A First Glimpse of Kadogawa

Hello dear friends and readers and lovely wonderful people! I'm sorry for the lack of updates but I still don't have wifi in my new home in Kadogawa, and updating a blog on my smartphone just feels sac religious! I mean, how can I sip my iced latte while writing posts if I have to use both hands for the keyboard?! Am I a caveman? 

I guess the answer is yes because here I am, writing a post from my iPhone in my tatami room. There's a first time for everything.

So much has happened in the past two weeks! I've moved into my home in Kadogawa town, an awesome little burg on Kyushu island! It's between two larger cities, Nobeoka and Hyuga, and I spend a lot of time going back and forth between them. 

Monday through Friday I ride my bicycle to work at the Kadogawa town hall, where I get paid to sit at my desk and make lesson plans, study Japanese, or just converse with all the other government employees. The actual classes I'll teach don't start until September, so for now I'm just spending my days preparing for school visits. I'm little nervous, but so excited!

I have a desk at the Board of Education, which is a wonderful spot because everyone loves to talk and laugh and chat with me about all sorts of things! Most people don't have a ton of English skills here, but everyone knows just enough to get their point across. We all are learning together and everyone is so easy going, the lack of Japanese skills on  my end doesn't seem to be too much of a problem at all.

The Kadogawa Town Hall - a good looking building!

We had a slow day at work so we all watched my supervisor's wife cooking on local television! It was awesome!

Regardless, I study Japanese everyday. I'm not sure when I'll have as much free time as I do at this point again, so I'm just trying to stuff as much knowledge into brain as possible. I've gotten to lesson eight in my workbook and I'm so close to finishing the whole thing! I can't wait to be get to the intermediate lessons. I need to be able to say "I do this" and other important verbs! 

Otherwise I've done nothing but sightsee and eat at cute cafés with my new friends! I've been drinking iced coffee in excess and eating lots of noodles. It seems like so far Japan really gets me. I think we have a good thing going here.

Here are a few photos from some of my adventures: 

My second night in town - my predecessor and some of his friends and I went to Fujikatsu, a tonkatsu restaurant! They were all so kind and we had an awesome time! We even took purikura pictures afterwards!

 

Then we had a typhoon! Here's the view from my apartment: 

Not too stormy at this point, but my friends from the town hall had to go set up evacuation rescue centers in the gymnasium at one of the middle schools I work for! Better to be safe than sorry!

That night, some of the current ALTs and I sang karaoke and went to a nice "welcome to Japan" dinner! I busted out some "Let it Go" from Frozen (which actually might be more popular here than in the states!).

So fun!

I also got a great cafe/sights of Hyuga tour from some of the more experienced JETs. There's so much to see here!

Scroll Cafe in Nobeoka had amazing ice coffee and delicious treats! I had a "summer tiramisu" which was like cream on coffee jelly.

Nap Cafe had scrumptious American style hamburgers and amazing iced coffee as well! 

Here were some of my favorite photos from their tour of the natural beauty around Nobeoka:

I'm almost done, but I have to show just a few more photos! My coworker Haruka has been showing me the best noodle places in town and they are incredible. I think udon is my favorite, but I haven't had a single dish I haven't enjoyed!

So far, I am very happy in this new town and I look forward to spending my time here. I've never met such friendly people and there's so much natural beauty! I can't wait to see more!

I'll be sure to update more regularly once I get actual wifi. In the meantime, I hope this barrage of photos will hold you over! Tomorrow I head to Miyazaki Orientation for our prefecture wide convention on being a JET. I'll be sure to take plenty of photos and keep you in the loop!

またね (See you later)!