自己紹介など。。。

Well, I will try again to keep a blog. Hopefully I will keep it up longer this time. 頑張るぞ！　If you just see a lot of boxes or garbled text here, it just means your browser isn't configured to display Japanese text. Just skip whatever you can't read.

Tambêm vou escrever em português de vez em quando.

私はアメリカ人です。テキサス州からきて、今静岡県浜松市に住んでいます。二つの中学校で英語を教えています。楽しかったり大変だったりです。興味のない 生徒に教えること難しいですね。去年ずっと鳥取県鳥取市で英会話イーオンの先生として働いていました。最初の一年目での日本で過ごした日々はとても印象的 でした。本当に優しいひと達に会いました。よかったです！この二回目の来日も現実になった夢です。今浜松には二ヵ月半ぐらい居ます。浜松が大好きです。と ても国際的だからというのがその理由です。浜松地方は少なくとも三万人のブラジル人と約四千人のペルー人がいます。ポルトガル語を話すことが好きなので浜 松に来ました。楽しい！

下手な日本語で、ごめんなさい！

So anyway, you can just ignore it if you can't read it. It's just a sort of a self-introduction. You probably already know that I'm from Texas, that I lived in Tottori, Japan last year and that now I live in Hamamatsu teaching English to 500+ insane, hormone-ridden, Japanese junior high monkeys. I've been here two months already, and I only just now get around to starting a blog... More, after these messages:

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Bom, vou me apresentar um pouco em português tambêm. Sou um norte-americano do estado de Texas. Faz 4 anos que estudo português. Vivo apaixonado pelo Brasil, que passei 4 meses viajando la, adoro música brasileira, leio de Machado de Assis e Jose Alencar até Clarice Lispector e Luís Veríssimo. Já estou querendo muito me mudar para o Brasil, abrir uma escola de ingles talvês, quem sabe. Mas é dificil para americano tirar o visto, a carteira de trabalho e tal. Daí pensei que se eu fosse ter mais experiência dando aulas de ingles, poderia mais facilitar uma mudança pro Brasil.

Assim cheguei no Japão em janeiro de 2004, sem saber nada do Japão nem saber falar nada do japonês. Passei ano passado inteiro em Tottori-ken, no meio do nada, dando aulas de ingles numa escola particular lá, e aprendendo um pouco de japonês. Gostei. Nem tanto quanto eu gosto do Brasil, mas gostei. Em dezembro, o contrato acabou e eu voltei pros EUA por 7 meses. Trabalhava de novo na loja de partituras musicais enquanto esperava saber se eu ia ser escolhido pelo programa JET, pra voltar ao Japão e dar aulas de ingles nas escolas publicas. Fui escolhido, graças a Deus, e no fim de julho vim morar aqui em Hamamatsu, que fica no litoral sul à meio caminho entre Tokyo e Osaka na linha do trem bala.

Pedi Hamamatsu porque a cidade tem, de uma populacão total de 800.000 pessoas, mais ou menos 30.000 brasileiros. Em baixo aqui tem os dados oficiais da populacão estrangeira aqui. A maioria do brasileiros são descendentes de japoneses, e me parece que a maioria são ou paranaenses ou paulistas. Hamamatsu tem restaurantes brasileiros, lojas, açougues, agências de turismo, bares, tudo, falando relativamente. Eu estou gostando muito.

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Anyway, Hamamatsu has been a blast so far. It's a city of about 800,000 people, very spread out over a large area on the shinkansen (bullet train) line almost exactly halfway between Tokyo and Osaka, on the south coast. It is known as the City of Music, because many musical instruments are produced. (Hamamatsu's only skyscraper is supposedly designed to look like a harmonica, though I've never seen an oval-shaped harmonica...) Hamamatsu is famous for several other things too: eel, green tea, and automotive parts. There are a lot of factories here and loads and loads of Brazilian-Japanese immigrants who work at them. Hamamatsu is ridiculously international for its size. A real oddity in Japan. Have a look:

Hamamatsu Non-Japanese Resident Population
Brazil	17,255
Philippines	3,291
China	2,366
Peru	2,088
Korea (N&S)	1,691
Vietnam	914
Indonesia	950
USA	178
Nepal	158
Canada	90
UK	73
Australia	46
New Zealand	25
Other (68 countries)	934
Total (81 countries)	30,059

(Thanks to HICE for the figures)

The above is the official count of legal foreigners here, but the total number of Brazilians is closer to 30,000 and of Peruvians maybe 4,000. Not sure about the others. At any rate, it's an interesting mix, and you can't walk down the street without noticing it.

The diverse international population also gives Hamamatsu a pretty wide range of restaurants, which is great. There is a Brazilian rodizio and a number of other Brazilian restaurants, a German beer garden, a couple of French and French-colonial places, a Russian restaurant, several Indian restaurants, Indonesian, lots of Korean and Chinese places, etc. There's a Nepalese restaurant a block from my apartment-- when's the last time you saw a Nepalese restaurant? But ALAS, there is no Mexican food here. Most grocery stores carry Old El Paso products, and I can pay a fortune for a few tortillas at one of the import shops, if I want. That's about as close as I can get... Oh for a sizzling pile of fajitas with guacamole and pico de gallo... mmmm........

Anyway, I will certainly go into more detail about my schools, but for now, just a picture of some kids playing tug of war at the sports meet at my smaller school. Every high school and junior high in Japan has a sports day once a year in which every student participates. They are divided into a few teams, 4 in this case, and they do lots of races, relays, tug of war, jump rope, etc. It's an all day affair, and they have a lot of practices for it beforehand. The kids enjoyed it, and I did too. Normally you will be able to click on the pictures to enlarge them, but I don't want to put any recognizable photos of my students on the net, so I disabled it this time.

Please leave me a comment, so I know I'm not writing in vain!

Deixe um commentário, que eu quero saber que nao escrevo em vão. E se tiver erros no meu português, faça a favor de me corrigir, ok?

コメントを書いて下さい！間違えた日本語があったら、訂正をしてくれませんか？もっと正しく話したい。。よろしくお願いします。。。