I'm still here!

It's been a while since I made a post, so I'll take a quick minute to update my current whereabouts.

Still in Japan, but I moved. I'm in Bentencho now, which is by Osaka bay. It's really gritty and industrial, cool with me. Not quite as convenient as my old place, and a lot farther from the nightlife, but it's a good location for me since I hang out in the gym all day anyway.

The trip home is about 90% in the bag. Picked the days, made my airline reservations, informed my employers, and alerted the media. All that's left to do is secure subs for my days off (these small schools don't have a big pool of substitute teachers to pick from) and pay for the damn ticket. It came out a lot cheaper than I had orignally complained, looks like only about $650. Of course, that's still a pretty penny, but I think I'll manage.

I have this optimism because I've been given a wealth of job offers recently. I'll be picking up two more days a week, bringing my weekly real-work total up to 3 days. It should be a breeze too - another kindergarten on Thursdays and the Kinki University job on Mondays. With those jobs, I'll be getting around $400 a week. Then I've got my classes at the gym, which I'm hoping to start advertising and bringing in the students. The payment from those classes varies widely, but it's good for grocery money.

And I'm super-psyched because I've almost learned to backflip. I practice every chance I get, hopefully I'll be full-on flipping when I come home. And my face is intact!

To the East

Of my apartment, that is.

One of the best things about the place I'm in now is the location. Besides being within walking distance of the best nightspots and shopping, there's really quite a lot of great scenery just outside my door. I sure will miss those walks through the neighborhood when I move.

The area is called Shitennoji. It's a somewhat ancient temple complex that has been fused with a zoo, shopping arcade, and a theme park (I told you they were everywhere). I say "somewhat ancient" because it was blown to bits in WWII and rebuilt, while the original structures would have been centuries old.

The temples themselves are the real treat. There's a great walk that connects them through back alleys and parks. It's best when the seasons change, lovely greenery. It takes the better part of a day to see them all, and unlike most of the hotspot temples, there are no entrance fees.

In my area are the memorial parks. Since the Japanese do Buddhist funerals, they cremate their dead, and their cemeteries have only headstones. It's strange to be in a graveyard with no dead people, totally not scary. No worrying about zombies popping out of the ground or grabbing at your ankles. For the Japanese, they're scared of ghosts. The tradition is to clean the headstone of one's ancestors and leave little gifts. Get lazy and their spirits come after you. One of my friends told me not to touch crumbling headstones because that person's family had obviously abandoned them, so the lonely ghost would chase me. So far, no hauntings.

The parks here are great. Not great as in fun, but great as they hold scores of bum houses. Japanese bums, like American bums, are usually wracked with alcoholism and mental disabilities. But for some reason these bums build really cool houses. We're talking walls, windows, doors, porches, electricty, water. It's like a real house, just made out of tarp, wood, and cardboard, and built in a park. They use a lot of car batteries too. I've even seen them have floors elevated on cinder blocks because the ground was uneven. Some of the places along the rivers have gardens where they grow their own vegetables. They still take their shoes off before they go inside too.