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Remember those ninjas I talked about? Turns out I’ll soon be living with them!!

OK, I am not going to be in Iga-Ueno, which is where the Ninja Museum is, but soon I will be living in the same prefecture as them. I’m so excited and can’t wait - it’s only about a month away now.

I will be teaching in a small village of about 4000 people. There is a middle school and three elementaries. The schools are all small, with the middle school only having 98 kids. I’m very excited!

I haven’t talked about this at all here (in case I failed miserably), but I have hinted/talked about it at twitter, so if you have been following me there you may know what I’m talking about oh-so cryptically right now. That is, today I received a letter from the Brisbane Consulate of Japan to say I have been short-listed into the JET Programme. Or, in simpler terms… I’m going to Japan!!! As long I’m healthy and the criminal background check doesn’t dig deep enough to find my secret past, I will be flying over to Japan this August.

I’m sure that the next three and a bit months will go very slow but at the same time very quick. I plan to go all gung-ho with my Japanese study - mainly because I have a lot of excellent texts that I don’t want to lug with me to Japan!

I am looking forward to many exciting times in Japan.

March was an OK month in regards to my Japanese progress. Some of the activities I did include:

• An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese

I have gone through chapter three of this but still need to do more review.

• Reading Manga

I have read through two and a half volumes of manga. I finished the first four chapters of Hana Kimi and decided that was a “book” when it wasn’t the extended version From there I read a story called (from memory, it is packed now, more on that later…) “Love, Love..” I think I’m about 5 pages from finishing it but had to put it down. I was a bit over the main girl character crying all the time. Now I’m a chapter and a bit into “pichi pichi pitch” subtitled “Mermaid Melody”. Very cute, for a young audience so it is fairly easy to read.

One place I loved on my trip to Japan in November 2008 was Iga-Ueno, specifically the Ninja Museum. Iga Ueno is near Nara in the Mei Prefecture. It is a little bit tricky to get to, but only in that you have to swap trains a couple of times. The way we got there was:

• From Osaka we took the JR Yamatoji Line from Namba to Kamo - in the mornings direct trains to Kamo depart from Namba, but otherwise from Osaka station. All trains aparently depart from Tenoji Station as well.
• Kamo station is three stops after Nara, about 15 mins from Nara. From Kamo station swap trains. The next train is a little one or two car train on the JR Kansai Line. Take this train for five stations, 35mins to the Iga Ueno station.
• From here you take a cute ninja decorated train to Ueno-shi, 3rd station along and about five minutes to get there.
• Hint: don’t get all the “iga”s and “ueno”s confused!

I think overall the trip cost around 1530yen one way.

A short walk from the station is the Ninja Museum. It cost 700yen to get in. First up is a cool demonstation area where a female takes you through some of the tricks ninjas have in their house. They changed all the signs to English and the girl spoke in English to us, she was pretty good. We got to swing around in hidden doors and look out peep holes.

While in my hotel one night (in Osaka) I decided to watch a bit of TV and Full House was on, dubbed.

I filmed a little bit of it in the following clip - and yay, I can understand one joke. Haha. I haven’t seen Full House in years.

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