First real post from my real location! Woot!!

Oooookay! Everyone can stop worrying about my health and state of affairs, because I am alive and well! The reason I haven't been posting lately is that it's freaking impossible to get an internet connection with a language barrier. Tell you the truth, it's hard even without a language barrier around here. It'll take roughly four weeks to get an active connection at my apartment. In the meantime, I will make short posts from the office. Enough griping, on to business.

So I figure, even without everyone knowing what's been going on in the past month, you've got some basic questions. Let's see if I can rattle them off;
1) Where the hell are you?
2) What's Japan like? Is it weird?
3) What are the people like around where you are?
4) What's the coolest thing you've seen/done/eaten?
5) Are you, in fact, gainfully employed?
6) Have you met any good-looking women yet?

I will answer these inquiries in a series of posts. The first will be today. I am in Shibukawa, a small-ish town in the Gunma prefecture. The capital of the Gunma prefecture is Maebashi, and we're kind of the next town over from Maebashi. We're at the extreme Northwest of the Kanto plain, which is the region that Tokyo is in. Basically, I'm about as far from Tokyo as possible while still being able to say I'm near Tokyo. This area is still in what I have heard referred to as the 'Tokyo vortex', which means that all the young people (ages 19 to 35) spend as much time in Tokyo as possible, if they haven't actually moved there. As a result, this town has very little in the way of nightlife, and its population consists mainly of children and the 40+ set. However, it has every modern convenience (even if my apartment doesn't) and good schools and public transportation. It even has its claims to fame - the Konyaku farming here is huge. Shibukawa is very proud of its konyaku, which is a plant that looks a little like celery, is cut and ground into a powder from which kind of a jelly is made. It's eaten all over Japan, but I can't say I have developed much of a taste for it yet. The town also calls itself the "belly button of Japan" because of its geographical location near the center of the country, and every year it has a "belly button festival" in the summer, when the population has a parade and the young men paint their stomachs in various ways to accent their belly buttons. I have yet to witness this spectacle, but I hear it's something to behold.

Well, I have to go, but I will post more at a later date. Probably some photos, too, but those may prove difficult from the office computer. I'll try my best. Wish me luck!