Thursday, February 19, 2004

Well, of all the things I could have thought of, I never expected to get a guided tour of the 119 Emergency Services dispatch room today.
119, the Japanese equivalent of the 000 emergency number, deals with fire trucks and ambulances. For police, you have to dial another number, 110.
Theyve got a very advanced system, and I think more efficient than the setup in Australia in that each individual city has its own dispatch centre, rather than it all going through to a central place somewhere hundred of k's away. One wall has a big map of the city, and flashing dots showing the position of each fire truck or ambulance at the current time. As expected, the moment you place a call to them their screen flashes up with your address and lights a dot on the map as to where you called from.
Not the hive of activity I would have thought though; as you can see by the photo I put up.
Oh yeah, photos have moved, as the more astute of you may have noticed. They are currently being stored on Yahoo Japan's photo storage; which unfortunately means the majority of the page is in Japanese. Dont worry..., you won't need to use anything that is written in Japanese, just click on the albums in the middle with the names in English. If your computer insists you download Japanese text software; its up to you, but the page should still work without it.

Last night in Okazaki tonight, last night to enjoy the glow in the dark bath. Spending tomorrow night in Tokyo and on Friday move into the english school in Saitama. I'm betting that because its a school, there will be internet access available easily... otherwise I'll have to hunt down an internet cafe here and there to keep writing this! Would still love to hear from everyone, and in case youve forgotten my email address, theres a button over there on the right, the one that says 'Get In Touch' and 'feedback'.... click that and you can email me!! I promise to reply as soon as I can!

Saitama means an end to potatoing and a start to being productive. Hoping that this school is lots of fun... im sure it will be... and hoping against hope that there will be at least an internet connection, hopefully a phone.
Anyway, Shall let you know how it goes.

Till next time,

166

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