No, we’re not lost!  We arrived in Japan safe and sound and are loving it so far.  We don’t have internet at home yet though so I probably won’t be able to post very often until we do.  I’ve found a good “internet cafe” – 3 computers at the back of a bookstore/electronics shop but it isn’t very close to where we’re living.  It’s near one of the schools we’ll be teaching at though, so whenever I’m in this area I’ll stop in and let you know how we’re doing.  Once we get internet at home, watch out!  I have so much to share.  I wrote 13 pages in my journal yesterday, my first day off!

There are many challenges to learning to live in such a different environment but we’re enjoying the experience immensely.  Of course, there’s the job – learning what’s expected of us.  It isn’t rocket science though and I’m sure we’ll soon be quite comfortable with that part of life.  Learning the train system and getting from place to place can be quite a challenge.  I did manage to get on a train going in the wrong direction the other day but I realized it right away, got off at the next stop and got myself turned around!  MIL has 2 main schools and 8 satellite ones. We’ll be teaching at several of them so we’ll spend lots of time on the trains.  Grocery shopping is another major challenge.  How do you tell if the package contains salt or sugar if you can’t read the label?  So far, we haven’t made any major blunders though and we’ve started to experiment with a few unfamiliar foods.  Figuring out a workable meal schedule is also an interesting aspect of our new life.  We usually work afternoons and evenings so are quickly adjusting to eating supper late in the evening – often about 10:00 p.m.  Settling into the apartment has presented a few interesting challenges as well.  Things like how to use the washing machine when the instructions are in Japanese but I’ll go into that in more detail in a future post.