It' been a week now since I moved into my Japanese house. The house is traditional wood house and all there rooms have sliding doors and even though the are 10 people living here there is only one bathroom.

I arrived on a Sunday at around midday. I was moving into the smallest room in the house and that room current resident to a Japanese girl call Aika who would be moving into one of the other larger rooms. At this point Aika was still asleep so I sat in the kitchen. I was surprised to enter the kitchen and find a Japanese couple settling down to and English breakfast consisting of English muffins, eggs and soldiers, orange juice and tea. I presume this is not a standard Japanese meal.

The guy I met lives in what is now the room below me his name is Shume and his English is limited, being that my Japanese is worse are conversation was quite simple. We managed to get to names and what we do for work and why I was in Japan. His girlfriend Ayoko spoke no English but had Shume translate any questions se had. These mainly consisted of if I knew or had ever met David Beckham. She also asked me to name some famous English people. But due to the fact she wouldn't know half the people i mentioned the best we came up with was the Beatles and Harry potter, and he's not even real. After about an hour of stunted conversation Aika got up and moved her stuff into the other room. I brought my stuff upstairs and unpacked.

The room itself is 10 foot by 6 and has a bed built into it. I have to curl up a little to sleep as I'm taller than six foot, but so far I have slept comfortably every night. I have a little cupboard and a small table and I've made my self at home in my little room. Cat had given me a present of pictures of us and our friends which I've stuck up about the room. My only reservation with the house is that its made for midgets and I crack my head a couple of times a day. Mostly in my room where there is a massive lampshade in the middle of the room that is almost eye level. Every time I bang my head on it, it kicks up dust and makes me sneeze. That first day was spent unpacking and chatting on skype as I spoke to my parents, my sister and Cat one after another. At least on the weekends the time difference doesn't really matter. I popped out briefly that day to the shops bumping into an Australian guy at the door called Yarrick who suggested we go for a few drinks later that day.

The house is relatively quiet, but from my room I can hear if somebody is in the kitchen and the sound of sliding doors can usually be heard throughout the house. When I woke up on Sunday I could hear girls chatting from the kitchen and strangely all in English. I got up and went down stairs to find 4 Chinese girls in the kitchen with broad Australian accents. One was dressed as chip the chipmunk. The girls Mel, Monica, Jenni and Anna were all from Australia and had moved to Japan 5 weeks ago on a whim, all being fans of Japanese culture.they had studied Japanese before moving here and all spoke a little. A couple of the girls can even read kanji quite well. I sat with the girls for a few hours exchanging stories. It seems they all share one room the largest in the house and have been living as such for the last 4 weeks. They all had jobs at an English bar which is where Japanese pay to talk in English to native speakers and can also pay for lessons. They told me about the other residents of the house.

There was them in one room, Yarrick who I had met the day before was in the room next to them. On the bottom floor there's a guy called nick who they told me was American (I later found out he's Swedish) and There is also Shume and Kiyo a Japanese woman I had yet to meet. Up the stairs to my room there was Aika and I made 10.

Later that day while chatting to the girls Yarrick came in and the 6 of us stayed up to 2 drinking plum wine and chatting about why we are in Japan. Yarrick has been in Japan for 4 years bar a short trip home and he speaks excellent Japanese. He's also nice enough to impart his knowledge regularly as we chat. I soon got into the same timescale as the rest of the house which usually involves getting up late and chatting to the early hours over a few drinks.

On Tuesday the girls, Yarrick and I went to a Japanese lesson. For 200 yen which is about £1.40 I sit with a Japanese volunteer for a hour and a half and he teaches me some Japanese. My guy was an older man and a bit of an anglophile. I think I taught him English as much as he taught me Japanese. The girls were in a more advanced group and would learn more conversational techniques, and Yarrick having no real need for a language lesson sat in on kanji classes. All of us learned something form our time there. We are all signed up and every Tuesday from half 1 to 3 I now have a Japanese lesson. To get to the lesson I had borrowed one of the girls bikes which I dwarfed and Mel stood on the saddle shelf of Monica's bike as we rode. It's apparent that cycling is the best way to get around and definitely the cheapest. I would have to get a bike.

For the next week I hung out with Yarrick and the girls, on occasion one of them would go off to work, Yarrick included who had a job as a fake priest giving western style ceremonies to Japanese married couples who wish to experience a western wedding. Most night s we sat in the kitchendrinking or sat up in the girls room all of us having a DS lan party playing bomberman or Mario kart .

I met kiyo properly on Wednesday evening as I came down stairs to find her eating tea in front of the TV in the kitchen. I sat down next to her and we got chatting about Japan and England and I tried to explain how the UK flag is made up. Kiyo's English is fairly good and it made for interesting conversation and I learnt a few Japanese terms as we talked.Thursday I headed out with Yarrick on the hunt for a bike. We looked about for an a few hours and Yarrick didn't seem to mind leading me from shop to shop. He asked about second hand bikes in Japanese for me and translated, and by the time it was dark we found a good second hand bike that was big enough for me. It even had gears and a led light. It came to about 40 pounds, I had to get a lock and register the bike as well which made it a clean fifty. It Is a good investment as I had spent at least that on the subway over that past two weeks. This would mean I could avoid the subway and see more of Osaka by bike. Yarrick assured me that wherever I was in Japan it was cheep to have my bike shipped to me… therefore this would be my bike for the next year.

That night we went out. Yarrick, the girls, Kiyo, Akia and me all got on our bikes and cycled our way to Namba. It looked like a low budget quadraphonia film. Yarrick took us to a western bar called Cinquecento where all drinks are 500 yen and we settled in there for the night. We all ordered cocktails from the list and as Yarrick was friends with the staff all the drinks had a little extra kick. I started with an inferno which ended up being full of hot sauce. I was told usually the drink had Tabasco in it but they had run out. I asked what was in it then and the Australian barman pulled out a bottle called mama Africa's and it had skulls hanging off of it. This would explain why my lips were burning and id lost feeling in my tongue. We all picked different drinks from the list all night all sipping each others to see what they tasted like and we even had a few drinks that couldn't be found on there as well. I met a Brazilian guy who was a ju-jitsu sensei in Japan and he told me about the clubs around the area. We stayed at the bar all night and about 2 o'clock we were partied out and all very drunk. The girls headed off home and Yarrick and I stopped off for some food before cycling back we stopped on the way for Yarrick to chat to a teacher in Japanese. The guy was apparently a kung-fu coach as well and was very passionate about it. While we talked I saw people dressed up as if it was already Halloween. Japan is a crazy place. When we got back I went straight to bed. It was a great night and a fantastic first week in my new Japanese home.