Goodbye Okayama

This is going to be the last entry here. I’ve returned to the UK now and am settling back into British life. But I wanted to properly close off this record of my time in Japan.

I sometimes get asked what made me decide to drop everything and move to Japan for a year. It’s a question that I find quite difficult to answer convincingly. In truth, the kernel comes from a very young age when I loved videogames almost as much as I love music now. I would read all the magazines, buy games the week they came out and generally sat in front of my Nintendo for as long a period as I could get away with. At that time, Japan was THE place for anything to do with computing and video games. Nowadays, changes within gaming have meant that the US is very much on a par with Japan when it comes to game development but at the time, Tokyo was to a videogamer, what Detroit must have been to a fan of Motown. My burgeoning obsession was boosted by a series of articles in gaming magazines and a particularly mindblowing episode of the TV programme Bad Influence in which the beautiful Violet visited early-90s Tokyo.

As I got older, I played games much less. But at the same time, Japanese culture remained trendy, alien and rather baffling in many ways. Some Japanese people have a total misconception of why people like myself come to their country. They think their country is famous around the world for its temples, tourist attractions and food. Whilst that’s true to some extent, it’s the shallow, disposable kerrazee Japan that attracts a large number of tourists. I have to admit that this was true in my case. The beautiful nature, constantly surprising culture and friendly people were not really relevant to my choice of Japan as a place to live.

Another reason why I chose to visit Japan was that I needed a break from my UK routine. I had always wanted to take a gap year but for various stupid reasons had never done so. Even having done my year abroad now, I still wish I had taken some time after university to travel or do something similar. It’s baffling as to why I didn’t do this, especially as I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life around that time.

So I made it. I got on the JET programme. At the time, getting on the programme seemed like a great achievement, given the volume of people who are rejected. But in retrospect, as someone who had already been in the workplace for a few years and knew therefore, how to approach job applications with a professional attitude, it should never have been that difficult. Nonetheless, I can still remember the thrill when I got accepted and got given a year’s leave from my job in the UK.

That’s another thing. I was tremendously lucky at being allowed to leave my UK job for a year. It would have been tough to return to the UK without a job to go back to. If I had quit my job, I think I would definitely have wanted to stay longer in Japan. As things turned out, family reasons mean that a second year would never have been viable so it all worked out nicely. But I could happily have stuck around longer than I did.

It was tough clearing out my apartment. I was very aware that my predecessor, whilst generally awesome, had left a lot of junk behind that I’d subsequently had to dispose of. At the time I’d been annoyed but when I came to pack myself, I suddenly became aware of how incredibly hard it is to dispose of anything in Japan. You can’t just take stuff to the dump-you have to plan weeks beforehand so as to put your trash out at the right time for the refuse collectors to pick it up.

I insisted on arranging my own travel to the station. I like to be self-sufficient and I hated the idea of being seen off at the station. In some ways I’d come to doubt the sincerity of the kindness that some colleagues had shown towards me. I appreciated their generosity, was incredibly grateful for the effort they’d made but I never really knew what they thought of me. It was so rare to be able to have a frank, open conversation with work colleagues that I never really knew where I stood.  One part of Japanese culture that I struggled with is the compartmentalising of certain subjects and issues. I like to be able to talk about anything with my friends, without it making them uncomfortable. But that just isn’t the Japanese way. I could never adapt to the idea that giving opinions is a problematic thing to do.

I was a little sad that I somehow couldn’t manage to see Fuji from the shinkansen. I made it to my Tokyo hotel in Nakameguro. After a year of staying in inconvenient parts of the city, I’d finally been recommended a cheap hostel in a perfect area-just right for exploring the parts of the city I was interested in. My time in Tokyo was dirty, frenetic and exhausting. It contained all the things I love about city living and all the elements that make Tokyo so appealing to me. At times it felt like a non-stop headfuck-like a series of baffling episodes that have now merged into one. At the start of a Tokyo night out, anything is possible. 

I paid a visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine and museum. The museum is very interesting but certainly isn’t the same history of the second world war that I was taught at school. It was definitely worth seeing though. I also really liked the Tokyo Museum, finally saw the Meiji shrine, hung out in Yoyogi Park and got introduced to some very fashionable cafes. All good stuff.

Leaving was no massive trauma. I feel like I’ll be back. I know it’s no hassle to return to Japan in the future. Okayama will always be there. What’s difficult is the occasional sense of loss that you feel living back home. In particular I miss how easy it was to eat great food without expense or hassle. I miss the bright lights at night and the tiny bars. English customer service is certainly a massive shock to the system too. I miss the beautiful countryside that I wrote about repeatedly. The friendliness of the people, the chaotic city centres on a Saturday night, the ease of travelling around. Sigh.

I got a lot out of my time in Japan. I will always have a love for the place and all its silliness. I envy the new JETs but I know I’m in the right place, with the right people now. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog and that it wasn’t too dull or self-centred. Goodbye Okayama.

Let's Go!

No time for blog updates recently. That’s because I’ve been frantically busy as I prepare to leave Japan. On Saturday I will be taking the shinkansen up to Tokyo. There, I have 4 days to wallow in nostalgia and stuff myself senseless before boarding my British Airways flight back to London.

There have been many, many leaving ceremonies, presentations and parties. I have received a mountain of beautiful and thoughtful gifts. I have visited Korakuen, Kurashiki, my favourite ramen restaurant, my favourite yakitori restaurant and all the cutest cafes in town. I’ve got wasted with the other JETs and done karaoke for a mammoth 5 hours without any problems. Approximately 1 million photos have been taken of rice fields.

I’m ready to go.

Ikimasho….Let’s go!

Forever Delayed

What a few weeks it has been. Too busy to update but filled with a mixture of stress, fun stuff and seriously awesome stuff.

To start with, I have been cleaning like a maniac, packing stuff away and generally doing dull tasks. None of that has been fun, but I have been reasonably well organized which has made stuff less irritating. Also, my supervisor has been excellent at helping me to make leaving arrangements. Once again, I feel guilty at how much other people do for me here. But I also feel relieved that I will soon be able to take responsibility for my personal arrangements once more.

My Junior High English Club did a leaving presentation for me and I felt quite emotional really. They have the tear jerking mixture of being both overly-earnest and very cute indeed. I’ve also started to receive a range of beautiful gifts. My favourite so far has been a set of two lacquered cups. I like them because they will definitely be used and look identifiably Japanese in design. Also, the person who gave them to me wrote  a very sweet card.

One strange aspect of Japanese gift-giving protocols is that receiving gifts can sometimes be slightly depressing. That’s because the routine of gift-giving is so ingrained that many gifts are based on a societal obligation rather than an individual act of kindness. A lot of the time people exchange rather thoughtless gifts that involved the minimum of effort in purchase. This can sometimes be a little upsetting if you have given a thoughtful gift in the opposite direction. Also, a premium is placed on the financial value of the gift and I generally feel that shouldn’t be too important.

Remember this place? Well we returned last weekend. This time we decided to stay for 2 nights so that we could relax and take it easy. I could easily have stayed for a week without getting bored. The surrounding area is so lush and encapsulates so many of the things that I love about Okayama. I had a great time talking about Japanese pop music with East Asia’s drunkest man. We walked up a mountain in a slightly blissful mood. On the way back we stopped off at what might be rural Japan’s only Iranian pizza restaurant. And a fine place it was too.

So now that we're back from this very romantic stay in the mountains where it was just the two of us, idyllic and romantic. I thought I should post the following song, for no obvious reason...

A Final Visit To Hiroshima

Last weekend, I visited Hiroshima with some friends to spend some time together before our departure and to see that great city for the second time.

I’d already been to the Peace Museum, which is extraordinary, but I decided to give it a miss this time. We did sit by the dome at night and I was again struck by its emotional impact and the horrible jagged edges.

I prefer Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki to the type that you get in Osaka. I like it because you get a fried egg and because it’s a big mess, rather than a pancake. On this occasion, we went to a pretty average restaurant to have it, but I still enjoyed it. I still think it’s one of the least healthy foods that I’ve ever eaten. Everything about it is bad for you, but maybe that’s a good thing.

In fact, this was not a healthy weekend. For a start, I slipped up on the smoking and felt guilty about it as I puffed my way through the two days. Secondly, we really did drink an awful lot, eat unhealthily and get very little sleep. I don’t regret any of the above, but it did take its toll as the weekend rolled on.

The first epic night out was spent drinking ridiculous “Skytree cocktails”, stuffing our faces with izakaya fare and then heading to the nightlife centre nearby for 2 hours of karaoke silliness. You can’t beat a bit of karaoke silliness. I measure any karaoke session by whether or not I start climbing on the furniture and on this occasion I did not. But I did discover that I enjoy singing Ceremony by New Order which wasn’t something I knew beforehand.

The following day, we went for a full English breakfast at Hiroshima’s cheesiest “English Pub”. I don’t usually go to themed English stuff but I did enjoy it as a novelty and it was great to have proper streaky bacon. I guess that if you’re on holiday in Greece or whatever, then UK/Irish themed places are pretty much the crappiest thing you can do and should be avoided. But now I live here, there’s definitely something to be said for it, provided it’s rare. It can actually be fun to have a break from Japanese culture sometimes, whether that’s a pub, a decent hamburger or whatever.

The Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art had a great exhibition of Art Brut on, backed up by a 90 minute documentary on different artists from the movement. I’ve been interested in art brut ever since seeing a Jarvis Cocker documentary on it back in the late ‘90s (even then, Jarvis was always doing “worthy” stuff outside the band, which used to annoy me because the gap between Pulp albums was so long, but which I now realize was just part of a slow descent into Radio 4 dull-ery where he doesn’t actually need to create anything decent artistically at all but can instead just bask in Guardian adulation for Being Jarvis Cocker…) and I enjoyed the exhibition. There was also a cool Henry Moore sculpture outside and a little park area that overlooked the city and had a map of what it had looked like immediately after the bombing.

Saturday night was even more epic than the Friday. In Japan, you often get nightlife areas which consist of 7 or 8 floor buildings. Outside the buildings there is a sign that just gives the name of the bar. You can’t see into the bar from outside or get any impression of what it’s like, other than from the location and the name. I find these bars quite forbidding because you never know what you’re gonna get. A lot of them are Hostess Bars, which doesn’t really apply to me as a) I don’t speak Japanese and b) I don’t want to pay someone to make small-talk with me. Some of them are basically strip-joints, some are a mix between the two and some are just ordinary bars.

So on this night, we decided to each choose bars from the street and then visit them, as a way of breaking through this barrier. The only condition was that it couldn’t be anything too seedy. This led to us discovering a range of odd places. There was the darts bar, The Beatles-themed bar, the bar with misogynistic posters about beer being better than women plus many bars where we poked our heads round the door only to quickly reverse at first sight of a freaked out barmaid.

I felt sad to leave Hiroshima. It’s definitely one of my favourite cities in Japan and would certainly be a place I’d consider living if I ever relocated here. When I tell Japanese friends that I’m visiting Hiroshima, they immediately ask me whether I’m going to visit the shrine at Miyajima, as if the city itself is something not to be talked about. But this is a shame because whilst Miyajima is pretty enough, Hiroshima represents so much that is great about Japan and whilst the history can be saddening, the redevelopment of the city is one of the great Japanese achievements. Hiroshima-I shall miss you and your strange ways. It’s all about the jagged edges.

Don't Mention The War

Typical. My favorite group of students have spent the post-April period morphing into a band of noisy spawn hell-demons, much to my regret and disappointment. And then, when it comes to the week where I tell them I’m leaving, they revert to being the friendly, warm, earnest young people that I fell for in the first place. This would all be much easier if they could just revert to the brat-mode of a few weeks ago.

I think there’s a tendency amongst ALTs to exaggerate their closeness to students and/or the esteem by which the students hold them. ALTs do like to boast about:

a)How cool the students think they are.

b) How beautiful the students think they are.

c) The level of trust and intimacy they have with their students.

d) How much their students fancy them.

It can be a bit unattractive and ties into the supposed “film-star” status that some ALTs feel on arriving in Japan. I could write a lengthy post about the self-esteem boost that male ALTs receive on arriving here to be treated like movie stars by elements of the local female population. It’s a bit more complex than this, but we can’t pretend it’s not both played up to and a boost to the ego for some.

Anyway, one aspect of returning to UK life will be the absence of otherness. We will once again be just one of the crowd. In Japan, we are really only defined by our otherness. We are not Japanese and that’s what makes us stand out. But in the UK, it’s our own dress style, personality, interests etc. that mark us out as individuals. I’ve joked on this blog about my increasingly dodgy dress sense in Japan. Part of this might be that I have a 30 year-old’s increased focus on practicality. But it’s also in part due to the fact that no-one from home will ever see me in my waterproof jacket and stupid hat. So one part of my readjustment on returning to the UK is that I will again make more effort in what I wear and how I present myself-and this is mainly due to external pressures rather than any idea of “looking good for myself”.

Since arriving in Japan, I’ve taken part in a monthly English-language discussion group attended by some English teachers in Okayama. For the past few months, they’ve been reading  the book of The King’s Speech and having little discussions about it. The book itself is alright-it’s utterly fawning towards both the king and Logue, but it’s interesting enough if you like that kind of thing. One problem with the book is that it covers the outbreak of World War 2. This means the War is a difficult subject to avoid and it has come up intermittently in our discussions. I’d love to have full and frank discussions about Japan’s wartime and immediately post-wartime history. It’s kind of fascinating. But that’s never going to be feasible in this country. Any time the subject comes up, it feels uncomfortable. People aren’t especially comfortable talking about their opinions here anyway, so it’s a subject you have to be careful around.

Also, if you want to know just what a lot of made up monarchist crap, the film of The King’s Speech was, just listen to a recording of the actual speech here. See, it was a rubbish speech. The guy took half an hour to string a sentence together. That’s who we had as our ceremonial leader at the time of our greatest ever national crisis. If the head of state had been elected we’d have chosen someone who could string a sentence together, with better health, a less foreign background and a sprinkling of charisma. Instead we were left with this guy who couldn’t even read a speech that was laid out in front of him. And it may sound as if I’m picking on people with speech impediments here, but it seems to me that if the main duty of your job is to make speeches, then we ought to have had someone who could fulfil that function competently. So this story is actually the tale of a dysfunctional political system and the coaching of someone who clearly wasn’t up to the job, like a low grade civil servant on ineffective performance management measures. Sigh.

A Trip Round The Islands - Shodoshima

We climbed a gorge and made moody poses!

A few months ago we decided to do a series of island trips during our final months in Japan. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, we have to save money for our return to the UK and island trips are relatively cheap since they don’t involve hopping on the super-pricey shinkansen. Secondly, we’ve found the islands off mainland Japan (I’m not sure whether you can correctly describe the larger islands of Japan as “mainland Japan” but anyway…) to have a character of their own compared to the mainland. Usually they have been more laid back and there seems to be a larger number of “characters”, in our experience, anyway.

So last weekend, in the final part of our island odyssey, we made our way to Shodoshima. Shodoshima is the largest of the Seto Inland Sea islands (again, this is questionable geography, because I don’t know whether Honshu itself could count as a Seto Inland Sea island, but anyway…). It takes about an hour by ferry, which was enough time to consume my own weight in overly-salty snacks and sandwiches. The bagel that I bought from Bagel and Bagel was not a patch on either Carmelli or the Brick Lane Beigel Bake (sic) but it filled a hole nonetheless. We made the wise decision to rent a car, which gave us a lot of freedom over the weekend and meant we could do some cool drives along the coast and pretend we were in Thelma and Louise. I was Thelma of course, because K Chan never lets me be Louise.

Poser

Now there are an awful lot of things to like and admire about Shodoshima. But it is a Japanese tourist destination and that means you do have to wade through a lot of tacky nonsense. As I’ve said before, Japanese tacky nonsense can have a charm of its own. Shodoshima is “famous” for olives. In that spirit we visited the Olive Park where there was a history of olive production on the island, some Greek ruins and er, a Dutch-style windmill. There really were “Greek ruins”, honestly. We also admired the Visitor Centre’s reproduction of “The Venus of Milo”.

For some reason, the caption on this re-production amused me.

I was continually frustrated by the gift shops on Shodoshima. They sold every type of olive-based product imaginable: olive bread, olive-flavoured seaweed, olive oil, olive jam, olive chocolate etc. But they did not sell olives. The only thing I wanted to buy was olives. This was frustrating.

Also, I had been told to try the olive ice cream. Unfortunately, there seems to have been some terrible olive ice cream related production crisis on Shodoshima because every shop we tried had run out. I did try the soy sauce flavoured ice cream though. I know that sounds dreadful but it was actually delicious-the salt and sweet flavours go together really well.

We hopped into what may well be our last onsen/sento visit in Japan and I enjoyed the excellent views over the ocean whilst chatting to a random Japanese retired gentleman who had previously been a professor of African-American literature and knew a lot more about Langston Hughes than I did. I absolutely love speaking to Japanese academics who have studied English as their range of knowledge is usually amazing and they often have an international perspective that very few people have here, in Okayama at least. This guy had lived in Harlem for several years during the 1970s which is fascinating in itself, but he also talked interestingly about the social and academic stigma of studying African-American literature when virtually nobody in Japan had even met an African-American, let alone read any African-American literature. He had apparently just read a Langston Hughes poem one day and loved it so much that he had decided to spend the rest of his career studying the guy. Man, I love enthusiasts.

We also took a drive along the coast to visit the recreated set of Twenty-Four Eyes, a famous Japanese film, itself based on a book and set on Shodoshima. We wandered around the 1930s-style school room and vegetable patches, wallowing in nostalgia for something we hadn’t even seen. It was pretty though and I really enjoyed the drive.

The Twenty Four Eyes "Set"

I don’t know if we’ll make it back to the Seto Inland Sea. I’m heading to Hiroshima next weekend and then that’s probably it for big trips until hometime. But I’ll always have fond memories of our island adventures. One month to go. We’re nearly at the end now.

There's absolutely nothing profound to be said about this picture of our dinner.

The teacher desk was a little small for me.

Onegaishimasu

Rain that lasts for 24 hours

A typhoon is heading our way. With luck, it should pass just south of Okayama and we’ll avoid the worst of it. I’ve enjoyed the rainy season so far-you get some uncomfortable humidity, but it gets relieved by the rainfall in the evenings. However, I don’t enjoy my commute to school as I get soaked cycling through the rain and then have to immediately change my clothes on arrival since I don’t own any waterproof trousers. I could buy some I suppose-it might just add to the rash of unfashionable but practical clothing that I’ve happily adopted in Japan, along with tights, silly hats and a variety of Uniqlo undergarments.

I shaved my head for the first time last week and I quite like the way it looks and feels. However, having to shave your head every 2-3 days is incredibly dull and it takes me about 20 minutes to do it. It’s almost as if you have to plan your evening round it. I hope that it becomes something you can do quickly once you are better practiced. I’m relieved that I don’t have a weird shaped head with my spinal column sticking out the top like a stegosaurus or anything like that. Although I’m happy with how it looks, it is a little strange since I feel like the appearance doesn’t quite match my personality. I don’t feel like a skinhead, but I do look like one.

Last night I stayed in and watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I was really impressed by it. The effects are excellent, particularly the way they’ve drawn the monkey, Caesar. It’s not really an action movie as there’s no real jeopardy or fighting until the final third of the film. Meanwhile, much of it feels like an SF drama in the style of Contact or Outbreak. James Franco is great as usual and it’s helped by a strong plot that sets things up nicely for the sequel.  No love of science-fiction or knowledge of the previous films is required.

I’ve also rented My Neighbour Totoro from Tsutaya. I sometimes feel that I’m the only person in Japan who hasn’t seen it. I’m doing my research Ghibli-wise as we will soon be visiting the Studio Ghibli museum near Tokyo and I want to know a bit more about the films before I go.

I’m not gonna be running tonight…

Welcome To My Home

This weekend, we had friends visiting us from the UK. Some of my favourite nights out in Japan have involved visitors from abroad. I’ve really enjoyed showing visitors round the city. It’s funny how quickly you develop a sense of civic pride about a place. I was so proud of Manchester when I lived there, even though I had only actually been a resident for a couple of years. Now, I always feel that I really want to show off the best that Okayama and the surrounding region have to offer.

Sometimes in London, you see foreign tourists walking along Shaftesbury Avenue or Charing Cross Road at about dinnertime, desperately looking for somewhere decent to eat. And then, invevitably, they make their way to the Angus Steak House or Aberdeen Steak House. You want to rescue them and guide them off the main road towards Soho proper, but you can’t. Fortunately, this is not something that could ever happen in Okayama.

Okayama doesn’t really have an equivalent of Shaftesbury Avenue. Sure, it has some slightly touristy areas. The Bikantiku area of Kurashiki for example is tacky as hell, full of shops selling junk and overpriced cafes (this is not to slate that area totally as it’s quite pretty and the Ohara Art Gallery is excellent).

Okayama isn’t somewhere that you’d usually visit as a foreign tourist. It has a beautiful garden, some historical areas, a history of pottery craftsmanship and some other bits and bobs. But the Lonely Planet only devotes a couple of pages of the “you could actually spend half a day here” variety. In the end though, a karaoke booth in Okayama is much like a karaoke booth in Shibuya, Tokyo.

So there’s a Hefner song I like with the line “How can she love me if she doesn’t even love the cinema that I love?” That’s basically how I feel when it comes to visitors. If they don’t like the Korakuen Garden or aren’t impressed by the lush countryside I get doubtful about whether we have anything in common really. This shows that a) I am the most tremendous snob, b) I am a poor judge of character and c) If you want to deceive me Hustle-style, you should just, on meeting me, casually drop Pulp b-sides into the conversation until I hand over my bank details and the keys to my flat.

Highlights of the weekend: Lounging in my favourite Okayama cafes, trying blue beer, encouraging others to pay money to try blue beer, amazing yakitori (how did we survive before yakitori entered our lives?), playing an arcade game where you have to overturn a table in an onscreen bar by flipping a piece of wood on the control panel, discovering that Soundbeat karaoke has Rip It Up by Orange Juice.

The above picture of Ted Hughes has nothing to do with any of this but he does have an impressive jaw.

Sleepwalking

I’m sleepwalking through my job right now, pretty much on autopilot as far as my day to day duties are concerned. It’s difficult to be genki when your inclination is to lie down and catch your breath, but I am trying. Nonetheless, the past couple of days have been pretty satisfying.

I had a great conversation with some of my junior high second year students yesterday about the perils of juku (cram school) and homework. Even though some of my second year classes have become a bit rowdy these past few months, they are probably my favourite group of students. Their level of English has advanced at a frightening rate. This is one advantage of teaching at an academic school. When I first met them they could barely do a self introduction. Now, they are intermittently confident English speakers, able to express themselves and capable of understanding 60% of what I throw at them.

I don’t mean to imply that this improvement is down to me. It’s mainly due to the excellent teachers at my school, its emphasis at early junior-level on genuine communication skills and the students’ hard work. They have put my lazy Japanese skills to shame.

I feel really proud of them in a way that I never expected to when I came here. Teaching English was never a motivational factor in my decision to come to Japan. It was merely a means to an end, which was to experience a foreign culture and properly explore a country I was fascinated with. I have no particular love for kids, especially teenagers and the idea of spending my time surrounded by them made me slightly nervous to be honest.

But it hasn’t quite turned out how I expected. Firstly, the kids are great. There’s a unity to the group and a carelessness about their nature that’s really appealing and which can totally put you at ease. I’ve found myself really rooting for them on so many levels. So much so that it makes me want to work hard for them and improve my teaching on their behalf.

Secondly, I’ve enjoyed the creativity of teaching. I’m pretty decent at it. There’s nothing like watching a lesson you’ve planned run perfectly with happy students cavorting around the classroom and enjoying English. It is a genuine thrill and I envy my friends who are teachers who get to do that on a regular basis with the proper experience and skill that teaching for a living imparts upon you.

Thirdly, through family and friends, a whole rash of babies and young children have entered my life in the past few years. Now I’ll be honest. Babies are really boring. Only if they are your own do they hold any real appeal. They moan, they cry, they have very little personality and they are incredibly demanding. They drive the parents crazy. It’s just the inevitable side-effect of 24/7 babytime.

But toddlers…toddlers are fun. For a start, you can talk to them. They are little people with individual personalities. You can play with them and hang out. Sure, they are, if anything, even more demanding than babies. But you get something back from a toddler. Babies just ask for your attention, get it and go to sleep if you’re lucky. Toddlers can actually lift you and make you feel good. So I suppose my attitude towards children has changed in the sense that I can actually envisage enjoying their company to some extent.

I’ve enjoyed the teaching, even if I have major reservations about the specific role of an ALT. I will miss being on my feet for 3 hours a day and the challenge of interacting with people on a personal level so regularly. But if I’m honest, I’d rather be a civil servant. Which is lucky, because that’s what I’ll be again on August 7^th.

I’m not pregnant by the way. I don’t have Danny Devito as my doctor. I’m really not.

What is the collective noun for a group of monks?

With my newly-shaved head, I increasingly resemble a monk. A Jewish monk. Which made last week’s trip to Koya-san even more appropriate. It’s a beautiful place-all forests, hills and impressive temples.

But the most impressive part was the Okunoin graveyard. Now, I know it’s a Smiths-fan cliché, but I do enjoy a good graveyard wander. Even though I’m acknowledging the indie affectation, writing that does make me wince slightly. It’s true though-one of my favourite sites in Paris is the Pere-Lachaise cemetry (sic-get me, I can even spell in an irritatingly referential way) where I spent a delightfully pretentious afternoon back in 2002. The graveyard at Koya-san was huge, mossy, varied and had a whiff of Indiana Jones about it. We spent much of our time wandering off the path and being unsure if that was allowed. But it felt great to walk inbetween the graves and let them surround you. As with Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, it was surprisingly easy to escape the crowds and find a bit of solitude amongst the grave stones.

Man, I’m so wet sometimes.

I loved all the moss.

We stayed in a temple at one end of the graveyard. The temple itself was amazing-absolutely massive with beautiful gardens, a friendly band of monks (what is the collective noun for a group of monks?) and a really serene feel to the rooms with a pretty view. My main memory will be the constant chorus of frogs that provided the background to our stay. The frogs are so noisy in Japan this week! Seriously, last night they kept me awake in my apartment!

My nemesis.

One reason to stay in the temple lodgings is that you can eat shojin ryori food. This is a type of vegan cuisine. No meat, fish or anything meat/fish related. There were a few highlights. I really liked the main piece of tofu, which was well flavoured. Tofu is great at taking on other tastes and although I sometimes dislike the consistency of it, this time it was excellent. There was also some especially tasty tempura that I’d have liked more of. But on the whole, I wasn’t a fan. There were too many bland components, overcooked veg, foamy textures and a lack of satisfaction about the whole thing. Still, it was great to try something new.

In separate news, I’ve continued to be a bit under the weather these past few days. In fact, it’s been almost a fortnight since I last felt genuinely okay. I don’t get sick very often but I have had an increasing number of minor medical complaints this past year or two, which is one of the reasons I’ve been attempting to be a bit healthier. But my current problem (a recurring shortness of breath and occasional stomach pains) is really irritating as it saps your energy. When it started it would only last for twenty minutes or so at a time, but recently it’s been lasting whole days. Very annoying, especially at a time when my general health is improving. I’ve been running 3 times a week, doing taiko once a week, cycling and eating better food. I’ve cut down on alcohol since Christmas and I’ve also barely smoked in the last few months. I suspect that all the above symptoms are related to the nicotine withdrawal, but still. It’s actually started to stop me doing things and that’s a major headache. Getting treated properly here is hard work without good Japanese skills and my doctor here seemed pretty clueless about what was going on. Though that didn’t stop him from prescribing me tranquilizers that I’m almost certainly not going to take. I’m hoping that it will go away on its own as it’s starting to majorly piss me off.

Would you like fries with that?

Most recent Sunday mornings have begun with me packing up my possessions in a rush so that I can vacate my lodging by its 10am check out time. One aspect of my life in Japan over the past year has been that I’ve stayed in more hotels and hostels than at any other time in my life. Thank goodness, then, that Japanese hostels have been of such a ludicrously high standard. I remember travelling around Spain and Italy for a month when I was 21 and a large number of the hostels were awful. This was particularly true in Italy where many of the hostels were run by religious groups. They would often have a 10pm curfew, be based in the drug-dealing centre of the city and chuck you out all day so that the rooms could be cleaned. Which was ironic, because the rooms were usually quite dirty when you returned.

In Japan, on the other hand, almost every place I’ve stayed has had something going for it. Staff have tended to be overwhelmingly helpful. And even though some of the rooms have been on the small side, I’ve not stayed anywhere that wasn’t reasonably clean.

One aspect of living in Japan is that your expectations as a customer change significantly. I noticed this immediately when I visited the UK in March. There are definitely bad sides to the Japanese way. God knows-the overly servile and clone-like impressions of some Japanese service personnel can grate and I sometimes do wish that people would just shut the f*** up and stop greeting me every time I turn a corner in a shop. But on the whole, it has been hugely refreshing to be treated so well here. There seems to be a much lower tolerance of shoddy service and expectations are just a lot higher than in the UK. I’ve really appreciated this during my time here. It’s always nice to be treated well. I rarely have to worry that the cheapest hostel will be a dive.

Euro 2012 starts today and I feel a bit weird to be so disconnected from it all. The current England team are both rubbish and totally unsympathetic. But if I were in the UK, it would be a really big deal and I’d be making all sorts of preparations about where to watch the games. I do enjoy the big tournaments but I will probably not see a single match of this one. England play on Monday at 5am local time and I will most likely be asleep.

In other news, I’ve booked my flight home. I return to the UK on 2^nd August. I may have a few days in Tokyo beforehand to say goodbye to Japan and get set for departure. After that, my lifestyle is going to change dramatically.

A Trip Round The Islands - Naoshima

The island trips continue. Naoshima is a very special place and it was great to spend the night there, without the pressure of a 5pm ferry on our minds. We camped out in yurts by the sea, had a BBQ for dinner and drank prosecco on the beach (champagne is beyond our budget).

This time we got to see all of the Art House Project buildings. It was interesting to see traditional spaces converted into something altogether different. There was a great variation in quality though. One or two of the buildings made you wonder why they had bothered at all. Nonetheless, I enjoyed wandering the streets and not knowing what to expect each time I walked through the door.

We also finally made it to the sento, which is really unusual and almost a work of art in itself. The bath had a mosaic floor that was pieced together from photographs, drawings and other oddities. Above the bath stood a life-size model of an elephant. It was a strange atmosphere but it did feel relaxing which is the point I guess.

The James Bond Museum was a real oddity. They’ve centered the museum around a post-Fleming Bond novel in which the climax is set on Naoshima. It has lines like ““Japanese women are the most beautiful in the world” thought Bond, as he sipped his Martini”. They’d made their own Bond film/documentary which involved some unusual “acting”. Still, it made me laugh and I enjoyed browsing through the Bond tat that they had collected over the years.

I’m sorry this entry reads as a bit of a list of stuff that I did. I’ve had a funny week, really. I got a bill from Softbank that was as much as a shinkansen ticket. It floored me. The lesson is to never, ever use your Japanese-contract phone abroad. Even for a minute. Feeling totally screwed, I handed over my not especially hard-earned money at the combini and muttered to myself in a crazy person fashion.

Crazy person muttering is not a good look for me.

To the art island...

Last time we went to Naoshima it was freezing cold.

 

Naoshima has a special place in my heart. Pumpkins, beaches, galleries, cool art oddities scattered all over the place and a laid back vibe. It’s one of my favourite places in Japan. K and I will be visiting for an overnight stay this weekend. We’ll be camping in a yurt next to the beach. If it remains dry, then it should be a beautiful, relaxed weekend. If it rains then…well let’s just hope it doesn’t rain.

I’ve been quite health-focused recently. I’ve done a lot of exercise and am keeping an eye on what I’m eating and drinking. I’ve also barely (with a couple of exceptions) smoked since coming back from Tokyo. To be honest, I love smoking to the extent that it almost feels like a hobby. But it’s not quite as awesome as it used to be. I really hate giving up and the side-effects that go with it-that’s as good an incentive as any not to lapse. I have very weak willpower and I do like chocolate an awful lot (particularly when it’s covering Macadamia Nuts or involves green tea), so I slip into bad habits sometimes. I also find it difficult to eat food in sensible quantities. Even when I eat stuff that’s healthy, I tend to eat too much of it.

In possibly-related news, I’m going to (for complicated reasons) be getting a free, sporty car when I get back to the UK. When you put all of the above together-exercise, weight gain, practical wearing of tights in winter, shaving of head and driving of a silly car I suppose it does sound a bit like a mid-life crisis. But they’re meant to happen when you’re 40, right? Seriously though, I think it is just a coincidence, but it does feel like a lot of grown-up things are all happening at once right now. I’ve even started to get a thrill from gardening recently. Maybe I should just do a Mark Oaten and get it over with? Probably best not to.

A Trip Round The Islands - Shiraishi

Shiraishi Island is one of those places that’s great not for any intrinsic qualities, but because of the fun times you have there. The beach isn’t especially pretty and the hikes, whilst enjoyable enough, are not particularly spectacular in my opinion. There’s only one bar. The beach isn’t all that clean.

But this was the second time we’d visited the island and we had a supremely awesome weekend. The first occasion that we came to Shiraishi was last August for a “group bonding” day. It was fun to hang out with the other JETs and we did a pretty but painfully hot walk up to the island’s observatory. This time, we decided to take it easy and spend as much time as possible on the beach.

I’m not really a beach person-I enjoy reading in the sun for about an hour, but anything more tends to get a little dull. However, Shiraishi has a friendly bar on the beach run by a Japan Times journalist and her husband. The bar keeps things moving along nicely with reasonably priced cocktails, offers of food and by making a bonfire to keep people out there until late at night.

I really wanted to swim but there were loads of jellyfish on the first day. I’d never seen jellyfish in the wild before, so it was pretty cool. I did get to jetski for the first time which was amazing, though I had my eyes shut for most of it and almost crushed the chest cavity of the guy who took me out. Never take me out on a fast moving vehicle. I will crush your chest by mistake.

Back at the International Villa, we bumped into the other guests and one couple offered to cook dinner for everyone else staying there. We were incredibly grateful for this and had one of the most delicious, enjoyable meals since arriving in Japan. They wouldn’t even let me wash up, no matter how much I insisted. Gyoza, duck, salad, crackers and all sorts of nice things. The guy next to me kept trying to get me drunk on shochu and semi-succeeded. If this kind of thing didn’t happen so often I’d have been blown away by it. This type of kindness is one of the main reasons why I’d recommend Japan so enthusiastically as a place to live.

School feels like a slog at the moment. There are 2 months left and I’m not sure I want to be teaching my (increasingly rowdy) students for the rest of my time in Japan. But I do usually enjoy the lessons once they get going.

I also completed my first week of running and found some beautiful Okayama countryside. I just need to cut out the huge slabs of cheese that I’ve been consuming and I’ll be fine. Mmm. Cheese.

A Quiet Thursday Night

I like going to see movies in Japan. It’s comforting to do something that is such a regular part of my routine back in the UK. I’m a member of the British Film Institute and will usually see at least one movie a week if I can, either at the National Film Theatre or the Soho Curzon (depending on how much money I have at the time). Since coming to Japan, my visits have become much less frequent. We have an arthouse cinema in Okayama which shows the occasional offbeat foreign film. Meanwhile, the larger cinema chains will show major US films, particularly the action/superhero ones. At the same time, we don’t get everything. Many of my friends in Okayama are annoyed that our prefecture will not be showing The Muppets movie. Having seen and enjoyed it, I think they’re right to be disappointed.

So last night I headed to the local shopping centre/mall with some friends to see The Descendants. Now I’m a great fan of the film Sideways, which is by the same director. I love Paul Giamatti, the California countryside looked beautiful, I felt great empathy with the characters and it was very funny indeed.

The Descendants has many of the same ingredients, a similar style and some strong performances. But it isn’t quite as good. At times it’s quite affecting as it shows people’s imperfections and a family dealing with the grief process. At times it’s also lightly funny in a small smile rather than David Cameron-Rebekka Brooks LOL TORIES=NUMBER 1!!! way. Great soundtrack too.

But it’s not really smart enough or funny enough to really make it for me. For a start, the plot is quite predictable, especially if you’ve seen any of Alexander Payne’s other movies. Then there’s the family dynamic which starts off chaotic but then has everything seemingly resolved a couple of scenes later. The older daughter appears to become a responsible adult over a time period of about three days.

As for George Clooney-as always he’s charming and competent. I didn’t believe in his character for a moment because he was, after all, George Clooney, but he did a decent job. I think they might have been better going with somebody less good-looking and maybe even less sympathetic. Jack Nicholson would have been great (Yeah-I know I’m not exactly sticking my neck out here as Jack Nicholson is almost always great), or even Bill Murray.

It reminded me very strongly of A Serious Man, one of the Coen Brothers’ greatest films and maybe the one that deals best with disappointment and family breakdown. Unfortunately, Clooney isn’t really in the same league as Michael Stuhlbarg, but nobody is, really. Clooney’s actually made a whole series of so-so films now. I really disliked Up In The Air and this is a much better movie, but that’s not a fair comparison maybe. All in all, one for a Sunday night on DVD maybe. But hey, we have limited opportunities here and it was fun to invade the multiplex and practice Japanese with the subtitles.

Afterwards we wandered to Ario Mall for churros and were then predictably chucked out by the security guard. So we sat outside the mall, feeling a bit like teenagers. I enjoyed that.

I'm Gonna Miss This Place

Yesterday I received a letter from my BoE that made me tremble slightly. “Dear ALTs, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all of you for your contribution to the promotion of English education and international understanding in our prefecture…you should decide the date of your departure…obtain an estimate for your plane ticket home…to your departure airport….”

Yes. It’s time to book my flight home. I’m getting out of Okayama on the first or second of August. I will be flying back to Heathrow Airport where I will laugh at my home country’s woefully inadequate immigration procedures for the Olympics. I will then have a few days to get my affairs in order, pick up the Daisycat from our friend and get my things out of storage. On 7^th August, I will return to my UK job working 9 to 5 for the British government.

The new JETs are now starting to get their placement information. I remember when I received my letter this time last year-“Okayama Prefecture”. I had absolutely no idea where it was and went on a google-blitz, dragging up amusing youtube videos and unreliable Wikipedia pages saying that it was famous for its rural character and sunshine. “Famous” being a word that is greatly over-used in Japan when describing tourist destinations.

I have been so lucky to live in this beautiful part of Japan. To get Okayama City was a lucky break. I’ve had access to the city life that I can’t do without, whilst being surrounded by rice fields and some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve seen. Meanwhile, the shinkansen station is a 5 minute journey away, making travel around Japan straightforward and easy. It’s possible that I would have been delighted with any placement, but I still feel like this is a very special place. I’d love to live in Tokyo for a year or two. But if I were to stay in Japan long term, I’d be content to live somewhere as friendly, relaxed and pretty as Okayama. I am madly jealous of all the people who will come here for the first time. Flying into Okayama Airport, drifting and rising over the lush, green hills below us was an experience I will never forget.

K Chan and I are agonizing over where to go for our final Big Trip In Japan. At the moment it’s between Tokyo and Okinawa. We haven’t been to the latter before, but it’s more expensive and there’s a lot that I still want to do in Tokyo. On the other hand, the idea of a few days at the end on a tropical island is very tempting.

Stomping Through The Rain

You’re not always aware of how much you’ve missed people until you see them again after a long time apart. Two good friends of mine came to visit me in Okayama yesterday and it was such a dramatically awesome day that I’m faintly dreading my return home to an empty apartment tonight.

It’s starting to heat up. Rainy season is just around the corner and it won’t be long until I’m wearing shorts on a regular basis. I really hate the way that shorts look on me. There has never been a tall person who looked good in shorts-it’s a karma thing to make up for our being able to see the stage at gigs. But anyway, shorts will be worn and sweat will be wiped. I’m even thinking that I might invest in one of those towels that old Japanese men sling round their neck all day in the staff room. I think they’re very becoming.

Meanwhile, this month is all about islands. Rabbit island last week, Shiraishi island this weekend and Naoshima the following weekend. Shiraishi is a reasonably pretty sunbathing spot in the Seto Inland Sea. We’re looking forward to some chilled reading time and a balmy evening stay at the International Villa there. Fingers crossed that the rainy season holds off for another weekend.

It will be our third visit to Naoshima, one of my favourite places in Japan. I have fond memories of wandering the island in torrential rain and being hugely impressed by the Tadao Ando architecture and random bits of art. But this time we are camping in a yurt by the beach. Hopefully there’ll be sunshine, relaxed times and tasty picnics. In practice, it may not turn out that way.

Inspired by my recent ill health, I went out for a run on Monday and I’m probably going to do the same again tonight. It felt good to explore the area round my house and the surprised faces of the elementary school children at a gaijin running directly towards them made me giggle. I cut a fairly ludicrous figure when I run, but that’s part of my supposed charm I guess.

With Your Incessant Talking

Rabbit, rabbit, rab­­bit. If you can’t make a Chas n Dave reference after visiting an island populated almost entirely by rabbits, then what’s the point of having a blog at all?

As well as having some of the most beautiful and interesting tourist attractions in the world, Japan also has some of the tackiest. Recreations of European cities, The Island Where The Fictional Momotoro Slayed A Fictional Demon complete with ACTUAL DEMONS, Dejima, anything that involves a “local specialty” etc.  I’ve taken great pleasure in visiting some of these less worthy destinations. They are sometimes quite charming, with a bit of luck involve figurine recreations of past events and you can usually buy a funny gift or two.

Okunoshima or “Bunny Island” sits somewhere on the borderline between “tacky destination” and being a genuine place of interest.

During the Sino-Japanese war, the government began using the island to research and manufacture chemical weapons. These weapons were used during the following decades to obviously tragic effect. The island was removed from maps of Japan and the work was hushed up. Apparently, train conductors would draw the curtains of carriages as they passed the island so that it could not be seen by passengers. Not sure how effective that would have been. The manufacturing processes were primitive. Many workers and residents of the island became ill, suffered or died as a result of the work.

Industrial Remains

At the end of WW2, the factories were closed and the chemicals destroyed. Rabbits were introduced to the island. They multiplied prodigiously (tame joke avoided) and nowadays the island is known primarily for the large population of tame rabbits who you can feed, pet and generally make a fuss of. My students love the place and quite a few of their “What I did during Golden Week?” presentations involved a trip to the island.

The journey over was pretty painless and we saw rabbits almost as soon as we stepped off the boat. I had a steady supply of carrots that I used to basically buy cuddles. I also had a stick that I carried round with me for a hilarious metaphor-based joke. That didn’t actually happen. I liked how many different types of rabbits we came across. They were all shapes and sizes, ranging from mangy and wild looking to Disney-cute.

Bunny Party!

I’ll maybe admit that I did get a bit bored of the rabbits after a while. But the island itself was quite pretty. We did a pleasant hike up and around the centre of the island. We even saw Japan’s Tallest Pylon (official). It really was very tall!

Japan's tallest pylon!

We also checked out a museum about gas production on the island. Japan’s issues about openly discussing its own history are too complex for me to cover adequately here. But in the 1980s, a museum was opened on the island to show the history of the chemical production. Like the Hiroshima Peace Museum, it has a strong anti-war bias. And like the Peace Museum it is not merely inward looking. In addition to illustrating how gas was made on the island, the museum looks at the effect of the gas in war and makes strong statements against its use, with some unpleasant pictures of its effects during the Iran-Iraq war.

I’ve seen so many museums about war-not just in Japan but in the UK of course, where my favourite museum remains the Imperial War Museum. Japan’s museums on the subject vary tremendously-I have still not visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine and seen the “alternative” viewpoints about the war there. The war is a subject that I avoid as much as possible with my friends here. But anyway, this particular museum was very impressive for its thoroughness and outward perspective.

Now then. Here are some cute pictures of rabbits:

The mysterious and enigmatic K Chan tempts a rabbit.

Unwell Ramblings

Apologies for the lack of updates recently but I’ve been a little under the weather. Last week I started to feel a little strange during my special needs school visit and I haven’t been able to shake it off since. Nothing too serious, but enough to put a dampener on things.

I’m really excited for next week because two of my oldest friends are coming to visit. I haven’t seen them for ages and, well, I miss them. So it will be great to catch up and amuse ourselves with embarrassing teenage memories of kissing the wrong people and suchlike. Also, it will be good to show some friends around my patch as I haven’t really been able to do that yet. Doubtless this will take in yet another trip to the beautiful Korakuen. I must have been there 8 or 9 times now. I always enjoy it but each time I go am irritated that I never bought myself an annual pass as I:d have saved about 20 quid by now.

I was at my special needs school again today and it reminded me of what I meant to say in my last post. Going to the special needs schools has been in many ways a happy experience. But it has also been a little depressing and saddening at times. Many of the students will lead very limited lives in which there will be constant boundaries on what they are able to do. You get a huge outpouring of happiness from them. But speaking to the teachers, they tend to focus on the long term. One teacher commented that she finds it sad because so many of the students will grow up frustrated and irritated by the things they are unable to do. She also said that she finds it difficult knowing that a fair number of the students she teaches may not live that long. Dipping into the school is fine and the nature of my visits means that the students are generally happy because they are pleased to see me. But in many of the ways that matter, they can sometimes be deeply unhappy. When I think about my own circumstances and the things in my life that make me happy-the truth is that many of those things won’t be open to these kids as they develop into adults. It’s desperately sad, when you think about the reality of it.

I’m trying hard not to generalize too much here and I know the above does go slightly against the grain of what we are encouraged to think about disabled/differently abled people having as much potential for achievement and happiness as anyone else, so I hope I don’t sound like an arse in the above paragraph.

In other news, I’m heading to a rabbit-filled island on Sunday. It used to be a research and manufacturing centre for chemical weapons-now it is marketed like a petting zoo. Japan is strange sometimes.

Why don't you like Justin Bieber? Look at him.

Yesterday I was at one of my special needs schools. Of all the unexpected things that I’ve done here, this is the furthest outside my comfort zone. As I’ve said before, teaching was not the reason I came to Japan. It was merely the means by which I could live abroad and see an interesting country. I’d never spent any sustained time around special needs kids and I didn’t know what to expect really.

This particular school is massive. It has elementary, junior and senior high kids. It has the biggest staff room I have seen since arriving here-it’s like an aircraft hangar. There are often as many staff members as students in the lessons, particularly where the students require a lot of help and attention.

In some of the lessons, I have been introducing myself with my well worn self introduction materials that I have probably used about 30 or 40 times now. I’ve had to change them in order to keep it interesting for myself and I recently added AKB48 to my list of “Dislikes”, not because I especially dislike them but just because it always gets a reaction and I enjoy that. Previously, I used Justin Bieber for this purpose but sometimes younger students wouldn’t know who he was. In saying that, one of my students at my base school is always coming up to me with pictures of Justin Bieber and thrusting them under my face with a “why don’t you like him. Look at him Ben-senseii! Look at him!”

We also played some games in which I had to sing. I can’t sing. Not at all. I was okay at singing when I was very little but ever since my voice broke it’s been a fairly dreadful noise. But it was fun. None of the students or teachers could sing either and it was all about just trying to be enthusiastic and not being “above” it or letting on that you’re tired/embarrassed/whatever. I think they appreciate that. So much of being an ALT in Japan is about just doing exactly what you’re told to do but doing it with the right attitude and going out of your way to please people (whilst at the same time not showing too much initiative). In the end, people on youtube/forums/whatever go on and on about what this job is really about but I don’t think it’s all that different to any job back home. Regardless of your level of ability, just being professional, co-operative and calm goes 80% of the way to doing the job well. There’s a 20% which is natural teaching ability which, frankly, I don’t have. But there are other ways you can make up for this and if you are self-critical you can definitely improve over time, like in any job.

Anyway, it was a pleasure to play games with friendly kids all day. I’m really going to miss these random, testing experiences that I come across on a regular basis in my Japan life. I’m constantly having to stretch myself and that’s a really healthy thing. The other thing that I like about the special needs school is that it’s in a really beautiful part of Okayama and surrounded by the greenest rice fields and hills that you’ve ever seen. Every time I go there I get a huge buzz just from looking out the window.

In case it isn’t obvious from the above and from recent posts, I’m starting to freak out about leaving.