Monday, April 5, 2010

Sayonara Melbourne!

I know I should've posted about this earlier, but I'm leaving for Japan on Wednesday! Since my last post I finally got that email I had been waiting for (after a horrible week where my phone broke, my apartment was flooded and we were homeless for a week and my car broke down again) saying that I had been accepted into the April placement!


I tried to write this post a million times but I never knew what to say and eventually I just gave up. My feelings have a been that weird combination of excited/nervous/freaked out/terrified/in denial and words haven't really been coming to me so easily. On top of that I've stopped reading blogs, I've stopped cooking and baking and I've been sucked into the magnificent world that is k-pop (korean pop, don't ask). It seems my brain is in another place and I'm not really coping well with this whole leaving-the-country-for-an-unspecified-amount-of-time thing. For awhile I was really emotional about it but that seems to have passed, in this last week of goodbyes and farewell parties I've been surprisingly unmoved. I suppose that even though I keep telling myself that it's the last time I'll see someone/do something/be somewhere there's really no way to actually accept that it's the truth.


So for some details: I'll be living in Nagoya in a one bedroom/studio style apartment (tiny! but cosy?) right near the Kurumamichi station which is just two stops from Sakae (downtown Nagoya). I leave the land of Aus on Wednesday afternoon and I'm staying in a hostel for two weeks during my training period while I wait for my apartment to be vacated. I start training on the 12th and I start teaching two weeks after that! I've been shopping like a mad woman for work clothes as I have to wear very conservative business attire, ie. button down shirt and jacket. And it's actually not that easy to find shirts in Melbourne as everyone here wears blouses and pretty tops instead of button down shirts! Anyway after the ridiculous amount of money I spent I'm pretty happy, I'm excited to show you some photos of my in my full teaching get-up!


I've spent a lot of time in the city over the last few weeks, hanging out with a wonderful girl that I met at the Japanese consulate who just left for Japan yesterday morning to study Japanese north of Tokyo, and also with the magnificent Halia who I only met in person for the first time on Saturday! I love hanging out with the city and I really wanted to soak up as much as I could because I know I'll miss it a lot when I'm gone. So I drank coffee in Fed Square at Beer Deluxe (best coffee ever) while people watching at the Saturday Book Market, I drank Asahi at the riverside bar on Southbank, I ate dumplings in Tattersales Lane, I ate cupcakes on the lawn of the State Library, I went to two comedy festival shows and I took numerous sets of silly photobooth photos at the Japanese and Korean "photo world's" on Swanston Street. In all I think I did a pretty good job of sampling Melbourne's little pleasures!

So for now I'll say 'mata ne' (see you later) and hopefully when I'm settled into my apartment in a few weeks I'll have lots of photos to share with you and I can start blogging again properly! Minasan arigatou gozaimasu, ganbarimasu! (Thankyou everyone, I will work hard!)

3 comments:

Jacinta said...

Oooh! How exciting! Oh, I have always wanted to go to Japan, so I feel a little jealous! hehe.

Anonymous said...

Oooh! How exciting! Oh, I have always wanted to go to Japan, so I feel a little jealous! hehe.

Katyha said...

So exciting....I hope you have a marvellous time.

PS found you through intimate vignettes