i just thought i would write a quick note to let you know that it is all going really well over here. as you would expect, Tokyo is huge, amazing, overwhelming, exciting and beautiful. i also don't know how to find caps locks on this computer. or any punctuation keys.
my apartment is great, it is like a little dolls house and i sleep on a kind of bunk, the stairs up to my bunk open up to be storage areas and my toilet has a tap which sits at the top of the cistern and you can wash your hands as the tap refills it. ingenious! i also do not have a drier and that is because my entire bathroom turns into a drier when needs be. i simply hang all my washing on the shower rack thingy, close the doors and press a series of buttons and the vent at the top of the bathroom starts blowing out hot air and dries the clothes in about an hour. rather cool.
my neighbourhood is soooooo gorgeous! it is very residential with lots of beautiful houses all of which have the most amazing, well cared for and deeply loved gardens. lovely old Japanese folk are out at all hours of the day pruning their large bonsai, feeding the fish in their little outdoor ponds, weeding and so on. one house near mine is completely hand painted in Disney characters. there are huge huge crows all around the neighbourhood, they fly low along the streets and are rather foreboding. but, i have to say they are magnificent.
everyday at 5.30pm in my neighbourhood there is a `work has finished!!` bell. it is piped out over the community on loud speakers and its like the kind of tune you'd hear in one of those ballerina jewellery boxes!! it is very cute!! and all it means is, lets relax now. so funny.
we had a huge orientation day with all the teachers who are here as part of our program from all the different campuses westgate works for. it was a looooong day and the president gave a speech - he is the ultimate cliche of what you'd imagine a Japanese business man to be like! apparently he was informed that he had to tone down his welcome speeches as his last three speeches included a racist rant against Chinese, an opening line of `did you know i am extremely rich? well i am and i will tell you why!` and another where he said that it was good that he wasn't an actual teacher as he wouldn't be able to stop himself sexually harassing the female staff. his speech was one of the funniest things i have ever seen, and he was intentionally funny, but also unwittingly funny as i don't think he realises how much of a caricature he really is. i had that terrible repressed hysterical laughter thing in a huge silent room full of people. Ive had that quite a bit here in japan .... i think its the jet lag and the late nights but also just the weird funny small things all around.
there is soooooooo much to say and its only been about three days. i cant really fit it all in. i went to a central Tokyo house party last night where within the first five minutes a woman pulled her skirt up to reveal her bum to me in the bathroom to show me her tattoo .... she then went on to tell other people at the party that we were a lesbian couple. that makes it sound like a rather extreme party, it wasn't, it was quite lovely and sedate and i met some really cool Japanese girls and a real estate agent from San Fransisco who just sooooooo looked like a real estate agent from San Fransisco that i told him so about four times. he seemed rather chuffed.
anywaaaayyyyyyyyy - i love all you guys. Qantas smashed my computer on the way over so i have pretty much no means of communication unless i come to a PC room which is strangely harder than it sounds in such a technologically advanced city. so its hard to contact everyone at the moment.
feel free to email me because i am missing everyone to be honest and its weird not having any friends or family to hug ..... makes me realise how much physical contact is necessary!
all my love
magnolia
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