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Out comes the whale meat!

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:39:42 GMT

Oh yes, on Monday, we had whale meat for the first time in years (they say) for school lunch. Apparently, in those days when harpooning whales was done on a regular basis, they had it for school lunch quite often. Now it's very rare so the school made it a very special occasion.

Although it did look nice and meaty, sauted in sweet soy sauce with sesami, I just couldn't face it. I honestly eat anything and will usually try anything. I just never expected whale meat to be served for school lunch! I mean, there are 500 kids in this school and imagine if all the elementary school children in Yokohama had it? I'm thinking 500 whales must've been killeed to serve these children. I mean it's a really rough estimate, because I don't know how big the whales they ate were, but I'm thinking more than one! I'm pretty sure they have been taught that whales are endangered, but the students didn't really seem to think twice. I understand that it's a dish served in Japan and it has been for years and years. For the first time since I started working, I refused to eat all of what was required to eat. The children seemed understanding when I said I can't eat it, so I think they understand now that I'm not totally Japanese.

But now I'm doubting whether I did the right thing. They already killed the whale and has been distributed to feed me so did I waste it and has been thrown away? Isn't that worse than eating it?

On a more positive note, I managed to read all of the Akira comics. The story was so complicated- I don't think I got it, but it certainly explained a lot of the missing pieces from the film.
I also read a comic book called 彼女を救う５１方法 translated as "51 ways to Save Her". It basically makes a few predictions about what would happen to Japan and its individuals if a big earthquake (7 on the rictor scale) hits central Tokyo. It also gives you a few tips on how to survive in a situation like this :-D
I don't really know if I have an obsession with futuristic and pessimistic (but has a slightly optimistic ending) genres, but I seem to be reading a lot of them lately.

Hakone- the Little Prince Museum

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:18:21 GMT

Last weekend, Taka and I went to take a trip to Hakone, where it's very famous for its hotsprings and having a great view of Mt Fuji.

Our real purpose of going there was to go to the Little Prince Museum, which was so charming! I loved that book ever since I was 17 and when I read the book in Japanese again, I found a bookmark, which advertised this museum. I was so pleased. When you enter the place, it really looks like a dream land. There's a bubble machine that constantly blows pretty bubbles by the entrance and I was trying to catch the big ones like a little puppy. Taka caught one with his eye and he swore that he'll never go near that machine again. hehe. There were also little stations where you can make huge bubbles and I was competing with this 8 year old boy on who can make the biggest bubble. Inside the museum was very creatively decorated, charming and informative. They still had the original writings and draughts of the book's drawings and pages and I learned that the author was actually good at drawing despite what he said in his book. We walked through the gardens, which is supposed to resemble a small French village and came across this little hut, which was filled with children's books. Taka saw his favourite book and we took a picture of it (to be shown on Facebook soon). THis is probably the best museum I've ever been to and I would recommend it to anybody who visits Japan, although I would also like to mention that I haven't been to a real museum in Japan yet (nope, not even the national Museum) and have been going to a lot of small weird ones like the curry museum and Ramen Museum (I definitely would recommend this too- it's made to resemble parts of Yokohama city in the 50s).

We got to our accomodation and we were very sceptical about this place, because of the name. It's called Cesar and made us thinkn of a lion that was the muscot of an advert for apartments. It actually turned out to be a really nice place and our room was a fire escape, which Taka and I thought... "great! If there's ever a fire, we'll get to escape first!". We went to the hotsprings near by, but on the way back, the last bus left so we had to walk in the dark in the mountains. We got back to our accomodation with beautiful glowing skin, had a good full meal then went to the hotsprings in the hotel, which countains radiation. It's good radiation apparently... you know.. the type you use for radiotherapy... apparently. Well, I don't care. Now I have the most beautiful skin in the world and everyone envies me for it. lol

Oh yeah, to finish off, we had wasabi flavoured ice-cream. It wasn't great.

Okutama

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:58:32 GMT

Taka and I were advised by Taka's sister to go to the west side of Tokyo to see the leaves changing their colours. It took around 2 and a half hours on the train.

It was a national holiday (labour thanks giving day) on that Friday as well so the timing couldn't have been better. I mean, who would really want to go hiking in Tokyo? As people who lived in Japan would understand, trying to book anywhere in Japan during national holidays unless you book it a couple of months in advanced is next to impossible. So we settled for a less popular place.

Just a note, I got a little hand made present from the third grade kids at one of my schools for labour thanks giving day. It was a sash with all their messages attached. It was so cute and it made me feel like my efforts has paid off.

We got to a place called Kori and we decided to taking the hiking course, which ends 3 train stations away from our station. We started walking really slowly admiring the colourful mountains, which were painted over by yellow, red and orange leaves from various trees. We climbed up to this hidden shrine, which requires you to get geared up for hiking, because you had to take probably about thousand steps to get there. I almost expected to see Totoro or a weird monster from Spirited Away. Taka thought the place was creepy though and started scaring me by saying that we may actually be spirited away... (kamikakushi).

The hike took us about 4 hours. High mountains with very few people living around. We couldn't believe that this was still infact,a part of Tokyo.
The contrast was shocking even for Taka as well. We were too tired to take the train back to Yokohama so we decided to spend a night at a Ryokan (Japanese style hotel), which had hotsprings. Our trip to the hotel was quite interesting though. We noticed one thing about people who live in the mountains. They don't like customers. Taka and I found these people extremely funny for their lack of good services and frankly, their extreme rudeness from our point of view. But it just didn't become funny anymore when we hiked another 3 hours the next morning heading our way back to a train station. We got quite hungry so we went to a very small and well-hidden soba place. The waitress (a very old woman) made us stand there until we were seated for about 5minutes, she forgot to bring the chopsticks, I asked her for some green tea (as it's customary to have green tea or some kind of cold beverage in the summer brought to us before and after we eat) twice. The worst thing was that she didn't even apologise. Soba was delicious though. In the end, we went to the cashier to pay for our food and to our surprise (nb sarcasm) she made us wait again. When we got our money out of our wallet, she said "hurry!" in a very dubious tone. Taka dropped 1000 yen on the floor and the woman just said "Pick it up". Gosh, she was unbelievable. I wanted to laugh at her, but I was more angry at her! I regret not saying anything to her.

The next day, Taka and I went to get another cell phone together. So now we have two! Uuuuuhhh how trendy am I?

Filthy liars!!

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:35:16 GMT

I'm so sick of the bad working environment and attitude people have towards it in this country. I'm tutting like Alan Partidge and all I could say is: "This country!".

I've never heard of a decent company in Japan. My friend Mo is experiencing some difficulties with her company Nova, because they are in such financial trouble, they're having trouble paying their employees. My boyfriend Taka is finding it difficult to face his co-workers everyday, because they're dumping their own jobs on his desk, expecting him to complete their jobs. When he doesn't have a clue what to do, they tut and tell him to figure it out by himself. He was also tricked into taking this job, because his boss told him that in 5 years time, he'd be able to work abroad and would be going on many business trips. But all he's doing now is booking train and airplane tickets for his co-workers.

Now my company. Compared to what my friends are going through, it's not really worth mentioning, but I will anyway. I'm only supposed to be working 29.5hrs a week, but I've been working 8 and a half hours including a 45min break since April. I'm only supposed to be working 6hrs a day. I've been told by my company that if this happens, we shouldn't complain directly to the schools, but to the company. So I have. I received a phone call from my trainer the other day and said that I'm working the right amount, because the 29.5hrs a week only applies for the teaching time. I argued back by saying that the other seem to be working less hours than me and he simply said that that shouldn't be the case. I read my contract and my group leader agreed with me that it states: "employee shall work 29.5hrs a week between 8:30 and 5". Well, it doesn't say anything about TEACHING TIME. Yeah, I prepare for my lessons and take care of kids for fun and I'm volunteering. Ugh, they're all fucking liars!! My group leader and I had a long discussion about this and he's going to write an official complaint letter to my company. Something has to be done. I can't let them manipulate me nor anyone else for their own fucking benefit. Apparently, one of our trainers called all ALTs "lazy, flakey bastards". I think it's them who are the lazy flakey bastards, because they just sit on their fat asses all day in the office getting what we've earned for the company. They say that if we have any complaints, then we shoud write it in our monthly reports and they'll sort it out. Bullshit. They only sort things out only if it's an easy task to handle.

I feel like all my effort has been wasted, because of my company's ungrateful attitude towards my effort.

I would like to get a better job, but I honestly don't think there are any honest company left in Japan because every company is facing financial difficulties. It's all due to bad management and people's defeatist attitude. They work over their working hours (like Taka who works about 12hrs Mon to Fri), spend thier Saturday and Sunday at work, because they can't complete their task during the week. If they don't they'll get fired. If you take a little paid vacation, you'll be a reject, because you're considered to be an irresponsible person.

Japanese work ethics simply do not exist anymore and I know there's someone laughing and bathing in their own filthy riches in this long capitalist chain.

Most of these people do not have a life. When they do go out, they go out after work with their co-workers getting absolutely trashed in their suit and behave like preforming monkey (for example that time I saw a man dancing and singing naked with his tie wrapped around his dick in the Karaoke room next to ours). Girls replace their loneliness and insecurity with expensive clothes, cosmetics or just anything that would make your prettier. This results to becoming obsessed with how you look and make stupid judgements on people. They lose the ability to find something more valuable in life.

Children are the future... KIDS!

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:48:26 GMT

I've been incredibly lazy with writing my journal simply because nothing really much has inspired me to write anything interesting.

I noticed that I haven't talked an awful lot about my job. My job's great because I get to make things, create new games for learning and because English only just became a compulsary subject in elementary schools, I'm contributing a lot in making a curriculum for them!

Last week, I made a lesson plan for the 4th grades to practice how to use "she/he has", because I noticed that many Japanese people always cofuse "she" and "he", probably because the two words sound very similar to them (or am I supposed to say us..?). The title of the game is called "Draw My Monster". Basically, a person has to draw a monster, then describe it to the rest of the group and they have to draw the monster by listening to that person's description. For example: "She has a big face. She has 5 noses. She has 20 legs..." and whoever draws the monster closest to the original wins the game.

Choosing songs is also very cool. I was thinking of good, simple and appropriate songs to sing with the kids and I thought of the theme tune to Happy Days. I sang that with the 6th graders and they absolutely loved it! I wasn't quite sure about giving them the lyrics as we aren't supposed to teach them to read or write, but they all wanted it cuz they thought it'd be really cool to have lyrics to English songs, written in English. They tried really hard to read it and showed interest in learning English. I thought that was sweet.

The difficult task of teaching a language is to make sure that your lessons are coherent and organised, which is sometimes difficult to do as the Ministry of Education has commanded us not to use Japanese in English classes. It works for the younger grades, but as they become older, they want a lesson that's more concrete, because they get too old for dancing and playing games. But when they respond to "How are you?" or "What drink do you like?" it makes me so happy, because I feel that I'm doing my job really well. When they even show an interest in the language, it makes me happy.

I started to remember that elementary school children are at the stage of developing their own opinions so I try to be an example rather than forcing my believes on them. This 6th grade kid who causes a lot of trouble around the school once asked me: "If I say tsuna instead of tuna in America, would they understand me?" and I said "I think generally, people will understand you, but if you want to avoid people asking you to repeat yourself, then it'll be better to say tuna, because that's the way people pronounce it in America" and he seemed content with my answer. I'm so fascinated by how children think. It's such ashame that adults stop thinking that way.

Babel

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 17:59:18 GMT

I've been living in Japan for 6 months now and I started to notice that placing a high value on speaking another language is over rated.

Ofcourse it's important when you want to communicate with people at a deeper level, but you can get away by pointing, gesturing and whatever form of communication people are capable of doing when you're just visiting. I thought it was just me, because I'm used to learning foreign languages and adapting in this way, but my friend Chris came to Japan without knowing a single word of Japanese except for "Arigatou", but he manages to do things without needing a lot of help from me. It's pretty impressive. He manages to understand things without me telling him exactly what to do, because he's also very experienced in living and travelling abroad. He appreciates the different cultures and manages to turn things into something positive, even though it must be frustrating or scary not to know what the signs say. He's tried everything on the menu even though some of the things I like may appear very disgusting to westerners, he'll just say "I'll give it a go".

A different country, different customs and cultures, but both (UK and Japan) are developed countries so things shouldn't be all that different... Or maybe it's because I've seen the good side and the bad side of both countries that I find more similarities than the differences. In a way, I'd like to think that one country is better than the other, but everywhere I go, there are always bad, rude and disgusting people as much as good and polite people.

For example, I think in the media, Japanese women are essentially beautiful, sexual, cute icons so they hardly say anything intelligent nor funny as the men. They just kinda sit there answering questions, being adored, laughing very sweetly by covering their teeth. It's a little more progressive in the UK in that sense. But when Taka talked about a typical Japanese girl and complained about how materialistic they are and how they don't think at all, then later asks me what it's like in the UK, it's hard to give a short response to that. Even though it appears to be more progressive in the UK, there are equally dumb, slutty, materialistic girls and boys as there are in Japan.

It's easy to say "oh Japan has more or Japan is more" or the other way around when you want to give a lazy short answer, but when I actually think about what I used to do in the UK or what I personally saw in the UK, it's a little bit more complicated than that. I noticed that I only do that when I'm too angry to be sensible with what I see and I start saying "in Germany/UK, it's unthinkable". THen I come home and think about it, then I get confused about why I would say such a thing, because it's a blatant lie! BUt ofcourse, this all depends on a situation. I still think that I get stared a lot in public and the public in Japan has a lot of power over people's behaviour.

Hanabi (Fireworks)

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 15:09:03 GMT

went to see the fireworks in the middle of Kanagawa prefecture. They shot 10,000 fireworks and 550,000 people gathered around to watch this. The crowd was pretty crazy, I've never seen so many people concentrated in one place, but it was definitely worth watching. I forgot the mute the microphone so I'm sorry if my voice annoys you...

Summary

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:39:38 GMT

I started my summer holidays and I've done quite a lot over these past few days.

I went to a beach party last Saturday in Enoshima beach. It was a lot of fun cuz I've never been to a beach party before. I actually partied in a very cliched manner, which I'm quite ashamed about, but hey, it was fun. It was like being in a night club, except that it was open air and we can go in and out of the bar so if we wanted to take a rest, we just sat by the beach drinking or played football. It started to pour down with rain, but we still danced, but the only thing was that it almost became a wet T-shirt competition, but luckily, since I don't have anything to show, it didn't matter to me. My friend's friend who was DJing was really good and as a final song, he played Singing in the Rain!!

Enoshima Beach

On Monday, Taka suddenly asked me if I wanted to go to the Izu Peninsula for 2nights and 3 days the next day as he's not gonna have that chance anymore cuz he's starting his new job soon. So we went to the very bottom of the peninsula, which took about 3 hours to get there. The beach was beautiful, the guest house was cozy (incredibly Japanese),the seafood was great and we had such a good time except that at the end of the trip, I had about 9 mosquito bites on my legs. but it was certainly very nice to see nature.

We came back and there was the summer festival for my local area. My friends John, Stephen, Autumn, Tsuka-chan and John and Steve's friends joined me and Taka and we had lots of beers, ate a lot, danced to the steel drums. I wore my traditional Japanese yukata (pictures will be displayed later..!) and danced to "Bonodori", which is the traditional festive Japanese dance (just like what that weird man in Lost in Translation did). We went clubbing afterwards.

Today I went shopping around in Yokohama with Taka and I bought an electric guitar!

My friend Mo

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:48:57 GMT

Mo came to visit me from Osaka

and we had a cracking time this weekend. It was a national holiday on Monday called a Marine Day so she came down here on Saturday evening and left Monday night. The only bad thing about this weekend was that the typhoon came (predicted a bad one, but it wasn't so bad here in the Kanto region) and there were 2 earthquakes on Monday, which was marked 3 on the rictor scale. Nagano and Niigata prefecture were badly affected by it, as it was marked 6 on the rictor scale and there were 9 deaths reported so far. It was Mo's first experience of an earthquake so that surprised her alittle.

Anyway, so she arrived on Saturday, she met Taka, got ready to go out and we headed into Tokyo to meet up with some friends. We went to this tiny bar where they played rock music on iTunes. I liked the atmosphere, but we got a little bored so we went to play some pool. Mo and I only got to play 3 games in an hour where my friend Chris and Taka played countless number of games (so they say..!). Yup we sucked. Then we joined a few others for Karaoke all nighter- about £20 for all you can drink till 8am! Chris was embarrassed with my choice of music, he would start shaking his head everytime or if something really cheesy comes on, he would say "it's probably Maz's". I did get to sing "A Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler so I have no regrets. We left at around 5:30am, dragged ourselves into the train.

Sunday, we lazed around, but wanted to book for our trip to Hokkaido, but it was damn expensive so we gave up trying, at least to fly out in August. We wanted to have a lazy day so Mo went to get a bottle of wine and cheese and we went to the DVD store to rent 8 episodes of Knight Rider. We are so cool.

Monday we went to Tokyo and went to see the Imperial Palace's East Garden, which was really pretty. I wish I were an Emperor cuz you get to live in the centre of Tokyo, but because the gardens surrounding the palace is so huge, it must feel like living in the countryside. I envy him! We went to Asakusa and saw Sorenji temple after lunch (Mo was getting really cranky by that time) and we did "Kujibiki" (fortune telling), got ourselves covered in the smell of incense (ugh). We wandered around there and we stopped by this old ladies' clothes store, I got tricked into buying a Japanese granny's dress. When I showed that to Taka today, he really couldn't stop laughing. Neither could I. I felt so sorry for the shopkeeper with no customers, I paid 2000 frigging yen for that. But the scary thing is, I tried it on this afternoon after work... Oh my gosh, it is a gift from the material god. We went to Ginza afterwards, obviously we couldn't afford to buy any of the stuff, so we went to UniQlo and Mo got a very pretty ukata.

It was really nice to see a good friend from my past- it brought back happy memories and the greatest thing is that old close friends are still my present good friends... (thank you for the flowers!)

Mo and I having an ice candy by the Imperial Palace.

Pictures of Natou Man and others

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 10:29:50 GMT

We went to 子供の国- children's land and fed farm animals.

Taka drew the dragon and I drew the colourful fish on the path in Children's Land!

My new school bag!. Broom broom....

My version of Nattou Man

Taka's version of Nattou man and he drew another character called Mekabu man. He's made of sticky seaweed.

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:05:13 GMT

I had a really fantastic weekend. Last week, we decided to start going Aloha dance classes every Saturday. When we got there, they said it was cancelled that day so we decided to go to the gym instead. It was pretty cool- we did all the gym stuff, did some rock climbing and got on this machine called "The Rodeo". This machine was quite strange, because it's supposed to replace the feeling of riding a horse and just sitting on it watching TV was the laziest excersise I've ever done. I had to buy a rucksack and got one, but I found this other cool bag that's supposed to be a totebag that looks like a yellow school bus. It's the coolest bag ever.

We headed back home, got a can of beer and started drawing a super hero character called "Nattou Man". Nattou is a type of food, which is supposed to be very good for you cuz it contains lots of protein and collagen, but many foreigners hate it cuz of the smell and are not used to the idea of eating rotting beans. Taka's drawing was very cute. It looked like a pokemon and mine looked like spiderman.

We walked to my local Karaoke place and on the way there, we found a grilled chicken restaurant and had a few drinks there. We got to the Karaoke place quite drunk together and we were told that we had to wait for an hour for a room. So we went to a convenient store at about 10:30, got some beer (well just me cuz Taka's body was totally red) and cheese. We were trying to find a park to hang out like a couple of 15 year olds, but we found a great place by the model houses with a table and chairs! We kinda looked like a couple of townies, but we didn't care. All we needed was cheese, drinks, cigarettes and somewhere cool. Greatest spot ever! We then headed back to the Karaoke place, sang for 2 hours (I sang lots of songs including "A whole new world", "My Sharona", "Be my baby" by the Ronettes and many more...!

When we finished our incredibly bad but lots of fun singing session, we walked to the park to sober up and we found that cool tarzan style swing. We had a go at it so many times and ended our night by going on a normal swing.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:57:59 GMT

Oh my gosh!! I can't believe how hot it's getting in this country! It's not that it's that much hotter than Greece, but it's the humidity I can't take!! Whenever I say it's hot to Taka, he just looks at me with those sympathetic eyes and say "Oh no Maz... it gets a lot hotter..." It's not like it's my first summer in Japan, but I haven't experienced it for at least 7 years. It already got to about 35 degreece plus humidity this one day- I started to love hopping into department stores to cool down. When I was teaching the other day, I was sweating so much just by standing and pointing to the board. That was so embarrassing! I bought these things called sweat pads, which you put inside your shirt between your armpits to obsorb the sweat and that helps, but what about my face?! My make up?! My haaaaaaiirr?! I stopped styling it because as soon as I walk out of the door I start sweating and messes up my hair-do. I miss the British summer.

What Taka made me eat....

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:42:02 GMT

I've tried many kinds of food in my life, but I never got quite as far fetched as eating squid's organs, raw horse meat or even... (shiver) Raw horse meat was alright, it tasted like ordinary sashimi, but it just kinda felt too meaty.

I went to an Izakaya with Taka this one time and he ordered the "surprise dishes". When I looked at the weird looking things, I was kinda grossed out so I told Taka not to tell me their contents... It didn't taste terrible, but kinda weird. We left the Izakaya and Taka later told me that I ate squid's poo. I was horrified, just the thought that they would serve that as a dish just terrified me. I tried to keep an open mind about it, but I really doubt I'd be fighting to have squid's poo again...

Haircut

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:40:44 GMT

I've been inspired by Jon's new haircut so I decided to get a haircut too.

Model pose

Supermodel pose

First Sparklers fun to start the summer!

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 15:37:09 GMT

I bought a fan and then we bought some sparklers. It was raining, but we managed to find a hut and had lots of FIRE fun there!

OH MY GOSH!!

FIRE!!

Curious MAz

We're all fired out...

Sankeien Park

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 15:27:34 GMT

This weekend was a blast! I went to Yokohama to meet up with Taka, watched Babel (yes, films get shown really late in Japan). The next day we went to this huge park, which was created by this super rich guy, who decided to create a garden for himself. He transferred the unwanted temples and other building from all over Japan to preserve the Japanese culture. It was in the middle of a forest so I actually saw some real nature in Yokohama!

Yokohama

A huge lake

Me and Taka

Chikara Udon! Noodle soup that gives you power

A huge Japanese dessert

Taka driving

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Made a dog balloon to end the day!

100 yen shop-Daiso

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 09:37:07 GMT

I think one of the greatest things about Japan is certainly the wide range of products available to you. The best place to spot them is certainly the 100 yen shops! I went in one today and from there, I managed to buy a red, perfectly comfortable underwear, a wooden box, stockings, balloons, gift bags, ribbons and a wizzard hat. There was also a mini toilet for uour long drives down the countryside!

Yup, there's still a lot to do in Japan and I'm hoping that I'll be able to go to Hokkaido during the summer to get out of the unbearably hot humid summer of Tokyo. I couldn't sleep well last night cuz it was so damn hot, I already had to turn on the airconditioning.

I've been working hard and doing over my contracted hours, but that's expected in Japan. But at least I get to run around playing tag and dodgeball out in the sun, paint, draw and make amusing silly stuff and come up with ideas to teach creatively. I love being a teacher in an elementary school!

B-day celebration

Fri, 25 May 2007 13:35:18 GMT

I'm 24... I'm 24... I'm 24... I feel like I'm 254 years old. I'm old... I'm an ooooollld woman.

Anyhoo, despite the fact that I turned 24, my birthday was pretty nice, although I was suffering from a bladder infection and am still on anti-biotics at the moment.

I was supposed to go out for a romantic dinner in Yokohama with Taka, but since I was ill, we had to cancel it. But instead, he came over and took care of me, cooked for me and we celebrated my birthday with a huge strawberry cake with 2 long and 4 short candles. He also got me a very nice silver necklace and it was just a really touching birthday!

Then my sister came home and got me a yucky looking chocolate cake, but turned out to be the nicest chocolate cake I've had in a long time.

Golden Week

Mon, 14 May 2007 11:52:32 GMT

During Golden Week, Taka and I went to Miura Kaigan, which is located at the tip of the Kanagawa prefecture's peninsula. It was my first time at a Japanese beach and it looks very different from the ones I'm used to. Although it's just a beach, the surrounding buildings, sea creatures and condition of the sand makes a huge difference to the way a beach looks.

Also, some people hired a boat to go net fishing and when they dumped a tremendous amount of fish on the beach, a lot of these eagle like creatures started surrounding us. But a few people picked up the fish and started throwing them into the air and the birds caught them with their sharp claws in mid air! It was like watching a free bird show! I wished I could do that.

We also found this place where they sold yakisoba for 100 yen and you get free popcorn with it. I was really exhausted by the end of the trip, but we had a really really good time. I also got sunburned.

Some pix

Wed, 02 May 2007 09:24:10 GMT

These are some random but thought were interesting things.

Karaoke in Shibuya,Tokyo. I thought their logo was a bit creepy.

An Okinawa dish called Taco Rice. It's really yummy!

Ginza, Tokyo

Akihabara, Tokyo. This is the place where it's famous for having a crowd of Otakus and they say "moeeee!" when they see something cool and sexy. The atmosphere was a little bit creepy with all these maid cafes and real Otaku shit. But I found this game store where they sold LOADS of retro games and consoles and they have a retro game centre upstairs! It was great to see all these old games on the Famicon, Megadrive, Atari and Supernintendo!

Taka and his friend Mitsuta in a Karaoke bar in Yokohama.

Autumn and Laura, same time and place as above. We got into this humongous argument with the Karaoke bar- there were 10 of us and most of them left us to sort out the problem. We ended up paying for the people who didn't have enough money or had to catch the last train so we didn't have any money for a taxi nor a hotel so the 3 of us ended up walking to Taka's house which took us 2hrs. Quite an adventure, but I think we were being way too nice. Still annoys me a bit.

Yokohama bay on a warm sunny day. Shame about my finger.

Taka on a pedal boat. We get really excited about doing silly things like that, hence his child like expression on his face.

Stupid Japan

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 12:48:20 GMT

Since Japan's economy is at its worst time, people's working condition or just life in general is horrendous. I'm really lucky that I'm just an ALT at the moment and I'm with a pretty good company, but it's just so unfair for those Japanese people who work for a mid to small companies.

Taka is trying to get a proper permanent job at the moment, but it doesn't seem like he's not going to get what he wants. Did I work for a really good company when I was in the UK or was that just an average deal? Taka went for an interview last week for a recruitment company and told him that he would have to work at least 360hrs of overtime (unpaid) a month. Yes, that probably means, come home at around 1am to get some sleep and get ready to leave for work by 6am. Also, applying for a job in this country is a long procedure. To get a normal job, you have to take an exam and 2 interviews. Taka's been going to an interview almost everyday- doing exams as well, but none of them are giving him a good deal. The best he's had was half a day off per week. Woohoo. There was this other company that gave him a job, but they offered him no weekends cuz he has to work that hard and they were going to allocate him to a different branch, but couldn't tell him where exactly, until he accepts the job. Salary is absolutely crap and if he doesn't meet their sales target by the end of his probation period, he'll get fired. Also, no guarentee that he'll ever come back to Yokohama.

It's just really frustrating. I really don't think asking for a weekend off or at least a day off from work is asking too much. You don't usually get paid holidays in Japan either and asking for holidays is kinda frowned upon. Fucking slavery, I don't understand how people can work in such conditions. No wonder you get the occasional psychos madly attacking people in the streets in the most gruesome and unthinkable ways. No wonder you have these twisted fucking perverts on trains. No wonder there's a high suicide rate in Japan, so much that people think it's a usual event. There's definitely darkly wrong and inhumane about the society in Japan. They try to disguise the twisted ways by producing so much materialistic and unnecessary crap. It is no doubt, a really fun place to be, but you have to try really hard to live in Japan if you're looking for a meaningful and soulful life here.

Crazy Kids!

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 09:24:38 GMT

I'd like to say that I really need a hair cut. I've got flicky out hair now and my fringe is getting too long so I look like a member of a new wave band.

I officially started working full time and I'm really happy with the school. The teachers are really friendly and it's in a little village so I get to see a lot of green. The kids are very cute. There tend to be a few punk ass kids, who think they're hot or cool because they play either soccer of baseball, but they are sweet, because they think they're really cool.

It's funny cuz you have a lot of these snotty ones in the 1st and 2nd grades and they start wiping their nose and start looking tidier after the 3rd grade. So although I love these 1st and 2nd grade kids, they are kinda disgusting. They certainly love talking about monkeys and pooping. They are extremely enthusiastic though. They have so much respect for teachers and they all come running towards me to hug me, get on my back, if they don't have enough space, they do grab onto my arms and legs so I get about 6 kids attached to my body like those sticky monsters from The Windwaker, Zelda. One of them kept lifting my shirt up just to feel my back, the other kept patting my ass and one of them even tried to kiss me on my mouth. If this were an office, I could sue all of them for sexual harrassment! They certainly are a curious bunch.

The older girls are very sweet and kind. They start becoming humble, but they have these cute shy smile and I love to play around with them. The older boys are such boys and they do like to be naughty.

Overall, I'm having a good time so far. I am still very nervous around the teachers. So during break time, I go outside and play a game of dodgeball or tag/freeze tag. This is possibly the best job ever. I get to play!! Woohooo!

Onsen

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 15:52:02 GMT

I went to Gunma prefecture to go on a trip to the hotsprings on Sat and Sunday. We took the JR train from Yokohama to Tokyo and then the bullet train from Tokyo to Shiobara something something. We bought a Eki-ben, which is just a lunch in a lunch box for us to eat while we were on the bullet train (our train was called Nasuno, which sounded like Aubergene's in Japanese. Yes, I giggled). Anyway, we were eating our lunch and talking, feeling quite relaxed. Then the train stopped and announced that it was the last stop. Woops, we missed our stop. So we got off, waited for 40min for a train to take us back to our destination. It was really funny cuz we were both really relaxed about it and couldn't believe that we missed our station.

We then took the bus to the mountains and from there, we walked for about 20min to get to our hotel. We dropped off our stuff then went for a walk in the woods, tried to jump from rocks to rocks in the river, laughed at some signs for bird watchers, got a little bit lost then when we reached civilisation, we put our feet into the foot bath, wiped our feet with toilet rolls, cuz we weren't really prepared.

We then went to the outdoor hotsprings, which was beautifully located just beside the river. This was a shared one so we brought our swim suits, but when we got there, people were just walking around naked. I was just a little uncomfortable getting a glimpse of the male genitals everytime they walked past me and Taka was laughing at me cuz he immediately knew what I was thinking. I was desperately trying to keep the conversation going, but everytime a man walked past, I kept forgetting what we were talking about. We went back to our room, then had dinner. They brought dinner to our room, had sake and rested.

We went to take a bath again, but this time, we rented a private hotsprings room. It was very nice for the obvious reason, but also because I didn't have to see strangers' things dangling/floating around.......!!! I think there were people next door to us, but they were incredibly quiet. I think we interrupted their romantic session cuz we were laughing a lot and were talking about Batman and Robin's constumes.

Anyhoo, we were woken up at 7:30am the next morning and they brought our breakfast over. We were still really sleepy, but politely accepted our breakfast. We took a morning bath then packed to head back to Tokyo.

We got to Shiobara something something station and had about 2 hrs to kill so we decided to tour around the area. Mh, there really wasn't a lot to see. A souvenir shop, 2 restaurants and a cafe. We went to all of them and finished our tour in an hour. When we were trying to decide which restaurant we should go to, Taka seemed to be extremely keen on going to the restaurant that was called "Silk Road". He just wanted to go there because of the name. He's so cute.

The train journey was really funny. I took a nap, woke up with dried drool down my cheek and neck. We picked up a catalogue from the train to look at the crazy things on there and we really couldn't stop laughing cuz there were some really crappy stuff on there.

I had a really really really good time, but I was really tired when I came back!
Foot Bath:

Rivers:

Dinner:

Me and Taka at 7:30am... arrrggggghhh!!

Hills of Gunma prefecture:

Cute cafe with little chairs:

Training

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:18:06 GMT

I had my training this week for my job and I guess it was fun and sG ome parts, they weren't fun. Because we were trained by former ALTs/teachers, we actually were taught like we were little kids. So we played loads of games and stuff. Overall, they were all exciting!

I then went home, rested, then got ew echanged and met up with all the other ALTs for drinks at a British pub owned by a Bristolian. I became friends with this British girl called Helen and she's really cool!!! She's just so energetic and very British, which is a very balanced and good combination! I also became friends with this British rg W guy called Chris from Wolverhampton and he's really calm. Others included Americans, Canadians and Australian (this guy Steve really has the Neighbours' accent- he sounds so laid back!). We drank quite a lot and I'm still a bit drunk and I'm gonna have a cup of apple tea now...

Bleuh.

Night

An eternal journey

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 08:02:44 GMT

I left home at around 12 for Yokohama to get my passport renewed (it has expired already- oops). I waited for ages and as I got to the final stage of the long bureacratic procedure, I found out that I need this "Kosekitohon" (a Japanese equivalent to a birth certificate). Well, I managed to sort things out in the end, but I do need to go back there eventually.

I met up with Taka at around 6 to celebrate his last day of work and we had Italian ice-cream and steak for dinner, walked around aimlessly then got some beer and peach flavoured sho-chu (yum yum) from a convenient store. We thought it might be a good idea to sit on top of the ferry port, quietly look at the fantastic night view of Yokohama, but it was freeeeezing cold! So we decided to get inside the departure lounge and we drank until we got kicked out around midnight.

Then we went to eat Tonkotsu noodles and then decided to stay over in a love hotel. I wanted to get into one of those love hotels with a tacky rotating heart shaped bed, but we were too tired to find one. It was a very standard room, much like an ordinary hotel except that they had a very big bathroom with a huge mirror, old porn video tapes and a vending machine for sex toys. We woke up with a terrible hangover, watched TV until check out time.

People were making chinese food on TV so we decided to go to China Town and eat lots of Chinese food. I was extremely quiet cuz I was too hungry and hungover to talk. After filling myself up with all you can eat congee with oily side dishes, I was myself again!

At around 1pm, we went to the hotsprings and that was such a life saver! We first went to the "ashi yu", where you just put your feet into the hotspring and watch the Yokohama harbour. Then we went into the actual hotsprings. That was amazing! There were so many baths, I got so excited! Most of them were outside and just knowing that it's quite cold outside whilst you're bathing in natural hotsprings was just a fantastic feeling! Oh and also there's a sauna in there with a TV! We met up again later, then went to this resting lounge where they have reclining chairs. Taka said he'll wake me up, but he fell alseep too (his excuse was that he saw me sleeping so peacefully, he wanted to sleep too). When I woke up, I tried to wake Taka up by tapping him, shaking him and pinching his nose, but he wouldn't wake up. Well, he eventually did. We went to take purikura at the game centre upstairs, took more baths and ended our onsen adventure by buying presents for my sister (wasabi flavoured soba noodles!).

We talked about Korean food for a bit and he said he hasn't had good Korean food in Japan ever!! So I took him to this restaurant near my house and had awesome Korean food. So we finally decided to go home at around 10pm.

Cherry blossom tree in Yokohama!

Taka