How.. convenient.

When I lived in France and Italy, I found it wasn’t long before the novelty of being in a new place wore off and I got used to seeing everything in a different language. Certain things still tickled me, of course, but on the whole everything was very much like home. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s because Japanese has a different script, but I still find myself gazing in wonder at things on a regular basis. I have been here for almost three months now! I still marvel at the coins:


50 yen and 5 yen pieces have a hole in the middle. Sometimes I consider threading them together on a piece of string, like something from Muppets Treasure Island.

I still yearn to know what all of the buttons on my A/C remote do:


Other regular day-to-day items just look so much cooler in Japanese:




I would also be grateful to be able to buy food from the supermarket without limiting myself to items whose packets have a picture of the cooking method with ５分 (5 mins) next to the picture. My diet would certainly be more varied if my kanji wasn’t limited to about 60 words, as it is at the moment.

An element of my life which I feel will never cease to be a source of wonder (and vague nostalgia) however, is the コンビに (conbini - convenience store.) There are so many convenience stores in Japan; I pass three on my way to school alone. They are generally open 24/7 and sell snacks, newspapers, a limited selection of hot food, alcohol, tobacco and manga comics (every time I walk in there are at least three boys in the manga section, reading their favourite comics before replacing them on the shelf and leaving.) Many of them also have an ATM inside. At the counter you can pay utility bills and buy tickets to baseball games. Sounds like an amazing place to go, right? It gets better. If you order something from Amazon, you can print off your order and take it to the conbini and pay for it there. They scan the barcode, take the payment, and trigger the delivery. If you want, you can have your items delivered to the conbini and collect them when you are free - extremely handy if you work during the day and are always missing deliveries!

As they are open 24/7, I sometimes slink off to my local one in the wee hours if I’ve been up late and fancy a snack, just like I did at university. Of course, Costcutters back home would always be closed by 11pm six days a week, but it’s the same idea. That slightly guilty feeling of knowing you’ve already had dinner but fancy a cream-filled doughnut, a box of Pocky (chocolate covered sticks of biscuit) or a carton of indulgent, sugary drink.


This is ‘café au lait’ if the carton is anything to go by. Iced coffee is very sugary in Japan. I’m starting to get accustomed to it now, but I do wish they would put only half the sugar that they normally do. It’s good on a hot day anyway, especially as during the summer here you sweat an inconceivable amount. I’m not saying this to be disgusting - it’s the truth! People carry towels around during the summer to periodically mop themselves up. Replacing salts and sugars lost during the summer sweating is probably one of the reasons drinks are so sweet here.


I bought this recently, thinking it was just banana milk. To my delight it turned out to be choco-banana milk! On the carton it says チョコ　バナナ (choco-banana) in katakana, the alphabet used for foreign words. For the record, I did discover the true flavour of my drink by reading the carton before I opened it, but only once I got home. It was delicious.



This is an iced-coffee drink made with soymilk. I thought it would be like the iced coffees Aimée made for me at university. Alas, it was vile. Nothing like the refreshing, delicious drink I imagined. Gag.

So thus far I don’t quite feel like everything is ‘normal’ yet, not in the way that I have done in other countries. It’s not such a bad thing though; now that I have settled more or less into the routine of my job, it is nice to still come across things that make me go ‘wow! That’s actually pretty cool!’

Even if, at the same time, I can’t help but wish some of you were here for me to say it to!

Where do I start..?

Hello everyone! I can’t apologise enough for the huge gap that stands between my last post and this one. I guess it goes without saying that I’ve been really busy since I started teaching, but I’ve also found myself staring at the computer screen on numerous occasions just not knowing where to start! I imagined I would right a ‘first lesson’ post, followed by a ‘summary of the first week’ post.. But I have yet to write a single post about my teaching experience at all.

So.. I’m going to start from the middle. I’m in a completely different time zone from the rest of you and I often feel like I’ve slipped into a different dimension thanks to the complete change in scenery and language and everything, so it makes perfect sense to start in the middle and swing backwards from time to time. That is whilst all the while looking forward, keeping the past in mind and living in the present. But I digress…

I’m not drunk by the way, just exceptionally tired, in the way that only adolescents can make you feel tired.

This week has been a bit of a strange one as the students are now about to take their mid-term exams. I work in two schools, my base school (not far from my one-roomed mansion) and my visit school (an hour long commute.) The basic set-up is that I work at my base school on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, and I work at my visit school on Tuesday and Friday. It’s a good set-up actually, I adore my visit school but the journey is a bit of a pain (two buses, two trains and a ten minute walk) so the balance is just right I feel. Anyway, since exams are starting a few days earlier in my visit school, I have been told to stay at my base school for a couple of weeks. A good excuse to spend time planning ahead for lessons and studying for the Japanese exam I am taking in December!

The kids are a fairly mixed bunch. I have a handful of amazing students, a bunch of good students, and a hell of a lot of unmotivated and painfully shy students. Some of them try and get away with murder in my classes; they act up, talk over me to their friends, do their homework instead of the worksheets I assign to them.. and then there are others who can’t wait for me to walk into their class and break up the week for them. Now, I know you’re not supposed to have favourites, but I can’t help preferring some students over others. Surprisingly, it’s nothing to do with their ability! Since I started teaching I have realised it isn’t about which ones shine more than others, it’s a question of who takes part. More and more I find myself looking forward to certain classes because I know that there are a few students in them who will joke along with me, eagerly put their hand up to answer a question just so I will give them a stamp, and motivate their friends to compete with them to win a game or finish a worksheet first. They move the lesson along, which is more than I can say for some classes. One class in particular drives me to distraction. I have affectionately renamed them the ‘blinking fish’ class. Blinking is a vital skill on their part - it lets me know they haven’t stopped breathing. It is the only way I know they haven’t stopped breathing.

In a few of my very first lessons, a few boys thought it would be hilarious to practice their English with me through what appeared to be a succession of dares. Open-armed declarations of ‘I love you’ persisted throughout the lesson. Only one student so far has used the F-word. He went down on my black-list for a couple of weeks but managed to redeem himself eventually; at the end of the day, there aren’t really any swear words in the Japanese language so he probably didn’t even realised quite how offensive he was being. But boys will be boys I guess.

Girls, inevitably, will also be girls. The female reaction to my presence has been as varied as the academic level at my schools. Some girls were really excited to meet me, their cried of ‘kawaii!!’ and ‘small face!’ echoing down the corridor. Others have been less than kind, laughing openly at me in class as they point at me and talk about me in Japanese to their friends. It doesn’t bother me so much - I would rather be where I am now than back in year 11 where they are with braces, spots, boy troubles, and general adolescent woes!

Small face is a compliment, by the way. Just thought I’d throw that out there!

Lunch is normally spent in the teachers’ room. I have become food -lazy recently, due in part to the lack of proper sandwich bread (the toastie bread is amazing but not so practical) and the abundance of instant noodles.


Never again will I eat pot noodles from the UK! Here, I normally eat vegetable noodle pots or deep fried tofu noodle pots. Not so healthy of course, but I am only here for a year after all!

For those of you that are interested, breakfast is different all the time. Sometimes I buy the impossibly creamy full fat milk from the convenience store (conbini) and have cereal à la anglaise, other times I grab a quick pastry containing chocolate (if I don’t grab a sweet bean bread by mistake) or apples.



“This forest seems to be very delicious.”

This pastry has apples in it and the character on the packet is called Rilakkuma (relax bear). I took this picture with a certain person in mind.

So, to keep these posts at a reasonable size I shall finish here for now. I will endeavour to continue posting as often as possible despite the exhaustion to keep you all updated. I’m missing you all immensely!

Put the kettle on...

A bit of a sentimental one for you tonight, guys. A week ago a parcel appeared on my desk at work. It was a package my mum had sent me from England with various bits and pieces including Maryland cookies, salt and vinegar flavoured crisps, sachets of instant porridge, and a box of tea bags.

I tidied my desk, emptied the parcel out, admired my spoils, then put everything but the tea bags back in the box. My lesson plans had already been done for the day anyway so all I was doing was going over my Japanese study notes. I could concede myself a tea break. With more care than is normally paid to tea packaging, I opened the box and made a cup of tea, sitting back to breathe in the smell of it and think of home.

Now, I’m not the kind of girl that cries normally. It takes a lot to make me blub, and when I do it is normally the result of huge stress such as money worries or dissertation stress. But I was struggling a little as I stared into my cup of tea. I didn’t have a breakdown at work, I’m pleased to say, but I had to force myself to hold back a couple of tears as a wave of homesickness engulfed me. Sometimes smells trigger memories for me, which seems perfectly normal to me but I don’t know if it’s true for anyone else. Certain spices, for example, remind me of when my cousins and I used to play hide and seek at my grandparents’ house, and I always made a beeline for the pantry. The smell of freshly baked pastry puts me back in the café of the university campus in France where I used to buy my breakfast on cold days.

The smell of tea unlocks more memories for me, and not necessarily distant ones. It makes me think of funny cups of tea with an amazing friend of mine in my final year at university. It makes me think of those post-essay class gatherings I used to have from time to time in my student flat with other Frenchies. It reminds me of second year when another close friend would often come in for a cup of tea and a chat on the way home from lectures. More poignantly it conjures up cups of tea on lazy mornings, on the sofa and watching bad TV with someone. As strange as it is (and stereotypical this might be, as an English person), I can probably name a moment spent with everybody important to me where tea was present, despite some of my best friends not being tea-drinkers themselves. That morning then, when I finally had my first cup of tea after almost a month away from home, I suddenly felt very far away from everyone.

So I’m not quite sure what JET has done to me exactly, or why I’m feeling this sentimental. Small things are triggering homesickness at unexpected moments and in unexpected places. But I’m pushing through, helped largely by the fact that since my internet was installed I am only ever a skype call away from seeing or talking to most people. Just so you all know, if I have ever had a cup of tea with you… I miss you.

Cakes, celebrities and question time

It’s been a random week or so with not a great deal of news or discoveries. I’m settling into something that resembles a routine now, waking up at 6am, going to work, churning out lesson plans and photocopying handouts, spending the weekends at Nishinomiya Gardens pigging out on doughnuts.. You get the idea.

This weekend I took a trip to Kobe to meet up with another JET for shopping and cake. Sounds like a good plan, right? Fortunately this happens quite often. There are various things about Japan which I dislike (or, it’s fair to say, about being a million miles away from home that I dislike), but there is a very long list of stuff which makes up for it all. One of these is the fact that the Japanese seriously know how to do desserts. I’d even go so far as to say that they beat the French hands down. Sorry to any Frenchies reading this but you have to trust me on this one - head to Japan and try desserts, cakes, pastries… Kobe sweets in general are just divine. I will start taking pictures of the desserts that I eat out and about. Part of the reason I haven’t so far is that I feel a bit rude taking pictures in cafes and stuff. The other (bigger) part of the reason is that I would feel like a fat pig if I started to amass photos of every treat devoured. One week’s worth alone would probably take over this blog.

The trip in question developed into a long shopping trek, pit stop for coffee and cake (ok, one of these days we’ll talk about the coffee - or lack thereof), more shopping, and meeting up with another JET for dinner in a restaurant where the entire menu was in kanji and the food a little overpriced. Still, good times, good company, and beer. Weekends are getting better all the time!

At work the dynamics are changing quite rapidly. Yesterday was the day of the opening ceremony, in which I had to give a speech to 1200 students. I guess it goes without saying that in the two days leading up to this event I slept very little and studied a huge amount. Fortunately I had to give a speech to the teaching staff in the teachers’ room first, which I did solely in Japanese, thereby boosting my confidence a little. Most of them have never heard me speak Japanese before but all of them knew that I couldn’t speak a word when I arrived a month ago. For that reason perhaps they were all incredibly friendly to me after I had spoken - I have been quietly studying by myself for the past month, determined to break down the language barrier. Now they can see how much effort I have been putting in, even the teachers who can’t speak English have been coming over to say hello.

It’s not just the teachers either. Students at my base school and my visit school have been filtering through the teachers’ room over the past week or so, eager to speak to the new ALT, the one from England with the ‘small face’ (ah, Japanese compliments - I think). My new found celebrity is somewhat overwhelming - it’s certainly small scale, but it’s still unnerving to know that you’re being watched all the time. It turns out nothing is sacred in a country where bowel movements and menstrual pain are freely discussed between colleagues.

A student approached me in the teachers’ room today and told me he wanted to talk to me, but that he had class. We arranged for him to come back at lunchtime, at which point he took me up to his classroom where all of his classmates were eating their packed lunches. I won’t deny feeling awkward. There’s something very bizarre about sitting in a classroom surrounded by teenagers, knowing that you’re now a teacher and thus on the other side of the glass. Anyway it was a very pleasant half hour. The student spoke very good English and I enjoyed speaking to him. Some of his classmates interrupted from time to time, asking personal questions and trying to get reactions from me. At all of our orientations we had been warned about this but it still came as a bit of a surprise - though I don’t know what I was expecting from a group of teenage boys who actually weren’t all that much younger than myself! One lad in particular, goaded on by a friend, asked me my name and then if I had a boyfriend. Smiling sweetly, I replied ‘yes, I do, he’s English’ [snorts of laughter from friend, followed by what was probably a crude comment, judging by the response it got], then I added ‘do you have a girlfriend?’
The laughter died down a little as the student who invited me into the classroom pointed at a girl at the back of the room. ‘He doesn’t have a girlfriend, but he has a serious crush on her.’ Red faces ensued. The nosey boy’s friend thought this even more hilarious than the question itself, but I got no more personal questions (to my great relief) as the boys realised I was going to probe them as much as they probed me. Situation saved. I really wasn’t ready for the ‘experience’ questions.

My first lesson is actually tomorrow. I am absolutely scared out of my wits. 27 students all looking at me and wondering how far they can push me. Fingers crossed they’ll be kind and participate!

Small victories

Living abroad and trying to find your feet in a new culture is really tough. Some people go on about how difficult it is (and we all know I do my fair share of moaning, it hasn’t all been Kit Kats and grape Fanta you know!) whereas others seem to be having the time of their lives all the time. I think it’s your perspective. You can dwell on the things that drag you down (like when the sales assistant at the local convenience store makes you look like an idiot because you can‘t read kanji) and you can loudly boast about the amazing places you are seeing and the crazy new things you are experiencing. This makes for a bit of a roller coaster and I find that can be a bit exhausting. Still, everybody has a way of getting them through the culture shock of being in a new country and having to learn new words, new customs, and even new facial expressions.

My way is by counting the small victories.

The small victories are the tiny little things that might happen once a day, or once every two days, or maybe once a week. They’re the moments which disappear as quickly as they came and risk being forgotten completely when you have a negative experience. So when I get to the end of the day I think about the small victories of the past couple of days, and it helps give me some perspective when I’ve had a bad day and want to book a flight back to London. To give you an idea, here are the small victories from the past 48 hours:

- I asked the vice-principal for permission to go to the shop, in Japanese, and was understood.

- I learned to dance at the local ‘Bon Dance’ festival of my supervisor’s home town - in front of everyone and wearing the tightest tied kimono known to womankind.

- I went to the convenience store and paid an electricity bill. By myself.

- I asked for two customs labels at the post office, in Japanese, and was understood.

- I spent over half an hour in the supermarket looking for dashi stock, miso paste and tofu, then came home and made a really good miso soup first time around.

Individually these things don’t look like very much at all, but every single one of these experiences felt like overcoming an insurmountable obstacle. That’s not to say I don’t have a long way to go of course, but reminding yourself of the small things helps you to keep a grip on the bigger picture; it makes those misunderstandings, those wrong trains, those frustrations at having bought the wrong item at the supermarket seem like mere blips on what is ultimately a slow but steady journey.

So, having put in my two pence worth for the evening, here is a picture of me in a yukata.



I wasn’t joking about it being tight by the way, but I couldn’t tell the kind lady who tied me in that she was being a bit over eager. I’m not sure I would have even if I did possess the necessary linguistic abilities - as it turns out, putting on a kimono is a lot more complex than wearing a bathrobe with a big sash. Also, it is just as hard to get out of as it was to get in, so I would probably still have left her to it. Learning Japanese is one thing, learning how to put on a kimono properly is an entirely different thing altogether! That won’t stop me buying one to bring home by the way. I can’t come home from Japan without a yukata. It just wouldn’t be right.

The Kit Kat Challenge

There are many worthwhile things to do in Japan. My prefecture, for example, runs an event once a month where JETs go and play games with the children at the local orphanage. And I intend to do this.

But in the meantime I have taken up The Kit Kat challenge.

Kit Kats change fairly regularly in Japan, it would seem. So I have decided to try each and every flavour available on the market. Here are the first three of my challenge:

Green tea Kit Kat



I had my reservations about how much a Kit Kat could possibly taste like green tea.. But it really did. It tasted a bit like white chocolate had been mixed with the dregs of a cup of green tea and put on the Kit Kat instead of normal chocolate. A little strange.. but not bad if you’re not put off by just how green it is.

Banana Kit Kat




As soon as I opened this I was overwhelmed by the smell of banana milkshake. It was bright yellow, too! It tasted like a delicious banana milkshake with the crunchiness of wafer. This is one that I would definitely have again.

Salt and Caramel Kit Kat



I was a bit dubious about this one as well actually… it is a bit difficult to describe the taste. It wasn’t overly salty but it definitely tasted more savoury than other Kit Kats. I don’t think I’d have it again. It’s like the Kit Kat that can’t make its mind up.

And now, as an added treat, some photos I took in the supermarket of the frozen desserts, just in case you wanted to see how they did haagen dazs in Japan:


Maple Cookie flavour and Strawberry flavour (so far, so normal)


Tahitian Vanilla Caramel flavour (sounds nice! But what is Tahitian about it, exactly?), Milk Classic flavour (I’m confused) and the standard Green Tea flavour.


Finally, Cookies and Green Tea flavour (eh?!), Cookies and Sesame Cream flavour (what?), Almond Praline Cream flavour (ok, a little more normal) and Honey Milk flavour (actually this one sounds quite nice.)

I would love to take up the Haagen Dazs challenge, but alas my funds do not stretch that far. Kit Kats are probably better suited to my budget!

Japanese for beginners

I couldn’t let too much time go by without writing something about the Japanese language. Whilst learning it is genuinely the most difficult task I have ever undertaken, I am truly fascinated by it. Now seems like right time to write about what I have learnt so far as I recently unlocked the Japanese IME on my computer and learnt how to type in Japanese - so I can show you exactly what I’m talking about!

Ok, for those of you who know little / nothing of Japanese: There are basically three writing systems - two alphabets (where each symbol represents a syllable) and kanji (ancient Chinese characters where each one has a different meaning and pronunciation.

The first two alphabets are called hiragana and katakana. Hiragana is derived from the Chinese characters and are pronounced more less as they are read (unlike English where words are often spelt differently from their pronunciation). Hiragana are slightly more rounded, cursive symbols, and can look like this:
わたしは　(I am)

Katakana is used in a similar way but is employed for foreign words and onomatopoeia:
マイケル　(Maikeru - Michael)

It’s slightly more angular.. I prefer hiragana.

Kanji is used for many words, and there is a basic foundation of about 2000 kanji that will help you get by in daily life. In newspapers about 40% of the words are actually in kanji. They are so difficult to learn for foreigners, especially as there is no true way to look them up in the dictionary. You can look them up by stroke order (so the number of lines you use to write them) or by radical (a smaller kanji within a kanji). The concept of a radical might be easier to explain with an example.

火　this is ‘hi’, meaning fire. It sort of looks like a little flame. This can be used as an element of bigger kanji, making this a radical in some cases.

炎　this is ‘honoo’, meaning blaze. A double fire! Makes sense I guess.

災　and this kanji means disaster. If you use your imagination you can see a destructive fire doing some real damage in the symbol.

So, many kanji are symbols which represent ideas. Reading names of people and places is really fascinating as the kanji that make up their names portray different ideas and aspects of the culture. Take the common surname ‘Yamashita’.

山下　‘yama’ is the first symbol and it means mountain. It looks like three mountains in a row. Or three Diglett. But mountains for the sake of this explanation. The second, ‘shita’, by itself means to come down. When part of this name, however, it means ‘person who lives under the mountain.’ So, ‘a well balanced person.’ At least, this is how it has been explained to me.

I live in Nishinomiya.　西の宮。The first symbol means West. The final symbol means palace. The middle one is a particle which is often dropped when the name is on signs.. It links the two together. I like the name more now that I know the meaning!

I realise that this is the most basic of summaries so I hope my Japanese friends won’t think I’m simplifying things too much. I have a long way to go yet. Of the 2000 or so kanji, I have thus far memorised… 30 odd. Of these 30 odd I can only remember the pronunciation of about… 10. Of these I can probably reproduce half on paper; I am only capable of recognising the rest. It’s going to be a long year of flashcards!