Pre-jump Jitters

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  Tokyo, Kanto, Japan
Saturday, December 6, 2008

If anyone has any prayer requests, they better get them out of the way now 'cause God is going to be a bit preoccupied with me.  I have no clue how the hell I managed to get hired on with Gaba....its a miracle.  Today was My first day of training and it went relatively well except for the fact that I felt VERY out of place.  All of my fellow trainees where either studying for their PHDs and know more than three languages or were Japanese.  So there I was, sitting in a class wearing my worn out, second hand, suit jacket complete with obviously miss matched black dress pants surrounded by well dressed, well traveled scholars.  Two of them are from Australia and have been to Japan many times, one of them was Japanese and fluent in English and the last one was a girl from France studying her third language along with whatever classes on top of that!  But although I felt discouraged I flashed a little confidence to the others and tried not to make direct contact with the teacher for too long, so he would have less of a chance to unintensionally embarass me by asking a grammer question I didn't know.

The day went by relatively quick, and it was nice to power up my brain again, clean out some of them cob webs.  The teacher was really nice, his name is Nathaniel and he is from Ireland.  Nat has been living in Japan for about 5 years and has a Japanese wife here.  I am excited and VERY nervous to start working, but I am sure everything will work out fine.  I will make lots of mistakes and use them as stepping stones to improve my character and my resume.  Even though I know I am going to make lots and LOTS of mistakes a few words to the big guy upstairs from you guys wouldn't hurt.  Thank you :)

As for everything else, things are going really well.  I am sad that Becky had to move back to the UK since Jackie, Her and I were getting along so well.  The night before Becky headed out, we all decided to go bust a move at the local Karaoke bar, and was it ever weird.  When any unexperienced foreigner thinks of Karaoke, I'm sure they get an image in their head of a stinky little bar somewhere, stumbling full of intoxicated patrons.  The air is hot and humid with alcohol breath and there is a loud flat or sharp in the air from the next "super diva" showing their stuff by singing a bad song worse.  Here in Japan Karaoke is a whole different story! you start by checking in with the tired gentleman at the front desk.  He asks you how many people are with you party and how long you will be.  Then he escorts you and your companions to a private room complete with its own TV and Karaoke machine.  Using the phone on the wall you can call the desk to order food and drinks until you time is up.

That night we all sang our faces off until everything sounded great! We were up till about 3:30 in the AM and hit the sack for about three hours so we could see Becky off.  I helped her all the way to Shinjuku station which was about a half an hour away.  It was a good thing too, because I REALLY don't think she could have handled both of her suitcases and her packsack by herself.  Im pretty sure I was still drunk when I saw her to the platform but I was sobre enough to wish her a safe trip.  After I got home I think slept till about 4:30 in the afternoon. 

My Tamagochi is pissed off at me, I left it at home and didn't clean up its "doo doo".  I wonder how you can teach it to clean up its own mess! anyway, I dont have any pictures of today, but I think Jackie has pictures of Karaoke, that I will add.  If they are on this page, it means YES and if they are not....it means NO.  But after I am done training and stuff, I will start taking more pictures, I think I am going to take a video recording of the Yamanote line (Public transit train) during rush hour....YAY!

Peace for now!
Miss you all....even those I do not know :)

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