September

It has been a month filled with late nights. This month had two 3 day weekends. The first one was spent in Tokyo when my friend came to visit. This coincided with Alice's friend from home too, so we spent most of our time together. Tokyo is a different experience every time I go. We did so much walking, went to huge parks, such as Yoyogi in Harajuku, famous for the Goth dressers(right picture). We saw the Meiji Shrine in Yoyogi park. It was quite breath taking, and wrote wishes on wooden plaque and hung them on the frame circling a huge tree.
We walked around Ueno park, this was huge, there were shrines to see, museums and even a zoo in there. Then we walked around the Imperial Palace (centre picture) area and the water fountain features in Tokyo. It was all good, apart from my feet.

Our nights out involved a fair bi of walking too, aswell as dancing in 'womb' where the night ended at 5am for the first train home.

We went to an Izakaya in Shinjuku. Rieko had booked a place for 2 hours of all you can drink. We had to be there for 7pm, but Alice had arranged for everyone to meet at 6.30pm at the South Exit at Shinjuku station. However, Alice was the last to arrive, because she went to the wrong exit. Well, give her some credit, Shinjuku is the biggest train station in the world. Luckily we made it on time to the venue. Then later moved on to the 'hub', a British chain pub in Tokyo.

A good station to be at in the night, or anytime, is Shinjuku at the big crossing. Its just amazing to see a huge crowd appear every minute to cross the road... and the disappear, and then watch it all over again.... and again....

August

What a hectic month. I've now been in a Japan just a little over a year, and the work as a 2nd year JET begins. For my summer vacation I spent 2 weeks at a Japanese Language course in Hokkaido, Sapporo. It was hard work, but i also had a lot of fun, travelling and meeting new people. I had a host family called Shimizu san, Yukiko (mother) and Kenji (father). They were very kind to me, and we manged to talk about many things even with the little Japanese that i had had, and Yukiko's English.

Sapporo is such an amazing city. Even a monkey can navigate around it. The weather was so much cooler than Nagano, even on a hot day. However, last August was the hottest summer on record, and this August is Nagano is not as bad.
Anyway...When I arrived back in my prefecture, Nagano, the new JETs had arrived 2 weeks ago, and i had a workshop to attend, where i was to help out. But, it seems things were already taken care of.
As the 2nd year begins, so did my new position as the editor of the Jetsetter, our monthly magazine for the JETs in our prefecture.
Sarah and I were working really hard on our first issue. We wanted it to be awesome!!! We wanted it to be totally different to last years, especially the layout. Most of my mid-August was spent on that in Hakuba... (Nagano's ski resort... cooler weathers of Nagano)

Then it was the Orientation for new JETs... and handing out the Jetsetter... We felt happy and proud... and people seem to be pleased with it too... thank god!!!
What else in August... oooo... the Suwa Fireworks festival. That was cool.. the best fireworks display i have ever seen.... so glad i went this year, as i had missed it last year.
Now in my 2nd year, with a little more Japanese i hope that this year will be a wonderful one. I'm also planning my time here, before i leave this stimulating country.