First contact

First, I spelled the name of the high school wrong.  It is Ushikueishin.

In the placement sheet I got the email of my host mother.  I sent her a message using all of my Japanese ability, and she sent me one back, with much more than I can read.  The downside to trying to impress Japanese people is that they assume that you know more than you do.  Thank god for google translator.  And I have yet to send them a response.  It takes about twenty minutes for my to write up a paragraph, because while online translators are great for reading specific words, they are fairly unreliable for writing.

But they sound really cool, they go skiing once or twice a year so I'm bringing my ski helmet.  The younger kids play basketball so I know I'll be able to bond with them that way.  And she sent me some great links to the town, which isn't actually Ushikueishin, it's Tsuchiura.

Japanese page on the high school.  I suggest going through google language tools and putting in the url to get the whole page, but if you want to see what a Japanese website looks like:

http://www.ushikueishin-h.ed.jp/

Tsuchiura city webpage too: 

http://www.city.tsuchiura.ibaraki.jp/english/index.htm