This is my apartment building: Leo-Palace Rainbow Chateau. Apparently, Leo-Palace gets its kicks by naming its apartment buildings weird, flowery names taken from English or (as in the case of my home) French. Who knows why, because there's clearly nothing rainbow-y or chateau-y about this building. My apartment is not in view here because it's all the way at the end on the second floor. The tree by the gray boxes (which is where the trash goes) is blocking my apartment.
The street on which I live. The striped building at the end on the left is Rainbow Chateau. Across from it is a vegetable field in which is growing a big, leafy crop of something I don't know what.
This is facing away from my apartment building, the direction that I walk to go to work. At the end of the street, I turn left and go a little ways before hitting a major crossroads. It's a pretty quiet neighborhood. The buildings you see here are all residences (except for the spired building on the left, that's a restaurant called Spaghetti House). And look - mountains! It was a little cloudy the day I took these pics, but they were still visible. On clear days, you can see green and brown patches, and on really cloudy days, you can't see anything at all.
The road to GEOS! It's a short walk from my apartment to the school, about 10 minutes (less if I don't have to wait at the light at the crossroads, but I almost ALWAYS have to wait on the light). The only time I don't enjoy it is when it's really cold and windy at night, because it's a pretty fierce wind. Apparently, Gunma-kun is gets very windy in the winter, and it's a Siberian-based wind, so you can imagine how cold that can get. The past couple of days, I've had to take my overcoat to work to wear at night, and that makes it much more manageable. I shudder to think what it'll be like in January, though.
This is the outside of the GEOS office. Not all that impressive, is it? It's a pretty small school, with only two teachers and a manager, and our numbers are consistently too low to keep head office pleased, but Isesaki is a pretty small town by Japanese standards. The school itself has the lobby area, two classrooms, a larger activity room, a small office, a canteen area, and a small bathroom with separate washroom. It's cozy and suits our needs pretty nicely.
This is my room. It's kind of small and not much to look at, but it's my room and I like it. Today, I'm spending my day off straightening it up and getting it better organized. William did things a little differently than I want to do them, and there's not a lot of organization going on, especially in regards to the Kids' classes. I play 2-3 games with them each class, and some of them require a lot of props. I'm trying to make it so that everything is within easy reach and I don't have to go off on a search for something and in the process lose control of the class.
So, that's a bit of my "neighborhood." It's what I see every day. The 7-11 and the grocery store are about a 5 minute walk from GEOS, so everything I need on a daily basis is pretty close. There's a ￥100 yen store about 30 minutes from my apartment, and I don't mind walking there. I'm hoping to try out some of the restaurants that are nearby - there's quite a selection of them, and it's going to be only a matter of time before I get tired of convenie store fare.
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