update update

It’s so cold in now! I honestly have no idea how I survived London back then during exchange, as the winds there are stronger than in Osaka. The winds have been picking up recently here too though, and temperatures have dropped to around 0deg at night. It’s around 3deg in the morning, but the most awful aspect of winter here is the chill indoors. It’s alright when I’m in my office with the heater on, but the moment I step outside into the corridor, I feel the draft and the cold and urgh… japan definitely needs central heating! we've been seeing a bit more snow too, and it's apparently colder this year than previous years....

Winter also means a sizable amount spent on buying clothes to keep warm.. things like 150denier tights don’t come cheap, and considering you wear them everyday, you need a quite a few pieces on hand.. at least I’m recontracting, which means I get to use all these again next year.. :P stuff like Uniqlo’s heat-tech inner layers too – they’re fairly good actually – but the problem is, they just replaced the heat-tech section with fleece pajamas! Which I really don’t get, because it’s getting colder – coldest month is feburary, apparently – and people would need heat-tech inner layers all the more! Interestingly though, long-johns don’t exist in this country.. at least I haven’t seen any around...

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I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but my lecturer from uni asked me to write a piece for the Japanese-alumni newsletter providing advice for JET applicants in Japanese… turned it in a few days ago and it came back to me which lots of editing :P things like my particles, phrasing, etc.. sigh. My Japanese is still very lousy, although he claimed that I did a good job. Haha. It looks like I’ll have to write another installment too, this time about work and life in japan.. not sure what I’m going to say though, because being an ALT on JET is rather different from being a regular worker in japan, and the fact that I’m a city JET – and Osaka city to boot – makes my situation even less applicable to most people. I don’t want to misrepresent japan and working on JET to anyone who reads it, and probably must find some way to emphasise that my situation is rather specific..