Please enjoy your welcoming typhoon

Last weekend there was a typhoon. There's another one coming this Tuesday. They tell me this is just the season, but I think I may have brought them with me. Maybe I'm some kind of weather divinity. Who knows.

Anyway, an update on my life... Pictures included!

Mostly all I'm doing is work and shopping. At work I go from one class to the other to help the teachers and see what kind of activities they do and how they manage the students and work in general. They teach maths, science, music and p.e. in English, and in reduced groups with no more than ten children more or less. I like it this way, because it's easier to manage the class and pay them proper attention.


This month everything is Halloween themed: decoration, crafts, songs... Some of these get stuck in my head and I wake up singing them. Dem bones dem bones dem dancing bones, doing the skeleton dance ♫♫

By the way, the school has a very cool pet. Her name is Elsa (I suspect because of the Frozen movie, because the kids are obsessed with that one like woah):

Very cute indeed. Never does anything at all, actually. Just... floats there. Easy maintenance I guess?

Let me show you some pictures of the neighborhood. The apartment is some fifteen minutes from the school going by foot, maybe ten or so by bike. The main street is very busy and has everything from conbini stores to supermarkets, pharmacies, electronics stores, groeceries, a train station and restaurants. But once you get on the side streets you can find traditional old houses that look either amazing or terribly run down, and even a couple of temples.

(Maybe someday I'll learn how to format the pictures so they don't have to appear in a row in such a lame fashion. Maybe.)

Also I obviously have an apartment, which is much bigger than I expected it to be. It has a fridge, a balcony and a washing machine, and came furnished with bed, kitchen, toilet (with ofuro!) and a desk. I had to buy the useful things like sheets and plates and all, though.

Now you may wonder, if apartments in Japan are so small, how do people organize their things? The answer is: hang it from the walls. Everything hangs from the walls. EVERYTHING:

My toilet is the tiniest, but it has a bathtub and that's all that matters.

My kitchen is also the tiniest and the fridge is so small I can barely fit food for a week. But at least I have one.

Everything hangs from something.

EVERYTHING!

I love my curtains. And my pillow case. It has owls. It's perfect. 

And my flag <3

My bags, hanging from the wall.

My keys and my wallet, hanging from the wall.

Mi desk.

In Japan you don't wear your shoes inside, so I have a cupboard to put all my shoes right next to my door.

The room from the kitchen.

And of course, my paper cranes!

Japan is like The Netherlands in which there are bicycles everywhere. This is the main street right next to the station... And pretty much at any other point to be honest.

So of course I also needed a bicycle. It's green, new and shiny, and I love it. I ride it to school and to go shopping and mostly everywhere I can ride it too. It's the perfect height for me too! And that's new, so yeah, I get to be excited about it.

For now this is all, because I have no internet so I have to leech it off my friend/neighbor and at some point I do have to go back to my own apartment and stop creeping in a corner next to her bed. Let's hope I get my own connexion soon!