One Month In...

Thanks to the help of a few good friends (namely Tim and Mariko) the last two weeks has been a lot less lonely than the first two :) and Ive managed to slowly make some progress on setting up a life here.

Cellphone
Spent a whole day (when you include breaks for okonomiyaki and Haagen Dazs) with Mariko checking out the different deals of the big three companies (AU, Softbank and Docomo) only to find out they were pretty much the same with a Y2835 (NZ$50) charge to set up a contract, text plans ranging from Y1029 (NZ$17) to Y4410 (NZ$72) per month depending on how much you use, and a Y10,000 (NZ$165) penalty for cancelling the contract before the standard two years is up. I looked seriously at getting an iphone but because at the moment Im only going to be here for a year and would only get half of the 24 month "cash-back" deal it works out quite expensive and theres a one month wait. At the end of the day I ended up choosing the prettiest "free with contract" phone that I could which happens to be a purple AU model with a 12.2 mega pixel camera but because I dont have my alien registration card yet we had to set it up in Marikos name and will have to pay to switch the contract into my name in a couple of weeks - but at least now Im contactable :)











Playing house
Last Monday it was finally time for me to get some essential appliances off my predecessor. Four of us from work showed up planning for it to only take the morning to pick things up from his house, drop what I wanted at my place and take the rest to the dump but.... his place was such a mess (thats what you get for a boy living on his own in a small space I guess) that it took us the whole morning just to load up the truck up at his end! After a quick break for lunch and getting everything to my place we had to spend the whole afternoon scrubbing out everything because we couldnt have put it into my clean new apartment in the state it was in. So it was a pretty physical Monday at work but awesome to finally have a fridge and a washing machine - especially in the height of summer - around 35 degrees most days! Once Ive got the few finishing touches in Ill take some photos of my place to show you all.

Enjoying Osaka
Even though Im the only JET in Sakai Im pretty lucky that Im only about a 15minute semi-express train ride away from Namba (the heart of Osaka and where Tim lives) so can see myself heading up there at least one day most weekends. Caught Tims first DJ Gig at Suite on Sat the14th, went to an Osaka AJET Welcome evening at the Hard Rock Cafe on Wed the 18th and was up there again on the Sun the 22nd to watch the Phoenix beat the Central Coast Mariners FC 2-0.

Getting out and about
With Mikunigaoka being both on the JR and Nankai Koya lines its pretty handy (although I have to go north a little bit to change on to the other Nankai Line) to get around the area. Seeing as summer holidays are almost over (they finish at the end of August) most of the outdoor summer pools also close then :( so to make the most of them Tim organised a day trip down to Misaki-koen to help us cool off from the intense summer heart. On the Southern (サザン) express train from Namba it only took 45 minutes to get there but we had a great day enjoying the shallow river ride and the 6 waterslides :)

 
Hunting for a gym
So once all the summer pools close it doesnt look like there are any public pools within walking / cycle distance of my house and even though Im doing Pilates every morning (thanks to Caroline and Alexey) with all the delicious food here its quite dangerous so suddenly stopping swimming, gym, boxing, handball etc means that I seriously need to get back into some exercise so have spent quite a few evenings after work hunting around for a gym with a pool but Im not having my luck so the hunt continues...

Enjoying Sakai
I guess the one good thing about hunting around looking for gyms is that Ive been able to get out and explore a bit of Sakai - having bought a bike of my predecessor helps quite a bit (although its not the most amazing bike in the world it still gets me from A to B faster than walking). Went for a big cycle around the waterfront trying to find some of the Wellington vibe but the closest I found was one statue and a bunch of industrial areas...

 

 

 

Work
There are three sections to the International Division - the ASEAN team, the International Relations team and the Foreign Affiliations Team so I help everyone (as well as anyone else in the whole of City Hall) with their translations and do a lot of "native english" checks. The last couple of weeks they have kept me pretty busy at my desk with translations for an upcoming ASEAN Festival, Booking forms for the newly opened International Plaza, Letters from the Mayor to recepients of a Peace Prize, the Ambassador of South Africa, and the Head of the Shanghai Expo Steering Committee and Letters of Demand from the Debt Collection Office as well as a FAQ on Privatisation of Daycare in Sakai - so quite a range of documents and sometimes they even get me to translate from English into Japanese so have been working on some short term exchange students (from Newlands and Wellington College) impressions of Japan from 2008 (maybe they were just saving up little things for me to do in case they were worried there wouldnt be enough work...ha!)

Another big part of my job is interpreting at events - even though Im sure Im not quite up to that level yet, its a bit of baptism by fire. Last week we had a group of exchange students from Russia come through and meet the Mayor so I had to interpret their teachers ideals that these kids will become the future leaders of Russia (at least thats what I think she was talking about, her accent was a little thick...) into Japanese for the mayor which was a little intimidating and Ive just come back from the 65th Indonesian Independence Day Diplomatic Reception at the Hotel Hyatt Regency in Osaka where I was helping the General Director of the International Division with any translation assistance he needed. It was quite a interesting evening with a group of speeches in Indonesian and Japanese, and then not being able to eat all the delicious foods on offer because I had to run around and be introduced to the Consul Generals from most of the ASEAN Countries - which was nice, but hoping my jobs becomes a bit more grass roots level as the months go on. Although Ive finally got business cards and am becoming good mates with the Mayor so at least things are heading in the right direction....