Apparently Takeshi Kitano is a big supporter of ECC (the company I work for). There are posters of him everywhere in Nagoya supporting ECC. You might know him from MXC (he was Vic Ramano when he was younger) or any of the weird and usually depressing movies he's made.

He's really big over here. I get about 10 channels on the TV they gave me (all in Japanese of course) and he's on one of the channels pretty much every night. It seems to be kind of a big deal that he supports my company. One of my trainers was told he was going to be in a commercial with him if he traveled up north. When he got there they kept them in separate rooms the whole time and it turned out to be a photo shoot for a poster, not a commercial. He never ended up meeting Beat Takeshi and instead had to stand on a box next to two little Japanese girls and look "cool". I'm not sure why they put him on a box, he's already over 6 feet tall. I haven't seen this poster around yet, but some of my friends have and they say he (my trainer) looks like a robot. He was somewhat less than pleased.

Last night we made some Japanese friends. It's hard to say if we'll ever talk to them again, their English wasn't that good and my Japanese is non existent. One of them is going to study abroad in California in March so my fellow trainee from California taught him dude, bitchin', and cowabunga. I told him that no one really says cowabunga, or bitchin' for that matter. Maybe in the 80s. Hopefully he didn't take his advice to heart. Baseball was the longest conversation we had. But it just consisted of them listing Japanese baseball players in America and us saying we'll support the Nagoya Dragons (who according to them may be the best in Japan). Baseball is big here.

That's all for now.

Hello from Japan!

Konichiwa!

In Japan for Valentine's Day the girls give boys chocolate. Apparently if you're a boy you should watch out though because there's also "White Day" in April where the boys have to buy the girls that got them chocolate jewelry. They like diamonds. The Japanese girls all want foreign English speaking boyfriends for some reason. I suspect it's because they can't understand what they're saying. They maintain it's because they're cool though.

I'm about halfway through my training. My first official day of work is Feb. 25th. I guess I'll be a substitute for a while until they give out new schedules. The Japanese school year starts in April. When I leave training everyday we walk through an outdoor mall area on the way to the subway and there are frequently live performers. Yesterday there were two J-pop idols there. I really wish I had taken a picture, but it was worth your life to try to get close enough. There was a little mob.

This is the TV tower that's right downtown. If I walk out of my apartment and turn left I'm practically under it.

That's all for now. I eagerly await my first pay check and until then will do things around town for free.