Moved

Hi! I've moved, and now I'm living in Kashiwa. Is it stupid to publish my address on here? Probably, but here goes:

202 Leopalace TSD Minami Kashiwa,
41-1 Imayakami-cho, Kashiwa
Chiba 277-0074 Japan

It was really sad to say goodbye to my friends in Beppu, but I hope that I'll be back there soon.

In the meantime, it is good/weird to be back in Kashiwa, where I lived 3 years ago. Good because I am getting to revisit some places I used to know, but a little bit weird because I never expected to live here again!

My apartment is okay, but one of the older Leopalaces. I'm pretty familiar with all the various Leopalace configurations, and I must say they are getting more liveable as they go along. In other words, newer is better! Unfortunately, being in an older apartment means that I am living in a large "box" with almost no shelf space or furniture. This means that I'm going to have to waste some money on buying furniture, which I am going to have to either throw out, or pack up and move in a couple months (depending on how much I want to keep it, how expensive it was, and how hard it is to move). I'm currently looking for a desk and chair of the "easy to assemble/dissemble Ikea variety". I'm also looking for a bookshelf, I think. I was lucky to find some super-cheap ones from the home store when I was in Beppu before.

I also have to go through the frustrating experience of re-starting iaido and jodo training with teachers who teach the same "basic" thing but in a slightly different way. This happens every time I move and start with a diffrerent teacher. It's not that what they are teaching is really that different, just that everyone has a particular way of teaching, and set of things they think are important. The outcome, however, is that they will almost certainly look at me and say, "You're doing [this] wrong" whereas my old teacher wouldn't have much of a problem with it.

I start work tomorrow (today, Monday, was a national holiday) so I'm looking forward to that. One of the nice things about teaching is the human interraction, but one of the real downsides is that everything is a performance. It doesn't matter whether you're feeling happy, healthy and motivated, or not - you still have to get up and teach a class full of people. But working in the office, at least, is pretty low pressure. You just go in, get your instructions, and plug away at it. Kind of boring, compared to teaching, but a nice break, at least for a couple months. By April, I'm sure I'll be looking forward to getting back in the classroom!

Anyway, now you have my new address, so I will be expecting the presents to start rolling in soon. Or how about e-mails, at least?