Pink Christmas Trees

The Christmas season has officially begun, and as a start to the festivities Terry-sensei invited us out to a Christmas service at a christian school/university in Shibuya. We arrived a little late due to having just taught an after-school lesson to the 3rd year junior kids who are going to New Zealand for a two month home stay trip. We still managed to catch the majority of it though, infact I think the only things we missed was some of the preaching/talky-bits-of-the-service (which is all done in japanese, and due to the crowds we wouldve only seen it on a big monitor anyway).


It was a really nice service with hundreds of people in the crowd watching the Christmas tree being lit, and as we begun to sing some Christmas carols they lit the candles at the sides. In no time there was a sea of lit candles being held in the air to the sound of Silent Night in Japanese. Quite a sight it has to be said. Luckily, despite the fact that the carols were sung in Japanese, since carols are so slow we could sing along thanks to a sheet with the lyrics in hiragana. Couldnt tell you what any of it meant, of even if it was similar to the English version, but I could sing it non the less. Afterwards we went to Dubliners, an Irish pub, met up with Matt and followed up the Irish beer with ice cream, what more could you ask for? Big thanks to Terry, should he ever read this, for inviting us out, it was a really nice service and I had an amazing time.


Christmas in Oji has also started with all of the decorations near the station being put up. This is all great until you realise that the tree they put up is bright pink. With pink and purple baubles, and a pink and red wreath thing. With a pink and white base. Far too much pink for my liking, if Im completely and utterly honest.


It is nice that theyve made an effort though, and it definitely feels alot more Christmassy to see a huge Christmas tree (no matter what the colour) and decorations every time you walk to the station/to work/etc. Especially since I cant see any decorations going up in our flat since there isnt any about and I dont feel like buying any to only use once, unless I find a ridiculously cheap Christmas decoration shop.

Just a few more things to say to round off the post. I sewed for the first time ever the other day! I'll give you a second to calm yourself down after the shock. Just a little tear that needed fixing on my grey jumper just beneath the neck seam thing, but now its fine! My UCAS form has been sent, Im now waiting for replies from Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, Edinburgh and SOAS. Not sure which Im hoping for yet but my top 3 at the minute are Leeds, Newcastle and Sheffield. Also teachings going really well, having a great time every day at Junten as I get to know the kids better - and some of them have some really good craic, Im going to be pretty sad when my holidays roll around on the 11th of December because I really do enjoy going into Junten. Its the first time Ill ever say this but I think I might offer to give up some of my holiday to help out with any classes, or events or anything, because I dont have the cash to travel and I dont want to just sit around most days doing nothing.

Over and out.

Mike

Taikai

Hey all, hope everythings all fine back home! Life here has been pretty normal lately. Well as normal as living on the other side of the world, in the biggest city that exists, can be. Work just got quite a bit more 'busy' (Im using this term fairly lightly) due to the fact that our previously fairly easy thursdays have now got another 3 hours of working added to our timetable. The reason Im not entirely classing this as busy is because this time is spent working at a nursery, and all we really do is get fed and then play games with the kids - so to me that seems more like a cop off than actual work, but Im not one to complain about doing a lack of work, and Im sure anyone who knows me will agree with me on that.

So, how did I cope last thursday on our first session with the kids? Well, I'd say it went quite well. Mike from last year clearly made a good impression because I'm pretty sure they mistook me for him: they all mysteriously knew my name as I arrived and they pretty much swarmed me and demanded I play tig from the word go. They have no understanding of the fact that I dont speak Japanese though, and if I dont respond to them in Japanese they either forget about it and move on or just shout it louder hoping that the only reason I didnt respond was because I couldnt hear.

I'm hoping that the sessions with the kids will be a good way to practice some Japanese because although Im trying to practice with as many people as possible, the kids will speak fairly simple Japanese. That and if I dont use Japanese I wont have a clue whats going on itll just be a swarm of kids chasing me, hitting me and pulling me around. Should be a good laugh, Im sure.

On Sunday, I went to a shorinji kempo taikai (a taikai is like a sports competition) in Akabane, a town about 5 minutes or so away on the train. I met up with the students and the teachers in Akabane station at around 9ish and the thing started at around 12, the other hours in between were spent practicing the opening ceremony so that we knew what was going on (although this didnt really help because I didnt understand a word of anything, being the only gaijin [foreigner] in the place until 12). At 12 we had lunch and Leon turned up, meaning I had someone to talk to in English, which was an absolute godsend because theres only so much time you can survive not being able to understand anyone (or be understood for that matter).

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Anyways, onto the competition itself. There were tons of competitors, all performing either 2-man, 1-man or team embu's (an embu is essentially a kata but its more of a simulated fight, the kind that youd see in a martial arts film, than a serious of moves in random directions). Me and Yuu, a first year senior student, were doing a 2-man embu together and I was ridiculously terrified of performing as Id barely finished learning it days before. Anyway, with my pulse racing and blood rushing to my cheeks we got up and performed it. Id say it went really well, we took our time and I really put my all into the moves and didnt slip up once. The four judges held up sheets saying numbers between 76 and 82 (out of 100) or some such and apparently this score was enough to get us second place in our group of around 7 pairs and we both got silver medals. Not bad for someone who started not much more than a month ago, eh? Especially considering there wasnt a single other white belt in our group.

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I also performed a fairly simple embu solo, but that one didnt go as well. I probably enjoyed it more though because, due to having done the first one, I wasnt nervous at all. After the event finished me and Leon went to the adults/teachers' after party in a hired out room in Hokutopia. This was mostly just a drinking session for the adults so, although Im a teacher at Junten, I still feel more like a Junten student when Im doing shorinji due to the fact that Im getting taught by students AND we're the same age and therefore felt slightly out of place at this party. Afew people told me to drink but since the owner of the school (watanabe-sensei) was present I figured it was probably for the best that I didnt, although at the end 3 leftover crates of Asahi lager got dumped in my possession so Id say thats a huge score. They also got me to do a speech (ergh) to everyone at the after party. I had Leon there to translate things into Japanese but I figured I might aswell chuck some Japanese at them so I said about 6 or 7 lines and then the rest in English. I hate giving speeches about myself, its one thing I wont get used to. Ever. But it didnt go too badly and it seemed pretty well received. I think they were fairly grateful that I tried even a little Japanese.

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Another long post, eh? Cant help myself sometimes, when I start typing I tend not to be able to stop. The pictures are just some I took of me in my Shorinji Kempo dogi, figured I needed something and I hadnt taken many pics in a while. (The commas are there due to some random error which doesnt allow me to have a space between those lines...)

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Anyhoo, sayonara.

The Flat

Well, Ive kept to my word, and in the same day as seeing the dancing, the flower arrangement exhibition AND cleaning this place from top to bottom, I've managed to make a second blog post. Clearly, I have nothing better to do on a sunday.

So with not too much more in the way of text, here's a video tour of Vera Heights:

Bonus pictures:

Our rooms.

The beginning of something awesome (it seconds as an earthquake warning).

...et moi against our picturesque view (complete with roadworks).

A Clean Slate...

Purikura with: (L-R) Saki, Matt, Erling, Me, Yumi (front right), Satomi (back right). Random picture to make the blog seem a bit less like a block of text. EDIT: That picture really brings out my receding hairline, doesn't it?

Well, this weekend has been a fresh start, for sure. I got a haircut yesterday, which I was terrified about, and it was really necessary - I was putting it off due to the fact that should I visit a hairdresser they probably won't speak any English and I was pretty scared about what the outcome might be. It didnt go badly, if anything it was quite fun. The guys in the hairdresser are really friendly and although they spoke barely any English (to the extent that one of them didnt know how to say 15 minutes) but they tried to get everything across as hard as they could, and it allowed me to try out some of my new japanese vocab that Ive been learning.

Today was a very different sunday to normal though. This morning, me and Erling went to Hokutopia (the place where we gave the speech to the students in an earlier post) to watch some Japanese traditional dancing. Watanabe-san from our tuesday lunchtime class invited us because her daughter was performing and it was a really good performance. We watched 4 dances and each one was really well done, really professional (and considering afew of the dancers were about 8 years old it was insanely good). After this we went, with a member of our monday night class and a friend of hers, down into the basement of Hokutopia to see a Japanese flower arrangement exhibition. Although I wasnt particularly thrilled about flower arrangement, it wasnt too bad and it meant today was a real cultural experience with a hefty slap of two really traditional things. And then they paid for dinner for us, which was a god send because I have no money (payday tomorrow) and was going to live on instant noodles for the day.

This is a poster I found in a train station, again a random pic.

The real reason behind the title of the post was our flat. This morning this place was a hellhole. To put it nicely. The living room was littered with beer cans (anyone from Project Trust reading this, we dont drink... the cans were... someone elses...) which wouldve made us look like binge-drinking alcoholics if anyone from Junten came to see. The kitchen was a state, and my room was pretty bad too. I told my parents I was going to live out of my bag when I got here, and I pretty much have (to an extent, my clothes were always put in the wardrobe but pretty much all of my books and anything else were in my bag/all over my floor). However this sad state of affairs has been dramatically changed and although my awesome Mountain Dew can-tower still stands, theres nothing on the floors, the desks been cleared and the only mess to be seen is a laundry pile in the corner. Which is neatly stacked, I'll add. The entire flat is now habitable and will stay this way, and luckily now I'm not ashamed to take pictures of the place to let you all see what my flat is really like (the 11 year old wallpaper/stained carpets still remain I'm afraid). The next blog post, along with a cracking set of pictures, will be about the flat. That will either be later tonight, or sometime this week - depending on how busy I am.

Laters.

Halloween

Back at home, I dont think I ever really celebrated halloween much. I mean I remember as a kid carving out pumpkins, dressing up and all that, but past the age of 8 I dont think Ive ever really cared for Halloween at all. But now thats different. I just had an absolutely amazing Halloween, following the three importants "DR-s": dressing up, drinking and dr...eating cake? Ok its hard to think of a third word that begins with dr, but much fun was indeed had.

Halloween started about a week ago, when Leon and Saori invited us out to a sports 'theme park' called Spo-Cha. Annoyingly, thanks to Erling, we both turned up in costume as he told me that we were spending the whole day in costume - which wasnt true. And to make it worse, my costume was a last minute costuming consisting of a bloody tshirt (ketchup), a surgical mask and spiked up hair. So when I turned up I looked like an idiot. Luckily spo-cha has a vending machine for tshirts (100yen/50pence tshirts, yes!) so it wasnt so bad. The place itself was class, you pay for a few hours and you get access to rollerblading, baseball batting booths, golf, archery, shooting, football, basketball, tennis, badminton, table tennis, karaoke, a free arcade, pool, darts, bowling and many more activities. After trying out most of them, we all spent a fair while on the rollerblading which was ace - turns out ice skating all those years ago at disneyland, newcastle and mowbray really paid off because I didnt fall over once!

The day before Halloween, Matt and others invited me out to a Halloween party in a club in Shibuya called Womb. Interesting name, and a pretty interesting club - it was seriously packed, and everyone in there seemed to be foreign or atleast spoke English, which although I didnt complain about being with other english speakers, it did seem a little strange. I was fairly suprised to make it in, with being underage here and everything, but the guy on the door was...well...a little 'special' perhaps, and didnt mind that I handed him 'my' ID while my face was completely covered by my death costume. He didnt question it was me and in I went. Score. The place was heaving, but the fact that it was all you can drink made up for it. You literally just walked to the bar and picked up coronas that were just sitting there for people to take. The DJ in there was dressed as Osama Bin Laden (complete with dynamite strapped to his chest), there were people in human sized fanta bottle costumes and far too many other amazing costumes here to name. After missing the last train home, about 8 of us decided to hire out a karaoke booth for the night. I tell you now, sleeping in a karaoke booth is not comfortable. Neither is having to wake up at 4:30 to get the first train home after a night of drinking AND THEN having to go to work. Fun fun fun.

That next day was pretty good to be honest. I took a pillow into work, made a makeshift bed with some chairs and managed to get some kip and then on the afternoon was the Junten english department Halloween party which was ace. Tons of students turned up and I, once again, donned my death costume. We played aload of games, did some trick or treating (well, we dished out candy and forced the kids to say trick or treat), ate cake, carved the pumpkin and Id say it was a fair success. Some of the kids got so into it that despite the fact it was meant to end at 5:30, they stayed until nearly 7. Im making a note here: Huge Success.

This last picture was taken at ICU's festival (Matt - a volunteer here two years ago - 's uni).

Pretty good week. Got up to tons, but now Im left skint. Time to live off instant noodles and rice! =D

Nikko

Nikko was absolutely amazing, seriously Im not sure any other trips I have in Japan could beat it. I arrived at about mid day and went in search for some food, and after a steaming bowl of ramen I set off for a big trek in the mountains. I hiked past aload of waterfalls and then had a huge relaxing walk around this lake. Some of the best scenery Ive ever seen in my life, hopefully you can see that from the pictures Ill be spamming through the post. Nowhere in Britain could compare really. The leaves are just going red for autumn so it was insanely picturesque. I then had a bit of a wander around the lakeside hotspring town. There was a really nice small shrine and temple in the town, and since there werent that many people around both the shrine and the temple were completely empty leaving me with a nice relaxing and calm stroll around. That night I stayed overnight in a youth hostel and I met tons of other backpackers. A german, australian, austrian, italian, portugesian, and afew other brits who were from Manchester. It was great meeting so many people since I was out here on my own, and some of them were really sound people, really easy to get on with.

I went out for dinner with the people from the youth hostel and then on the second day a bunch of us went on an absolutely massive hike. We walked up to Kiri Furi Falls, and the view from the observation point was possibly the most amazing view I have ever seen in my life. A descending valley of cherry red and chocolate brown leaves surrounding this small picturesque waterfall, and the valley was huge... the pictures I took were terrible and didn't do the place justice so you really do have to go yourselves sometime. We then found another trail nearby which was much less walked (for good reason, it was going through dense forest and was barely even a track). It was absolutely chucking it down but that just added to the sense of adventure, if Im honest. The only downside was everything in my bag got absolutely drenched, and since I was only in a hoody and jeans, so did I! Afew of my Japanese books got ruined, and the little notebook I was using to keep a diary of the trip pretty much died aswell. Never mind, eh? We walked for a decent 4 or 5 hours and found another 3 waterfalls, each one more pretty than the last. The last one we found was by far the best though, it was completely off the track and we climbed halfway up the rocky bit of the fall (getting ever more drenched in the process) and then found that the next bit was an unclimable cliff, luckily we found a cliff beside the waterfall with a rope dangling down (?!), naturally seeing the rope we scaled the cliff (and cliff is no exaggeration, I had no idea how I was going to get back down, and instead climbed down another waterfall/stream). Rock climbing to the extreme!

I think I saw some of the most amazing sights Ill ever see in my life. Japanese mountains are some of the most amazing places ever, as you can most likely see in the pictures. After the hike we then made a trip to an onsen (japanese hot spring), which was my first time in one. It was a really strange experience because everyone goes in naked, which is completely normal for Japanese people - they grow up going into public hotspring baths together - but for an englishman it was quite odd... to say the least, but was nowhere near as bad as expected. No one really cares about being naked and everyone just gets into the boiling water and relaxes and has a good time. And boiling water it was, 42 degrees! You can only really stay in for 5 mins before you have to get out and take to the showers before getting back in. It really did get unbearable after a little while, but for a £1 entry you cant really mind only spending 15 mins max in there. They also had a living room in the building, so after the onsen we all got beers from a vending machine and collapsed in front of the tv.

But the day didnt end there, that was only morning! Me and Anton (a german who is currently travelling around Japan until December and then coming back to Tokyo to live permanantely in January) then went for a journey around the huge Toshogu shrine, which was a seriously amazing shrine. One of the best historical sites Ive ever seen. Seriously, the place was huge and really great. It felt so Japanese, for want of a better description, with the really old artwork, the really traditional clothing, buildings etc. The only thing that let it down was the rennovation going on in the most inner courtyard, but that still didnt detract much from it. After praying and making a wish in the highest shrine, right next to Tokugawa Ieyasu's grave (an intensely atmospheric place, it was the only place in the toshogu which looked seriously ancient, with no paintwork just grey stone, moss and dark wooden buildings, this and the rain and fog really added to the atmosphere) we met up with the others and scoured some more local shrines and temples.

Pretty good 3 day trip Id say. Really intended to go backpacking some where again, and maybe next time Ill take waterproofs and decent hiking gear!