ALIVE AND WELL IN FUJIMI-SHI

Hi guys!! I'm borrowing my new roommate Victoria's laptop (she told me I could use it if I wanted to) until I get my own laptop connected to the internet. I wanted to let all of you know how I'm doing in Japan. This is only my second day here, but the first full one.

Fujimi is outside of Tokyo, but it's still a good 2hrs by bus, and then about 5 mins by train, and then a 3 min walk to the apartment from the station.

Victoria took me to the city office in order to register as being here, but it also gives me a paper saying that I've done it so that I can get a bank account and a cell phone, which is waaaay cheaper than a land line, or so I'm told.

I hit the grocery store today and bought one of those noodles in a bowl things, that had little packets of meat in it and mushrooms. It was really good, and I bought this thing that looked like a big bun that was slit crossways at the top and had what looked like eggs in it and had been baked. It tasted like eggs, mayo and bacon in it. I was seriously hungry by the time I got back to the apartment, so I ate that, the noodles and a little thing of garlic bread about the size of a big sausage bun and a small piece of some kind of sponge cake that tastes kind of bland, except for the slight molasses taste, that is. It's light as a feather, though! I also bought something that looks like some kind of doughnut, but I've not eaten that yet.

I'm trying to eat fairly cheap until I get my first paycheque and figure out what is going out and what's coming in, but the grocery store is a fun place to look around!!! Not for the squimish, though, since if there's a few packages of octopus in the freash fish section, you can really tell that it's octopus!!!! They have packages of the little baby ones and they look pretty whole to me. The bigger ones have the suckers still attached. There are also packets of roe bags (which look like really small, red sausages), fish of every description and the reddest salmon I've ever seen! I even saw these things that had been battered and fried, and I thought they were really, really big shrimp, until I saw the fish tail sticking out

The plane ride kind of stank, since we lost 3hrs going to Vancouver, then gained 10 or 12 on the way to Narita. The part that I hate is that the Air Canada planes don't have an air vent at the seats to get cold air, so I ended up sitting there sweating for 10 hours or so. By the time I got here, I was in dire need of a shower!! I did sleep really well, though, on two futon mattress on the floor. They're very comfortable, and I had a fan in my room as well, which really helps.

One thing I did not expect was that it's so humid here! The air's quite damp and it's really humid and I'm told that in the summer it's way worse!!! Good thing that every room has an air conditioner and a fan. The night air is much cooler, though and when all three bedroom windows are open there's a fantastic breeze that goes through the whole place. That's what I'm doing now, sitting here, enjoying the cool breeze, which is actually getting a bit chilly now.

There are also lots of pine trees, rice fields right near the airport, and azelas everywhere, even trimmed into headges. There are also some types of palm trees, so I'm guessing they either die back in winter or else it really doesn't get that cold here. It may be the latter, since both Victoria and Carolyn told me that, being Canadian and therefore used to the snow, I'm likely to be walking around saying "What are you talking about? It's not cold!" LOL!

TV's kind of sad, since we don't have cable and there's probably only 7 or 8 channels. I haven't seen any sumo on the TV yet.

As for anime, I've seen two so far, one's called NANA and the other one, as near as I can remember, is called Zengapen, or Zangpen or something. There's a game coming out based on it, that much I got from one of the commercials, and it looks a little bi