Shiga and Kyoto

So up the next morning to catch the 8:50 bus from Tokushima station. Actually, I was feeling surprisingly well as we strolled towards the station, feeling quite smug as my friend Sam drags her hungover feet behind me. Could it be that I had escaped the fateful hangover that has haunted me for many mornings in the past?! Turns out, no. Denied a non-eventful sleep on the bus I proceeded to be very ill (obviously not helped by my travel-sickness) and at certain points along the 2 hour bus ride, I actually wanted to die! We got to Osaka station and had a quick breakfast stop (which I didn’t participate in) and then were off again, on the train this time, destination Shiga to meet with a friend of Austin’s. This time my body did allow me a bit of sleep as I slumped in a chair and stayed there for the whole hour until it was time to get off. Feeling slightly better, we departed the train in Shiga and were met by Danny’s friend Christine – the smiliest person you will even meet! She then took us to her very nice apartment so we could drop off some stuff (she lives next door to Danny so we could sort out sleeping arrangements later) and we then quickly headed back out to Lake Biwa. Now this day sounded perfect. There were already quite a few ALTs at the lake who we were going to join and we could play cricket and swim in the lake and have a really pleasant afternoon. However, the weather was not on our side and as soon as we reached the lake it started to spit, then drizzle, then rain, then absolutely poured it down soaking us all. We then took this opportunity, as we were already wet, to go and swim in the lake for a bit. But wait, who forgot to bring their swim stuff?! Oh right, I did. I am now proud and slightly ashamed to say that this did not deter me for long, and after a bit of encouragement from Danielle, I got in the lake in my underwear (though modestly as I kept my long top on which seemed to cover most). Did I mention that my hangover had cleared up by this point and I was actually starting to enjoy my day!

After the lake (which was eventually completely rained off) we headed back to Danny’s to dry off before heading back out to get something to eat. After traipsing round the town a few times trying to find a place to fit 18 of us (no, we didn’t in the end!). Everyone but our group and Danny and Christine went back home to chill out for the evening whilst the rest of us managed to find a table in a place called the Olive Garden?! It was rather strange. A buffet style starter, I guess like Harvester but less salady and a pizza or pasta main course! It was very nice but very filling so I was glad that between four of us we shared the dishes we ordered, Danny and Broc polishing off what myself and Bella could not. Then back to Danny’s for an evening of random games (very civilised) before the girls went next door to Christine’s and collapsed onto futon beds!

The morning came too quickly it had to be said, and we were up and ready to go a 9:30, giving us enough time to get to the bakery for some breakfast before we caught the train to Kyoto. In Kyoto we decided to follow a route that took us to 11 temples and shrines. To be honest I don’t really remember whether we went to the 11 or not, but we definitely went to a few. The first that we went to was really interesting. There were Buddhist monks everywhere, and it was clear that there was some kind of ceremony going on. I went inside for a bit (after taking my shoes off and putting them in a plastic bag) and sat down on the tatami mats just listening to the main monk chant. It was quite a surreal experience but definitely worth it. At the same temple, I also got to see my first, weird looking, wild turtle that was swimming around in the pond. It wasn’t like any turtle I’ve seen before – having more of a beak for a mouth than anything else.

Another great experience was going down into one temple into the darkest room I have ever experienced in my life. It really was quite unnerving. Even in very dark rooms our eyes usually get accustomed to the dark and use any light possible to help navigate us. There was simply no light at all under this temple for our eyes to adjust to – when I help up my hand in front of my I couldn’t see it in the slightest even though I knew it was there. An experience you can’t imagine until you have done it and I would thoroughly recommend it if ever you’re in the Kyoto area! This dark walk eventually led to a revolving stone, which I believe when touched you can make a wish and it is supposed to be lucky?! Something like that anyway. After an entire morning walking around shrines, streets and temples, we finally ended up at the most typical looking English pub I’ve seen – obviously being the Rugby World Cup we Brits had to meet up with fellow Brits to watch the game. Needless to say I didn’t watch the game, but did enjoy sitting in a cool pub, eating chicken and chips and reading the guide book! After this we headed to Gion – the area in Kyoto which is famous for geisha. We didn’t see any geisha but the buildings were still interesting to look at. After this we headed back to Kyoto Station – a huge building with great views over the city, where we eventually caught a train back to Shiga and went for some sushi for dinner before heading back to Danny’s for more games and sleep!

 The next morning was taken at more of a leisurely pace as our only deadline was to be back in Osaka at 19:50. We went to another bakery in the morning for breakfast and headed to the old town where we saw another shrine and went up a cable car to see the view of Shiga, including Lake Biwa which we had swam in only a couple of days ago. By this point though most of the girls, for one reason or another were lagging having had too much sun, early mornings and long days filled with walking. We slowly made out way back down the hill and headed for a bit of lunch. By the time we got back to Danny’s there was just time to pack before we headed off to the station for the journey home. Although it was raining buckets by the time we got back to Osaka, there was a perfect end to the trip for me. As we stopped off into the last store before we got on the bus to go home, I found the most amazing thing on one of the shelves. A large bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk!!!! Heaven. Needless to say, that was picked up and not put down for the rest of the night. ¥300 well spent! Home and bed, ready to be completely wiped for the next morning.

Good, no, awesome weekend!

Birthday Fun!

What a weekend!

To be fair, it started fairly quietly as I am including my birthday (which was on Thursday) in this weekend. So Thursday I was at my elementary school, and although I didn’t get any birthday cards from the kids (this will be rectified next year) I did at least have one class sing happy birthday to me – rather well I might add, and another class applaud me because of my birthday. Can’t go wrong really can you?! No chocolate cake from anyone which I was quite disappointed about seeing as for the last two weeks I have been telling all of my classes how my favourite thing is chocolate cake! Ah well. I had a nice surprise later on as I had to go to my JHS after elementary school and when I got there I found I had a present and a card from my JTE on my desk =) That was nice. Anyway, I had a surprisingly nice night in on my own, chilling out, eating chocolate cake (own bought) and drinking umeshu, with a quick chat to the parentals and a few birthday presents in the mix it turned out to be a really successful birthday. 

Birthday cake and drink!

Also, Thursday I became an official alien as I collected my alien card (foreign residents card) from the town hall. Brilliant.

So a good Thursday.

Friday then just got better. Had a fairly boring day in the morning at my JHS but it was ok as it didn’t drag too much as I knew that in the afternoon I would be able to leave the school to attend the local JHS English speech contest. It was quite a weird experience. There were four JHS competing in this particular contest – each with two or three students. The weird part of it was that the other ALTs which I had now met a few times were there but we were all very much segregated – it was as if we were competing against each other – loyal to our schools already. I did feel sorry for the students though. Throughout the whole contest it was absolutely chucking it down with rain outside which, when you’re in a room that doesn’t seem to be insulated in the slightest, makes quite a racket and it was pretty hard to hear any of the students at all, whether you spoke English or not. My students did me proud – only forgetting the words once or twice – however sadly they did not win as were beaten by one boy who was told that he won because his speech ‘went on a journey. At the start he felt one way and the end he felt another.’ BLAH! Who wants to have a speaker who is not consistent in how he feels?! Anyway, the speech contest over, I raced home, packed, showered, and got ready to drive to Tokushima City for my joint birthday party!! =)

The amazing guests!

 

We went to an Izakaya where we had the nomihodai (the all you can drink option – dangerous!) I am so glad that people over here like to organise things as I could have never had organised such a nice event on my own. Mari organised the whole thing, and when I got there, we made a grand total of 20 people all in our own section. It was perfect and loads of fun and I didn’t have to pay in the end as everyone chipped in a bit so that me and other birthday girl Katie had a free evening! The food just kept coming and each dish was different but incredibly tasty – my favourite probably being the asparagus wrapped in bacon! What was not so good however was my adventurousness when choosing my drinks. Firstly I managed to get someone to help me with the menu and so was able to snag myself a nice lime cocktail. After that (when others were well into their third beer) I decided that I might as well just work down the list of cocktails – so the waiter came along and I just pointed to the next two on the list!.... hmmmmm bad idea... What arrived to me next was what I would describe as... well... hmm... actually it was so disgusting I can’t even put it into words! It was a mixture of cold tea and water?! Maybe.. add in a little bit of ‘ew’ and you will be very close to what I tasted! Needless to say the other drink was slightly better. I was a bit dubious at first as it was white but all in all definitely drinkable. Then came the gin and tonic (woops – I can’t stand gin!) and then after all my failings at randomly pointing to a nice drink. I decided to go back to my trusted lime cocktail again...... oh go on then, add an umeshu to the mix and I was definitely ready for last orders! But the night was still young so we headed to Ingrid’s International (the local ALT haunt) for yet more drinks (a screwdriver courtesy of Ingrid as a birthday present) and a bit of karaoke and failings at pole dancing! Then when we were all sung out we headed back to Bella’s to prepare for the next day’s adventures.

I want to ride my bicycle......

Hey everyone, me again!

So after a very successful Saturday cleaning the apartment, doing washing, and spending a lot of money at the 100yen store, I decided to go for a little bike ride around my area. What can I say? It is amazing around here!!! =) not so rural that I will get lost straight away - there is always a main road to come back to, but rural enough that I can cycle for a good half hour around the fields and houses without seeing a car and only seeing a very few locals.

I am so lucky to be living in a place like this, and extra lucky to have a bike so I can go exploring. My favourite part of the bike ride was going past a small pond with koi carp in it! I wanted to take a photo, but a little old lady came and watched them with me. I very apologetically told her 'wakarimasen, igirisu gin desu'... which I hope means 'I don't understand, I am a 'stupid' english person'! which I believe she responded with a charade of her telling me not to fall off my bike.... weird.

Anyway, I will just share on this post some pictures of Tokushima whilst I'm out and about to give you a general idea of where I live. Enjoy!


***Update 24/09/11*** I almost fell off my bike today =( I was trying to put a can of drink in my basket without it spilling and ended up crashing into a barrier! Luckily it was there though, otherwise I would have dropped down a 10ft ditch into a stream. As it is I coasted along the barrier using my leg. No damage done but I'm glad no one was around to see!

One of the many shrines encountered on my bike ride

The locals and my bike...

Have you met my bike?

 Apparently she is a hit with the locals...

 There have actually been a couple of these on my bike. One of them actually came with me to the supermarket and back before I realised that he was there! They are so tiny, this one is on top of the pedal thing!

I found him when I was checking for frogs! Well, I didn’t have to look very hard, he was just cotching on the mud guard on the back wheel. Weird.

Back to school... (I never thought I'd hear myself say that again!)

Teacher's room

So instead of sitting here at my desk trying to look busy doing absolutely nothing, I have decided to use this time to my advantage and write a bit more of my blog. Though what I’m going to write about I have no idea, the point is that I am typing on my laptop, other teachers don’t know what I’m writing but I at least look busy – plus it stops me practically falling asleep!

So I will tell you a little bit of my experience of my schools so far. For a start I have had a lot of me just sitting, trying to think of things to do, whilst teachers around me are constantly getting up and down, chatting, or doing something teachery! I feel like I’m in one of those films where they do a speed up of time around the main character (people rushing past around them) whilst they are sat alone in the middle of it all barely moving. I don’t know if that’s a good description or not or whether you understand what I mean, but hopefully one day you will be watching a film and this kind of sequence happens and you will finally understand what the hell I am talking about and think ‘Aaaaah I see, that was what she was going on about. Yeah, she looks like a right pleb’. Hmmm right.

Donari Junior High School (teachers room: 3 windows on ground floor)

Anyway, so I will just give a brief overview of my main school, Donari Junior High. So far there hasn’t seemed to be much consistency between day to day. I think this has something to do with the culture festival that is happening at the school on Sunday – this seems to be taking precedence over normal lessons. Add on top of that the typhoon on Friday, completely wiping my whole day of lessons, and I find that I have still yet to meet half of the students in lessons and therefore will be introducing myself constantly for at least the next week. Ah well. Today was by far my smallest class consisting of 4 students. This is my special education class but to be honest it seems weird that they have been so separated from the rest of the school (from the teachers room I literally have to treck to the other side of the school before I find the class). From what I can tell there seems to be one boy who struggles to pay attention, 2 girls who are more than intelligent but just a bit awkward and one other boy who is slightly autistic. Give them a separate class in England and you would have a prejudice court issue on your hands, in Japan however, this is quite normal and definitely seen as correct. Hmmm. Anyway, it was a nice change from the 38 students I taught yesterday – 3^rd graders, where half the class seemed interested and shy, but the other half were outgoing but definitely couldn’t care less about me or English and instead talked – yes talked, not even whisper, throughout the entire lesson. Crazy stuff! I have still yet to teach 1^st and 2^nd grade but hopefully next week that time will come. I like this school so far though. I have my own locker for my shoes (I really need to get some comfy indoor shoes – apparently slippers aren’t appropriate despite what I was countlessly told) I have my own desk with loads of material left by my predecessor. In fact, I spent my entire first day at the school simply going through my desk working out what was there and tidying up, as it is I still have no idea what half of the games are, nor how to use them!

My desk!

Lunch is served everyday (still haven’t worked out when I’m supposed to pay for them) and so far they have been edible, though my stomach clearly freaks out as my appetite has definitely gone, leaving an embarrassed Liz throwing away at least a bit of food at the end (not good) but they do come with a carton of milk which goes down very well, and today I actually managed to finish the whole lunch! A feat that I had yet to accomplish in Japan! The teachers here are also very nice, and although with some teachers we only share the daily ‘ohaiyo gozaimas’ other teachers keep trying and trying to engage me in a conversation that neither of us can understand, which strangely makes me feel more welcome and that I belong.

Although the junior high school seems like a nice school, I think my favourite days by far are going to be the ones that I spend at my elementary schools! I have only been to one of them at the moment but felt very welcome (despite the lack of my own desk, which is fair as I’m only there twice a month!) and the kids are super kawaii! Plus, it is definitely more fun spending a lesson playing games and doing quizzes than it is teaching about grammar. My three elementary schools are Gosho, Donari and Omata. I go to Gosho and Omata twice a month on Mondays and Donari every Thursday morning – my first being tomorrow. Again, so far I have only given my self introduction presentation, but the audience at the elementary school far surpass that of the junior high. So hopefully these days will be more enjoyable. Plus, I only have to get to school at 8:30 and can leave at 3:15 – short day hey?! =)

Ah yes I forgot to mention, I have also started to help two junior high students with their speeches for the English speech contest. They are both very shy and although I want to help them sound much better, I also don’t want to scare them away. However, obvious mistakes like enzams instead of exams I feel can’t go unsaid. The worst bit of this helping is definitely the fact that yestday I had to record myself reading both of their speeches. God that was nervewracking – I never did enjoy sight reading. No real mistakes were made though and hopefully it will help them understand what the hell I’m banging on about when I correct them. God I hate my voice though.

Anyway I feel this has used up a good amount of time and I look suitably busy (fingers crossed anyway) Now I wil probably go back to what I was doing this morning trying to find material to use in my eikaiwa (adult english speaking classes) which I’m not entirely sure when they will start, but I want to be well prepared for them when they do. After all, adults will be far more aware when I have no idea what I’m doing rather than students who you can just blag to and get them to do something boring but schoolish. I don’t think I will be able to get away with that with my eikaiwa, especially seeing as I ‘m teaching them on my own, and won’t have my JTE to hide behind if anything goes wrong!

My new school shoes! Ha! Black ones for JHS, white for Elementary!

School lunches

Well, I have the time so I might as well add another post tonight!
If you hadn't guessed already from the title, I'm just going to tell you a bit about my experience with school dinners so far....
I've only had 2, but so far so good, although I've yet to finish one as they somehow fill me up straight away! I think maybe it might be because I am not entirely sure what I am eating, which makes everything a little bit more stressful and unnerving. However, when I came to Japan I was determined to try everything given to  me, and to be fair to myself that's what I have done, even when everyone in the staffroom seems to have half an eye on me to see what food might be my breaking point!
So, around 12:30 (well 11:30 today because of the typhoon) lunch gets delivered to the staffroom by the teachers whose turn it is to serve up. We all get given a carton of milk (that I can cope with) and a little tray with different sections for different food. I almost feel like I'm back in primary school, except switch the chips with rice and the turkey dinosaur with some unexplained bowl of stew?!!?
Yesterday I was given some soft ball things with possibly octopus in them - though I'm not entirely sure, just ate one whole and nodded approvingly at the sensei next to me who was carefully watching.

 

Ok, so above is my lunch today (yes I did feel like a bit of a prune, taking a picture of it!) So.. the rice I can identify. I believe the bowl had egg(?), carrot, meat of some description and other such unknown items. It was very nice, but rather sickly. The portion I barely touched is the one at the top.. it had cabbage(?) and pickle(?) but the overriding taste was that of fish, as I believe the little white straggly bits are actually prawns(?!?) Little white things with a black blobby eye - very unappealing and needless to say, rather untouched!

The most interesting part of the meal today was that of the dessert pot, a mixture of apple jelly with a middle of apple ice?! No clue. Very nice, but sickly again and by that point the whole meal had been rather overwhelming so I didn't finish it!

Anyway, I may update this post at a later date if I find anything of note to mention. There is the possibility of more photos as well, though feeling like a complete pleb may put me off slightly!

Fingers crossed for more recognisable food on Monday!

The tastiest rice I've ever eaten along with unknown blobs of....?!

**************************UPDATE******************************

Good news on the food front! Today (after almost passing out from hunger) I managed to eat my entire lunch! Woop! Though I guess it wasn’t much of a challenge today. Standard milk, seaweed and something salad, spaghetti with prawns, bacon, peas, carrots, and an unknown substance, and finally the saviour of the simple bread roll! Heaven. Hopefully I will be able to keep it up!

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Tues 13th September

First of all can I just point out that this is a lot of rice!! How do they expect me to finish all my food with all that rice?!! Ok.. secondly.. needless to say I did not manage to finish the things in the bottom right... they were battered/fried fish.. whole fish.. bones and all.... no thank you!.. This was unfortunately picked up on by the other teachers and all I could say to them was 'I had 1!'... gross

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Weds 14th Sept

Exciting news everyone... look mum, all gone!

Plus we had dessert today consisting on sugared bread (basically a donut! Very nice!)

Everyone meet Life, Honda Life!

Hey everyone!

So currently I am stuck inside watching, what might possibly be, the most rain I've seen in my life (and this is coming from someone who has lived in England for most of it!) so I thought I might cheer myself up by giving you a really brief update on the new thing in my life!

That's right, today I became the proud owner of a little Honda Life Kei car... (name suggestions more than welcome!)

I managed to get it this afternoon - meaning I could escape from school 3 hours early - and was able to drive back to my apartment in time to get a few essential chocolate supplies from the supermarket before the typhoon really started going. Trust me, if I went outside now, I would probably drown!

How I thought I would be able to go a year without driving I don't know. It was so nice to get behind the wheel again earlier, especially as my car is an automatic - so much easier, though it did take me a bit of time to stop trying to put my foot on the clutch everytime I stopped! (very unnatural!)

Anyway, meet my car!..... yay!

Just a few updates on the car!

1.. I still love it, especially the price of petrol! At home my car started to cost more than £40 to fill up. Here it takes about £20 (2sen)! Now I'm not entirely sure how far that gets me, but even if I have to fill up more often, I still feel like it costs less!

2.. Confused by the lights! Went out tonight and needed my lights on. However, there only seems to be two settings - the first crappy lights that you can't really see a thing with, or bloody full beam blinding everyone! Being British I was loathe to use this bright light - that is until I almost ran over two people in the street, then the full beam was on to stay!

3.. Last update - I was an idiot about the lights. I had accidentally pulled the lever which put the full beam on. After much miming at the garage (much to the man's confusion) I finally worked out what I had done and hastily retreated home to wallow in my shame.