Buy, sell, and Japan info.

I have quite a bit to update on. So much that I wonder how good of a job I'll be able to do.

First of all, I got a letter from my JET predecessor. She told me all about the job I am going to be starting and the apartment that I am going to be moving into (which are both hers at the moment). Everything sounds REALLY awesome. She also sent pictures, which I won't post here because it's not my apartment to post pictures on the internet of at the moment. But yeah, let me know if you want me to send you the address of the apartment or forward the pictures via email (I've already done that a number of times.)

The temp agency still hasn't called me about any really short terms jobs. I could really use the money for Japan. The JET program recommends us to bring about $3,000 to tide us over until our first payment. I think I should be able to get $2,000 for my car, I currently have around $500 to my name- so if I try to refrain from spending money, I have about $500 more to figure out. I think I might actually be okay $500 short because I already know that my apartment requires no rent (which is something that not every JET gets to find out before they leave the US- unfortunately.)

I've been selling things on eBay and raking in some dough that way. Not a lot, of course. Although I was surprised to find I had a collector's item (baffled, even.)

Meanwhile I finished packing all of my stuff to keep at my dad's house while I'm in Japan, so now I just have the stuff I want to have in Japan with me. My room is pretty empty. Some people came by last week and bought my futon couch. Tomorrow or the day after, I am going to be moving for the first time this summer (of a total of three.)

Mom and David are upgrading to a manufactured home, so we're going to be moving out of this house (we've been putting things in storage) and into a house that we will be sitting for while the family who owns the house is on vacation. Then, after the house is set, we'll move into the new manufactured home (move #2), and about a week after that, I'm off to Japan (move #3)- pretty crazy, right? I've already planned to use the move from here to the housesitting place as a sort of practice run for packing for Japan. We'll see how that works out.

...I just remembered I had images to add to this blog....

Moving back to the topic of hearing from my predecessor, it occurred, I think, the day after all that mess with my graduation application. I was so bummed out by that mess when it was occurring, that I saved the file onto my desktop as "worstnewsever." When it got all cleared up so quickly, I moved the file to my recycling bin. Then, when I got the letter from my predecessor, that I saved it onto my desktop and named it...


On the letter was my address, which I, of course, looked up on google maps. I found a place that MIGHT be the location of the office I will be working at. I was curious because the letter said that it takes 10 minutes to get there from the apartment walking and 5 minutes by bicycle. So I compared it to the distance I walked to Chuo University from my host family's house last summer-


I used the map on the right (although it's been rotated) on a blog last summer to illustrate the distance I walked from my host family's house to the building that has the International Office at Chuo University. (The blue lines are a little hard to see because I made the image a lot smaller). On the left is the best route from what I could tell from the apartment building I will be living in Hioki city to what I think is the office building. I was surprised to see that (because the zoom is the same on both maps), that the Chuo distance is actually quite a bit longer.

Anyway, that's all I can think to write at the moment.