Well, since you asked...

My name is Scott Piekarczyk. I'm from Portland, Oregon (west-siiiiiiiiiiide.... or something) but at the moment I'm living in Fukuma, Japan.

I'm teaching English at a Jr. High School as part of the JET Programme, which is a really great programme... uh, I mean program that the Japanese government has set up to promote internationalization by introducing English speaking foreigners into classrooms as teachers. This is my first year on the programme... dammit program, I mean program, but so far it's been an amazing experience. Which again, brings us to my purpose in making this site. (I think I'm going to try to load this page with as many links as possible.)

If you felt compelled to read my intro when it was up, this site in an attempt to bring some of my everyday experiences in Japan to my family and friends so as to keep them up to date without having to write the same email 50 times (in which case, I don't really write the same email 50 times, I just write it about three times before I get sick of it and then cut and paste it the remaining 47 times which makes me feel real guilty but apparently not guilty enough to actually stop doing it). I'm aiming for something along the lines of Jason Rivas' wonderful site, thejetfiles.com, in which he, as well, documents his thoughts on what it's like to be an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) in Japan. Except that he does it probably a thousand times better than I ever will. (Props to Jason since his site was actually the inspiration for this one.) Check it out if you get the chance.

If there's ever anything you want to know about Japan, drop me a line and I'll try to feature something on the site about it. I'm probably going to start running out of ideas after about five updates, so don't be shy!!

If anyone cares about tech stuff, this page is made on an Apple G3 500MHz Pismo PowerBook, using, of all things, Adobe PageMill® 3.0 (which is why this site looks so cheap, but hey the disc came free with my iMac so I can't complain too much) from within the Classic environment of Mac OS X. If anyone ever wants to donate a copy of GoLive or DreamWeaver for the cause of making this site rock the house, I won't complain. :P

Okay, enough of the ego-stroking "all about me" page. On with the show.