5 more days, guys. 5 more days.
5 days of form-filling. 5 days of English Christmases. 5 days of sleeplessness and then I am at last 23 years old.
It's funny. I've spent the last four or five months of my time here repeatedly telling people old and young how old I am, but when push comes to shove and I think about how old I'm gonna be this Thursday I actually can't remember. I don't feel any older than I did at 21, and that was two years ago. Maybe this is it until the big three-oh; maybe I'm doomed to feel adolescent for another seven years.
Well, I don't much mind. Case in point, I don't think I've been this excited about a single day in a good couple of years. Maybe even longer. This is the sort of excitement that preceded things like cars shaped like Noddy's car that you could ride around in, or video game consoles named after bodily fluids. That's all old news. But these days I find myself sitting around at home, iPhone in hand, watching a Scandinavian fellow make a freakishly overweight man/woman clown thing and let it loose in Saints Row 2 because I just cannot contain my excitement without at least grabbing a sniff of things to come.
That's right. On Thursday 15th December I shall be unboxing something called a Prima Note Galleria QF770 (with a few personal alterations) and starting a new generation of computer gaming which has been until now locked away from me by the powers that be (I'm looking at you, Gates). That's right, I shall be the proud owner of a Japanese gaming laptop. It's like a nerdy man's equivalent of swimming with dolphins. Today, I bring to you the story of my soon-to-be fateful union with Giganoss. That's his name, by the way. I made it myself.
So, when trying to buy technology in Japan there's a bit of a problem that first has to be overcome, and that's language. I studied Japanese for four and a bit years, but at no time did they tell me the Japanese for 'solid state drive', 'graphics card' or even 'gaming laptop'. You may think that last one a bit of an obvious translation, but it's actually a good example of the difficulties faced. Like at home, laptops in Japan are sometimes called 'laptops', and sometimes 'notebooks', and that last one is the more widely used one. That's the first hurdle over with. Now, if I were to search Google for "gaming notebook computer" (in Japanese, duh) I get manufacturer pages full of gibberish technobabble and, unsurprisingly, bias. If I search for "game note" I get online shops and their smiley, ignorant 'I don't know what this is but I have a funny feeling you want it' sites. But if I search for, and this took a fair bit of researching, 'ga-note' (that's gey-nou-to) I get what I was really after, which is the opinions of real people. That's the second hurdle. The third is then translating those opinions into English and sifting them for lies or those tricky pros that are actually cons. Y'know, like being told the hard disk has a lot of memory space. Turns out that's not so great, in that these days the 'in' thing is one of these aforementioned solid state drives. It's like a hard disk drive, only it doesn't have moving parts, and this somehow makes it faster. In my search of the internet, the one resounding opinion that always came back to me was that HDDs in a modern gaming laptop are a waste. SSDs are the way forward, and I bet you there was only a handful of shops in this whole country that would have been willing to let me in on that little nugget free of charge.
Still on the topic of language, though, I found that once you find a nice collection of opinions that are written by people who care about the same things you do (I fluked and got one first try) deciphering their Japanese isn't all that difficult. Everybody speaks politely, explains things in detail and offers friendly advice, presumably because we all come together in the mutual gain group of 'people who like gaming computers'. This is where I got my SSD tip.
But Pete, I hear you shout from across the sea, why go to all that trouble to search through the endless internet when you could have done that anywhere in the world? You're in Japan now. Why don't you just go down to the store and ask? And yes, that's a decent question. The chaps at PC World would have been very helpful if I'd gone with the same request in England, so why not do the same here. Well, let me tell you something about Japanese technology stores. You get the smaller shops that are owned by brands, they're not a great place for research because they'll only get you to buy their product and nobody else's. Then you get the massive ones, like our local Labi in Sannomiya, which has whole floors decked out with swanky, new computers. A Labi employee would theoretically be bias-free, but unfortunately they are a little difficult to come by. On a computer purchase floor, the computers are all divided up by brand. And so are the staff. Staff who will kindly inform you that the computers on their side of the shop are exactly what you are looking for, not like the over-priced paperweights that OTHER side is selling.
And here's another problem. Technology may be the fish of the day here in the Land of the Rising Sun, but gaming technology that isn't a console or a handheld device is still a real niche. PC gaming (as I mentioned in my latest article on SquareGo.com [/shamelessselfadvertising]) is rare in Japan. Games like Skyrim and World of Warcraft are virtually unknown over here, unless they get a console release as well. Consoles are the big sellers, played by all, and computers are used for word processing and low-spec free-to-play massively multiplayer games like Grandia Online and little else unless you're a massive geek. If you are, you need to look a little bit harder for your gaming fix.
Enter Dospara. This computer shop is a little out of the way, up some stairs within Center-gai, and stocks gaming computers almost exclusively. For a little while I even believed all the computers were different brands (oh, what a fool I was). So here's what I had to do. The internet kindly told me that Dospara gaming computers are fairly well known here in Japan, and a bit more digging brought up that their latest model is popular, cheap and probably the best on the market. The website even stacked this computer against Alienware's latest child, though the comparison was probably a little skewed in that Alienwares are hard to get a hold of this far out of their home territory. Fortunately for me, there's this other way that gaming computers can be put through their paces, something called 3DMark. 3DMark is a program that uses game cutscenes to test a computer's ability to play a given game. Did you know this? The popular example at the moment is the opening cutscene from the new Monster Hunter Frontier Online 2, which plays along with 3DMark. The program racks up points as fast as it can while the game plays, so any lag experienced with the video, even if it's visually invisible, slows down the point gain. I think that's pretty ace. Shops will have these cutscenes playing on loop with the points tallying up before your very eyes. Though most computers will vary by a few hundred points each time they play, the average can be posted on, say, review websites as a good indication of the computer's gaming quality. And don't you start thinking that it's a program that's only used with the real top-scorers. I saw a word-processing laptop in Joshin's (another big shop) with some kind of self-built graphics card that was doing horribly, and they still let it sit out there and tell everybody. Presumably this was because the brand doesn't specialise in gaming hardware, so what have they got to lose.
Okay, so I found a good model to look at. Dospara, like many shops, offers the chance to tweak the design of the computer before you buy it and, under Steph's suggestion, I did just that on their website before printing off an order form and bringing it in to the shop to get a look at. See, being foreign, the chances of me owning a credit card are a little slim, and I don't really fancy the challenge of trying. So any purchases come out of my account back home (expensive) or in cash. If I buy in-store, I can pay in cash. I felt a bit bad extracting just under a third of all my money in the country in one go, but it got there safely, so no harm done. The real surprise came when I offered the form to one of the clerks, who then used one of the store computers to replicate the order online. He then took me through each of my choices, reminded me what they all meant, and made some suggestions. And you know what? He even suggested an SSD that he said was a better model for my needs even though it was cheaper. I was pretty amazed. At that particular time I didn't have the cash with me. I didn't want Giganoss lying in a box in my room for several weeks without me able to open him up, it would kill me. So last week I went in again and made the same order (with the same guy. He didn't remember me, which is funny seeing as how I was foreign and stick out like a sore thumb. Maybe they get a lot of us in there...) which he again went through part by part to confirm. When I mentioned I was also after a mouse and one of those nifty cooling racks, he made some recommendations there, too. Y'know, one of those USB fan things you put a laptop on to take out some of the heat. They didn't have a big enough cooling rack in the store that day, so he added it to my order and said I could pick it up when the computer was ready. Which is tomorrow, by the way. I'm picking it up tomorrow. I may not sleep tonight, even though I won't get to play it until Thursday. What came (hah, I typed 'game' there for a second. Shows what I'm thinking about.) as an even bigger surprise was that, as opposed to a couple of weeks prior, it was now the start of the winter sales, so I would get a discount on my purchases and a free 16GB SD card. If even I needed a sign that God was okay with my hedonistic spending. (I needn't point out tomorrow's Sunday, either.)
Phew. There we have it. That's the story so far. As a previous sentence may have clued you in, the big game I'm looking forward to getting my grubby hands on is Saints Row The Third. It's easily a hundred times any PC game I've played since Portal 2. But is it a game a Christian should really be getting excited about? Hm. I've already sworn to myself not to hurt the pedestrians unnecessarily, and to only shoot at those who shoot first. You think that'll seal it? We'll see how long that deal lasts in just under a week, eh? I'm also looking forward to being able to properly play Terraria and Minecraft for a change. Do you see how deprived I've been? Minecraft, for pity's sake! Baby's been a real joy to work with (that's my netbook, the little laptop I'm currently working on) but boy does she not know a thing about games. Time to see what I've been missing these past years.
Okay, that's all I had to say. Or rather, with Steph's laptop out of batteries and an 80s themed party jointly in my honour in a little while, it's time for me to go.
Thanks for reading.
Friday, 9 December 2011
Friday, 4 November 2011
8 - Resonate
Yes, okay, it’s been a while. I don’t have any brilliant excuses, just the usual ones. So why don’t we stop focusing on what I haven’t been doing, and start looking at what I have.
It’s the end of another week here in Kobe, and these last few weeks have been murderous. It’s not just the start of that all-important second wind in our own bodies, but the winds on the outside have changed as well, and the creeping cold is enough to keep many an ALT in bed. I myself have been a bit on the sick side lately (prematurely ending Halloween festivities), to the point that yesterday walking back from the station almost proved too great a challenge. As much as I would love to talk about the highly entertaining lack of stuff that’s been happening off the clock, pretty much everything worth talking about from an international understanding point of view was while I was at work.
Having left sports season behind, the nation now turns to sport’s reclusive twin brother, culture, for his moment in the limelight. Koryo was no exception to the seething mass of orchestral performances, amateur plays and artworks of all kinds that infested Japan in the last few weeks. I was drafted into helping set up and take down the displays, chairs and so on for the 23rd Culture Presentation (that’s a rough translation, that one) in exchange for alcohol. A lot of people make fools of themselves when drunk, but I think my inability to successfully quote “Even my father never hit me” in Japanese for the Gundam-loving PE teacher left quite a stain on my reputation more than any pratfalling would have done. But I’m getting ahead of things here, so let’s backtrack.
From 9am ‘til 12pm, the school flung open its gates for family of the students to come and inspect the cultural things they’ve paid money for their kids to do this term. Each classroom was vividly decked out with random pieces of artwork, poetry and the occasional textile or flower arrangement for visitors to come and see. There was some pretty impressive stuff to see, too; it’s a widely-held opinion that Japanese kids are genetically empowered in the drawing department, and Koryo’s Culture Presentation was further evidence. I didn’t get much of a chance to see many of the displays, assigning myself to the front gate to guide visitors around, as well as to show myself off as school property. Don’t get me wrong, I’d have gone inside and looked around a bit more if the other teachers on duty hadn’t seen me doing such a good job and left me alone to do it. I’m not complaining really, I got a chance to see a fair few of my elementary kids that morning, which was pretty cool.
At 12pm the stage is set for the, well, stage show portion of the day. Firstly we were shown each year group’s winners from the class choir competition earlier that week, followed by a joint venture from all members of the year at once. The first and second years were great, but I wasn’t so taken with the third years’ performance. I dunno, it just lacked something. It sounds to me like the same songs are chosen for every school in the city, so I bet the students are sick of hearing them by the time they’re finished. Would have been nice to get something I recognised, is all. After that was the presentation of a certificate to the girl who came up with the year’s school motto (“the seed of today, through effort, becomes the flower of tomorrow”, except in Japanese) and a talk by the health club on the importance of regular sleeping hours. Surely one of them must have mentioned that darkened room plus quiet music plus twenty minutes of talk about how great sleep is makes for an unresponsive audience… Then it was a quick break, presumably for the audience to get outside for some fresh air to wake themselves up. During the break I was told my tie was very cool. That was nice.
The second half of the show was dedicated to the third year leavers and the brass band. The former put on a short series of skits, joined together by an entertaining story about trying to make an idol group called KRY48. It had sounded really awful on paper, but they did an excellent job with it. The production managed to combine all three of Japanese entertainment’s biggest players: dance groups, comedy duos and truly weird stories. I didn’t really understand either of the last two, but my lack of native, regional Japanese only accounted for the comedy. The weird play was just downright weird. Anyway, that was pretty cool. The brass band, however, really were the neon-lit torpedo that blew the others out of the water. There were five songs played in total, notably including a Little Mermaid medley (I’ll bet you can feel the enthusiasm I had about that one), a Super Mario Bros. medley and the song ‘Laser beam’ by Perfume. It was a really excellent performance; I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t moved. It also made me want to play a wind instrument. After all that it was time to pack everything away and get roaring, screaming drunk. It was a good day, and I was happy to sacrifice my beloved Saturday for it. Tomorrow I’m going in to one of my elementary school’s Music Festival, this time as a guest (but I still get Monday off, weh-hey!), so be sure to look forward to a report on that.
I had a couple of weeks before the next big event, but it feels like I had a lot less. This week was my evaluation lesson, the one where they decide whether to keep me on or not. I know, I know, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. It’s in the Programme’s best interests to keep ALTs on for at least one year, so I’m sure they weren’t ‘out to get me’ in any way. But that does not stop me getting myself into a stress fest over it. In the end I had nothing to worry about. The class they were observing was a third year speaking test preparation class, and even though not one person volunteered answers (I did the same lesson with the three other third year classes that same day and got a much more enthusiastic response) there was some good practise throughout. The KEC representatives said they liked the rapport, the relationship with the teacher and the simplicity of the lesson, and also gave me some good ideas for improving on some of it for later use. No problem.
Next week is ‘Trial Week’ for the second years, the equivalent of work experience in the UK. The only difference is they are sent to shops in the neighbourhood rather than getting to pick their own from the city at large. The result of this, along with the mass of paperwork that needs doing while it’s going on, is that I have very little to do next week. I’m looking forward to that.
Oh, that reminds me. One of the other Kobe ALTs has started a project with his third years to start writing letters to other ALTs in the city, and I’m helping out (along with quite a lot of us). On Wednesday I received six letters from third years, and I spent a fair amount of the day replying to them. Most of them had already heard that I liked Pokemon, so many were asking me about that. Some asked about sports, some about music. One guy (who had the nerve to start his letter with “Dear Pepe Swan”) asked about pretty much everything under the sun. I also received more pictures of Pikachu than I know what to do with.
Week after next is the first JET Skills Conference, and all. It’s a busy month, this one. I think one of the big things that makes it an event to remember is that every ALT will be attending along with a selected Japanese teacher of English from their school. I get the feeling it’ll be a little like show and tell for us ALTs. Not really sure what else to expect, except maybe more sitting and listening ala Job Training all those weeks ago.
So yeah, all in all things are going well. I continue to talk to more of the students, and they in turn get more comfortable with trying to talk to me. I met a few of them on the tube with Steph the other day; they made quite a fuss about that the next day in class. My lesson-making experience continues to build, and usually they go off without a hitch. The less said about that Halloween monster making class, though, the better… More excrement-themed abominations than you could wave a stick at. Today I did comparative adjectives with the second years, which went down a real treat. I’m honestly exhausted all the time these days, and slouching at my desk plus low blooming ceilings at home have made for some nasty neck pains, but things are going really well. The only problem I’m having, something that was brought up a little at church on Sunday, is that I appear to have become a slave to my own sense of time. In a day I have about four hours of free time. In that time I have to cook dinner for tonight and lunch for tomorrow. No problem, right? But every night it feels like I’ve been robbed of what could have been a satisfying amount of free time. I go to bed (at nine thirty, the sad old man that I am) feeling dissatisfied with my relaxation, and each day I long for Christmas more and more. It’s making me grumpy, which I don’t like. If there’s one thing I’m trying to avoid being, it’s grumpy. For now I’m trying to value the time that I get for what it is, not what it could have been. Right?
So that’s international understanding and angsty soul-searching out the way. Let’s talk about what I want to really talk about.
It’s been a corker of a week for video games. As an attempt to celebrate for a hard October I decided to splash out on a game this weekend, and happened across a game from a series I’d been hoping to get into for a while now: Silent Hill 4 on the PS2. PS2 games are still in vast supply (and production, you may be surprised to hear) here in Japan, but still manage to come off as quite cheap, and SH4 only set me back about 8 pounds (this keyboard I’m using doesn’t have the pound symbol, I’m afraid). I’d heard that it’s not the best in the series, being too combat-y for a proper tense survival horror, but it was the only one I could find and thought, hey, if I play all the others afterwards they’ll probably look even better! I have to say, it’s not all that scary. As soon as I got my hands on that aluminium bat and started charging up attacks to the full all fear of green dogs with tongues, two-baby-faced hand monsters and some kind of chest/face monkey thing went out the window. Even those nurse things weren’t all that bad. The ghosts are a bit alarming, but that’s it, nothing a bit of speed can’t handle...
…
That’s what I thought until last night, at any rate. I’m not going to spoil a thing, but let’s just say events have transpired that make the eponymous room, which had become my lovely little salvation-hole when the dank subways, spooky forests and water treatment plants turned child murder camps got a little too much, into something I want to avoid. It’s very clever, really, how it hands you an unsettling situation and then says ‘Don’t worry about it! You’ve got a completely safe apartment to go home to! Look, it even restores health for you!’, but then snatches that completely safe apartment out of your hands while you weren’t looking and replaces it with a ticking ecto-plasmic timebomb. Now I can’t even save the game without risking a heart attack (for me or Henry) and with added responsibilities stacking up (SH veterans may know what I’m talking about) suddenly the game becomes something of a gruelling exercise, like holding your breath underwater, rather than a fun romp through slightly-surreal land. I’m of two minds as to whether I’ll take a deep breath and plunge back into that nightmare tonight. I may just reserve myself to the other game I bought this weekend.
Which is a real gem, let me tell you. It’s barely been out a week, and Final Fantasy Type-0 is simply staggering. It’s not ‘real’ FF by any stretch, being a third-person action game with multiplayer inklings (like, I learned last month, a third of all Japanese games these days), but it’s really, really awesome. Just like running away from an invincible robot spider, putting on a play to kidnap a princess or watching your entire world blow up in a big, watery explosion, it’s the very beginning that really grabs your attention. I really like the return to FF8’s Battle Royale-style combat Japanese high school setting, and in T0 they’ve combined that with the world politics of Avatar: The Last Airbender to make something not too deep, but very compelling. In terms of story, I’m a little disappointed that there’s so many characters on offer from the very beginning. All of the protagonists (all 14 of them) have their own individual personalities and quirks, and all have been carefully crafted like a collection of rare figurines. But like a collection of rare figurines crammed into a display case too small for them, you don’t really see a whole lot any one of them, and it feels too much like Class Zero is a character on its own rather than there being a complete, well-constructed set of protagonists. Perhaps the game will prove me wrong later in the game, but I doubt it.
I like King. King is really cool. He’s a bit if a Yakuza punk, not something I really like normally, but you can’t say no to double pistols as a weapon choice. And that’s where the game really does excel. The 14 characters may all be crafted from the same clay personality-wise, but in terms of combat each one could not be more different. It’s a real shock to the system to switch characters half-way through a mission, as you have to pick up a whole new set of tactics and ways of playing. It feels amazing, like being in a sandbox-style shooting game and instantly being given all the weapons. There’s choice like you wouldn’t believe. In between the awesome missions you get time off to do what you like. You can go chat to some other students, fight some guys in an arena or head out into the world and do any number of other things. Oh, yeah, I forgot. Sometimes you have to go all real-time strategy and command troops between your cities to attack other cities. It’s a little farfetched – why leave commanding the armies of the nation to a bunch of 17 year olds when said nation surely must have military commanders to do that for them? I’ve only done one of these Risk-y missions so far, but it seems to be balanced okay. It’s just not quite like a proper mission, as far as I’m concerned.
So yeah, that’s my life up ‘til now. There’s not a whole lot else worth saying. I’m watching the new series of the Walking Dead, which is great. I got a little zombie game on my iPhone for free, that’s also great. Did I mention someone complemented my tie?
Thanks for reading.
It’s the end of another week here in Kobe, and these last few weeks have been murderous. It’s not just the start of that all-important second wind in our own bodies, but the winds on the outside have changed as well, and the creeping cold is enough to keep many an ALT in bed. I myself have been a bit on the sick side lately (prematurely ending Halloween festivities), to the point that yesterday walking back from the station almost proved too great a challenge. As much as I would love to talk about the highly entertaining lack of stuff that’s been happening off the clock, pretty much everything worth talking about from an international understanding point of view was while I was at work.
Having left sports season behind, the nation now turns to sport’s reclusive twin brother, culture, for his moment in the limelight. Koryo was no exception to the seething mass of orchestral performances, amateur plays and artworks of all kinds that infested Japan in the last few weeks. I was drafted into helping set up and take down the displays, chairs and so on for the 23rd Culture Presentation (that’s a rough translation, that one) in exchange for alcohol. A lot of people make fools of themselves when drunk, but I think my inability to successfully quote “Even my father never hit me” in Japanese for the Gundam-loving PE teacher left quite a stain on my reputation more than any pratfalling would have done. But I’m getting ahead of things here, so let’s backtrack.
From 9am ‘til 12pm, the school flung open its gates for family of the students to come and inspect the cultural things they’ve paid money for their kids to do this term. Each classroom was vividly decked out with random pieces of artwork, poetry and the occasional textile or flower arrangement for visitors to come and see. There was some pretty impressive stuff to see, too; it’s a widely-held opinion that Japanese kids are genetically empowered in the drawing department, and Koryo’s Culture Presentation was further evidence. I didn’t get much of a chance to see many of the displays, assigning myself to the front gate to guide visitors around, as well as to show myself off as school property. Don’t get me wrong, I’d have gone inside and looked around a bit more if the other teachers on duty hadn’t seen me doing such a good job and left me alone to do it. I’m not complaining really, I got a chance to see a fair few of my elementary kids that morning, which was pretty cool.
At 12pm the stage is set for the, well, stage show portion of the day. Firstly we were shown each year group’s winners from the class choir competition earlier that week, followed by a joint venture from all members of the year at once. The first and second years were great, but I wasn’t so taken with the third years’ performance. I dunno, it just lacked something. It sounds to me like the same songs are chosen for every school in the city, so I bet the students are sick of hearing them by the time they’re finished. Would have been nice to get something I recognised, is all. After that was the presentation of a certificate to the girl who came up with the year’s school motto (“the seed of today, through effort, becomes the flower of tomorrow”, except in Japanese) and a talk by the health club on the importance of regular sleeping hours. Surely one of them must have mentioned that darkened room plus quiet music plus twenty minutes of talk about how great sleep is makes for an unresponsive audience… Then it was a quick break, presumably for the audience to get outside for some fresh air to wake themselves up. During the break I was told my tie was very cool. That was nice.
The second half of the show was dedicated to the third year leavers and the brass band. The former put on a short series of skits, joined together by an entertaining story about trying to make an idol group called KRY48. It had sounded really awful on paper, but they did an excellent job with it. The production managed to combine all three of Japanese entertainment’s biggest players: dance groups, comedy duos and truly weird stories. I didn’t really understand either of the last two, but my lack of native, regional Japanese only accounted for the comedy. The weird play was just downright weird. Anyway, that was pretty cool. The brass band, however, really were the neon-lit torpedo that blew the others out of the water. There were five songs played in total, notably including a Little Mermaid medley (I’ll bet you can feel the enthusiasm I had about that one), a Super Mario Bros. medley and the song ‘Laser beam’ by Perfume. It was a really excellent performance; I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t moved. It also made me want to play a wind instrument. After all that it was time to pack everything away and get roaring, screaming drunk. It was a good day, and I was happy to sacrifice my beloved Saturday for it. Tomorrow I’m going in to one of my elementary school’s Music Festival, this time as a guest (but I still get Monday off, weh-hey!), so be sure to look forward to a report on that.
I had a couple of weeks before the next big event, but it feels like I had a lot less. This week was my evaluation lesson, the one where they decide whether to keep me on or not. I know, I know, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. It’s in the Programme’s best interests to keep ALTs on for at least one year, so I’m sure they weren’t ‘out to get me’ in any way. But that does not stop me getting myself into a stress fest over it. In the end I had nothing to worry about. The class they were observing was a third year speaking test preparation class, and even though not one person volunteered answers (I did the same lesson with the three other third year classes that same day and got a much more enthusiastic response) there was some good practise throughout. The KEC representatives said they liked the rapport, the relationship with the teacher and the simplicity of the lesson, and also gave me some good ideas for improving on some of it for later use. No problem.
Next week is ‘Trial Week’ for the second years, the equivalent of work experience in the UK. The only difference is they are sent to shops in the neighbourhood rather than getting to pick their own from the city at large. The result of this, along with the mass of paperwork that needs doing while it’s going on, is that I have very little to do next week. I’m looking forward to that.
Oh, that reminds me. One of the other Kobe ALTs has started a project with his third years to start writing letters to other ALTs in the city, and I’m helping out (along with quite a lot of us). On Wednesday I received six letters from third years, and I spent a fair amount of the day replying to them. Most of them had already heard that I liked Pokemon, so many were asking me about that. Some asked about sports, some about music. One guy (who had the nerve to start his letter with “Dear Pepe Swan”) asked about pretty much everything under the sun. I also received more pictures of Pikachu than I know what to do with.
Week after next is the first JET Skills Conference, and all. It’s a busy month, this one. I think one of the big things that makes it an event to remember is that every ALT will be attending along with a selected Japanese teacher of English from their school. I get the feeling it’ll be a little like show and tell for us ALTs. Not really sure what else to expect, except maybe more sitting and listening ala Job Training all those weeks ago.
So yeah, all in all things are going well. I continue to talk to more of the students, and they in turn get more comfortable with trying to talk to me. I met a few of them on the tube with Steph the other day; they made quite a fuss about that the next day in class. My lesson-making experience continues to build, and usually they go off without a hitch. The less said about that Halloween monster making class, though, the better… More excrement-themed abominations than you could wave a stick at. Today I did comparative adjectives with the second years, which went down a real treat. I’m honestly exhausted all the time these days, and slouching at my desk plus low blooming ceilings at home have made for some nasty neck pains, but things are going really well. The only problem I’m having, something that was brought up a little at church on Sunday, is that I appear to have become a slave to my own sense of time. In a day I have about four hours of free time. In that time I have to cook dinner for tonight and lunch for tomorrow. No problem, right? But every night it feels like I’ve been robbed of what could have been a satisfying amount of free time. I go to bed (at nine thirty, the sad old man that I am) feeling dissatisfied with my relaxation, and each day I long for Christmas more and more. It’s making me grumpy, which I don’t like. If there’s one thing I’m trying to avoid being, it’s grumpy. For now I’m trying to value the time that I get for what it is, not what it could have been. Right?
So that’s international understanding and angsty soul-searching out the way. Let’s talk about what I want to really talk about.
It’s been a corker of a week for video games. As an attempt to celebrate for a hard October I decided to splash out on a game this weekend, and happened across a game from a series I’d been hoping to get into for a while now: Silent Hill 4 on the PS2. PS2 games are still in vast supply (and production, you may be surprised to hear) here in Japan, but still manage to come off as quite cheap, and SH4 only set me back about 8 pounds (this keyboard I’m using doesn’t have the pound symbol, I’m afraid). I’d heard that it’s not the best in the series, being too combat-y for a proper tense survival horror, but it was the only one I could find and thought, hey, if I play all the others afterwards they’ll probably look even better! I have to say, it’s not all that scary. As soon as I got my hands on that aluminium bat and started charging up attacks to the full all fear of green dogs with tongues, two-baby-faced hand monsters and some kind of chest/face monkey thing went out the window. Even those nurse things weren’t all that bad. The ghosts are a bit alarming, but that’s it, nothing a bit of speed can’t handle...
…
That’s what I thought until last night, at any rate. I’m not going to spoil a thing, but let’s just say events have transpired that make the eponymous room, which had become my lovely little salvation-hole when the dank subways, spooky forests and water treatment plants turned child murder camps got a little too much, into something I want to avoid. It’s very clever, really, how it hands you an unsettling situation and then says ‘Don’t worry about it! You’ve got a completely safe apartment to go home to! Look, it even restores health for you!’, but then snatches that completely safe apartment out of your hands while you weren’t looking and replaces it with a ticking ecto-plasmic timebomb. Now I can’t even save the game without risking a heart attack (for me or Henry) and with added responsibilities stacking up (SH veterans may know what I’m talking about) suddenly the game becomes something of a gruelling exercise, like holding your breath underwater, rather than a fun romp through slightly-surreal land. I’m of two minds as to whether I’ll take a deep breath and plunge back into that nightmare tonight. I may just reserve myself to the other game I bought this weekend.
Which is a real gem, let me tell you. It’s barely been out a week, and Final Fantasy Type-0 is simply staggering. It’s not ‘real’ FF by any stretch, being a third-person action game with multiplayer inklings (like, I learned last month, a third of all Japanese games these days), but it’s really, really awesome. Just like running away from an invincible robot spider, putting on a play to kidnap a princess or watching your entire world blow up in a big, watery explosion, it’s the very beginning that really grabs your attention. I really like the return to FF8’s Battle Royale-style combat Japanese high school setting, and in T0 they’ve combined that with the world politics of Avatar: The Last Airbender to make something not too deep, but very compelling. In terms of story, I’m a little disappointed that there’s so many characters on offer from the very beginning. All of the protagonists (all 14 of them) have their own individual personalities and quirks, and all have been carefully crafted like a collection of rare figurines. But like a collection of rare figurines crammed into a display case too small for them, you don’t really see a whole lot any one of them, and it feels too much like Class Zero is a character on its own rather than there being a complete, well-constructed set of protagonists. Perhaps the game will prove me wrong later in the game, but I doubt it.
I like King. King is really cool. He’s a bit if a Yakuza punk, not something I really like normally, but you can’t say no to double pistols as a weapon choice. And that’s where the game really does excel. The 14 characters may all be crafted from the same clay personality-wise, but in terms of combat each one could not be more different. It’s a real shock to the system to switch characters half-way through a mission, as you have to pick up a whole new set of tactics and ways of playing. It feels amazing, like being in a sandbox-style shooting game and instantly being given all the weapons. There’s choice like you wouldn’t believe. In between the awesome missions you get time off to do what you like. You can go chat to some other students, fight some guys in an arena or head out into the world and do any number of other things. Oh, yeah, I forgot. Sometimes you have to go all real-time strategy and command troops between your cities to attack other cities. It’s a little farfetched – why leave commanding the armies of the nation to a bunch of 17 year olds when said nation surely must have military commanders to do that for them? I’ve only done one of these Risk-y missions so far, but it seems to be balanced okay. It’s just not quite like a proper mission, as far as I’m concerned.
So yeah, that’s my life up ‘til now. There’s not a whole lot else worth saying. I’m watching the new series of the Walking Dead, which is great. I got a little zombie game on my iPhone for free, that’s also great. Did I mention someone complemented my tie?
Thanks for reading.
Saturday, 17 September 2011
7 - Defiance
And so, against all odds, Sports Day was only nine tenths cancelled today.
Picture the scene. It's 8 o'clock, everybody's already here, and the rain is for now remaining up in the sky. Amidst the practicing, line-drawing and tent-building there are five middle school students and a tall foreigner...
...soaking up the water on the ground with sponges.
Now I had thought that Japan, the nation that had successfully produced and commercialised the headed pillow shaped like a woman's lap would have had some kind of miraculous piece of environmentally friendly technology for doing this task. Something using a bucketload of straws and the vacuum of space, perhaps. So I was rather humbled by the whole ordeal of trying to get all the water from the sandy pitch out of the sand and into a bucket. You've heard the phrase 'like trying to draw water from a stone' before, I would guess. Well this was kinda similar. It's one of those situations where you can't help but think 'wouldn't this be so much simpler in the world of Pokemon'. 'Course, if my awesome Blaziken was at the task of getting water out of sand, he'd be more likely to vitrify the field than dry it*.
However, 9 o'clock rolled around and the pitch was at least workable, so the Sports Day went right on ahead.
First I'll go over the way everything works for those that haven't seen one of the plethora of anime dedicated to the memories of sports in Japanese schools. Rather than teams, each class goes up against the other, wearing coloured headbands to mark allegiance. Each class has a flag that they made themselves, and they all take their places off to one side and wait for each group's individual summons to the battlefield. So the start of the ceremony was a short march to some song that I KNOW I've heard before but can't place where, and then the principle gives a speech, they raise both the school flag and the national one to, of all things, Thine Be the Glory, and everybody claps. Of course, this is just my school we're talking about here.
First was 50m dash, nice and simple, then 100m and relay. And then it was Heavy Rotation. Heavy Rotation is awesome. Rather than a straight running race, classmates (in a team of some thirty or so) line up in fours and are given a long stick, which they hold between them. They then have to run out to a cone, which they go round (student on the far end doing all the work while near end student acts as an anchor) and then keep going, to a second cone, which they use to slingshot back the way they came. THEN, as they approach the rest of the group, the two centre students break off, and the outsiders have to pull the pole under the legs of Everybody else in the class, who jump over it. Chaos ensues. First team to get everybody around the course wins. Awesome.
That's the sort of thing you see a lot of in Sports Day, quirky stuff. Other highlights include a relay involving a unicycle, a child's trike and a tire pulled by two other students, and an insanely dangerous human chariot battle. Unfortunately, Typhoon 13 saw fit to end the proceedings right in the middle of the entire-class-legged-race, and everyone went home early.
But not before I got my own chance to race.
The staff relay was an odd race, taking place during the girls 200m relay, and rather than everyone running a set distance we were assigned fractions of the track based on (supposed) ability. As youngest, I got a sizable 110m, and I rocked it. Unfortunately, we were so far behind by the time we did I couldn't do a thing to save us.
Not much else to say about today except that we teachers then had to work hard in the pouring rain to get everything cleaned up minus student help. The baseball team are an odd lot. There's a strange, militaristic feel to them that you don't get off the other clubs. They shout louder, work harder and just help to such a ridiculous extent. Whenever a teacher walks by during practice, foreign me included, they all take off their hats (but not helmets, that's dangerous) and practically bellow "Konccha~", a very manly hello. They stammer a little when it's me, who, remember, can't speak Japanese, but there's a ritualism to it that's very striking. Case in point, they insisted on helping in the rain tonight, and every time I tried to do something one would jump in with a "Peter! Change! Change!" and I'd be out of a job.
But now, one day late, it's the weekend. And I'm gonna fill myself up with beer. It's weekend until Tuesday, so with tomorrow's church the exception I may not get up for anything! I'm so knackered, in soul more than body, and am gonna vent my heart's content.
Thanks for reading.
*Special thanks go to Portal 2 for teaching me that word.
Picture the scene. It's 8 o'clock, everybody's already here, and the rain is for now remaining up in the sky. Amidst the practicing, line-drawing and tent-building there are five middle school students and a tall foreigner...
...soaking up the water on the ground with sponges.
Now I had thought that Japan, the nation that had successfully produced and commercialised the headed pillow shaped like a woman's lap would have had some kind of miraculous piece of environmentally friendly technology for doing this task. Something using a bucketload of straws and the vacuum of space, perhaps. So I was rather humbled by the whole ordeal of trying to get all the water from the sandy pitch out of the sand and into a bucket. You've heard the phrase 'like trying to draw water from a stone' before, I would guess. Well this was kinda similar. It's one of those situations where you can't help but think 'wouldn't this be so much simpler in the world of Pokemon'. 'Course, if my awesome Blaziken was at the task of getting water out of sand, he'd be more likely to vitrify the field than dry it*.
However, 9 o'clock rolled around and the pitch was at least workable, so the Sports Day went right on ahead.
First I'll go over the way everything works for those that haven't seen one of the plethora of anime dedicated to the memories of sports in Japanese schools. Rather than teams, each class goes up against the other, wearing coloured headbands to mark allegiance. Each class has a flag that they made themselves, and they all take their places off to one side and wait for each group's individual summons to the battlefield. So the start of the ceremony was a short march to some song that I KNOW I've heard before but can't place where, and then the principle gives a speech, they raise both the school flag and the national one to, of all things, Thine Be the Glory, and everybody claps. Of course, this is just my school we're talking about here.
First was 50m dash, nice and simple, then 100m and relay. And then it was Heavy Rotation. Heavy Rotation is awesome. Rather than a straight running race, classmates (in a team of some thirty or so) line up in fours and are given a long stick, which they hold between them. They then have to run out to a cone, which they go round (student on the far end doing all the work while near end student acts as an anchor) and then keep going, to a second cone, which they use to slingshot back the way they came. THEN, as they approach the rest of the group, the two centre students break off, and the outsiders have to pull the pole under the legs of Everybody else in the class, who jump over it. Chaos ensues. First team to get everybody around the course wins. Awesome.
That's the sort of thing you see a lot of in Sports Day, quirky stuff. Other highlights include a relay involving a unicycle, a child's trike and a tire pulled by two other students, and an insanely dangerous human chariot battle. Unfortunately, Typhoon 13 saw fit to end the proceedings right in the middle of the entire-class-legged-race, and everyone went home early.
But not before I got my own chance to race.
The staff relay was an odd race, taking place during the girls 200m relay, and rather than everyone running a set distance we were assigned fractions of the track based on (supposed) ability. As youngest, I got a sizable 110m, and I rocked it. Unfortunately, we were so far behind by the time we did I couldn't do a thing to save us.
Not much else to say about today except that we teachers then had to work hard in the pouring rain to get everything cleaned up minus student help. The baseball team are an odd lot. There's a strange, militaristic feel to them that you don't get off the other clubs. They shout louder, work harder and just help to such a ridiculous extent. Whenever a teacher walks by during practice, foreign me included, they all take off their hats (but not helmets, that's dangerous) and practically bellow "Konccha~", a very manly hello. They stammer a little when it's me, who, remember, can't speak Japanese, but there's a ritualism to it that's very striking. Case in point, they insisted on helping in the rain tonight, and every time I tried to do something one would jump in with a "Peter! Change! Change!" and I'd be out of a job.
But now, one day late, it's the weekend. And I'm gonna fill myself up with beer. It's weekend until Tuesday, so with tomorrow's church the exception I may not get up for anything! I'm so knackered, in soul more than body, and am gonna vent my heart's content.
Thanks for reading.
*Special thanks go to Portal 2 for teaching me that word.
Friday, 9 September 2011
6 - Solo
...which brings the cockroach count up to four. I swear, though, I'm a bit of a ninja with the old box and sheet of paper. All four harmlessly evacuated from the premises, hopefully with some of that roach poison stuff on their lips that they can then hopefully spread the stuff around. Gosh, I'm so proud of myself.
But that's not what you came here to read, I'll wager. No, because this week was my first proper week of work, with real lessons that I really planned myself and everything. A quick rundown of the stuff you've missed: Monday, Wednesday and onwards were all at Junior High, where Tuesday was at Elementary, and for the record I wasn't supposed to have any lessons on the Monday but happened to anyway.
So Monday saw me with class 1-2, which have fast become one of my favourites. Before we got there, I mentioned to my OTE that I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, and he said to me, "Don't worry. Class 1-2 are very... lively. We have a very... special boy in this class." And boy, was he special. But no, there was seriously no need for me to have been nervous about a single thing. First years are very similar to Elementaries in terms of fondness for activity (see later), and are more than happy to humour you by saying that the picture in your hand is clearly of a cat, unlike certain 3rd year classes I could care to mention (see much later). As I found out, it's often good to go for a Dragon Quest-inspired finale, where you pull out your big guns one after another so they don't have time to rest. This means playing that clip from Break Out by JAM Project, mentioning I like anime songs, listing my three favourite animes, then pulling out my DS complete with pictures of girlfriend, then an Xbox controller, and then finishing the whole thing off with a guessing game about my favourite video game which ends in a Pokemon-hat flourish. I had kids standing up in their seats because they couldn't think of better ways to express their growing excitement (or, as one kid remarked in his homework, "Tension up up!").
A good day, then. But my week was just getting started. Elementary school was the next day, and meant a renewal of nerves that morning. But, once again, they were unnecessary. Elementary school kids here in Japan are God's greatest creation. The cuteness I was expecting, but what I wasn't expecting was a level of bull-headed enthusiasm that I don't think I could match on the mother of all sugar rushes. They were shy at first, as was to be expected, but as soon as it became clear that their school was my destination I was instantly one of them. It didn't matter that I forgot the way to the staffroom, I practically had my hand grabbed and pulled all the way there without me even saying a word. Now, Elementary timetables are a little funny. Rather than a massive break after lunch like what I got at that age, each class has a 10 or 20 minute break in the middle which, if you're under the age of 10, is enough for a whole dodgeball tournament. My four lessons that day were with 6th year students, the top end of the school, and as would be a running theme through the schools here each class had its own little quirks, little nuances. Though I received overwhelmingly positive responses from every class, 1 and 3 were the top end. I was mobbed at the end of my class by 3, all eager to see the montage of puri-kura on my DS or quiz me about my favourite Pokemon and lovelife. In the other, question time devolved into a match to see who could name the most obscure anime they could think of and still have me know what it was. The kid who asked about Gundam, who happened to be wearing a tshirt with a Z'Gok on it, did a little dance when I said Gundam was one of my favourites. And then this one kid, himself wearing a Monster Hunter tshirt, he was an absolute legend. When Nakamura-sensei asked if I was an otaku, and I replied that I probably was by Western standards, he insisted on running to the front to give me a double high-five, shouting a victory cry the whole time. He even added a cheeky "Too bad, sensei!" to his homeroom teacher when it became clear I had a girlfriend. In breaks I was dragged (not unwillingly) into various games that each left me exhausted, and any attempt at sorting my files in the staffroom had kids knocking on the door with polite requests for my company in various classrooms (or in one case, "Peter, come on!"). Lunch was with another class, a fifth year one, who jumped for joy at the sight of my Pokemon lunchbox, and last class was with teeny-weeny 2nd years, practicing the very basics of self-introductions. This last class, it turned out, attended the nursery school by my busstop after their time at Elementary, presumably to wait for parents, and were not so much thrilled as shocked that I was present outside of school. I had a good chat with those guys waiting for the bus. And that was my day. Ex-flipping-ceptional.
Back to Junior High now, with Wednesday being 3rd year day. These guys are just as much enthusiastic, I think, but they have it hidden deep below their foolish too-cool-for-school images. I fail to believe that they don't know what a dog is, for example. Still, three successful lessons plus some useful advice from my OTE. Thursday was 2nd year day, and as expected those guys are a mixed bag. I got a lot of shy guys, but also some entertaining troublemakers ("Which girl sensei at Junior High do you like the most?"). Also, watching the question time routine of pass the ball around during the music and the poor soul holding it when the music stops must ask me a question, was pretty hilarious. AND I'm pleased to find that my soccer and basketball abilities are roughly the same as the 2nd years, making for some fun lunchtimes. Today was an odd one, though, as I started off with my Nakayoshi class. Nakayoshi, for those who haven't read my explanation in an earlier post, is the class for special needs students, and I have to say that other than a much more casual approach to student-teacher interaction, and this one girl who had a throat infection that day so spoke like Darth Vader, I couldn't find a thing wrong with any of them. They were exceptionally friendly, very much willing to take part, and though underconfident about their English very willing to try.
And that's about it. Next week will be real lessons, not just my long-winded self-introduction, which will need real preparation. Also fast approaching is the Sports Day, which has been practiced down to the last second so far in specialised lessons this week, with no sign of stopping. Also, double Elementary school!
Thanks for reading.
But that's not what you came here to read, I'll wager. No, because this week was my first proper week of work, with real lessons that I really planned myself and everything. A quick rundown of the stuff you've missed: Monday, Wednesday and onwards were all at Junior High, where Tuesday was at Elementary, and for the record I wasn't supposed to have any lessons on the Monday but happened to anyway.
So Monday saw me with class 1-2, which have fast become one of my favourites. Before we got there, I mentioned to my OTE that I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, and he said to me, "Don't worry. Class 1-2 are very... lively. We have a very... special boy in this class." And boy, was he special. But no, there was seriously no need for me to have been nervous about a single thing. First years are very similar to Elementaries in terms of fondness for activity (see later), and are more than happy to humour you by saying that the picture in your hand is clearly of a cat, unlike certain 3rd year classes I could care to mention (see much later). As I found out, it's often good to go for a Dragon Quest-inspired finale, where you pull out your big guns one after another so they don't have time to rest. This means playing that clip from Break Out by JAM Project, mentioning I like anime songs, listing my three favourite animes, then pulling out my DS complete with pictures of girlfriend, then an Xbox controller, and then finishing the whole thing off with a guessing game about my favourite video game which ends in a Pokemon-hat flourish. I had kids standing up in their seats because they couldn't think of better ways to express their growing excitement (or, as one kid remarked in his homework, "Tension up up!").
A good day, then. But my week was just getting started. Elementary school was the next day, and meant a renewal of nerves that morning. But, once again, they were unnecessary. Elementary school kids here in Japan are God's greatest creation. The cuteness I was expecting, but what I wasn't expecting was a level of bull-headed enthusiasm that I don't think I could match on the mother of all sugar rushes. They were shy at first, as was to be expected, but as soon as it became clear that their school was my destination I was instantly one of them. It didn't matter that I forgot the way to the staffroom, I practically had my hand grabbed and pulled all the way there without me even saying a word. Now, Elementary timetables are a little funny. Rather than a massive break after lunch like what I got at that age, each class has a 10 or 20 minute break in the middle which, if you're under the age of 10, is enough for a whole dodgeball tournament. My four lessons that day were with 6th year students, the top end of the school, and as would be a running theme through the schools here each class had its own little quirks, little nuances. Though I received overwhelmingly positive responses from every class, 1 and 3 were the top end. I was mobbed at the end of my class by 3, all eager to see the montage of puri-kura on my DS or quiz me about my favourite Pokemon and lovelife. In the other, question time devolved into a match to see who could name the most obscure anime they could think of and still have me know what it was. The kid who asked about Gundam, who happened to be wearing a tshirt with a Z'Gok on it, did a little dance when I said Gundam was one of my favourites. And then this one kid, himself wearing a Monster Hunter tshirt, he was an absolute legend. When Nakamura-sensei asked if I was an otaku, and I replied that I probably was by Western standards, he insisted on running to the front to give me a double high-five, shouting a victory cry the whole time. He even added a cheeky "Too bad, sensei!" to his homeroom teacher when it became clear I had a girlfriend. In breaks I was dragged (not unwillingly) into various games that each left me exhausted, and any attempt at sorting my files in the staffroom had kids knocking on the door with polite requests for my company in various classrooms (or in one case, "Peter, come on!"). Lunch was with another class, a fifth year one, who jumped for joy at the sight of my Pokemon lunchbox, and last class was with teeny-weeny 2nd years, practicing the very basics of self-introductions. This last class, it turned out, attended the nursery school by my busstop after their time at Elementary, presumably to wait for parents, and were not so much thrilled as shocked that I was present outside of school. I had a good chat with those guys waiting for the bus. And that was my day. Ex-flipping-ceptional.
Back to Junior High now, with Wednesday being 3rd year day. These guys are just as much enthusiastic, I think, but they have it hidden deep below their foolish too-cool-for-school images. I fail to believe that they don't know what a dog is, for example. Still, three successful lessons plus some useful advice from my OTE. Thursday was 2nd year day, and as expected those guys are a mixed bag. I got a lot of shy guys, but also some entertaining troublemakers ("Which girl sensei at Junior High do you like the most?"). Also, watching the question time routine of pass the ball around during the music and the poor soul holding it when the music stops must ask me a question, was pretty hilarious. AND I'm pleased to find that my soccer and basketball abilities are roughly the same as the 2nd years, making for some fun lunchtimes. Today was an odd one, though, as I started off with my Nakayoshi class. Nakayoshi, for those who haven't read my explanation in an earlier post, is the class for special needs students, and I have to say that other than a much more casual approach to student-teacher interaction, and this one girl who had a throat infection that day so spoke like Darth Vader, I couldn't find a thing wrong with any of them. They were exceptionally friendly, very much willing to take part, and though underconfident about their English very willing to try.
And that's about it. Next week will be real lessons, not just my long-winded self-introduction, which will need real preparation. Also fast approaching is the Sports Day, which has been practiced down to the last second so far in specialised lessons this week, with no sign of stopping. Also, double Elementary school!
Thanks for reading.
Monday, 29 August 2011
5 - Attrition
I have some grave news to begin with. As many of you know, one of my great prides is being able to say that I have visited every single one of the world's Pokemon Centers. In a feat that spanned an entire year, I crossed a nation in order to purchase Pokemon paraphernalia all across Japan. However, last month, that achievement was made void by the duplication of the Osaka branch. Without my even realising it, I had let slip quite possibly the greatest accolade I will ever own. You cannot begin to imagine my torment. However...
... I have now once again earned the right to label myself as a Pokemaniac. Osaka's not that far away, not so far my dreams can't reach out and grab it. And that was my Monday.
Oh, alongside the taking of blood, ECGing and official registration in Japan that also took place.
So I guess there are a couple of things that need special mention today. Job training was Thursday and Friday, which was worth the time out of school. It's clear the staff at school aren't 100 percent sure what to do with me, I think the whole speaking Japanese thing is taking some getting used to. Still, gently does it; I'll be a fully fledged part of the team in no time. In the meantime, it's up to me to try and somehow make myself useful.
So training was pretty good. But Saturday kinda wiped it into insignificance with Kobe Winery's Bon-Odori festivities. Jumping at the chance to re-don a yukata, Steph and I were right there, only a half hour late. I'm sure there'll be photos about on Facebook on due time of my dashing blue gown, lessened only by the poor footwear choice and the fact you can see my tshirt under it. For those who don't know, Bon, or Obon, is a Japanese summer festival typified by expensive festival food, bright colours and dancing. This is the Japanese barn dance, to make a rough comparison, and the fact that we were both foreign and clueless didn't exempt us from giving it a try. However, disaster! Kobe winery was hit by a sudden thunderstorm as soon as we emerge from the changing rooms. It's a good hour and a half before the rain lets up enough to give people a chance to start. And once it did, though very rushed, it was pretty spectacular. Rather than limiting itself to just traditional Obon dancing, there were a number of performances of different cultures. And when you get down to it, having a bunch of sweet elderly women try to explain a quirky dance to you ain't that bad.
Oh, for the record, I was pretty hot on the dancefloor.
Sunday was more church, which continues to prove to be better than we could have hoped. Today's post-service event was bowling, which was cool. Left us both exceptionally tired, though; it's a wonder I got up for work at all this morning.
Well how about that. Just when I'd given up on 100 yen mega-Coke, I waltz into Family Mart to pay my bills only to find they've sold them all along. Once again, all's right with the world.
But yeah, I'm actually walking down the street while I write this. iPhones really are something.
So how's school REALLY going, I'm sure you're dying to ask. Pretty amazingly, all things considered. People are starting to recognise me, talk to me even, and in today's colossal meeting that I only had to be around for part of there was a definite sense that I was one of their's, not just a visitor. I'm also now the voice of the second year English listening mid-terms. That's pretty cool, I think. I even sent off a video letter to my elementary classes saying how excited I was to meet them, but also how worried I was that I didn't know their names nor their favourite foods. Apparently it'll serve as the intro to a name-card making exercise in the coming week, as well as help them recognise me when I finally turn up next Tuesday. Cute, huh?
Okay, home now. Time to kick back and enjoy a big can of sparkling sugar goodness while I beat the snot out of a transforming shark robot with my awesome guitar powers.
Thanks for reading.
... I have now once again earned the right to label myself as a Pokemaniac. Osaka's not that far away, not so far my dreams can't reach out and grab it. And that was my Monday.
Oh, alongside the taking of blood, ECGing and official registration in Japan that also took place.
So I guess there are a couple of things that need special mention today. Job training was Thursday and Friday, which was worth the time out of school. It's clear the staff at school aren't 100 percent sure what to do with me, I think the whole speaking Japanese thing is taking some getting used to. Still, gently does it; I'll be a fully fledged part of the team in no time. In the meantime, it's up to me to try and somehow make myself useful.
So training was pretty good. But Saturday kinda wiped it into insignificance with Kobe Winery's Bon-Odori festivities. Jumping at the chance to re-don a yukata, Steph and I were right there, only a half hour late. I'm sure there'll be photos about on Facebook on due time of my dashing blue gown, lessened only by the poor footwear choice and the fact you can see my tshirt under it. For those who don't know, Bon, or Obon, is a Japanese summer festival typified by expensive festival food, bright colours and dancing. This is the Japanese barn dance, to make a rough comparison, and the fact that we were both foreign and clueless didn't exempt us from giving it a try. However, disaster! Kobe winery was hit by a sudden thunderstorm as soon as we emerge from the changing rooms. It's a good hour and a half before the rain lets up enough to give people a chance to start. And once it did, though very rushed, it was pretty spectacular. Rather than limiting itself to just traditional Obon dancing, there were a number of performances of different cultures. And when you get down to it, having a bunch of sweet elderly women try to explain a quirky dance to you ain't that bad.
Oh, for the record, I was pretty hot on the dancefloor.
Sunday was more church, which continues to prove to be better than we could have hoped. Today's post-service event was bowling, which was cool. Left us both exceptionally tired, though; it's a wonder I got up for work at all this morning.
Well how about that. Just when I'd given up on 100 yen mega-Coke, I waltz into Family Mart to pay my bills only to find they've sold them all along. Once again, all's right with the world.
But yeah, I'm actually walking down the street while I write this. iPhones really are something.
So how's school REALLY going, I'm sure you're dying to ask. Pretty amazingly, all things considered. People are starting to recognise me, talk to me even, and in today's colossal meeting that I only had to be around for part of there was a definite sense that I was one of their's, not just a visitor. I'm also now the voice of the second year English listening mid-terms. That's pretty cool, I think. I even sent off a video letter to my elementary classes saying how excited I was to meet them, but also how worried I was that I didn't know their names nor their favourite foods. Apparently it'll serve as the intro to a name-card making exercise in the coming week, as well as help them recognise me when I finally turn up next Tuesday. Cute, huh?
Okay, home now. Time to kick back and enjoy a big can of sparkling sugar goodness while I beat the snot out of a transforming shark robot with my awesome guitar powers.
Thanks for reading.
Thursday, 18 August 2011
4 - Firsts
Late on my first day of work. May as well just fire me now.
I'm kidding, of course. Everyone at Koryo seems to have taken my blatantly gaijin idiocy in their strides, and just this once it looks like I'm off the hook. Won't stop me getting to the station a good 20 minutes ahead of time tomorrow, though.
But first things first, there was a little thing called Summer School to talk about.
Summer School is a voluntary English learning scheme set up by the KBE, and includes every last Kobe JET. Though participation for the kids is optional, we didn't get the luxury of choice. But before I end up sounding too bitter, let's get right to it. Monday was a preparation day, so nothing much to report...
I did it again, didn't I. I haven't told you about Sunday yet.
So Sunday, early start to head off to church in east Kobe. It's a fair ride, even further than the KEC, but a train, a bus and a shuttle later and we've made our way to Kobe Union Church, as far as I'm aware the only English-speaking church in Kobe. It's a fairly small congregation, about double Doshisha Church's, from all walks of life. Fortunately for Steph and I we were accompanied that day by fellow Hanayama JET Alex and his wife Nozomi, who showed us the way. The building needs special mention, it was really something. The main hall was all polished wood and stained glass, including a really cool organ at the stage-end, and underneath was a huge multi-purpose room where we had coffee afterwards. KUC is non-denominational, which set me a little off-ease at first (owing to bad experience with other 'non-denominationals'), but everyone, it became instantly clear, was about as friendly as you could get. We were encouraged to stand up and briefly introduce ourselves at the start of the service (I pride myself a little by being the only Brit in the church) along with the other six or so newcomers. Everyone seemed keen to say hello afterwards, with many adding a sympathetic "Sorry to hear about the trouble in your country". Steph and I have already decided on returning this Sunday, they even took us took a buffet lunch afterwards!
So yeah, finally, Monday. Preparation day meant an opening address followed by assignment of rooms, then decoration of those rooms and a couple of trial runs using the people from the others. Each room involved an English-based activity, and the students, when they arrived the next day, would cycle between all four in the morning and then have presentations in the afternoon. Most exciting was the 'Harry Potter Room', a series of challenges based on the popular English novels, including riddles and a particularly harrowing Dementor battle. You think saying "expecto patronum" in a moment of crisis is difficult for you, try being a 12 year old Japanese student. Next was 'Carnival Games', with challenges such as maze where one student would be blindfolded and the others would have to guide them through to the other side. 'International Mystery' was a murder-mystery style challenge, where the students were told of a theft by an international hyper-thief who was now hiding somewhere in the world. ALTs took on different roles as people from different countries, and in groups the students had to interview them to find the culprit. And finally, the room your's truly was assigned to, the 'Speed Dating Room'. Can you imagine my excitement? But yeah, in the end it was speed dating in name only, borrowing the 3 minute conversation format with students paring of ALTs several times for a quick chat. You may have seen the photo I stuck on Facebook a few days back: that was my desk what I decorated myself. As I'm sure you can imagine, I was many students' first choices.
Both days progressed very smoothly, all things considered. The opening and closing portions were very well executed, getting the students fired up for conversation, and all of the rooms performed excellently. Student bravery and skill was highly variable, with many opting to not say a thing during their three minutes, but you did occasionally get the gem who asked you what your favourite Pokemon was, or laughed at your jokes, or gave interesting answers. Special mention goes out to the 2nd Year who plays Euphonium at her school's Euphonium club. How cool is that? The presentation contest in the afternoon was also good, despite much unenthusiasm on the part of all of us. We had a few serious ones, the natural topic of the year being Tohoku, but some hilarious ones too, the winners of the second day being a particularly skilled group of boys who translated some traditional rakugo into English. Superb stuff. In the end, though, I'm glad it's over and I have a chance to catch my breath. Well, y'know, sort of.
Because today was my first day of school. I'll just say it now, the day's gone pretty well. First off was meeting the few staff who were here during the summer, with extra attention being paid to vice-principal Fukuda and the principal whose name... escapes me... I had a bit of a rifle through my predecessor's monumental amount of teaching resources, and also helped correct a student's English speech for a contest next month. Apparently I'll be giving her some 1-to-1 tuition on that when the term starts properly. As for the students themselves, I didn't see many, most busy with sports training. I did get more than a few curious glances and smiles, which really helped me feel welcome. A couple of times during my tour with the vice-principal he stopped to introduce me to some small groups of the students, who seemed genuinely very excited to see me. This was after he instructed me to feign not knowing Japanese. There was great surprise when I told them my age ("So young!!") which was echoed later during a meeting with my elementary teachers later that day. The teachers were very pleased to hear my Japanese, however, and seemed genuinely relieved that we'd be able to speak more naturally. Little has been said about classes at this point, though I do have my schedule. Most Mondays will be spend at... Tsu... Tsukushigaoka Elementary starting the 12th September with a class on 'I like'. I'll be bringing in big pictures of England and fish and chips for that one. Tuesdays will be Koryo Elementary, with a similar lesson in mind. Most of my lessons will be with 6th years, the highest year in the school, and I have already been warned that they are a very "powerful" year. By which I think they meant they are high-energy and enthusiastic, not that I should be wary of their magical powers as I was tempted to think. That one starts on the 6th. The rest of the week will be spent at Junior High, with different classes to work with each day. Friday is Nakayoshi day, Nakayoshi being the code-name (meaning 'good friends') for the special needs class. A little nervous about that one, not sure what to expect, but the teacher is very friendly, so what's the worst that could happen? Other than that, I'll have an opening ceremony to give a speech at on the 1st, and Sports Day to attend on the 9th. I also have to write a tiny self-introduction for the school newspaper, that's by the 24th.
So yeah, plenty to be getting on with. Steph and I prepared dinner ahead of time tonight, so when she gets back we just have to reheat the stuff and have maximal Terraria time. Having said that, I'll need something for lunch tomorrow, and every day for that matter. Now, where in my bursting schedule am I going to find time for that... and more importantly, what am I gonna make? Urgh, this is what that cookbook was for, I guess.
That's it. Thanks for reading.
I'm kidding, of course. Everyone at Koryo seems to have taken my blatantly gaijin idiocy in their strides, and just this once it looks like I'm off the hook. Won't stop me getting to the station a good 20 minutes ahead of time tomorrow, though.
But first things first, there was a little thing called Summer School to talk about.
Summer School is a voluntary English learning scheme set up by the KBE, and includes every last Kobe JET. Though participation for the kids is optional, we didn't get the luxury of choice. But before I end up sounding too bitter, let's get right to it. Monday was a preparation day, so nothing much to report...
I did it again, didn't I. I haven't told you about Sunday yet.
So Sunday, early start to head off to church in east Kobe. It's a fair ride, even further than the KEC, but a train, a bus and a shuttle later and we've made our way to Kobe Union Church, as far as I'm aware the only English-speaking church in Kobe. It's a fairly small congregation, about double Doshisha Church's, from all walks of life. Fortunately for Steph and I we were accompanied that day by fellow Hanayama JET Alex and his wife Nozomi, who showed us the way. The building needs special mention, it was really something. The main hall was all polished wood and stained glass, including a really cool organ at the stage-end, and underneath was a huge multi-purpose room where we had coffee afterwards. KUC is non-denominational, which set me a little off-ease at first (owing to bad experience with other 'non-denominationals'), but everyone, it became instantly clear, was about as friendly as you could get. We were encouraged to stand up and briefly introduce ourselves at the start of the service (I pride myself a little by being the only Brit in the church) along with the other six or so newcomers. Everyone seemed keen to say hello afterwards, with many adding a sympathetic "Sorry to hear about the trouble in your country". Steph and I have already decided on returning this Sunday, they even took us took a buffet lunch afterwards!
So yeah, finally, Monday. Preparation day meant an opening address followed by assignment of rooms, then decoration of those rooms and a couple of trial runs using the people from the others. Each room involved an English-based activity, and the students, when they arrived the next day, would cycle between all four in the morning and then have presentations in the afternoon. Most exciting was the 'Harry Potter Room', a series of challenges based on the popular English novels, including riddles and a particularly harrowing Dementor battle. You think saying "expecto patronum" in a moment of crisis is difficult for you, try being a 12 year old Japanese student. Next was 'Carnival Games', with challenges such as maze where one student would be blindfolded and the others would have to guide them through to the other side. 'International Mystery' was a murder-mystery style challenge, where the students were told of a theft by an international hyper-thief who was now hiding somewhere in the world. ALTs took on different roles as people from different countries, and in groups the students had to interview them to find the culprit. And finally, the room your's truly was assigned to, the 'Speed Dating Room'. Can you imagine my excitement? But yeah, in the end it was speed dating in name only, borrowing the 3 minute conversation format with students paring of ALTs several times for a quick chat. You may have seen the photo I stuck on Facebook a few days back: that was my desk what I decorated myself. As I'm sure you can imagine, I was many students' first choices.
Both days progressed very smoothly, all things considered. The opening and closing portions were very well executed, getting the students fired up for conversation, and all of the rooms performed excellently. Student bravery and skill was highly variable, with many opting to not say a thing during their three minutes, but you did occasionally get the gem who asked you what your favourite Pokemon was, or laughed at your jokes, or gave interesting answers. Special mention goes out to the 2nd Year who plays Euphonium at her school's Euphonium club. How cool is that? The presentation contest in the afternoon was also good, despite much unenthusiasm on the part of all of us. We had a few serious ones, the natural topic of the year being Tohoku, but some hilarious ones too, the winners of the second day being a particularly skilled group of boys who translated some traditional rakugo into English. Superb stuff. In the end, though, I'm glad it's over and I have a chance to catch my breath. Well, y'know, sort of.
Because today was my first day of school. I'll just say it now, the day's gone pretty well. First off was meeting the few staff who were here during the summer, with extra attention being paid to vice-principal Fukuda and the principal whose name... escapes me... I had a bit of a rifle through my predecessor's monumental amount of teaching resources, and also helped correct a student's English speech for a contest next month. Apparently I'll be giving her some 1-to-1 tuition on that when the term starts properly. As for the students themselves, I didn't see many, most busy with sports training. I did get more than a few curious glances and smiles, which really helped me feel welcome. A couple of times during my tour with the vice-principal he stopped to introduce me to some small groups of the students, who seemed genuinely very excited to see me. This was after he instructed me to feign not knowing Japanese. There was great surprise when I told them my age ("So young!!") which was echoed later during a meeting with my elementary teachers later that day. The teachers were very pleased to hear my Japanese, however, and seemed genuinely relieved that we'd be able to speak more naturally. Little has been said about classes at this point, though I do have my schedule. Most Mondays will be spend at... Tsu... Tsukushigaoka Elementary starting the 12th September with a class on 'I like'. I'll be bringing in big pictures of England and fish and chips for that one. Tuesdays will be Koryo Elementary, with a similar lesson in mind. Most of my lessons will be with 6th years, the highest year in the school, and I have already been warned that they are a very "powerful" year. By which I think they meant they are high-energy and enthusiastic, not that I should be wary of their magical powers as I was tempted to think. That one starts on the 6th. The rest of the week will be spent at Junior High, with different classes to work with each day. Friday is Nakayoshi day, Nakayoshi being the code-name (meaning 'good friends') for the special needs class. A little nervous about that one, not sure what to expect, but the teacher is very friendly, so what's the worst that could happen? Other than that, I'll have an opening ceremony to give a speech at on the 1st, and Sports Day to attend on the 9th. I also have to write a tiny self-introduction for the school newspaper, that's by the 24th.
So yeah, plenty to be getting on with. Steph and I prepared dinner ahead of time tonight, so when she gets back we just have to reheat the stuff and have maximal Terraria time. Having said that, I'll need something for lunch tomorrow, and every day for that matter. Now, where in my bursting schedule am I going to find time for that... and more importantly, what am I gonna make? Urgh, this is what that cookbook was for, I guess.
That's it. Thanks for reading.
Friday, 12 August 2011
3 - Destination
There's been a death in the family. Thought I'd better get this out of the way now so as to not taint the rest of the story with grief. On Friday I had to say goodnight to my Fuji digital camera. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say he's still comatose, but the doctor that is my common sense (and he's been running tests every day) tells me to give up hope. Water damage, was the final diagnosis, brought on by Japan's eco-bottles having rubbish caps. The offshoot of this is that I don't have much in the way of photos to show you today. What few I've taken with the iPhone can already be seen on Facebook. It was only a little water... and yet...
Sorry, sorry, I'm okay now.
So, let's get on with the show. I've got a week and a half to cover and Gundam Musou 2 (that's Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 to you) waiting for me to finish. Wednesday, awoke at 6.30 for a 7am breakfast and to pack, 8am meeting for an 8.30 departure to the airport. This flight was a lot better than the last one we'd take-
I never talked about Tokyo Orientation, did I...
Okay, TWO weeks to cover now. You saw my room, and heard about the flight and Shibuya, so all that's left is to talk about the seminars. Monday morning, 7am start for a 7.30 breakfast with Steph and Amara (it is so GOOD to be in the same time zone as your girlfriend!) followed by the opening ceremony at 9. After a brief explanation by one of the longer-standing JETs ("How do you like my new cat-skin shoes?") the ceremony began. Speeches by staff from the Minstries of Education and whatnot, all very grateful that we were there, and then a run-down of the next two days. We'd be picking our own seminars for the most part, with a few, such as prefectural meetings, being compulsory. Let me see if I can remember this... Steph and I spent the day learning about using JET as a springboard into a career in education, elementary school teaching and finally a very lively talk about self-introductions both for our first time in front of our new co-workers and students. Funny coincidence, that last one was headed up by a guy called Fergus, a British guy who graduated from Edinburgh Uni with a degree in Japanese and then went to Kobe City on JET with his girlfriend. Sound familiar? It's a funny world we live in. Anyway, Fergus is one of the ward team leaders for Kobe JET, so we'd be seeing a lot of him in the coming days. Lunch (in the midst of all that) was a simple tomato pasta thing, but I didn't complain 'cos it was free. We also a number of stellar talks about 'grassroots internationalism' (FAR more entertaining that it may sound) and what foreign language education is like in each of the school levels. Hats off to Mr Junior-High for a simply hilarious talk. Now, throughout all this was an AJET Information Fair, where we could pick up books about travel, education and the like, as well as enter into a raffle and sign up for the JET support mailing list. The one complaint I would have about that first day would be that the fair ran from the time of our first talk to the end of our last, meaning the only way we would be able to make the most of the room would be to skip out on either a seminar (which I for one was told would not be allowed) or lunch (which I for one would rather die than do). Seems like a bit of a silly system, really, the result of which being that Steph and I simply didn't get a proper chance to give it a look. Dinner was a reception in the main hall. We were... fed, I suppose, but the vegi options were slim pickings to say the least and so, after drowning myself in as much free Pepsi as I could, Steph and I headed for the convenience store around the corner for some sweet, sweet instant udon. Bed, sleep, end of day one.
Phew, one down.
Tuesday was essentially more of the same. Breakfast again (did I mention we got chips and ketchup as part of that?) followed by a panel discussion about JET life. Useful stuff was said, even if I was feeling a little rougher than I had the previous day. After that we split into prefecture groups to watch a demonstration of 'team-teaching' (or maybe 'one of us, one of them') in action, which was really excellent. Really helped my confidence to see the system working so well. Then it was more seminars, and let me tell you, the information load on this poor boy's brain was really beginning to weigh heavy. Classroom troubleshooting (such as what to do when some kid tries to ask you how much sex you get) followed by a Kobe City meeting, and then a talk on teaching special needs children. By the end I was ready to collapse, my brain felt heavy enough to give me balance trouble. And so when a not-compulsory-but-you-really-should-go trip to the British Embassy was announced, I wasn't the happiest of customers. I think I had better not have gone, all things considered. 520 yen on the train there and back, and all I get from it is the end of a talk on Embassy services (travel planning team leaders were beheaded for that little blunder) and a beer. I was promised food, but that promise did not come with the assurance that I would be able to eat the stuff. Yeah, more anti-veg levelling. Ridiculous, for a country so vegi-minded as Britain...
Wednesday, and we're ready to go for good this time.
The flight was a whole ton better than the last one I'd taken, only taking a little over an hour. But boy, Kobe is HOT. I mean, it's really, REALLY hot! Even now I'm struggling to get used to just how hot it is. Sweating is as common an action as breathing. But yeah, that's not important. What IS important is that Kobe is also staggeringly beautiful. From close to any vantage point in the city you can see the whole thing, with the tree-laden mountains providing a really awesome backdrop. We didn't get a whole lot of sightseeing done on this first day, taking a bus immediately to the KEC, the Kobe Education Center, where the magic happens. Paperwork, introductions and another talk about things to come. Our CIRs Daniel and Marie are both excellent, and did a superb job of letting us know we were in safe hands. But boy, am I not glad to be back in amongst the red tape of bureacracy. I've done more paperwork these last two weeks than I think any administrator knows what to do with. We also met some of our staff, Siba-sensei, Miki-sensei (finance division) and our own ALT supervisor Wada-sensei who, I am told, is incapable of anger. And after that, the intense fear and tension of meeting our team teachers for the first time. But rest assured, reading public, Nishida-sensei seems like a really great teacher. He quickly warmed to the conversation, and seemed incredibly pleased to hear my Japanese. He even used the term "English gentleman" when he called up the vice-principal of our school to say I'd arrived safe. Talk about a vote of confidence. We took a taxi to Hanayama, my new home, which if anything is even hotter than hot, hot Kobe. It's also very far out of the way, the taxi driver not having heard of it before and being unable to find his way there without help. Travel costs are gonna destroy me, if nothing else does. It's green like no other place I've ever lived before, with trees just everywhere. Oh, and creatures that live in trees. We've been warned about centipedes and cockroaches, but I've also seen crickets the size of my fist and last night I even saw a tiny lizard. Oh, and a praying mantis. It's like living in Twycross Zoo sometimes. The rest of the day was spent socialising with the other Hanayamans, first at a barbeque and then at one of our sempai JETs' places. And make no mistake, the people of Hanayama are quite simply the nicest, most welcoming and most entertaining people I have EVER met. Each one of them is kind and enthusiastic, and very easy to talk to. I am truly blessed to be here, with such a stellar support network in place.
Okay, swiftly on now. Thursday was our first Neighbourhood Day. After a brief trip into the KEC again we went off with our house groups to the ward office to register, and then Sannomiya, the central entertainment area of Kobe, to get iPhones. Those little things are staggering. I'm listening to music on mine right now, it can store all of my library and still has space, essentially making my iPod obsolete. The battery's a little low, so I'll likely bring my iPod as well on travels, but the breadth of function of an iPhone is just magnificent. Downloadable games, a camera, Skype, internet and email, Google Maps. It can even allow you to TALK to people who aren't right next to you, so long as they have a phone as well. After that we went back to the Hanayama area (my poor wallet...) for lunch and to look around. We stopped by a shop called Konan, the B&Q of Japan, where we picked up dehumidifiers and the like. Apparently the humidity here will melt away your clothing if you're not careful. I'm going to have to stop by there again some time soon to pick up bug deterrents. More on that later. That night was okonomiyaki at a nearby shopping area in Oike, which was superb. Drink bar includes icecream, a heavenly combination.
Phew, getting tired here. Next was Friday, in case you were unaware, and a true tour of Sannomiya. We saw Tokyu Hands, the Loft, a little food alley behind the station, cinemas, stations, offices and shops. I didn't buy anything, holding out for a more interesting cover for my phone, but eventually we made our way to the Hub, the British pub, for a quick Happy Hour. Many of us split at that point, but a few of us from Hanayama stuck around for a quick Thai curry and karaoke, which was brilliant. I'd forgotten how much I adore karaoke, it's such a release, and the other Hanayamans are an almost ideal group to sing with. Though the Jankara in Sannomiya didn't allow for things like extensions or cheap alcohol, I was assured that the 'Phoenix' near the okonomiyaki place was a much better deal. Finished at 9pm (I know, pathetic), and then it was home to sleep.
Saturday, Steph and I returned to Sannomiya for a bit of personal shopping. There's a fanTASTic floor of 'Centergai', the main shopping center, that caters to folk of a more otaku slant. I got myself the most incredible phone cover, a white one with a picture of Kyubei's smiling face on it. Don't know who Kyubei is? Google him, and then watch Madoka Magica. After all that, it was off to Ikea (interesting fact: it's pronounced 'ee-kay-ah' in Japan) to pick up some sheets for Steph's bed, and then off to see the fireworks. Kobe's annual fireworks festival is not to be missed, make no mistake. Though I was tired beyond belief I'm extremely glad I went, it was just staggering. The East really does put us Westerners to shame when it comes to fireworks. The afterparty was at a senior JET's house on Port Island, where I once again successfully dodged the King's Cup.
Sunday we had tried to get to church, but to our discredit we didn't do the right amount of research, and when the time came to head out we didn't really know where to go. I'm hoping God's willing to forgive us this once, it HAS been a very exhausting work week. We have plans for tomorrow, though, going along to somewhere called Kobe Union Church with a Hanayaman named Alex. We know absolutely nothing about it, save that there's a Bible study on Wednesdays, but it'll be good to get the those church roots planted. The rest of the day was spent not doing anything. No, seriously.
This next week's been a bit of a blur, so don't blame me if it's a little brief. Monday was a sort-of job-training thing at Suzurandai JHS, a school reknowed for its second-to-none English ability. We had some short, informal talks with our senior JETs about things like teaching materials and extra-curricular activities (can it still be called that if I'm not a student?), followed by lunch with some of the students and a tour of the school. Let me tell you, it was ace being inside a building only ever seen in two dimensional illustrations before. A building, may I also point out, that traditionally gets attacked by supernatural forces or that acts as a training ground for magicians or robot pilots. It was a little odd finally being inside one. The boys taking us around were really nice, they seemed unusually relaxed to talk with us. Hiro informed us we'd be seeing more of him this coming week at Summer School, the English language teaching event for Junior High students that we ALTs help out with. The highlight of the day, though, was getting back on the bus at the very end and reuniting with Steph (who hadn't taken a tour with my group) and holding hands as we walked to the gate, and getting accostered (yes, that's the right word for it) by a small mob of girls who seemed extraordinarily excited to see us. "Couple?" they asked, "Married?", and then squealed very loudly when we responded. Sometimes young girls are the same the world over.
Tuesday was our first day of Japanese language class. Steph and I were placed into the top set together, along with most of the group. Class was from 9.30 to 3, with super-generous hour and half lunch, and consistenly left us drained of life. But I'm glad I went; it was good to have that extra practice and it was very well-taught, even fun. Tuesday was self-introductions, with an emphasis on finding funny stories to tell about our names. Wednesday was illness and wallet loss, Thursday was keigo. We also spent Thursday afternoon and Friday morning preparing for our unofficial assessment: a 3-minute speech on a topic of our choice. The two lower groups had fixed topics. Friday afternoon was a massive presentation of the amazing products of our imagination. In case you were wondering, I did mine on the way that the changing economy is forcing Japanese businessmen to rethink the way that they use Japanese formality markers in speech in the light of money-loss balancing the workforce in the eyes of society*. It was a lot of fun, all in all, and I received a number of happily-received pats on the back.
Over that week we didn't do much with our free time. We were so exhausted, there was little enthusiasm to really do anything. We cooked dinner, we watched films, we restored our energy. On Thursday afternoon, however, we participated in an epic water gun fight with the other Hanayamans (see profile picture for proof) in which a small Japanese boy tried to fire a water gun up my bum. No joking. It was extraordinarily wierd. I was even told afterwards that he was attempting to coerce others into doing the same. Fortunately none of the other Hanayamans were WIERD JAPANESE BOYS! Tch, so ridiculous. I am NOT putting up with that sort of treatment when I get to my school. Friday afternoon we spent out last opportunity to be in Sannomiya cancelling optional extras on our iPhones, buying Crocks and phone covers, and turning traveller's cheques into real money. I also bought Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2, and we played Terraria co-op deep into the night.
And now here we are. It's half-2 in the afternoon, and we're about to head to the convenience store for lunch. It's gonna be a long day of Terraria and Gundam ahead, methinks, and maybe a bit of Dragon Quest 9 in there as well. May well be my favourite game of all time, that last one.
Anyways, as always, thanks for reading. I'll try to be faster next time.
*Psyche. I did it on Pokemon.
Sorry, sorry, I'm okay now.
So, let's get on with the show. I've got a week and a half to cover and Gundam Musou 2 (that's Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 to you) waiting for me to finish. Wednesday, awoke at 6.30 for a 7am breakfast and to pack, 8am meeting for an 8.30 departure to the airport. This flight was a lot better than the last one we'd take-
I never talked about Tokyo Orientation, did I...
Okay, TWO weeks to cover now. You saw my room, and heard about the flight and Shibuya, so all that's left is to talk about the seminars. Monday morning, 7am start for a 7.30 breakfast with Steph and Amara (it is so GOOD to be in the same time zone as your girlfriend!) followed by the opening ceremony at 9. After a brief explanation by one of the longer-standing JETs ("How do you like my new cat-skin shoes?") the ceremony began. Speeches by staff from the Minstries of Education and whatnot, all very grateful that we were there, and then a run-down of the next two days. We'd be picking our own seminars for the most part, with a few, such as prefectural meetings, being compulsory. Let me see if I can remember this... Steph and I spent the day learning about using JET as a springboard into a career in education, elementary school teaching and finally a very lively talk about self-introductions both for our first time in front of our new co-workers and students. Funny coincidence, that last one was headed up by a guy called Fergus, a British guy who graduated from Edinburgh Uni with a degree in Japanese and then went to Kobe City on JET with his girlfriend. Sound familiar? It's a funny world we live in. Anyway, Fergus is one of the ward team leaders for Kobe JET, so we'd be seeing a lot of him in the coming days. Lunch (in the midst of all that) was a simple tomato pasta thing, but I didn't complain 'cos it was free. We also a number of stellar talks about 'grassroots internationalism' (FAR more entertaining that it may sound) and what foreign language education is like in each of the school levels. Hats off to Mr Junior-High for a simply hilarious talk. Now, throughout all this was an AJET Information Fair, where we could pick up books about travel, education and the like, as well as enter into a raffle and sign up for the JET support mailing list. The one complaint I would have about that first day would be that the fair ran from the time of our first talk to the end of our last, meaning the only way we would be able to make the most of the room would be to skip out on either a seminar (which I for one was told would not be allowed) or lunch (which I for one would rather die than do). Seems like a bit of a silly system, really, the result of which being that Steph and I simply didn't get a proper chance to give it a look. Dinner was a reception in the main hall. We were... fed, I suppose, but the vegi options were slim pickings to say the least and so, after drowning myself in as much free Pepsi as I could, Steph and I headed for the convenience store around the corner for some sweet, sweet instant udon. Bed, sleep, end of day one.
Phew, one down.
Tuesday was essentially more of the same. Breakfast again (did I mention we got chips and ketchup as part of that?) followed by a panel discussion about JET life. Useful stuff was said, even if I was feeling a little rougher than I had the previous day. After that we split into prefecture groups to watch a demonstration of 'team-teaching' (or maybe 'one of us, one of them') in action, which was really excellent. Really helped my confidence to see the system working so well. Then it was more seminars, and let me tell you, the information load on this poor boy's brain was really beginning to weigh heavy. Classroom troubleshooting (such as what to do when some kid tries to ask you how much sex you get) followed by a Kobe City meeting, and then a talk on teaching special needs children. By the end I was ready to collapse, my brain felt heavy enough to give me balance trouble. And so when a not-compulsory-but-you-really-should-go trip to the British Embassy was announced, I wasn't the happiest of customers. I think I had better not have gone, all things considered. 520 yen on the train there and back, and all I get from it is the end of a talk on Embassy services (travel planning team leaders were beheaded for that little blunder) and a beer. I was promised food, but that promise did not come with the assurance that I would be able to eat the stuff. Yeah, more anti-veg levelling. Ridiculous, for a country so vegi-minded as Britain...
Wednesday, and we're ready to go for good this time.
The flight was a whole ton better than the last one I'd taken, only taking a little over an hour. But boy, Kobe is HOT. I mean, it's really, REALLY hot! Even now I'm struggling to get used to just how hot it is. Sweating is as common an action as breathing. But yeah, that's not important. What IS important is that Kobe is also staggeringly beautiful. From close to any vantage point in the city you can see the whole thing, with the tree-laden mountains providing a really awesome backdrop. We didn't get a whole lot of sightseeing done on this first day, taking a bus immediately to the KEC, the Kobe Education Center, where the magic happens. Paperwork, introductions and another talk about things to come. Our CIRs Daniel and Marie are both excellent, and did a superb job of letting us know we were in safe hands. But boy, am I not glad to be back in amongst the red tape of bureacracy. I've done more paperwork these last two weeks than I think any administrator knows what to do with. We also met some of our staff, Siba-sensei, Miki-sensei (finance division) and our own ALT supervisor Wada-sensei who, I am told, is incapable of anger. And after that, the intense fear and tension of meeting our team teachers for the first time. But rest assured, reading public, Nishida-sensei seems like a really great teacher. He quickly warmed to the conversation, and seemed incredibly pleased to hear my Japanese. He even used the term "English gentleman" when he called up the vice-principal of our school to say I'd arrived safe. Talk about a vote of confidence. We took a taxi to Hanayama, my new home, which if anything is even hotter than hot, hot Kobe. It's also very far out of the way, the taxi driver not having heard of it before and being unable to find his way there without help. Travel costs are gonna destroy me, if nothing else does. It's green like no other place I've ever lived before, with trees just everywhere. Oh, and creatures that live in trees. We've been warned about centipedes and cockroaches, but I've also seen crickets the size of my fist and last night I even saw a tiny lizard. Oh, and a praying mantis. It's like living in Twycross Zoo sometimes. The rest of the day was spent socialising with the other Hanayamans, first at a barbeque and then at one of our sempai JETs' places. And make no mistake, the people of Hanayama are quite simply the nicest, most welcoming and most entertaining people I have EVER met. Each one of them is kind and enthusiastic, and very easy to talk to. I am truly blessed to be here, with such a stellar support network in place.
Okay, swiftly on now. Thursday was our first Neighbourhood Day. After a brief trip into the KEC again we went off with our house groups to the ward office to register, and then Sannomiya, the central entertainment area of Kobe, to get iPhones. Those little things are staggering. I'm listening to music on mine right now, it can store all of my library and still has space, essentially making my iPod obsolete. The battery's a little low, so I'll likely bring my iPod as well on travels, but the breadth of function of an iPhone is just magnificent. Downloadable games, a camera, Skype, internet and email, Google Maps. It can even allow you to TALK to people who aren't right next to you, so long as they have a phone as well. After that we went back to the Hanayama area (my poor wallet...) for lunch and to look around. We stopped by a shop called Konan, the B&Q of Japan, where we picked up dehumidifiers and the like. Apparently the humidity here will melt away your clothing if you're not careful. I'm going to have to stop by there again some time soon to pick up bug deterrents. More on that later. That night was okonomiyaki at a nearby shopping area in Oike, which was superb. Drink bar includes icecream, a heavenly combination.
Phew, getting tired here. Next was Friday, in case you were unaware, and a true tour of Sannomiya. We saw Tokyu Hands, the Loft, a little food alley behind the station, cinemas, stations, offices and shops. I didn't buy anything, holding out for a more interesting cover for my phone, but eventually we made our way to the Hub, the British pub, for a quick Happy Hour. Many of us split at that point, but a few of us from Hanayama stuck around for a quick Thai curry and karaoke, which was brilliant. I'd forgotten how much I adore karaoke, it's such a release, and the other Hanayamans are an almost ideal group to sing with. Though the Jankara in Sannomiya didn't allow for things like extensions or cheap alcohol, I was assured that the 'Phoenix' near the okonomiyaki place was a much better deal. Finished at 9pm (I know, pathetic), and then it was home to sleep.
Saturday, Steph and I returned to Sannomiya for a bit of personal shopping. There's a fanTASTic floor of 'Centergai', the main shopping center, that caters to folk of a more otaku slant. I got myself the most incredible phone cover, a white one with a picture of Kyubei's smiling face on it. Don't know who Kyubei is? Google him, and then watch Madoka Magica. After all that, it was off to Ikea (interesting fact: it's pronounced 'ee-kay-ah' in Japan) to pick up some sheets for Steph's bed, and then off to see the fireworks. Kobe's annual fireworks festival is not to be missed, make no mistake. Though I was tired beyond belief I'm extremely glad I went, it was just staggering. The East really does put us Westerners to shame when it comes to fireworks. The afterparty was at a senior JET's house on Port Island, where I once again successfully dodged the King's Cup.
Sunday we had tried to get to church, but to our discredit we didn't do the right amount of research, and when the time came to head out we didn't really know where to go. I'm hoping God's willing to forgive us this once, it HAS been a very exhausting work week. We have plans for tomorrow, though, going along to somewhere called Kobe Union Church with a Hanayaman named Alex. We know absolutely nothing about it, save that there's a Bible study on Wednesdays, but it'll be good to get the those church roots planted. The rest of the day was spent not doing anything. No, seriously.
This next week's been a bit of a blur, so don't blame me if it's a little brief. Monday was a sort-of job-training thing at Suzurandai JHS, a school reknowed for its second-to-none English ability. We had some short, informal talks with our senior JETs about things like teaching materials and extra-curricular activities (can it still be called that if I'm not a student?), followed by lunch with some of the students and a tour of the school. Let me tell you, it was ace being inside a building only ever seen in two dimensional illustrations before. A building, may I also point out, that traditionally gets attacked by supernatural forces or that acts as a training ground for magicians or robot pilots. It was a little odd finally being inside one. The boys taking us around were really nice, they seemed unusually relaxed to talk with us. Hiro informed us we'd be seeing more of him this coming week at Summer School, the English language teaching event for Junior High students that we ALTs help out with. The highlight of the day, though, was getting back on the bus at the very end and reuniting with Steph (who hadn't taken a tour with my group) and holding hands as we walked to the gate, and getting accostered (yes, that's the right word for it) by a small mob of girls who seemed extraordinarily excited to see us. "Couple?" they asked, "Married?", and then squealed very loudly when we responded. Sometimes young girls are the same the world over.
Tuesday was our first day of Japanese language class. Steph and I were placed into the top set together, along with most of the group. Class was from 9.30 to 3, with super-generous hour and half lunch, and consistenly left us drained of life. But I'm glad I went; it was good to have that extra practice and it was very well-taught, even fun. Tuesday was self-introductions, with an emphasis on finding funny stories to tell about our names. Wednesday was illness and wallet loss, Thursday was keigo. We also spent Thursday afternoon and Friday morning preparing for our unofficial assessment: a 3-minute speech on a topic of our choice. The two lower groups had fixed topics. Friday afternoon was a massive presentation of the amazing products of our imagination. In case you were wondering, I did mine on the way that the changing economy is forcing Japanese businessmen to rethink the way that they use Japanese formality markers in speech in the light of money-loss balancing the workforce in the eyes of society*. It was a lot of fun, all in all, and I received a number of happily-received pats on the back.
Over that week we didn't do much with our free time. We were so exhausted, there was little enthusiasm to really do anything. We cooked dinner, we watched films, we restored our energy. On Thursday afternoon, however, we participated in an epic water gun fight with the other Hanayamans (see profile picture for proof) in which a small Japanese boy tried to fire a water gun up my bum. No joking. It was extraordinarily wierd. I was even told afterwards that he was attempting to coerce others into doing the same. Fortunately none of the other Hanayamans were WIERD JAPANESE BOYS! Tch, so ridiculous. I am NOT putting up with that sort of treatment when I get to my school. Friday afternoon we spent out last opportunity to be in Sannomiya cancelling optional extras on our iPhones, buying Crocks and phone covers, and turning traveller's cheques into real money. I also bought Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2, and we played Terraria co-op deep into the night.
And now here we are. It's half-2 in the afternoon, and we're about to head to the convenience store for lunch. It's gonna be a long day of Terraria and Gundam ahead, methinks, and maybe a bit of Dragon Quest 9 in there as well. May well be my favourite game of all time, that last one.
Anyways, as always, thanks for reading. I'll try to be faster next time.
*Psyche. I did it on Pokemon.
Sunday, 31 July 2011
2 - Explore
I can't actually believe this place. Photos of the main building to follow, but for now just know that the Keio Plaza Hotel is swank-tastic. 35 floors of posh flooring, lighting, staff... I felt a little common for the place until I got into the rooms and they're the same as any hotels', just with a cheaper, slower internet. View's nice, though.
Yeah, that's my bed by the window, the sofa bed one. Hey, it's horizontal, so it'll be a million times better than any aeroplane seat!
Breakfast's at 7am tomorrow morning, and we're expected to be there. Won't find me complaining, but I do wonder what sort of surprises a breakfast in this sort of place is gonna throw at us. Best not thought about for now, because now is the time for Big Thunder! Yes, my quest for the elusive 53yen chocolate bar has proven successful, and I have two of the golden nuggets of sugary treasure sitting in a plastic bag waiting to be eaten. But I'm savouring them, oh yes, for when the time is right.
Coffee and onigiri were sensational after so long. It's a real sign of being back in the country, that taste. Both shopkeepers seemed very pleased that I was able to buy my items correctly, as well, which made my heart swell a little.
But first, one very good reason why this hotel is like God's way of welcoming me personally back into Japan. There's a Bic Camera 5 minutes away, the route to which involves walking through Yodobashi Camera. That's my two favourite stores right there. And you know what? That road also had a Traders on it, where I spotted a copy of Sexy Parodius on the Playstation for 3000 yen. Tempting offer, despite technically owning the game already on the PSP in the form of Parodius Collection, for the sensational multiplayer. Though thinking about it, challenging people to a game of Sexy Parodius sounds like an easy way to lose friends...
The small neighbourhood between Keio Hotel and Shinjuku Station appears to be some kind of Yodobashi Fortress, with five or six different versions of the shop dotted about in a grid shape. There's the Yodobashi Camera for electrical goods, the Yodobashi camera for toys and games, the Yodobashi Camera for travel goods. And don't let me get started on the Yodobashi phone shop, with its hundred-odd staff, all working for different phone companies and all trying to shout out the others. I'm not complaining necessarily, I've just always thought the idea of multiple copies of the same shop, differently specialised, in the same area was a bit off. I'll cut a long story short and tell you I didn't buy anything, save the food. There were more tempting offers out there, though. Gundam Musous 1, 2 and 'Special', which I'd never heard of. Slimes from Dragon Quest as key chains, phone charms and child's cutlery. Pokemon Smash EX, or whatever it's called. There's a lot of good stuff out there, and a pity that much of my money should really be saved up for when I'll invariably need it for rent etc. over in Kobe.
I also found myself buying a funny set of one bottle of some melony soft drink and one of Pocari Sweat, which I am reminded now with a stomach ache is actually rank-tacular. It TASTES like you'd imagine sweat does, y'know? Maybe it's just the name but... that taste...
Much of my time was spent traipsing round the shops, killing time before the quickly approaching 5.30pm, at which time I will move down to the lobby area to play on the DS in the hope that Steph will magically appear. I spent a good long while in the one arcade in the area, actually, which despite it being Sunday afternoon, a time typically spent doing lazy things, was hosting two events. One was a Shin Samurai Spirits tournament, with some kind of Hello Kitty biscuits up for grabs, and the other was a demonstration of the power of the brand-new Gundam vs Gundam EXTREME arcade game's 8-player scrambling system. There were some sixteen machines for this latest game in total, pretty much all taken up by smoking youths and glasses-wearing miscreants. But wow does that game look good. Heh, not that I had a go, you understand; I'd get ripped apart in a most humiliating way, no fun for anyone. But wow. It's like it takes every suit from every Gundam Battle game (including my beloved SEED Destiny Rengou vs ZAFT II Plus) and shoves them all into one beautiful, beautiful melee. This is including brand new Unicorn suits and some stuff I've never seen before. Crossbones and stuff. Ace to watch, I spent a long time there. Also got briefly mesmorised by a new fighting game called Aqua... something. Something girly-sounding. And by the looks of it you send cute little girls into bloody fights with each other, and occasionally against burly men. The characters in question were all characters from popular dating-sims-turned-anime (not that I'm an expert on the subject...) and flailed about with the most ridiculous-looking attacks I have ever seen a young Japanese man exclaim over. The highlight was a match between a girl who looked about 9, who ran gaily across the battlefield with a handbag slung over her dainty arms, who took great pleasure in ripping apart a girl about the same age except she was clearly a robot, whose only means of defending herself against this bloody onslaught was a simple broom. And every time she turned around her eyes went all swirly. It was quite a match, let me tell you.
It's 5.23, I should be off soon. Tomorrow will mostly be speeches from CLAIR's admin team, followed by workshops about life in Japan and so on. You have to choose some to do, so I'll have to pick wisely over brea-
Oh hold on, there's something I was meaning to say but haven't yet. It has come to my attention that I'm more fashion-conscious than I realise, and no this is not a good thing. The first problem is that I didn't bring any comfortable shoes to wear when not in a suit, so suit shoes it is. They still look quite nice, quite smart-casual, when worn with one of my new pairs of jeans, except the jeans require a belt that I... also forgot to bring with me. I say require, I did just fine today, but it'd be a handy addition, let me tell you. One solution would be to wear my shorts, which I DID bring, and which DON'T require a belt, only when you wear formal shoes with cargo shorts the whole thing comes off as ridiculous. Do you see my point? I shouldn't care about all this, but I do, and it's very inconvenient.
And then there's the fact that NONE of the above goes well with a bright blue raincoat. I love that coat, but it doesn't suit formal shoes nor cargo shorts. I've really done myself a disservice here. At least I have a lot of pastel shirts. Silver lining, and all.
Anyway, that's that. I'll write again tomorrow if anything important happens.
Thanks for reading.
Yeah, that's my bed by the window, the sofa bed one. Hey, it's horizontal, so it'll be a million times better than any aeroplane seat!
Breakfast's at 7am tomorrow morning, and we're expected to be there. Won't find me complaining, but I do wonder what sort of surprises a breakfast in this sort of place is gonna throw at us. Best not thought about for now, because now is the time for Big Thunder! Yes, my quest for the elusive 53yen chocolate bar has proven successful, and I have two of the golden nuggets of sugary treasure sitting in a plastic bag waiting to be eaten. But I'm savouring them, oh yes, for when the time is right.
Coffee and onigiri were sensational after so long. It's a real sign of being back in the country, that taste. Both shopkeepers seemed very pleased that I was able to buy my items correctly, as well, which made my heart swell a little.
But first, one very good reason why this hotel is like God's way of welcoming me personally back into Japan. There's a Bic Camera 5 minutes away, the route to which involves walking through Yodobashi Camera. That's my two favourite stores right there. And you know what? That road also had a Traders on it, where I spotted a copy of Sexy Parodius on the Playstation for 3000 yen. Tempting offer, despite technically owning the game already on the PSP in the form of Parodius Collection, for the sensational multiplayer. Though thinking about it, challenging people to a game of Sexy Parodius sounds like an easy way to lose friends...
The small neighbourhood between Keio Hotel and Shinjuku Station appears to be some kind of Yodobashi Fortress, with five or six different versions of the shop dotted about in a grid shape. There's the Yodobashi Camera for electrical goods, the Yodobashi camera for toys and games, the Yodobashi Camera for travel goods. And don't let me get started on the Yodobashi phone shop, with its hundred-odd staff, all working for different phone companies and all trying to shout out the others. I'm not complaining necessarily, I've just always thought the idea of multiple copies of the same shop, differently specialised, in the same area was a bit off. I'll cut a long story short and tell you I didn't buy anything, save the food. There were more tempting offers out there, though. Gundam Musous 1, 2 and 'Special', which I'd never heard of. Slimes from Dragon Quest as key chains, phone charms and child's cutlery. Pokemon Smash EX, or whatever it's called. There's a lot of good stuff out there, and a pity that much of my money should really be saved up for when I'll invariably need it for rent etc. over in Kobe.
I also found myself buying a funny set of one bottle of some melony soft drink and one of Pocari Sweat, which I am reminded now with a stomach ache is actually rank-tacular. It TASTES like you'd imagine sweat does, y'know? Maybe it's just the name but... that taste...
Much of my time was spent traipsing round the shops, killing time before the quickly approaching 5.30pm, at which time I will move down to the lobby area to play on the DS in the hope that Steph will magically appear. I spent a good long while in the one arcade in the area, actually, which despite it being Sunday afternoon, a time typically spent doing lazy things, was hosting two events. One was a Shin Samurai Spirits tournament, with some kind of Hello Kitty biscuits up for grabs, and the other was a demonstration of the power of the brand-new Gundam vs Gundam EXTREME arcade game's 8-player scrambling system. There were some sixteen machines for this latest game in total, pretty much all taken up by smoking youths and glasses-wearing miscreants. But wow does that game look good. Heh, not that I had a go, you understand; I'd get ripped apart in a most humiliating way, no fun for anyone. But wow. It's like it takes every suit from every Gundam Battle game (including my beloved SEED Destiny Rengou vs ZAFT II Plus) and shoves them all into one beautiful, beautiful melee. This is including brand new Unicorn suits and some stuff I've never seen before. Crossbones and stuff. Ace to watch, I spent a long time there. Also got briefly mesmorised by a new fighting game called Aqua... something. Something girly-sounding. And by the looks of it you send cute little girls into bloody fights with each other, and occasionally against burly men. The characters in question were all characters from popular dating-sims-turned-anime (not that I'm an expert on the subject...) and flailed about with the most ridiculous-looking attacks I have ever seen a young Japanese man exclaim over. The highlight was a match between a girl who looked about 9, who ran gaily across the battlefield with a handbag slung over her dainty arms, who took great pleasure in ripping apart a girl about the same age except she was clearly a robot, whose only means of defending herself against this bloody onslaught was a simple broom. And every time she turned around her eyes went all swirly. It was quite a match, let me tell you.
It's 5.23, I should be off soon. Tomorrow will mostly be speeches from CLAIR's admin team, followed by workshops about life in Japan and so on. You have to choose some to do, so I'll have to pick wisely over brea-
Oh hold on, there's something I was meaning to say but haven't yet. It has come to my attention that I'm more fashion-conscious than I realise, and no this is not a good thing. The first problem is that I didn't bring any comfortable shoes to wear when not in a suit, so suit shoes it is. They still look quite nice, quite smart-casual, when worn with one of my new pairs of jeans, except the jeans require a belt that I... also forgot to bring with me. I say require, I did just fine today, but it'd be a handy addition, let me tell you. One solution would be to wear my shorts, which I DID bring, and which DON'T require a belt, only when you wear formal shoes with cargo shorts the whole thing comes off as ridiculous. Do you see my point? I shouldn't care about all this, but I do, and it's very inconvenient.
And then there's the fact that NONE of the above goes well with a bright blue raincoat. I love that coat, but it doesn't suit formal shoes nor cargo shorts. I've really done myself a disservice here. At least I have a lot of pastel shirts. Silver lining, and all.
Anyway, that's that. I'll write again tomorrow if anything important happens.
Thanks for reading.
1 - Entrance
Hello, and welcome to the third in a series of blogs chronicling the grand adventures of student-turned-teacher-plus-internet-superstar Swanner Peek. When we last left our intrepid hero, he was graduating from Edinburgh University with his MA in Japanese and Linguistics, and now we see him putting those hard-earnt letters to use in a job out in Japan. As we speak I am on board a coach heading to Shinjuku from Narita Airport, and everything around me is Japanese. Like, everything. It shouldn't surprise me, but I think the past eleven and a half hours on the plane blurred together to make a strange, dreamlike state in which I didn't go anywhere at all. Needless to say this is all a little shocking.
The flight was bearable, I suppose. My head hurts and my poor suit is a little crumpled (they have irons at the hotel, apparently) and my feet are twice the size they should be and I seem to have lost and then refound every last item in my inventory over the last half hour. First I had everything, then I was told that having money in the luggage being sent off to Kobe City (did I mention that's specifically where I'm heading?) wasn't clever and I had to pull it all out and shove it into my hand luggage. Then, having sent everything off, I found I no longer had my passport nor my boarding card for the bus and, fearing the worst, spent a few panic-stricken minutes pulling out every last of my million pockets (I'm wearing a raincoat over this suit, not that I need one) in search of it, before realising I'd foolishly shoved it into the main compartment of my handluggage with my money. So, all that found, I went to board the bus, only to find that AGAIN my boarding card had escaped my clutches. Were it not for a helpful coach driver finding it on the floor, I'd have been forced to take the walk of shame. Now I'm on the bus, and everything's gonna be alright.
Rest of today's free, operating out of Shinjuku's Keio Plaza Hotel, right in the thick of it. We've been heartily instructed to make the most of this free tourist time (particularly those of us newcomers to this crazy culture), and I fully intend to do that. Steph's flight gets in at 5.30pm, and until then I'm on my own. Do you know what I'm gonna do first?
I'm gonna change, go down the street to the first convenience store I can find, and I'm gonna buy a tuna mayo onigiri, a bar of Big Thunder and a carton of coffee milk (and maybe even something else, like a melon bread). The lunch of gaijin kings. Hey, maybe they'll even have those instant kitsune udons... nah, sounds like too much bother all of a sudden. Dinner'll be sorted when Steph gets here, so it'll be up to me to hunt down some romantic spots ahead of time. And for dinner on Tuesday, for that matter, the only other meal before departure on Wednesday morning that we'll have to get for ourselves.
Suddenly I find myself wondering what Hanayama neighbourhood's gonna be like. I think it'll be strikingly similar to Steph's Mukaijima from third year, all homes and farmland with one supermarket to cover a good many homesteads, and big roads and bigger thunderstorms. And y'know, I think I'd quite like that. I've done the suburbia thing, I think I know enough about the... uh, urbia thing to know I'd rather not try it, so it makes sense to have a few years of country life to complete the experience.
Ah, one of the customs guys I was talking to was looking through my passport and suddenly splurted out 'Nihon-go, daijoubu desu ne.' Scary stuff. Fortunately he didn't go on to test my 'nihon-go' very much, just asking if I had any liquids or medicine I needed to declare. But it struck a chord: this was what I was gonna have to do fairly regularly for the next few years.
I just saw a Pokemon Center!! Do you think the driver'll be angry if I ask him to pull o- Ah, now it's gone. There'll be time, oh yes there will. I have my Ash hat ready and waiting.
I hope he doesn't realise I'm typing about him, but the guy across from me just opened his luggage and found a 'Safe travels' card from, I'd imagine, the girl I saw mournfully clutching his arm back in Heathrow. Now his reaction lenses have darkened over, and maybe he's happier that way. Maybe if I ask he'll do a Roy Mustang from Fullmetal Alchemist.
"No... it's raining..."
Think the flight drove me a little crazy, to be honest. I got about an hour and half of sleep, but boy was it not enough. But fear not, readers, Swanner will ride out the day so as not to get hit by jet-lag tomorrow morning. But boy, when I get into that hotel room my body's gonna be screaming for a lie down. After I've lunched up, maybe, but no sleep! Oh right, I was gonna talk about the flight. There were 65 films on offer, sixty-five! Can you even imagine how many hours I could have wasted watching Battle:LA, Friendship With Benefits, Bollywood films about robots and the like. In the end I only ended up watching a single hour of The Adjustment Bureau (that's right, isn't it?) before being ejected from the plane. Seems interesting, in a sort of pop supernatural conspiracy way, and I'll have to finish it later. Also watched two very good episodes of Modern Family, two very good episodes of Family Guy, and then one episode of Family Guy that had me giving up ten minutes in due to the sheer vileness of it. Those who are curious about that sort of thing, it was the 'notorious' (Virgin Air prided themselves in telling me) 150th episode where Stewie and Brian get locked in a bank vault. Oh, also watched one of the Inbetweeners, which was pretty good.
Just passed Disneyland, everyone's very excited. The massive ferris wheel is getting less attention, despite it reminding me warmly of previous Japan travels.
Seriously, EVERYTHING is Japanese! It's a real mind-bender. I mean, I'm in a coach full of Brits, and our guide is a San Franciscan, but when I look out the window it's all Japanese. Like a portal into another world, or one of those amusement park rides where it tries to make you think you're in a marine APC gunning down Aliens by shaking the seat around. Maybe when we get off we'll all be in London again... I'm not sure that'll happen.
This bridge is apparently called the Rainbow Bridge. Looks pretty dreary to me, and to be fair that's exactly how I'd like it right now. No sun in sight, just a lot of overcast, cooling goodness. Coor, there's a nice-looking bridge further towards the sea. Skyscraper heaven, here; reminds me of Godzilla: Save the Earth on the Xbox where spotting chuckable skyscrapers became a favourite pasttime. Baseball, there. Let's expect some more of that.
Think I'll stop talking about the stuff I pass on the way to the hotel and sign off. More updates to come, rest assured. Until next time.
Thanks for reading.
The flight was bearable, I suppose. My head hurts and my poor suit is a little crumpled (they have irons at the hotel, apparently) and my feet are twice the size they should be and I seem to have lost and then refound every last item in my inventory over the last half hour. First I had everything, then I was told that having money in the luggage being sent off to Kobe City (did I mention that's specifically where I'm heading?) wasn't clever and I had to pull it all out and shove it into my hand luggage. Then, having sent everything off, I found I no longer had my passport nor my boarding card for the bus and, fearing the worst, spent a few panic-stricken minutes pulling out every last of my million pockets (I'm wearing a raincoat over this suit, not that I need one) in search of it, before realising I'd foolishly shoved it into the main compartment of my handluggage with my money. So, all that found, I went to board the bus, only to find that AGAIN my boarding card had escaped my clutches. Were it not for a helpful coach driver finding it on the floor, I'd have been forced to take the walk of shame. Now I'm on the bus, and everything's gonna be alright.
Rest of today's free, operating out of Shinjuku's Keio Plaza Hotel, right in the thick of it. We've been heartily instructed to make the most of this free tourist time (particularly those of us newcomers to this crazy culture), and I fully intend to do that. Steph's flight gets in at 5.30pm, and until then I'm on my own. Do you know what I'm gonna do first?
I'm gonna change, go down the street to the first convenience store I can find, and I'm gonna buy a tuna mayo onigiri, a bar of Big Thunder and a carton of coffee milk (and maybe even something else, like a melon bread). The lunch of gaijin kings. Hey, maybe they'll even have those instant kitsune udons... nah, sounds like too much bother all of a sudden. Dinner'll be sorted when Steph gets here, so it'll be up to me to hunt down some romantic spots ahead of time. And for dinner on Tuesday, for that matter, the only other meal before departure on Wednesday morning that we'll have to get for ourselves.
Suddenly I find myself wondering what Hanayama neighbourhood's gonna be like. I think it'll be strikingly similar to Steph's Mukaijima from third year, all homes and farmland with one supermarket to cover a good many homesteads, and big roads and bigger thunderstorms. And y'know, I think I'd quite like that. I've done the suburbia thing, I think I know enough about the... uh, urbia thing to know I'd rather not try it, so it makes sense to have a few years of country life to complete the experience.
Ah, one of the customs guys I was talking to was looking through my passport and suddenly splurted out 'Nihon-go, daijoubu desu ne.' Scary stuff. Fortunately he didn't go on to test my 'nihon-go' very much, just asking if I had any liquids or medicine I needed to declare. But it struck a chord: this was what I was gonna have to do fairly regularly for the next few years.
I just saw a Pokemon Center!! Do you think the driver'll be angry if I ask him to pull o- Ah, now it's gone. There'll be time, oh yes there will. I have my Ash hat ready and waiting.
I hope he doesn't realise I'm typing about him, but the guy across from me just opened his luggage and found a 'Safe travels' card from, I'd imagine, the girl I saw mournfully clutching his arm back in Heathrow. Now his reaction lenses have darkened over, and maybe he's happier that way. Maybe if I ask he'll do a Roy Mustang from Fullmetal Alchemist.
"No... it's raining..."
Think the flight drove me a little crazy, to be honest. I got about an hour and half of sleep, but boy was it not enough. But fear not, readers, Swanner will ride out the day so as not to get hit by jet-lag tomorrow morning. But boy, when I get into that hotel room my body's gonna be screaming for a lie down. After I've lunched up, maybe, but no sleep! Oh right, I was gonna talk about the flight. There were 65 films on offer, sixty-five! Can you even imagine how many hours I could have wasted watching Battle:LA, Friendship With Benefits, Bollywood films about robots and the like. In the end I only ended up watching a single hour of The Adjustment Bureau (that's right, isn't it?) before being ejected from the plane. Seems interesting, in a sort of pop supernatural conspiracy way, and I'll have to finish it later. Also watched two very good episodes of Modern Family, two very good episodes of Family Guy, and then one episode of Family Guy that had me giving up ten minutes in due to the sheer vileness of it. Those who are curious about that sort of thing, it was the 'notorious' (Virgin Air prided themselves in telling me) 150th episode where Stewie and Brian get locked in a bank vault. Oh, also watched one of the Inbetweeners, which was pretty good.
Just passed Disneyland, everyone's very excited. The massive ferris wheel is getting less attention, despite it reminding me warmly of previous Japan travels.
Seriously, EVERYTHING is Japanese! It's a real mind-bender. I mean, I'm in a coach full of Brits, and our guide is a San Franciscan, but when I look out the window it's all Japanese. Like a portal into another world, or one of those amusement park rides where it tries to make you think you're in a marine APC gunning down Aliens by shaking the seat around. Maybe when we get off we'll all be in London again... I'm not sure that'll happen.
This bridge is apparently called the Rainbow Bridge. Looks pretty dreary to me, and to be fair that's exactly how I'd like it right now. No sun in sight, just a lot of overcast, cooling goodness. Coor, there's a nice-looking bridge further towards the sea. Skyscraper heaven, here; reminds me of Godzilla: Save the Earth on the Xbox where spotting chuckable skyscrapers became a favourite pasttime. Baseball, there. Let's expect some more of that.
Think I'll stop talking about the stuff I pass on the way to the hotel and sign off. More updates to come, rest assured. Until next time.
Thanks for reading.
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