I now know for certain where I’m going in Japan. I will be living in an apartment building called Shinwa Heights, which is located in Sanda. A quick look on Google Earth revealed that Sanda is about 35 km to the Northwest of Osaka, over some “mountains”. It doesn’t appear to be as built up as Osaka, which could be a nice thing.
I dont know where I’m working yet. If I’m working in Sanda that’d be fantastic, but I fear I’ll be working in Osaka or Kobe, which will mean a 30+ minute commute to work and back every day. Thats just the luck of the draw I guess.
I’ve read about the way the Japanese people need to create a mascot for everything, but I hadnt really realised the extent of it until I explored the Sanda official site a little and found that even the town itself has a mascot (and an emblem, and a flower, and a tree). So here he is:
 
Apparently he’s a pheasant.
On Tuesday night at 9pm I had my three remaining wisdom teeth removed. This was necessary before going to Japan as two of them had quite a lot of decay that was affecting the nearby teeth in my mouth.
The actual extraction of the teeth was fine, I’m sure I wasn’t very happy at the time, but one of the drugs they gave me was an amnesia inducing drug, so I cant remember much of the procedure at all. They also gave me a drug that made me “chill out”, which probably explains some of the photos Mum and Rene took afterwards.
So without further ado, I present the aforementioned photos. Be warned, if you dont like to look at blood covered teeth, then you might not want to click on the thumbnails below.
It dawned on me today that I have been incredibly lazy when it came to getting this up and running. I bought the domain and hosting package almost a month ago, and since then I’ve installed Wordpress, and not much else. I mean, I did select a Wordpress theme, and install a bunch of plugins, but does that work really count if you just delete it all at a later date?
Tonight I’ve changed the theme entirely, designed not one, not two, but three separate header images, disabled comment moderation, and written this post. Its been quite productive, and has highlighted my total ineptitude at all things arty. I still dont like the header you see up above, but it will either grow on me, or I’ll make a new one at some stage.
I’ve still got to finish the photo gallery, make the main page more appealling, and get another few plugins up and running. And time is running out.
