Despite everything I've done over the break, the journal would take a back seat. I initially thought that the intention of the destination pages on the Yamasa website was to provide a reference for visiting and prospective students of Yamasa. Declan's more ambitious than that. He wants the website to be the best on the internet so that it will attract people interested in Japan to what the school offers beyond just travel. He certainly seems to have the right idea based on what I`ve seen so far. There seems to be a hole in the internet for English users for travelling in Japan to some of these hidden treasures beyond the usual guide book fair. That did mean more detailed writing and intensive research work than I was expecting which was fine since it meant learning more about these places, whether I've been to them or not. It was a good thing that I visited Ise and Futamigaura over the break too since I had a lot of pictures to use from that trip, not to mention what I learned from the experience. The job is getting better and better though I have been working a some extra hours to start pooling time for my trip to Sapporo next month. Thing is, I still don`t have much time in the evenings to do much else.
The school is coming back to life with a vengeance after the break. On Tuesday, there were 28 new students starting the AIJP course and several more came Thursday for the usual 2-week round of new short-term student orientations. Some of them I have seen popping up in the Student Village.
Still, overall it`s not quite getting to high gear here yet. There`s the holiday next Monday, one week after the New Year break. Then there`s the trip to Toyota with the Discovery Tour that Declan's letting me join. Between that and the trip to Nagano makes this a four-day weekend tour. Writing about it next week will be interesting.
Certainly the most noteable events of the week involved bikes. I came across the aftermath of a collision between a small car and a student on her bike who didn't see the car coming in the narrow intersection (partly because of poor visibility). She came away woozy and bruised but it could have been much worse. The streets are narrow with many blind spots which is why I don't take any chances at intersections.
On the other hand, while safety from injury may be a concern, at least you can feel somewhat secure in that people are certainly honest here. One late night, an ex-classmate came back from Nagoya only to realize he lost his keys both to his bike and to his room at the Student Village. For security reasons, the school changes the locks at the village when this occurs and charges the student a few thousand yen for the trouble. As it was, he needed to borrow a set of bolt cutters to free his bike from the lock only to find the bike moved to a safe spot with the keys sitting in the basket. Amazing.