Tokyo Burns

Round 2

2011-06-09T20:12:00.006+09:00

I'm back. Nearly two years of no posts and I'm finally bringing this blog back from the dead for use during my year in Japan beginning September. I'm studying at Hitotsubashi University in the west of Tokyo, reasonably far from where I was before but still close enough to visit good ol' Oji with ease whenever I fancy.

I figured for a picture, this was fairly fitting - 18 years old, sat in Colombo airport in Sri Lanka, waiting for the transfer flight to Tokyo, preparing for a year on the other side of the world. I'll be in that position again soon but in Moscow, or Italy, or somewhere else instead - and hopefully not the ridiculously long waits we had in Sri Lanka.

Soon. So soon.

Japan Round 2: BEGIN.

The Speech

2009-10-14T20:15:00.003+09:00

I've now been home for a few months now but I realised I never posted my goodbye speech up here. The one I had to give to every student and teacher in Junten... in Japanese. It'll be nice to have this to look back at in a few years and see how much my Japanese has progressed from when I did my gap year.

みんなさん、おはようございます。

今日は私が順天ではたらくさいごの日です。
一年間東京に住みました。そして来週イギリスに帰ります。

去年の９月から私はいろいろなことをしました。
はじめてのところにたくさん行きました。
新しいしゅみはじめました。
日本語をべんきょうしました。
でも、一番楽しかったことは英語を教えることでした。
あなたたちはとてもいいせいとでした。ありがとうございます。

りじ長先生と校長先生も、本当にありがとうございます。
先生たちもみんなしんせつでした。ありがとうございます。

私は帰国しますが、日本語をべんきょうして
二年後にまた日本に来ます。
あなたたちは英語のべんきょうをつづけてください。
あなたたちといしょに英語で話したいです。
がんばってください！

本当にありがとうございました！

さよなら

Grass... and Trees... in Tokyo!

2009-07-14T18:06:00.008+09:00

So, last week I finished work and now I'm officially unemployed! Wooo! And Awww! at the same time. I'm going to miss the students, and working in general really. Apart from the really long hours, working was so much fun - I really loved teaching English, but sadly I'm not sure if teaching is in my future. Couldn't hack teaching in England.

During these past few weeks I gave plenty of goodbye speeches, I even gave a few in Japanese (but I was reading from a prewritten one on my phone =P). I gave a speech to most classes in Junten, and I gave some to the PTA, the ex-PTA and also to my evening classes, but they were nothing compared to what's to come. My final speech, and my final day of 'work' to do for Junten, is on the 24th when I will give a speech to every student, every teacher and every passerby... in Japanese. That means well over a thousand people in total, all standing before me and watching me speak my awful (at best) Japanese, while I shake in total fear. It'll be interesting... not fun, but certainly interesting.

Anyway, on with less depressing news! I went to the gardens around the Imperial Palace for the first time at the weekend. I hadn't noticed yet but the cicadas are out in force in some places! I love the sound of the cicadas, its one of those sounds that will always remind me of when I first arrived in Japan. If you don't know what they are, they're these bugs that live in trees and make quite alot of noise in the summer.

Needless to say the gardens weren't so bad. They are in the Emporer's grounds, after all. Some really nice quiet areas (apart from the annoying american tourists) and lush grassy and wooded parts. Wish I went there for hanami back in the spring, I can imagine that it'd have been a pretty amazing place to get drunk underneath cherry blossoms.

One thing that was really highlighted by the gardens, and hopefully by each of the photos here, is the amazing juxtaposition of old and new in Japan. Old meets new, East meets west, ...Skyscraper meets traditional Japanese building...? Ok, I ran out of ideas, but I'm sure you can see what I mean. It's something that's became hugely apparent in my time here - although Japan is very modernised (and some might say quite westernised), it also maintains alot of tradition. With young people going out in the summer wearing yukatas, traditional buildings in the middle of skyscraper districts and robots who can do tea ceremony, its easy to see where its desires lie, in a crazy mixture of maintaining the past while keeping ahead of the future. It's something that makes Japan a really special country, different from the rest.

The boat trip. For Matt's farewell party a bunch of us went on a cruise around Tokyo bay. An all-you-can-drink-for-two-hours-costing-only-£15 cruise around Tokyo bay. Amazing sights, seemingly free drinks and a giant lit up life-size Gundam replica in Odaiba, pretty much the best boat trip you could ever ask for. If anyone, and I mean anyone, comes to visit me in my exchange year here in 2011, they'll be treated (by treated I mean I'll organise it but they can pay for themselves, of course) to this cruise - its an awesome experience. Some of the best photo opportunities of the year, its just too bad I was too busy trying to tank more than my money's worth of free drinks to take many pictures. It just means that people will have to come on it with me to see for themselves!

With about 2 and a half weeks left I still have a few plans for my time here. By a few I mean far too many to actually do, but I will try. I'll keep you updated on what I get upto (hopefully).

Laters

Taikusai - The amazingness which is...

2009-06-20T23:24:00.011+09:00

Well, the Junten Taikusai (sports festival) was today, and it was amazing. Nothing like sports day back in St.Aidans. It was held almost like an olympic event with speeches, tons of ceremonial activities, fanfare (supplied by the band) while the Japanese and Junten flags were raised, handing over of team flags, some crazy jogging military march (ichi, ni, shichi, SO-RE - or some such) by the student judges, and, ending the longest sentence ever written, even student 'staff' who took their jobs ridiculously seriously.

All formality was soon dropped, although dropped doesn't really cover it... maybe dropped, spat on, set alight and then thrown down the well of informality and unadulterated crazy only to slowly die a painful death at the jaws of insanity. Or something like that. Merging that with the fact that this is Japan can only mean one thing - the opening event was a dancing show meant to warm the audience up, featuring crossdressing male maids, schoolgirls with horses heads and pikachu. The most awesome opening to a sporting event ever.

I essentially spent the entire day lazing around, talking to students, getting people to sign my 1-6 class t-shirt with crazy messages and watching kids (in official sporting events) beat each other over poles and hats. Class, pure class.

Here's a few descriptions of events to give you an idea of how a typical Taikusai might go:

Kibasen - Piggyback 'horse riding' event. Teams ride fellow classmates into battle to steal someone's hat. Basically, 3 people carry you, the hat wearer. Now go and steal the enemies hat, use fists if you have to. Some pics:

Tower-defence - Two teams. Two giant poles. Twenty students defending each pole. Twenty students attacking each pole. Simultaneously. Flying kicks allowed... no, mandatory. Oh and helmets also mandatory. Why allow needless injuries in mindless bloodsport? It's immoral.

Club races - Practice your sport with a partner for a minute. Now run to the starting line, carry your partner in your arms for 50 metres. Carry them on your back for 50 metres. Now switch to wheelbarrow mode. Now go for some good old 3 legged racing. Baseball and basketball teams seemed to win every time. Shorinji? Last. Good old Shorinji.

Yokasoi - Traditional Japanese dancing. Unless you're a third year senior in which case you dance to some crazy club remix of a traditional Japanese song.

Team skipping - 26 people on one skipping rope. Awesome madness.

Tug of war - not so interesting really.

Relay - ditto.

Martial Arts, Musical Instruments and Taikusai

2009-06-19T22:48:00.008+09:00

A picture taken a little while back, just after my Sakura post maybe, when a few of us travelled to Gunma prefecture to catch some Sakura after they'd finished blooming in Tokyo. Could've blogged on that in the last post, never mind.

Part two of the June catchup. Just a little (a little... haha) on how its going over here in rainy Tokyo. Rainy season's started recently and we have the Junten Taikusai (sports festival) tomorrow. Why they couldn't have planned it, say, last month when it wasn't rainy season I will never know, but it should be good fun. We've been setting it up and rehearsing at Shinden campus today and yesterday, which for me consisted of doing nothing but chat to students (and some fun fights involving bandanas and me getting lashed in the eye might have taken place). Sadly the teams seem a little unfair - the entire school gets put onto either the red team or the white team. All of the english orientated classes (my favourite students by far), most of the english teachers and Erling have been put on the white team while, as you might have guessed from the build up, I'm on the red team. Should be good fun anyway, I'll just have to destroy Erling and Barney in the tug of war and the other teacher events.

I've finally got into gear and sorted out a martial art, although it isn't quite a traditional Japanese art. I've started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, so if you go back 100 years ago it has its roots in Japan but as the name pretty much tells it isn't a Japanese martial art at all. Its quite expensive so I might be living on rice until pay day next month but it'll definitely keep me busy (and hopefully be worth the cash, although since I just got £100 from the Japanese government due to the recession its not so bad) since they have atleast 2 hours of classes I can attend a day - even more when I'm on holiday next month. After 4 training sessions my blue gi finally arrived today so I'll get to try it out on Sunday - I wanted the black one but decided that beginners in black gi's will just look like wannabe ninjas. Atleast now one of the three gi's I own isn't white! I'm really enjoying doing it but hopefully in a few more training sessions I'll be used to being choked every few minutes - I certainly wasn't the other night, and the armbars weren't so easy going either! Definitely alot of fun though, and the members are so welcoming, trying their hearts out to speak English and show me the ropes - even if the 'ropes' do involve being unable to move with someones legs in a triangle choke hold around my neck squeezing every last breath out of me. It's not dangerous, honest!

Another thing I haven't mentioned yet is that I have also been getting into the traditional Japanese side of things by learning to play the shamisen. It's a traditional Japanese string instrument - youtube it, especially the yoshida brothers for some contemporary shamisen music - and its so hard to play, despite there being so few strings. Rather than the plectrum you might use with a guitar, you use a hand-sized bachi and its not an easy case of strumming or plucking either. You have to use the bachi with the same motions you might use with a fan, you have to lift it back up after every note and hold it down on the skin of the guitar until the next note so that you get the full sound that you want. Great fun, I might not be able to keep it going when I get back but it's definitely worth it while I'm here.

Well that's what's going on in the life of me at the moment - I'll try to blog more before I leave, I'll have to see.

Sayonara

Wow I'm getting lazy with this...

2009-06-19T22:02:00.008+09:00

Seems like its fairly difficult for me to be motivated to keeping this thing up to date. Anyway, my first update in a long time - and with less than a month and a half left in Japan! And only 3 weeks left teaching at Junten! Wow how time flies. It feels like it was only weeks ago I was in England soaking up the sun... no wait... and only days ago I was writing the exact same "it feels like" comment here at the 6 months in mark. I can't believe it's so close to being over - I know I'm definitely coming back for uni in a few years but it's devastating to think about this year, probably the best of my life so far, coming to a finish in a matter of weeks. So much I still want to do, and so much I'm just starting and won't get to properly finish here.

Anyway, to try to keep fairly up to date I'll quickly go over some things I've done in the past few months (as much as I can remember anyway) and then finish with a bit more detail on current happenings in the next post.

So, where do I start - I've done so much but when I try to think about what I've done to pen it all down its gone from my mind. Let's see:

The thai students - don't think I blogged about this. In April (I think, I really can't remember) 20 thai students came over to Junten for about a week. I did TONS in the week with them. Pretty much every activity they did, even. Disneyland - awesome, not as good as Paris due to the Frenchies having a much better Space Mountain; Flower arrangement - mine was ace; Tea ceremony - nice and sour tea; Kimono wearing - it's not a dress, no really; Goodbye party - thai curry is lush. Too bad i couldn't have blogged on this properly after I did, would've made for a good post.

Mid year course - we had the 2-day mid year course in Ome which I don't think I've mentioned, maybe I have. We stayed in a really old Japanese house, maybe 300 years old, with paper walls, tatami floors, old Japanese armour and ceiling beams lower than the top of my head. Nice! We had a great time, 6 Japanese uni students, the 4 of us, Steve and Miss Nakaie. We cooked all the food (or I did my bit to help them cook the meals), had a good laugh, visited a disability care home, went for a nature walk and then finished up with an onsen trip (ergh onsen - far too hot for any longer than 5 minutes).

Enoshima - really nice place. Visited it with a few people - birds of prey, thousands of cats, pretty nice shrines, caves and jellyfish aswell as lots of nature. And then we went to the beach in Kamakura in the rain. Good fun - although I didn't get to see any of the shrines there which are supposed to be pretty amazing.

Thai festival - crazy festival in Yoyogi park. Curry, thai beer, muay thai fights, thai music, thai football (think volleyball/futsal but with only two people) and probably more that I've forgot.

Meal at Ten-Ichi - ridiculously expensive meal in a world famous tempura restaurant in Ginza. All paid for by a teacher from school, I swear I work with such nice people. Followed by a trip to a spanish bar and then an all night camping session outside of Hokutopia so that Yumi could get some comedian tickets - even though no one else was queueing, we had a good laugh watching breakdancers, drinking on the streets of Tokyo and heading to an empty mid-night Asukayama park for a go on the kids play area. Class.

Riverside drinks - really nice couple of drinks in a riverside cafe, literally on level with the river in Itabashi, as the sun sets. Followed by the necessary trip to a cheap Izakaya.

Barbecue - me and some people had a barbecue under a giant highway bridge by a riverside. There must've been hundreds of uni students doing the same thing and it was ace. Even when it started absolutely pouring down. Having 4 people hold up a blue mat to use as a rain shield has never been so fun. One lesson to be learned: only buy pre-prepared squid. When you buy a squid to barbecue (i.e. a fresh, full squid), when you cut it up brown ink will go everywhere. Not a nice sight and not a delicacy I intend to try again.

Dancing show - Kiyoka, one of my 2-7 students that I've taught since my first week at Junten was in a hip hop/house dancing show. Went along with some other students and despite the fact that I'm not into hip hop at all it was really spectacular, amazing show - and if she ever reads this, thanks for inviting me! It was really good!

Alot of karaoke.

Playing on my PS3 on a giant hi-def TV at Leon and Saori's house while Moro (the dog) tries to tear me to shreds, and nearly succeeded.

I'm running out of ideas now, but I've done ALOT! The most interesting few things will come in the next post though.

Laters.

Sakura

2009-04-29T14:42:00.005+09:00

I forgot to post anything during the Sakura blooming season, and since its a few weeks gone now its a perfect time to look back and post some pics!

A cherry blossom is the name for the flower of cherry trees, also known as Sakura (Japanese kanji : 桜 or 櫻; hiragana: さくら) in Japanese. In English, the word "sakura" is equivalent to the Japanese flowering cherry.[1] Cherry fruit (known in Japanese as sakuranbo) comes from another species of tree.

Long Time No Post

2009-04-29T14:05:00.003+09:00

Well, it's been a long time since I posted last. It's not that I've lost interest in the blog or anything, it's just that most of the time I can't be bothered to post, even when I want to. Anyway, due to actually wanting to post something that isn't going to take my three months left to read, I'm going to have to miss out on quite a few details.

Anyway, on with the blog. So, the new term started with the beginning of April and that means replacing most of my students with new ones, and of course the dreaded self introductions. With every new class (and most old ones) we all had to do a lesson of self introductions... when you consider we teach 13 different classes of students, thats alot of self introducing. But despite being one of the most boring and annoying things ever, it did highlight one thing for me. How much I'd changed since I came here last September.

Last September, I stood in front of the same amount of new students and introduced myself while my heart wanted to beat its way through my rib cage, while my legs were shaking at the sight of 40 students all watching my every move, and while paranoia sunk in with every whisper or giggle they exchange with each other. This time, things were different. I'm so used to being at the front of the class, nerves weren't an issue, the only issue was trying to talk about myself for a decent few minutes, which although it sounds like something I'd be able to manage, after "I'm Mike, I'm 18 and from England" you start to run out of ideas.

Anyway, introductions aside, I love my new students. The new senior high school English orientated class arrived at Junten with a higher level of English than the current second year or third year English orientated classes put together. Or thats the impression I've got from the ones who've chatted to me outside of lessons. Another group who are quickly becoming some of my favourite students are the 6 returnees in the first year juniors. They're only about 11 or 12 years old and yet, ignoring two of the new first year senior students and one of the teachers, they're the best Japanese English speakers in the school. They all lived abroad for between 2 and 6 years and their English is spectacular, and unlike most other first year juniors, they're the friendliest bunch of kids I may have ever met. Sadly, the only downside to them is that Barney managed to let them in on the nickname some of last year's 1-7 class had for me last September... that's right, I'm getting called Buzz Lightyear again. Infact here's a picture of 3 of them and a bunch of other students shouting Buzz and making superman poses... weird kids.

About nicknames, the 'other one' (anyone with a good memory will remember which one i mean) seems to have died down, although theres still a few 3rd year juniors who like to call me 'Machine-sensei'.

Quick last mention: a few weeks ago aload of teachers and the first year juniors did a two hour walk to Todai (Tokyo University, top picture). It was a really nice day, so much so that one of the office staff made me put on a Junten cap (I'm glad there was no patrolling fashion police, that thing made me look like a 7 year old american kid playing baseball). We walked from Asukayama park in Oji, down a long road, through another two parks (one of which was really nice, have to go back some time for pictures) and through more roads and finally arriving at the Akamon (red gate) of Todai. Then after stopping for lunch in the cafeteria there, we went to another park inside the Todai grounds. This one was based around a large pond (if you can call that bit of water next to the ski slope in Sunderland a lake, then this is probably one too), and it was somehow historic, but I've forgot and didn't really care so much. The more interesting thing about it is that this is the pond/lake/thing where one of those 6 returnee kids I mentioned fell into the water while trying to recreate the titanic pose (you know the one) on a rock a little way out. So funny, a few of the teachers were rushing to help and there was me laughing my head off. Good times.

Concering Mountains

2009-04-01T16:24:00.003+09:00

This time it wasn't so hard to decide on pictures, the one above is one of my favourite pictures of this gap year. Project Trust photo competition winner, anyone? Anyway, last week, the day after Hakone, I climbed Mount Takao. Takao-san is another popular visit for people looking for a day escape from the big city, and I was up for conquering a mountain in the name of Britain. I climbed from the very bottom to the very top, and felt only slightly idiotic because of it - there was a cablecar to about a third of the way up but I decided the entire climb would ensure better photos. Not only was the first third the most painful climb ever, so steep, but there was also nothing at all to see. Never mind, I guess it added to the sense of achievement.

As you can see from the pictures the weather wasn't so great. But this wasn't a bad thing because it made for some great misty pictures in the temples at the top. It was a really cool temple aswell, and I managed to arrive when a Buddhist ceremony was starting. I heard drums as I entered the temple complex and ran up some stairs but just missed them - I could still hear the ceremony going on inside but didn't want to intrude. A little while later I managed to see a procession of monks chanting, but I didn't want to take a photo - I'm sure they wouldn't have minded, but it just didn't quite feel right. So instead I bought a Buddhist wallhanging from the temple to commemorate the climb. The way back down was so much better than the way up, aswell. I took a less walked route (theres 7 routes up and down) that went alongside a river, from where it more or less first forms up the mountain. It was a really picturesque and scenic walk, and well worth the long time it took to walk back down. It's sometimes nice to steer clear of the beaten path, even if it was blatantly a used route I didn't see a single person all the way down which added so much to the journey.

This is one of those "what you can see in the distance" view points. I tell you now, I saw nothing of the sort in the distance. Being able to see Tokyo from here my eye. Damn mist.

Well, after going on a pirate ship the day before the trip, in Hakone - I needed to find something utterly and spectacularly cool to beat it. Monkeys! The monkey park was ace! I even saw a monkey do a backflip. Almost forgot to say, the monkey park was the main reason I decided to climb the mountain, because how cool are monkeys?

Concerning Volcanoes

2009-04-01T15:47:00.004+09:00

Choosing pictures from my facebook albums to use on here is always a tough choice - mostly because I take so many and try not to put more than 4 on. Anyway, heres my favourite pics from my trip to Hakone last week. Hakone is a hugely popular retreat for Japanese and tourists alike wanting a few days out of Tokyo. It's nearly 2 hours from Tokyo, if I remember correctly anyhow, and its in the thick of Japanese nature. Lake Ashi, Mount Hakone (a volcano) and the historical Tokaido road are just a few of the tourist destinations in the area. Naturally I was there for the active volcano. And the pirate ship, of course.

After a long train journey and a decent length bus ride, I was ready for some good old sightseeing. Little did I know that Hakone Shrine was currently being invaded by a good three busloads of noisy Chinese tourists who set out to ruin every picture of the shrine I took - but I soldiered on and visited the old Tokaido road Hakone Checkpoint. The Tokaido road was one of the old paths between Kyoto and Tokyo, but not much of it is left - a few stone pavements here and there - but the Tokaido train line travels more or less the same route as the old road (I think).

So yeah, the Volcano. After taking a pirate ship across the lake (a pirate ship!) and then a ropeway up the mountain, I arrived. I kind of had the image of Mount Doom in my head before I got to Hakone. However, it turned out that I was a little bit wrong. No giant fiery crater, no lava - however the volcanic crater of Owakudani was still quite impressive. The crater was created during an eruption a long time ago and is still a hugely volcanic zone, so much so that half of the mountain side was steaming. Quite a sight, especially when it sinks in that the sulphuric steam and boiling hot springs are coming from the volcano directly beneath your feet. Theres a place you can buy eggs that have been cooked in the hot springs, they're black and smell of sulphur... and don't taste so great, but on the plus side it's said to add 7 years to your life. Not bad.

Oh yeah, the Pirate ship. *thumbs up*. Round 2 of the Great March Blog Catchup coming soon!

Laziness...

2009-03-26T01:54:00.003+09:00

Just a quick post to say there WILL be a proper post coming soon, or maybe even a few.

Recently I've been to FujiQ Theme Park, Hakone and Mount Takao, which all need to be blogged over. I would've wrote some tonight, but I was shattered after a lot of walking today. I'll see if I have time tomorrow, if not it'll be Friday morning. I promise. Maybe.

6 months today...

2009-03-09T16:25:00.004+09:00

Well, exactly 6 months ago, on the 9th of September, I waved goodbye to my parents and little sister at Newcastle Central Station and took off on the train down to London with my Uncle. Then after a mini-bus journey across London, we arrived at the airport - I said my final goodbyes, to my Uncle and to England, and I was off. Off to Sri Lanka anyway. And so began the painfully long journey to the country of Japan.

The only way I can really put my feelings into words is: Christ, I cannit believe it. I've been here 6 months! 6 months without my family and friends, without sunday dinners, greggs pasties and chavs. Not all bad then, I guess. Infact, if I'm honest, it was painfully difficult to come up with many things I missed other than my friends and family (sunday dinners was an easy one, don't really miss chavs though, for obvious reasons).

If we could boat all of my friends and family out here permanently, I'd have no reason to go back to England. It's not that England doesn't have redeeming qualities - I love the place. The only problem is Japan is atleast 20,000 million times better. I love this place, it has so much England doesn't have - the coolest history of any nation (oh come on, a country which got invaded by the french can't match up to samurai, no matter how hard it tries), delicious food and so much more.

Maybe I'm just feeling mid-year blues (well, post-mid-year... I may be returning at the start of August) and panicking at the short amount of time I have left here, in the same way that when I was coming out here I spent the last few weeks of English life not really wanting to leave. Either way, I'm really setting out to make the most of these last 5 months, mostly in the form of martial arts. I've already been doing Shorinji Kempo (although, I've been hugely lazy since Christmas, but I will properly start again in April with the new school year), I joined a Shotokan Karate class a few days ago and I'm looking to start Kendo. 'How will you juggle all of this, Michael?' you ask. 'Do you really have that much free time?' Well, no. I don't, and I'm not quite sure how this will all fit in but I have my heart intent on trying. I also really want give Taiko drumming a try. How I'll manage all of this? No clue, but I really feel the drive to do more things that I can take away from the gap year, so that when I get back home I can get that "holy crap, I just spent a year training three different martial arts in Japan, the home of each of these fighting styles". The sense of achievement would easily outweigh the exhaustion that will come with it.

When I stop to think like this, I still have so much left to do before I leave. So many places to see (Kyoto, Nara, Iga ninja museum, Utsunomiya...), so many new things to experience (Taiko, Kendo, Hanami - wiki it, festivals...) and so much still that I need to do within Tokyo that I haven't got around to (seeing the Imperial Palace, visiting the war museum and the national history museum, seeing Sumo...).

Hopefully this post can be not so much a wake-up call, but a promise to myself, and to whoever reads this, that I'm going to really try to do everything I possibly can in my last few months before my journey back across the world.

This can also be a post to say "I'll be back home soon, get ready to party". I demand atleast 5 welcome back parties, including (but not limited to) some nights out, some house parties and a few trips to Japanese restaurants so I can criticise them on how un-Japanese their restaurants are.

The pictures in the post are just random ones I selected from my first few months here. The top one was taken at the Junten Bunkasai (school festival), which happened in my first few weeks here. Despite the fact that this will sound immensely cheesey, it does almost seems like an eternity ago, I'd kill to go to this year's Bunkasai just so I could relive it now that I'm really at home at Junten and now that I know so many students. Never mind, still sports day to come! The second picture is of my trip to Nikko, again that feels like so long ago - my first real trip in Japan. The third is a random picture at karaoke which must've been taken in my first few weeks when Paxman was still here.

Hopefully my next post can be about a trip somewhere - no trips planned as of yet, but I have another 3 weeks off. A small amount of travelling can and will happen!

Oji - Part 3: Return of the... Museum?

2009-03-07T17:24:00.005+09:00

Can't promise this one to be quite as interesting as the others, but I shall try. As I was walking through Asukayama park earlier I came across two museums, I'd heard a little about both but didn't realise they were both in Asukayama (although since one is called the Asukayama Museum, I maybe should've took the hint).

So there was the Asukayama Museum and the Paper museum. Yes, the paper museum - something about the old Oji paper mill. Swiftly ignoring said paper museum, I decided to have a look around the other one. After milling around the reception looking at some really cool postcards and books, I finally bought my ticket and asked if it was ok to take photos - I didnt understand her reply very well (damn asking questions in japanese, you arent going to understand the answer! fool!) but it seemed to be "yes, if you write your name here and wear this arm band". I'm not sure what the band said but I'm hoping it said something like "foreign press - photo taking allowed".

I wasn't disappointed, the museum was quite interesting - this may have been due to the lack of English in there. Museums are always better when you're just there to look at pretty pictures and exhibitions rather than having to read through a load of text to understand anything.

Luckily, I'd arrived just in time for a historical theatre piece which was basically mechanical mannequinns telling the story of something or another with a video. Despite understanding none of it, I really enjoyed it; the trees changed due to the seasons, I understood words here and there, there was a woman with a tail... wait, what? A tail? I didn't quite get that bit but due to some history Oji seems to have with foxes, I assumed that the fluffy tail emerging from her kimono was showing her to be some kind of fox god... maybe? Either way, it was a good watch, and a video came on after which, although really fun to see, didn't seem to be very informative so much as showing that, in the cherry blossom season, people got ridiculously drunk in historical japan under cherry blossom trees. Not much has changed then... hopefully.

But yeah, despite understanding nothing, it was really cool to see the kanji for Oji in really old historical documents (with pictures, Im not a psycho reading through long texts in a language I don't understand just to find two letters) and being able to see some of the history this area has.

And history it has, it seems. From all of the pictures Oji seems to go back quite far, which is cool, especially since Japanese history is the coolest thing since sliced bread.

This piece of art really took my attention. It was a photo of a really long scroll (lifesize, it went quite far down the wall) and is an artwork map of the area, and this little bit (you cant see due to terrible quality, for some reason the camera didn't like this picture) is Oji. Changed a bit, like.

Oji - Part 2: The Nature Strikes Back

2009-03-07T16:57:00.007+09:00

And Part 2 of the academy award winning series on the town, the park and the foreigner that could.

So this post is about Nature in Oji. The picture above is Oji shrine. I think its a fairly famous shrine, really amazing place although I'm sure I've mentioned or showed it before.

Sorry about the quality of this picture, the camera, as great as it is, tends to screw up pictures now and again. Anyway, this was a really cool thing to experience when I arrived at Asukayama park (for the first time, I add, despite it being a major attraction in Oji, especially during Cherry Blossom season at the end of this month). A group of kids doing a drumming performance on a small stage in the park. They looked a bit rag tag since they couldnt quite stand still, but this didnt detract from the cracking performance they gave. Really good for a group of kids.

Asukayama park. On a really nice spring day, this was a great place to go for a while - the pictures don't seem to capture much of the nice day due to the leaf-less trees though. I'll be sure to come back when every single tree in this picture is glowing pink with the Sakura.

Random water feature in the park. Looked good. Nothing else to say.

Big stone I couldn't read. Looked cool. Anything else to say? 'fraid not.

View from Asukayama park. Really shows the mix of nature and metropolis, I think, with the green park and traditional looking clock-thing juxtaposed with the high rise buildings in the background.

A view of the small river... thing that runs through here and under the station. It's the same one that you saw in the last post in the pictures of my route to work. And heres some more pictures of the same place:

A really nice little feature in the middle of a city like Tokyo. It makes for a really picturesque walk to work, it has to be said.

Onto part 3!

Oji - Part 1: The City

2009-03-07T16:31:00.006+09:00

Well, after visiting Hokutopia (the big high rise building in Oji) and seeing the amazing sights of the cityscape from 17 floors up, it got me thinking. I haven't really done much in the blog to show people the city I actually live and work in. And, come to think of it, I hadn't really seen much of it myself. Obviously spending most of my time here I've seen the main areas of it, but I hadn't really thought about sightseeing here, in the same way that back in England I wouldn't think of sightseeing in Sunderland.

This is probably going to end up just being a long picture post due to the amount of pictures I took today but it'll give you a really good view of Oji, the town (I'm still confused about what to call it, I suppose towns good because its a town in the city of Kita in the city of Tokyo... you get the picture) I live in. Look out for the huge contrasts in Oji, i.e. from old to new, from calm nature to busy traffic. Enjoy. Oh and the picture at the top is the area just outside the train station.

These two pictures are of places I pass on the way to work, I also go through a shrine as you'll see in one of the next few posts. Not a bad walk to work I have to say, really nice area and in a few weeks this path will be lined with bright pink trees (if my informations right) when the sakura bloom. Pic taken on the 17th floor of Hokutopia: Asukayama park on the left, bullet train and local train lines below it and huge cityscape behind.

I doubt you'll be able to see it due to the size of the picture on the blog but my appartment block is on there, to the left of the ENEOS red sign on the right of the picture,

Oji ekimae (in front of the station). I go through this place twice a day every day, sometimes it can be ridiculously busy - the amount of people who get off trains here is shocking since it isn't a big shopping area or anything.

And last but not least, a Hummer. This holds no significance to the post at all but I saw it on the way back today and, naturally as Hummers do, it stood out a fair amount. Undeterred by the Hummer's hefty japanese owner, and his black stares every time i took a glimpse at this beastly vehicle hummering up my Oji, I took a picture... although I waited until he turned his back. Not like I was scared or anything, I just... erm... didn't want to have to show him who was boss... that was all... yeah...

bst wkend EVAR

2009-02-28T16:30:00.008+09:00

So this weekend is starting to seem like the best weekend ever. And it's only just started! Counting Friday as the weekend, it snowed yesterday! In Tokyo! IN TOKYO! It didn't lie or anything, which was too bad, but it does mean that Britain has nothing over Tokyo now. Unless you count proper chinese food, of course (what is this steamed dumpling madness? Where is my curry egg fried rice and chips?!?). I didn't think I'd actually get to see snow in Tokyo, so I'm amazed that I finally did. And it was on a friday, my least busy day, which meant I could make the 20 metre trip between the main building and the ELC as many times as I wanted for the opportunity to act like a kid in snow. It was like arriving in Hokkaido again, only with bigger buildings, noisier roadworks and more homeless people.

To tip the start of the weekend even further up the Awesome Scale, last night I went for my usual Chinese (12 gyoza and rice) and the amazing gyoza lady (my new favourite person ever, beating Bruce Lee to the top) gave me 6 gyoza for free! I don't know why, perhaps it's because my custom brings in atleast half of their income, I eat there so often, or perhaps they had gone off and that was their version of a practical joke, either way this was awesome. And then to really destoy the Scale of Awesome, I woke up at 4pm today! This weekend is only going to get better on Sunday night when Craig arrives, back from Hokkaido, for a night of drunken Tekken in the arcade before he goes back to Britain.

Anyway, less on my amazing weekend, last weekend was pretty good too. On Sunday I went to Asakusa (every picture in this post was taken there). Here's a little bit from Wiki about the temple there (Senso-ji):

The temple is dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon, also known as Guan Yin or the Goddess of Mercy. According to legend, a statue of the Kannon was found in the Sumida River in 628 by two fishermen, the brothers Hinokuma Hamanari and Hinokuma Takenari. The chief of their village, Hajino Nakamoto, recognized the sanctity of the statue and enshrined it by remodeling his own house into a small temple in Asakusa, so that the villagers could worship the Kannon.
The first temple was built on the site in 645, which makes it the oldest temple in Tokyo. In the early years of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu designated Sensō-ji as tutelary temple of the Tokugawa clan.

It was a really cool place, but what suprised me the most was the fact that something so traditional, on such a big scale, exists in Tokyo. I mean, it always feels like I need to travel far out of Tokyo to find something really spectacularly historical or traditonally Japanese, when in reality its on my doorstep.

Also in the past two weeks, was the Speech and Recitation contest. I was one of the judges for the senior contests, where the first year seniors would recite a speech made by a famous person (e.g. Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, and others) and the second years would do a speech which they wrote themselves. Me and Barney had already seen all of the speeches when they did their 'auditions' to see who from each class would be selected for the finals, so we had a fair idea of what to expect - but not everything went as we expected. The english orientated classes (the classes who do more lessons of English than any other class, and the only class in the second year who get english conversation lessons) 1-7 and 2-6 did abysmally. It was embarassing, really, because with them being english orientated students (and we picked more of them than any other classes for the finals) they have a huge headstart! And yet their failure ranged from students who got too nervous and screwed it all up, students who get too close to the microphone and shout - the pain of her speech still rings my ears and yet she got a prize (is there no justice?!), and the students who generally failed at doing anything interesting.

The real heroes of this speech contest were a mix of people, some expected and some unexpected. The first place winner of the first year seniors wasn't an english orientated student, but she was a gaikokugobu (foreign language club) member, and although I don't think the club itself is enough to make you a good english speaker - only good speakers seem to join it, so it wasn't too much of a suprise. She did really blow me away with her speech though. Her heart was in it, her pronunciation was cracking and her intonation was in all the right places. As for the second years, lets just say two shorinji kempo students got first and second places *wink wink*. I jest, the top two were shorinji kempo students I knew, but that was only because they were the only students who impressed anyone (which amazed me, because as friendly as they are, they struggle to say much to me at all). 2-6 class had some really good speakers, all who froze up under the pressure of the Hokutopia stage, can't blame them really - I cracked up under the pressure of that stage in my frist week here, its huuuuge (I have to show you some pictures of that stage sometime, its where in an earlier post, I did my speech in Japanese).

The girl who got first place (if I remember the order of the winners correctly) is the captain of the shorinji club, and she gave a really intense speech about pets and how much they can improve your life, and despite this, how many dogs and cats are killed in Tokyo every year (huge figures, so big I cant even remember...). Second place was won by another shorinji black belt who did one on the nerdy ways of life... the Otaku (wiki it sometime). A really good speech, I was so impressed, especially since he was so nervous - he seems to be really shy, in terms of public speaking, and yet he gave his infront of almost a thousand seniors. Really good effort from him, especially since he had the nerve to come out of his "otaku-closet" on stage infront of everyone (which everyone proceeded to laugh at) - took some guts, i tell thee now.

One last shout out before I wrap this up goes to one of my 1-6 students. Also a shorinji kempoist, but one I have never really talked to due to him being in my 1-6 class (I get on so much better with shorinjiers that I dont teach), 1-6 being my worst class - I really despise that class, they have no will to do english, even attempting to teach them is painful (and on an unrelated note, this coming wednesday theyll be my last lesson of the year). But he gave a really, quite good speech. He went on stage, uber confident, and when his class shouted his name (customary for each class to cheer on their mates), he turned around and gestured to them to do it louder, and louder. And then made a gesture, when behind the podium, to shut them all up. The judges, including me, loved this. Infact everyone in the hall loved this, even though his speech was quite good, this comedy act made it all the better. He didn't get a prize, but he deserved one for being the only student to set out to make me laugh and succeed (I did laugh at others but only ones like the Annabell Lee speech, where he leant over the podium and gave his speech in (what I could only comprehend, due to his weird stance and even stranger intonation/pronunciation, as) the character of a sex offender.

Nice long post there, may take a while to read - sorry about that.

Laters.

My feet...

2009-02-15T18:02:00.009+09:00

Well, I'm writing this while recovering from several injuries. Injuries sustained by fault of refugees. My feet are blistered, my legs are kind of sore and I'm tired. Ok, I may have exaggerated slightly there but after running an 8km race in an insanely unfit state, I was left in a fair amount of pain/tiredness. I was asked to take part in an 8km run for charity, by Junten, and I was well up for it to be honest, despite the fact that the last time I'd properly ran was back in year 10 or 11, running around backhouse park for an hour in the winter Games lessons in school (against my will).

We were told well in advance so I should've properly trained but these things can't be helped and laziness got the better of me. I didn't really see the need to train, if I'm honest, especially since we were racing against the first and second year juniors (11-13 year olds). I figured it would be fairly easy to beat them but oh how wrong I was. I didn't take into account that just about every single one of them are in a sports club of some kind, like football, baseball, tennis, running, etc. It turns out a fair amount of them are atleast ten times fitter than me.

Anyway, a bit of an explanation: the race was to raise money for Refugees International Japan, a charity dedicated to helping refugees around the world. All of the junior students who took part raised sponsor cash, and me, Barney and Erling were required to do the same, so we sponged the teachers in Junten for all they had. Apparently, collectively, the juniors raised twice as much as the entire school did last year, so this was a fair success (and I think I heard that the numbers reached nearly £1000, although I'd have to check on that cause I'm not entirely sure), and coupled with our sponsorships and the money raised by every class in the school, a huge amount will have been raised.

I still thought it was fairly harsh to force the juniors to run 8k (although the girls only had to run 5k), especially since some of them (very few) are fairly unfit. And apparently one of my students agreed with me. A certain unnamed second year student of mine, who is notorious for his fear of English (and social situations in general), refused to get out of bed. I assumed he'd just walk the course but he went one further and decided it would be easier to disobey his mother than the teachers. Either way, as harsh as it is, the majority of people finished the race (and the ones who didn't reach the end will do it again next week. Junten really knows how to forcefully raise money for charity, eh?).

And onto the race: after tanking up on caffeine - my trump card (two red bulls and the last two pro plus tablets I had left from England), a few speeches and some warmup laps of a small field, we were ready to go! I decided to try to keep up with Nakahara sensei (a marathon runner) for a while because I figured I'd best make use of what little stamina I had fast and then rely on my fighting spirit for the rest of the race... this didn't work, infact I should've realised it wouldn't work because just typing it makes me feel like an idiot. Nakahara sensei was taking no prisoners and went far too fast so I was dead after the first km. I think I managed to keep up with him until the second km until he left me in the dust.

Anyway, I fought on, stitch in chest, blisters on feet and insane heat (for some reason in the middle of this winter period it hit around 25degrees - it felt like summer - and since I was wearing a jacket I nearly died). I still remember thinking, from about 2km onwards, that I really wished I had done some kind of training, but it was a little late for that. Anyway, I finished not too far behind Barney and Erling, who had both done weeks of running in prep, and came in at a respectable 47 minutes, which Barney said was his and Matt's time two years ago. So for the English department the results were: Barney: 40 minutes, Erling: 44 minutes, Me: 47 minutes. Not too bad, I thought, especially with little or no preperation.

After the race, we had to stand and listen to more speeches, awards given out to the fastest students, all while I could barely stand due to 4 massive blisters, but we were allowed to leave, finally, and on the evening Nakahara sensei invited us around to his house for a massive meal. It was a big lamb dinner and I tell you now it'll be the first and last time I eat such a big roast dinner in Japan. And since both of Nakahara's daughters speak Queens English in a perfect southern accent, I might aswell have been in England for the evening.

As Of Late...

2009-02-09T22:25:00.008+09:00

Ok, so I've finished blogging Winter Vacation, now for a short catch up (mostly because I can't remember much about the last 2 months that needs to be said, damn my memory). The picture above is from when the New Zealand students came to Junten for about a week. I only really did a few things with them, since I wasn't invited to disney land (pfft...). On one saturday, some weekends ago, we took them around parts of Tokyo. What a disaster that was. I was one of the three group leaders but since they hadn't told me where we were going or at what time, I was pretty much lost and had to follow the PTA members. So much for group leader, eh? Nothing really happened that day, we went to a series of places but actually did nothing, at all. Never mind.

The only other activity I participated in, with the New Zealanders, was the setsubun (sp?) celebrations. Setsubun is the Japanese day before the start of Spring in the lunar calendar. Essentially someone dresses up like a devil (an 'oni') and the others pelt beans at him. And then eat the beans. Can't say that's not an epic household festival, can you? Was a pretty good day: only a half day at work, I pelted beans at some students in masks, got some free food. Not bad, not bad.

I don't think I ever mentioned them much here, but we lost two men in action. Trevor, the Pennsylvanian exchange student, and Mikhal, the Pennsylvanian (turned New Zealander) exchange student, both went home after spending a fair slab of time here. It was quite weird to see them go, since they've both been around since I came to Junten and its been alot quieter since they left, as we're now down to one exchange student. Anyhow, this pic here is the last pic of the three Mikes O' Junten. Sadly, we never got a picture of Quadruple Mike, when Paxman was here, so Triple Mike will have to do.

Will try to keep more up to date so that I don't find myself stuck for things to say like now, but I'm not making promises.

Laters

Hokkaido

2009-02-09T21:59:00.003+09:00

Ok. It's february. I haven't made posts about anything since New Years. Laziness seems to have taken over. In a vain attempt to get over the laziness, this will be a big picture post about our time in Hokkaido with a little bit of text. Hopefully when the winter holidays are all blogged about, I can finally get on with updating now and again with other stuff. Have to see I guess, anyhow, as promised:

First of all: SNOW! I know to you lot back at home this may not be the most amazing thing you've ever heard due to the recent weather in Britain but THERE WAS SNOW IN HOKKAIDO! It just didn't stop snowing. In some places the snow was upto my knees, which was ace until me and the toya vols went for a bit of hillwalking (if you can call it that, we walked up a fairly large hill and then back down). Due to no one being suicidal enough to go walking in the hills, the snow was untouched, and so immensely deep. Made for a pretty tough walk since I didnt have snowboots and nearly caught frostbite, but was amazing fun nonetheless. I miss the snow =(

During our time up in the far north, we had a bash at snowmobiling. I got well excited at the idea of this because I kind of assumed it'd be a case of: "here's a snowmobile, theres a field and some hills, try not to die", but instead it was a case of: "I'll be driving fairly slowly around this quite boring circuit, follow me and try not to have too much fun, now!". Don't get me wrong it was tons of fun driving a snowmobile, and the sights up there were intense, but it just wasn't quite what I expected. Damn you dad, ruining my expectations by taking me quad biking and go karting too many times.

Toya-ko itself is one of the nicest places ever. Some cracking views, tons of snow and some of the friendliest people I've ever met. Seriously, despite having very limited English ability, these people really tried their hearts out when talking to you, especially the people in the Toya Penshon where we stayed. This old couple owned it, and despite having not a word of English under their belts I had a few amazing conversations through insanely broken Japanese and lots of pointing and hand gestures. I couldn't believe how friendly they were, especially considering the language barrier. Still, despite how much I loved the place, I doubt I could live there. I think I've been spoiled by being sent to Tokyo because I doubt anywhere else in the world will seem even remotely liveable after this gap year, its such an amazing place.

Year of the Ox

2009-01-23T18:55:00.004+09:00

No pictures this update, I'm afraid, but many were taken in Hokkaido and so the Hokkaido post will be chockablock with them.

Making a quick recovery after the Christmas banter, partying started soon after with the Hokkaido volunteers arriving on the 26th and Craig, last year's Hokkaido volunteer, getting to Japan afew days later. It was tons of fun to see the Hokkaido volunteers again, especially since I get to see very few people that I actually met/knew in the UK before I came out here, even though I'd only met them both briefly.

Chronological order is going out of the window at this point because although I can remember everything that happened, my memory isn't so good as most of the people reading this probably know. Well, sometime after they arrived in Tokyo the four of us headed over to Harajuku to check out the area and Meiji shrine in particular. I'd already been to Meiji shrine but this time it was ten times better because there was no rennovation going on. The first time when we went with Lynsey and Tom (check a previous entry) a few really good photo opportunities were ruined due to scaffolding etc, and this time they were ruined by a lack of camera.

So after a bit of tourism we headed off to Shinjuku where we were meeting Aiko, one of the girls who showed the four of us around in our first week, and a few of her friends. Following a meal, purikura and lots of karaoke, I left everyone to head off to Leon and Saori's house where I was going to kip for the night. They live quite close to Narita airport so it was the perfect place to stay since I was picking Craig up from the airport the next day. And what a pickup from the airport that turned out to be. I didnt have Craig's number, he didn't have my number, and all I knew was what time his flight was arriving so it took us nearly an hour and lots of phone calls from the two of us to a mutual friend to sort things out. It did all get sorted and Craig turned out to be sound as owt.

During their time here; me, Craig and the Hokkaido volunteers headed to Akihabara for some arcade games, shopping and a trip to a maid cafe. Wait, what? A maid cafe? Yes, its a cafe... where the waitresses are dressed like maids. When I'd heard of them before coming to Japan I kind of assumed that they were a place for lonely old men to go to cheer themselves up, but after actually visiting one the truth isn't so creepy. Essentially, they're just an ultra-cute place for anyone who wants to relax in an ultra-cute place. And when I say ultra-cute, I mean it. Pink walls, high-pitched up-beat J-pop music playing in the background and waitresses cosplaying maids. In England, the only clientele they'd get would be teenage girls and, probably, creepy old men. However, in Japan it seems that anyone and everyone with a slight appreciation for cuteness (that being every Japanese person) is a potential customer. Don't get me wrong it was a really fun place to go and I'd recommend it to anyone to be honest, this might just be because we were being served drinks by maids while playing on the Wii, but who knows? You probably really have to be in the mood to appreciate the cuteness though, otherwise it's a little too sickly-sweet for it's own good.

So, after some drunken nights and lots of arcade Tekken, New Years finally rolled around and the 5 of us, plus Leon and Saori, partied it up in Vera Heights (our flat) seeing in the Year of the Ox in style. A damn good week to make up for the previous one, it has to be said.

Christmas in Japan

2009-01-23T17:43:00.005+09:00

Its been a long time in the coming, but finally I'm getting around to updating this blog with Mike's winter adventures in the land of the rising sun. Since I dont think I did much after the Hong Kong students trip until Christmas, I'll just get started with Christmas time itself. The only problem is, since I've left updating this for an entire month after the birth of Christ, my memory has diminished ever so slightly and I doubt I'll be able to remember everything that went on during the festive period but maybe I can distract you with... hey look, pretty pictures!

So, Christmas eve. That joyful occasion that I can't remember much of. Not suprised really, because I don't think I actually did anything at all. Probably just stayed in the flat all day. One thing I did do, though, was to open all of the Christmas presents/cards that people sent. I'm not one to get soppy and sentimental at all but I did come close when I was opening the presents and cards. All of the encouraging and really nice messages that people sent, the thoughtful presents, and that card from my sister that had a woman in a bikini with a chimps head calling me a bumface, really made homesickness kick in and I realised how painful Christmas was going to be without my family - and knowing that I'd still have to wait another 8 and a half months before seeing everyone again didn't really soften the blow.

Needless to say, I battled on and made my way through work on Christmas day. That's right, work on Christmas day. Work that, months before, I was told I needed to attend but work that, on the day, I was told wasn't necessary. Not funny Junten. Not funny at all. It turns out that I didn't actually need to go to the End of Year ceremonies, and no one missed me when I stayed in the ELC instead. So with my new found time I mished off to Ueno to find something to do that wasn't just sitting in work or in the flat before the teachers' Bonenkai (end of year party) on the evening that I actually had to attend.

Now when someone mentions the words "Christmas dinner", it conjures up an image of me eating a mouth-watering meal of ham, chicken, vegetables, yorkshires, etc, until I'm stuffed and refuse to eat anymore in case I collapse due to not being able to support my own bodyweight. That is until they bring out the chocolate cake, in which case I give up all my inhibitions and take the risk of killing myself by eating more. I mean, if we take the words "Christmas dinner" down to their latin roots they more or less mean "best meal of the year". This year I had a kebab. On my own. In Ueno.

The bonenkai wasn't so interesting so here's a quick overview: alcohol available, us not drinking, teachers drunk, us not drunk, teachers acting like idiots due to alcohol intake, us not drunk, Mike gives a godawful speech in Japanese, us not drunk.
So yeah, a little bit of a depressing post, but that's because Christmas was indeed depressing but New Years and the rest of the winter holidays completely made up for it. More on that in the next post.

Also, my favourite video of the festive period (a little late for it now but I still love it): http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=lmCrIZeob4w

Hong Kong day trip

2008-12-21T19:27:00.002+09:00

Well, a day trip with Hong Kongers rather than to Hong Kong. Bit misleading there. I'll try to keep text to a minimum with this post, and fill it up with pictures rather than words as I notice I sometimes type more than is humanly readable. Well, I popped into school on Friday and Nakahara-sensei let me know that I was invited to go on a day out with the Hong Kongese. It ended up being Me, Mikey, some PTA members, afew Junten students and aload of Hong Kongians and it was great fun. We went to Ueno zoo, as you can see in these pictures, which is ace. We didn't have time to go all the way around though, so I definitely intend to go back sometime.

This is a pic of Mikey with two of the Hong Kongos and a big fluffy panda. Ueno zoo was famous for its giant panda not long ago... until it died. I didn't get to see a panda =(

After the zoo, we headed to Akihabara, the wonderful place it is. Me and Mikey went for a wander when everyone was given free time. Afew things which made my day: I played Street Fighter 4. Its only out in arcades at the moment and its class. I clearly haven't lost my SF skill that I gained when I was six, firing off those hadokens and shoryukens like no ones business. Also, there was a PC for £2.50 in one shop. No joke. Two pounds, fifty pence. Didn't tell you the spec, but I'm sure the price speaks for itself in this case, but still, an under three-quid computer!

It was quite fun trying to get from Ueno to Akihabara to Odaiba (our next destination) with more than 30 people in a group. JR didn't know what hit them when we turned up. Trying to make sure everyones there, getting on the right train and getting off at the right stop makes for a lot of hassle but its completely made up for by the looks on a few, select, Japanese faces. The only way I can describe their faces is with what I'd expect them to be saying in their heads (and this isnt most Japanese people, just a select few who I saw): "CHINESE PEOPLE? ON MY TRAINS? PREPOSTEROUS! AND THEY BRING WHITE PEOPLE TOO! HAVE THEY NO SHAME?!" This is of course a joke, but there were still some hilarious faces when people realised there was about 40 foreigners filling up an entire carriage of the train.

In Odaiba (my second time here, I came to Odaiba with Nakahara sensei and his family back in our first week at Junten) there's a huge ferris wheel from which you can see a vast distance of Tokyo, theres a beach, theres the Sega Joypolis (a themepark), several shopping centres, an Edo period hot spring theme park and alot more. We did none of this. We went to the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. What a godawful trip for the Hong Kongans. They come to Japan and where does Japan send them? A musem about science. Thats not just a museum, the've doubled - no quadtrupled - the boredom factor by chucking the word science in there. It did make for an interesting trip, but only when I was late to leave and half the people had already left and the others waiting for me. When I finally got to them it turned out Mikey was still in there, and after 30 minutes of tannoy messages and searching we found him. Ok, when I said it was an interesting trip, the interesting bit started after we left the museum, but never mind.

All in all, a good day, and what makes it best is that Junten are subsidising our travel and food costs (thats right Junten, you pay for my kebab, and you pay for it good).

Junten Christmas Party: Round 2

2008-12-21T19:01:00.004+09:00

We had a second christmas party hosted by the English department on Wednesday, which was ace, probably a lot better than the first. The hong kong students had just arrived at Junten and I was shocked at how outgoing they all were. Not a single shy one to be seen, which is a massive change from the Japanese students. Dozens of them asked for photos with us, compared to the zero Japanese students that have asked me for one. They were a really friendly bunch, and their English was spot on which again came as a shock since Japanese students, in general, speak pretty poor English.

Tons happened on the day, free lunch (clearly the most important), Christmas games (mostly the same as the other party), singing 12 days of christmas, a performance by Junten's choir club (first I'd heard of one existing), another by the foreign language club. Then after a few presentations about Christmas in Hong Kong, Germany and Scotland, we were given an amazing performance of Shorinji Kempo. It was really ace, normally they just go out and perform a few embus, but here they kind of made a backstory and turned it into an English language skit, a really funny one at that about some Yakuza stealing someone's manga and this person eventually learning Shorinji and being able to get his stuff back. Included in the story were fighting mothers: played by male shorinji students in pink aprons; and Doraemon with a gun (I think. It was a guy in blue with a bell, I'm sure it was meant to be Doraemon or some other kids character anyhow). The brass band also gave a show, which was the most intense thing of the day. They seriously never cease to amaze me, every time I've seen them play it's been top notch. Really hard to believe that they're a school club and not a professional band.

And yes, thats me dressed as santa. I was forced to, but luckily only for a short bit of time to dish out some sweets.

Not a bad party I have to say. It's just too bad the Hong Kong students leave on monday, it was quite nice to have a huge amount of English speakers in Junten.

My ear is numb...

2008-12-21T18:48:00.004+09:00

Yeah... my ear is numb. The kind of numb you get in your face after getting anaesthetic at the dentist. I don't know why it started, and it didn't go away after a day's sleep. If it continues I shall have to go see a doctor tomorrow, I guess. I assume I mightve fell asleep on the train in a funny way, or atleast I hope thats all it is. The internet didn't manage to comfort me.

I went out to a club last night with some people and on the way back at, maybe, 5 am or something I kept falling asleep on the train. I was on the yamanote line which is essentially a huge circle and it'd take over an hour to go all the way around it. I went all the way around atleast twice. I just kept falling asleep and then waking up and realising I'm at a station before the station I actually got on at. And then for some reason I kept on getting off thinking it was my stop, only to find out it wasn't, and then having to wait for the next train to come. It took me about 5 hours to get home, when it should've been a 35 minute journey. And I wasn't even that drunk. Well maybe a little.

Small Update

2008-12-16T19:11:00.003+09:00

As far as holidays go, I'm pretty sure I haven't had one so far, despite my official status of "on holiday" since last thursday. Although I haven't punched in at work since thursday, theres only been two days I haven't been in, Friday and Sunday. On Friday I took a trip to Akihabara to look for a DS 'game' which is essentially a kanji dictionary. I found it but decided not to buy it, due to £20 being too much for something I decided that I probably wouldnt use, I can wait until I properly get into learning kanji I guess.

At the weekend, apart from an exhausting day of standing in the freezing cold for 5 hours by myself, was pretty relaxing (but the kind of relaxing which is on par with boring). The only interesting thing that happened was managing to catch some of the sunderland game live through a chinese website. Needless to say, watching an english game live via china didn't make for a stable connection, and it was only watchable for a little while but I managed to catch a fair amount of us trouncing West Brom taking us out of the relegation zone... only to go straight back in after Newcastle's 3 - 0 win.

The english christmas party at Junten, yesterday, was set for fail. For the first half an hour, only 3 people turned up apart from us dirty foreigners. No one had done much advertising, unlike the halloween party where we put posters on every floor of the main building and told every class at least 3 times. Despite our lack of effort (which I still believe was made up for with our effort in making awesome decorations), 2-6 class came to our rescue! Nearly the entire class turned up and meant that a party actually happened. We played a few games, tons of chocolate was dished out and then we sung the 12 days of christmas with pairs having each part. I say pairs, I had to sing the "five golden rings" bit alone, the hardest bit of the entire song for the worst singer. Cheers lads. Needless to say, I forgot to sing a few times, was out of key for the majority and even managed to screw up the rhythm completely, but by the end I was semi-pro I tell thee now. Just before the final game, 1-7 class finally turned up (Junten had them in the JM Hall for some lecture or something), we played pass the parcel (I won nothing, again fairly needless to say). All in all, I have to say: huge success.

Today was a rather odd tuesday. Our first tuesday 'off', and although I did turn up to work, it obviously wasn't it's normal hectic tuesday. Our lunchtime class gave us £50 each as a gift for our journey to Hokkaido, absolute legends they are, and then Nishimura-san sorted out my gaijin card which I signed up for months ago and forgot to collect. I am now officially an alien, and I have the card to prove it.

The thing which really made this tuesday strange, though, was that instead of teaching classes all day, I instead practiced shorinji for hours... and hours... and hours. From 2 til 5. Insanity, I tell you now. The shorinji crew were awesome though, during a break I asked for some help with my speech (more on that after) and they spent ages reading through the Japanese, correcting it and re-writing it out. For the 1-6 class students I'm sure it felt good for them to be on the teaching end of the stick, because in my lessons they clearly hate being on the student end. The speech I mentioned was sprung on us yesterday. Apparently at the Junten end of year party, the one where we're the only ones not allowed to drink, we have to give a speech in japanese to a load of rowdy, drunken teachers. Fun, fun, fun, eh? Possibly not, I've been told that they're quite a tough crowd when drunk and probably won't pay attention. I'd prefer the good, sober attention where they're amazed at my Japanese, but I guess no attention is better than getting negative responses.

Tomorrow should be fun. On the internet I've found a volunteer japanese class that teaches four times a week in the same building as I voluntarily teach english on a wednesday night. I'll be checking that out tomorrow morning which should be good fun, if its still running and the website isn't outdated of course. The great thing about the lessons though, is the website says they're 2 hours long and only cost 100yen each (for the record thats about 50p). That means £2 a week for 8 hours of lessons, should I attend them all. Not bad eh? And on top of the lesson, the hong kong students are arriving tomorrow. They'll be treated to a shorinji performance (which I dont have to take part in, yus!), some singing and a christmas party. That's right, I get to go to another christmas party, with more chocolate. Score! More on how this went in a later update, no doubt.

Well, I managed to keep this to a small update didn't I... lol. Never mind. I get too carried away with typing when I start.

Laters!

Red Cliff

2008-12-13T10:22:00.003+09:00

Last weekend I went to see what was possibly one of the best films I have ever seen in my life. Red Cliff is a huge Chinese epic about the Battle of Red Cliff in the Three Kingdoms period in China. I can barely use words to explain how amazing this film was. It was indeed epic, some of the battles and scenes could easily match up to the epic nature of the Lord of the Rings films, it was gory, but not in a ridiculous or an unbelievable way - more in a "Jesus Christ, that must have hurt" kind of way, and the fight scenes were amongst the best I've ever seen in any film, hollywood or asian.

Needless to say this is a must see film. Seeing it at the cinema in Tokyo, the film was in Chinese with Japanese subtitles so I didn't understand a word, but the film itself made up for this. I did find a version with English subtitles on the internet though and after watching it last night, mostly to try to get a jist of the story, it made the film 10, no maybe 20, times better. The story is really intense, and for anyone who has ever played the Dynasty Warrior games or read anything on Chinese history there are many names you will instantly recognise.

The best thing by far about this film is that although this is primarily an epic war/martial arts film, it doesn't take itself too seriously and manages to pull in elements of comedy here and there, while at the same time maintaining the seriousness necessary for a film depicting war. Another amazing feat of the film is the strategies used by the characters, I dont know a huge amount about Chinese history but I assume/hope that they are all historically correct because there were sometimes when I sat there in the cinema, my mouth gaping open in awe as one army falls into an amazingly intricate trap set by the other force.

Sadly, in Europe, you're only getting a shortened version, whereas here in Asia we're getting two volumes, the next being released in April. I really implore you to find a way to watch the full length films, even if that means importing the DVDs when they come out.

This film has also really interested me in Chinese history itself, to the point that Sun Tzu's the Art of War is actually in the post and ready to be delivered tomorrow. Amazon.co.jp is so handy! Screw credit cards, they give you a code, you go around to the convenience store, give them the code and then pay the bill, within half an hour Amazon will let you know they've got your payment and your order has been dispatched. Not too shabby, eh? I also bought The Book of Five Rings -a Japanese historical book on strategies, so I'm keeping up with my Japanese culture too! And since both of these books together cost about £7.50, including packing costs, and they'll both be delivered the day after ordering, I'd say this wasn't a bad impulse buy at all and they'll go quite well with the Bushido book one member of my evening class, Ohsuga-san, bought me.

Holidays are coming...

2008-12-10T22:14:00.006+09:00

Well, my holidays begin tomorrow. Thats a month when the only day I have to work is Christmas day. I'd say one days work to make up for a month off is fine with me! The only thing is... Im going into work at normal time tomorrow, on my first day off. And then Im going into work on Friday. Oh and Saturday, and then Monday and Thursday next week, and I might start going in for Shorinji Kempo on evenings... so yeah, Im spending half my holidays at work! This might sound insane, but there is method in my madness. Japanese is so hard to learn alone so Im going in to steal some time from the exchange students to teach me some, or anyone I can get a hold of for that matter! Watch out 1-7 students, or you'll be recruited into the army which is Mike's battalion of Japanese senseis!

But yeah, I figured that spending my time in school studying would probably be a better use of my time than sitting in the flat watching TV and on the internet. It'll also be nice to go into Junten without having working hours, or work for that matter. I enjoy being there and having a crack on with the students but sometimes the lack of breaks really limits the amount of fun you can have, so having days of permanent breaks will be ace.

Update on the UCAS application: Leeds 1 - Mike 0. Touche Leeds, touche. Leeds have said no, not entirely a suprise after the rude emails I got from the guy a while back saying that my ABC is not fit for a BBB course as its an academic course and needs academic ability. Yeah, thanks Leeds, I apologise for my terrible academic skill. Sheffield, on the other hand, have gave me an offer. At the minute, Newcastles probably my first choice, but Im keeping Sheff in mind. Lets wait and see on a result from Newky, then.

The taste of home...

2008-12-08T23:01:00.005+09:00

A few weeks back I felt a little bit homesick, now that its over I figure it's a good time to let you in on some weird habits that I've picked up for that "close to home" feeling.

The first being football (when typing that out, I nearly typed soccer... argh, having to say soccer instead of football to Americans is turning into a bad habit). For some strange reason a few weeks back I started being really interested in SAFC. I have no idea why, as it started a little before the homesickness, but really stepped up during that period. Back at home, most people know that I was more against football than for. At most I'd watch the world cup, and I rarely even did that, although I did try to keep up with it. The only sports I was really interested in watching on TV was the Judo during the olympics, and boxing, MMA and Muay Thai on the fight network. Im struggling to find places to watch Sunderland matches here (by struggling I mean its not going to happen, ever) but watching the highlights and keeping up with the EPL news is easy enough. Any one with any idea on how to catch EPL games in Japan that aren't just the big four, give me a heads up.

The next is drinking Newky Brown. Never wanted to touch the stuff back at home, mostly because of it looking thick and black, but it's actually some of the nicest stuff I've ever drank and really easy to get a hold of in any english or irish bar over here. Although strictly, it isn't a hometown drink, it's still nice to feel that step closer to the north east. It tasting good is clearly just a nice bonus. For any one who hasn't tried it, I really reckon you should its really good stuff.

The last is Mountain Dew. Ok, this isn't quite the right place to put it because I've never seen Mountain Dew in England but I tell you now it's heaven in a green, sparkly can. It obviously doesn't make me feel close to home at all but I still felt the need to post this because I've been drinking it by the gallon over here. Anyone within a train journey of an American import shop needs to get a crate of this. Yahoo Mountain Dew, as Barney would say.

Next episode: Japanese food and drink. For proof that I don't just live off imported booze and caffeinated soft drinks.

Christmas Carols, Dodgeball and Nearly Dying

2008-12-07T14:21:00.010+09:00

Well. This week killed me. Like, well and truly had me knackered. I've never had so little free time in my entire life. I am probably exaggerating how bad it was but I didn't even have enough time to reply to emails, it's been that bad. Here's a round up of the weeks events:

月Monday - Monday wasn't too bad. Like usual we had a fairly busy day with few breaks, but it wasn't hugely taxing. Evening class as normal, followed by an izakaya trip with a few of them.

火Tuesday - This is where it really kicked in. We had our usual insane tuesday. Only in this case, about 10 minutes after finishing our after school PTA class, we were whisked off via one of the school shuttle buses to Shinden campus. At Shinden, we taught the 2-3 class who are going on a trip to British Hills (some crazy 'British' style village just out of Tokyo) for an hour, with me, Erling and Barney taking three seperate lessons at the same time. This was followed by a pretty good meal for school dining hall standards and then by an hour of playing Snowball Fighting in he sports hall. Essentially this is dodgeball where everyone on the team gets a few small spongeballs, with a flag to capture. We then proceeded, naturally, to play dodgeball with a volleyball. Fun, fun, fun. The kids werent too bad though, if anything they were a good laugh. One kid, I have no idea why or how he learned this word but it amused me anyway, started calling me the Sex Machine, and he'd call me this while dancing the robot. I have no idea why this started, or whether he even understands the phrase, but it was weird and kinda scary non-the-less. Anyhoo, after the sports, Barney and I hit the gym for a bit. Staying in the dormitories there wasn't too bad though, apart from having to spend an entire 30 or more hours in Junten.

水Wednesday - After being woken up at 6am by the Junten theme song (the godawful tune it is) and half an hour classical music, I wasn't best pleased. At all. Luckily Wednesday was pretty normal apart from spending some time putting up Christmas decorations in the ELC before the evening class.

木Thursday - A normal day with lessons, nursery and the ex-PTA, followed by another stay at Shinden with 2-1 class. By this time, I'm pretty shattered since both our usual free evenings are now full. Free time is non-existant.

金Friday - Friday's timetable was followed by an after school class teaching the 3rd year juniors who are going to New Zealand. Ergh. And then there was a bonenkai (end of year party) at the volunteer centre in Setagaya which, although it was pretty fun, was again fairly tiring after the week I'd had. They also made me do a speech in Japanese. Argh.

土Saturday - Saturday, a day of rest, a day of lying in, a day of doing nothing, was sacrilegiously busy. I was forced to get up early to go to the nursery at 10. TEN IN THE MORNING! ON A SATURDAY! I did it though, and we went with it being the mochi (a kind of rice cake) festival. I nearly died infront of several 3 or 4 year olds. Those rice cakes do not taste good at all, and to top it off they are unchewable and pretty large. Trying to swallow doesn't work and before you know it its clogging your throat while still attached to the bits in your mouth and refusing to go down. I think I hid my dying quite well, but after a minute of pain and intense near vomiting, I was fine and no one had noticed anything. I look up at Erling only to see his eyes bright red and glazed over. Seems I wasn't the only one to succumb to the murderous poison which is mochi. Later on, when we went to see Matt's British Embassy Chorus performance on the evening, Barney told us that several people a year die from eating mochi around New Years time. Never again, I tell you. Never. Again.

Pink Christmas Trees

2008-11-29T20:01:00.008+09:00

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

2008-11-18T18:05:00.007+09:00

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).

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.

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.

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...)

Anyhoo, sayonara.

The Flat

2008-11-09T20:30:00.013+09:00

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...

2008-11-09T18:46:00.006+09:00

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

2008-11-02T15:55:00.005+09:00

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

2008-11-02T13:22:00.004+09:00

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!

Busiest day yet. Easily.

2008-10-21T17:58:00.003+09:00

Well today, as it says in the title, was easily the busiest day Ive had yet. It was far from the worst day, and it wasn't the most tiring but it was tons and tons and tons of work packed into a day with no breaks in the schedule.

This is partially down to Erling being ill. I still dont exactly know whats wrong with the lad, all the lights were off and he seemed to possibly still be in bed when I got in so I left him be, but I woke up this morning to a note telling me not to wake him up because of him having some kind of illness. Many complications arose from this. Each lesson we teach, one of us goes with Barney and one of us goes with a part time teacher and we each teach half of the class in seperate rooms. This meant that there was always one teacher without a volunteer so I ended up doing half of each lesson with one and half with the other, and considering Barney teaches in a seperate building it meant far too much travelling between classes (on the positive side, it meant that each student in the classes we teach got a taste of the awesome that is Mike-sensei). And also at one point Christina (a german exchange student) joined us in teaching one of the classes, which was cool - its always nice to have some of the western exchange students to help us teach, someone to have a good crack on with, etc. Despite the running about it was fun though, teaching students I don't normally teach (some that I knew or recognised) and it really made me realised how I've progressed with confidence and teaching. I now feel nothing in the way of nerves (even in front of students I didnt know, and even when they clearly say things about me in Japanese - which scared me to hell at the start), when a few months ago I crapped myself at the idea of standing infront of someone, even just saying a few sentences. I could really see myself teaching in the future now which I couldn't not so long ago, I don't really intend to but if I ever needed work then teaching in Japan would easily be an option.

I also taught a lunchtime class today (meaning I missed out on my only free period AND my lunch time) which went well, but I ended up having to miss a part of it due to club pictures being taken over lunch, which wasnt going to be a problem when Erling was going to be in. This meant I had to teach the lunchtime class by myself (which I dont usually) and then rush off early to change into my Shorinji gear and get some pictures taken in the JM Hall with the Shorinji Kempo lot, only to have less than a minute to make it to my 1-7 class (meaning I completely missed out on lunch, something that I'd very rarely let happen. Not a huge amount can get between me and eating). Hopefully, I'll be able to get a hold of the picture to put on here - have to see.

And then after the hour of Japanese and 5 straight periods of teaching, I had another class to teach which worried me. The PTA. Normally a nice and relaxed lesson of chatting and working through the textbook with the intermediate students, I had to take over Erlings class aswell. The problems here were that I had no clue about what he was teaching them, and that the number of students I was teaching just quadrupled. Luckily, some last minute 'planning' in the ten minutes before the lesson and the lesson went smoothly. About 25 mins of talking about what we'd all done in the past week was then followed by Barney's invention: 'Beatle Bonus Time'. Barney is a huge Beatles fan and now with all of his classes he starts with a 5 minute game where you listen to a Beatles song and fill in the blanks left in the lyrics. Sounds easy, but its not so easy considering they arent native English speakers. The PTA loved this game. They were all huge Beatles fans and really got into it. After that there was only 5 minutes to go, not enough to play the next 4 games I had planned so I ended with a quick game of Pictionary, which, again, they adored. A fun end to an exhausting day.

But it wasn't the end! We agreed the day before to record a listening CD for the junior students' midterm exams, so I spent an hour after the PTA class doing this, which wasnt too bad in all fairness. The thing which made it fine was knowing that the kids, while sitting through hours of painful exams, will have to listen to my voice. Over. And over. And over. Mwuahaha. The mp3s of the listening tape will be posted next week hopefully, my tape voice is a beast! Those kids will no doubt pass all of their English exams because of the clarity... and if they fail I put all the blame on Barney's american accent putting them off.

So a very busy day, but fairly rewarding and fun. Completely enjoyed it. I just hope Erling gets well soon because Im not sure I could do that very often haha.

Well, now I'm off for the rest of the week due to the exams so I may go travelling. No ideas yet, but Im hoping that, wherever I go, the regional dish is gyoza (chinese dumplings and the best food, in the world, ever. By far). And on that note, I'm off to get some gyoza and egg fried rice!

Sayonara!

Oh and the pictures are just some pictures I've taken so far. Just thought I'd break up what would otherwise be a boringly huge block of text.

Kawagoe!

2008-10-19T22:30:00.005+09:00

Me, Erling and our friend Hina travelled to Saitama prefecture (about 35 minutes from Oji) to go to the yearly Kawagoe festival. Kawagoe is an amazing city. Its intensely picturesque with tons of shrines and temples all over, I've seen many shrines since arriving in Tokyo (hell, I walk through one every day on the way to work) but Kawagoe was something else. There is a shrine on every block (slight exaggeration but the amount we accidently found was insane), and each of them - despite some being really small - were just as traditional, attractive and awe inspiring as the rest. Seriously, some of the views in that city were amazing, it killed me when my camera ran out of battery minutes after arriving - but never fear! I intend to go back some time soon to take a memory-card full of pictures (enough to win me every Project Trust photo competion they start, anyway!). The city's known as 'little Edo' (Edo being an old name for tokyo), because the architecture of some of the preserved traditional buildings is supposed to be the best insight into what Tokyo was like before it lost most of its historic qualities after the 1923 earthquake and the WW2 bombings.

The festival itself started in the year 1648 and is held every year on the third weekend of October. Each area of the city decorate a float to push around town during the weekend and the floats are incredible. Theyre really tall, beautifully designed and decorated and have an army of people on them playing the flute, taiko drums and dancing. Each float also has its own 'character', which is the only way to describe it, essentially someone on it dressed up and dancing on it. One we saw had a guy dressed up as a monkey, another a dragon, another a woman dancing with a fan, and so on... each one more colourful than the last. Seriously an amazing sight, especially when two met down a street and they'd continue playing their music and dancing, trying to knock the other float out of beat. I'll have to steal some pictures off the others because the festival was seriously class.

Aswell as the dozens of shrines and thousands of street stalls we visited, we also took ourselves to see Kawagoe castle, or atleast the only bit of it which is still left (the lord's residence which was built in 1848, the rest of the castle, which was built long before that, I assume was either pulled down or destroyed at sometime because in paintings it seems to have been huge with moats and tons of other structures). It was a really nice building, tatami floors in most rooms, the style of rooms that you think of when you think of traditional japan and an amazing traditional garden. Infact the garden was probably the best bit because for a while the three of us just sat on the edge of this wooden platform chatting with the view of the garden infront of us. Really nice place, definitely intend to go back.

As we were heading back to leave, the other two raided the candy store (Kawagoe is also apparently famous for its traditional sweets) and then I went and got meself a banana coated in chocolate on a stick. It looked so nice on the stand I couldnt help myself but it just reaffirmed my beliefs that fruit and foods that taste good should be kept WELL apart. Ergh. That wasnt the only thing I picked up though. I also managed to get a hold of two amazing masks, not quite traditional ones but a pokemon mask (piplup for any really sad people out there) and a naruto mask. I mustve looked really weird walking back to the station with a kids anime character mask on but never mind, it was a good laugh. People seemed to be amused, and kids nearby loved it, and luckily I was behind a mask AND had the anonymity of being in Tokyo (where you're very unlikely to see anyone you know unless youre in your local area) to protect me from embarassment. It was a festival anyway and I wasnt the only one wearing a silly mask (admittedly the others were about 7, but still). Pictures to come.

Also, another post to come for what Ive been upto in the past two weeks, I just wanted to get this jotted down so that I didnt forget anything!

Sayonara!

(Pictures by Erling Garriock)

Haunted prisons and men in skirts

2008-10-07T20:14:00.014+09:00

Here I am again, I have a fair amount to say here so no promises on this post being short but Ill try if I can.

Last saturday, after work (yes, work... on a saturday - what is this madness?) we went to Shibuya with a bunch of people for a meal in The Lock Up. The only thing I'd heard about The Lock Up before going was that it was a restaurant themed around a prison, but in all fairness that doesnt really prepare you at all for what its like in there. After going around a haunted house style passageway to get to the actual restaurant we were sat down while we waited for our table, and when the waitress came to take us to the table one of us was handcuffed (yup, me) and dragged by a chain to our table - fairly interesting so far. Then about 5 minutes after being seated, the lights go off, a siren starts blaring and men dressed in hockey masks and the like jump into your 'cell' and scare the living hell out of you. This we werent expecting, and although it sounds like a cheap halloween trick it was terrifying (especially since the door to the 'cell' is a large metal sliding prison door which makes one hell of a noise when these guys crash it open to dive in). And it wasnt a bad price either, about £17.50 per person, all you can drink and a decent amount of food. So a pretty amazing night out.

And the fun of the weekend didnt end there, on sunday Steve and Mai took us to the scottish festival in Makuhari (about an hour away from Oji by train). I didnt really have my hopes up for anything amazing but tbh a day of drinking beer and whiskey, watching huge scotsmen throw heavy logs and weights, and laughing at men in skirts is a pretty good way to spend your time. I saw a fair amount at the festival like bagpipe playing, highland dancing, the aforementioned throwing of the heavy objects (the highland games was great fun to watch to be honest) and aload of grown men (huuuge grown men) losing to kids at tug of war. Success.

[Quick disclaimer, The skirt wearing comment was a joke intended towards a specific person. No offence was intended... except towards Steve. The Scottish festival was great fun, and I laughed at no men in kilts... except Steve. Thank you.]

I'm now about a week into Shorinji Kempo and Im still really enjoying it, although every day I do it it makes me miss karate more and more. The worst thing is that I spent the past year getting used to being in strong, wide stances, learning certain moves and katas; and now I have to forget all of that and learn something completely different. I mean, I dont want to stop doing Shorinji because of that... but itd be good if the higher ups in whatever the Shorinji organisation is could just... well... forget everything and start teaching everyone Shotokan Karate. Possibly a wee bit too much to ask? Oh and when I said that that was the worst thing, I lied. A worse thing by far is in the warming up when they make you travel across the hall... by way of pressups. Thats right, it kills - you do a press up, move one arm forward, do another press up and so on until youre across, and its a pretty big hall. But again there is something far worse... forward and backward rolls over your shoulder. I cant do them which is embarassing and as much as they try to help me to do it right it kills my knee and back to do them (which is odd because you wouldve thought the gammy collar bone wouldve been the worst bit... but if anyone who might worry is reading *cough*Auntie Susan or me mam*cough*, I dont use that shoulder, its fine).

On a positive note, my dogi (my white suit, not a pet) should be coming on friday and it has the kanji for my name on it, I believe its: 舞華流 for Maikeru, I could be wrong because thats just going from what I can remember of the kanji although Im pretty sure the first two are right - if any kanji experts read this please correct me. The kanji mean (or they should if theyre the right ones) dance, flower and flow. Conjures up a pretty image doesnt it - which is sad because the kanji I wanted to use were: 魔育 which mean (I think... the second one doesnt quite look like the kanji I know for iku) demon and grow - so growing demon... sounds a bit better than dancing flower flow, jesus. But yeah, apparently its bad luck to have a sign for satan in your name. Who'd have thought?

Anyway, I've babbled for far more than enough this post, so laters.

Mike

It has begun...

2008-09-30T22:43:00.009+09:00

After the updates I kinda feel more like updating this thing more often, its spurred me on to post more than I was before (i.e. at all). Ive done a fair amount since those updates, we had a three day weekend (which was necessary, lazing around has never felt so good) and then we properly started work (I say we properly started because we've now started the 10 minute early morning lessons with the year 1 junior classes and we've also started evening classes).

Firstly, the weekend. After spending 2 days lazing around doing nothing except sleeping, eating and making katakana/hiragana flash cards (exciting stuff) I finally got to leave the house on Sunday after Lynsey and Tom invited us out to the Indian festival in harajuku. After a burger lunch in Shibuya (shiBOOYA) we walked to harajuku to visit the Meiji shrine before going to the festival. Meiji shrine is huge, infact the gardens themselves are massive - it takes a decent 5 - 10 minutes of walking just to reach the shrine after going through the gate. After taking pictures of a wedding that was taking place there (a very public wedding infront of 20 billion tourists) we threw a 5 yen coin (the luckiest coin to put in apparently) into this... box... or something and made a wish. Apparently this wasnt enough for Erling who paid 500yen (about £2.50) more for a little wooden plaque to write a wish on and to hang up in the shrine. Till this day it remains a mystery what was actually wrote on that plaque, scholars maintain the translation was lost hundreds of years ago but I believe it had something to do with beer, curry and karaoke. Lukcily the gods looked down upon Erling that day and it was granted in the form of an Indian festival followed by karaoke. All in all, a good day.

After a hugely busy day on monday (10 minute morning lesson, five 50 minute lessons during the day and an evening class at 6) I was fairly knackered and a bit worried about being far too busy from now on (I miss my lazy life). This feeling however has completely been decimated after an amazing day today. We had the same 10 minute morning lesson, the same five 50 minute lessons but then we also had the PTA (parent-teacher association) class for an hour. I was terrified, first lesson teaching alone and I had to prepare it all before hand. In the end it was ace, I was taking the intermediate class which only consists of 4 people with pretty good English, and they put so much effort in it was unreal. The lesson Id planned led on to a massive chat for the last 15 minutes (by accident, it wasnt planned - but it was good practice for them, and less teaching for me), and then the feedback was great aswell - its a massive confidence boost for a nerve-wracking lesson to go well. And straight after that class finished I went up to the JM hall for my first Shorinji Kempo practice (a martial art Im starting), again a little nervous for me because none of them speak English but it ended up being ridiculously fun. The students were friendly as owt (possibly because I dont teach any of them), and some of them were a proper laugh - they were trying their best to speak english and I was throwing in Japanese where I could but the language barrier didnt really matter because they were funny as hell and immensely friendly. Its just too bad I dont teach kids like them (I hope none of my students ever read this - if they do then this is...erm...english humour... yeah thatll do...). They were also really impressed with my karate katas for some unknown reason (probably because karate is way cooler than shorinji kempo), which is weird because in england if you said you did karate people really dont care, but in Japan you tend to get a lot of "ooooooh karate!" and they sound genuinely impressed (hopefully not just humouring me). All in all, this was the funnest day at work so far and its really sealed the deal that this year is gonna be mint.

Wow, it seems I cant stop talking about myself, so yeah, I'll stop now before this post gets waaaay too long. Leave some comments or email me etc, let me know how stuffs going down back at home.

Mike.

Bunkasai - The school festival

2008-09-27T12:10:00.004+09:00

This last week was the week of the school festival - or bunkasai. This means alot of things but for us it meant a week with no teaching, expensive food and working a national holiday. Although describing it like that makes it sound worse than it was, mostly because it was ace. The festival itself was on the monday and tuesday and essentially every class turn their classroom into something to raise money for the school - so things like restaurants, cafes, haunted houses, crossdressing maid cafes, that sort of thing. Hold up, crossdressing maid cafes what the... The girls in the school are told they arent allowed to host a maid cafe so the lads in one class dressed up like women and held their own maid cafe, it was... how do I put this... disturbing. Infact the reaction of one girl pretty much sums it up - she walked into the cafe and about 10 seconds later ran out of the exit looking horrified shouting the equivalent of "AHHH GROSS".

Other than that though it was all amazing, the haunted house was done really well, the food was quality (still a complete rip off though) and the ice cream/crepe cafes were class. I spent so much money over the two days on food it was unreal. Aswell as the classes being transformed, several clubs did performances - the orchestra was amazing, if youd heard the music you would never have guessed they were high school students, the shorinji kempo shows were great (and Im joining their club on monday so more posts about it to come fo sho), there were also dancers, cheerleaders, baton twirlers, bands, and a play by the foreign language society.

On the thursday after the festival was over and cleaned up, the entire school went across to Hokutopia, this massive theatre, for some speeches and for afew of the shows from the bunkasai to be performed again. This was possibly the first time Ive done a speech to over 1,000 people never mind a speech in Japanese, but alas I did it, I didnt slip up, and no one laughed so Id say that was a success. It also means that I dont think Ill ever be nervous infront of a class of 30 kids anymore, because I know true fear. After falling asleep during a 2 hour maths speech (all in Japanese), it was time for the shows - some were amazing like the orchestra, the shorinji kempo and the choirs but afew misshaps also happened. The foreign language society performed the wizard of oz and dorothy tripped over the yellow brick road, the mics stopped working at times and the curtain was pulled too early. Still a good show, but I felt so bad watching so many problems going on after the amazing shows they put on on the smaller stage at bunkasai.

I'll make this the last post for today (I've already posted 3 stupidly long ones) and hopefully Ill try to update this regularly instead of having to make so many posts at once to catch up. No promises.

Mike Burns

Second catch up post

2008-09-27T12:00:00.003+09:00

Thats me in my suit on my first day of work. Looking good, eh?

Again this is mostly copypasta'd from an email to my parents. Oh well. Original content soon to come Im sure.

Afew days later (long weekend due to monday being a national holiday) I started work in Oji. There is nothing more nerve racking than getting up infront a class of Japanese kids, who cant stop staring at the only foreigner in the room, and then introducing yourself. Once the introductions over you feel slightly relieved but then come the questions, and I guarantee atleast one girl in every class will get bullied by her classmates into asking if you have a girlfriend, which the rest of the class find hilarious. My 3-1 class also seem to find it hilarious that I look like 2 people in their year, which meant that they started going crazy part of the way through my introduction - I didnt know what the hell was going on, or how to control them so I just kind of stood there looking embarassed. Essentially most of my lessons, apart from the PTA class and the ex-PTA class, are team teaching where Im just an assistant to help with marking, to read things out or talk to them in english etc. Just to add on about teaching, my 1-7 (i think they were 1-7) are apparently amazing at noticing look-a-likes so three girls in the back were quick to point out that I look like Buzz Lightyear which is my new nickname (only with those 3 though, luckily the rumour hasnt spread to the rest of the class - athough Barney-sensei seems to find it amusing).

A few pictures to make this post a bit more interesting:

LtoR: Me, Mike, Kuni, Wakana, Matsuya?, Lynsey, Erling, Tom

LtoR: Erling, Matt, Me, Hina, Yumi

First catch up post

2008-09-27T11:24:00.003+09:00

A small backstreet in Akihabara

Sorry about not posting at all, Ive been really lazy about it and if Im honest I really couldnt be bothered to update the blog. However here I am now, about to copy and paste from an email to my parents, laziness all the way.

When we arrived after 30 odd hours of travelling we were fairly knackered after barely sleeping on the plane and being smacked in the face with jet lag, but we perservered and eventually got through customs/immigration (the tightest immigration control EVER with a fingerprint scanner, a photograph taken and several forms filled out for every single person going through). Eventually, through my amazing sense of direction and navigation, we made our way through Narita airport and got our bags sent off to our soon-to-be homes aand got bus tickets to Shibuya where we met up with Mai and Aiko, two girls who volunteered to take us to the volunteer centre. We then stayed in Shibuya for a few days in hotel suave, being shown around Tokyo and having meals paid for us left right and centre.

All in all a great first few days with karaoke and sightseeing (to an extent), didnt really take many pictures Im afraid, mostly due to laziness - who'd hav guessed? In these few induction days we also visited the Earthquake centre where we shown how to react in an earthquake, how to navigate through a burning house and how to use a fire extinguisher (however it was all in japanese so really it was just a joke). On the saturday we got taken to Junten High School and our flat in Oji. Oji is a reeeeeally nice place, our flat isnt what Id call nice but its still great - its got character. Despite being a fair distance from the centre of Tokyo, Oji is still a really lively place with its share of skyscrapers (well, buildings alot taller than any in england anyways, not quite skyscrapers). After being shown around the school and our flat, the teachers then took us out for a meal, which was ace - the food around here is seriously amazing, I dont think Im going to be able to eat when I get back home (if I come back home that is).

View from our appartment

The next morning I woke up at 6 in the morning (the first of many early mornings) because the girls were flying up to hokkaido so I took a train to shibuya but got there far too early so I had a McBreakfast (I assumed it might be easy to order in there with it being a western establishment, I was wrong, oh so wrong "cheeseburger please" "random japanese and then pointing at breakfast menu" "oh breakfast only? ok ill have this please" "random japanese" "ehhh?"). Anyhow I then made my way to hotel suave and then went with them to Haneda airport and then found myself with nothing to do on the other side of tokyo, only to use my previously mentioned amazing nagivational abilities to make my way to akihabara (electric town) for a half day sightseeing trip. Akiba is... interesting to say the least. Imagine an entire city where shops only sell electronics, video games, anime and manga... and then throw in some girls wandering around dressed like maids and some arcades and then you have a fairly acurate image of what Akihabara is like.I then made my way back to Oji, arriving back only to be met by Mike (previous volunteer), Lynsey (another previous volunteer) and Erling to go out for a meal followed by karaoke.

First post!

2008-07-13T03:12:00.001+09:00

Hey all, welcome to my blog - it's a bit empty at the minute but it has only just been made, hopefully I'll be able to make it look a little better with the help of a few friends... if they're feeling generous of course.

Anyhow, I was on my training course last week up on the wee scottish isle of Coll. We did absolutely tons in that week, we had sessions on culture shock, health overseas, teaching and loads of other topics, aswell as actually teaching a few lessons ourselves. The lessons went fairly well giving me a massive confidence boost (especially the second lesson - since I'm usually terrified of getting up and talking in front of people, being able to stand up and teach English to English people for 20 minutes without laughing - like I did in the first lesson - made me feel a bit better about teaching in general).

I also learned alot about my project itself, which is in a town called Oji in Kita-ku, Tokyo. I'll be teaching English at Junten High School to all three of the junior grades and two of the senior grades but I'll also be helping out at an elementary school and teaching conversational english to the Parents/Teachers association. So anyone who thought that my gap year sounded like a holiday, this is going to be a bloody hard working holiday!

Big thanks to all of the Project Trust staff and the other (around 50 I think) volunteers on the course who were all really friendly and a great laugh. Have fun in Guyana and Uganda.

Oh and just to add this on at the end, for those who don't know, I broke my collar bone on training after the ceilidh. I got slightly intoxicated and ended up falling off a sand dune. Bet you didnt see that coming!

Anyway, I think I've gone on for well more than enough, sorry about that. My next blog will probably be just before I go or just after I arrive,

Later.