From school life to Sport's Day to giant penis statues

I’ve now been teaching at school for a couple of weeks now. A typical school day at a Japanese junior high school is certainly very different from high school back in Scotland. Probably one of the biggest differences is the fact that the kids and the teachers actually clean the school themselves. There is usually a period of about 15-20 minutes each day known as cleaning time where everyone will get out the brushes, dustpans, mops and hoovers and will each clean a small section of the school. I literally couldn’t believe it the first time it happened; the kids were so working hard at cleaning, barely even talking to one another due to their complete concentration to the task at hand.

Similiarly, the kids also each the same lunch, known as kyushokuu, in their respective classrooms. Each kid has a job at lunchtime to carry up all the food and trays and arrange them out on the desks. They even don aprons and those white masks that you will undoubtedly have seen Asian tourists wearing. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t wear these because they are scared of “Western germs”, but because they are thoughtful enough to prevent the spread of their own germs when they have a cold. Kyushokuu differs greatly from typical Western school lunch in that it is exactly uniform, everyone has the same and everyone has to eat what they are given. Usually it consists of a soup or curry of some sort, a small bit of salad with something else that changes each day, a carton of milk and a gigantic bowl of rice. I am amazed at the fact that the kids always finish everything since first of all, it is quite a lot, and secondly, whenever I ask them if they like it they generally reply with “So so”. This just makes me realise how spoilt for choice we are in the west, and how we don’t even give a second thought about the notion of wasting food.

Another huge difference is that the kids all stay on after school until at least 5.30 doing their club activities. EVERYONE does a club activity and they usually involve something sporty. These past 2 weeks the kids have been practicing for their sports day, which is definitely a very big deal here. This has meant that they have been practicing literally all day out in the hot sun some days from 8am until 5pm (even though school ends at 4). And not only that, but they have then been doing their club activities afterwards until 6.30pm. Now I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t actually managed to stick around until that late since I’ve been too tired or had things to do after work. I honestly applaud these kids because I don’t know how they do it. On Friday though I did notice that quite a lot of the kids were injured or just overly exhausted from all the extra practice, so perhaps it is too much for a lot of them. I know it would be too much for me. I’ve barely been joining in with much of the sports day and I’m tired, but by the end of the day the kids are sweaty and covered in dirt. The sports field isn’t exactly the most pleasant thing to practice on, since it’s just made of dirt, which by the way, is absolutely blinding when the sun shines on it since it’s far too white.

Sports Day itself was another spectacle. Japanese sports day seems to be pretty uniform at least around Ehime from what I’ve heard. To me, it basically epitomises Japanese culture as it’s a strange mix of precise, military style marches and then some of the wackiest (and downright dangerous) team games I’ve ever seen. One example is when kids makes groups of four, with three kids on the bottom forming a support for the fourth person who climbs on tops. They run forward towards a metal box on a table. The person on top swings a big rope that is weighted at the end and the aim is to knock the metal box off the table. Of course I’ve seen many of the teams collapse on top of each other mid run, people getting the rope wrapped round them, being hit in the head with the rope and all sorts. Needless to say it’s not a game that namby pamby overprotective Western parents would approve of.

Another game that seems to result in a lot of injury is the appropriately named “mukade”. A mukade is a poisonous centipede that lives in Japan. Although I have yet to come across one (tap wood), they are the bane of JETs’ lives since a bite from them can cause a lot of pain and even hospitalise you. Anyway, the game is basically just a gigantic three-legged race in which around 15 kids are tied together by the legs and have to race to the finish line. Hilarity ensues (at least for me) when the kids all topple on top of one another, but it has actually resulted in some pretty bad injuries.

At Sports Day I was able to join in the girls wavey scarf dance thing and do the folk dance. A lot of the 13 year old boys seemed both thrilled and terrified at the idea of dancing with a foreign white girl. Some of them held me quite literally about a metre away from them in case they caught cooties or whatever the Japanese equivalent is, while others threw me all over the place. The boys also had to do this performance thing were they got into groups and climbed on top of each other to form shapes such as pyramids and planes. I stood terrified with bated breath watching this performance as the shapes were sometimes 3 tiers tall (standing up), with only the dirt ground to break the fall if the top boy was to lose his balance. Luckily I never witnessed any such accidents.

In Japan, cheerleading is seen as a boys sport, however for the purposes of Sports Day all students joined in. The school was divided into two teams, with the third year students actually making up some rather elaborate dances and cheers themselves. The kids worked on these dances every single day since it was a competition between the two teams. I’m not sure if the kids actually won anything apart from their own sense of pride, but it was a really big deal. The cheerleading itself is different from Western style, in that it is much more traditional and Japanese looking. There was no music, but instead the students move along to the beat of the Taiko drum.

For me, Japanese Sports Day and school in general really allows me to see how Japanese society works and how the Japanese mind set comes about in the first place. The kids put their all into absolutely everything. There is none of this crap about trying to skive that is so prevalent back home. Everything is based on respect and community, from the cleaning to the school lunches to all the team games during Sports Day (I didn’t witness any game that didn’t involve teamwork in some way). The teachers base their whole life around school, coming in early and staying until God knows what time. I even heard from some other JETs that their teachers apparently stay until as late as 10pm. How they manage to make time for their family is beyond me… While the work ethic in Japan is certainly refreshing, it is definitely something that I’m glad I never grew up with since the students and teachers alike seem to be under an enormous amount of pressure. As a Westerner, I am exempt from this extremely tough work ethic to some extent, as I’m sure I would never be expected to stay anywhere near as late as 10pm!

Actually teaching the classes has been fun so far due to the strange questions and comments I have received from all the students. So far I have only been doing my self-introduction, which involves showing a lot of pictures of Edinburgh and Scottish things. So far most classes like to ask if I have a boyfriend, and I even had a 9 year old girl ask what my “type” is. I also often have 13 and 14 year old boys following me around proclaiming their love for me, while the girls walk behind me and shout “Kawaii”, giggling non-stop. It’s great that they show so much interest in a foreigner as I doubt back home anyone would really bat an eyelid at a new foreign language teacher.

One day school was cancelled due to a typhoon. I ended up basically walking up a waterfall to get to school that morning, only to receive a call as soon as I arrived saying that I didn’t actually have to go in. Luckily the rain subsided and the teachers said I could go home as the students wouldn’t be in until after lunch that day and I didn’t have any classes scheduled for that weekend anyway. Rain during a typhoon is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. 10 seconds in that rain was enough to give me a shower. I doubt I’ll be complaining about Scottish rain again any time soon.

In my time outside school I have tried ikebana, traditional Japanese flower arranging. The class was held in a temple by an 80 year old Japanese woman, who is the youngest looking 80 year old I have ever met. She was able to sit in the seiza position for a long time, while I could only do it for around 15 minutes before my legs became utterly dead and I was in pain. This just involves sitting on your knees with your feet tucked under your bum. It doesn’t sound difficult, but believe me, when you try to stand up again after 15 minutes and the blood starts returning to your legs, then yes it is very difficult! We were able to look around the temple and even take pictures, which I will post later when my laptop stops being so crap.

Yesterday I also went on a daytrip to Uwajima, a bigger town in Ehime. We visited the castle, but more interestingly we also visited a fertility shrine complete with a giant 9 foot stone penis and a sex museum. Don’t worry, there are lots of pictures of the giant penis on my Facebook. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the sex shop, but let’s just say I saw some creative uses of the phallic form, such as being incorporated into Pinocchio’s face and the animal form, as I saw some rather interesting elephant and camel statues. And this is only for starters. Where they managed to acquire this amazing range of penis statues is beyond me. It was certainly a once in a lifetime thing… I’m not sure how many other giant 9 foot stone penises there are in the world.

And on that thought, I’m going to leave you here. 

Japan: A Country of Baffling Paradoxes

I just had my first day at school! However, I’m not going to write about that until I’ve finished my first week, instead I’m going to be writing about my super duper Japanese weekend involving onsen, karaoke and yakiniku, as well as a few other things that have cropped up in the meantime.

Since my last blog I have done loads of nursery visits, each time being surprised by the fact that the children already seem to know a small amount of English, despite the fact that they are 5 and under. I’m jealous of the fact that the Japanese now get to learn a foreign language right from the beginning of elementary school, a chance that I never got.

One of the nursery visits was particularly memorable as a couple of little boys were yelling out “Kirei” (beautiful) and actually grabbing our hands and kissing them. Well, they’re certainly starting out young. Finishing the nursery visits was rather sad, as they are so young that they are full of curiosity and self-consciousness is a foreign concept to them.

Other highlights in the past week or two include the Uwa lantern festival: a beautiful festival in a small town, with different kinds of lanterns being lit up all around the streets. This included lamps being arranged in the shape of a bear face from a bird’s eye point of view and lamps being hung from a play park.

Another highlight was the cooking class I took. Or rather, that I observed since everyone else seemed to know what they were doing and I would have been a hindrance as the clumsy gaijin. It seemed to be less a cooking class and more like a cooking club for people who already know what they’re doing. One embarrassing moment occurred when everyone in the room started cutting onions at once. My eyes happen to have a very strong reaction to onions, so I basically looked like I was bawling my eyes out for about an hour. Some of the people in the class looked a tad concerned, despite my reassurances that it was just the onions.

I even made actual Japanese friends in the cooking class! (Hannah nae mates) One of them messaged me, saying that her friend who speaks some English is in town and I just have to meet them. So I was taken out to an Indian restaurant (interesting experience, a really small but tasty bowl of curry accompanied by the biggest piece of nan bread I’ve ever seen) and they rather enthusiastically got me to pencil in dates until the end of 2013 as to when they are going to take me to various places around Japan. And when the Japanese make plans, they sure do stick to them, weather permitting of course.

This brings me to the non-existent typhoon that everyone had been fussing over all week. Or rather, the typhoon appeared in the form of lots and lots of rain. Which is nice, because it’s significantly less hot and sweaty. I am typing this without the fan on or without windows open which is a nice change! However, when it rains in Japan, well, it RAINS! So a couple of beach parties had to be cancelled during the last two weekends.

The main thing I want to talk about is my extremely Japanese weekend, and more specifically the onsen part of it, since it’s something that foreigners generally tend to worry and wonder over upon coming to Japan. For those of you who don’t know what an onsen is, it’s basically a Japanese hot spring, also with cold pools that you can jump into. With one catch: you’re completely naked, along with everyone else at the onsen. However, the onsen are at least divided by sex, so if you're a girl there won't be any creepy Japanese men leering at you and vice versa, since I've heard many Japanese girls have a thing for Western boys. 

Now I’m quite a shy girl, so the idea of this did completely freak me out at first, particularly when I thought about the fact that Japanese people stare at me walking down the street and I’m actually fully clothed when this happens. It still freaks me out a little even after having done it, but I suppose the feeling will subside the more I do it. What happens is that you go through a curtain to your changing room and get undressed and put everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) in a locker. Then you walk out (naked) into the room with the hot springs. You then go to the side of the room where they have showers and sit on the little stool and make sure you’re completely clean. Then (still naked) you actually get into the onsen and try to ignore the old Japanese women staring at you. Though once in the water it’s easier to relax since you’re covered up, not to mention the fact that you’re in a traditional Japanese hot spring.

It is very relaxing since you are essentially completely free, but that feeling can shatter for a moment when an old Japanese woman walks towards you stark naked while you’re sitting down in the water so that you just happen to be right at eye level with parts of her that you really don’t want to be eye level with… I suppose Japanese people of this age have been onsening their whole life and don’t really think anything of it, or think about the fact that it might freak the poor Western girl out. However, I have heard stories from both Western males and females about Japanese people commenting on “how big” particular parts of their anatomy are. I have to say, it completely baffles me how a society that is generally seen as very modest and shy has no issue with walking around naked in a hot spring full of strangers. Of course, you just have to keep in mind that everyone else is also naked, and you can bet a lot of the foreigners also feel the same way as you do and so aren’t going to be staring at you. Then there’s the fact that, hey, we were born naked!

Despite various anatomy being alarmingly close to my face at times (and I’ve heard this is a lot worse coming from the men’s side), it was relaxing and I would do it again. Besides, it’s not so scary once you’ve taken the plunge once. It's just a little odd to meet someone for the first time and then them basically say "So hey, wanna get naked together in a hot spring?" Only in Japan... the country of strange paradoxes.

That weekend, before the onsen we (all the JETs from the Nanyo area) took over the café of one very enthusiastic Japanese guy with a great music collection. This resulted in a sweaty midday dance sesh in the middle of the café. Then we all drove to Nametoko Gorge and went “hiking” (a small stroll) amongst some lovely scenery and went paddling in the river. We were even greeted by the sight of a red-faced monkey in the car park. Yep, just a casual monkey in the car park.

This was followed by the aforementioned onsen, which was really great after such a sweaty day. That night we had nomitabehodai yakiniku (all you can drink and all you can eat grilled meat, a combination that would be absolutely lethal in the UK). The spin on yakiniku is that you actually grill the meat yourself on a little grill in the middle of the table. I’ve found that barbeques always seem to bring out that caveman instinct in men (MEAT! FIRE! OOH!), and yakiniku is no different.

We then headed out to karaoke, which is another decidedly Japanese past time. In Japan, you are always given your own private room to do karaoke. I’m not much of a singer myself, and I do prefer dancing in a club, but I did enjoy garbling unintelligibly down the microphone along with everyone else. There were of course actually one or two decent singers who put the rest of us to shame. Just like onsen, karaoke is another Japanese pastime which doesn’t quite fit in my opinion. I also thought it was strange that the Japanese aren’t too self-conscious to sing in front of others since they never seem to like to draw attention to themselves in everyday life, but someone pointed out to me that perhaps karaoke is the only time in Japanese society when it is fully acceptable for someone to be completely self-centered and have all the attention focused on them for a moment.

I’ve waffled enough now, but I hope that sheds a bit of light on onsen for those who are considering doing it for the first time. Next installment will be about my first week at school!

Week 2 in Yawatahama

So this is my second week living in Ehime. Ehime is a rather inaka (countryside) prefecture by most Japanese people’s standards, so being a city girl, this is quite a big adjustment, even if Yawatahama is considered to be a “city” by those south of us in Seiyo and Ikata. However, I definitely am warming to the small town mind-set. Whether it’s a simple “Konnichiwa” on the street from a stranger, which definitely doesn’t happen in Edinburgh, or meeting the mayor and ending up in the local paper, it’s safe to say that people are a lot friendlier in small towns.

Yes, I actually did meet the mayor. Luckily for me I was dressed smartly in a suit since some photographers in the local paper had come along for the occasion. Though unluckily for me, Japan is a rather humid place, so sweaty-faced me is going to end up in the paper, scaring away all the locals from integrating with foreigners. Well, I hope not. The paper still hasn’t come out yet, so I still have the joy of seeing what picture they choose. Despite the fact that the mayor spoke barely more English than I speak Japanese, he seemed like a very lovely man. In fact he gave us omiyage of the famous Yawatahama Chanpon t-shirts that everyone working in the city office and board of education seems to wear. I feel like a bit of a fraud wearing it since 1) I haven’t actually tried chanpon (in fact I’m a little bit vague as to what exactly it is, I’ve just been told it’s a “mix of everything”) and 2) the t-shirt is too big since I foolishly said I was a medium since Japanese sizes are notoriously small.

Actually, that brings me to the fact that my feet are a size large here. What? I feel like a giant! And I’m actually pretty small, so that’s saying something. Any Westerners above average size probably will really struggle to find clothes or shoes here. Luckily I’m fairly Japanese sized, apart from my massive clown feet of course.

Anyway, so the mayor then invited us to watch the fireworks with him and another journalist rushed up to us at the end and asked us to give him a quote about the fireworks. Needless to say, the quote ended up in the paper just a few days later. I guess I’m famous! Better get my autographing signature ready for when my picture comes out in the paper… Though I suppose it’s reassuring to some extent that they have to fill up the paper with quotes from foreign girls about the fireworks, since it means there is literally no crime to report. In fact, I even accidentally left my bike unlocked for 2 days and nothing happened to it. Japan is known for having extremely low crime rates and this is even more true in the country. It’s definitely a refreshing change
from British city life.

There is a definite sense of community spirit, and this is evident from the various festivals that have been going on in the last week, where everyone gathers to talk, eat carnival food and watch the fireworks. Whether it’s because we’re foreign and therefore automatically more intriguing, or because country folk are generally nicer, we ended up with a load of free food after one festival. This included candy floss, a bag of frozen chips, fried chicken and some ice slushy things, all in one night. Warning: being foreign may make you fat, as everyone wants you to try their food.

Going back to community spirit, at one festival a Japanese woman who spoke the most perfect English I had ever heard, probably better than a lot of Scots, came up to us and immediately wanted to strike up a friendship. Surprisingly she had never lived outside Japan, so it baffles me as to how she speaks so well. She ended up inviting us to her house for coffee another day, during which we were surrounded by her family. Her youngest son was really intrigued and kept peeking in, then bursting out laughing at the sight of such pale people.

I can’t get over the utter politeness of everyone, yet at the same time there are such big cultural differences. For instance, people here find it normal to eat fish heads (with eyes and everything!), while I struggle to even eat a single prawn. But that’s just me being a wimp. I will overcome my fear! At one of the festivals they were actually getting random people from the crowd to ride a pig and see how long they could stay on for. Yes, there was a pig rodeo. An actual pig rodeo. Everyone seemed to find it hilarious, but honestly, I found it rather cruel with all the squealing of the pig. I suppose this is why the Japanese can’t really seem to fathom the idea of vegetarians.

However, the community spirit even extends to the nursery children. This week we’ve been doing nursery visits. This means singing things like Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes and reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar, one of my childhood favourites. I think the word kawaii was invented for this very event! The children can barely speak Japanese, yet they manage to sing all the songs and some of them can even say a small self-introduction in English. Impressed didn’t cover it, and it still didn’t cover it when the kids started doing taiko drumming IN TIME WITH ONE ANOTHER AND WITHOUT HITTING EACH OTHER WITH THE STICKS. Seriously, even I can’t manage to do this nowadays. I’m rather proud of myself for the fact that I managed to resist stealing one of them. Will people get the wrong impression if I post this online? But that being said, a bunch of little Japanese children all waving and say “Bye bye! Nice to meet you!” is quite possibly the cutest thing ever.

Of course, I did manage to escape briefly back to city life for a couple of days when I went to Matsuyama a week or so ago for the Ehime Orientation. This one was much less sleep inducing and much more useful than the Tokyo Orientation in my opinion. On the first night we actually went to an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink restaurant. A Scottish girl + all you can drink = carnage. Such a formula would never work in the UK. It was really hilarious to see the amount of hungover people at orientation the next day.  Of course, I was one of them, but that’s nothing a Maccy Ds can’t sort out.

Japan continues to surprise me, just as it did last week. For instance, I headed out with some of the other local Nanyo JETs to a jazz bar in Ozu to find some of the smoothest jazz I’ve ever heard. Japan never really struck me as being a hub for jazz. However, the most amazing thing this week for me has to be what I call “the noodle river”. Today the head of the BOE drove us up precariously high into the mountains to a noodle restaurant. But it wasn’t just your usual noodles in a bowl.While some Japanese bars have conveyor belts with food, this restaurant had a little stream going round the table. And in the stream the chefs would send out little clumps of noodles at random intervals that we had to catch with our chopsticks. Yes, I was literally fishing for noodles! Isn’t this just the most amazing thing ever?? Maybe it’s just me… This, combined with being in a sort of tree house deep in the beauty of the mountains made it such a strange, yet exhilarating experience. Sadly it can’t be a regular occurrence, since it’s nestled so deep that you need a car to get there. But alas, that is where the magic comes from.

Hmm, it seems Japan might be rubbing the sharp sarcastic Scottish edges off of me… Time for me to go I suppose before I become too mushy and stop recognising myself.

Arrival in Japan Part 2: First Days In Ehime

When getting off the plane in Matsuyama, the capital of Ehime prefecture, the first thing that struck me was the heat and humidity. All the new Ehime JETs were met by a gaggle of excited supervisors waving large welcome signs around, before being whisked away to their towns.

When we arrived at Yawatahama, me, the other new JET, a current JET, my supervisor and my coordinator all went for lunch at what felt like an overwhelmingly traditional Japanese restaurant. It was all shoes off and sitting down around the low table. We were told that we should try cold noodles. I hesitantly agreed, thinking it sounded a bit off-putting, but not wanting to offend my bosses. And to my surprise, it was really great and refreshing. Basically you pick the noodles up with your chopsticks, dip them in a tub of soy sauce and other bits and pieces and slurp them up. Apparently slurping here in Japan is not rude in the slightest, but instead shows your appreciation for a meal. However, being a stoic British person, I can’t yet quite bring myself to do that yet.  We also had okonomiyaki, which is basically a savoury pancake type thing with vegetables and things mixed in. I had this once before, but to my surprise my coordinator suddenly took the top off the table to reveal a hotplate underneath, and starting pouring the mixture onto the hotplate and making the pancake himself in the middle of the restaurant. Needless to say, it was very tasty.

I was then shown to my apartment, which to my delight is very much Japanese style. I have a kitchen, and then a bedroom and living room, both of the latter having traditional Japanese tatami mats on the floor. Although I’ve been told they can be a bit of a hindrance to maintain. Here is my tatami mat living room which has a lack of furniture.

 I don’t have an oven, or rather I have a mini oven thing, even smaller than a microwave. I also have a gas stove, which alarms me as it looks like it could blow up any minute. The biggest surprise of all was my shower though. I have what is essentially a wetroom, with a swimming pool type floor with tiles and a drain in the middle. The shower itself is a deep box that you climb into and stand in (about double the height of a normal bath), with a handheld showerhead. Basically, there is a hole in this box and the water drains out and goes down the drain in the floor. Rather odd. At first I thought my box was leaking when water appeared on the floor, until I realised this is what is meant to happen. The ability to add pictures has mysteriously disappeared, so I'm afraid I can't add anymore pictures right now.

The next couple of days were basically a blur of me and the other new JET being taken round by the supervisor to visit the Board of Education and some of our schools we will be teaching in once the summer holidays are over. This consisted in us giving out omiyage to all the teachers and co-workers, which are little souvenirs from our hometown. So for me this is generally things like shortbread, tablet and little Highland cow key rings and the like.  Never have I bowed so much in my life as I did in those past 2 days. And never have I said “Arigato gozaimasu” and “onegaishimasu” so often for lack of any better vocabulary.

One thing I noticed is people’s utter enthusiasm towards foreigners. Whilst in the UK we wouldn’t even blink at the sight of a foreigner, we are such a novelty to the Japanese due to their complete lack of racial diversity. This can be both a good and a bad thing as I have quickly come to realise. Whilst people are very eager to make you feel welcome, it also means that you get a lot of stares when walking around outside and in the supermarket. One little girl practically banged into a door because she was staring at me. And just this afternoon a group of Japanese schoolgirls exclaimed “Kawaii!” when they saw me in a shop. I really feel it won’t be long until everyone in the town knows about the two new blonde gaijin girls simply from everyone talking about us "newcomers".

While most adults generally try to hide their curiosity when they see me walking around, the kids really can’t help themselves. At the first school I visited they literally swarmed round us like a bunch of flies to some leftover meat. It was very endearing for me, the way in which they were both eager and shy at the same time. They would yell out the few English phrases they knew like “Nice to meet you” and rather amusingly “This is a pen!”. But when I actually tried to speak to any of them directly, particularly the girls, they would dissolve into a fit of giggles and hide behind their friends. I suppose this is my first small taste of what teaching will be like. Sometimes frustrating, yet always amusing.

I’ve had a great first week so far, being shepherded around by our coordinator and sampling many different restaurants. The food has been great, although I know that in a couple of weeks I’ll be craving some fresh mozzarella and a big bag of McCoy’s Salt &Vin. The surrounding countryside is beautiful, although the sheer humidity makes me reluctant to go outside for long periods of time.

Our coordinator has been very much a mama bear to us, doing everything from helping us open bank accounts, to making sure we don’t get lost, to taking us shopping and most amusingly, trying to set us up with some of her younger friends. Yesterday we were initially told that we would be going shopping, then we would meet some of her friends to go out and eat with and then to the beach, gender unspecified. In Japan people tend to hang out in same sex groups, so it wasn't unreasonable to assume they would be females. Later in the day it comes to light that these friends are actually male. Then she starts telling us their ages saying “Oh, they’re too young for me”. I have to applaud the way in which she was so sly about introducing this idea of gallivanting around the beach in the dark with some of her young male friends, originally leading us to believe they would be female without actually saying that. Although in the end the beach never happened as everyone was too tired and full from good food. Anyway they were all lovely guys, and we will probably meet them again for some kind of language exchange, even if this is a little bit different from our coordinator’s original hope of us gallivanting around the beach in the dark with them. 

Today being the only day without work or plans, I decided to do a little exploring of my own in the afternoon sun. To my surprise I stumbled upon a sprawling hillside graveyard with several beautiful shrines in the entrance way. I think I’ve used the phrase “to my surprise” far too often in this blog, but I think this really sums up living in Japan.

So all in all, a great first week and hopefully many more to come!

Arrival in Japan. Part 1: The Tokyo Orientation

*** Just to apologise for the lack of photos, my computer isn't being cooperative in letting me post them. I'll try and sort it as soon as possible.

So here is my first blog post, finally having arrived in Japan. I’ve been here less than a week, but I feel I have so much to say as everything is so overwhelming. So for now I’m just going to focus on Tokyo orientation. In a strange way, it seems like time has passed both quickly and slowly. Whenever I look at my watch it feels like it’s sneakily jumped ahead a few hours because I’ve been doing too much. But at the same time, it feels like years ago that I was at Edinburgh airport because of how much has been packed in this last week

Just over a week ago I was stressed out, running around Edinburgh saying my goodbyes. It was a sad time to leave, given that the festival was just revving up. I kept getting excited over this despite the fact that logically I knew I wouldn’t be here to see it.

Anyway, I digress. The plane journey was fairly hellish, in terms of the fact that it was 12 hours long (not including the flight to London and the waiting in between) and I was unable to sleep for more than about 10 minutes at a time. When I arrived in Tokyo that day I felt like the whole world was swaying. This swaying feeling only added to the feeling that I was dreaming. It’s strange how we step into an airplane, step out however long later and we’re in a new place. Have you ever stopped to wonder that it’s just a simulator and we’re actually the star of our own Truman Show (great film that is worth a watch if you’re never seen it before)?

So moving on from strange philosophical, Matrix-like questions, the hotel was pretty damn sweet. I’m kicking myself now for not having taken a picture of all the chandeliers hanging in the entrance and dining rooms, but it was pretty frickin’ sweet. 

Also, only in Japan does the toilet have a remote control. It took me a couple of minutes to work out where the flush was, which, by the way, isn’t even on the remote control.

I spent the first afternoon swaying in my dreamlike state with a big group of other British JETs since we were the first nationality to arrive. My first meal in Japan was a plate of noodles with random egg yolk on the top that took me by surprise, though despite this, it was pretty tasty. But as I was soon to find out, this is only the beginning of the surprises I would find awaiting me. By the way, we ordered the food by pressing a button on a machine in the door and putting our money in like a vending machine. Then a few minutes later the waiter turned up with our dishes.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around Shinjuku, in all its bright neon lights, then getting the subway, or rather, overground, since it’s not actually underground (or at least this line isn’t, I haven’t ventured to the others). And guess what: it was cute! As in little cartoon character mascots everywhere! There are so many times that you can say "Only in Japan" and I think this is definitely one of them. Cute is everywhere! Even in the bank in Yawatahama which I'll get to later.

We got the subway to Shibuya and stood around in our big gaijin bubble making the Japanese V in our pictures. Naturally this resulted in a lot of Japanese people staring at us, which brings me to the topic of the fact that Japan is an extremely homogenous country in that over 99% of the population are completely Japanese in origin. Most of the other 1% is made up of other Asian immigrants from China or Korea, so when a huge group of British folk rock up, then the Japanese stare since they’re not used to this. Even in Tokyo which you would probably presume has a bit more variation in terms of race.

The rest of the day was spent in a sweaty and tired, but completely awed daze, visiting a shrine near Harajuku and climbing a tall building near the hotel to get a view of the city at night (when I say night I mean 8pm, since it seems to get dark here around 7pm, even in the summer).

The next day was actual orientation. This meant hundreds of JETs from all over the world were herded into a giant room and sat down according to the prefecture they are heading to. We were basically talked at for several hours, which isn’t a great idea when combined with jet-lag and suits in a rather warm and crowded room. In my opinion, and also after having talked to several others, the JET Programme was pretty harsh on us. They expect us to arrive in Tokyo after an extremely long flight and a timezone change of 8 hours, then actually attend conferences and stay awake the next day? Yeah, sure. And a lot of the Americans and Canadians were much worse off, having an even bigger time difference and arriving late at night.

To cut a long story short, we were talked at for a couple of days and I was really sleepy.  On the second day I ventured out to lunch with the other Scots (definitely the best group of JETs, totally not biased!) and ended up in a really traditional sushi place. Unfortunately my friend has the picture on his camera, but it was my first experience of taking my shoes off  before entering a restaurant and sitting on the floor at a low table to eat. Really great sushi and at least a third of the price I would pay back home.

The second evening was also really cool. It was the British embassy event, so all us Brits were herded to the British embassy for munchies and bevvy (woo!). We were also given a lecture basically telling us not to get arrested. Did you know you can get arrested for punching a plastic snowman? Or for stealing a cardboard cut-out of Justin Bieber from a karaoke bar? Nope, me neither. Later on I drank all the wine and loaded my plate with sausage rolls – only at the British embassy. I mean, who knows the next time I’ll get to eat a sausage roll? And of course there were the traditional Japanese Taiko drummers, which just about burst my eardrums but were very amazing and energetic in their dancey drumming.

Later that night a big group of us headed to an izakaya (a traditional Japanese bar) and failed miserably because the group was too big. So we split up, and I bought an interesting drink in the konbini (convenience store) called Strong Zero which managed to get me tipsy after only 1 can. Yep, me, the Scottish girl who can drink a bottle of wine like juice got tipsy from one can of something…  I seriously wonder what they put in that stuff!  So I had a fun last night wandering around Shinjuku and Shibuya amongst all the colourful lights, and going into arcades and not actually playing anything, but just gazing in awe at how many floors it has and the weird prizes it had (a box with eyes on it, seriously?).  So I must confess, and please don’t hate me for this, we ended the night by going to McDonalds and having some chips. It wasn’t my idea, I swear!

The next day I got up at early o’clock in order to catch my flight to Ehime. The flight was short and I slept my way through most of it. In fact I awoke to what I thought was turbulence, but was actually the plane bumping down on the ground. I looked out the window to see lots of hills! And green! And actual Japan! Not the crazy hallucinations of a frat boy on mushrooms that Tokyo is.

So stay tuned in kids for the next instalment of Hannah Wanders Helplessly Round Japan Offending Everyone She Meets With Her Gaijin Ways.  :)

London Orientation: 3 weeks until take-off

So I had to go to London for my JET orientation this weekend! I also took this as a bit of a tourist opportunity as I haven't been to Landan town for about 4 or 5 years now. So here is Piccadilly Circus (and a couple of randoms)!

The other JETs had arranged a meetup the day before orientation in a good old Weatherspoons. Of course, I managed to get lost on the way and unexpectedly found myself outside Buckingham Palace! This doesn't bode terribly well for finding my way around Tokyo but anyway I digress... So I eventually found the others, had a few drinks, went to the campus for something to eat and a drink, then I turned into my shabby hostel for the night.

The first day of orientation just consisted of a day full of different talks and information being thrown at us, the main gist of which was don't be late to the airport, don't do drugs and don't do stupid gaijin stuff (like wrestling in a pool of rice, true story) that could offend the Japanese otherwise you will leave in disgrace. In short, by the end of the day I was terrified that I was going to disgrace myself terribly in Japan. But I suppose that's the point, that they scared us into behaving as "British ambassadors", a phrase that is thrown round an awful lot in JET. Oh and in terms of drugs in Japan, just don't do it. Not even weed since that is also a class A drug. They will hold you for up to 3 weeks in prison without a trial or a lawyer, and they will get a confession out of you and you most certainly will be convicted. Even being around someone smoking weed can get you convicted by association. Crazy.

After the first day, most of JET piled into the Nandos just down the road. To put it into context, there are around 140 of us, so the staff were definitely kept on their toes that night.

Day 2 was the most intensive day of language learning I have ever encountered in my time as a language student. I was in the beginner's class, but we sped through the curriculum at the speed of light. We went from "Watashi wa Hannah desu" to some quite complex grammar within just a few hours. Perhaps the Japanese can cope with this superfast learning style, but us poor gaijins certainly can't. Despite this overwhelming amount of knowledge being forced on us, our teacher was super sweet, encouraging and extremely hilarious in the way that only the Japanese can pull off. She seemed to have her own private jokes, as she would often say something in Japanese that none of us could understand, then burst out laughing, causing the whole class to also burst out laughing.

After this was the reception at the Japanese embassy. I was expecting this to be a very serious, probably very awkward affair, but it turned out to be quite the opposite. So a big group of us rolled up to the Japanese embassy all suited up and looking like we had stepped straight out of The Apprentice with our wheelie suitcases behind us. This is probably the most similar thing to an enkai (a Japanese after work drinking party) that I will ever experience in the UK. None of us had eaten dinner, and we were literally plied with free champagne. After taking a mere two sips, a waiter would come rushing up to us and practically force more champagne down us. This is the same as in Japan, when someone will pour another drink for you whenever your glass is looking empty. The same could be said for the canapes, which were amazing and ranged from everything from sushi, to quail's eggs to cocktail sausages. Needless to say, by the end of the reception, which lasted a mere 2 hours and ended at 8pm, all of us were quite hammered.

There was also an after-party at the pub just down the road. It was definitely easier to talk with the Japanese officials who worked at the embassy, as like us, they were all extremely drunk and had their guards down now that they had left the embassy. One particularly entertaining moment was trying to teach one Japanese guy Yellow Submarine by having a whole group of us chant it at him. Poor guy. Finally, I crawled into my terrifyingly high triple bunk bed (another cheap hostel) and passed out after all the exhaustion of the weekend.

I woke up, practically falling out of the bunk bed to my death, since there were an alarming lack of safety bars. Anyway, I survived and spent the rest of the day walking around an unpleasantly hot London taking in the sights until my feet gave up and it was time for me to catch the train home.

I couldn't have asked for a better weekend. I met some really amazing people that I hope I will be staying in contact with and visiting in Japan next year. Likewise, I learnt that the Japanese are really not so dissimilar to the Brits, especially once they have a few drinks in them. We have a similar sort of reserve and a tendency to drink tea and make small talk about the weather. And from the speeches that some of the Japanese made, our sense of humour isn't quite as different as I initially thought, unless the British sarcasm is rubbing off on them a bit. With all that being said, I am extremely excited and can't wait to go!

Less than 4 weeks to go

This post is not really about Japan in any way, but more a bucket list or a reminder to myself why I need to come back to Europe sometime. Because I know for sure I'm going to miss Europe.

Things I want to do in Edinburgh before I leave:

• Climb up Arthur Seat again. This bad boy right here.

• Climb up the Pentlands, because believe it or not I've never done it before, apart from one drunken trip a few years ago. And quite frankly I couldn't see anything because it was pitch black. I even sat on a stranger's used condom... So I need to undo that experience.
• Lazy afternoon in the Botanic Gardens. 
• Take a tour bus round Edinburgh, acting like an overly keen tourist and taking far too many pictures.
• Camera Obscura... What even is it? Everyone talks about it, I'm an Edinburgh native and I don't even get it.
• That art gallery thing where one person looks huge and the other person looks tiny. Yeah, I'm making so much sense right now...
• Actually learn the words to Flower of Scotland. 
• Drink whisky and like it. Okay, I fail at being a Scot. Don't ever ask me to drink Irn Bru and like it because it will never happen.
• And the dream of every Scottish girl... take a cheeky wee peek up a laddie's kilt ;)

Things I need to do in Europe at some point:

• Viene a ballare in Puglia Puglia Puglia! Finally get round to visiting Puglia after I was robbed of that experience last year. *Grumble grumble Italians and ridiculous heating bills grumble grumble* Home to these lovely little cone houses!

• And while I'm there in the South, go and visit Salerno, home to the one and only Ema, the cult figure of 2013, who moved to Scotland to yell "Porco Dio" every 10 seconds and lecture us all about our bad cooking habits. 
• Visit Genoa again, a truly underrated northern Italian city, that I once spent one lovely afternoon wandering around by myself. They even have Willy Wonka style lifts in the streets that go side to side as well as up and down!  Genoa is a port city, that is built upwards, eventually disappearing into the mountains behind it. Strangely enough, very similar to Yawatahama where I'll be staying in Japan! Let's hope this is fate then, since I think I fell slightly in love with Genoa that one afternoon wandering around. Unfortunately I have no pictures of my own due to my tendency to lose cameras, but Google can provide for us.

• Visit Scandinavia, because they're just so damn cool.
• Closely followed by... FINLAND!  One word that sums up my time with Finnish people has to be "Kippis"", meaning cheers. I think that says it all...
• Visit Eastern Europe, because I don't want to neglect a whole side of the continent. 

So, it's fairly obvious that I love travelling. And I hear Japan has many awesome places to travel to, so I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot from me over the next year ;)

In the meantime, I'm going to be heading down to London for my Japan orientation, along with all the other UK JETs. The fear is beginning to set in now... and I think the fear will really begin to hit me after the orientation.