My house mate Megan just made a site call "A Gaijin Diary" which contents all the posts that she wrote in her blog while she was in Kumamoto last year. Most of them are very interesting and I found quite a lot similarity to the time when I first came to England.
But anyway, it’s really recommended to take a look on her site, especially you are about to travel to Japan or willing to do some Gaijin study :-) .