February Happenings

Ive mentioned a few times that despite being the only JET contracted to Sakai City, meeting an amazing group of Osaka-fu JETs around me has helped soo much with the readjustment process of living in Japan again, and this month they just continued to prove their amazingness welcoming in the first week of February with some awesome events. We celebrated Setsubun on the 3rd of Feb at Mindy's house in Kishiwada, had a Tacoyaki party at Jen and Tom's place in Nakamozu and a Curry and Scrabble evening at Brandon and Katie's place in Osakako before some lamb at Tin's Hall in Tennoji with Tim to celebrate Waitangi Day

Seeing as Im taking nine days off work in March while Stuart is visiting February was very busy with work. In between the usual busy-ness of translations (including 16 pages of information including acceptance speeches for the Sakai Peace Contribution Award) there were also a few extra events running in February;

Presentation at Meeting of Kansai Consul Generals (3 Feb)

Madoguchi Eikaiwa (8, 9 and 16 Feb)

Kiwi English (3, 10, 17 and 24 Feb)

 

Sakai Industry Experience Day for International Students (14 Feb)

JET Kinki Block Seminar (18 Feb)

Senshuu Marathon Reception (21 Feb)

The days either side of my long weekend trip up to Sapporo for the Snow Festival we got some snow in Sakai. It was pretty impressive as it is quite rare for it to snow here at all (let alone twice on the 11th and 14th) but very cute to have snow at home ;)

And of course this blog on February wouldnt be complete without mention of the terrible Earthquake that struck Christchurch just before 1pm on Tuesday the 22nd of February. I was walking to work at the time (it was 9am here) but as soon as I turned my computer on I was quickly bombarded with the news about it and tried to keep up with everything as the situation developed over the next couple of days through online news updates as some channels opened up their live feeds for a few days afterwards. I would just like to put my condolensces out there to all the families that have suffered as a result of this natural disaster. Being so far away from home at the moment its hard not to feel isolated at times like this but I am so proud of how everyone across NZ pulled together the gather supplies and raise funds for Canterbury. I am happy to see that Japan responded quickly by sending over a search and rescue crew and a US$500,000 donation from the government. My local government in Sakai put forward a donation of Y1,000,000 and I talked to newspaper to spread the word that we have donation boxes set up at City Hall, so I hope every little bit helps. Kia Kaha, Arohanui from Japan xx