I recently took my first trip to Japan, for visa purposes. In a nutshell, I didn't have the proper work visa for Korea and they can only be issued abroad. So, my school flew me to Fukuoka, Japan, home of the nearest Korean consulate, for two days to get the proper visa. Everything went off without a hitch, and to be honest there wasn't much to do in Fukuoka. I walked around the downtown for 5-6 hours, made my way to the beach on the Sea of Japan, looked at the big baseball stadium, and played a few Japanese video games. Fukuoka itself reminded be a bit of a smaller Busan, and parts of North Vancouver. It was a nice city, but if I never go back I won't regret it. However it did pique my interest in Japan in general; among the few travel plans running through my mind is the idea of doing all of Japan, north to south, for a month or so. Or possibly using my weeks' worth of holidays and doing the Tokyo to Kyoto area; who knows.
Other than that trip to Japan everything is running like clockwork. My new job is going very well. I haven't had a single discipline problem after three weeks of work with elementary and middle school kids; remarkable. As I mentioned previously I'm working Saturdays, and that class is a lot of work. The level of stuff I'm teaching is quite high, we're using a college english textbook... and these kids are 13 years old. One girl lived in Boston for ten years, and speaks perfect english; better than some of the teachers at my old job. Another girl lived in Paris for 8 years and speaks english with a french accent; we also speak to each other in french and no one else at the school can understand.
Not much exciting coming up in the future, just working. We've got a staff dinner on friday night, which should be fun. The weather starting to get a bit warmer; highs of the low-teens and lows around -3, which makes Seoul a much nicer place to be. I'll try to update this a bit more regularly, but not much going on now beyond teaching.
