September 19th

Hi everyone,

Photo: Iwamura

Just writing to say i'm having an AWESOME time here. My host family live in 岩村 (Iwamura) in the Gifu prefecture. My school is great - everyone has been so supportive and the teachers try their best to include me in the lessons :). I'm really enjoying English, Shodo and Maths! In Shodo we made a はんこ　(personal seal) and have been practising lots of　kanji characters. I got 10% in the first maths test (on my first day!) because i could barely understand it!

I've also joined the soccer club and have been doing some seriously hard drills and learning loads! I'll try and post some more photos soon...

Photo: 中津高校　My host school

Last night, my host father took me to the a community hall to meet his friends. They were all really friendly and tried to speak English (which was really funny). One of them has offered to teach me to play the しょう　- a tradtitional Japanese panpipe-like instrument. It sounded so good when he played it. I can't wait to learn!!

Photo: Me playing the しょう

Today my host family took me to まごめ(Magome) - a really old town about 20 mins from the school. There were so many people there - it must be a really popular place! (Photo below)

My Japanese is improving heaps - i've started a vocabulary book for the words i hear a lot at school,　have bought myself a kanji workbook (小学一年生 hahahaha) and have almost finished Hai. But, i reckon my Japanese has improved most from reading and replying to the several txt-emails i receive from my classmates daily :)

I'd like to write more but the internet here is very slow and i don't want to use up all of my host family's internet allowance. I'll try and write posts on here as often as i can, but that is likely to be only once every few weeks.

I've written a newsletter story for the AIIU September Newsletter that has much more detail (and photos!) about my time in Japan so far. Please have a look at it at http://www.aiiu.com/ (scroll the 'Japan' tab and then click 'Newsletters - "Stories from Japan". The newsletter should be up there by early October.

I hope everything is well in Australia!

トーマス・スィノットより