teasmartgarden.com

The House

Lo and behold, I am not getting an apartment, but a house! And the rent…is about 240 US dollars (for all my Canadian friends, I am being specific)! Isn’t that just lovely? It’s subsidized by the Board of Education, so it doesn’t actually mean that it’s only worth $240. I’ll post pics of the place when I get them. I’m just glad there’ll be a step to place a tanuki statue. For some reason, I suddenly decided that I needed one. If you were ever wondering what a tanuki is, it’s not a raccoon, it’s not a dog…it’s a raccoon dog! And if you were wondering what their most memorable trait is, all I can say is that they fight with them in Pompoko (a Studio Ghibli movie), and it’s one of the ahh… more well-endowed traits on the statue.

Omurice and Combini

This is a silly reason to post, and yet, here I am.

I made my very first オムライス *omurice* today. It was とてもおいしい！It can still be better, and that’s exciting :)

On the topic of food- when I was in Japan, I was in love with their combinis *convenience stores*, and all the food they offered. Since my mother and I were not yet masters of the bento, we would pick up soba, onigiri (mom was a fan of the wasabi tsuna-mayo *tuna mayo* filling), and various other tasty meals. When it came to the drinks, there were a billion types of tea, and various other types, such as Mitsuya Cider, Qoo, Gokuri, Melon soda, and a few Western staples, such as Coke and Pepsi.

Two of the main Japanese brands are Asahi and Suntory. People used to seeing these names only as alcoholic beverages may think that everything else they make is alcoholic. This is far from the case in Japan. This kanji *酒* means alcohol. If you’re not good with kanji, just remember that it looks like a bottle.

It was very hard to find anything that was an actual fruit drink. Sure, they had Qoo, but they can’t trick me. If there’s any fruit in Qoo, they made sure to hide the fact. I drank Gokuri because (at least the kind available to me) was a vegetable/ fruit drink. I also drank a lot of green tea. Sadly, the reason why was not because I liked it…not at first, anyways. They have this lovely strategy to get me to buy their drinks- one that affects me deeply. What they do is put a little plastic package around the top of the bottle. As soon as I see that, I immediately take a closer look, for what’s inside is dear to my heart. A toy! Yay, I love toys! Especially ones that can be attached to my keitai *cell phone* or keyring!

Seriously though. I even suffered through mugi-cha *barley tea* for some cute tea cat keitai charms!

On the flip side, I now really like green tea.

JET Friends in Wichita

I have finally met with two of my fellow 2006 JET participants (Hi Sarah and Andrea!). We all had a good time hanging out at Wichita’s Riverfest on Thursday and Friday. Unfortunately, they’re going to Northern Japan-a biit far away from Fukuoka.

I am still working on the US Residency tax form (aka 8802, aka a pain in the ass) that ALTs must fill out in order to skip out on having to pay Japanese income tax. I wasn’t required to file taxes because, well, I was a poor college student (now I’m just poor). Because of this, I had to send for a copy of my W2 from my place of employment during the summer of ’05. Hopefully this is all I’ll need, though there’s something else on there about needing parent tax info (I’ll be calling them about this one…I’m too old to be a dependent).
Alas, if you read this and it all seems blatantly obvious to you what I *should* have done, just be happy that someone was actually able to be this blissfully ignorant of tax necessities for a quarter of a century before she had to be brought down to the realities of the IRS (if that doesn’t give away my age, I’m not sure what else will).

Speaking of age, my birthday is in a month. Yay for me! I’ll be a quarter of a century + one!

Right, and I’m also having fun with the medication release form. Good times.

Hopefully next post will have better news than “I’ve got all this crap to do”.

And a word on podcasts. I might try this, if nothing more than to humor myself and expand on the features of this site. I’d prefer to vodcast, but that would involve a camcorder, and I’m still working up to that.

More Information Than You Care To Know

Alright.

Well, I’ve figured out the mystery of Yoshii City.

It’s actually a town that joined with another to form Ukiha City (うきは市）。 The city is located in in the Fukuoka Prefecture in Kyushu.
I have even found my school online (everyone has a site in Japan)
Both sites are in Japanese (ごめん to those who can’t read it).

Links are great. Here’s one to Fukuoka (prefecture, not the city). It’s in English, and you’ll find my city under onsen *hotspring* locations (mine should be the top right onsen on the page).

Ukiha is known for its fruit, wine, clean water, and onsens (like everywhere). Apparently Japan’s #1 carbonated onsen is located there. I must admit, I’m looking forward to seeing how sitting in pop (“soda” for my Northern friends) must feel like.

I just realized that I spelled the name of my town totally wrong in the database in the Yahoo group for JET participants…how embarrassing…

I’m meeting with some fellow 2006 JET’ers in an hour. Can’t wait.

I’ve Been Placed

Finally.

I have found out that I’ll be placed in Yoshii City, at Yoshii Mid High School!

Now, what would make this even more interesting…knowing which Yoshii City I’m going to…I found three.

With a little more research, some deduction (and perhaps another e-mail from my predecessor), I may soon figure out the mystery of “Random Placement Town Named Yoshii”.

Checklist For the Site

I have a few things to work on for my site:

1) I remember seeing a plug-in that changes the banner image randomly. I might try fussing with that for a little bit, and hope that my sudden luck with plug-ins will continue.

*later edit* plug-ins now hate me, and I’m suddenly fine with just the one image for now. screw plug-ins, and screw ease of use! Ok, I’m going to go cry now. :cry:

2) I’m not really sure how to go about this, but I want some cute adorable emoticons in order to put a little joy in my postings. Perhaps this, too, is a plug-in.

3) There need to be some links on here. I have some in mind, but for some reason, a little voice is saying to get permission first. The main thing holding me back on that is how I should attach my own link to the e-mail so they know what kind of site mine is. That would be nothing right now, in case you were wondering.

*later edit* For now, I’m not going to worry about the details. I’m putting links up.

4) There needs to be something on the “about” section. On second thought, perhaps I’ll just copy and paste what I said for the first blog entry. That kind of covers all I want to say right now.

5) I kept telling myself that I’d eventually get around to giving my own account of the details surrounding things such as the JET interview. I haven’t. Therefore, that should be done soon (putting it off again). I’ll add a new category for “JET and Japan Info”.

6)I need a good sub-header.

7)The scheme needs to be changed a bit. A different background color, definately. Different navi buttons…perhaps.

*later edit* Or just change the theme entirely! I really like the new widgets sidebar function through wordpress too. Makes my plugin fighting days nearly non-existant. Lovely!

8) I need to do something to make sure I remember to post these blogs written away from the internet. Perhaps a background that says “post your blog!” will work…you think?

I believe that’s enough stuff for now. I’m sure I maaay get around to about half of these, if even that.

Welcome, and a Little About Me

Welcome to teasmartgarden.com, the site dedicated to dealing with the infamous question of, “so, how is Japan?”.

My name is Charity, and I have been selected as an ALT through the JET Programme, beginning in August of ’06. If you’re wondering about the address, it is simply the english translation of my name written in kanji. 茶利庭

I thought it was fitting.

Anyways, please check back, as this site will hit its full glory closer to the departure date in late July.
Thanks for stopping by!