Back in Beppu

I'm back in Beppu now. I moved into my apartment, (which is another building from Michelle and Helen, the other teachers) and was quite pleased by the size and nice, high ceiling. Then I discovered that it has no internet! This was a crushing blow, to say the least. Fortunately, Helen dropped by a few minutes later and said that she'd be willing to trade apartments with me, because she doesn't use the internet at home very much. How nice is that?!

So we moved our stuff to our respective new places, which was easy because we hadn't started unpacking yet. My new place is the exact same floorplan as my old place, only mirror-imaged. This is fine, except that there are a couple places where it doesn't work. The table, for example, has a strut that I bang my knee on every time; last time, it was going the other way and wasn't a problem. And the fridge door opens the wrong way, so you have to reach into the corner and open it as you step back. Minor complaints, but irritating enough as daily occurrences.

We went to school yesterday and had a brief meeting with our university contact guy. The enrollment for our course is always low in the fall, but this term exceptionally so. It seems like we will have really small classes, like some classes under 10 students. Yay!

One of the big downsides that I'm a bit worried about is the national health insurance. There's some kind of new law that requires membership in the NHI plan (before, we were on a private plan from the company) and I might have to pay a lot of back taxes because I've been in Japan for so long. Hmmm. We'll see how it goes.

So anyway, I'm mostly unpacked and settled in. I still have to get a few boxes of stuff back from people who have been storing them for me, and I still have a big pile of unsorted stuff on my floor, but that will gradually get put away.

I went to practice last night, and delivered some of my gifts from Canada (maple syrup, icewine, dreamcatchers, cookies, etc.) and they went over really well, which was good. Now I'm glad I went to the trouble lugging them over here.

Right! Stay in touch, everybody!