big poster outside my apartment advertising the party I had missed as the ?Welcome to Jamie Party?E Nobody ever told me I was going to be the guest of honor. Oh well. Hopefully they had a good time without me.


There?s much more I could write about, but I won?t because I?m too tired and lazy right now. Hopefully I?ll have some interesting pictures to show you on my next big update. For now here is a picture of me just clinging to life about half way up Mount Iwaki with a bunch of other JETs. Sionara.. or whatever it is they say around here to mean goodbye.


Jamie