Countdown to Christmas

One of the things that worried me slightly about coming to Japan was the idea of Christmas in a country where, according to wikipedia, 84% of the population say they are not religious. Christmas is not even a public holiday in Japan, though luckily it does fall on a Saturday this year.

With this in mind I didn’t really think it would feel like Christmas this year for me, although having questioned some of the students in my classes I discovered people still put up a tree and exchange presents. I went to the nearest shopping centre yesterday to kill some time (and get out of my shoebox apartment) and was quietly thinking to myself how in the UK the shops would already have had their Christmas stock in for a good three weeks. Now, I complain about this aspect of our culture just as much as the next person, but it is nice I guess to have a reminder that even though the nights are drawing in, there is something to look forward to. Lost in my musings and drowning out the sound of the crowd with my ipod, I stepped on an escalator and became aware that at the top something was emitting a series of flashing lights. Out came the earphones, I could hear something in the distance…

Sleigh bells!!

Gliding off the escalator I found myself in front of Izumiya, my local supermarket. In the space of a week the entrance to the home section had been transformed into a winter wonderland!! There were Christmas trees galore, beautiful decorations, the most elaborate and technical Christmas cards I had ever seen (where you open them up and they become 3D card Christmas trees with flashing lights) and Christmas songs were playing in the background! I took some pictures of the main Christmas tree, decorated in true kawaii Japanese style with Rilakkuma (relax bear).


Sorry for the bad quality, I wish my ipod had auto focus! I guess that’ll be the aim for the next ipod they bring out.. although I have no intention of buying one for another few years. This one bankrupted me this month as it is.

So even if the Japanese don’t really celebrate Christmas per se, I now think that at least I won’t feel as if it never happened this year. I’ll take more pictures as time goes on anyhow to show you all the decorations that they sell here - I think there may be some sort of light festival coming to Kobe soon too so I will have to check that out. Ah, festivities!

Luckily the boot's on the foot

A couple of days ago I was on my way back from work when I walked past two school boys in the courtyard area by my apartment building. In a typically schoolboy-ish way they were gazing in fascination at an insect on the ground. They looked up as I walked past so I pretended not to be interested, but as soon as they were gone I ran back with my camera.


This is a Japanese caterpillar. If it bites you, it is extremely painful. At the very least you have to go to the doctor as it requires medical treatment. Another JET told me recently that there are neurotoxins in its bite, so get bitten by more than one at a time and you could find yourself in trouble. Apologies for the poor focus, as it turns out my iPod touch doesn’t zoom or focus. For your benefit though folks, I put my boot next to the little demon so you can see its relative gi-normity. Note that even with boots on, I was reluctant to get too close.

Too much kindness?

As it turns out, this week is turning out to be a bit of a strange one too. Where do I start? Perhaps I should write more often, then I wouldn’t need to ask this question so often.

The biggest event that has happened so far this week is the concert that I went to on Tuesday. The reason I say this is because it is an event that has left a lasting impression on me. I’ll explain.

During orientation in London and in Tokyo for the JET programme, we were told that the best way to cope with culture shock in Japan was to accept pretty much anything our colleagues invited us to. This way we would give a good impression, build good relationships with everyone and experience new things at the same time. So when one of the teachers came over to me last month and said there was a piano concert in Osaka in October, with free tickets to teachers from our school, I accepted his invitation to go to it. I didn’t really have a choice actually, but it certainly didn’t seem like much of a chore as I love the piano.

So the concert rolled around on Tuesday. Between being invited and actually going to it, this same teacher had intermittently been coming to me with information on new concerts / music events etc., often writing them on my desk calendar before I could stop him. He’s quite a bit older - I assumed he was just interested in music and in practising his English (he isn’t an English teacher so doesn’t have much opportunity). I admit the constant invitations were getting a bit wearisome but I tried to keep a balance between refusing stuff and staying friendly.

Before leaving school with him on Tuesday evening, one of my colleagues, with a worried expression, asked me if he was married. Of course! I replied. I’m sure I’ve seen a ring on his finger. She looked a bit sceptical. When he came over to my desk I checked.. no ring. Oh dear.

The guy had a BMW. A very new, clean and expensive looking one at that. I didn’t think teachers got paid that much. We made small talk on the way into Osaka and I was feeling a little uneasy because of my colleague’s comment, but I tried to push it to the back of my mind. We arrived at the hotel, the Royal Hotel no less, where he began making requests to the staff in Japanese. From my basic grasp of the language I could tell he was ordering vegetarian food for after the concert, then he ordered flowers from the florist. I could feel rising panic.

When it was time, we went up to the concert itself and listened to some very beautiful and inspiring music performed by one of his ex-students (this explains the free tickets to our school) and the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra. I really enjoyed the music, it was truly inspiring to hear such talented musicians perform live. Whilst the music played, I began to calm down a little. The flowers couldn’t possibly be for me - could they? And the meal, surely it was a small meal somewhere inexpensive. I started at the sound of applause, and to my huge relief saw the huge bouquet of roses the teacher had ordered being presented to the pianist. Wonderful! Now I could enjoy the food and really relax. I had overreacted as usual.

Except I’m not sure that I had overreacted. After the concert he said to me Right, let’s go eat some vegetable tempura! So I followed him through the hotel to an elevator which took us up to the 28th floor and then an esclator.. and stepped into a restaurant where the panoramic windows gave a breathtaking view of Osaka by night. The ceiling was black but it had small lights embedded into it to make it look like the night sky. What a romantic restaurant I thought, as my heart sank. A waiter quickly whisked us to the table that had been reserved for us, where a small bouquet of five pink roses awaited me. A present for you! he said with a broad smile. Later he insisted on taking a photo of me with the flowers against the backdrop of the city view. He also paid for dinner, which as it turns out, was as expensive as you would expect from the Royal Hotel in Osaka.

What started out as a kind invitation to a free concert left me feeling seriously uncomfortable. Other teachers have bought me things and taken me places, but it normally extends to a slice of cake and a trip to a local festival. I’m going to be careful about what I say yes to in the future so I don’t get put in this position again. More than likely he is just a kind man with a keen interest in music and doesn’t mind spending money on people. However, for my own peace of mind I will be keeping male colleagues at arm’s length, at least until I suss out what Japanese people consider to be too much in the way of gifts. I hope I don’t seem ungrateful, it’s just that where I come from this would all be considered too much, so it’s probably best to err on the side of caution.

On a different but related note, the following day a different teacher extended a more relaxed and welcome invitation (in the middle of the day, I might add). I’m about to go to the best cake shop in Nishinomiya if you’re interested in coming, said one of my JTE colleagues. At this, I was practically at the entrance of the school with my outdoor shoes already on. So we set off in his car, talking about food and cakes and the students in our class.

But the best cake shop in Nishinomiya was apparently closed on Wednesday. Typical.

So we went to the second best cake shop instead, where said JTE colleague said he was buying. But only this time I’m afraid, he grinned. This was exactly what I wanted to hear after the night before!! The cake was delicious:


The very professional staff even put a small sachet of ice in with my cake to make sure it was still chilled by the time we got back to school:


Needless to say, this slice of chocolate cake was a less intense but greatly appreciated act of kindness!

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!