Well it’s been awhile since my last post, and I have a lot of information to share with everyone. I am going to be leaving on Saturday, and I still have a lot of preparation to do before then. I am headed to Hyogo-ken ('ken' is the Japanese word for prefecture). I will be living in Tamba-shi ('shi' is the Japanese word for city). I will be teaching in two highschools, and I am going to have a car because one of the highschools is about twenty miles away from where I live. Now for those of you who are not very familiar with Japanese geography Hyogo is west of Kyoto, and contains within it the city of Kobe. Tamba is in the center of Hyogo. For those of you who don’t know anything about Japanese geography Hyogo is southwest of Tokyo. For your cartographical convenience I have included a map of Japan (Hyogo is in the bright pink section), and if you want more detailed information feel free to look up Tamba on Google Earth. For those of you who know some people in Japan; the Otsukas live in Saitama (near Tokyo), the Schmidts live in Hokkaido (in the far north of Japan), and Yoshimi lives in same prefecture as me (I'm hoping to see her soon after I get there).

                Please continue to keep me in your prayers as I plan out what I need and start to pack. One of the hardest things for me is going to be deciding which books I can take over with me. I also am going to have a difficult time with the language barrier, although, this is certainly a great way to learn Japanese! I have had the opportunity to attend both an Orientation session and a Crash Course in Boston, which have hopefully prepared me better for living in Japan. Please pray that I can find a good church that is not too far away from me. It was great to see so many of you at my going away party; I really felt blessed to have so many friends there.

Thanks for all of your support!

Peter

p.s. Because this blog is public, I am not going to post my contact information on it, but I will put it on my Facebook account, so you can see it there, or email me if you do not have Facebook.

p.p.s. I have an American phone number listed in my contact information. I set that up with Google Voice, and it should allow me to call people in the US, or be called by people in the US without paying for an international call. That's the purpose of it, we will see how well it works when I get to Japan. :)