Hey everyone,

Sorry for the delay in writing.  If any of you have been checking the
foreign news though, I`ve been pretty busy because I was working for a
company that tried to declare bankrupcy although now I believe they
have found a sponsor, so I can go back to work, but I can`t because I
have two jobs and private students, plus I would probably have to move
and in addition I still won`t recieve payment for the last two months
I worked.  That said, everything is going pretty well.  One of my new
jobs is at this tiny school working for this Japanese woman who is a
full-on genius and she expects everyone who works for her to become a
genius or at least act like it, so its really cool.  She taught
herself four languages, has lived all over the world and got a
doctorate degree (I think) in linguistics with a specialty in language
learning.  I`ve looked her up online and she has definately published
articles on language learning.  In addition she is hoping to start a
translating service, which she would do, but she would use me as the
editor.  The students for this place are ridiculous.  It sounds like a
joke, but I have one student so far, who is a pharmaceutical
researcher that is studying English because he is going to Harvard
next year for at least 3 years to study and try to develop drugs for
diabetes.  He does 10 hours of homework every week for our 2 hours of
lessons.  Its crazy.  So meeting and working for this lady is just too
good an opportunity to pass up. As some of you may know also, I am
living in Akashi now.  This is a suburb of Kobe although it is pretty
much its own city and in Japan it`s considered countryside.  But its
pretty nice to leave the city a lot of the time.  It just feels
better.  I lived in the heart of Kobe for 1 year, which is tough for
me.  It looks like a beautiful city in pictures, but living in that
populated an area is so disgusting.  I`m used to seeing rats,
cockroaches, mice, and pidgeons.  I`m starting to develop a theory
that creatures (including humans) flock to cities for materials like
food and money, because its convenient, so this makes those creatures
lazy and because of that they become disgusting.  Trust me if you go
to Osaka with me, you`ll understand why I could think this.  Osaka is
a business only city and its disgusting on many levels.  I`ve never
seen such a high frequency of weird skin problems and things like that
except there.  So living in Akashi is nice.  Oh yeah, speaking of
being healthy. I quit smoking too.  I haven`t smoked since around
september 8th, so it`s been about 2 months and these have also been
the most stressful two months in my life, so I think I`m pretty much
done smoking.  It`s actually nice, although, I have been getting
stuffed up even easier now, because when I`m around smoking it affects
me even more.  That`s pretty much all my news.  I haven`t been doing
anything lately because I`ve had no money.  I`m hoping to get money
back from the Japanese government for my missing pay, but maybe I can
only collect a small amount and if I can I will try to get
unemployment for three months.  If I can get unemployment I will
definitely come home for a visit soon, but right now it`s
questionable, because of finances.  However I`m almost back to the
survival point and hopefully soon will enter back into the world of
decadence and waste, but right now life is very simple.  So that it
for now.  Hope everyone is doing well.  E-mail me if you get a chance,
I almost never hear from anyone anymore.  My life is not that
interesting, so I want to hear about other stuff.

Dan