Welcome to Hagi

I think the best way to describe my aparment is that it is bigger than I expected, but smaller than anything I have seen in Oz! The apartment is 3 rooms: bedroom (with a bed, not a futon), loungeroom and kitchen - off the kitchen is the laundry area, the toilet and the shower/bath.

Possibly the coolest thing in my apartment is a shoe cupboard (pictured). Now obviously, back in Australia a shoe cupboard that houses only 9 pairs of shoes would be insufficient for me, but over here there is still room for 1 more pair. On the idea of a shoe cupboard, does anyone want to hazard a guess at how big my shoe cupboard would have to be back home???

As a special welcome to Hagi the Board of Education (BOE) had organised fireworks and a festival... joke. The summer festival started the day we arrived, so I met up with the rest of the Hagi JET community (and some JETs from the inaka round here) and had some dinner and went down to the beach to watch the fireworks. So in Australia fireworks just go for however long they go for. I know the Skyfire one has a soundtrack, but this was divided into sections, with different sponsors, and announcements over the PA all night telling us what was going on - actually only about 40 minutes total including fireworks and announcements.

I spent my first morning in Hagi unpacking, not that I brought that much stuff, given our luggage limitations, but trying to decide where to put it. In the afternoon Tsucky (my supervisor at the BOE) and Flick took us to get bank accounts, and a keitai (mobile or cell phone as it is called over here).

I also got to visit my supermarket for the first time. It's amazing - you can get anything you can desire ready-made. Of course, I'm not really sure what everything is, but one day I'll probably figure it out.

All in all, Hagi seems quite cool