Well here we are, another JET blog. Yeah I`d like to say I started this blog as a way to share thoughtful insights into Japan`s culture but really I`m just incredibly lazy. Its tough writing a whole bunch of separate emails, so if I write just one blog post I don`t have to repeat myself so often. You know I`m such a fantastic friend. Yeap.

So Japan. Yeah. Cool place and shit. So let`s start with where I live. Hokkaido! It`s considered the inaka (rural). Apparently the mainlanders ie the people who live on Honshu think we be all uncultured up these ways, since we are less `hard out`about fashion and being all proper-like. Hokkaido (the island) is pretty huge but the population is teeny-tiny, sitting at a mere 5 million. Consider that the population of Japan is 128 million, you can see Hokkaido ain`t exactly teeming with people.Hokkaido is suffering from a huge decrease in population, especially in the eastern parts. My man-friend (Tim) who lives out east went to a primary school and wandered around for half and hour without seeing a single child, just empty classrooms and perhaps slight fear that he was about to enter into a horror film scenario.

If you take a train anywhere you are bound to see these empty peices of land that look like they were once farms but now have a whole bunch of weeds and other unhelpful wildlife growing in them. They were once farms, but apparently many farmers in Hokkaido could not compete with the cheap fruit and veg coming from the Phillipines (I think there a few more reasons but I can`t remember) so they stopped farming. This made me very sad, as most NZers, even if they live in cities have a connection to the land in some way or another.

So the city that I live in is the Palmerston North of Japan, Tomakomai! It`s got a Mall! It`s crazy flat! So let me begin with the bike. It`s a requirement to get anywhere in Tomakomai (or T-Mai if you prefer). Yeap, I can`t ride a bike so my life in Tomakomai began in a very frustrating manner.

So the first attempt was late at night outside my apartment. I managed to get myself onto the bike in a highly unco-ordinated manner. Then I gave peddling a wee go, oh no bike went sideways. After about 20 minutes I could ride a couple of metres without falling off. After my victorious first attempt I went back in side eager to try again the next day. Over the next few weeks my bike-riding skills improved ten times over, however that first week was all about the bike shame. I couldn`t cross the road on my bike, I could barely ride in a straight line. Many times I had nearly ridden straight into some unsuspecting elderly woman with screams of

SUMIIIMAAASSEEENNNN!!!!!

Which is sorry/excuse me in Japanese. I love how even now when I feel totally confident on a bike, something will happen that reminds me I have only being doing this for a month. I went to one of my JTE`s (Japanese teacher of english) houses for the first time, her husband met me on the corner. He was riding this super-awesome road bike, neatly flicked the bike standy thing with one foot (I had been pulling mine up by hand, the question of why people looked at me funny when I did that was answered) and peddled off into the distance with ease. I got nerves and followed him, trying not to run people over, then as we crossed the road I fell off my bike. I was trying to be all `Its no big deal, I`m all tough and shit` but inside I was like NEVER AGAIN WILL I RIDE MY BIKE IN PUBLIC. Bike shame, it gets me all the time.

My life consists of biking places, students and going to the supermarket waaaay to often. Students. They are an every-changing beast of really awesome or moving to the other end of the spectrum kinda creepy. You feel like you are famous or something when you go to school, the kids go mental when the meet you (or don`t say anything at all). When I gave my self introduction in Japanese at the school assembly, I said two words in Japanese and 800 students lost the plot, they were screaming and yelling. When I finished about 80 girls all screamed `KAWAIIIIIII` in unison, kawaii means cute by the way. I dislike being called cute, but hey it`s better then the kids ignoring you completely.

I do have a soft-spot for some of the boys, they try and act too cool, or the loudest most obnoxious creatures ever to exist EVER. With a bit of teasing and being a slight hard-ass they become sheepish a quieten down. I asked a boy what his favourite food was and he quickly replied `YOU are my favourite food`. His english was quite good so I refrained from beating him with my shoe, I just kept repeating `I am NOT a food` until he said what food he liked.

A comic from Life after the BOE which is the assumption that I had about all my schools (whoops!)

So a small, brief interlude into my life. I have been drawing like mad so when I get a scanner BAM this blog gonna be illustrated-erized!