Shinnen Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!

"Congratulations on the dawn of a new year!" is what that title roughly translates to. I hope that you all made it safely into 2005. As for me, I spent New Year's Eve having a steak dinner and watching the "Red-White Song War." (That's an annual New Year's tradition; on New Year's Eve, popular singers are gathered into a red team (women) and a white team (men), and they have a competition. It's a four-hour show (with occasional news breaks and special guests), with singers from each team alternating. At the end, the live audience (plus people with high-tier digital satellite/cable) vote on who wins. This year it was the women's team.

For the past three years, after watching the show, I would walk to the small Shinto shrine near my apartment and greet the new year with my neighbors. Not this year, though -- I don't know where the local shrine is, and I don't know all that many people.

I guess that's the main difference between this job and JET. Because JET was a government job, and because I went to ALL of the schools in town, I was much more well-known. This job is at a small private school, so I don't get to meet as many people....

Right now, it's almost 4:00 AM, and I'm still wide awake. Because my job has kind of screwy hours -- 12:30 PM to 9:30 PM most days, but one day is 10:00 to 4:30 -- my sleep schedule is really screwed up. I guess that's another difference between here and JET.

Although, the fact that I stayed up really late on New Year's Eve and New Year's day probably has more to do with it right now.

Later,
Rob