Our little apartment is shown here and we live on the ground floor, left door. It is even smaller than our last apartment. We have to be creative to manage our space.

Note the parked car...the yards here are virtually non-existent...we are closer to Tokyo this time and space is at a premium. This car is parked in our neighbour's front yard.

However, I(Colleen) will post some pictures this week of a beautiful yard filled with roses which we can see from our window. We also think that it is the home to a time-zone challenged rooster....that starts crowing every morning about 1:30 and continues until at least 6:00 AM!! It is quite bizarre considering we are in Tokyo.

As always, the streets are very clean and the cars are always sparkling...no dust...just smog dirt which is harder to see.










Relaxing outside of Meiji Univesity during our day of training on the Friday of our first week.

Our days prior to this were spent trying to settle in and orgainze our little space.....we just think of it as camping without the bugs...we hope. Whatever would we do without the 100 YEN Shop where you can buy everything to organize and set up house for 100 yen (approx. $1.00)...a swiffer-type mop, a non-stick pan, baskets of every description, and cans of Green Giant creamed corn ( at the grocery store only Japanese varieties are available for twice this price... I guess American brands are second-best!!)

First week in Japan May 3, 2006 we met with friends from our first visit. It was good to renew acquaintances. Every get-together in Japan has to be a 'food experience' (some things are universal) We went to a TGI Friday restaurant near Ueno station. This was a food experience for 3 of them....American/mexican food, and we enjoyed it because it was familiar.














Coming in for a landing at Narita airport on May 1st. It was warm and humid.

We flew from Ottawa to Vancouver where we met Cheryl Janzen ( from Killarney) waiting for the same flight to Narita. She is working for the same company as us and for the same time period. She is at Toyahashi, not far from Nagoya where her brother John and sister Dianna are living.