Midori House

So I guess I should tell you a little bit about where I am living?! I am now living in Awa City, Tokushima and so far I really like it, though I've yet to explore it properly.

What I can tell you about now however is my lovely little apartment! My apartment is in a building known as Midori House, or for those who don't know Japanese The Green House! Now don't worry, it's not as humid as it sounds (even without air conditioning!) Nope, my house is named so because, you guessed it, of it's colour. It is veeeeeeery green...

 

Green House! My apartment is upstairs on the right!

My bed, tv on the right, large wardrobe on the left, tatami mats!

It is a second floor apartment and consists of a little entrance porch (for shoes of course), living room, toilet, shower room, kitchen and bedroom. Actually for Japanese apartments it's very big and I almost feel like I have too much space to myself. At the moment I'm not even using my sitting room as I have now put the wired internet in my bedroom, which also has the tv! Why would I leave?


Even though I've always taken my shoes off to come in my house, this has taken a little more brainpower to think about what shoes I'm supposed to be wearing.

Back to supermarket. Facing bathroom, bedroom to my right.

For example: I will come in my home and take my shoes off in my porch. I will then step into my slippers (which are handily ready waiting for me) and walk to my bedroom. But wait! My bedroom has tatami mats which you can't wear slippers on. So I then step out of my slippers (backwards so they are ready to go when I leave my bedroom) and can walk around my room. I then step back into my slippers to walk to the toilet. But wait again! I have different slippers to use in my toilet! So I have to step out of my house slippers into my toilet slippers and then swap back again when I am done! Complicated right?! But I'm getting there.

Very neglected living room! But very comfy.

The only real negative about my apartment so far is that it is right next to a road. With no double glazing I am finding that I am being woken up quite early in the morning with things driving past my room which seems to rattle the whole house! It can't be that but I've yet to discover the cause of the heart-stopping wake up call I get every morning!

On the plus side. Out the front of my house I can see the back of my local supermarket (just a 2 min walk away), out the side of my house I can see my local bank (30 secs away) and from the back of my house I can see a rice paddy! Hooray for Japan!

View from my kitchen/bedroom windows of supermarket with the bank being to the left.

Konnichiwa Tokyo! (briefly)

 So after 11 ½ hours, too much food, not enough sleep and 3 terrible, TERRIBLE films later*, I finally touch down in Tokyo.... to then sweat more than I thought humanly possible waiting for yet another 2 hours at the aiport, then another 2 hours transfer from the Airport to the hotel!

From what would have been a plane full of 80 or so JETs from the London orientation, I found myself sharing the plane with countless Japanese (who would have thought hey?!) and four very lovely UK JETs – 2 from England, 2 from Scotland. These were to be my travelling buddies for the next loooong hours – no pressure to get on hey?

Made it to the hotel (much napping to be had by me on the bus) and had that all important cool-down shower that was very much needed. Who would have thought 30° would have been so hot?! Not good hot either.. not, ‘I’m off to sunbathe’ hot.. the kind of hot that makes your hair poof out to at least 10 times it’s natural frizz and makes just the simple act of standing a sticky and unpleasant one. After the shower it was straight out to get some food at a rather weird Italian Japanese restaurant. Pleanty of spaghetti and miso soup for all! Then off to the local store (when in Tokyo....) for the numerous nods and guilty smiles at not being able to understand a single word that the nice Japanese girl was saying to you as you bought your very simple ¥105 cake slice! Then finally back to the hotel, with many a stop to act the tourist taking countless photos of skyscrapers, traffic and giant letters spelling out love on a street corner. Now bed for a few hours until the alarm goes off for yet another full day...

Full day my...um...you know what...by the end of the morning session I wasn’t feeling too great and had to go to bed for a few hours to recover from a rather inopportune migraine (cheers mother)! The afternoon session was ok and I got to meet the prefectural advisor for Tokushima. Tomorrow we will be leaving together at 7:30am for yet another coach ride and then plane journey to Tokushima! Very excited. To end the evening myself and a few JETs went up the Tokyo Municipal Building (or something to that effect anyway) which was free, which gave us a brilliant night-scape of Tokyo as a whole! There was also a kawaii shop at the top of the building where I couldn't resist being a tourist buying 2 'My Neighbour Tototro' magnets which are now stylishly placed on my fridge! (Pictures to follow) After coming down, Kirsty, my room mate, and I went for a little explore as we both felt that being cooped up in a hotel in Tokyo all day did not mean that we could claim we had been to Tokyo! It was only a brief walk around Shinjuku, but enough for me to feel as if I had seen the real Tokyo (or at least part of it) and also more than enough to make me feel very hot and sticky... nice.

*I would not recommend watching Source Code, Water for Elephants or Rio – though Rio was definitely the best of the three!

Hajimemashite - Liz to yonde kudasai

So a little about this whole thing... I’ve decided to (try to) keep a blog of my life away in Japan for the next year. There are a few reasons for doing this – for a start it will help me remember all the great experiences that I will hopefully have, but mainly it is a lazy man’s way of keeping people at home up-to-date with all that’s going on without having to email a dozen people separately. My theory = if you want to know, come and read!

For those who don’t know, in a weeks time I will be JETting off to Tokyo, Japan and then soon after will be headed to my final destination of Tokushima, where I will be spending the next year working as an assistant English teacher in various Elementary and Junior High Schools in the region. What seems like forever ago (though it was only back in November) I applied for the JET Programme (Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme). This programme takes graduates from all over the world and puts them to work in all parts of Japan as Assistant Language Teachers (ALT). If you want more information, check out their website: http://www.jet-uk.org/ Anyway, after countless more forms and email responses, I finally got accepted onto the programme just a few months ago! 

‘Why Japan?!’ I hear you (as so many before you) ask. I will respond to the question with the ever-eloquent and loquacious answer of, ‘Why the hell not?!’ I am 22 years old and have just spent the last three years (which have simultaneously been the bane of my existence and the best years of my life) ‘studying’ at Sussex University in Brighton. Time to take this degree in Film Studies (yes, yes, I can hear you sniggering) somewhere completely off the charts – somewhere completely new.

Second answer to your question goes the following: I suppose my interest in Japan has a lot to do with my mum, when she unknowingly recorded off the tv what was to become my all time favourite film – Laputa. From there my love of the Studio Ghibli films grew and as that love grew, the interest extended much more into Japan and its entire culture, food and lifestyle. To be given the chance to live in this amazing country and culture for more than just a passing holiday is kind of insane! I feel extremely lucky and grateful.

I’m not going to pretend to be an amazing writer – for an assistant English teacher my spelling and grammar is likely to be appalling at times. However this will just be an honest, and sometimes rambling, account of my life in Japan. So wish me luck – hopefully my next post will let you know how successful my first week or so has been! Fingers crossed.