Floor Plan!

This is the floor plan of the apartment that I will be living in starting 7/27. It's pretty big for a single person to live in. Compared to the dorm room in Tokyo where I lived 1.5 years, this is a palace.

The toilet is separated from the shower and the bathtub, and there is a washing machine. There is even a veranda! I'm sure some of you might be thinking, "Hey, what's so great about this place?" Granted it's not Tokyo, and rural parts of Japan have bigger housing, but in Japan, this would be considered a very nice place to live.

The rent? About $440. It's not that cheap, but my predecessor tells me her previous apartment before moving into this one was a lot worse and cost about $400. I just hope I will like it as much as my predecessor does.

Exit PowerBook

That's it. I officially hate Mac now. My PowerBook that I have been using for only 12 days is dead. Well, it's not totally dead since I can turn it on and off, but I can't see anything on the screen.

Last night, I was using it as usual, and I closed the lid which would make it go to sleep automatically. When the PB goes to sleep, the button that opens up the lid pulsates in white light, but my PB didn't do that. Panicking, I opened the lid again, but it was already too late. The screen was completely black even though the machine was still running.

I tried troubleshooting it for several hours, but I gave up and went to the Apple Store in Woodfield this morning. The guy at the Genius Bar took a look at it and tried similar troubleshooting methods I had done and declared that there's something wrong with the hardware, which I had guessed already. So, my new PB is off to repairs, and hopefully it will be back next week.

The repair is covered in the warranty for one year, but I'm afraid of what will happen after the warranty is over. I'm thinking about enrolling in the AppleCare Protection Plan which extends the warranty to up to 3 years anywhere in the world. The cost? $349. If I can get the Education Discount, it's $239. The repair would have cost me $310 if I didn't have the warranty, so I think I should play it safe and enroll in the Protection Plan.

While I was troubleshooting last night, I found out that there are a lot of people who have had various problems with their iBooks and PowerBooks. I'm sure all laptops are susceptible to failures, but having it die on you after only 12 days isn't what I call reliable.

I will never buy another Mac. Ever.

Enter PowerBook

Yessssss!

It's finally here. Well, it arrived on 6/17, ahead of ETA much to my delight. I still need some time to get used to it, but so far, everything's going great except Mail. I have some trouble sending e-mails in Japanese due to some encoding problem, so I need to look into that soon.

Anyway, this post is dedicated to some cool pictures of my PB. Enjoy!

Glowing Apple logo! This was taken on my bed, so you can see the yellow blanket....

Isn't this pretty? Glowing keyboard! You can adjust the brightness as well.

JET Contract

While we all wait for my Powerbook to arrive, I'll quote some parts of importance in my contract.

Period of Contract

- Your contract is for the period beginning on July 25, 2005 and ending on July 24, 2006.

Job Description

- The ALT shall perform duties as specified by the Supervisor and/or Principal of the board of education and/or school, as specified below:

I. Assist in foreign language instruction at junior and/or senior high schools.

II. Assist with foreign language education at primary/elementary schools.

III. Assist in the preparation of teaching materials, and to assist with foreign language ability contests.

IV. Assist with seminars for current foreign language teachers.

V. Assist with special and extra-curricular activities.

VI. Assist with local international exchange activities.

VII. Other duties accepted as necessary by the Supervisor or the school Principal.

Remuneration

- You will receive an annual remuneration of 3,600,000 Japanese yen, after the deduction of any applicable Japanese income tax or resident taxes.

(This amounts to about $36,000 per year.)

- The renumeration shall be paid on the 21st day of each month.

Travel Expenses

- Your travel expenses to Japan will be provided. Your return travel expenses, however, will be provided on the condition that 1) you have completed your Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme contract, 2) you do not enter into a subsequent contract with the Prefecture or a third-party in Japan, and 3) you leave Japan to return to your home country within one month of completing your JET Programme contract.

Hours, Holidays, and Leave

- The JET shall perform duties thirty-five hours a week exclusive of break time.

- The JET duty hours shall be from 8:30 A.M. to 4:15 P.M. from Monday to Friday, with Saturday and Sunday as days on which the JET is not required to perform duties. The time from 12:00 P.M. to 12:45 P.M. shall be designated as break time; that time may be utilised as the JET desires.

- The days identified in the following items shall be holidays for the JET:

I. Japanese national holidays (those defined by Article 3 of the Japanese National Holiday Law [Showa Year 23 Law #178])

(There are currently 15 national holidays. January (2), February (1), March (1), April (1), May (3), July (1), September (2), October (1), November (2), December (1).)

II. New Year's holiday (the period from December 29th to January 3rd of the following year)

- During the period of contract stated in Article 4, the JET can take twenty days of yearly paid leave, individually or consecutively. This yearly paid leave may be taken in hourly units.

- The maximum period of sick leave to be used at one time shall not exceed a total of twenty consecutive days....

- The JET shall be allowed 5 days of special summer leave.

Financial Assistance

- The Prefecture will not subsidise the JET's rent. However, the Prefecture will provide the following assistance towards JET set-up costs:

I. Deposit Depending on requirement, up to:
120,000 yen for a deposit of three-months' rent
80,000 yen for a deposit of two-months' rent
40,000 yen for a deposit of one-month's rent

II. Estate Agent's Fee/Key Money
Depending on requirement, up to one-month's worth of rent (40,000 yen).

III. Set-up Costs
50,000 yen will be given to the school to set-up the new JET's apartment.

My sexy new partner will arrive soon!

I just ordered my first Mac!

After about a month of pondering, advice from friends, researching online, I finally switched! I've been a PC user since 1991, but recently, Windows and MS software have been giving me a few headaches, so I've been trying different solutions such as using Firefox. Also, I knew I wanted to buy a laptop before going to Japan, and there are so many different PC brands and options that I was kind of wary of buying a PC.

After considering a Mac, it soon became an obvious choice. I will be mostly free from things plaguing Windows and Internet Explorer such as spyware because Mac OS X has better security. I can try out new things on a totally different OS, and the time to try out new things is just right because I will probably have lots of free time in Japan. Also, Apple's laptop is just plain sexy! Just look at the picture below, and you will know what I mean.


PowerBook G4 15"

Several friends advised me not to buy a Mac because it's not a PC and because Steve Jobs recently announced that Macs will be switching to Intel processors starting next year. Price was another factor that kept me from making the decision quickly. At $1999.99, the 15-inch PowerBook G4 that I ordered is not a cheap deal.

However, I'm not regretting my purchase at all, and I'm really looking forward to playing with my new toy which might arrive as early as 6/18. Oh yeah, I ordered iWork '05 as well, which consists of Pages and Keynote 2, similar to MS Word and Powerpoint. As you can see, I'll be doing some exciting computing with non-MS software for a long time, hopefully.

I will post pictures of my PowerBook as soon as it arrives. Stay tuned.

Shizugawa-cho, my new home starting July 27, 2005

So, I finally found out where I will be living in Miyagi-ken. Once again fate has cheated me (might turn out to be a blessing if I like the town) of my hopes of getting placed in Sendai, which is conveniently located 2 hours north of Tokyo via shinkansen and even has an airport.

My new home starting July 27, 2005 will be a town called Shizugawa, 2 hours north of Sendai via train with a declining population of about 14050. Below is a close-up map of Motoyoshi-gun/Kesennuma-shi area on the left and entire map of Miyagi-ken on the right. If you look at the map on the right, Sendai is the biggest block of area in the second bold section from the bottom.


Motoyoshi-gun/Kesennuma-shi area northeast of Sendai

In Japan, land is divided into 43 prefectures (there are 4 exceptions, including Tokyo and Hokkaido), and many prefectures are divided into areas called shi and gun. Gun is in turn are divided into cho (machi) or mura. So, I will be in Shizugawa-cho, Motoyoshi-gun, Miyagi-ken, Japan.

I will be teaching English 4 times a week at Shizugawa High School, the only high school in town with about 465 students.


Shizugawa High School

My predecessor is teaching once a week at Kesennuma Nishi High School which is 1 hour north of Shizugawa via train. She said I might be teaching there once a week as well, or I might get a different school. If I do indeed get to teach at Kesennuma Nish, I have to worry about doing a 1-hour commute via train to and from the school until I get a car. Unlike most predecessors, mine is staying in Japan, so she probably won't sell me her furniture, much less her car which is a 94 Skyline GTS-25T type M.


94 Skyline GTS-25T type M

I hope to find more about my visiting school soon. In the meantime, I will be busy being a victim of red tape with all the paperwork I need to complete, things like visa application and Japanese income tax exemption. I will update as new information about my future rolls in.

Cheers.