Suddenly it's December!

Hello Blog,

I've not really been very faithful to blogging lately and November seems to have disappeared rather quickly!

Well, first things first. I'm still loving life in Japan and feeling very much settled into a routine. I've fallen behind with my OU studies, but as yet, not waved the little white flag of defeat. I was just about keeping up with it for the first month, but then I had five days without access to the course website. Then I changed my schedule which mean't that I worked eight days without a day off and when I did have a day off, I had to catch up with other things.

I've finally had a couple of days off and thought I'd catch up with things, but yesterday I felt like I needed a day to recover from working eleven days out of the last fourteen days. Today was supposed to be the day I'd give myself a kick up the backside and get cracking again; but I found plenty of other things that needed doing - doing my another online training activity (I had to do some online study before I go into Tokyo next week), getting my haircut, shopping etc. Anyway, when I finally bit the bullet and logged into the website; it was down for maintenance!

Anyway, other than the OU course, life is good. I went out for a meal with some friends in Tokyo earlier in November. One of the dishes was roasted lily bulbs (see photo below). They tasted just like roasted sweet chestnuts. Utterly delicious; or 'oishii' as they say in Japan.

Roasted Lily Bulbs

The autumn leaves have been stunningly beautiful in Chiba Park. I went out with my camera last week and took a few photographs. Rather than upload lots of photographs though, I've put them together as a slideshow video.

In summary, after two months in Japan, I'm happy here.  On the one hand, yes I'd love to have more time off to do my OU studies, see more of the country etc etc; but then on the other hand; I keep feeling like I may be here for the long-term and so why burn myself out by taking on too much. The more I think about things, whenever I read about people's experiences of Japan, I think, "Yeah, when I was younger I would probably also be in a hurry; but now I'm a bit older, I'm much more content to let things happen in their own timescale." The most important thing is, I'm having fun!