At Long Last, I Escape Winter

There's a popular saying that Wisconsin has two seasons: winter, and road construction. (Considering that it is late May, and suddenly every two-lane in town has morphed into a twisty, turny one lane separated from certain death in the form of an oncoming semi by just a few measly orange cones, I believe this saying to be true.)

On the JET application, I did not specify any placement wish. My logic was: 1) I just wanna go. 2) Never been to Japan. I'd be picking prefectures at random, so why not just let them do it for me? 3) The less I demand, the more likely they'll put me someplace nice! (Sometimes I wonder if they would stick a kid who requested Tokyo into a small, fisherman town as far from Tokyo as possible just for spite.)

My one fear, as I sat last night contemplating the fun realization that I had no idea where I would be living in little over 2 months, was," Not Hokkaido. Anything but Hokkaido."

This is no knock against Hokkaido, which I've heard (maybe sarcastically) is a quaint, lovely little (big) prefecture. But I have had enough of Wisconsin winters for a while, and from my crude understand of meteorology, Wisconsin and Hokkaido could be twins.

Low and behold, at 5:44, I received my placement.

Kagawa-ken.

At first, mild amusement. (My university 先生 is 掛川.) Then mild panic. Where the heck is that? A few frantic Google searches later, I discover: 

1) it's in Japan. (What a relief!) 

2) It's on an island. Well, okay, duh, all of Japan is an island, but it's on ANOTHER island. Shikoku island, to be exact. 

3) It is (more or less) across the sea from Osaka-ken, which my mother will be thrilled about (she had her heart set on seeing Osaka and the cherry blossoms in April there. Her and her guide books....)

4) It's one of the smaller prefectures. 

5) Best of all... it's warm! Very mild winters... so mild, the snow almost never sticks around. 

Ha! At long last, winter, I have evaded your cold and clammy grasp! I'm going somewhere warm-with actual humidity! 

Now onto my CO. I don't know what city I've been placed in, but my contracting organization is listed as Mitoyo-shi. So yet another frantic Google search ensued, and...

1) Mitoyo is a municipality on the western side of Kagawa. 

2) It's about 130 square miles, so to convert it into Midwestern speak, it's about 2 hours wide. 

3) It has a population density a little less than where I'm living now, so not urban, but not thoroughly rural either. A nice balance, so I gather. 

4) According to my friend Gay Megaman, with my contracting organization being the -し instead of the -けん, I can expect to be working with middle schoolers and elementary school students. 

And that's all she wrote, folks. Now I eagerly wait (that's the word of the year!) for news, any news, from my predecessor and contracting organization. I'll be here, holding my breath, if you need me.