Midweek Miniblog; 3 Things they didn't tell me in basic training about rural Japan

I've been living in rural Japan for around a month now, and here are 3 things they don't prepare you for at your induction as a teaching in Japan. 

3. BUGS THE SIZE OF YOUR FACE!

Oooh watch out for the mosquitoes they said, you might get bitten a couple of times in the night. No one mentioned the wasps that are both the size of, and about as friendly as, a hand-grenade!

JUST LOOK AT THE BASTARD! I know I'm supposed to be a profession at all times, but if that thing ever flies into my classroom I am grabbing the nearest child and sacrificing it to the wasp daemon that has just flown in! 

BUT...Even worse are the centipedes! 

They crawl along some some over-limbed ninjas and just exist to fuck you up! They're huge, poisonous, and that whole "they're more scared of you than you are of it" does not apply to these creepy millipede envying twatbags!!! 

2. Old people and Children. 

Living in the countryside I have realised that all human beings in the demographic 18-60 have left the countryside. They have all realised that there is literally nothing here, and have thus moved away for a better chance at sex, coffee, and or conversation.  

Thus the town is full of children and old people, who, as it happens, are the two groups of people most likely to engage you in conversations about weird shite when you're walking home. I don't know how they know, but they all just seem to have this acute awareness that I want to talk about Winston Churchill with a complete stranger! I have since learnt the Japanese phrase for, I'm really sorry, this conversations is really riveting but I need to remove my fingernails with some tweezers.

The young have no choice and are sent here by their parents because they like the schools here (mostly down to the new English teacher being devilishly handsome and shit hot at learning them kids some english). The elderly seem to return here like some kind of wrinkly crustacean. They've lived there lives, spawned, and now they are just clock watching until a centipede comes and shuffles them off their mortal coils. 

1. Not a pub in sight!

Not even an Irish bar!!! And even in fucking Myanmar, which had been a closed country until fairly recently, me and the girlfriend managed to stumble across some heinously stereotypically named bar and have a decent Guinness. This town has had eternity to open a bar and not one bugger has thought it profitable to open a bar for children and the elderly! The thoughtless gobshite! Thus my evening entertainment options are fairly slim. 

To illustrate this If you go on trip advisor and search Yanai, the area I'm in, the number 1 tourist attraction is...a bridge. Not a nice pretty Bridge of Sighs type bridge, or even a tradition wooden red bridge, no, a normal, steel, vehicle bridge. The number one thing to do or see, is a bridge. And I've been to see it, it's a nice bridge, but, I've peaked too soon and according to trip advisor everything I do from now on will be less fun than a bridge. I guess I'll go back to sitting in my box apartment, rethinking life choices and eating Marmite from the jar because the bread here tastes like sugar paper!

  

Hiroshima

I accidently spent around 3 weeks in Hiroshima due to contractual ball baggery and the very earth deciding that it didn’t want me in Kumamoto. With Obama about to set foot there here is my super short site seeing guide of Hiroshima.

Don’t mention the war…because everyone else will do it before you…

So Hiroshima is famous for one thing, and there is no subtlety about it what so ever. The people/ city government are not afraid to show their honest opinions for the bombing, and those opinions are that it was a very twatty thing to do. If you ever have the chance I strongly suggest a visit to the A-bomb hypocentre area, which is where all the museums, the famous a-bomb dome, and peace memorials are located. I’ve done my fair bit of grief tourism, the Anne-frank house, ground zero, war cemeteries etc. but the a-bomb done is by far the most in your face museum I have ever been to. They do not blur images, the models they have made are not subtle (burning flesh, melting facial features etc), and there are a few tactile exhibits where you can touch and feel artefacts warped and damaged by the blast.

It truly is worth a visit however don’t expect a romantic tale of a cities triumph after a tragedy, the whole museum is a giant “look what you did to us, you giant bastards”. The memorials are all very beautiful, from the children’s memorial and the ringable peace bell (and it is not a subtle quiet contemplation ringing sound) to the eternal flame that burns over the hypocentre, the whole peace park has a very calm and serine atmosphere. It’s a popular attraction for natives and foreigners, and is a good way to spend an afternoon. Be aware though that the whole place can get quite crowded around the holidays and when it’s warm.

One final note;  again, whatever your opinions surrounding the bombings is, be aware that Japan has line one line on then, and that is that it was a dick move. Do not try and convince them of any other political opinon…they will not like you. I’ve witnessed a conservation between a tour guide and a portly American man wearing a US navy cap, where he tried to convince her that the killing of 350,000 of her town’s people was proportional and appropriate…this did not go well.

Is there stuff that isn’t to do with death and destruction?

Why yes, yes there is. Hiroshima, is, as you might expect, quite a new city. So here is my top 5 things to do in Hiroshima…

1. Miyajima Island; 

      

island is beautiful, it’s where you can see the famous floating shrine. It has an amazing aquarium, lovely mountains and views, and is only a short and fairly cheap ferry ride away. If you’re feeling a little fancier for only ￥3600 you can take a leisurely boat trip from the city centre. Otherwise it’s an hour street card or half an hour’s train ride to the ferry terminal. If you like getting sexaly assaulted by deer there are also a lot of them on the island, and they are used to lots of nice foreign people giving them snacks, and because deer are racists we all look the same to them. They will come and get you...

2.     

2. Okonomiyaki; 

This is Hiroshima’s baby, it’s a type of savoury pancake which at its base is batter, cabbage and okonomiyaki sauce (no idea what makes the sauce, but it tastes like heaven’s runny brown joy). You can add absolutely anything to it: Egg, cheese, fish, you name it they probably do it. There is a tower block called Okonomiyaki-Mura or the okonomiyaki village where rival restaurateurs try and out-do each other on 6 floors filled with okonomiyaki stalls. The best part it, it’s fairly cheap!

3.       Go see a baseball game;

I have no idea what this mascot is supposed to be, my guess is the Loch Ness Monster went Eurovision...

This might sound like an odd thing especially for the British people, but Japan fucking loves baseball! More than I thought they would, and in Hiroshima, everybody, and I mean, everybody loves the terrifyingly named local team; THE CARPS! (The amount of homework I have correct where the children say they love the craps is more than I ever thought possible). But seriously, the carps are huge here, if you can get yourself over to the zoom-zoom stadium (I shit you not that’s its actual name) go for it. If not however, go to a bar, sit down with an all you can drink beer deal, and go nuts with the locals. Baseball games do last a while though, none of that 80 minute rugby crap, I’m talking hours! So feel free to eat some of the bars delicacies, such as pig kidneys and chicken cartilage (see previous blog)

4.    Go see some plants;

There are some really beautiful gardens here in Hiroshima. Shukkei-en being proably the best one. If you’re lucky enough to be here during cherry blossom season then all the better, but any time from Spring-autumn and the parks will still be beautiful. And if you have hay fever…tough I’m afraid, if you’re going to be beaten up by plant sex there’s nothing I can do to help you.

5. The castle, 

whilst in Hiroshima the castle is worth a visit, it’s worth pointing out that there are better castles in Japan, much better. The original one was, of course, completely obliterated by events in section 1 of this blog but it’s been lovely rebuilt on its original foundations and filled with all sorted of cultural goodies*. For the sake of a ￥200 to get in, it’s a good way to kill a rainy day and there is a spectacular view of Hiroshima from the very top of the castle.

*Translations in Japan can be somewhat of a hit and miss experience, and no-where more is this true than in museums. Often they only bother to have the stuff that they think foreign people will be interested in translated, and where translations are available they are often very abridged versions of what is written in Japanese. But there are often old retired people who give tours for free and a few of them speak good English if you’d like one of those.

So there you go, if you find yourself in Hiroshima, go do those things, or other things, I don’t mind, you are all your own people and your actions here are inconsequential to me. I currently live about a hour away from Hiroshima, so the climate is the same, but all the fun stuff now costs me a lot more money to get too….yaaaaay the country side.

Midweek Miniblog: 5 Weird as balls things I have been made to eat in no particular order

5: Natto

Fermented soy-bean that are so fermented they have strings of mould that stick them together. This is a direct quote for a teacher “No one in Japan really likes them, but old people think they’re good for our health so we eat it just to keep them happy”

Grossness score: 4/10 Not as bad as everyone says, it just tastes like mouldy dust

4: Sea Urchin

Someone went diving, saw something that looked like Godzilla’s haemorrhoid and decided to cook it’s eggs. Because Japan

Grossness score 5/10; Tastes okay, just looks like a diseased tongue on top of rice

3: Nankotsu

The Japanese equivalent of popcorn chicken, however this is made with THE FUCKING CARTILIDGE! If you want to moan about the pink sludge that goes into chicken nuggets, take a bite of what that shit before they process the hell out of it, and then go and enjoy your pink sludge.

Grossness score: 7/10; For both the disappointment of this not being a chicken nugget and the fact that I don’t like eating deep fried stones.

2: Deep fried insides

On bar menus this is literally a choice! In my basket of goodies I had pig kidneys, chicken hearts, some brain (animal unknown though most likely pig) and some intestines. If it comes from an animal in anyway shape of form, the Japanese will deep fry it.

Grossness score 8/10; The mystery of it all makes it so much worse when you realise that you've now gotta chomp your way through a large piece of brain. Also, pigs kidneys, when whole, taste like piss.

1: Ice-cream

Yeap, ice-cream. Hey I'm all for some weird ice-cream flavours. Sweet-corn, potato, carrot, vegetables various etc. They’re kind of quirky. But I draw the line, at fucking meat ice-cream! So far I've only had the chicken ice. Deep fried chicken ice-cream is in no way shape or form a good choice. But a teacher very kindly brought it in for me after I said I quite liked eating weird food! (NEVER EVER SAY THIS TO A JAPANESE PERSON, THEY SEE IT AS A CHALLENGE).

 I was then informed of some other options; Raw Horse-meat (though apparently you can only get this in Kumamoto), Whale (though not very popular any more and they hadn't seen it for a while) and squid (still around apparently) I will now endeavour to find these weird as shite ice-creams and let you know what happens…

Grossness score 8/10; It's just, so unholy to icecreamyfy meat, and it tastes like fried chicken that's been dipped in a puddle, put in the freezer and then squeezed out a Mr Whippy machine.

How to become famous, washing your rubbish, and the joys of living in rural Japan.

First a little update…

So ladies and gentleman the final nail has been put in the coffin of my travels to Mashiki-Machi. The official confirmation has now arrived that there is no suitable housing in the area and the commute would be too long for someone without a car, it is thus entirely off the cards. Moving forward the idea is to put me into an area called Kita-Kyushu, it is the very northern tip of the very southern island of Kyushu. However no one is quite sure when the move would take place, what kind of schools I would be going to, and where exactly I would be situated. Once again, I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen.

But, for now I am in a small ‘city’ called Yanai, at the north-eastern end of Yamaguchi Prefecture. Population of around 33,000 (1/10 the size of Newham), with 4 junior high schools for me to look after. There are about 10 buses on each route a day, and a trains are on average every 80 minutes or so (though not at regular intervals). Exactly how long I’ll be spending here I have no idea, but here is a brief update on what life is like in semi-rural Japan…

Being the only honkey in town:

In all the other places I’ve been in Japan I have never been alone in being a foreigner, in most big cities there are lots of foreigner bars, regular meet ups, and things designed to bring the diaspora in contact with each other. Here though in Yanai, there are very few foreigners. Aside from the girl I’m replacing I have no seen one yet. It may not seem like a big deal, but everybody knows who you are, and you become somewhat a fairly well known figure, a celebrity by virtue of birth, a bit like a really shit version of the queen. Thus you spoken to by a lot of people. Even though sometimes you just want to zone out and walk around the town a little bit they ask you anyway, out of genuine curiosity. There is, of course, a generic set of questions that you are always asked. Of which there is a nice polite version, and one that is a bit less tactful. Because at first they assume you speak no Japanese and will just throw out single words at you. Some of the standard question include;

“Where are you from?”/ “American?”

“How long are you staying here?” / “Tourist?”

“Can you speak Japanese” / “Japanese OK?”

If you can learn the correct response to these questions you are guaranteed to convince people you are a near native level speaker. Being who I am though I tend to get some follow up questions which usually include;

“How tall are you?” “Really, stand up, let me see”

“How old are you?” “Really?!?”

“Are you married yet?” (There is never a really after this one, just an acknowledging nod)

These are always asked out of genuine curiosity but they tend to murder the conversation as I’m slightly too British to ask these questions back. Plus asking a stooped over, very elderly Japanese woman about their height, age, and marital status is going to bring around some awkward moments.

Community Spirit/Guidelines

Yanai being the size it is, things do not work here like they do in the big cities. People know their neighbours and, in the area you live in, you will know most of the people, and the people will almost certainly know you. This, like all things, has its ups and downs, on the positive side people will look out for you, and are always happy to lend a hand. People here take pride in their community and it’s well looked after. However on the flip side, people know who you are, which means there is no chance to do any kind of civic naughtiness. Japan has some very strong rules on things such as rubbish collection; in Hiroshima there were 8 different types of rubbish, all of which were taken out on different days, had to be washed and dried, placed in different types of bags, and would then be gone through by old people who had nothing better to do (That is not an exaggeration, I have seen them doing it). Failure to comply with these rules will result in old people getting very grumpy at you, you become somewhat of a social pariah, and people never trusting a foreigner again. (Again, not an exaggeration)

Community spirit here is so fun that I have the great joy next Sunday of taking part in the annual storm drain cleaning (it was either that or Pay £20). This will include pulling weeds, cleaning out rubbish and other things that in the UK we normally have to commit to a crime to get the chance to do it. Yaaay community.

Me no speak Americano

The Japanese learn English from the age of 12-18 (if they choose to go to high school, they can leave education here at 15), but no one really speaks it. English is an academic subject, and whilst being here in Yanai, aside from the teachers, no one will even attempt English. I am always met with the same fearful look when I enter a building that I won’t speak any Japanese. Thankfully I can passably do day to day tasks, but not having any people sharing the same native tongue as you nearby can be a little frustrating. It always put a bit of distance between you and the people you’re talking to, as you’re never 100% sure if the type of language you’re using is appropriate, or even if the words you’re using are conveying the tone and message of what you’re saying correctly. Japanese is a highly contextual language, often the subject is omitted from the sentence, and the entire direction of conversation can be missed if you miss just a tiny fraction of a sentence. So you really do need to pay attention! The whole smiling and nodding thing does not work here, during a conversation about pets one person was telling me about their dog dying a few weeks ago…this was an inappropriate time to smile and nod. I know that now…

The future…

So that’s Yanai so far, the plan for staying here, in terms of time and length are pretty unknown. I should find out in the next week exactly where I will be heading off to, but I really know nothing of any definite plans. I start work properly on Monday at the biggest of the junior highs, and will just keep working until they tell me to stop and pack up my things again…game on, I guess. Finally, It’s time to edumacate them kids some gud Englamish!!! 

My accidental tour of Japan

Hello people,  

             I’m currently sitting here in Hiroshima, which is around 1250 miles away from where I originally going to be, and a further 200 miles away from where I'm supposed to be going. I have seen more towns in Japan in the last 2 weeks than I have in the previous 4 trips! And I have been asked by a few people… “What the buggery fuck are you actually doing!”

              

              The simplest answer to that question is, I don’t really know, and nor does anyone else, here’s how the whole adventure was supposed to turn out...  I get on a plane at Heathrow, fly to Hong Kong, Arrive in Sapporo, move into my new apartment, spend 1 week doing company training, and then start working at 2 inner city schools in the city of Sapporo for the following 12 months. However! The contract for the Sapporo schools was pulled just 7 days before I was due to leave. The plan then changed and my new contract was in a small town called Mashiki-machi, somewhere I had never heard of nor had most of Japan…at least for the next week.

               

             So the plan became fly me down to Hiroshima, spend one week in a hotel whilst they train me to learn them kids some darn good English, then take a short bullet train down to my new town, and start working in 2 rural schools. Then I woke up on the first day of me being in Japan, to an awful lot of texts asking if I was okay, and where was I? Then I turned on the news to find out that there had been a huge earthquake, directly under the town of Mashiki-Machi. A day later, an even worse earthquake struck not far from the original epicentre. Roads were shattered, houses collapsed, train services were cancelled and the airport runway was cracked in two. In total 44,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, 48 people have lost their lives, and around 3000 have been injured. Japan has more earthquakes than anywhere else on the planet (should have done my researched and learnt that before I came) but the area around Mashiki-Machi is not one known for its seismic activity and thus many of the houses were old and not built to modern earthquake proof standards.

Like I said, it was a really bad earthquake...

So I flew to Hiroshima as planned, and awaited news, so far news has still not come. I’ve spent precisely 2 weeks in and out of Hotels, If you're curious they have been; The Mercure Sapporo, The Unizo inn Sapporo, The Yamashiroya Hiroshima, the Hotel Hokke Club Hiroshima and the Alpha 1 Miyoshi. The levels of comfort have been mixed, but the important thing is they all had the awesome butt wash toilets. If you come to Japan and your hotel does not have the awesome butt wash toilet, you should immediately leave!

This has then put at the point where I should have been teaching junior high school for 2 weeks in the northern most island of Japan, I have instead found myself having taught 2 days of elementary school in the small town of Miyoshi, and 1 day at the even smaller town 50 miles to the north where there were 21 children in the entire school. Though one child did ask me how snaked poohed, as we're not allowed to speak Japanese in the classroom, this required a lot of gestures...

After all of that tomfoolery last night I moved into an apartment that the company had going spare for the next 2 weeks. Moving in was simple, you walk 25 minutes from the train station in Hiroshima, to get on a tram to go 15 minutes to walk 25 minutes, to get lost to end up asking a woman in her pyjamas walking her dog if she can help point you the way, she is then kind enough to take you and her dog to where it says it should be on your phone, to then realise it's not there, when she then goes and knocks on a neighbours door to see if he knows, they then tag out, whilst the neighbour walks you with his torch another 10 minutes to find your actual house. Super-convenience at it's best.

But it’s mine to live in and be in, and not have to live out of hotel suitcases for until then. Which is such a nice feeling! It's not a tiny room and I can cook and clean for myself, and it has a butt wash toilet. Well, I mean, it's not a big room, but its marginally bigger than a hotel. And domestically, it's you know, not the easiest place to be a domestic god in, I have two electric hobs and precisely zero work surface in the kitchen, and when I say zero, I don't mean very little. I mean zero. There are 8 different types of rubbish all of which need to be taken out on different days and in different, but very specifically shaped, sized, and coloured bags.

Hiroshima is a beautiful city btw, if you find yourself in southern Honshu its definitely worth a trip

                

         But as far as plans go…this is where they sort of run out. The town of Mashiki is not somewhere my company are happy to send me for the time being, and even if they were communications are fairly intermittent. So far they have so far been unable to reach the school board for the town. Even if they did manage it I'm sure the town has other things on their mind other than the new rent a honky coming to stay. In terms of finding me accommodation this again presents a very difficult task, with many homes damaged or completely collapsed, finding a safe place to stay in the town itself may take some time.

So yeah, 2 weeks in, 50 to go, and plans are currently of a somewhat flexible nature...