Nagasaki

Last of the archived blogs now. Yay!

Nagasaki then. It was, unsurprisingly, rather good. However, I should probably start with the hows and whys.

There’s a “rule” in Kumamoto-ken that ALTs are not allowed to work over 20 days a month. When they told us this during the closing stages of the Tokyo Orientation there were cheers even through the Jet-Lag assisted exhaustion. This Kumamoto exclusive allowed me 3 “choseibi” days off during August which I was required by law to take. Well well well. How marvellous. However, I found myself at something of a loss; what to do with 3 days off? I can’t just sit in my apartment eating noodles for three days straight (which is the only foodstuff I currently have in my kitchen). Luckily, the Kumamoto City orientation provided the answer in the form of a group of ALTs heading off to Nagasaki. I was kindly invited along, but only after I promised to stop attempting a cockney accent (something which I’ve become curiously fond of recently).

So, after a 2 hour bus ride to reach our departure port I find out that all but one of the group has had to pull out as their BOE (Board of Education) had stuff for them to do. The one remaining ALT, a South African called Megan, is a Senior High School teacher the same as me, who reports directly to the Prefectural BOE rather than any local council one. We decided that as I’d come so far we’d throw four fingers (two sets of two) up at the other ALTs and go anyway. So we did.

First stop was Nagasaki-shi (shi=city) itself. After an extremely short ferry ride we arrived and flatly failed to find the Youth Hostel we were staying in. Infact, we went to the opposite end of the main street and stood for a good ten minutes scaring the locals with our odd language and copious sweating. Yes, it’s hot in Nagasaki too.

After finding the Hostel (and discovering its 11 o’clock curfew) we headed to the place every tourist goes to first, the A-Bomb museum. It turns out Megan is a bit of a museum nut, even going so far as to consider a Masters in Museum Studies so it took us about 3 or 4 hours to get around the various sections. Which is not to say it wasn’t interesting, on the contrary it was fascinating in a rather morbid manner. I did however leave with mixed feelings; no doubt the A-bomb was too harsh a measure to take (especially seeing as the US’s own advisors had predicted Japan’s surrender with or without the use of the Bomb) but I couldn’t help noticing the lack of information surrounding Japan’s role in the war. They seemed to be presented as an innocent and unsuspecting party, which is blatantly untrue. Oh well.

We visited the Hypocentre (the exact spot where the bomb exploded) and the Peace Park (a rather kitsch collection of statues including the faintly ridiculous Peace Statue) and called it a day. However, we did pop down to the Wharf for a drink and the smallest pizzas you have ever seen in your life. Possibly their growth was stunted by the residual radiation. Who knows?

The second day in the city was spent temple hopping. There’s a street that contains nothing but temples, shrines and graveyards so we spent most of the day wandering into the variously coloured and increasingly impressive buildings, eventually ending up being force fed beer by the caretaker of one particularly fine example. He was lovely though, and gave us both a patterned tea towel as way of thanks for filling his lunch with Gaijin-goodness. Mm-mmm.

I also bumped into my Tokyo roommate; it turns out that all the new Nagasaki JETs were in the city for their Orientation which was a complete coincidence. Anyway, we rejected his offer to join the NagaALTs in an all you can drink party and instead took a ropeway to the top of the local mountain, Inasa, to see the city at night. I took loads of photos but none came out. D’oh.

The next day we heading to areas more rural, firstly stopping at the spa town of Unzen nestled below an active volcano. It was temperate, it was sunny, it was haunting. Until it started raining. With our accommodation waiting for us the next town over, we headed out without seeing either the volcano or much of the geysers which was disappointing. We were booked into another youth hostel in the Castle town of Shimabara and it was there we headed, keeping marginally ahead of the rain. We arrived just in time to watch them close the castle gates and shoo off any hangers on so retired to catch up on some much needed sleep.

On the final day we finally made it to the castle (not as nice as Kumamoto’s) and also to some old Samurai houses (with scary plastic mannequins). Taking the ferry home, we arrived in good old Kumamoto in time for a quick stop into an old folks home (where they gave me more free beer) and I made it home yesterday.

To finish, here is a list of thing what I have ate:

Raw horse meat
Moving raw fish
Lots of squid
Fried Octopus Dough-balls (takoyaki)
Fermented soy beans (sticky)
Enough rice to fill a large barn
My pride.


The ridiculous looking Nagasaki Peace Statue. Looks like a Pokemon.


The interior of one of the myriad of temples we went to.


Some lovely mountains in Shimabara.


Shimabara Castle. An amazing photo by me if I do say so myself.

Stuff

Here's another archived blog. Most of the stuff in here is outdated (the bug is dead and I have the telephoen back) but still....

So far it’s been good. Great in fact: I’ve met some great people, done some great things, and generally felt great about it all. Course, the danger here is that it can’t possibly continue to be great for the entire duration of my stay (however long that may be) and although it is all still, well….great, I’m beginning to imagine how it might not always be so.

I’ve started to understand the idea of ‘culture shock’ a bit, although I wouldn’t use that particular term myself. ‘Culture frustration’ is perhaps more accurate. I’m starting to get a bit fed up of not being able to understand anything, a bit sick of feeling as helpless as a particularly undereducated 4 year old. And it’s not even as if my Japanese isn’t improving, I’ve learnt a truckload of new phrases not to mention a great deal more about the grammar but these are trivial advances when you’re sitting in a restaurant being spoken at in machinegun bursts of a language that has absolutely nothing in common with your own. The culture itself isn’t particularly shocking, just a bit hard to get to grips with when you can’t even attach the correct “goodbye” to the correct situation.

And my supervisor…he’s a lovely chap and has been indispensable but bless him he’s got absolutely zero knowledge of anything more technologically advanced than a desk drawer. And I’m not kidding. Take this example; my predecessor had an internet account where she rented the modem from the phone company who obviously requested it back at the end of her contract. With the former JET in question having left the country, the responsibility of sending the modem back passed onto my supervisor.

He sent them her phone. Her actual phone that she had bought with her own money. Not a rented phone. Not even just a phone: a phone/fax combo. He mistook a phone/fax combo for a modem. He told me that he thought it was a bit odd that the modem had paper in it. Douglas Adams couldn’t make this shit up. That thing was expensive too, about 40000 yen (£200) and I’ll be buggered if I’m forking out the same amount again if the telephone company have lost it/thrown it away in bemusement. You can imagine how hard it is to try to get this guy to help me with setting up the internet. That’s one Japanese stereotype out of the window then.

The apartment too has lost some of its initial sheen. I’ve been to a few other JET houses and they’ve all been, if not bigger then newer. I’ve started applying such terms as “basic” and even “ramshackle” to my pad, which may be a bit unfair with regards to everything except the kitchen. It really is a nightmare to do anything with. I’m not perhaps the best, ahem, cook in the world but there’s hardly room to put two plates down side by side in there. Hmm. I’ve also had my first bug issue. I decided to have a cleanup on Saturday (as most of the rooms didn’t look to have been hovered before I arrived) and while moving the bin a cockroach the size of my face scuttled across the floor and under the freezer. I actually screamed. I may even have swooned. This thing was bigger than most of the plates I own, Christ knows what sort of food it thought I was throwing away as a three course meal wouldn’t have sated it. I immediately armed myself with a Tupperware bowl and a poker stick thing and set about thrashing the space under my white goods. Or rather, I spent an hour working up the courage to. As it happens Percy, which is how I now refer to him, was not to be seen again that night so I closed off the kitchen and dreamt, for some reason, of Spaniards with 8 legs.

Today however, he resurfaced with a friend. I glimpsed him moving between the freezer and washer and proceeded to run screaming from the kitchen once more. A few hours later, for various reasons, I needed to go out so tentatively ventured back into the kitchen, keeping my tootsies as far from any dark areas as possible, and turned the door handle. Christ almighty, something ran from the front door to, yes you’ve guessed it, the back of the freezer. Lord only knows what it was but it was fast and long and, I thought, bluey-white in colour. Now, I still haven’t seen this mysterious presence again but that didn’t stop me from going to the nearest Hyaku-en store (100yen shop) and buying the biggest can of insect spray I could find and nuking my kitchen. My gas detector alarm went off I used so much of the stuff and I can no longer feel my legs. Only kidding, but hopefully Percy can’t feel any of his. We’ve been told not to step on them for two reasons:

1) They may be carrying eggs. One crunch and all the little eggs go everywhere and you have an infestation. Nice.
2) When they get squished they released pheromones telling all their little mates to come and have a party at mine. Again, infestation.

We’ve also been told about Huntsmen (spider that grow on average to the size of an adult’s hand and that beat their prey to death), centipedes (which can kill apparently) and hornets (one of which was buzzing around my windows on the second day here and which could probably have eaten my head whole. I’ve seen smaller cars. They can kill as well and will physically go for you if you anger them/swat at them/if they feel like it). I did however on my travels see a tiny little dormouse running down the road and into someone else’s house. Aw. Lucky bugger.

Oh, and I found the modem. It was behind a cardboard box with a phone/fax combo on it.

More pics, mostly from the Kumamoto City Orientation put on by JET:



Kumamoto Castle. Mmm, pointy.



A view of Kumamoto City from the top of the castle. As you can see, it's not the biggest place in the world (that would be Preston).



Can you see me? This is from the pub-crawl after the second day of the Orientation. The guy in the middle is the other Jet in my town a great bloke from LA called Ellison.



Couple of more recent ones now, this was taken last week (the 3rd of September) and it's me and some of the other Yatsushiro ALTs (plus some of the second and third yearer's Japanese mates)



Me looking rather surprised in a Karaoke parlour. That's an Irish ALT called Dalbhagh (Dalva) in the foreground. She scary.

Anyway, that's your lot. Until next time...

Kagami

Ok, this is the first of my "archived" blogs that I wrote when I was offline. Enjoy!

Kagami

Coke cans are smaller here. Nissan Skylines carry families rather than Rude Boys. They do have shops emblazoned with “Super Happy Time Inside!” type English. Pachinko really is as pointless as I’d thought and it’s much, much hotter than I expected.

Just a few of the things I’ve noticed since I arrived in Kagami-machi (machi=town). I’m writing this Blog entry offline 3 days after I arrived, but as the internet isn’t working I have no idea when I’ll get chance to post it up. The likelihood is that I’ll post it up in a few weeks time when everything is sorted out.

Anyway, Kagami. It’s actually quite nice. When I first arrived I was terrified that they really had stuck me in the arse end of nowhere. I was greeted at the airport by two schoolgirls waving a huge sign with “Richard – Welcome to Hikawa High School” written in large, haiku-esque lines. I greeted them with what I thought was a cheery ”Konnichiwa” and they smiled and repeated the greeting rather coyly. Hmm, thought I. They led me over to Fukuda-sensei, my supervisor for the duration of my stay who turned out to be fairly competent at English and a nice bloke to boot.

The girls and I took the bus back to Yatsushiro train station (where they’re close to completing a Shinkansen (Bullet Train) line) with Fukuda-sensei following in his Subaru. 20 minutes from Yatsushiro is Kagami and it looked bloody awful. Tiny, tiny (and I mean tiny) roads that a fat man couldn’t walk down without getting wedged complemented ramshackle farmhouses and dodgy looking dogs that seemed to live in them alone. True, the scenery is like something you’d find in the Big Book of Beautiful Mountains or World’s Greenest Landscapes (think Thin Red Line and you’re there) but the shanty town look Kagami seemed to be going for got me worried.

As it happens, Kagami isn’t like that at all. For some reason, probably for his own sense of morbid fascination, Fukuda-sensei had taken me through the back streets. The main street of Kagami is reasonable large, certainly very long. Probably about the size of Cleveleys high street but as I say, longer. Hikawa High school, where I’m based looked Ok, like any other High School in the world.

What I really want to write about are the people. Wow. This is one thing I thought the JET handbook might have been exaggerating; the so called “David Beckham” factor. As I’m in quite a small town, the all knowing handbook had warned that I may be treated…differently in Japan. Perhaps the best way to sum up the reception I got is the example of when Fukuda-sensei was giving an extracurricular English lesson yesterday (Thursday the 4th). I went along to see how the lesson worked, if not to actually help out. On my way there I casually “Konnichiwa-ed” a couple of students who turned to me in shock before suddenly bursting into laughter. Not nasty laughter though; they looked like the old archive footage of fans at the front of Beatle concerts in the 70s. It was unreal. And it got worse (or better, it still remains to be seen). We were halfway through the lesson when I noticed through the frosted windows (not actually ice you understand, I was almost melting in the heat let alone any water than my have chosen to solidify) a small crowd. As the lesson ended, what seemed like half the school poured into the room all seemingly shouting to get my attention. They’d call out “Richardo-Sensei!” (how cool is that, I’m a sensei!), I’d smile in their general direction and they’d all burst into raucous giggles. And I’m not just talking girls here, all the boys seemed to find me fascinating as well. It’s surreal to say the least but quite flattering at times.

So far the most common questions I’ve been asked (when they find time to breath between the screams) are “Do you have a girlfriend” (“Yes” “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!”) and “What is her name?”. If Hannah is reading this you’ll no doubt be happy to know that the ones I showed a picture of you to proceeded to shout “Sexy!” for a good five minutes. Obviously these questions tend to come from the girls, the guys seem to sit they and guffaw to themselves.

The girls seem to be more communicative than the boys generally, probably because they know more English. The competence level is very low however and with most of the questions being barely recognisable I certainly have a challenge ahead of me. Fukuda-sensei, who I’ll be teaching with exclusively until April, has some very odd ideas of how to teach. He’s dragged up some ages old theory by Ogden called “Basic English.” Ogden thought that all concepts in English could be expressed using 850 words and for some insane reason Fukuda-sensei thinks this is the way to teach his class. As far as I know, Ogden’s theory wasn’t very well received when he made it God knows how many decades ago so why we should be teaching it to Japanese children is unknown. He actually wants to drill the 850 words into the student’s heads…In my opinion that’s madness, the little enthusiasm they have for English lessons would go out of the window. Oh well, I’ll have to try and work him around.

As I said, not much is working here in my apartment at the moment. My laptop is up and running, and the power converters I bought work. The new TV (which is huge) isn’t tuned in, and the satellite channels and internet need to be reconnected. Apparently I can’t use the car until my Inkan (a Japanese ink seal used instead of a signature) is registered and until the insurance is reregistered with the teachers union they have down here. Hopefully I’m off to set up a bank account today, having already applied for an Alien Registration card. I’m also hoping to get a Multiple Re-entry pass, a card that allows me to leave Japan as many times as I like during my possible 3 year stay. I got this mainly for vacations to Korea and Hong Kong, but it also works if I want to come home. It costs 6000yen (£30) but lasts for as long as my Visa does.

The apartment itself is larger than I thought, with three large-ish rooms and a smaller kitchen and bathroom (and a separate toilet). Two of the rooms are tatami matted (straw mats used for sitting), one is the bedroom and the other seems to be a spare which is odd as it’s the largest. The living room has the all important air-conditioning unit within, as well as the TV and a small couch.

Natasha, my predecessor has left me absolutely loads of stuff, some useful and some not. For example, I have every spice known to man, but also a scratching post for a cat. A hand-drawn map of Kagami and a big box labelled “Xmas stuff”. Some laptop speakers (very handy), but also the complete Ultimate Fighting Championship: World Series on VHS. Anyway, there’s more than enough space to put everything. Infact, I seem to have an excess of storage space; I found a door today I had previously missed that contained a whole other cupboard (and for some reason, a skateboard).

It does still feel like I’m living in someone else’s house at the moment. Natasha has left her JET calendar up and almost everyday has something pencilled in that she should have been doing, as I said the myriad of cupboards are still filled with a lot of her stuff, a small collection of the worst taste in CD’s I’ve ever seen lies in the living room, and various Canada related artefacts are placed in full view. I will try and unpack today (it’s now Saturday the 6th as I write this) but I have to go to the school to phone the local JET reps (well, I don’t have to but they’re organising a party at for this weekend and I couldn’t get through yesterday).

Pictures (click to see a bigger version)!


My apartment block, containing 4 apartos. Mine is actually offscreen, it's the upper right one. And yes, that's my car.


The main high street of Kagami. Quiet.


A festival in Yatsushiro City, the nearest urban centre. These are very popular and this one involved these poor people dancing for about an hour to 3 repeated songs...


My "Inkan" or personal seal, used in place of a signature. It actually says Godwin in the Japanese Katakana alphabet.


Had to put this one in last. That's me, obviously, looking quizzically at a can of "British Style" iced milk tea. Surprisingly nice.

Hallelujah!!!

'Ello.

Fiannly, finally my internet has been connected in my little apartment. Thank you Mr Yahoo-Japan. It's slightly slower than I would have hoped though:


(the top number is the download rate, approx 8mbps)
Considering I'm signed up to a 50Mbps plan it's a little off. Can't have everything I suppose.

Anyway, I have been writing blog entries since I got here to post up when I get the chance. So I'll start posting them up with their associated pictures ASAP.

Yahoooooo!