Apricot with ability to say clearly what is thought

Well here I am in my new home, Kamogata. It`s a pretty small place. I can only describe how small by reference to fast food chains; there is no Maccas here. Yes, Maccas pervades even the wannabe cities of Japan. There are no internet cafes, that is a bigger indicator. My house is on a hill (as is almost everything here), a big baby blue number divided into four apartments. My place overlooks a lake type arrangement with some kind of fruit tree surrounding it, which in the half light of sunset looks almost romantic. However, the Japanese delection for burning things means that my house constantly smells like a bonfire - this is Outback Japan.

This morning I went for a walk and ended up in the next town. Not your usual occurance during a one hour walk, but things here are pretty snug. I had my first offical emergency when I found I didn`t have time to walk home again before the agreed 1pm meeting time so I had to ring Hirai (dude from Board of Education who is looking after me) to pick me up. While searching for a telephone though it started to pour with rain, which when combined with the gale force wind made for a very messy Jo indeed. It was kind of like a mini tyhpoon. Weird.

Tomorrow I`m picking up my first official Hanko (stamp with your name on it used as we would use our signatures). I had to pick out my own kanji characters to represent my name. I went with 叙杏　which means something along the lines of "apricot with ability to say clearly what is thought" Sorry to those who can read Japanese and are currently looking up in their dictionaries to see if I`m right on the meaning, or who already know I am wrong...

Well, this apricot is signing out for today.