my nice little niche

Well, it seems i have carved out quite a nice little niche for myself in this land of the rising sun. There are no longer any surprises, and i do not have immense trouble living day to day. Things seem to be pretty stagnant, that is, until my inevitable adventure to Tokyo and Hiroshima in March. I receive my 10 day vacation in late February, and i plan to use the days wisely, and i have also decided firmly not to leave Japan in my wanderings, mostly because it is frightening, and secondly because a returning-to-country permit is 3000 yen (30 dollars). That is 3000 of my hard-earned yen the fatcats in the Diet in Tokyo won't be laying their miso-covered paws on. So Japan it is, and will only be. Comforting in a way, less stressful to plan, and i have no patience for worrying nowadays. My job is so easy sometimes it makes me want to shed more than a few tears, and my salary is more than providing for my exuberant life of reading books and cooking vegetable and rice dinners. Day in and day out things are pretty much the same. The same 15 minute bike ride to the same Sogo department store. The same textbooks with the same lesson plans and the same students, usually. The same coworkers, except this new Australian guy who just moved in today and i haven't met yet, and the week-long helpers from other branches we've been receiving to cover for an Englishman who just left us. His name is Ashley. Can you say Ash Ketchum of Pokemon fame??? I can. Let's just hope he can catch 'em all.
Yes, first a Matt Rainbow and now an Ashley. The bizarrely named Aussies never stop a-coming. For some reason i have not figured out, nova loves ozzies. I don't like their accents--they have this blatant disregard for the way words are pronounced--par example, they pronounce the word "no" as "no-oiiieee!" Why overcomplicate things? They probably need to compensate for their sullied image as nothing more than English criminals who managed to steal something beyond their wildest dreams: the lovely continent of Australia. And the poor "Abbos", as they call them, are left to chuck their boomerangs at freight trucks and play their noble didgeradoos into the lonely smog-filled night.
Nope, nothing much strange or crazy anymore. Nothing extremely funny anymore. It's just another country, like any other. Except with sumo and cartoon perversion and fried octopus balls and rampant unexplainable antisocial behavior.
Two and a half months and change to go.