Day -22: Matsusaka

This has been a tremendously exciting week for my wife and I! The board of education informed the JETs that are leaving at the end of their contract that they could start contacting their successors.

On Tuesday morning, my predecessor contacted me via an eloquent and friendly email, and gave me two valuable nuggets of information:


Firstly, I will be living in the city of Matsusaka, Mie for the next year.
Secondly I will be working at two schools for the next year. The schools are:
1. Matsusaka Commercial High School or Matsusaka Shogyo in Japanese (or simply Matsusho for short), and
2. Kameyama High School


Matsusaka

(Thank you JapanGuides.net for this image.)

According to Wikipedia, Matsusaka is a city of about 170 000 people. The city has a large area and as you can see, it stretches across the width of the entire prefecture. Matsusaka means "pine slope", and a neat way of remembering that is that Osaka is actually O-saka, with an honourific O followed by Saka for "slope". Now you know a new Japanese word ;).

It seems probable that Taryn and I will be living about 10km from the eastern coastline of Mie.

Matsusaka Commercial High School

It seems that I will be spending about 80% of my time at Matsusaka Commercial High School. This school is about 5 km from our place of abode, and apparently it's a scenic bicycle ride to work in the morning.

Kameyama High School

I will be spending 20% of my time at Kameyama High School. This school is... actually I haven't figured out where exactly yet :P. I'll get back to you on that one :D.

Iinan High School

Taryn will be working at Iinan High School, which seems to be about 25km away from our HQ at Matsusaka. According to Google this will be a 50 minute commute, however it looks like a mindbogglingly beautiful area, and hopefully the scenery will make the drive worthwhile.