In Matsuyama which is on the Island of Shikoku. It’s a city of 500,000 but the tour books glaze over it only giving it three pages of airtime. I’m staying with Deb who’s doing the JET program. Getting here was quite exciting, especially not knowing much Japanese. Got lost on a bus, went to the bathroom in a squater toilet only to find no toilet paper, got rejected by the train station ticket machines (like bart machines), the Shinkansen (bullet train) made me sea sick, climbed to the top of Japan’s coolest castle, got lost/wrong bus in Hiroshima for and hour and a half, and took a hydrofoil ferry to the Island.

Went to the school at which Deb teaches English (7th-9th grade) for their last day of class/closing ceremony. American public schools make Japanese public schools look like military institutions. But they get the job done. For example, they take 10 minutes out of each day for the students to clean the school (there are no janitors, the students clean everything). I also had a chance to practice my English and broken Japanese with some of the students. Local university for lunch (their cafeteria is like going out to a really good Japanese restuarant, and I’m not talking sushi.) So here we go….