Japanese Whiskers

Contrary to what one may come to believe from the scarcity of recent posts, I am still alive and well over here in Japan. Of course, by now no one but the people I literally tell "go read my blog!" will be checking for new entries...

My only excuse is that very little of particular interest to my dear readers (both of you... ok, me and you... if you're still reading) has happened as of late. Of course, lots of things that are of interest to me have happened, but most of it wouldn't be interesting to read about, and the rest is, well, nothing I care to hold a public discourse on at this time. Maybe it'll show up in my memoirs.

One thing that is a bit interesting though is that last Sunday (I know, I'm terribly late) I went to Akita City with my host mother (for the short homestay I did during Golden Week) and attended a meeting with a local English conversation group called ACES. If you check their page, you can see some bad photos of me.

It turned out to be quite an interesting two and a half hours. And I also think I may have made some valuable contacts. Nine people attended the meeting, and I think that if I need help with something in their area of expertice, I know now where to turn. I exchanged email address and Skype username with one of them, who works with getting jobs for foreigners. Might be a big help later on. Of course, the actual topic we discussed was interesting too - physical culture, but also similarities and differences between Swedish and Japanese culture. There are some fascinating similarities, let me tell you that. But then of course, the differences are rather big as well. I spend the last hour mostly listening to their debate practice, which was kind of amusing. One or two of them seemed like they had had some practice using dirty tricks and such, which was fun to listen to. In general, they were pretty good at it, especially considering their level of English. Now I don't mean to be rude - they were very good for being Japanese.