Let's get this started

So yeah, starting this up a little late, but it hadn't even occurred to me until one of my fellow trainees suggested I make a blog (thanks Ryan!). Honestly, it's not like you've missed much. Okayama was interesting, but I was mostly training and I didn't have a camera, so yeah. The highlight was probably the castle and the gardens. That's about it.

On to Matsue (beware of photo dump ahead)! Just got here on Wednesday, but I haven't gotten a good look at the city until today due to loads and loads of work. My predecessor, Daniel, was a pretty cool guy, and he helped me get set up, so I've already got internet access and an iPhone. There was some confusion on the bike front, but I went and bought one today, so that's covered as well. My branch school is surprisingly slow at times. Normally it's just my manager  (Matsuura), the head teacher (Mayumi), and me working. All my students are pretty freaking awesome, which is a relief since I had been worried I'd have some nightmare students like I did when I was teaching 109X. Highlights for me are a plastic surgeon that does gender reassignment surgery (he's one of only three in all of Japan, which is pretty cool to me), a college student that's a member of a hip hop dance group (I really wanna see them perform to see if it's different than American hip hop), a professor at a nearby university (this one is obvious), and a history enthusiast (also pretty obvious). Tomorrow I meet my last group, so hopefully it goes as well as it has been previously.

My branch school. Yeah, not too much to look at.

My apartment is pretty nice, and it's freaking huge considering the size of your average Japanese apartment. The only downside I've noticed is that the windows are really thin, so sound and temperature have no difficulty getting through them.

I need to buy slip-on dress shoes. Badly.

Looking right from walking in the door: my kitchen, toilet room, shower room (toilet and shower are separated here), and washing machine in the book corner.

I get to stand on the floor while taking a shower (the tub is for baths only)! There's a drain in the floor, and it's awesome. Only downside? The floor takes forever to dry, so there's usually tiny puddles left even at the end of the day. Uncomfortable while brushing my teeth.

Now, left! Living room and Bedroom.

Couch and awesome floorchair (least that's what I call it). Excuse the mess in these next few pictures, I've been exhausted, so things kinda piled up a bit.

My tv, some dress pants, and one of the best inventions ever: a Kotatsu (look it up).

My bed. Good thing I don't mind sleeping on the floor. Also, my desk, but it was way too messy for me to take a picture of.

The view from the window you see in the last picture. Not much to look at from here :/

The view from outside my apartment. This picture doesn't actually do it justice. Those hills in the background are much more prominent than they appear, and they're coated in trees displaying full autumn colors. I want to hike in them.

That's about all I saw for my first few days here. Yesterday was my first day off, and I spent it walking around and taking pictures of my walk to work (due to me being dumb and buying a bike that was way too small for me then being too embarrassed to return it right away).

Park on the way that I drop my recycling stuff off at. It's the only "normal" park I've seen over here. This part is under construction, of course, but there's more.

Like this bridge, that runs across the middle of the park (the park is pretty freaking big; takes up about a city block).

Why is there a bridge, you ask? Because this city has water freaking everywhere. I'm serious. No matter what road you're on, there's water either under or near you. Guaranteed. Most areas have stairs leading down to little platforms like this one, but I've never seen anyone down there.

I'm pretty sure all the water comes from the same river (just split off and manually redirected multiple times). Coincidentally, a walk over the bridge that goes over that river on my way to work. The next few pictures (it's a big river with an island in the middle) is looking left while walking from my apartment.

Yes, somebody actually does live on the island. I envy them, but at the same time, it looks creepy as all hell. I couldn't get good pictures of them, but there's ramshackle, rusted metal sheds and huts all over with tall grass and overgrown bushes growing in and out of them. Very horror movieish.

That's the top of one right there. Pretty much just took this picture to maintain the steady "landscape" scene transitioning from rice fields back to river.

This side of the river is much wider, the start of actual cityish looking buildings is off to the right.

Finally, this. There's boats everywhere on this freaking river, but nobody seems to use them. They just sit there. I've passed over this bridge at least 20 times since Wednesday at various times of day (been walking a lot), and I've only seen a boat being used once. Seems weird to me.

And now the left heading from my branch school. It's a lot of the same, so feel free to ignore these. I don't really have much to say about them.

Almost done with the river shots, I swear. I found this while exploring a back road, and I honestly think it says  a lot about the river and the use (or lack thereof) of the boats. There's lots of areas like this with rundown and unused docks or boats. Gives me the feeling that the river used to be used a lot, and isn't now for whatever reason.

Just for reference, that's the bridge I took the earlier pictures from.

Last one. I'm serious this time. Remember when I said earlier that someone lived on that island? This is their house. They have to use a boat to get back and forth. How freaking cool is that? "Where do you live?" "Oh, nowhere special, JUST AN ISLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF A DAMN RIVER!" I assume they have a mailbox on the city side of a river... unless the mailman gets an awesome mailboat to take out to their house.

Chips over here are freaking deceptive. If their were a food version of Transformers, Japanese chips would definitely be Decepticons. If the nutritional pyramid was the Norse pantheon, the section with Japanese chips would be Loki. After buying chips here, I'm pretty sure there was a translation error in The Bible. It wasn't a snake that deceived Eve, it was a fucking bag of Japanese chips. Take the chips in the green bag for example. What's your first guess? Sour cream and onion, right? Green back, chips with green flecks on them, everyone knows that's sour cream and onion. Nope. It's freaking nori and sea salt. They taste like fish chips. I ate them because I felt betrayed, and I eat when I feel betrayed. You win this round Deceptichips.

When I said earlier I bought a bike that was too small for me, I meant this is how close my damn knee came to the handlebars. I'm pretty sure I looked ridiculous.

Finally, I have decided that every weekend (Sunday and Monday for me), I will attempt to make new Japanese dishes. Hopefully this will allow me to, in time, stop spending so much money going out for lunch every day. I will take pictures of this process so that you may all use them to mock me later.

Day 1: Salmon fried rice and the most delicious invention ever, peach, grape, and banana juice (no, I didn't make the juice, but I wanted to put something that actually tasted good in this picture).

The rice was a total and abject failure. I overcooked the salmon, forgot to buy any freaking vegetables and failed to realize this fact until i was already cooking everything, put the rice in late which caused a cold fish/hot rice combo of grossness, and pretty much messed up everything that could be messed up. Yeah.

Score to date: Thomas - 0 Vengeful food gods - 1

What a sad way to end my first day off. Oh well, I'm still in Japan!