happy birthday liv! I may have some remote connection to the present coming from dod. 🙂

hail!

well so far japan seems to be agreeing with me. disturbingly little english is spoken here so i will have to start learning pretty sharpish. going into resturants i have to point at the most edible looking picture and hope for the best. people are very friendly and helpfull. when i arrived i must have looked like some lost, simple minded sheep as a couple of people went out of there way just to help me. arriving at the station after very little sleep on the plane and a long train ride, i was peering bleary eyed at some incomprihensible map writen entirely in japanese when some business chap came over and asked if i needed help. ofcourse i did so he showed me how to get out in the right place. on the way were a few long staircases and the guy offered to carry my suitcase as i was clearly struggling. having been poisened by my india experiances i emediatly refused. but then realising that he was just trying to help we carried the bag together. we then parted with much bowing and thankyous. a rather nice introduction to japan.

food here is pretty nice, athough i havent been eating the good stuff yet. fast food and conveniance store sushi have been my staple diet so far being quick and cheap. the hostel i am staying in is really nice and fill with many of the right sort from various diverse countries. there is also a small bar attached to one of the hostels which i have visited a few times, and made quite a few friends already. the night life is pretty good with famous places like rippongi having hordes of night clubs lit up in blazing neon. the area that i am in is called asakusa, and has a pretty impressive temple and grounds in it. its a big tourist atraction so i wasnt that keen on it as it was very busy. i also went to the electronic district called akihabara, a massive place given over to gaming and computor shops, japanese animation and manga stores. pretty crazy place. filled with young people. there are also lots of cheap markets selling all kinds of tat, but i actually have no room in my bag for anything else. when i get an apartment then we shall see. on the front things are going a bit slow. im still trying to find somewhere suitable and cheap. ill start applying for jobs and give them the address of the hostel for now.

just picked up some rather nice post cards, so expect one in the mail in aprox 6 months. speaking of which can some one mail me tans and grannies address.

right im off for now.

julio

I’ve made a couple of small tweaks to the sidebar of the blog.

Most notably, I’ve removed a couple of the news feeds and added a timezone section so we can see what time it is in Japan and vice versa.

No, no advice, other than to avoid that particular agency.

I just spoke to someone from 02 and they said you need to go to ‘connectivity’ and then ‘mobile network’ and then ‘search mode’ and then ‘manual’ (I think it was in that order but I may have got it jumbled) and then you select

DOCMO

as the network. This is the important bit. She said there should be twenty or so options.

Any problems, she said phone free on +447802410202 from your handset.

I tried to explain that if you had problems you wouldn’t be able to use your handset to phone …-

hail! phone still not working. don’t suppose you can call them dod and be a bit shirty as i told them i was going to japan when i accepted that contract and by all accounts on the website it should be working.

did al condescend to impart any useful tips? 🙂

will blog soon

julio

I mentioned to a colleague of mine whose writing project ‘team’ I am on, and who you have spoken to on the phone a number of times, that you were in Japan, which he, of course, knows well, and he seemed surprised you hadn’t asked his advice. He also reminded me of that language teaching agency that went bust, asking if you had heard of it.

Here in France, it’s windy; but still sunny enough to be outside.