Still alive, still no internet!

Greetings all and once again, apologies for not keeping in touch but it's bloody difficult when you don't have your own internet (still!) and there's no internet cafe anywhere near me.

So what have I been up to since I last checked in? Quite a bit actually. It's Sakura season over here at the moment. That's Cherry-Blossom. There are cherry-blossom trees all over Japan and they bloom for about 1 or 2 weeks every April. The whole country is covered with them and the Japanese use it as an excuse to go a little it nuts. They're usually very business-like and withdrawn but totally let loose (relatively speaking) when the Sakura bloom.

I met a few English guys who're also teaching over here and they introduced me to Machiko, a completely bonkers Japanese woman who worked as a Catholic nun in England for 28 years. Anyway, she speaks really good English and organises stuff for all the local foreigners every now and again. She was having a dinner party at her house last Friday but when I got home that day from wherever I was I saw a note in my letter box saying it was cancelled, but that there was something else on instead and to bring food and warm clothes.
I was to meet her at the train station in half an hour so I legged it to the local supermarket not having any idea what kind of food to bring since I don't really know what the Japanese do at these occasions, and to be honest, I didn't have an iota of what kind of occasion I would be attending anyway! So just to be safe I loaded up on biscuits and chocolate to give out after whatever it was.

So I'm there at the station and Machiko cycles up and then leaves. Before she leaves she introduces me to her friend, Yoko, who introduces me to here husband. "This is my husband" she says, "Please call him Mr. T."
'Mr. T' was this small 50 year old Japanese guy with a big mustache and a jacket that had a paragraph of English on the back. Needless to say it was complete gibberish and mad absolutely no sense whatsoever.
So I'm left with Yoko and Mr. T, both of whom have only basic English and they tell me to get in their car. I'm thinking "what the hell, what else have I got to do?" so into the car I got. They drove up to this hill-top near the city where a load of Sakura trees were in bloom and some people were drinking and bar-b-q-ing. We waited there for about 45 minutes and absolutely nothing was happening. We were just sitting there not being able to say much to each-other and I'm still wondering what the hell is happening. Eventually a few car loads of people arrived, both foreign and Japanese, and we spent the rest of the evening eating and drinking on a Sakura-covered hilltop overlooking Kasaoka city and the bay. It was pretty freaking great!

So the next day I headed in to Okayama city since they have this traditional Japanese garden called Korokuen. It's regarded as one of the top 3 gardens in Japan and I really wanted to see it while the Sakura were in bloom. I have to say it was pretty sweet! The weather over here is pretty warm and sunny at the moment, although not overtly 'hot'. It was a glorious day to spend strolling about a traditional Japanese garden!
I've also been to several Japanese castles. The grounds of them are amazing, you could stroll around there for hours just going "wow, look at this", "wow, look at that!"
The castle in Okayama is pretty cool but there's another city called Fukuyama nearby and their castle kicks ass!
There's also a trip planned for next Saturday week to an onsen (natural hot spring bath) on the island of Shikoku so that's cool. May the prancing about naked commence!

I started school this week so up until now I've just been getting everything set up and settling in. The place is pretty cool. Last week I was brought about to all my schools (I have 12!!!) and introduced to all the principals etc. Horribly formal, stifled occasions but despite the language barrier they were all really nice.
I have a different school every day, although sometimes I'm at the same one for a few days in a row. 5 of them are out on islands and I have to get a ferry across to them. The islands are great, I've taken about 400 photos of just about everything since I got here but you'll have to wait till I get my freakin' internet for me to upload them.
I'm using one of the school computers at the moment which technically are only used for 'research' so I'm typing this on my laptop and copying it over quickly into Bebo via USB drive. The lengths I go to just to say herro!

I started school on Monday but didn't have any classes until today. So I was basically just sitting there for 2 days pretending to have something to do or reading a phrase book. They asked me to introduce Ireland to the students and tell them about where I'm from so I put together a slide-show of something like 70 photos of everything from aerial photos of Ireland to Celtic jewelry to cows to Guinness to hurling and presented it to them this morning. I had 3 classes and had to do the same thing for all of them. And I've another after lunch! Also, I imagine I'll have to do the same thing at all 11 of my other schools!
I got a picture of the Ogham alphabet off the net and taught them how to spell their name in Ogham, so that was cool! I taught 3 classes of Japanese kids Ogham today - and that was just before lunch!

I can't stress enough how much it sucks not having the internet. It's majorly frustrating on the communication and just-looking-stuff-up-for-the-hell-of-it fronts and also cause I'm several weeks behind in Lost and 24 and I haven't seen any of the new Doctor Who! Yahoo said it would be 2 or 3 weeks until they connected the broadband. It's now been 3 or 4 and I haven't heard anything.

So you're going to have to do without regular contact for the next while but fingers crossed I should have the net soon. I've been saying that for a while but it couldn't possibly be much longer... right?

In the meantime I've uploaded a few photos. Only 5 for now but I have literally hundreds coming soon!

Okay, I'm off. Talk to y'all soon I hope.

May FUNK blossom wherever you tread.