Report from Greater Tokyo

Well, here I sit, in a bar with Internet access, with no job, no key, no home. But lots of money (photos later). I wanted to head onwards to Saitama-ken, specifically Kawagoe-shi. But it seems that all the hotels in town are booked. no doubt it is for the teachers' conference that one of the teachers at my old school (feels weird to say that so soon...) is going to. To make it doubly ironic, he wants to meet up in Kawagoe, but I think that will be impossible because his conference will likely prevent me from being in Kawagoe-shi.

Lest there be any confusion, I have just left Kawagoe-cho. I am about to go to Kawagoe-shi. there is no connection between the two, beyond the obvious rail links and being in the same country. I think they ran out of names when naming their towns and cities. I have also located two Hamamatsu's, and I am sure there is more than one Asahi here. What I want to know though, is was Toyota City (near Nagoya) named for the car company, or was it the other way round?

Well, for the second week running now, I have had over 1000 hits a week on my site. Let's hope this trend continues. This week, the biggest visitor to my site seems to be Edinburgh university looking at my dissertation from my tourism course. I hope they don't plagiarize me. because there really isn't anything worth plagiarizing there.

This morning I will teach my last ever lesson in Kawagoe.

Just when I thought things were sorted for next month, my prospective employer throws me a curve. In Japan as a foreigner, you are essentially reliant on your employer (or BYJW, but that doesn't apply in my case) to contact landlords on your behalf. Unfortunately, that particular employer is only willing to contact one Leo Palace, and their default contract with that housing shark company is for a shoebox. This is what's known as a deal-breaker.

The Outdoor Engine of mine is now available in Japanese! Whatever next? Of course, the translation probably could do with some polishing, but it generally works. I had to rework some of the sentence structure templates, which should be no surprise to anyone as the sentence structure of Japanese is different.

Another update to my outdoor graphics engine. Not only is it now in colour, but I also adjusted the camera so it doesn't appear as if you are flying (so high). And I added text labels so you now get to know where you are and what you are looking at. Check it out here.

Woohoo! I have a job offer! I haven't yet accepted, as I am waiting to hear the replies from some other interviews. This offer is in Saitama-ken, and is about an hour due north from Tokyo by train.

Update: I have accepted this job.

Today at the school lunch there was a special menu to celebrate the coming graduation ceremony for the final year. I'm not sure which was weirder, that primary schools in Japan have graduation ceremonies, or that the school's broadcasting system had been temporarily linked to a karaoke system for the aforementioned final year kids.

Now if only they could sing. Even with the aid of a mike, they were painfully quiet. These kids have no voice projection at all sometimes. Other times, they'll level a house with their voice.

I suppose one advantage of dressing yakuza style (think two-tone) is that it gets you into the odd place or two that my gaijin face would otherwise bar me from. Such was the case last night, as a spare space was miraculously found in the dormitory style hotel I stayed at last night.

So I'm at an Internet cafe somewhere in Shinjuku, Tokyo. I just got back from a job interview in the middle of nowhere. It was a one and a half hour train journey from Tokyo, followed by a 30 minute car journey. The company itself won't pay during the school summer holiday, and is paying below the going rate for teachers in any case. Fortunately the other company I interviewed with today is more reasonable.

Also in the news today... on the train, there was me and about 50 Japanese people. One of the Japanese people was physically disabled (perhaps a polio survivor), and smelt badly of beer, cigarettes, and urine. He was sitting at one end of the carriage. I was sitting at the other end of the carriage. For some reason, all the other 50 Japanese people were crowded around the aforementioned down and out guy. They must have been really scared of the foreigner today, because my end of the train was empty.