Let's get started!

OK, here's the deal. This blog is mainly to bother people back home with news from Japan without having to write emails to everyone. Lazy, I know, but there you go.

For anyone else stumbling across this (very unlikely), here is the stae of play right now.

I have been in Japan for about 10 months now. It is my second stint after spending 5 years here from 1996 to 2001. I work as a director of studies for an english langauage conversation school just north of Tokyo. I live in Kawaguchi city on the 7th floor of a mansion buliding that has great views of the Arakawa river, hence the name of this site. Sharing this far from palatial abode with me is The Guru of All Things Japanese, my wife of 2 years and the best person in the world (although she is far from happy with me at the moment as I managed to put a hole in one of the paper sliding doors last night by throwing a ps2 controller at the floor in frustration with fifa soccer 2002 - oops).

In April I started an mba in educational management with the university of leicester. This so far has proved to be a lot of reading and plenty of vagueness on my part about what I am supposed to be doing. My tutor replies to my emails saying "great, good idea" etc, but not much concrete advice so far - this will hopefully change. Anyway, details of his work will be regularly posted, which I am sure everyone is dying to read.

About the window boxes - I have 3 at the moment. one is full of basil and is going great guns, no problems there at all. The biggest one was the also the first, contains basil, coriander, rosemary and lavender. It's all a bit cluttered and that's why I put some basil into a separate one, and also some coriander into another. but these ones are not going well and I am deeply worried about the coriander - it seem to be suffering from vertigo and will not grow upwards (like it does on the picture on the packet). Regular and exceptionally interesing updates will follow on these as well....