Random Bits of Knowledge....and Curry

After two days of sporadic cleaning and getting used to Japanese grocery stores, we`re finally beginning to feel situated. The other night three of our fellow teachers (Mike - Canadian, Kirk - American, & Heather - Aussie) came by to say hello and share some information about work and the city. Interestingly, the first impression they got of Steph was of her dicing veggies and cooking up a hot meal (see below, Steph in kitchen - unheard of!). We quickly clarified that we`re more into "heating things up" than formally cooking. Anyway, before they left for the night we agreed on meeting up later in the week for dinner or a few drinks. We then settled into our tiny couch with hot plates of curry (pictured above - nice job Steph) and watched, as Steph would say "our favorite TV show EVER": F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

Speaking about curry, did I mention that our toilet has a sweet `ass-warmer` feature. Seriously. . .there`s a coil-type apparatus inside the seat (like Dan`s old VW Passat) and there`s even a knob for adjusting the intensity (so as to avoid swamp-ass). Sorry about the language mom, but that`s really what you get if it`s turned up too high.
Onto another subject, trash and recycling are a "ritual" in Japan and an example for us all. Everything needs to be separated into non-burnables & burnables. They are further broken down into recycling categories: plastics, glass, cardboard and newspaper. The problem is that recycling is only picked up twice a month. When we moved in we therefore inherited about 2 weeks worth of beer cans, wine bottles and tea containers. We were told at orientation that if trash is not separated properly, do not be surprised if it shows up back at your front step. People are fined for not recycling.
To answer a previously posted comment, we do sleep in traditional Japanese futons on the floor. They consist of 3 layers: a 2 inch thick pad on the bottom, a "down comforter" like cover on top and in between another "comforter" that serves as a mattress. They are quite comfy and warm at night. We did have to push two of them together because they provided two singles as opposed to one double.

If you have questions about our living arrangements or anything else, please post it as a comment and we will reply in a following post. Some of you might have the same questions and it is easier to post an answer to everyone.

Sweet Home Sasebo

The Guittars have officially landed at our new home for the next year. We are in a 2/1 apartment in downtown Sasebo within a one minute walk of infinite shops and restaurants (really infinite). There is a 1 km long arcade of shops less than one block from our front door. I do want to say before any of you get excited that the trip to get here is LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG! From our last post in Osaka we took a 2 1/2 hour train ride to Fukuoka on a Nozomi Shinkansen (aka bullet train) which is pictured above. We then transferred to another local train for a 1 1/2 hr train ride on our final leg of the voyage. Now back to the apartment. It is on the fourth floor directly above some shops and restaurants. It is a semi-Western style apartment in other words it has characteristics of both Japanese and US accomodations. When you walk in there is a small foyer area where you take your shoes off and change into the "inside" slippers. Then you step onto the wooden flooring that continues throughout the place except for the tatami room which is lined with 6 tatami mats (like rice mats).
When we arrived here we were met by a NOVA teacher who showed us around the area and introduced us to a little Mexican stand which we have visited twice already. It is operated by a Japanese man who lived in Australia for a few years and is pretty fluent in English. The nice man feeds us chicken burritos that are TDF, YUM! After eating dinner we went grocery shopping in an 8 story multi-department store called "Jusco". They have everything we would need except chocolate soy milk, Ovaltine or Nutella (sg). They did have some curry flavor cup of noodles for Nick. We also picked up other household necessities. The cleaning products we picked out by the pictures on the labels since we cannot read ANYTHING on the labels for any of the items we bought. The only reason we recognized milk was the shape of the carton. We do not know what animal it came from so we held off on it until we learn the symbols.
As for the rest of the weekend we will just continue to rest up and prepare for a busy week of training. On Monday we will have to take a train to Fukuoka for training (1 hr 40 min) and for the rest of the week we will be in Nagasaki where we will stay in a hotel. We are still waiting to set up our internet and phone. In the meantime, we are using a place called "JJ Club" where we can use the internet and play games fairly cheap.

We are here!

This is a quick post to let everyone know we are here safe and sound. We accessed the internet at the hotel we stayed at in Osaka. We currently are unable to communicate by phone, we are working out some issues with our calling cards so this was our only way to say we made it. We will board our train to Kyushu at 11:30 am (japan time). Remember when viewing posts subtract 14 hours from the post time to know what time it was posted local FL time. We hope to update soon.
P.S. Dan, we had Mexican food last night. The menu was even in Spanish!

Ready, Set, Go!

We are ready to go. We are packed to the max with four oversized, overweight suitcases and the biggest carry ons allowed. I hope the airline doesn't give us any trouble checking them in. My dad had the idea of doing curbside check-in to avoid getting the bags weighed in at the ticket counter. He seems to think that they won't weigh them at curbside....we'll see. It would certainly save us a lot of money considering that all 4 bags are over the suggested 50 pound limit and a couple of them are might be over the overall 70 lbs limit!
I wanted to let you all know that since we won't get into our apartment until Friday and we don't have our work orientation 'til Monday we will not be able to update our blog or email for at least a week or so. We will however keep a journal of the following days and will update the blog once we get settled and are up and running. Until then, "Sayonara"! SG

Good News!

Today was just another day of running around doing last minute errands. However, we did receive great news from our realtor. For those of you that need a little background info...we have two homes (the one we lived in and our recently acquired investment property) both of which we had to rent out while we're gone. We put them up for rent in December and had not yet come across qualified responsible tenants. Today our realtor called to let us know that he had indeed found tenants for both of the homes. We are unbelievably relieved. We can now leave with a little peace of mind.
On traveling news: In our planning and errands list we completely overlooked the fact that we needed to exchange money and get traveler's cheques prior to leaving. We had been warned by every brochure and booklet that we'd received from Nova about this way in advance. What we didn't realize or know at the time was that local banks don't actually have foreign currency/travelers cheques at hand. In hindsight this seems like common sense but at the time it didn't seem like it to us. This put us in a bit of a pickle since most places have a turn time of 4-7 days and we didn't actually think of this until last Friday (which meant that we only had 2 1/2 business days before leaving). For our sake, American Express came through and we were able to call before their daily cutoff and order our foreign cash and cheques to be overnighted and they came in today. We're still short of what we were recommended to take with us due to a limit they put on how much you can exchange per 7 days. Our backup plan now is just to take some USD cash with us and exchange it when we get to Osaka if need be. Anyway, everything's starting to come together, so I'm confident that this experience will soon have a successful kickoff.

So, Where is Sasebo?

Hello. . . off to the right-hand side of ths blog you'll notice there are links to three websites. Those of you interested in learning about where we will be living should definately spend some time on the first link.

This link will direct you to the official website for travel in the Nagasaki Prefecture of Japan. Both the cities of Sasebo (the city we'll be living in) and Nagasaki (a city famous for obvious reasons) lie within the Nagasaki Prefecture, formally titled 'Nagasaki-ken'. So, what's a prefecture? Furthermore, how is Japan broken down? I'll expalain this by comparing the locales of Orlando, Florida and Sasebo, Japan.

USA - Florida(state) - Orange(county) - Orlando(city)
Japan - Kyushu(island) - Nakasaki-ken(prefecture) - Sasebo(city)

Anyway, this site on Nagasaki-ken will give you some basic info on geography, climate, sites, etc. Of particular interest is the section titled 'Great Plans', which walks you through the major sites in the area by providing short descriptions and video clips. Enjoy!

5 Days 'til Departure

We have received our flight information and our physical address in Japan. We will leave on Wednesday, Jan 25th at 8:00am. We fly from Orlando to Detroit, have a 2 hour layover and then head out on our 14 hour flight to Osaka. There we will stay the night in Osaka before departing the next morning on a 4 hour train ride to our final destination, Sasebo.
Sasebo is the city that we will live and work in. It is located in the Nagasaki prefecture (county) halfway between the cities of Nagasaki and Fukuoka in the island of Kyushu.

Steph graduates with an M.A. in Applied Sociology (12/12/05)