After three different orientations and a home stay we finally had some time to settle down and get used to life in Japan. This is pretty difficult to do in August in Southern Kyushu. The weather is hot, really hot, are humid. As central cooling is not common in Japan there are relatively few places to escape from the heat.

One place to escape was school. In the teacher's room there is air conditioning. So the first month after arriving our routine was to go to school and spend the morning there. As classes weren't in session we spent our mornings reading books on how to teach English and got to know our fellow teachers by telling about our lives and asking about theirs. Also we spent time walking around our schools and getting familiar with the buildings and some students, who came everyday to practice their club sport.

As it was not necessary to stay the whole day, we went home at lunch, attempted to make something familiar from the ingredients we knew at the grocery store (I remember eating a lot of cucumber sandwiches), and then set out for an afternoon adventure.

The town we live in is called Hondo city. You can see in on the map in relation to Japan. It is far south on a group of islands off the major island of Kyushu. The group of islands is called the Amakusa islands and Hondo is at the center of local life. There are towns surrounding Hondo, but they are rather small and so many people, for major shopping and entertainment gravitate to Hondo.

So in the afternoons, we would set out, first on foot, and later on bike, to find out just what kind of town we are living in. Our first impression was, "A confusing one". In Hondo the roads don't run in straight lines, and can be very narrow and maze like. The only thing that made exploration possible was the fact that we lived near a very large golf driving range that was bounded by very tall green nets. This landmark is visible from anywhere in town and so when we had explored enough we would set our sites on the green nets and just walk that direction.

The place we found ourselves the most had to be the grocery store. With Dan being the type of person who likes to eat a proper dinner, we had to go early and often to the store. And once at the store the adventure could begin. Looking through the aisles, asking in broken Japanese, deciphering the picture directions, and deciding if such and such was the same as such and such back home took a good while and made for good entertainment. On other days we would set out with an idea of something that we needed for our apartment, search all afternoon and come home empty handed.

When the school year finally started we were ready for a regular all day schedule that didn't involve walking a long ways, or making a daily trip to the grocery store.

But the month did give us a good chance to get used to life in Hondo and Japan. We had a good chance to prepare for teaching, we had discovered a few recipes that we liked and could find the ingredients for, and we got to know the town and the islands that we would be calling home.