Japan- an Introduction

Finally- I feel like I can sit down and write my thoughts. I've been here now for over two weeks and I think I may be falling in love. Most of the time I've been has been working- and that's not necessarily a bad thing! I am thoroughly enjoying my new job teaching English here. The children are so interesting, smart and willing to learn. We have a lot of fun playing game and learning! My classes range from playtime- where I go and just hang out with 3/4 year olds for a morning- right up to teaching 10/11 year olds who think they know everything! We also do a program called curriculum where we from classroom to classroom of a particular school and teach a class stuff for only 20 minutes!! It's very fast, fun and extremely energentic! I'm usually pooped by the end!! Right now there is a bit of down time compared to what we'll have in a few weeks. All the schools are slowly getting back from holidays and because we're working mostly in kindergartens- they take their time! (I don't mind!) Here are two picture of my classes!

As far as traveling goes- I haven't gotten too far just yet! I have mainly been exploring Gifu (which apparently is considered the countryside despite the 500,000 people living here!) and Nagoya. Nagoya is the closest big city to Gifu and it takes about 45 minutes on the train to get there. I went to Nagoya last Saturday and it was really cool after I found out where I was going! I tried to take the subway to a big hotspot called the TV Tower and it just didn't work out. I tried to use my Survival Japanese book to ask for help, but nothing worked!!! I was staring at the map, almost in tears, when a lovely woman came up and asked if I needed help in perfect English. THANK GOD!! So I got to where I was going. Once at the TV Tower, I walked around and went on a ferris wheel- which are so prevailent here. It was on a building so it went really high up. After that I basically explored by walking around the city!!