Direction Okazaki, Japan – Yamasa

As a returning visitor I want to thank you for your interest.Thanks for visiting!

I had quite a few chuckles when I read that article about Studying Japanese at the Yamasa Institute In Okazaki, on a site called “Associated Content”. Just read the part about the Student Village. Really, now you can understand why I moved from there after a month. Like it is explained in the article, the Student Village is nowhere as clean as it was showed on the Yamasa Web Site. I even wrote about it in 2006, in my post called Another review of the Yamasa Institute: The Student Village.

I still recommend to AIJP students to consider another accommodation than the Student Village. If you can, even Leopalace 21 is a good choice.

Just moved to a new server. I need to clean again the french post because somehow the caracter encoding is not set properly. I indend to do a survey of the internet looking for new Yamasa Blog very soon. Summer is comming soon after all and I expect a lot of blog to be made.

Can you believe that in Nagoya the temperature is around 10 degrees? You probably noticed the new banner at the top of this blog. I was thinking I was due for dropping the “direction” from the blog name. But still Okazaki has a strong meaning for me, being in communication every morning with Skype to Japan. Even watching streamed live japanese TV. We really live in great technological times. Mindless tv shows accessible to masses

It is kind of nice to think that I started this blog around this time in 2005! I had a picture of a warehouse I was renting. Time does fly fast.

There were talks of inflation at the end of summer in Japan. Some were quick to jump to the conclusion that this was desirable outcome. But this inflation was driven by outside force, namely the price of imports such as oil. So while the cost of goods increased, people’s salaries did not. This wealth such went outside of Japan. And now that Japan is in a confirmed recession one has to wonder about living in Japan. You wish to be an English teacher? Thing are not like they used to be. With the demise of Nova, a surge of qualified teacher hit the streets. Combined with a demonstrated reduced interest in learning English and you have one of the worst time ever to go to Japan. With the Japanese Yen (JPY) at an all time high it seems risky to plan a move until the end of 2009. Even Yamasa, the school I attended still has opening this late before the start of the new semester of spring 2009 in the AIJP program. How will you be able to sustain yourself? Can you put this burden on your families? You are better staying at home.