Today was a wild day. Let’s say the lot was unexpected -well, mostly. Another day tinkering around town, mulling with preparations and readying for departure. Getting ready for Japan.
And then during a simple lunch the news came, ‘Check your email !!’ Well, it was those simple words that spurred me to hurry home and plunk down in front of my PC only to find the simple words waiting to tell me where I was going in Japan.
North. North towards Hokkaido to a small town on the uppermost left bit of Japan’s northernmost main hulking island. Living on the coast -never thought it would sound so sweet !! Since learning about where I’ll be living I have madly been linking, looking, siting, and searching websites just trying to get a good-and-better picture about what is going on in northern Japan.
Yeah, what is life like there ?
This might be a good point to interject. .
It is here now at this time I ought to clarify what exactly I am doing. I have been selected after a long application process (very sweet it was! I’m not lying, I really enjoyed it !) to be contracted to teach overseas in Japan. I am now endorsed as an ALT [Assistant Language Teacher] within the JET Programme. My date of departure just weeks away. My role will be assisting in classrooms in Japan to facilitate English learning with students of a variety of ages ! Games, conversation, marking, reading and such. .
As well within this programme I am duly encouraged to go and to get involved in the community, to interact with people and to really dig in to what Hokkaido and well, Japan has to offer ! And my goodness, what a relief it will be to be back in Japan ! Really ! It’s rather a fun place ! I have enjoyed travelling there in the past and am looking forward to living there for a year next month after !Back on track then -and I suppose I ought to keep these posts to a readable length !
Found out where I’m living, right !
So from here on out I am preparing for pre-departure seminars coming up next week, slews and sloughs of information -is it wrong of me to want all that info?
And well, my goodness it has been a long time coming, going back to Japan. But teaching, being wound-up and welled-up in a foreign culture. . wow. I cannot wait. Here now in this moment I can breathe in a deep breath, lungs full of hope, wait, and wonder. I am ready to continue moving towards this new story -my story, in Japan.
The Traveller's Typewriter 