Mel's Adventures in Japan

Nine years ago I was waiting for a message/call from my parents to tell me when my JET Programme placement letter arrived and where I was be...

I had an opportunity to participate in an exchange visit between Taiwanese junior high school students and first year students at a local To...

Lately there's been a lot of stuff going on and it's been taking a lot of energy just to get through the day. I feel like I'm ge...

Perhaps this is just my political naivety showing, but I really can't imagine how ousting (Japanese Prime Minister Naoto) Kan with a non...

I thought things seemed pretty promising for the May 2, 2011 Canadian National election with the whole Vote Mob movement encouraging youth...

Life is pretty much back to usual here in Towada. Of course there are still aftershocks, but thanks to a luck of geography, Towada hasn...

Thanks to Ceci, I rediscovered the NFB.ca (National Film Board of Canada) site. These are some of the animated "classics" from my...

I had made the decision to cancel my planned trip back to Toronto for Golden Week around mid-March (a little more than a week after the eart...

About a week ago I had a dream where five students from my first graduating class from Kirita came to see me. Even though that's all I r...

Amazing what changes a new day can bring. I'm feeling a lot...lighter today than yesterday. Something that definitely helped was going...

This isn't a summary of what has happened (you can find plenty of articles online for that) or even of my experiences. Instead, I'd ...

Recently I've been wondering if I should finally learn how to use make-up properly. For one thing it's rather embarrassing that at...

Most people probably have an image of Japan as a place for all things high tech. But after living here for a while--particularly in rural ar...

In April I was visited by some Jehovah witnesses. It wasn't the first visit I've had (they came once when I was living in the old ho...

As long as I've been in the program, I've heard talk about its decline and pending demise. Even though I know that many JET position...

After spending almost three years working as an ALT on the JET Programme, I admit I've gotten kind of crotchety. Keeping that in mind, h...