Happy New Year! (Akemashite Omedetou!).

Wow! Is it really over a month since I last wrote? Time flies I guess. I have done so much recently: returned to England for a two week vacation, left my job with GEOS, had a farewell party, found a new job a little unexpectedly on my return to Japan (working as an ALT in a junior high school starting on Monday), moved out of my apartment, moved into my Japanese teacher`s family`s house, took part in the Gotemba International Association`s International Festival, made some new friends, drunk more alcohol thank I would have liked, and been very cold as a result of the cold Gotemba weather. All in all a manic month if you think about it but as I said before I like to keep busy. As much as this is true, I think my recent hectic lifestyle is catching up with me as I am feeling pretty rough today as I write.

Well let me start with the International Festival which was held last Sunday at Gotemba Citizen`s Hall. Following on from my successful English cooking class in June, I decided to run a British booth at the festival selling some British foods and promoting British culture. Due to the numerous requests for fruit scones (one of the dishes I demonstrated how to make at the cooking school), I decided to run with it and the day before the festival I made about 130 scones - a variety of fruit, cheese and plain ones - and four loaves of sticky tea bread. Now, maybe they are not "typically" British but I can assure you they go down really well here. I didn`t make a return venture into the world of Yorkshire Pudding and the variations thereon due to the fact that eating it the day after would have meant for a cold and soggy experience. You kind of have to eat it as soon as it comes out of the oven right?

The festival went down really well - there were maybe 20 international booths selling native foods and promoting their individual cultures. Also, there were some traditional music and dance performances, together with games and other fun activities. I do not to want to criticise the event organisers too much (and they will know I am only joing if they read it), but it was interesting to note the layout of the booths. For example, the UK was sandwiched in between the French and Argentinian booths and the Canadian booth was set-up next to the American booth. While Canada and America may be next to each other on the map, I have good reason to beleive that their peoples don`t always see eye- to-eye - note the recent issue of a Canadian cow with BSE being discovered in the USA.

It was quite apt then that Erin and Mark, the guys who ran the American booth, decided to make "Meatball Sandwiches" using only be best quality US beef! And I also heard a comment relating back to the war betwen the two countries in 1841 (any corrections on the date welcome!) which was won by Canada as it happens. I don`t really want to comment on the UK situation, but there must have been something in that decision to place us between two out of three of our fiercest historical rivals, but then again, the past is the past and it bothers me none in the slightest - it`s just my sarcastic nature coming to the surface, although I will add that from all the food I sampled, and believe me there was lots of it and it was all good, the Argentinian dish (I forget the name - `empalada` or something like that) sneaked it for me, just ahead of the Philippine`s traditional soup. Here`s to next year!

So I wanted to tell you a bit about my next employment opportunity and current situation here in Japan as I am sure many of you are wondering what exactly I am doing. I left GEOS last Tuesday and handed everything over as best I could to the replacement teacher (who is from New Jersey, USA, and who must have felt completely overwhelmed as I did at the start and just about ready to punch me in the mouth at the end of the second day of handover - two days only - it makes me laugh to think you can properly fully prepare the next teacher considering the fact that the guy only arrived in Japan the day before - and plus the fact that there are also regular classes to teach. On a more happy note, I received so many nice cards and gifts from the students that it almost made me want to stay (only joking!) and having moaned about kids classes all year, towards the end they were no so bad and I actually found myself having some fun. Long may it continue!

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, I unexpectedly found a new job to teach at a junior high school as an Assistant Language Teacher (or ALT) in a place called Shimizu-cho - it`s a smaller town than Gotemba about 45 minutes drive away - however the job is for around ten weeks only, after which I will start teaching extra-curricular English conversation classes at a University in the Tokyo area. At present I don`t know which one but hopefully it will be a great experience for me. I am actually a little nervous about teaching at a junior high school as opposed to GEOS - bigger classes and less English ability - but on the other hand no selling pressure and student renewals to worry about, so all in all I expect it to be a very rewarding experience.

One small problem with the initial contact is that because I only found out about this on January 12th on my return to Japan, I have not been able to change my driving licence into a Japanese one in time to be able to take advantage of the use of a company car that was offered. This will make life much easier as I will have to regularly commute to Gotemba to the company head office (i.e. the company which provide the ALTs and who my contract is with). Maybe it was an oversight on my part not to have gone through this process and transferred my licence before Christmas (as my international licence actually expired on January 20th!), but the procedure for transfering a foreign driving licence to a Japanese one is every bit as complicated and as full of red-tape as I expected.

Let me explain. First of all, you need to have your native licence translated into Japanese but only at an official Japanese Automobile Federation (JAF) office. This means you either go in person and wait for it to be done or send it by recorded post - and it costs 3,000 yen. So as I had no time to visit the office located in a city about 30 minuites drive away, I decided to copy the licence and post it off. Thinking everthing was OK, I was happily waiting to receive it back when I heard from Yuko (a friend wand ex-coworker of mine who helped me so much to decipher the requirements of the process and to whom I am eternally grateful) that in order to be able to waive the requirement of taking an actual driving test, I needed to be able to prove that I had lived in England for at least mthree months after my date of passing the test. I passed in December 1994, but my current passport as I realised straight away had been issued in 2002, and my old one proving that I was in the UK after passing was sitting in a drawer of one of my bedroom units back home. Therefore I had to wait five days for this to arrive. On top of this, I had actually forgotten to photocpy the back side of one of my UK licence documents so this further held up the process.

Anyway, the old passport and translated licence eventually arrived and I went to the police station(another requirement) by myself to arrange an appointment at the test centre. I thought it would be difficult and it turned out to be. First, everything seemed to be in order, except for the fact that it wasn`t. Basically, there were 2 problems. One was the fact that although I passed my test in 1994, I had upgraded the licence to a European Union one during 2002, and I didn`t have my old licence because the DVLA had retained it at the time. The second problem was that there was no evidence in my passport of me returning to the UK after vacations to the USA, Canada and Hong Kong. This is due to the fact that British immigration do not stamp your passport on return to the UK unless you specifically ask for it. Therefore, it appeared as though I had never come back to the UK in the time between these holidays.

So, after having to ask the lady who was processing the application to speak to Yuko who is Japanese and is fluent in English, to try and explain the situation, I finally managed to convince them that they should just look at 1994 activity and 2002 was irrelevant to the procedure. I had been to the USA in 1993 and the visa stamp showed a three month validity with the last day being soemtime in December 1993. Obviously there was no stamp to prove when I returned but I finally managed to convince her through a combination of bad Japanese, gestures and facial expressions that I could not prove the unprovable and that I hadn`t had the foresight of predicing then that 11 years later I would need to prove that I had lived in the UK for three months from December 1994.

To cut what is already an exceedingly long story short, I finally got an appointment at the test centre for Feb 4th but I think it clashes with my schedule at the school so I am not sure if I can actually go there and it`ll probably have to be rearranged. This kind of situation makes me think what a great thing perfect foresight or hindsight would be. What would it be worth? Ona final note, I want to give a kind word to the lady who oprocessed the application. I felt for her because she didn`t speak any English (why would she - she is in Japan?) and my Japanese under pressure is worse than it is normally, plus the fact that just about everyone working on the counter was having a look and giving an opinion on the situation - it felt a little surreal and unfortunately, I expect it will be repeated by some other unknowing person!

To conclude, and to express some frustration, when I was at the International Festival I picked up a free book entitled "Daily Life in Shizuoka Made Easy" - upon skimming through the book I was staggered (and some what annoyed) to find that just about every complex procedure I had been through recently or will potentially go through in the future in Japan - for example, obtaining a re-entry permit for overseas travel, transferring a a foreign drivers licence, marrying or divorcing a Japanese national (I said `potentially`) etc etc, was explained in perfect English. If, and it`s an absolutely gigantic `if` (even bigger than Mount Fuji!), I had had this book earlier (even as a Christmas present) then I would have the Japanese driving licence by now, and I probably would not have had such an experience obtaining my re-entry visa from Shizuoka. As I am a nice guy (!), I decided to take a copy of this book for the two new American teachers in Gotemba - wanting to make life easier for people is something that we all should try to do however we can do it and by whatever means possible. However, the experiences I have had make for great stories, and they give me something to write about here.

Well, I sincerely hope you appreciated the entry today and if you managed to get this far, I would love to hear your comments at the following address:

keveds2003@yahoo.com.

If you want to look at photos of my experiences in Japan - new ones to be added shortly - then please feel free to access both of the following links:

http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/keveds2003 and
http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/comeinjapan

I will write again soon and let you know how my new job is going!

Sayonara!