Around the world in a lot of days!!

Another chapter ends, and another one begins......only this time in English!!

2008-10-25T20:02:00.023+09:00

Hello to one and all. To say a lot has happened since that last photo of me in the classroom with judo suit is the understatement of the century!!

Where to begin??

Well, Japan has finished. It snook up on me out of nowhere, and before I knew what was happening I was down to my last week on that wonderful island and was having going away dinners, final classes in school, going away ceremonies galore, final trips to the city to see the friends I had made there for probably the last time in most cases, and final trips out to the island for my friends whom I made there. It was an emotional rollercoaster to use an old cliche, very surreal and exciting at the same time, and having a nostalgic side to me as I do, it was a time to think back over the 2 years and reflect on all that had happened.

First off the judo guys said goodbye to me in proper fashion. I had slacked off in my training near the end as I was so busy organising stuff, but they insisted I come down once more to have a scrap with each of them and to say a goodbye. That was a nice one, of all the Japanese people I was around constantly, these guys came the closest to forgetting the fact I was foreign and treated me like just another person. This is mostly due to the fact not many of them were from the island and were from cities around Japan,, so westerners weren't as much of a novelty to them, but it was nice to be able to hang out with these guys in the evenings and be out of the spotlight. The last session was fun, normal enough for the most part but then at the end I said my thank yous and goodbyes, and each of them said them to me which was quite moving as the things they said were unexpected, and before I could leave, they said along the lines of "you've lived here for two years, you have to do do-ah-ge before you go". I had no idea what that was, but before I could say anything they had crowded around me and were in the process of hoisting me up, which they did in what was a crazy tradition of hoisting someone who is leaving aloft and roaring "whaaaaaaaaaaay" on each hoist. It was cool, and when they put me down they ran out and surrounded the car as I got in, and then chased after it as I drove off waving and saying goodbye. That sounds weird doesn't? It was, but in a good way, they are childish in some respects but its so refreshing too. It was a great goodbye, I told them I probably wouldn't be back as I want to leave Osakikamijima as a great memory, and coming back might spoil it, I would dearly love now to have a 2 hour training session with these guys now and sit around for a laugh after it though. I miss them a lot.

It was goodbye in each school as well, and they really go to town on these. In each case, the whole school piled into the gym and a formal setting was arranged where the principal would come forward and say his piece about me, and then 3 students came forward with flowers, gifts, and then a piece read out in English, and then each class presented me with hand-written pieces saying various goodbyes and tributes. It was all too much really, not in that they overdid it or anything, but more the fact that it was all so major and it all happened so close together that I couldn't really take it all in and found myself feeling numb for the most part. The ceremonies in the schools were a lot like that, very big and monumental feeling, however, the final classes were more relaxed and they were really cool as I brought my laptop in and hooked it up to the overhead in each class, and just did a class of showing my photos and telling stories and things. All the real stuff of what they thought of me at first came out as we were good enough friends at that point to not be shy and so on, and it was fun. The going away speeches were nice, a lot of tears from the teachers as compliments from foreigners (in Japanese) go a long way with them, and I said some nice things about them and talked about my first impressions and how welcome I was made feel. Nice days, I was relieved when they were over which is not to say I didn't enjoy them, but I wanted them to be perfect and to leave with good memories, and they were.

Then there was a whole slew of going away enkais or office parties. These were fun too. In Japan, enkais start out all formal and stiff with speeches here and there, and everyone sitting up and being all formal, and then they start drinking and within 25-30 minutes the whole attitude ahs changed and its easy going and fun. Each of these were the same, I had to give a small speech at each one, then the vice principal, then the principal, then they started proper. A lot of fun nights, I can barely remember each one individually as they happened over the course of a week and a lot of them were on consecutive nights, exhausting on both physically and emotionally, but worth it all. Lots of gifts, lots of stories, lots of people saying things they wanted to say but didn't have the courage in a way during normal time, lots of well wishing, lots of good stuff all round.

After all these, that was nearly it. Few trips to see some of my favourite people who were not in on the parties but who I had gotten to know well, my old boss, my judo coach and a few others, and then it was time to wrap it all up, post all my stuff home, get my apartment ready to hand over, close all my accounts, and await the final morning. On the second to last morning I wanted to see a final sunrise on the island so I got up at 4.30am and drove to the top of Mt. Kannomine on the island, and waited for it, watching the town wake up from the exact place I was two years previously on my first day. The scenery was absolutely magnificent, no camera can do it justice, and when the sun rose I performed an old Japanese tradition and roared "BBBBBAAAANNNNNZZZAAAAIIIIIII" at the top ofmy lungs for about 20 seconds until I was spent. I took my time going back, had my last day in the office, and then had my final night where I packed fully, walked around the apartment a final time and got it ready to leave, and set the alarm for 5am to go. I was awake long before that with nerves, I don't know about what, but I had an anxiety that wouldn't shift.

The final morning came, I had my bags outside from 4.45am onwards and was just waiting for Kanda to show to take Judy and myself to the ferry. When there, people starting arriving as I knew they would, conversation class students, current teachers, old teachers, current vice principals and principals, and former ones, students, and randoms. It was nice, I said even more goodbyes and these were really final ones, and then the ferry came and it was time. Walked down the ramp to the ferry, said a final final address from the steps of the ferry as they all watched on, and then boarded and went to the overlook and began the waving where they all reciprocated as the ferry pulled away, and this continued all the way until we were out of sight. I was numb again, watching these folks disappear from view along with the island was a strange moment. I was excited, it was time to leave and begin the next stage of my life, and I have so much to look forward to, but so many things happened while this was my home and I had so many truly great memories and events happen in that place that to see it like that was tough going. Kanda, myself and Judy stood on the overlook for the entire 30 minute ferry ride, and I was silent, I had nothing to say really as I was so deep in my own thoughts.

I got a huge amount of out Japan, certainly volumes more than I gave to it even though I thought I did a good job as a teacher and an ambassador for my culture and so on, but what I took from Japan has been life changing. Not material stuff, but experiences, the best fiance a man could ever ask for, memories which will last a lifetime, some wonderful friends who I had great times with, some days which I feel truly blessed to have been involved in, and an insight into a culture and people so different from those of my own that it can only be described as an experience of the highest order and one which I'll never ever forget. Its shaped the person I am now more than I thought it would, it had its down points and there were times I thought that I was finished and didn't want to be there any more, but overall, I have only positives to say of my JET experience and count it as something truly remarkable in the truest sense of the word. I miss it a lot, the excitement of being in the US with Tiffany for the short time I was there and then in Ireland for the month to see people, as well as the initial excitement of London meant I hadn't time to think about it, now things are settling down though, I often think back of going for a drive over the mountains in the sun on the empty roads, having a laugh with my old boss, messing around with the judo lads and winding them up, going jogging around the apartment and the laying out on the beach with my book. I do miss it, not enough to ever question my decisions as my life ahead is as exciting as a man's life can be, but it was a wonderful place.

Anyway, enough sappy nostalgia. After I left, (and got a free business upgrade from Narita - Washington....get in!!) I was Washington bound to see the love of my life who I hadn't seen since my trip over in April. This was the last one too, the last time I would only get to see her for a short, fixed time so it was really exciting, and this time I wasn't going back to Japan but on to Ireland, so it all felt different. Business class was nice, really nice, and I milked it for all it was worth by ordering about 5 of everything on the menu which they were only too happy to supply me with. With all the food, space a comfort I could possibly need, the 14 hours went much more quickly than usual stuck back in economy class, and before I knew it I was touching down in DC again, more refreshed than I usually feel. Tiffany was actually away on business and couldn't be there to greet me, but I called as soon as I landed and what a thrill to be in the same time zone and place again. She came the following day, and we had 3 glorious weeks together, seeing friends, organising more wedding stuff, going to dinners and parties, and just hanging out with each other. It was the quickest trip ever, it was a little longer than usual at just under 3 weeks, but it felt like I blinked and all of a sudden it was time to leave for Ireland, such was the wonderful time we had together there. As hard as it is to leave her, and it never gets any easier, we could console ourselves this time knowing that this is the last one and after this time apart the waiting is over and that we have made it. That doesn't make saying goodbye at airports any easier, but this thought has been my motivation ever since.

Well, I left and all of a sudden I was on to Ireland to see the folks for the first time in over a year. I arrived an hour early, but that was cancelled out by having to sit on the apron in the airport for almost an hour waiting for a slot to open, the biggest indicator I wasn't in Japan any more!! I was home though, back where I started two years previously when I showed up way too early and really nervous in July 2006.

Since this, Ive moved to London and after some time trying to get settled down, have begun working, studying and living here at last, and now countdown to my finest hour is fully on. I count myself as truly lucky to have ahead of me the things I have, it hasn't be an easy transition whatsoever, coming over here with an economics degree during financial mayhem was possibly the worst timing imaginable, but all has settled and things are running smoothly.

I don't know whether or not to carry on with this blog. As my predecessor in Japan found out with his, when you are in Japan, everything is noteworthy and pictures of the most trivial and mundane things are worth it, back in reality though its much harder to make things like that into stories.

I have really loved doing this (some might even say I was a "keen blogger".....inside joke), I read over it now and then when I have the time and can remember all of the events perfectly as if they happened yesterday. I always smirk when I read the entry where I first wrote "Tiffany the Texan" on the Fuji trip and think of where we are now, when I see photos of the island and the apartment for the first time and thought at how daunting it all was and by the end I could almost drive from Shosen to my front door with my eyes closed, how stiff and awkward Tabo-san was when I first met him compared to the final time I was in his house for dinner, how difficult it was to remember the formal greeting which I was to say to the office compared to how my Japanese was by the time I left the island, certainly not at any level which could be deemed proficient but good enough to be able to make all my work colleagues laugh at parties and to join in the jokes with the lads at judo. All of these and how they all changed over time have been great to be a part of, but its time to move on and get ready for my new life here.

Thank you all for reading it, sorry for the long gaps between them where I was too busy/lazy to spend the time to write it. What really made it special was that the emails I wrote to tell people I had posted it often resulted in back and forth chats, and those were fantastic and just what I needed sometimes when the island felt quite lonely.

To finish here are some photos which I could never fit into any blogs but thought should be included as they were very much part of my time there.

Funny story to this photo, one of my schools got a random call one day from Asahi Newspaper (one of Japan's daily nationals) from a journalist who had read the town newsletter, and they wanted to do a quick story about the foreigner who got a black belt in Japan. This was the photo they used, and the journalist came out to the school and asked me a bunch of questions, and a month later it was in the newspaper with a story beside it. The newspaper itself is at home and Ill put it in when I get my hands on it.

This one was quite a random photo. The woman in the photo is Akko, without whom every JET in the history of JET to come to the island would be lost and would probably end up going home after a week. She sorts out just about everything for us, and also works as a maths teacher in one of the schools. Always thought this one was funny, can't even remember why this was taken, there was a camera in one of the classrooms one day and this was the result!!

Nothing too special, this was a combination of two of my favourite classes in a photo from my final day of teaching. Great kids.

This was also one of my favourite students. Asumi, she found my face hilarious, its peculiar, she could not take me seriously and this was me on the last day trying to explain something to her, and I thought the gravitas of the situation would make her take it seriously. I began to speak, and as usual, this was the reaction.

Finally, this was from that wonderful wonderful trip to Hokkaido from a long time back. Always like this photos, just us having the famous Genghis Khan dinner from the local place. I think we have a similar photo somewhere back, but this one was always one I wanted to include.
Thanks to everyone for reading and emailing,
God bless,
Graham

The Judo Kid......get in!!

2008-03-30T21:17:00.006+09:00

Not much to say really. Back in December, after 5 weeks of almost daily training in a freezing cold dojo with one other person for the demonstration, the time had finally come to take the black belt test. I already had 12 points and 13 are needed, so on the morning of it, had to fight one more competition where I got more points than I needed, and finally Junpei and I were ready for the demo. Went great, we were right in front of the 7th, 8th and 9th dan judges and they were impressed from what I heard, and a couple of weeks later I got a call from the club telling me I had passed and that they would have a belt with my name embroidered on it as well as an official framed certificate from the judo head office in Tokyo soon.

This is the belt obviously with Gu-ra-mu written in katakana, the Japanese phonetic alphabet for foreign words and names, and here is the certificate which will be framed and put on my wall as soon as I'm settled in a new place. The photo at the top was when I wore the whole thing into school to show the kids, good day, they can't get their head around the fact that judo is so popular around the world, so seeing me wearing what is essentially samurai warfare attire never ceases to amaze them.

In the final run up to finishing in Japan now, about 10 weeks to go and then my time here will be over. Gonna do a final few posts soon before I leave, stay tuned for them.

Hope everyone is well,

Graham

Christmas USA!!

2008-01-27T16:25:00.017+09:00

Shortly after Tiff went back to the US to get started on the work side of things, we decided that Christmas and New Years would be a perfect time for me to make a trip over as it would cover several things we needed. First it would give us a chance to go and see the Church and reception venue for the wedding in Washington DC, and as well as that we could finalise a few other things that needed to be addressed with regard to the wedding as well as make a trip to New York for the four days around Christmas. With my tickets bought and all things in place, I set off at 5.30am one cold December morning and made it to the ferry on time to begin the long long trek from the remote island of Osakikamijima to the east coast of the USA. A long journey, everything ran on time and there were no hitches but it was still a tough one as the flight from Tokyo was 13 and a half hours, but waiting on the other side of the doors was my fiancee whom Id been dying to see since the day she went back a couple of months earlier!! It was only 11am Washington time though and Id been awake for over 24 hours already by that point so it was a tough day to get through, but I was so glad to be there and to have all the waiting over at last.

Washington DC is a cool place, lots and lots of history and things to see and do, so for our first day we set off to do some sightseeing around the US capital. There were so many that its hard to remember which building was which and what we were looking at, but I remember distinctly the US supreme court, the capitol hill buildings, the WW2 memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and what we called the Forrest Gump lake outside it, as well as the White House. First stop was here where we got to meet some surprisingly friendly security guards as well as some of the midwest's craziest tourists who were over on the east for a sightseeing trip. The place had a really nice feel to it as there were massive Christmas trees everywhere and people in generally cheerful mood, save for the always grumpy looking metro workers (more on them later!!!). In DC all of these sights are very close together and are connected by very long and scenic roads and lawns, and in winter time they were very nice to wander around. The roads are flanked by the famous musems like the Smithsonian and the natural history museum with others like the aviation museum and a few others that I cant think of right now. Huge, impeccably kept buildings with no entry fee and are open all the time for tourists, impressive. Anyway, we wandered around all of these sights for most of the day, my favourite being the WW2 memorial which leads to the pond up to the Lincoln Memorial, shown in so many films and things that it was like walking around a film set. As a true sign of the times, when I saw big Abe sitting in his chair overlooking the lake, the first thing I thought of was Lisa Simpson appealing to him for help with her moral dilemma in an episode of The Simpsons, not something to be proud of, but there ya go!! The speeches inside the memorial are cool to read, everyone has heard the opening lines of them but for me it was a first chance to read them in full and think about the motivations behind what he was saying and how masterful a man of words Lincoln was. Not only a place of great spectacle, but also quite a thoughtful place to walk around. The WW2 memorial has a lot of info on the people who died during the US' involvement in it, and then later on the Vietnam War Memorial is a tough one to walk through as it literally has every name of every US soldier who died during that time, and its not even that long ago as it only ended in the mid 70's. Whether or not you agree with the war or not, or war in general, it occured to me as I walked through it and saw all the names of these folks that if I listed the names of every person I knew or considered a friend, it would only take up a tiny fraction of the wall as it stretched for quite a distance, a thoughtful time to see it. I didnt take any photos of it as I thought that a bit tactless, considering as there were people there who were looking at the names of loved ones who had been lost in it, but it was a reflective moment. Finally we saw the White House which is actually the most underwhelming of them all, as you can only see it from quite a distance unless you want to stand in a mile long queue to take a tour (ehmm, no!!) of one of the wings of it, but it was a great day of walking and sightseeing. We finished that evening with a trip to see the Church we are to be married in, and then for dinner in the wedding reception venue. Both were actually beyond our wildest dreams in terms of how perfectly they suited our envisioned goal for the wedding, but I am gonna save the pictures for the added effect for everyone coming over. Its worth it, utterly spectacular.

Only a couple of days after getting there we began another exciting trip, this time a four day excursion to New York City. What is there to say about NYC, one of the most famous places in the world and 4 days including Christmas Eve and Day was an event Id been looking forward to for months. We got a bus from DC all the way up there and the first glimpse of it from the bus window made me start to feel excited as its something Ive seen so many times in postcards and on tv, but its quite a spectacle. They really weren't joking when they said it was fast paced, standing down off the bus in downtown Manhattan with a suitcase and now idea where we were going was one daunting experience, fast crowds and pouring rain with these huge buildings on either side of every street, and its hard to know how to get your barings as stopping in the street is enough to get you trampled on in those crowds. We got to our hotel and took a rest, and than began to think about what we were gonna do for the few days we were there. We had some activities planned like a Christmas Day broadway show, but other than that it was a blank canvas in terms of what to do with our time. We decided, we aren't locals so there was no point pretending to be, so instead of trying not to look like tourists and all that, why not get the tourist bus and go from there, which we did. A great idea it turned out to be too. Opened topped tour bus was our mode of transport, the first of which started right in the middle of Time Square and went all the way around Manhattan and down to the Battery Park area where you can catch a gimpse of the Statue of Liberty. It was cold, really cold as the North East gets a brutal winter, but we were both so excited at seeing all the sights of it. As many times as you see it on tv, it really is something to see the high rise buildings everywhere and have so many places from films pointed out to you and so on. The bus was full of tourists in various states of discomfort at the cold, I wasn't too bothered and Tiff was well wrapped up, however the tour guide kept making fun of the poor Venezuelans and Floridians who looked like they were having the worst time of their lives. The bus tour operated on several loops, and we got the downtown ones as well as uptown and Brooklyn, the only disappointing one being uptown which was kinda boring as it mainly consisted of "an apartment in this building costs 3 million dollars, Alec Baldwin lives over there, Bruce Willis lives here" and so on, but the downtown ones and especially around Central Park and the like, were great. Brooklyn was cool too as it offers great views from the bridge and from the other side of the island, and it itself is an interesting place to drive around, although they day we did that was especially cold and my face was literally numb at the end of that one. Speaking of central park, on Christmas Day we had a very typical NY Christmas as we went for lunch in a Malaysian restaurant, and then went to Central Park where we got a horse and carriage ride around. Really nice, the guy guiding the horse was Armenian and really seemed to like us (to the annoyance of the folks in the queue who thought we had been unfairly taken without having to wait 2 hours like some others did!!) and was full of chat as we went around, even taking these photos for us. Thats a really nice part of NY, down amongst the high end hotels and central park, really nice place to be, especially on Christmas Day with the sun shining and the park full of people out wandering. Later that day, after the carriage ride and the park walk, we went to Radio City to see the show which Tiffany's Mum had gotten us tickets for for Christmas, the Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes. Wow, I know Ive been using similar expressions but there really isnt much else to say about this show, it really is something. Its a collection of dancing, singing, acting, and acrobatics, with the Nativity Story in there too for good measure. Cameras are frowned upon so only a couple of shots, and then afterwards to little Italy for a meal the likes of which I hadn't had in a long long time, rounding off a perfect day. A wonderful 4 days.

The rest of the time we spent getting things in place for the wedding, but as I said Im gonna save these photos cos it really would spoil the surprise. I got to meet a lot of Tiffany's friends for the first time which was really good, finally good to put voices to photos.

A wonderful trip, over much too quickly for my liking but we packed so much into the two weeks that I was satisfied it was worth all the planning. It was great to see my wonderful fiancee again for a couple of weeks and get to meet all her friends and her housemates and so on, and to be among western culture again with nice food and spoken English and the like was a welcome change from Japan.

Check back in soon for some more nice news,
Graham

.........and finally!!

2007-11-05T10:41:00.000+09:00

If you've read my previous updates you'll have seen that I had but two days left on my trip home and still had one monumental thing left to do.

The trip home covered many things, introducing Tiffany to my family, my friends, to Ireland itself, and to introduce each of these to her, and to see my big sis get married. However, those in themselves would have been plenty in the normal run of things, but several months ago I made the easiest decision of my life in regard to where I wanted to go from this point onwards, but also with whom I wanted to spend my time with from here onwards. I thought, and prayed, and thought.....and prayed, and one evening in May, just after we returned from Borneo decided that while we were in Ireland, I would take a knee on O'Connell bridge and ask for Tiffany's hand. The day would be exactly one year to the day since we climbed Mt. Fuji together, and I also wanted to have introduced her to all my family and friends before proposing so that they had all met her beforehand. I decided to do it, and embarked on planning everything to work out perfectly for that night.

I began engagement ring shopping, which, is tough, very tough. After a couple of aborted attempts in Hiroshima City, I decided on a highly recommended and reputed online diamond seller, and with the aid of an "as you shop" skype call which they offer for advise and expert knowledge, chose the diamond, then the setting, and then the band, and they set about building it for me after I settled up for it. I decided to have it delivered to Ireland for the day after we arrived there for the trip, highly risky as I would have to get it into the house undetected and hide it somewhere where nobody would stumble across it, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy!! I kept the whole thing a secret from everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, and this in itself was tough as I was dying to tell eveyone my plans but knew it would spoil the moment if I did. Despite some close calls (like the diamond company phoning me literally 20 seconds after I left Tiff's apartment one sunday night to give me an update on the ring building process, dont want to think how I could have explained that one away had I still been inside!!) the whole thing remained a secret, and we left for Ireland with me knowing I had a task ahead of me to make this run smoothly.

The day after we arrived, I saw a van pull up and a delivery man get out with a decent sized box. I knew it must be the ring, ran to the door, signed for it, ran upstairs and hid the whole thing in the back of my wardrobe with loads of clothes over it. When asked who it was I told a fib and said it was just books from amazon for the flight home (ahem!!). That night, I got up in the middle of the night and opened it as quietly as possible, unwrapped the fifty million layers of bubble wrap, and finally got to the shiny box with ring inside. It took me back for a second or two, and the realisation then hit that this was real.

In put it out of my mind to avoid nerves until the day when I had planned. That night, we were to meet friends from college for dinner. First hitch came when I realised that the box it came in was not easy to conceal at all, and after a couple of shot down attempts to wear a jacket, had to go with a pair of slightly too casual looking baggy combat trousers to hide it in. I was worried it was showiung through the cargo pocket, but it was well enough concealed so nobody could see it. Anyway, dinner was great with the college folks, and we decided on a drink in Temple Bar afterwards. The nerves began rising as I knew the moment was drawing near, so I excused myself and went outside to ring the US to ask Tiffany's mum Carleen for her consent. After several long rings I almost panicked as the answer was not forthcoming and it was a problem I hadnt forseen, but she answered and I nervously said my piece. She was in shock, and after almost giving me a heartattack by jokingly saying "no, absolutely not", gave her consent and wished me well. I returned and tried to rejoin the conversation innocently, and then it was time to go. I suggested going for a walk to see the city at night, even though the suggestion was strange as it wasn't a great night as it was cold and a little drizzly. We walked, at all of a sudden we were on the boardwalk coming up to O'Connell Bridge. On the bridge however there was a whole host of what we Dubliners call "drunk young fellaz" and I didnt want to do this in front of them for a number of reasons, and realised that where we stood, on the boardwalk just in front of the bridge was absolutely perfect as Dublin looked wonderful from there, so as we stood gazing at the bridge and the river at night, I took a deep breath and took a knee, said my piece without choking..........and she said yes!! Absolutely wonderful, so surreal looking back on it as I was lightheaded with the amount of emotions running through me, but it was a truly once in a lifetime feeling of absolute ecstasy. Wonderful、Im remembering the feeling now again as I write this, and it hasnt diminished in the slightest. We drove from town to tell my parents and all the people they were out with as they knew nothing of my plans beforehand, and even though it was after 12 at night I then stood out to phone all my friends and tell them the news, possibly the best calls Ive ever made as each of them said some of the nicest things to me about us. Great great night, one we'll remember forever, August 30th, 2007.

Since then we've had a wonderful time as Tiffany's Japanese contract finished on Septmeber 1st and for the month of September she moved to the island to stay with me until returning home to the US on November 2nd to begin her new job. A great month. The locals were so happy to hear our news that they threw an engagement party for us where they dressed us up in ancient traditional Japanese kimonos, the real deal stuff with all the layers and proper ties and knots and all that. A real honour, these items are sacred to these folks and are part of their family's heritage, so to let a couple of "gaijin" wear them was a real compliment. They take ages to put on and embarrassingly enough you need someone to literally dress you to wear them, but it was worth it for the experience.

Thats almost it, Tiff left for home from Osaka about a month ago and since that Ive already organised my Christmas and New Years trip to visit until I move there after Im finished here.

While in Ireland we got great news that my home church Lucan Presbyterian should be able to help get me set up to begin my theology career in the US which suits our plans absolutely perfectly, so all this great news has given us a future which we are immensely excited about.

Thanks for reading this far if you have, hope the new format of smaller posts has made it more enjoyable, and please email me with any news or for a catch up,
Graham

(grahamruddle@gmail.com)

Trip to Ireland.

2007-11-05T09:42:00.000+09:00

Just after Judy arrived and got settled, I had to leave with Tiffany to return to Ireland for my sister's wedding and also to introduce my family and friends to my wonderful girlfriend who I met here. We had been planning this for months at it felt at times like the departure date would never arrive as the heat in Hiroshima was literally unbearable at the time, so the thought of an Irish summer was a welcome one!! The day arrived and we set off early that morning, although we also had another disaster as at the check-in they looked up from checking Tiffany passport and said "where is your visa or letter of invitation to enter China?". I felt the dread rise instantly at the remembrance of the Malaysian nightmare we had, and was ready to go off on one, but they realised almost immediately that we were only stopping over in Shanghai so it was no problem. Unfortunately we were booked in on China Eastern Airways, which meant the chairs were all made for 5'7 and slim Chinese people, and I don't fit that description, so the 14 hours from Shanghai to London was, well, lets just say it wasn't all that comfortable. In Heathrow airport we waited at the AerLingus terminal for our flight to Dublin and it was so strange to be surrounded by local Dubs again, just listening to the accents and stories felt so strange. Tiff thought they sounded great for the parts she could understand, so for any bus drivers from Finglas reading this, you are now stars in the eyes of one Texan!! The Heathrow Dublin flight was pretty uneventful except for the lovely attendant who chose to literally shove me to wake me up as we were coming in to land with a very eloquent "we're landing soon, you have to wake up, put that arm rest down" to accompany it. I felt at home instantly, Japanese politeness and manners have their charms, but there's no place like home. After about 24 hours of travelling we emerged through the doors into arrivals and for the first time in ages I saw my parents and finally got a chance to introduce them to Tiff. Lovely moment, although overshadowed by the realisation that although I knew Ireland's weather is by and large awful, I thought the final weeks of August would be nice, but was wrong, and we were freezing walking out of the airport into the blustery outdoors which felt like a cold Hiroshima winter's night. Back to the house to meet everyone and see my old place, as well as to give Lana and Adrian their wedding present of an authentic Japanese tea set, crazy feeling with Tiff sitting in my old living room having tea with the folks!!

The trip home was fantastic, and we packed it pretty full with meeting my friends from school and college, as well as a trip out to the west to see to Cliffs of Moher and meet up with Rob and Trish who lived in Hiroshima during last year. Great trip, the road trip to get there was an event in itself as we got to see the beautiful scenery of the west, and as I didn't want Tiff to just see Dublin, it gave her a chance to see what the majority of Ireland looks like with the rural setting.

Back in Dublin we set about seeing the city. I don't actually know all that much about Dublin City in the historical sense, so like every Dubliner I have a smattering of knowledge here and there without much worthwhile. To combat this, we took the Dublin Bus Tour, which was absolutely brilliant!! Really was, such a surprise. Informative, fun, and gives a great view point of the places you visit. We got on at Lower O'Connell street and it went up D'Olier Street, around College Green up Nassau Street, around Merrion Square and then out toward Kilmainham past Guinnesses (where we also made a visit, Tiff seen here balancing a pint in the squashed lift surrounded by Norwegians!!) and back in through the Phoenix Park and then past Parkgate Street up the quays back to O'Connell street before rounding Parnell Square back to where we started. The driver was also the narrator so he was full of songs and chatter the whole time, although only myself and the Germans for some reason knew the words to the songs he was singing. I was shamelessly gorging on western food at home as I do miss it out here, so we were frequenting all my favourite places in the city on my insistence, mostly the epicurean food hall though for the very Irish "Taco-Taco" lunch!! We got an amazing day for all this city touring, uncharacteristically hot and sunny, and in this climate Dublin looked wonderful, so the walk all around Grafton Street and Trinity was pretty stunning. During the evening we made trips to the old local to meet my lifelong friends, some of which I hadn't seen in a couple of years, and those were some of my favourite nights of all. It was good to catch up with them as as I said I hadn't seen some of them in a long time, and exchanging stories from our travelling lives and also stories from the past made for a night Ill remember for a long time. Great craic, they all loved Tiff as I knew they would, and all in all I couldn't have asked for more as everything worked out perfectly.

The main reason for being home however was that my older sister Lana was getting married to her fiance Adrian. They had been together for several years and had recently decided to move to Ireland to settle down. The wedding day went off very well, again with a very lucky sunny day which is a gamble at all times in Ireland!! The setting for the hotel was in a beautiful hotel in Leixlip, just outside Dublin in Co. Kildare, and on the day the whole setting looked wonderful as the wedding guests enjoyed the ceremony and reception which followed. Celebrations went long into the night with both contingents getting on famously, no hitches whatsoever and I can now boast a brother-in-law!!

The rest of the trip was spent relaxing and visiting friends. For me mass consumption of home food was the order of the day and for Tiff a hair appointment with an English speaker was a luxury not afforded in Japan, so she took full advantage!! As I expected would happen, it was over all too quickly, and all of a sudden it was down to our last couple of days. I still had one massive thing to do which I had been planning meticulously for months, and for that I'm going to need a separate entry, so read the next one for that news!!

A JET arrives, and another goes home!!

2007-11-05T09:24:00.000+09:00

As the island is so slow paced, any news is big news. When the new stock of food hits the supermarkets, when one of the kids in school wins a sporting event, when the English teacher gets a haircut, any of these is almost cause for celebration. So, with the end of our first year approaching fast, we began asking Tabo about the new English teacher who was to be Dave's replacement. He was very coy about answering and in proper Japanese fashion gave away very little, but then over time we wore him down with constant questions until he let on who it was to be and where from and all that. Seems kinda petty looking back, but thats what being here does to ya!! Anyway, we learned it was to be Judy Kroo (seen above beside Tiff in my boss' family restaurant), originally Hungarian but a resident of New York City who was to arrive on August 2nd a year after I arrived as she is a group A JET like me. With Dave holidaying in Thailand, Tabo came by my house early one hot and humid August morning and picked me up, and we set off for the airport to collect our new island resident. Again in proper Japanese fashion, Tabo rocked up to my apartment jubilant at the thought of a road trip with the westerner, so dictionary and flask of tea in hand, we set off way too early which meant we stopped off to look at the temples in Takehara, then went for ramen and more tea, and then a stop off at the single most beautiful house Ive ever been in to visit Tabo's brother in law and his wife for coffee and a chat. Lovely folks, my Japanese was getting the workout of a lifetime but its one of those things which improves without you realising it so I was able to chat away pretty well and got most things across, referring now and again to the my mobile phone's dictionary. We stayed there for a couple of hours with the old couple taking a great interest in me point out places Ive been to on their huge world map, and then we left to meet Judy's flight. (A couple of weeks later, we were in this house again with Judy so these photos are from that visit, not the original one when ti was just myself and Tabo. The old couple got two westerners to chat with that day, probably for the first time ever.) The day we met Judy though was hugely nostalgic for me as it was a year to the day since I was on the other side of the waiting screen, and standing there holding the welcome sign surrounded by all the folks I arrived with doing the same for their incoming JETs, was a poignant moment. Judy arrived, had a formal intro with Tabo, and I began my task of translator for the next couple of weeks which was filled with welcome parties and trips to the city to organise driving permits and the like. A tiring time but worth it as the whole time was a reminder how tough it was for me at the start. Shortly after, Dave was to leave the island to return to Canada, and on another hot summer morning we brought him and his bags to the ferry port and then onto the airport to wave goodbye. Another weird feeling, made me imagine my departure next August, and it was like a changing of the guard as now Dave was gone and Judy was beginning her time here.

All the best Dave, good luck in England.

Next blog entry will cover my trip home, check back for that in a few days.

Graham

Judo

2007-11-05T08:43:00.000+09:00

Judo has been going extremely well, so much so that I am now only 1 point away from getting an authentic Japanese black belt. It started with my second points tournament which was in the same place as the first one, the difference being that this time I wasn't suffering from a throat infection and subsequently didn't have a temperature of over 100!! Same format as well, 4 matches, although this time the quality of opposition was higher and the time between matches was longer. First match was over quickly as I did a lame hiza-guruma which got him down but not for a full win but I got on top for the hold down. Second guy was a bit of a nightmare as although it was an easy enough win, it was one of the nastiest points of my competition lifetime. I got him down the same as the first guy, but this time I couldn't get into position for a hold down. However, I did get him into a side arm lock (or ju-ji-gatame in Japanese) and secured that, thinking I had it on and he would tap out. He didn't though, and in the heat of the comp I cranked it hard and in doing so, really hurt the poor guy who then tapped out. Think it was a dislocation which is quite common in judo if someone refuses to tap out from it, wasn't a nice feeling though. Third and fourth matches were much better, higher level opponents but I was well prepared this time and I won with good throws, a tomoe-nage seen here on the right in which you can see the Professor laughing in the background and also a sumi-gaeshi seen here on the left. Both of these throws are called "sacrifice throws" in that you have to roll onto your own back and throw your opponent over your head, risky but spectacular when they work. Great day overall, brought the tally to 8-0 meaning at this point I only needed 5 more wins in these grading competitions to get an authentic Japanese black belt or shodan as its called in Japanese. Again, Tiff was there to take all these photos and to keep me from getting agitated during all the waiting.

Training has also been going very well and recently my predecessor Ben came back to the island to attend his friend Mori's wedding. While here, he came to training on my request to take some photos so I could show people how I spend every weekday between 5 and 7. Unfortunately my recently embroidered judo uniform was in the cleaners which was a shame as it has グラム　(gu-ra-mu which is the closest the Japanese language can get to saying my name!!) and アイルランド　or ai-ru-ra-n-do embroidered on the back in competition style. The really high end guys weren't there which was lucky for me as most of the photos would have been on me getting slammed, but these photos were very good, showing the drills we do first and then the open practice later.

These two gems came from the open practice. Poor Junpei felt the wrath of my Euro style o-soto-gari, get down......

.....and stay down.

Next was Junichiro getting the sumi-gaeshi Id been practicing for months and used in the competition.

Been having endless success with this one the last while. As I'm right handed and left footed, I can do these kinda reversed with a right hand drip and left foot action. Works well.

Finally, the group. Only about half were there the night Ben came along with the camera, but still a great photo. Great bunch of guys, having this every night during the Winter keeps me from going crazy with boredom down here!!

Just last weekend after Tiff went back I had another tournament and won that one too, bringing the tally to 12-0 and just needing one more win to get the black belt. The black belt competition is on December 16th so I have to practice this...

Nage-no-kata or なげのかた　

to pass the final exam after one more tournament win.

Thanks for reading, check back soon for the story of Dave's departure and the new JET's arrival!!

Graham

Mass updates coming soon.

2007-10-29T11:44:00.000+09:00

Hello again to everyone who has been interested in this page.

Just a quick note to let you know that I haven't forgotten about it and that there will be a whole host of updates coming soon with all sorts of news and events. I will also be using a slightly different format so instead of one long post with everything thrown in, Im gonna try and break it down and have a different post for each event so it shouldn't be as long and drawn out to read.

Will email soon when Ive completed them,
Graham

Borneo, baseball, Japanese sports day, peculiar boardgames and finally a judo tournament!!

2007-05-24T13:40:00.001+09:00

What a time we had in Borneo, a trip ranging from near disastrous admin screw-ups to wonderful days of rafting, exotic beaches, night time turtle watching, and a host of new acquaintances. First off though, the nightmare airport story to beat all nightmare airport stories. We were to fly out from Osaka airport at 0900 on the Thursday morning and as the Shinkansen or bullet train costs about €200, we deicded to take the night bus from Hiroshima to Osaka which cost considerably less and left at 2315 on Wednesday. Not as bad as we were expecting it to be, the coach was designed to be a nightbus so the seats almost fully recline and each person has enough leg room, as well as all the lights being off and the curtains being drawn, although the old man behind us did cause me to utter a few choice words with his incessant snoring and growling in his sleep. Got to Osaka at about 0515 and then another coach got us to the airport in plenty of time to have breakfast before checking in. Well, what we thought would be a formality turned into one of the most stressful 30 minutes of my life. Tiffany hands in her passport, gets the bag weighed and tagged and all that, no bother, then mine. She takes a look at my passport, types some stuff in and then says to me "where is your visa or letter of invitation". "Ehmm.........what?" I replied incredulously as Tiffany made double sure when booking that neither of us needed visas for Malaysia. She said again "you (me) need a visa or letter from Malaysian government for to enter Malaysia". We told her that Irish people didnt need a visa according to our travel agent and that there must be some mistake. However, Japanese-ness overtook her thought process and she lifted all our stuff to once side and called over her supervisor, a woman who almost made me lose my temper. She came over, had a long and extremely fast conversation with the check-in girl which I could only catch a couple of words of before picking up our tickets and passports and walking further down the desk without a word. We followed and already the panic began to sit into my stomach as I thought we were on the brink of a disaster. She flatly said to me, just as the check-in girl, "where is your visa or letter for to enter Malaysia". Again, both Tiff and I, probably in unison, said we were told we didnt need one and that both the US and Ireland we not the countries that required one. Wordlessly she turns away and is on the phone with both of us sure there must be something wrong as its too big a blunder for a travel agent to make and Tiff was so sure to check that as SE Asia is a maze of complicated visa countries and non-visa countries and all that. Im getting nervous standing there as our flight was boarding at the time all this was taking place and she seemed in no rush to get anything done. She comes back to us and says, "Malaysian Embassy is closed and there is a national holiday in Malaysia today so we cannot contact them". Seriously getting stressed now as the "last call for flight XXXX" announcements weren't far away and we were getting nowhere. In Japan, they have a really bad habit of doing nothing of their own accord without direction so you have to constantly prompt them on what to do in situations like these. We then said why not ring the travel agent and ask, which she did but not without giving us a look that said we were pretty much annoying her at this stage. On the phone about a minute before telling us that they don't open for another hour. "So what should we do?" we asked her but she said, as patronisingly as possible, that we would not be on our original flight and that we could take another flight to Hong Kong (our stop over point) and try and see would they let us into Malaysia. The infuriating part was that we knew with 100% certainty that someone had screwed up somewhere as it was just too big an issue for nobody to have noticed it during booking. I said, loudly with my temper starting to go, "Im from Ireland, Republic of Ireland, not Northern Ireland, not Iceland (they sound kinda similar in Japanese), Ireland". Again the patronising grin and kept saying "I cant do anything, its the policy" and then handed us a sheet which said "Countries requiring visas or letters of invitation to Malaysia" which had the war torn countries of Africa and the Middle East with no mention of Ireland. At this point she ran the risk of me injuring her as she said, "Ok, Ive spent enough time, here are your tickets and passports, its up to you what you do now, you can try and get a refund from your travel agent but I dont think it will work, Ive done everything I can" at which point she thrust the stuff back at us with the telephone number of the Malaysian Embassy and turned to deal with someone else. Against our heated protests and appeals to go higher and check our documents again she grinned and blanked us saying "you can do what you want now, I cant do anymore, go away" and turned her back on us. We were stranded, the last call announcements were in full flow, queues bustling past us, and the mental image of getting the bus back to Hiroshima with our unused suitcases to go and try and get a refund for our holiday from the travel agent who would have just said sorry and pointed to there policy of "Its up to the individual to organise visas and HIS Travel cannot be held accountable for any loss based on that" were starting to become a horrible reality. We would have had a good case but as it was their screw-up they probably would have given us flight vouchers or something. Tiff remembered though that HIS have a stand at the airport and decided as a last ditch effort to go over while I stayed and made sure the manager didnt try and leg it on us. She came back with an angry looking HIS rep with the list of countries letter in hand and went straight to the manager and this time I could understand most of it. She said, I think, "This man is from Ireland and there is no visa needed, what is the problem?" (paraphrase, thats the gist, not sure of the exact), to which the manager replied "Eirurando" which is obviously Japanese for Ireland and slowly with a look of horror took my passport again and looked at it as if she was reading her own death sentence when she read the cover. She went so white and her head sank for a second, then the HIS rep and her had a fast and furious coversation that I could only catch bits of but I heard enough to know that the manager had screwed up good and proper and was getting ripped badly by the rep as she had her head bowed and nodding in agreement as Japanese people do when they are getting scolded for a mistake. I said to the manager, angrily buy I couldnt help myself, "what was the problem, did you think it was Iceland? What? What was it? What was all this for?". She did another Japanese trait of trying to giggle the attention away and smile and faun over us to appease us but we werent letting it go at all, and then to my questions she said "I make a big mistake, big mitake, I prefer not to say". Her English got noticably worse when pressed about what had caused me nearly to have a rage attack, but then after us pressing and pressing as our bags were getting put through, she finally and begrudgingly said, "I thought your passport was Israel". Israel!!!!! I was so taken aback that all I could do was laugh at the ridiculousness, obviously the original check in girl (who was suddenly nowhere to be seen) had made a mistake and got Eirurando and Isureiru confused and thought I was an Israeli by misreading my passport (for anyone that hasnt seen the connection, Israel is a Jewish State and Malaysia is a Muslim country, hence Israelis arent too welcome there!!) and then, due to our stressed out condition and the realisation of the potential repercussions of the whole fiasco, the manager whispers to us "is business class ok?". The relief was tinged with annoyance at what was literally a misread passport and what made it worse was the 6 or so times I explicitly said "Ireland" and "Eirurando" in Japanese to her which went to show she wasnt really paying any attention to what we were saying and all our protests were effectively ignored. From there she rushed us through all the queues and checkpoints but not before they had the gall to try and stop Tiff taking some of her toiletries on board in the carry-on, but a proper good outburst from our southerner consisting of "Im serious, you've already mistaken my boyfriend for being an Israeli and and caused us serious stress, you've already caused us to almost miss our holiday, you need to find a way to get my stuff on board and get this sorted out........now!!" sorted that one out so much so that no more questions were asked, and finally, soaking with sweat from nerves, stress and almost running to get on board, there were are in first class having champaigne and OJ handed around as well as "Mr. Ruddle and Ms. Caroffino, welcome to first class, we will be taking off shortly". When we had settled down we actually laughed about it, but that was one seriously rough episode the likes of which I never want to go through again, and as cool as first class was, it wasnt worth that drama. However, first class is the way to travel. Id never got a chance to travel up there before so it was a new experience. We had the prawn salad with garlic bread and lobster pasta as well as a fine assortment of cheeses and crackers for the appetiser before the maincourse of a fillet steak with nicely cooked roasted spuds and veg, and then Hagen-Dazs ice cream for desert. I was totally going for it as I thought it right to do so for all the trouble it took to get there, so on the drinks menu there was a few mocktails (cocktails with no alcohol) which were delicious and as such I was ordering one every 4 or 5 minuites. Im guessing they are tough to make as they are made there and then, and at one stage they gave me a massive glass to hopefully keep me from ordering any more, but that one got downed in one go and I ordered another immediately!! Come desert time I ordered so many different types of coffee and icecream that I could tell they knew I was a total chancer and had no real place being there, what did I care though, it was that airlines fault we were there so why not? The chair you get is enormous with massive leg space and it almost fully reclines, the tv works for once and has a massive choice of films and tv shows from all over the world, the service is almost instant and each of the stewards seem genuinely happy to get you more stuff. Tiff was getting embarrassed at how much stuff I was getting but it didnt stop me. The only drawback was that it was only a 3 and a half hour flight so it flew by (no pun intended) and was over before we knew it. Its not worth the extra money as it tends to be 3 times the price of economy class, but was a nice treat to see it. The rest of the trip to get to Malaysia was pretty uneventful, flew to Hong Kong, waited around there with the usual wandering around duty free and finally flew to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo exhausted but glad we were finally there. We got to Kota Kinabalu and straight off the bat stayed at the same hostel our friends Nikki and Patrick (also JETs from Hiroshima) were to stay at as they were to be picked up from the airport by the hostel owner Malcolm. Thankfully that hostel had extra room for us so thankfully we didnt have to venture out into the town that late at night to find another place, and to get better acquainted Malcolm took us out to his bar for the evening which was closeby. Good night all round, but so exhausted by the time I lay down that I was out almost instantly. (also, Tiffany thinks I look too stupid in this final photo to include it but I disagree, think it suited the mood perfectly!! I thought she looked lovely as ever in the plane photos, but due to the stress she didnt think she looked her best so I cant include her's!!)

After searching for the hostel district and finding a decent place to stay (after some truly dodgy attempts to find one in the very centre of Kota Kinabalu, email for details!!) we started to organise things we wanted to do while we were there. High on the list was a day trip to go to Sepilok to see the famous Orang-Utangs, a trip to the famous Turtle Island (which lies off the other side of the island near Sandakan) to watch the turtles lay their eggs at night, white water rafting and also some island hopping to get some sun and see some nice beaches. The first activity apart from wandering around the city and sightseeing was to do some island hopping. However, as it turned out, we didnt actually do any hopping but instead got a boat out to just the nicest of the islands off Kota Kinabalu to spent the day. Here, for about the zillionth time in my life, I learned the painful lesson that Im not as resilient to the sun as I thought I was. I do go a very dark brown colour eventually, but eventually is the key word here, not one day in the sun, but I wasnt to be told this so despite Tiff's better advise I headed off onto the beach thinking that Ive been in much hotter sun before and not burned, this should be no problem. It honestly didnt feel that hot, there was a good stiff breeze and at no point did I feel any tell-tale signs of burning or anything like that. We had a great few hours lazing around the beach and going swimming and snorkling and all that, lovely deserted island feeling from the place and we were just ready to go back when the guy came to pick us up at around 6pm. Boat back had some incredible sights, Im not too good on boats usually but once they go quickly and dont rock around all over the place with the waves Im fine, and this one got us back to the shore in no time. That night we had dinner again in a wonderful restaurant we found in which you pick out your food from the raw fare on offer and then they season and barbeque it to perfection, the result of which is one of the nicest meals Ive ever had. Freshly caught stingray (the main feature on the plate, delicious!!) swordfish, tiger prawns, red snapper, as well as other favourites like scewered satay, barbequed corn and barbequed chicken wings. Delicious. However, during a bathroom visit I glanced in the mirror, and Graham Ruddle was not staring back at me, a giant red-spray painted walking lobster was staring back. So red was my skin that I dared not touch it, but when I did there was a big surprise, nothing!! No pain. We took loads of photos as it actually looked really funny, but then, as expected, the pain came a couple of days later and for about the 15th time in my life I was sunburnt and in pain. Aftersun every two hours and walking life frankenstein followed, not fun, but self inflicted so I wont give out too much.

Next was the trip to Sepilok to see the famous Malaysian orang-utans and have a bit of a jungle hike. We had to go to Sandakan to do this which turned out to be a less than fortunate result as Sandakan is the worst of the cities in Borneo that we stayed at. Run down, hardly any foreigners (not that that in itself is a bad thing but in such a tourist driven country no foreigners isnt a good sign), locals who look at you like you're their worst enemy, basically a place we had little or no desire to stay in other than to use it as a midpoint for days out. Looking at the pictures, you can see what we mean!! We got a taxi out to Sandakan (never ceases to amaze me how cheap taxis are in some countries, barely €6 for a 45 minutes trek!!) and then took the tour around the park and finally to the feeding zone where the monkeys climb in and feed for all the spectators. Great craic, felt like a little kid at the zoo again watching them climb the ropes and mess around with each other. Loads of photos and all worthwhile. My sunburn was on the decline as Id blasted my skin with so much aftersun that I was starting to look like an albino, and even the bugs in the jungle stayed away so we could have a good time. As we said, Sandakan was not nice but it did help us meet a couple who were on a world ticket and has stories that made our previous trips seem like a channel crossing. Kate and Dave, both from England but a long way from home having travelled so many obscure regions of South America and Africa. Some of their stories were amazing and their great humanitarian efforts were wonderful to hear about. We met them by chance one night as we were at a restaurant and decided to go for a drink and a chat. About the only upside of Sandakan, dont mean to go on and on about the place but if you ever swing by there you'll be the first to agree.

Sandakan also acted as a midpoint to go to the famous Turtle Island and watch the turtles lay their eggs at night. This was another great trip, most notably for the actual trip to get out there and back. We were picked up by a small minivan at the meeting point at 0800 and in our van was myself and Tiff, some random Finnish guy named Hans, the driver, and then the tour guide, the single most verbose woman in the history of humanity. Seriously!! She never stopped talking. Its not nice to say anything bad about her as she was a lovely woman and loved her job, but she just went on and on and on and over explained/repeated every single thing to be the point of ridiculousness. Anyway, after about 70 mins in the van with her we get out in what I imagine the Florida everglades look like, and cram onto this small boat. Lifejackets on, and we're off through the winding, narrow river which is banked on both sides by high and lush vegetation and made for an incredibly fun and scenic ride. Great photos here, and a beautiful sight as the narrow section ended and we sped out onto the open sea. I think our tour guide had been talking the whole time but the sound of the engine and the swash of the water covered her out. This was a great great boat ride, one of the few I ever enjoyed. The views on all sides were incredible, and before long we pulled into a tiny island set up for us to have lunch, watch a video about turtles laying egss (zzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!) and wander around to meet the indigenous folks. Truly the back of beyond, we were told not be feel weird about walking around these people's houses and gardens and that they were really friendly to the visitors, but it still felt weird at first. Beautiful little island, like a miniature Aruba with way less development, no industry whatsover bar visitors to Turtle Beach stopping by for the lunch/video combo. After wandering around (covering up in the sun this time!!) we got back on board the boat and headed off for Turtle Island itself. Same sort of scenery as before, and before long we pulled in to a bigger island with visible houses and a main centre. Fair number of people there, and some beautiful scenery. With an afternoon lazing around the beach and swimming (and Tiffany getting harrassed by the drunk New Zealanders who then seemingly congratulated me on being Irish!!) we then got ready for dinner but not before noticing one of the most perfect sunsets Ive ever seen. Our favourite photo comes from there, look at this just to the right, one for the scrapbook. This was early in the evening after being given free reign of the island in the meantime. We sat out for hours in that exact spot chilling out until it got dark, and then at last it was "Turtle Time". After much specualting and sitting around, in front of all of us in the dark of night at about 11pm a turtle, a humongous one at that, walks up in front of everyone and starts digging oblivious to our collective presence. This continues for about 35 minutes until she stops, and casually goes back the way she came, leaving us wondering what just happened and the tour guides angry at us for making too much noise and scaring her off. About an hour later when everyone is passing out asleep waiting, our lovely tour guide comes flying out of nowhere shouting "turtle time, group A" and off we trecked across the cold white sand with the moon acting as the light source (which was almost surreal it looked so perfect!!) to watch a turtle dig a massive hole in the sand and lay about 40 eggs. After that, they were brought back and they showed us how they incubate them to assure survival. Sadly no photos made it as the light was too bad to see anything properly, but it was a nice sight to watch them first with the turtle laying eggs and then later watching then release the ones who are ready into the water to have a go at it. Only a small number survive but it was nice to see them all released. We went to bed exhausted but happy with the experience.

Finally it was back to Kota Kinabalu and one thing which the thoughts of made me nervous. As Ive said in other posts, Im not into rollercoasters, rocking boats, anything that messes with the inner balance as my inner ear is destroyed from childhood ear infections, so the thoughts of "White Water Rafting" didnt fully fill me with enthusiasm. After a truly crazy train ride out to the place where we literally had to do an Indiana Jones impression to get onto the carriage (accompanied by a great couple from Peninsular Malaysia), we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere. We then had to collect a helmet and life jacket, listen to a safety lecture which made the experience sound suicidal, and finally walk down to the river and prepare to begin. These pictures are golden, really like em, they take them from the sides and then you can buy them from the later. It was actually really fun, but the first rapid (which they tell you after is the most extreme!!) put to rest any notions that they were having us on when they said lots and lots of people fall out and have to be rescued by the solo canoists. The calm part of the river is nice, fast flow and you feel secure enough in the raft even though there is NOTHING physically attaching you to the boat. Then the pace picks up a little and you round the corner to a scary sight, huge and erratic waves going in every direction and the boat goes right into the middle of them. You get launched up about 10 feet off the water level, the water opens up beneath you and you drop and good 20 feet down while a gigantic wave develops overhead and it then crashes into the boat when you rise out of the dip. I was actually launched out of the boat before Tiff pulled me back in by the life jacket. Repeat this pattern about 4 times and thats the first rapid over. We all let a huge roar of relief go when we looked around and realised we got through and everyone was still aboard. Then you paddle over to the side and watch all the other teams negotiate it. Its hilarious to watch, it looks equally as scary from the safe side. One Japanese team going flying up to it, all roaring in unison and going 150% with the paddles as you'd expect from them, then they disappear under the first wave, and as they come out there are only 4 of 10 left in the boat with the rest swimming to the side or waiting to get picked up. 8 rapids in total if I remember right, the rest a bit of an anticlimax after the first one but great fun. If you're wondering why myself and the Malaysian guy (the guy from the couple we travelled with!!) are the only ones padding like mad in the photos while the rest calmly watch on (even mockingly in one of the photos where the guy behind me is looking at me going nuts with the paddle like Im a moron!!), the front corner guys are the guys who basically steer the boat, the others are just for support and the ones in the middle are for holding the rowers in when they are about to get pitched out, so we (myself and Ernie the Malaysian) look like posers in all these photos but trust me, we were absolutely not posing, more concentrating on not getting flung out and keeping the boat going straight.

Our remaining days were spent in Kota Kinabalu taking it easy eating at our favourite restaurant and finishing the holiday on a quiet note. Nice days of wandering around in the sun and then listening to the holiday band at night. Perfect way to finish. We did discover later in the holiday when it was too late that the bargain "hotel" we had stayed at a few nights was a hotel but had a sinister side to it if you know what I mean?? Lets just saying the strange sounds that kept waking us up during the night was not a film in another apartment like we though. The City Inn, beware if you ever venture towards Kota Kinabalu.

That brings us back to Japan. Since getting back nothing too much has happened. We went to see a baseball game with Hiroshima's local team the "Hiroshima Carps" which was a nice day out although i) baseball is seriously boring to watch and ii) the Hiroshima Carps are awful exponents of it. Nice to see all the folks though and have a day together.

Sunday June 10th, the whole island had a community sports day in which all school pupils, teachers, workers and parents of students get together for a day of sport. Not much of it is competition but mostly demonstrations with crazy music going on the whole time. Took these photos the week beforehand as classes were cancelled for the entire week just have practice for this stuff. Weird!! Feats of balance and endurance, funny races with props, weird alright but good fun to watch them as they are so enthusiastic it looks brilliant. I didnt attend however. Ive been promising some judo photos for a while and finally I have some. After having my blackbelt grading cancelled twice as the university professor could not come with me to sign me in, I was beginning to lose hope if they were having me on about letting me compete. They said again, "Joonuh Tensuh, Sssahnday, juuuudo coh-peh-tih-shoh". I said Id do it months ago thinking they would probably cancel, but then friday came and no cancellation as of yet so I packed my bag and set off for the city, planning to go to Kure on Sunday morning and compete to get points towards my black belt or "shodan". However, all day Friday I feel desperately bad, so much so that they sent me home early cos they were only practicing for the sports day and I looked so rough. Sore throat, headache, dodgy stomach. Saturday at Tiff's and it getting worse, I know I have a high fever as Im sweating like mad one minute and then shivering 15 minutes later. All day feel so rough. Missed Irish JET compatriot Trish's birthday bash on saturday night to try and sleep it off, but sunday morning I still felt desperate, even worse than when I went to bed. I hadnt eaten in over a day, had aching joints, almost no energy and sore eyes. I knew I had a throat infection, Ive had about 50 of them in my lifetime with all the trouble I had with tonsils, and here it was again with the worst possible timing. Decided I had to go though. They cancelled twice and may have thought I was being a prat if I cancelled the morning of. So we set off at 0640 on sunday morning to go to Kure. Cant eat, cant drink, dizzy when I stand up and weak and sore joints when I move. Find the place at last and every eye is on us as we enter. The judogi or judo uniform looks weird on a foreigner to them, and they stared in shock at me. Another dude from the club, Junpei, shows up (really really good player, did not want to get paired off against him as its usually a stalemate as size can frustrate his brilliant technique a lot of the time but it takes a lot of energy to fight him) and we stand (barely!!) through the usual Japanese, drawn out opening ceremony. 3 hours of waiting watching the kids chuck each other around and Im feeling no better, at this stage just banking on an adrenaline burst getting me through. Finally its our turn and I get ready to go on by doing some warm ups which nearly make me pass out. For any judo guys reading this, look how perfect Junpei's entry to the uchi-mata is during our warm up here on the left, great to watch. The first guy is small and looks scared to death. Instinctly do my equivalent of a boxers jab (de-ashi-harai) which is my set up for all my best throws and he is flat out with a huge bang for an ippon after about 5 seconds. With his right foot off the mat I pull down hard on my right hand and sweep his left foot out from under him. Huge applause and Im in kind of a shock. Walk of thinking at least I won one, about 15 seconds later Im on again against another scared to death looking guy who pulls a weak effort of a sasae-tsurikomi ashi, and I get on top and hold him down. The 25 seconds of the hold-down took forever, but I knew his arm was folded across himself which is so uncomfortable and he was about to pass out at the buzzer so escaping was not an option for him. 2 wins and Im thinking something is wrong here!! 3rd guy races across and goes for a morote-seoinage which he never had the grip for and I get a deep choke in which makes him submit, 3 wins. Im laughing at this stage, I still dont feel right but they are just so nervous that they try and get it over with too quickly and as a result they make huge mistakes. All the other white belts crowd around me at the side of the mat asking me my height and weight and how old I am and start putting their foot beside mine, and at every revelation there is a huge shrieking "whhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" of amazement from them. The one who had been asking the most (the one Im looking at in the photo just left) suddenly turns, runs around the competition square and stands ready to begin. The Professor says to me "this is match final for tournament today, one win more and you winner. GAMBATTE KUDASAI (Japanese for "do your best please!!)". I hadnt even realised it was a tournament, thought you just had 4 random matches, and then he shoves me out onto the mat and the guy Ive just been talking to is my opponent!! Big guy, and hes won his matches easily too so hes fresh. Im winded though, and all my symptoms come back as we're waiting to start, really didnt feel good cos he was raring to go. He rushes and we grip hard, shove each other around for about 8 or 9 seconds trying to get the dominant grip and he goes in for a big ko-soto-gari. He hooks on for a second but he hasnt made me lose balance at all and so he is way out of position, and then I counter with my favourite left handed uchi-mata (shown here, my old coach in Ireland would be so proud!!) and slam him for the win to a massive applause. 4-0, 9 more wins and Im a black belt once I do a kata or technique demonstration, but such a great feeling and thank the Lord my symptoms pretty much held off once I got on and was in the spotlight. They are such good sports though, they all came over and shook hands with me and offered me all sorts of compliments in Japanese, most of which I understood, and then they were almost queueing up to take photos of myself and Tiff. Tiff took all these photos and deserves enormous credit for keeping me from quitting once we were there and keeping my motivation up throughout all the waiting cos there were several times I was thinking of pulling out, such was the miserable condition I was in.

However, getting back to the city was a tough experience as my symptoms came back in a bad bad way once I came down off the high of the event, and the rest of sunday was spent taking medicine for my crazy high fever and ringing Ireland to get advise on what antibiotics to take. I should be an expert by now as Ive had this exact condition so many times, but Mam back home always knows best!! Came home yesterday and have been a wreck ever since, called in sick and will most likely be sick for a few days, just enough time to do this between bouts of fever!!

Now, if you've read this far, you're probably wondering what the opening picture is. I found it in the back stores in one of the schools, and its a post war board game trying to show kids that the Americans were Japan's allies now and that they should work together. I cant read any of the Japanese to understand what it says, but its all about promoting Japanese/US relations. Thought it was an interesting thing to find.

Thats it for now. Ill update this next week when I get a chance to get to the Kodak Centre and get my photos put on a cd.

Working solidly now until my trip home in August for Lana's wedding, so will be in Ireland from August 18th-31st to attend the wedding and also to introduce everyone to Tiffany at last.

Hope everyone is well and please, as always, feel free to leave a comment or email me at grahamruddle@gmail.com.

God bless,
Graham

Finally...........

2007-04-03T10:23:00.000+09:00

Looks like Im back on track at last. First off the hard drive broke but thankfully I had inadvertently backed up a lot of the photos on my new mp3 player so that turned out to be not such a disaster after all, even though I lost some photos which I really wanted to keep from Hokkaido and a couple of other places. As such, a lot of the photos in this post have been "claimed" from other folk's photo sites, sorry!! Also, google's policy of trying to make things easier by making them much more difficult meant that when I upgraded to the new version of blogger, everything changed into Japanese, which wasnt fun at all. Wont give out too much though, their helpdesk were actually really good about helping me out. Finally, for reasons I wont bother explaining, the name of this site has been permanently changed to

- grahamdavidruddle.blogspot.com

, so trying to access the old one will just bring up a blank page (or a page saying I am guilty of distribution violations as I found out earlier!!). Sorry for all the confusion and more importantly, the delay!!

Right, where to begin?? Just after I got back from Ireland in December I immediately had a brand new adventure to look forward to, a trip to the very northern island of Japan called Hokkaido to see the famous "yuki matsuri" or snow festival. This is just as it sounds, a celebration of snow in the only place in Japan guaranteed snow and cold every winter. Myself, Tiffany, Dave the other JET on the island from Canada and Hannah the very very very English JET from Saijo in Hiroshima headed off early one wintry morning for the airport, set on experiencing some freezing cold city life and watching them make the ice sculptures and giant snow houses and all that. The train from the airport to Sapporo City had some of the nicest scenery Id ever seen, it looked like a real winter wonderland with deep snow blanket covering everything. We got out in Sapporo and walked to the hotel. Its an amazing place, really nice atmosphere, none of us could really put our finger on what it was but it really did feel festive even though Christmas was long over. The ice-covered paths didnt actually claim any major wipeouts which was a surprise, and then after a quick change in the hotel, headed back out to find some famous Hokkaido food. Of course, some snow fights were had along the way (dont ask where my head has seemed to disappear to in this photo, good throw from Dave on the right here!!), and lots of stopping to just look at the surroundings before we reached a tiny Ramen Bar which had the famous Miso Ramen. Heavenly, Ive had them from the local supermarket before but it was so much better when you go to the source. Check it out, pure deliciousness in a bowl. Hokkaido boasts some of the most beautifully laid out main streets also, and when it gets dark and the snow is still falling it becomes even more special looking than during the day. In sub-zero temperatures the four of us were choosing to take the scenic routes to get to places just to see everything, thats how nice it was to wander around in the silent and snow clad streets under the fog lights. Getting a bit nostalgic thinking about it, this is the one thing Tiff and I said we are definitely going back to do next year.

As for the yuki matsuri itself, its a little weird. The main street of Sapporo gets turned into a snow house and ice sculpture display which are built by both the army (of all people!!) and private artists who want to show their work. We were there just as they were being built as it was less than half the price and they werent as crowded, and it was cool to watch them work on them. They are impressive, giant snow moulds of cartoon and anime characters, ice sculpture of charicature faces and animals as well as some smarmy companies throwing their company logos in there to take away from the artwork (boooo!!), and also some gigantic snow houses which they fill with multi-coloured lights, making for a chameleon-esque house as they change the colours of them. Great night, the cold didnt bother any of us I dont think as we were well preprared for it (although I did have to buy snow shoes there, they wont be included in the photos though) but even if it did get chilly we could just stop in anywhere and watch the scenery from any of the nearby bars or restaurants which overlooked the place. Cool first night.

2nd day was much of the same but that in no way was a bad thing. A late morning was had first off and then brunch was more Hokkaido Ramen followed by coffee and then a trek out to see the famous seafront Otaru where they have huge Hokkaido crabs on display. These things are freaky big, and Ive seen enough cartoons to know not to get close enough to let them snap which the locals though was hilarious. Im thinking of making a competition from this photo here, just below to the right. None of us can remember it being taken, or what is going on in it, but Im thinking of sending someone a bottle of yakiniku sauce (delicious dipping sauce for BBQ`ed meat) if they can come up with a witty caption!! Answer in the comment section please. This was when we got sidetracked and wound up in what looks like a docking area for industrial ships or something, no idea. Lots more wandering around looking at the Swiss-esque surrounding here before stopping in to a German brewery to relax for a while. The photos here are of the Otaru Canal which is known locally as the "Japanese Venice". I think they let their imagination get the better of them there but its a lovely walk. Along here I had my snowball throwing rights removed as, earlier, whilst walking along having a snowball fight, I let the competition get to me and re-enacted a scene from Dumb & Dumber and nailed Tiff square in the face with an ice ball I had been moulding for several minutes. Doghouse for me. Not bad enough, then, along the Japanese Venice when I had been restricted to throwing underarm, I still managed to absolutely smack poor Hannah right in the ear with one, firmly placing me in the humble position of "target with no reply allowed". I wouldnt have been so annoyed but I had been trying to smack Dave in the head with one since we got there and missed every time, then without trying both girls suffered a massive iceball to the head unintentionally, and now throwing rights removed. Not good. That night we went for the famous "Genghis Khan" dinner which is thin strips of lamb cooked on a grill in the shape of the Mongol's war helmets. All you can eat of this was right up my street, absolutely delicious except that the smell from the cooked meat ingrains itself in your clothes and hair so you have to put jackets and things in a bag under the table. Great fun all round, everyone was in a great mood from the day and my hurrendous aim with the snowball throwing had been forgiven by then. Like my trip home, it was all over all too quickly, but not before sampling the famous Hokkaido crab and having crab nabbe for our final meal. Nabbe is like a giant soup bowl served with plates of raw veg and raw seafood, and you cook the raw ingredients in the soup until they are done. Im not usually a seafood fan, but this stuff is so fresh and of such high quality that it was impossible not to find it delicious. Fantastic few days, and definintely pencilled in for next year already.

We also had a day trip to Miyajima to see the famous Red Arch and get some oysters at the Kaki Matsuri or Oyster Festival. Really hot out and to be honest there wasnt much to the "festival" other than queueing for 45 minutes for 2 oysters (although they were tasty!!) and then wandering around Miyajima which could be done any other time without the crowds. There was an option to climb the local mountain and hang around with the orang-utangs, didnt sound all that great though. We did get to get the stereotypical tourist photos in front of the famous Red Arch which is out in the middle of the shore, and before you ask which Im wearing the rugby jersey, Ireland were playing England that night and we were going to go straight there. It is a scenic place though, and there was a full Japanese wedding procession in full flow while we were there which was nice to witness first hand. Then to the rugby. What a night, what a night. Poor England got taken apart and I saw it from the best pub atmosphere Ive been in in years. All these photos are from our local Irish Bar called Molly Malone's which I mentioned in another post. The Japanese guy wearing the Offaly jersey is Mia who's the chef from Molly's. He goes out with an Offaly girl and learned all his English from her and from trips to Offaly, and as such has the single strangest accent Ive ever encountered. His English is phenomenal, dont get me wrong, so good that I tend to forget hes Japanese sometimes as his grasp of Irish slang is second to none, its just weird when the first time you meet someone and they "hows she cuttin" in a half Offaly/half Fukuoka accent when you were expecting hajimemashite or something like that. Molly's was also the scene for Tiffany's 23rd birthday which was at the beginning of March. In the beginning we had planned to turn our favourite Italian restaurant into the party venue as the chef Angelo likes us a lot and thought hed be able to pull some strings for us, but despite his best efforts and my endless phonecalls to the restaurant owner (an old and non-English speaking Japanese man) it just wasnt gonna happen, so we decieded on Molly's instead. It worked out fantastically well though, loads of people showed up and the space we had reserved was just right. During the day I made a trip to a big department store to buy the birthday cake (which unfortunately I then had to carry in its giant pink box all the way down to where Molly's is, in the rain I might add!!) which was to be dropped off to Mia who'd look after putting the candles on and all that. A touch humiliating as all the staff who know me in there came out of the kitchen to take the piss when they saw the giant pink box and ribbons and all that, including the owner Mark who also decided it a good idea to play the CD I gave him of the usual birthday jingle Id downloaded (played on a cheesy accordion, Irish style) on the loudspeakers in Molly's during the deathly silent early afternoon when there was nobody but staff there. Rough. After all the laughing died down they assured me that all was set and they'd dim the lights and bring it out at the right time and all that. Worked out perfectly, just when everyone was there and had just finished dinner it took everyone totally unaware when the lights went off and they brought it out, and the birthday girl didnt suspect a thing which made the surprise aspect work, glad it all went perfectly and there were no hitches along the way. Later that night was Ireland/Scotland which wasnt a great game but we won so it rounded off a really fun night.

I also had my first St. Patrick's Day here and it was celebrated in fine style as an Irish couple who are both JETs here held a party at their apartment (Rob and Trish, thanks again for the invite!!). It had a great mix of western folks and also Japanese friends who did the side proud and showed up decked out in green to support the night. Great craic, and good photos too as I did my impression of an angry flat capped farmer with the local folks!!

Another noteworthy event was the end of the Japanese academic year. They run a beginning of April -> end of March academic year, so all the kids were either going up a grade or moving on to Senior High School which they do at the age of 15. Its the same in a way in Ireland except they have separate schools for juniors and seniors whereas all ours are together. Well, my favourite class and the ones which I had a guaranteed 50 minutes of side splitting laughter everytime I met them, were moving on to Senior High, and it was actually sad to see them off. They made an absolute tonne of progress in terms of both written and spoken English and this was almost 100% down to enthusiasm and just trying all the time to speak. Everytime I met them in the corridor they had a full chat, every lunchtime and any other time I saw them they were trying all the time to speak, and the difference by the end of my time with them was really noticable. All these photos are from out last day of class where they did a really nice thing and during the song they were practicing they changed all the words into a "thank you Guramu-sensei" song which they had apparently been practicing while I wasnt there. The whole class was fun for that day, and then a few days later they had the graduation ceremony which in itself was also a nice event as they really do it in style. There is the usual walking up to the stage to receive your certificate and all that, but the teachers who organised the whole show also had a really well edited DVD of footage from every year these kids had been in Junior High, right from their first day to the present and how they've changed along the way. All the teachers were crying their eyes out (as were the rest of the lower year students which is something that I could never see happening in Ireland!!) and then for the final hurrah they go to their classroom for the last time where all their parents are waiting for them as well as all the teachers who taught them. In this part the kids run the show and they sat in a circle and one teacher at a time had to sit in the middle of them while they played a video they'd made of individualised messgaes from each of them to the teacher sitting in the middle. The hard as nails looking music teacher was a mess of tears and laughing after a few mins, as was the English teacher, I remained dignified when it was my turn (just!!) but they were really nice and genuinely moving. They group clap all around you whilst they're encircling you when the tape is finished, and then you have to stand up and give a few words to them. I wanted to say some nice things which my Japanese is nowhere near good enough to support so the JTE translated for me. I told them they were genuinely my favourite class and the one which game me the most laughs and made me the most welcome, and then recounted a couple of stories from early on which everyone found amusing. They were the most enthusiatic class, and that had some ludicrously funny side-effects as they often tried to say stuff beyond their level which resulted in "The Famous Three". These were the 3 most ludicrous sentences which made no sense, a competition which I started early on. In 3rd place was, and I quote young Izumi Keita for this one "PL fireworks to see very people". I think he was trying to say the fireworks display was witnessed by many, good result. The 2nd place went to Watanabe Takayuki who embodied Japanese-ness perfectly with this eloquent verse of the philosophy of bravery. I quote "Think a lot of because of I now how badly off think But has flown the battle of life feel like is think. Working is High School, flown the battle of life is highschool". Stunning. William Wallace's cry of "they'll never take our freedom" fades away in comparison to this. Flown the battle of life!! After much translation we worked out that he was trying to say he will work harder in High School and pass his exams, but when I read this at first it was too funny, even the JTE couldnt keep a straight face for that one. The champion's effort, young Sugimoto Keiji, was not actually that impressive when looking back on it but at the time it was priceless. This guy is 15 and the same height as me with the "Lurch" effect from the Addam's Family going on. No English at all, and each recitation contest used to produce hilarity as he came out with golden moments of EngRish and at one stage actually sounded like he was speaking French it got so bad, hence I started the "no French" club who got "NO FRENCH" shoued at them in jest whenever they wandered off the English path and dabbled in the French. Anyway, during one recitation, I asked him what he was doing later, and he replied "Shall I bring.............five o'clock..............no French", which had me drop the book I was holding and almost had to sit down I was laughing so hard. Golden, I think Fridays at Kinoe will be boring now without these folks. They made this for me and it now takes pride of place on my bookshelf. Takayuki did the plane cos of the legendary "flown the battle of life" fiasco. Great fun to teach.

Not much else unfortunately, it would have been longer but I lost a lot of photos with the hard drive packing in, so about 2 months worth of photos were gone. One of these events was Tiffany's birthday present for me which was a trip to see a concert. A brilliant selection of Strauss II pieces and then one of my favourites, Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto "Emperor" which I have never heard live. Female pianist and all, really rare to see a female Beethoven player, especially something as demanding on the hands as that. We had no idea what the line up was going to be until we got there and opened the programme. I had loads of nice photos of us all dressed up and then the inside of the venue which was pretty spectacular, and of the riverside dinner later that night which was picturesque to say the least, sadly all will have to be left to the imagination as my misfortune with technology claimed them all.

The last 2 weeks were spent in the board of education with no work to do as all the kids were on holidays, so we had to show in from 0830 - 1615 and just be at our desks for the allotted time, not the most fun, although again my boss Tabo and his assistant Kanda offered plenty of unintentional Japanese humour here and there. Also took up badminton (dont laugh!!) which we do with our boss every wednesday, although going straight from judo to badminton on wednesdays is not fun as I can hardly hold the steering wheel of the car after judo. Good sport actually, really enjoying it, although my competitive side comes out here and there and Ive been a touch aggressive at times whilst playing the poor OAPs!! Ah well.

Back in school at last and have the normal routine resumed. Not for long though as myself and Tiff are heading to Borneo for a nice holiday in a couple of weeks. Ive said to folks that its slightly ironic that we are paying to go on a holiday to the sun now and we'll probably be fed up of Hiroshima's stifling heat by late August!! Its meant to be a fantastic place, Im gonna bring the camera and hope to be able to give a good representation of the place when I get back.

Thats all for now, hope no more disasters befall this page!!

Hope all are well,
Graham

Another minor disaster.

2007-04-03T09:12:00.000+09:00

Just when I had salvaged most of the photos by a major stroke of good fortune via my mp3 player, blogspot has now gone and changed format and whereas the homepage used to be in English, its now tries to be smart and select the language it thinks you want, so mine is now stuck in Japanese as part of the "upgraded" new version. As such, its a nightmare to use (even this small post is taking ages, adding photos is nigh impossible!!) and Im trying to work out how to change it back, so until then Im still not able to produce the long promised next post.

Anyone who knows a lot about blogger, by all means get onto me!!

Graham

Disaster.

2007-03-05T20:31:00.000+09:00

Just a quick note to folks keeping up to date with this.

Unfortunately, just as I was planning on a huge update with photos galore, my external hard drive has decided to pack in and have no photos until I get to a data recovery centre to get it fixed. Hopefully I can get it done in Japan but might have to post it to Ireland, so wont be an update here for a while yet.

Also, I have a trip to Borneo coming up soon and have had some spectacular trips over the past months which I was really looking forward to sharing. Be warned, the first blog when Im up and running could be War and Peace length!!

Graham

Sumo, utopian scenery, Dublin, degree and rice pounding!!

2006-12-27T09:49:00.000+09:00

Right, this could take a while!!

As a result of a combination of personal laziness, weekend excursions to a variety of places and a trip home to collect my degree, this page has remained neglected for the past while. However, during that time I have had my camera with me for the most part so I should be able to make up for it a little here.

A few weeks back all the JETs got together for another excursion, this time to go to Fukuoka by bus and see some massively overfed giant Japanese men wearing nappies slap and shove each other out of a dusty circle after throwing salt around for several minutes. Sumo. Lets be honest, the word sumo makes us imagine a quite funny picture of fatties flubbering at each other and the ones who cant hold it down properly in the flubbering department lose. I went with this picture in mind also, and the first thing to change this image was this dude, seen here between myself and Tiff. He doesnt look that big here does he?? Side on hes about 4 times my diameter, and I have to say, the most intimidating man Ive ever met in person. When I saw him I jokingly said "come on, we'll get a photo with this guy" and ran up all smiles. He gave me a look that would make Mike Tyson shrink away in fear, then we had the photo, then we shook hands and he nearly broke mine while giving me the look of "I could kill you if I wanted to". He wasnt even one of the bigger ones, there were guys there a good 4 or 5 inches taller than me walking around whilst still weighing well over 200kg, each with that "dont even think about it" look on their faces, and they seemed to take endless pleasure in making the normally built guys look wimpy in front of the girls. Anyway, we found our seats which were up in the nosebleed section but still gave us a cool overview of the action. The action itself surprised me and completely changed my views on sumo. Fast, athletic, skillful, brutal, and so respectful, things I never associated with it before as I always thought it was a kind of circus affair with everyone in the audience half laughing at these guys. I was so wrong. They walk out to the edges and do their display of stretching (some of them can do standing splits exercises!!) and then get handfulls of salt and throw it into the middle, then get down as if they are about to engage, start to almost shudder with anticipation, before stopping and going back to the corner. This is repeated 3 times and on the 4th time they engage, head first!! Its sometimes over in a few seconds as guys as heavy as this shoving each other around such a small space is bound to result in one of them being thrown out or falling over. In terms of rules its a little similar to judo in that if you throw someone to the ground onto their back, you win, and Ive discovered since by the PE teacher in one of my schools that a lot of these guys are judo black belts from a young age which definitely shows as one or two of them pulled off perfect o-uchi-gari throws, and then the champion splattered one guy with a koshi-guruma. This was rare though and most of the action centred on them slapping each other hard in the chest and face trying to shove, and then when they did grab it was by the funny belt they wear to try and hoist the other guy out, sometimes falling down onto the people sitting around the edge. The weirdest thing to watch was the prefight ceremonies where they all walk out in the line and get in a circle. They do a form of ritual dance type action in unison and then walk off, after which one guy comes out wearing special ceremony attire and does long display of stretching and palm slapping and all that. Also, before the champion or yokozuna Asashoryu came on, all his titles were paraded around the circle. Instead on boxing belts or olympic medals or anything like that, they are these silk sheets with kanji inscriptions on them, no idea what they say but aparently they are ludicrously expensive to make, over $100,000 each according to the same PE teacher as before!! That was what the action consisted of for the day anyway, great to see some more Japanese-ness. We then had the customary night out with dinner and then a wander around Fukuoka to see the night time sights. Some of the other JETs headed off to a club but myself and Tiff went around the city and caught some cool photos of the lit up signs and to see somewhere different from Hiroshima City at night was cool. It had been raining furiously all day but it held off thankfully for us to take a stroll and see the place. Really cool night, and this photo on the left shows the downtown night life district. In the photo if you look closely you can see the famous "salarymen". These guys are like London city boys or Wall Street traders except from what Ive gathered they have yet to accumulate the wealth of their western counterparts, yet they have all the trappings of it so you can regularly see them in the city wandering around in big groups looking identical with ill-fitting business man attire and briefcases!! Its a busy place this, different vibe from Hiroshima altogether, hard to put a finger on what but it seems less touristy or something, Ill edit this if I think of a better way to word it!! The following day the rain returned with a vengeance and as we were to go to an outdoor amusement park, we could decide if we wanted to pay ￥4000 to go to the amusement park and go on rollercoasters in the rain, or not pay, wander around a shopping mall for 3 hours and get brunch. Which do you think I went for? Brunch was delicious to be honest, all you can eat of quite an epicurean menu and the starbucks which followed hit the spot perfectly to prepare for the 4 hour bus back. Due to my inner ear problems as a kid rollercoasters and I are not friends at all (plus a bad fear of heights), so the rain was a blessing in disguise for me as it saved me from having to make my excuses and look like a wimp. Pretty uneventful bus back, watched Walk the Line on the tvs which had Jackson stuck in my head for about 2 weeks, cool weekend all round, a serious plus point to being involved in JET are these weekends away with a bunch of westerners from different backgrounds.

As Ive said previously, this island is an aesthetic masterpiece but one place that had eluded me was re-discovered recently. On my first night on the island Ben took me to the top of the island's highest mountain, Shimpozan, in the car, and it was a sight to behold at the top of it looking out over the island's towns and at the surrounding islands and sea. However, due to a combination of not having found my bearings on the island yet at the time and being still exhausted from the mental 3 days in Tokyo before I got here, I couldnt remember the way up or subsequently find it myself again. Quick email to Ben sorted this out and one night after school just when it was getting dusky I made my way up there camera in hand to check it out. Kinda nostalgic, the first time I was there was, as I said, literally my first night on the island and I was kinda in a daze from tiredness and disorientation, but to see the exact same place again months later was almost like a minor checkpoint in my experience here. In summer the view was hazy due to the humidity but in winter it was crystal clear and made for some cool photos. The photo right is of Osaki where I live and the one to the left is called Kinoe. Seeing them from this birdseye view and looking at the roads I drive around day after day was strange as you forget just how small this place is sometimes. These look good, and I stayed up there so long chilling out and just looking at the view that it got quite dark, and then the photos got really good. Im no photographer, but I did find the night shot function on the camera and the result was,

, really something else to see the old place in this light from this vantage point. While there I also found a walkway which took you through a Blair Witch style forest trail, up a decent set of steps and out higher on another peak which has a lookout post built to get a really crazy view of the surrounding scenery. However, as it was too dark at this stage to get any decent shots I decided to wait until Tiffany's visit the following weekend and go back up to get it in decent sunshine. Good decision to say the least. The following sunday was one of the best days on the island as we went sightseeing with a big drive along the seafront which looked perfect in the bright sun and then back up the mountain again to get the sights during the day. You'll notice these two photos are identical to some of the ones from before but actually look totally different with the sun out. Then we took the walk through the trees up onto the higher point and these photos are worthy of their own space again,
, quite something arent they?? In the last photo you can see Shosen which is the island's maritime university, although from what Ive gathered its only called that by name and isnt an actual university!! The small building with the red roof is the judo/kendo dojo where I train every night. After chilling out up there for a while (literally!!) and enjoying the view we headed down to the beach near my place which again reminded somewhat of my first night here as it was another place we went to that first day. In summer the beach looks pretty scenic to say the least but in winter it takes on a whole new life and if you can withstand the biting sea breeze its quite a spectacle. The sky was unlike anything Id seen before and as we were the only people there it had a wonderful silence about it. This has since become a regular fixture of me driving down here for a stroll the odd evening when I need to clear my head out a bit!! The cold wasnt really a factor after a few minutes out in this weather, although Ive since learned that this winter is unusually warm as Osakikamijima winters go, and apparently the worst is yet to come as January and February become seriously cold, but thus far it has been a non-issue, most of the heavy winter gear I had shipped from home has remained in the wardrobe. Later, after we came home to warm up for a bit and watched a few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm (which I have to admit is the first American comedy Ive ever enjoyed after being introduced to it recently) I held to a promise I made to Tabo-san my boss that when Tiffany came to visit we would have dinner at his parent's family restaurant so he could be introduced. Another great laugh, and a big confidence booster for me as I actually had to translate some parts of the English for Tabo which put my worries about not getting any better at Japanese to rest. You can also see from the photos (especially the one with me having eggnog and smores as my birthday/send off treat at Tiffany's) what I look like when I havent had a haircut for about 6 months. I quite liked it this length but I knew coming home for the graduation meant Id have to get it shortened as Mam would never have forgiven me had I looked like a washed-up 1995 Brit-pop wannabe in my graduation photo. Great weekend overall, my last one before the long trip home to collect my degree.

The trip home, which I am just back from, was a big thing for me in that it was to be my first ever trip travelling alone over such a long distance, but also a chance to really feel independent as I organised and funded the entire thing myself which may sound insignificant but meant quite a lot to me. Anyway, a ridiculously early start had me leaving at 5am to catch a bus to the airport, check in and wait 2 hours in the airport, hour and ten minute flight to Tokyo's Narita airport, check in and wait around there for 3 hours, fly to Paris on a 13 and a half hour flight, wait around Paris for 2 hours, finally an hour and a half flight to Dublin, and as usual, awake for pretty much the entire thing except for that 17 second spell when I fell asleep and Frenchie beside me decides to spill water all over himself and flail about in the seat as if it was acid, thus waking me up. Waited for 25 minutes at the baggage reclaim in Dublin until there are 5 of us left looking blankly at each other, when a guy comes up and says, in the first Dublin accent Id heard in months "yooz from Paris, wha? Yiz have to go to de Air France desk and soyin fawms to get yizzuz bags back". That sinking feeling crept in, then I heard "sorry, your bag was not on board the flight and is still in Paris". So after signing all the forms and all that left on a promise that it would be delivered out to the house the following morning, which it was surprisingly enough!! I rewarded myself for the mental trauma with one of the things I miss the most about Ireland, the fry-up. Check it out, heart attack on a plate with a huge cup of barry's tea, get in. The graduation day ceremony was quite a day. Had to get groomed somewhat so after a haircut, got the tux and bow on and went in to collect my gowns ready for the ceremony. Freezing day, made Japan's winter feel like Aruba but worth it to go in there and get the photos of me in my gowns and all that. The ceremony itself was a mix of Latin when they called us up in sixes to collect our actual degree (which is also in Latin) and to sign the Trinity Alumni book but that was after the opening speech which was in English when the guy gave a rousing pro-Trinity speech at length and in a way it made the occasion feel all the more monumental as this was finally the end of our collective time there, unless we go back there to study again. He also included a daunting reference to the huge portraits of famous Trinity alumni hung around the walls of the old exam hall where the ceremony took place, I was sitting under one of John Millington Synge but could also see Jonathon Swift, Oscar Wilde and I think Samuel Beckett but that one was kinda far away. It was all very formal, lots of camera flashes and handshakes and all that, and then everyone went over to have their traditional graduation photo taken (not arrived in the post yet!!) and have a drinks reception with the other graduates. This is where we had a cool photo opportunity as the pro-chancellor who gave us the degree not only used to be one of our lecturers when he was head of the economics department, but also presented me with the Chinese Mission scholarship back in early 2006, so it was good to talk to him as he is a genuinely nice old man and the photo my Dad got of myself and Paul, one of my friends from college, talking to him came out really well. If I remember right we had a brief chat about my time in China and then a laugh about the exam he set us in 2nd year as as it was his last year as a lecturer he took pity on us and gave us a very nice paper which everyone did well in. Great day all round.

The rest of my time at home was spent seeing old friends but also stockpiling things I just cant get in Japan to take back. Big shoes, shirts that fit, Irish tea, enough to fill a case. I also had a promise to keep though. It occured to me soon after I got to Japan that I had absolutely no photos of Dublin to show people, so when I was doing my self intro classes in schools and conversation classes, I was showing them all the photos of my travels. People began to ask me what Dublin was like so I made a promise to take loads of photos of Dublin city to show when I got back. It never occured to me what a scenic place it is. I imagine Dublin as dark and grimy, but in the photos I took it looks quite amazing, although I did get an uncharacteristic sunny day for it. I must have looked like such a tourist doing this with the backpack and camera taking photos of streets, and it was weird to photograph places Ive seen literally thousands of times, but how many Dublin people reading this have stopped and taken a good look at our city when the weather is nice like this? Its enough to rival most places Ive seen in Europe barring the extreme examples of Italian cities like Florence and Venice and some of the other continental places, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how well these came out.

The trip home flew by and I had a great time catching up with folks, and it was over all too quickly to be honest and before I knew it I was at Dublin airport again at 7.20am all set for another crazy long journey back. Exact same schedule as before except going the opposite way of course, long long journey of queues and waiting and tiny plane seats and all that, get to Narita exhausted and dying for a lie down, waiting again 20 minutes for my case until a board with "the following passengers need to contact the Air France representative", and my name was listed. "Sorry, your bag was not on board the flight and is still in Paris". I was starting to think Air France were having a competition to see which employee could say that exact line the most times and win a prize to a destination of their choice, or that the check in staff were missing a page from the training manual of the fundamentals of putting someone's bag from the check-in desk towards the actual airplane in the hope of it going with the passenger to their destination as Im sure thats why the majority of people with bags bring them, but this seems lost on them I think. Signed all the forms again, got the next flight down to Hiroshima, met up with Tiffany and had our own mini-Christmas of presents and southern eggnog in her place before I fell asleep watching "Its A Wonderful Life" as I was awake a fair amount of time by that point, plus the west-> east time difference is always hard to bear. She headed off for Laos and Cambodia on a volunteering trip the following morning at 5am and I got a bus back to the island at the same time to wait in for the case to arrive. Tough to only get to see her for a few hours but shes back soon enough. The voicemail I got about the time my bag would arrive at the island was wrong and it came the following day at 11 in the morning, although I was out cold in bed for most of that time it should have been arriving had the voicemail been correct so no harm done.

So thats me nearly up to date. I thought it would be hard to come back to the island with Tiffany and Dave away knowing that at home Christmas is in full swing, but it was nothing of the sort and I actually had an excited feeling driving from the ferry to the apartment as it reminded me how much I love it out here even though I obviously miss folks from home. Been in the BoE ever since as the kids are still on end of term holidays. Yesterday they brought me to make "mochi" which is the result of pounding boiled rice and adding water, turns it into this goo-like substance. Its a traditional village activity, so they brought me to this old folks home where they had all the equipment set up for doing it, and what they have are 2 huge mortar and trellis-esque stations set up with three massive wooden mallets each, and into each basin they dump a heap of boiled rice which first gets mashed with the mallets manually before the 3 guys holding them stand back and in synchronisation, pound the rice repeatedly until it turns into the goo substance called mochi. They then hand the mochi over to the female volunteers who make it into edible dumpling sized desserts. Its messy, as bits of it splatter out as the hammer strikes, and tiring as they made me do more than my fair share as the old folks liked watching big honky white boy here swinging the big hammer, but fun as well as it reminded me I am part of the community in case I had forgotten. Today Im actually sore from doing it as I feel as if I did 10 hours of weightlifting and then 2 judo competitions yesterday, but worth it to see yet another previously unbeknownst to me Japanese tradition. Even the police got in on the action as at first when I looked up and saw them I was clueless and actually started laughing as I thought they had finally ran out of patience with being bored driving around a crimeless island all day and were now seeking out the crime, and what better place to start than a rice pounding festival at an old folks home, right? Anyway, looked away, heard a giant shrieking "whaaaaaaaaa" only to turn around and see 3 fully uniformed coppers laying into the rice with the hammers, and going for it full on, obviously more frustrated with this lousy crime free post than previously thought. Although the only photo I caught was of the in the initial grinding stage, poor.

Well thats it, caught up at last!! Back on the island, rested well and waiting for school to restart. Loads of free days coming up with national holidays for news years and all that, probably head to the city and see whats going on up there.

Im in the BoE for the time being so anyone and everyone, please feel free to email me for a chat or if you see me on gmail, dont hesitate, Im doing nothing in there other than wasting time on chat forums and/or wikipedia when I should be doing my Japanese lessons, so go for it!!

Merry Christmas (or should I say Merry Winter Equinox) to everyone and a Happy New Year.

All the best,
Graham

Random discoveries, lessons learned and a southern belle!!

2006-11-07T13:43:00.000+09:00

Hello again everyone.

Now that Ive been here for a while, my longest time away from home including San Diego J1 2004, Ive begun to take note of some of the less obvious character traits of the Japanese folks and how overall they differ from us. A story I never tire of telling is actually from quite a while back, just after we got here and were trying to get all the admin stuff set up so we wouldnt have to do it after the teaching had begun. Myself and Dave were in the BoE and doing the usual forms and what not, when something I thought had cleared up before was brought to my attention. (The picture of myself and Tiff, seen here looking all stylish, has nothing to do with this story, jump to the end if you want to read that piece of news!!). My boss, came over to my desk and in his slowly improving but still very primitive English he said "Guramu (pause)......Guramu (pause).........Guramu, annnno, insernce (pause), pay (pause), you have to(long pause)". I got what he was saying immediately but as I had already settled up with my predecessor Ben for the insurance on my new car before he went home, I thought this had been dealt with already. As simply as I could I told him "Ok, I pay Ben before, pay already" to which I got "no no, Guramu (pause).........insernce (pause).........insernce (pause)...........pay, have to". Again, "no no, I (huge gesture towards myself with both hands) give insernce money to Ben-san (big gesture of giving) before New York fly (big gesture of a plane flying). Ok??". "Guramu (pause)..........Guramu (pause)..........insernce, pay have to.................". 4 and a half hours followed of this exact exchange over and over with babel fish translations brought in from the internet, other office workers in the BoE getting in on the act as well as their English is marginally better, elaborate gestures from both sides, Dave the other JET trying his hand as well in between fits of laughter as my usual relaxed and chilled out demeanour was slowly becoming that of an angry lunatic about to explode in frustration as although it was mildly amusing at 10am, by 3.30 in the afternoon with lunch hour thrown in I was just about given up. In the end, he said "Guramu (pause)...........insernce........" for about the 200th time I just mentally gave up the will to keep trying and stared blankly in a mix of bewliderment and frustration. I had noticed throughout the whole ordeal that another dude who sits near us had been looking over throughout the whole thing and nodding to himself, and I noticed him do it again at this point. We had never spoken much to this guy bar introductions so had no idea if he could speak any English beyond morning greetings, and I didnt think much of the nodding as this guy was usually quite quiet and unassuming and just got on with what he was doing as I think he is quite high up in the office so is always busy. Anyway, just when all hope was lost and I was a worn out mess of frustration and bottled up rage, this guy stands up, fixes his suit and walks calmly over to my desk, "Graham, we have an interesting situation here, the problem seems to be that you paid Ben for the obligatory insurance, but that leaves the voluntary insurance unpaid, and what your supervisor is trying to say is that he would be happy if you paid the volunary also as it makes for a much safer driving experience on the island". My jaw dropped to the floor and I think I was still staring blankly at him in disbelief when he turned on his heel and went back to his desk, sat down and looked at me again, nodded politely and calmly went back whatever he was doing beforehand. I was slumped down in the chair already when I turned to Dave who had a similar look of disbelief and he just said "what the f......", then with a big smile my boss looks at me and says "Guramu, pay, ok??". Exhaustedly I said, "yes mate, no problem". Absolutely hilarious looking back but it did give a huge insight into how Japanese people view their work and how important it is for them not to infringe on another's work duties and leave everyone to their own thing. It carries through in all walks of Japanese life from fashion to beliefs to tastes in things, everyone has their own set of personality traits and they are so sacred that nobody else ever chastises anyone else for what they do in regard to these things. On the other hand though, and this is a big "on the other hand", they are so uniform in other regards even to the point of that famous saying they have that the "upright nail gets hammered down" being true, and in my experience thus far this carries through most obviously in how they learn in schools as any dissent from the norm is rare but also they are of the mindset that to break from the tried and tested is one some way disobeying and that they should fall into line, hence if you ask them a question in English that they havent heard before, even if they understand you, they often stare at you scared to death and dont say a word. Thankfully, as I said last time up, the more endeared I become with them the less this happens and they are now really embracing the motto I gave them right from the off of "Dont be afraid to make mistakes". This has been the most obvious Japanese-ness Ive seen so far, shows how they are so good in some fields and almost non-existent in others. (plus, every now and again when we are in the BoE and we have another "insurance day" as Dave and I call it, we eventually look over at this guy for help and he now gives us this "Id love to help but I cant" look which makes me laugh).

Im kicking myself again this time as I left the camera in the apartment for a couple of good excursions and events, although to combat this I made a discovery of the highest order in the apartment whilst on a chillout weekend watching Lost. Now and again I do miss some stuff from home, not that often, but every now and then I miss having a dishwasher, or a cup of proper tea (barrys all the way, get in), or sunday roast, or the big leather couch, and when my sister sent me a great big bar of cadburys bourneville along with some books, I felt right at home. Then I made the discovery of a lifetime. Japanese grapes are near perfect, they are so nice and even though they set you back about €5 for a small bunch, they are worth it. However, when combined in the same sitting as the bourneville, you have the perfect compliment, the dark choc with the deep grape taste, combined for an awesome combination. I should patent this discovery but then I dont really want to be remembered as that guy who combined grapes with chocolate. Ive also become much much better at cooking and as you can see here I can cook what looks like authentic Japanese food, even if Im not up to restaurant standard yet, but getting there.

Now for a painful lesson learned which happened just last night. Had a really good session at judo last night, got chucked a couple of times but got a couple of good ones in and held up well in the fitness department, felt pretty good although a little banged up at the end. Then, just when we were all changed, one of them points at the climbing rope and says "challenge". I had to do it, I couldnt back down, so off I went. Got up it with not to much difficulty, but then I realised at the top that I had never done this before and didnt go hand over hand to get down, opting instead to slide as if the term "rope burn" was something Id never heard of, and when I did discover how much better it was hand over hand it was too late, looking down I saw gaping wounds which literally looked like Id tried to grate my hands with a cheese grater. Not good, in fact, seriously bad, and when I got home I saw they were pretty bad, bad enough to sound like an animal getting tortured when the soap got near them in the shower later. Not good. Here they are today, the most menial things like washing the dishes become hard to say the least in this condition.

Now, for my last piece of news!! I met Tiffany not long after I got here and even braved the Fuji ordeal in her company (if anyone can find me attractive wearing a towel on my head for warmth I know Ive found potential), and as often happens talking every now and again became talking a lot (with some flirting here and there thrown in of course) and all of a sudden here we are, my Southern belle (capital 'S' I keep getting reminded) girlfriend with the most lovely Southern US accent to boot. These were the nicest couple of photos from my trip up to see her last weekend, although for all our supposed attempts to mix in with the locals as we actually live here, we looked like such a couple of tourists wandering around the Hiroshima Peace Park and Dome!!

Big visit to sumo in Fukuoka in a couple of weeks as well as a big Southern (capital 's') Thanksgiving dinner so should have some more to report soon.

Hope everyone is well and to anyone at home, Ill be in Dublin for the graduation ceremony from Dec 8th -> 21st so Ill make a few visits here and there to see how everyone is.

All the best,
Graham

Parties, some staff photos and Richard the legend.

2006-10-21T11:05:00.000+09:00

Hello hello one and all!!

Keeping my promise to stay on top of this Ive sat down here on saturday morning with a rare uninterrupted stretch at the comp so here goes!!

The main revelation of the last couple of weeks has been how well everything has been going with the students. All the initial self introduction classes were good in a way as they got to learn a bit about me, but the thing is the language barrier is tough over here and although they were dying to ask me questions and talk, I generally had to nod and smile as I couldnt understand a word they were saying, especially when it was excitedly fast. (The opening photo is of the bunch I have the best laugh with, although the girl on the left has been nicknamed "hot intern" and isnt actually a student being the same age as I am!!) However, Ive picked up bits of Japanese here and there and their enthusiasm for English means in some cases there are students I can have a laugh with, and then add in the "Hahdogaaaay" impressions and class is now fun and games for the most part with some cool familiarity and joking around. They are not uptight or nervous around me anymore which is good, at the beginning if I looked in the direction of one of the girls they'd go bright red and start giggling hysterically, and the guys just stared at the ground or stared back with a completely expressionless face, thenkfully now thats a distant memory. You'll notice all the photos of students are just of the girls, guys dont really want to get into photos, Ill get some of them soon though!! These photos are mainly from one tea ceremony which they bring me too every week and it ALWAYS ends up in a "try to hold in laughing" session for Graham as everything is nice and orderly until the tea ceremony lady pulls this face of concentration when she does the cup cleaning part and I crack up laughing. The students know I cant stop laughing when she does this, and I soon as I start laughing, they start laughing, which makes me worse, viscious circle. The also found the fact I cant sit like them in the seza manner which is with your legs folded under you in that traditional Japanese manner of sitting means they are looking at me the whole time for signs of pain or having to move. Japanese poeple can sit like that for hours, its unbelievably painful after a few minutes for a westerner though, you ankles feel like they're broken and when you try to stand up, you cant, so this is also a scene of endless humour for them!! Trying on my shoes is also a comedy act of the week, scene here is the intern trying to walk in them, Japanese people's feet turn do actually face inwards in a lot of cases, always thought that was just a stereotype. All round, school is great fun. There are some classes I havent clicked with yet (and some who run for cover when the camera comes out, seen here) and Im still the big white guy who reads out the sentences in a funny voice and they repeat, they tend to be the younger ones in the big classes, the older kids are in smaller classes and I actively look forward to these.

Last weekend was a fun filled occasion with two parties in as many days and a trip into Hiroshima City to pay off another one of my flights home. Sogo is the big department store in Hiroshima and outside of it there is this huge tv where there is always some sort of promotion on or some famous J-Pop star singing or signing autographs, and this day was no different. I have no idea who this girl was, or what on earth she was singing about, but I felt so sorry for her, up there on stage giving it the cheesy pop performance with all the dance moves and the lighting effects in full flow, and the crowd by and large greeted her with stony silence and barely even a polite applause at the conclusion. It was pretty awful in all honesty, and she was hardly being spurred on by the crowd, but still strange to see it all happening outside a shop like this in the middle of town!! Anyway, this was the saturday after the friday night party at Kate's party in Takehara (good craic it was too!!) which I didnt get home from until 7am, so after roughly 3 hours power nap at home and a freshen up here I was in Hiroshima feeling jaded but on my way to another house party, this time Tiff's housewarming in Hiroshima City. An Indian dinner of serious quality was had before heading to the venue to help get it ready (well, just the deep south gin bucket, no harm in being early though!!). The party consisted of tonnes of JETs and other English teachers sittting around having a laugh, but the star of the show was Tiff's workmate Richard. What a legend, a man of unassuming manner and mildly spoken, but out of nowhere when everyone was chillin out at about 1am, Richard broke free of the shyness and went for it with a story which lasted about 2 hours about a subject Ill refrain from going into details about for the sake of the viewers (you can email if you want a full run down!!) but I actually did have a mild pulled muscle in my side from laughing at this guy, and then him falling on his arse from drunkenness as he was leaving, and then explaining the dymanics of the fall whilst wearing one shoe and still in his fallen position, was nearly too much. Great fun overall, despite the pulled muscle, and getting attacked by a curtain, and the following day we went to an Irish bar (all Irish people reading this, I know, usually tack city with added tackiness and riverdance music playing in the background, this one was quite genuine though, the menu even had the Irish printed beside the English) and got breakfast. I was all set for a massive fry up, I was even gonna pay extra for 2 but didnt want to look like a savage, then they came back, "no beans", to which I nearly wept as bitterly as Peter at the betrayal. Had to order the cottage pie with extra spud to compensate, good stuff, also my spud consumption ability has fallen since I got here, struggled to put away the last amount of spud which would hardly have been a warm up for the main course at Sunday roast at home. Great weekend all round, really tired on sunday evening when I got home but nice to be around a bunch of westerners again!! (Richard is the guy on the right in this last photo, should be in stand-up comedy or some brach of the entertainment industry, brilliant).

Judo has been going so well. I go at least 3 of the 5 days from monday to friday, last week went 4 times, this week only 3 cos had dinner with Tabo-san and his family on tuesday evening and then last night I didnt feel up to it, left shoulder was really sore from the day before. Ive made a lot of changes to my game overall, they are so technical about it over here and what they do for me is they get me to throw one of them and after it they tell me what I need to do to improve as they are so good they can tell by the feeling of it what is going wrong. Pound for pound these guys are 10 times as good as me, they are so skillful and to watch them fight each other is a joy, Im sure I look about as graceful as an eleohant with a broken leg, but with the size and strength advantage I have I can give nearly all of them some form of a competition even if I cant win. There was one guy, who does all the throwing demos as his technique is flawless, who I actually ipponed cleanly two nights in a row and he didnt thrown me back, so I dared think I might be getting up to speed, then on thursday night we paired off again and within 10 seconds I absolutely creamed him into the mat (while he was giggling which didnt stop throughout the throw!!) with the biggest o-soto-gari Ive ever done and when he got up, he said something to the effect of "ok ok, now difficult" in Japanese and the big smile he always fights with turned into a scowl of concentration, and I got battered, realising he had been completely taking the piss for the times I threw him and now that I could throw it was time for him to fight back. I spent the remaining two and a half minutes doing everything I could not to get slammed and as soon as the final whistle went the scowl went back to the big smile and he shouted SUGOI which means great or fantastic as now I had seemingly reached adequate competency for him to give me his full effort(I hope that was his full effort). Dunno if Im happy or sad at this revelation!! I had a similar scenario with the hardcore guy who came 5th in the big wrestling tournament as at the start I was getting beaten senseless by him every night I went down but the other night I caught him with a big uchi-mata, the best one Ive ever done to which he seemed delighted and gave me a huge bow afterwards. I think its the same with the language, any sign of improvement is highly welcomed and they encourgae improvement so much and praise it so much that any sign of it is noticed.Going down there after school is great though, means I have a long day but I get home at about 6.15 for dinner and feel brilliant overall, plus Im losing weight rapidly and sleeping much better. Ill try and get the camera down there to get a big group photo, they mostly look like Bruce Lee as the feathered mullets of black hair and skinny looking bodies are all around!!

Finally heres a couple of pics of the staff room and staff from one of my schools, Higashino Junior High. The woman who sits to my left is the music teacher who I always have talks about Europe with as she is an avid traveller, and the woman across from me is the JTE, Murakami-san. We also had to do another special class the other day so they got me to take loads of pictures of my apartment and we put them on a board like so and named everything, then in pairs the students had to do a presentation and say things like "there are two books on the table" which sounds easy, but explaining the sentence order and structure is tough going, so this was meant to get them enthusiastic and participating, although they seemed more interested in examining every minute detail of the photos rather than doing the actual lesson!! This photo on the right is of the whole staff room, the guy on the right of which is the kocho-sensei or principal. Real jolly old man, not a word of English but always a big grin andtries his best to dumb down his Japanese enough to talk to me. Ill get some photos of the other school next time up, this is the one Im in the most, 4 times a week and this was the one with the most speech contest students.

Well, thats all for this week. As I said before Im trying to stay on top of it better than I have been, this way I get more into each post and it doesnt take as long to do each time.

I hope everyone is well and all are welcome to drop me an email if you want to catch up.

The weather is starting to cool down down here so the mornings and nights are getting chilly, although during the day can still be stiflingly hot. I have all my winter stuff so the flat cap and undertaker coat will be out in force soon!!

Take care everyone,
Graham

Sorry for the delay!!

2006-10-05T13:03:00.000+09:00

Well first off apologies for the delay between posts to everyone who has been keeping up with this. Ive been kept busy to say the least recently be it with village festivals, coaching speech contest students, attending tea ceremonies, starting judo training in full and generally being kept active as well as the full complement of school scheduling.

The first big thing was the village festival which happened a couple of weeks back. This was a bit of a sticky issue for me and took quite a bit if thinking to decide what I was going to do. Every year this island has a village festival in which a huge Shinto shrine gets manually carried around the island by 10+ guys who hoist it around and bring it to people's houses who then pay and the shrine gets hoisted aloft 3 times outside their house for good luck. It is a tradition that the English teacher on the island takes part in the shrine carrying and this meant that both Dave and myself were to take part. This didnt fully sit well with me though as being a Christian, Im fully aware of what Shinto is and where it came from, and I didnt really want to take part in a big Shinto festival as it clashes with Christianity. However, I had a good talk with the principle of one of the schools who speaks really good English and he said that the festival is more fun and tradition than anything and nobody treats it as anything spiritual, so I decided that I would take part in the shrine carrying part but would decline any involvement in the ceremony side of it where they bow to the statues and chant in the Shinto temple. They are really cool about that over here, they havent had any issue with me being a non-drinker and with this they were fine too, respecting someone's beliefs is a big thing over here, so the day ended up being a good and learning experience for me all round. Im nearly 6'2, so is Dave, so this was tough going as we are considerably taller than the rest of the carriers, so we got a lot of the brunt of the considerable weight of the thing, and it hurt!! Dave had an accident where we were carrying it in around these small windy lanes and the shrine crashed into a roof knocking tiles everywhere, one of which nailed Dave in the side of the head and gave him a pretty bad looking gash. It turned out to be ok and he rejoined later, looked dodgy for a couple of minutes. It was a long long day, 5am -> 3pm of on and off carrying and resting, and then a walk out in the parade with the rest of the village. I think this is where its important for the JET in the island to be involved as all the locals really want to see the big white western guys carrying with the natives, loads of people were taking photos of us and waving . I think to not be a part of this would have been a bad move, maybe I was wrong to do it but I dont think I backed out of standing up for Christianity as I explained my issues with it openly to those involved, its why I made the decision I did, and it turned out that the principle was correct thankfully in that the locals treat it as nothing more than a traditional activity. Those clothes are the traditional festival attire, we didnt get to keep them as a souvenir unfortunately.

Schooling has been going really well. The kids have mostly got over their shyness around me and coupled with the fact I can hold some very basic Japanese conversations means we can now have a good rapore and have some fun. Makes the day a lot more enjoyable and I can teach them a bit better this way. Some days are boring when they teacher wants to do a class of mostly translation and I just have to read out the odd sentence here and there in English for them to listen to, but thankfully these are few and far between. Mostly they've taken my advise of "more conversation, less grammar" and we now have a lot of talking and less book learning which means Im much more involved. I teach in 3 schools, two of which are junior highs with kids from 13-15 years old and one is an elementary school with 6-9 year olds mostly. The junior highs I find easier as the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) who I work with can speak very good English in both cases and this makes things are lot easier when compared with the elementary where nobody can speak more than a couple of words of English and discussing the class beforehand ends up in elaborate body language and gesturing to explain the most basic stuff. Overall the teaching side of it is a lot better and a lot easier than I thought it was going to be, I expected to have to teach every class, every day, but the most classes I do in a day is 4 and thats a busy day, the rest of the time Im in the staff room trying to do my Japanese CD's, reading my book or talking to the other teachers. Happy days!!

I was also a judge at a speech contest the other week. This was a day of strange emotions as the kids I had been coaching for this were the very ones I had to try and judge impartially and as I knew how much it meant to them, this was quite a challenge. The photos here are of the venue before it filled up when they were given some practice time, it got quite full though, my desk as a judge was mid way through the seats. Dave was the MC for the event, and I along with an American guy named Brendan and two natives made up the four judges. The competition was not that difficult to score, there were 3 categories and thankfully 2 of my students won their category. There was one tough bit where the girl I have coached the most didnt even make the podium and was really upset. It dawned on me during her performance that she was A) performing a piece nobody else was and B) also performing possibly the worst thing you could perform for a contest, an informational soundbite with little or no storylike content, so although she trained every day for 2 hours with me and was highly prepared, she got an average result as some of the other contestants were reading kid's fairytales which were really easy to make sound interesting and score highly in intonation and delivery. Good day overall, big successes but the disappointed kids were hard to console, my pep talk afterwards probably sounded lame in their disappointment.

My final welcome enkai or office party turned into another great night and I earned my stripes a bit at it!! This came at a time when we were literally being worked and welcomed to death with long days in school staying back to help the speech contestants, and then dinners and receptions at night and at the weekend. Japanese people use ALL of their time, I dont think they ever have a day of wasting on the couch with a book or watching the entire first season of Lost (get in!!), and at the time we had to be somewhere for something all the time. I was at the end of my tether with this at this stage, they mean so well and are great hosts, but there is only so much you can take, and this was the last one I was at. It started off at a big open banquet place and I was sitting beside my boss (Tabo-san) and some teachers, none of whom spoke English. The food came and went and I was about to say my goodnights and go home when my boss asks me to come with the rest of them to his father's restaurant and join them for some more food and karaoke. I agreed out of principle of not turning any invite down, and it turned out to be a great decision!! The tiredness I felt went away almost immediately and when we got there we first had yakiniku which is a table top barbeque (so delicious Im getting hungry thinking about it) and then, the drinks started for the locals, me sticking to oolong teas as usual. Thankfully one of the JTEs was there for me to talk to and translate which was a relief as although trying to speak in Japanese and have a conversation is good fun, you do tend to hit a brick wall sometimes and it is good now and again to have an English speaker to talk to on a night out. Anyway, we had great craic as she could translate for me to talk to the rest of them so were werent limited to the most basic conversations. After singing Molly Malone to thank my boss for dinner, the rest of them got going on the karaoke which consisted of cheesy J-Pop ballads from the 70's, awful music but hilarious to watch them perform. I also had to sing Danny Boy after explaining the words to it so many times (without music and on my own I might add) which really went down well and this turned out to be what an enkai should be, everyone getting to know more about each other and about their backgrounds while having a great time. By going home time I was sore from laughing at some of the stories and all that, really glad I went, earned my stripes with my awful singing of some home songs too, all round good stuff!!

Judo has fully begun, love it, went four times last week and am still quite stiff, they dont do things by halves!! I can give most of them a fight, about 4 of them I cant fight at all, its just waiting for them to throw me despite my best efforts, the medium guys I can have a really good fight with with lots of back and forth throwing, this is where Ive imporved the most even with only 4 days, ipponed a few of them during the week and its a competition now instead of me just getting beaten up. 3 of them are quite new to it and these guys I can throw around easily enough, one of them weighs 100kg+ so even though I usually come out on top, its really tiring. My finger tips were actually numb for most of last week, fully numb, not joking, from the gripping. Really looking forward to this week.

Apologies for the lack of photos this time up, Ive these ones here to show some of the Japanese countryside from the bus to the city. I havent been taking my camera around with me enough, something Ill change now cos Im annoyed Ive missed so many photo opportunites with it being back in the apartment. Next time Ill have some more, for now this is rural Japan, I never get tired of the sights of this bus journey, pretty stunning.

As I said in the email, Im gonna try and do this more often. Its really enjoyable to do, and it gives me a great chance to remember stuff for later and to let people know how Im doing, but its takes so long to do if I dont keep on top of it and its rare I get a long time to sit at a comp with the camera uninterrupted. Ill make it a priority for the next while.

Hope everyone is well,
all the best,
Graham

The Mt. Fuji Adventure, welcoming ceremonies and my first full week in school!!

2006-09-09T12:01:00.000+09:00

Wow what a busy week this was!!

Ill begin last friday which was my first full day in school in a place called Kinoe Jr. Elementary school. Sprung up out of bed at 6.30 and had a cold shower, a strong coffee and on with the suit and into the car for 6.45 on my way to school. However, realised half way there that had forgotten if it was meant to be Kinoe Junior High or Kinoe Elementary, realised it was just too much of a potential balls-up to make on my first day so I turned back and did a Michael Schumacher impression to get home and get my timetable and made it back to Kinoe Jr on time for the ceremony. Down to their assembly hall where all the kids are waiting in line and then had to sit in a chair in front of the whole school while the principal introduced me and then two kids came forth and read a piece of welcome in English. Then the dreaded part which turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. I had to introduce myself in Japanese to the whole school. Got 4 sentences out to a massive applause as I think they realise how difficult Japanese is to learn for a Westerner. After that the whole day was spent telling the principal stories about my travels in Europe (he loves Europe, and speaks really good English to this took about 4 hours in his office) and helping coach some students for the upcoming speech contest. Good day all round, went as well as it could.

Now, after this the Mt. Fuji adventure began. Myself and Dave (the other JET) live in such a remote part of Japan down on the island that for any trip we have to leave the night before and stay someone or else we couldnt make it to anything early, so we got the ferry over at 8pm that evening with all our hiking gear on to stay with a JET in Takehara, Kate from the U.S. This was grand, bed at 11 as everyone was shattered and we had to get up at 5.30 in the morning to start the journey. All went well, up on time and met the other folks at the bus stop after getting to go on the bullet train (shinkansen......get in!!) for a bit, all set for the long trek to Mt. Fuji, 10 hours on the bus!! Passed by grand, made a lot of good friends with the other JETs already so the time flew by having a laugh and taking in the scenery off the bus. We got to Fuji and stepped down off the bus......BALTIC!!! They said it would be cold and to bring some extra clothes, so I brought the only winter clothes I have (waiting on a shipment from home with all my winter stuff) of jeans and a jumper, but these we nowhere near enough, and they said it would be a lot lot colder on the way up and subzero at the top. Quickly went to the supplies shop and got so lucky with a cheap coat which fit, as well as some gloves (girly white though) and a we were all set. Little tired, up since 5.30am and didnt sleep on the bus (surprise surprise!!) but felt good overall. Set off at 9.30pm to hike all night and watch the sunlight from the top, and what followed were 8 of the hardest hours of my life, I did not expect this in the slightest. The first 3 hours were grand, nice and warm with the layers I had on and everyone in good spirits. However, we then reached the tough part where the shelter stops and the dead of night cold begins (as well as tiredness setting in) and it began to get tough. Its also high altitude, you climb above the cloud level very early on so although it looks utterly spectacular, there is hardly any breath so every time you climb up the rock face you feel winded. This got tough, and we broke off into small groups. I was in a great group with 3 girls, Tiffany the Texan, Amy the native American New yorker and Natasha the Canadian, eh?? Climbing Fuji is like climbing a series of checkpoints, so you climb from checkpoint to checkpoint and rest at each one to let yourself get used to the altitude. The climbing got pretty rough at times, it wasnt walking up a hill, a lot of this was steep rock climbing in the dark. We had a good banter going of chatting and telling stories and whatever to keep spirits up, and it was grand for a while as we were making progress and nobody was suffering with tiredness too much, but then we reached about halfway and it suddenly got really cold, really really cold, and tiredness began to catch up with people badly. Miserable at this stage. I had to put on every item of clothing I had in my bag to keep warm, so combat shorts on over my jeans, an extra tshirt on over the jumper, a raincoat on over my coat, and as you'll notice from the photos, a towel wrapped around my head to try and keep the heat in (I wasnt in any way trying to be stylish with a bandana or anything like that). This was tough going, the wind had picked up and it felt like a dark and isolated hell on earth with this brutal wind and no air to breathe. At this point the chatter stopped during the walks from checkpoint to checkpoint and everyone was just concentrating on not falling and getting there. I became like a motivator at this point and took the lead trying to keep spirits up, but I felt like death warmed up myself after a while. About 4 hours of this, the air getting thinner and thinner, but eventually we start to dare think we might be nearly there and spirits pick up a bit as we think we are over the worst of it. Here came the biggest body blow of all, some idiot not from out group passes on that there is only an hour to go so we start going for it and the pace picks up, as well and forgoing rests at checkpoints to try and beat the traffic only to find out that there is a lot more than an hour to go and we had just wasted a lot of energy needlessly, and now we were all running on empty pretty much. Couldnt get Mussorgsky's "Night on a Bare Mountain" out of my head, it suited it perfectly. Everytime we would reach a checkpoint it felt like we had only one more to go until we looked around the corner and the mountain just seemed to go on as far as the eye could see with the lights from the torches of the hikers illuminating the way. So discouraging as it showed just how far we had left, a lot more than an hour!! We made a near fatal mistake and decided to sit down and huddle at one of the checkpoints for warmth, all nearly passing out and when we decided to crack on it was obvious we were all near done. This picture here (my favourite in retrospect!!) shows the state of us as we look like a bunch of strung out heroin addicts.

We kept going though, I took the lead and we got the head down and just kept plugging on and on, until finally we reached a point where the summit was only 100m away but blocked up with human traffic, and as we realised it was getting near the sunrise time of 5.15am we decided to stay where we were and watch the sunrise from there. (You'll notice a gap in the photos, but during this hellish walk taking photos was the last thing on my mind!!) Truly magnificent sight to see, woke us all up as with the brightness and the visual masterpiece came the realisation of what we had done and what we were witnessing. The sunrise from the vantage point of above the clouds was quite something, I'll put as many photos here as I can fit, but they wont do it justice, seeing it in person and looking back over the trek we had just climbed in the morning sun was unforgettable. We took a lot of good photos here but the memory will last forever, really once in a lifetime stuff.

We pushed on and finished out the last 100m or so and got to the top all looking terrible to be honest, but now the morning sun and rising heat was bringing back some life. Stayed around the top and shared our thoughts of what had been in our heads as we climbed the tough 3 hours at the end as NOBODY was saying anything in the misery, quite funny how different they all were. I was thinking back over a lot of old stuff and ahout finishing college and moving out from Ireland, first time Id had a real long stretch to think uninterrupted being so busy at home, kept me going for the time. The summit was crowded and to be honest I preferred the view at 100m from the summit as the angle made for a better perspective, but it was a nice feeling to be at the top. We had to pass through this gate thingy to get to the summit, not sure of the meaning!!

Now for the descent. This sounds easy, and it is easier than the climb up, but all it is is a man made zig zag trek which runs parallel to the ascent, except it consists of 50+ identical tracks which winds down the mountain face, and they are beyond boring but also the ground is small stones so your legs, which are already destroyed from the all night trek, have to work hard to stop yourself running down the slopes (which would almost certainly result in death!!) so it was a tough 4 hours down the hill in the brutal heat. Everyone had to shed the layers and carry them, and this whole part of the trip was Id say the toughest as everyone is awake 24 hours at least at this stage and already dehydrated, exhausted and starving, and then to carry a bunch of stuff down a mountain in 30+ temperatures is borderline insane!! Nothing much of note happened on the descent (except I beat Tiffany the Texan 9-0 in a "who can fall the least times" competition, get in!!) and finally we reached the bus, awake 30 hours by now and ready to die!! My feet looked like I attacked them with a steak hammer, but at this stage I was glad I had done it when I looked back on the mountain I had just climbed from the ground. We went to an onsen which is a Japanese bath house for a shower, bath and lunch which took the tension out of the legs a little, and then onto the bus for the return leg. I couldnt sleep despite the exhaustion, and we got left off at the Fukuyama stop at about 9.10pm. As the last ferry to the island was at 9.30 we knew we would have to stay at Kate's again (thanks Kate!!) and get the early one the follwing morning, so after a taxi and two trains we get back to Kate's for 11.30pm. Im awake, oh lets see, 5.30am saturday morning to 11.30pm sunday night, 42 hours!! Here is the killer though, Im also in school for 7.55am the following morning, and we had to get over to the island first, so yet another 5.30am start was had which was the toughest one so far as I felt like I had only put my head down when I had to get up. 6.05am ferry home, back to the apartment for 6.50, shower and freshen up and straight into school for 7.50am. This was the single hardest day in histroy to stay awake and my desk is right beside the principal's in a stuffy, humid office, so it took inhuman willpower not to fall asleep. As you can see from the above photo in the assmebly with the principal of another school showing Ireland on the globe, Im having a hard time staying awake!! Made it through the day doing my self intros for the students using my photos from home (some of you reading this are famous in a small island in Japan!!) and finally got home to rest at 6.30pm that evening, near death tiredness, but happy I made it through the whole thing.

Slept like the dead on monday night and the week was in full flow now. The week consisted of welcoming ceremonies on my first day in any school and then in my first classes in those schools, doing self introduction classes with photos and what not. Some of the students are involved in a speech contest so I was coaching some of them as well. I dawned on my how difficult English is for a foreigner as there is so much of it which just does not make any sense, and thats before we get onto intonation and emotive speaking which, for a culture used to a monotone language like Japanese, is near impossible. Its been enjoyable though, and eye opening. They learn by memory over here so by and large their spoken English is absolutely awful, and to combat this Ive been trying to get them into the attitude of not worrying about mistakes. Japanese people wont try anything generally if they think they cannot do it perfectly, mistakes are embarassing for them, so the classes were really quiet with no volunteers until I made a deal with them that if they tried to read out the sentences from the book and didnt worry about making mistakes, Id try to translate and say them in Japanese to give them a laugh. This is good alround as it gets them trying even if they are wrong and is helping me along with my Japanese. Makes the class way more enjoyable as well as I dont get stoney silence and blank stares any more when I ask a question, they are all trying to get stuck in and go for it. Also, anyone who has seen my Bebo flash box will have seen "Razor Ramon aka Hahdogaaaay". This guy is your best friend as a foreign teacher, any classes which are getting boring are instantly transformed into fun-fare with one impression of this guy (although before anyone jumps to conclusions, this doesnt involve me doing the pelvic thrusting antics, just the say say say say say stuff works wonders on that class). Overall teaching is no bother at all, really enjoy it and am learning as I go.

The other big news for me this week was my first judo training session. It was kinda sprung on me on thursay as Tabo-san said we were going to meet the coach for a talk. That was grand, met this guy (a 5th dan no less) who would be one of the 3 coaches and had a talk. I explained that I was quite good before but have had no training for a year and am very rusty, and he said it was no problem, to just take my time and that they would have no training for a couple of weeks as their college was doing exams. Grand I thought, two weeks to get the running shoes on and get the pounds off. "So you will join us for some training and introduction tonight, yes???". I could hardly decline, so after adult teaching class which ended at 4.30 after explaining the difference between Britain and Ireland and trying to explain the words to Danny Boy, I was on my way to judo practice. Walk in and they all run up to greet me, "whaaaaaaaa, Eirurando-jin" and mass handshakes. About 15 players, 8 of whom black belts and one badass guy came 5th in the all-Japan wrestling tournament as well as some high ranking judo tournament. They gave me a judogi and I got changed and got on. We started with ground work which is my best area and I made a fatal mistake of going for it from the off, so I battered the first guy easy enough on the ground, and then did the same to the second guy so the captain thought I was up for it came running over with a big smile on his face and we started. It was a draw at the end of the 3 minutes Id say, no submissions are pins or anything but he probably had the more control by a fraction. Big bow and a long "whaaaaaaaaaa" at the end of it told me I did alright. They dont do much ground work over here so this was my chance to impress. I was feeling tired already though, not in shape at all, and now we stood up to do some throwing practice. This was really exhausting, the speed of these guys is frightening, and they look like robots as each throw is identical to the last. 20 mins of this and I was wrecked. Then the crash mat came out and one of them did a demo to show us some new stuff. OH MY......this was olympic standard throwing and the speed was blinding. They give a huge shout when they throw here as well, and each time its 100% commitment to it. Then randori which is free practice and the guy who had just been giving the demo comes up to me with another big smile and bows which means he wants to fight me........gulp!! Held my own for the first minute until I got tired and then he just started slamming me all over the place. This is the same guy I fought to a draw on the ground so he must have thought Id be equally as good on the ground, not at all, so he was going for it full on and breaking out this mental stuff Id never seen anyone do outside of the world shampionships or something!! I could only stay on for 3 of the 7 randoris as I was absolutely falling over with exhaustion, but did alright overall, the captain beat me around pretty easily, so did his younger brother, and the third guy I fought to a draw with no scores although he was more tired than I was at the end. They only have white and black belts over here, so if you fight a white belt you have no idea how good they are at all. the last guy was a white belt but was a lot better than a lot of black belts Ive fought in Ireland. Fantastic overall, and they train monday-friday an hour and a half every day so I have my work cut out for me. Really lucky I found this place, should be a lot better by the end of the year. Here is a pic of my hands thought he following day which were destroyed from the intensity of the gripping!!

So to last night and my first office enkai which is an office party, this time in the form of a Japanese barbaeque to welcome me to Kinoe Junior High School. Had a great night, the food was delicious, (never thought barbequed wild boar intestine with cabbage and onion stew would be so tasty!!). The principal had near perfect English but he was deep in conversation with a colleague on something which looked important by the facial expressions so I was left to fend for myself and converse with the other folks. Combining my broken Japanese with their broken English was fun and we had great craic. Think this was me on the right here trying to tell a joke in Japanese at the end!! They cant hold their drink at all, Im a teetotaller but these guys were looking rough after about 2 small cans of beer. The difference is that they dont drink to get hammered like at home, so it was still really good craic to be around. They are big fans of 80's cheese pop rubbish which unfortunately I do know quite a bit about, so on the mention of Bryan Adams they were all giving is some impromtu karaoke which nearly made me collapse laughing. I thought I would add this last photo as although its nothing special as the guy who took it was a bit sauced, it looks as though Im about to tear the head off my principal. Dont know what he said or if this is just my face when Im trying to understand Japanese, gave me a fright when I looked over these this morning!! Had to drive the principal and the PE teacher home, brownie points all the way but I drove like such a pansy because they are really strict on road speed over here.

Thats all for this week, will check back next saturday morning with more news.

Graham

Settling in, conferences, seminars, training prisons etc....

2006-08-26T17:46:00.000+09:00

Been a mental few weeks, and in fact thinking back it feels like Ive been here for ages and it hasnt even been a month yet, thats how much has happened!! When I got here first the first days were spent with Ben travelling around the island and exploring with a few trips over to Hiroshima as well as a prefectural night on the town in which all the JETs from the Hiroshima Prefecture meet up for a night out or a trip somehwhere. These were cool days, exploring the new place and taking in the sights whilst letting whatever insomnia ridden body clock I had adjust to the differences. Then I actually began working, nut not teaching as all the kids are still on summer holidays, so my job consisted of sitting on the town hall's Board of Education (BoE) and with the official job title of "looking busy", I took it on myself to get stuck into some Japanese language learning from the CDs and books the JET crowd at home gave us. These days were also really cool, Id do an hour on the headphones with the CDs and then give the office workers a laugh by trying some of it out. Its a great atmosphere in the office there, strange as that is why I took this job, to get away from offices and all that, but this is a touch different to the stuff I probably would have been doing. Im a novelty for the office workers, they stare quite a lot and everything I do is quite curious to them, even little thigs like how I hold my coffee cup or how I type on a keyboard!! Every time I tried to say anything in Japanese everyone stopped what they did and listened, and if I got it right I received the Asian "whhaaaaaaa" sound of approval with the stereotypical furious clapping from the women who were present. 8.30am - 4.15pm of this was no problem, and if I felt tired one day there was nothing stopping me spending the entire day emailing and what not. Good times. The other JET for the island, Dave from Canada, arrived afterwards and joined into this set up, he lives in the apartment above me, so he then got the treatment I got for the first week by being shown around the island and brought to meet all the dignitaries, and as well as this we had a truly wonderful welcome dinner one night in the beer garden of a hotel which had one of the most incredible views Ive seen. It doubled up as a going away dinner for Ben and a welcome for myself and Dave. Nice way to break the ice with everyone.

Then the conferences began. The first one was the prefectural conference in Hiroshima City which although as condensed as it has been in years according to the organiser, consisted of several lectures a day which were quite long and drawn out. Most of the stuff in this conference had already been covered in the Tokyo Orientation like how to negotiate a Japanese supermarket or how to deal with a bug problem, but we heard them all again. I did get my re-entry permit sorted out for travelling which was a big relief, but other than that it was a bit of overkill during the day. The night time acitivites on the other hand were great craic. They organised a massive get together which everyone went to which had the usual combo of Japanese food/drink establishments followed by karaoke and then more karaoke. Im still awful, but as with everything when you throw caution to the wind it becomes a lot more fun and everyone gets into it and has a laugh over here so these nights were great fun. Admission to the above photo was granted on proof of having the name "Graham", so the girls seen here scammed the room for the other Grahams and claimed their nametags, whereas I stole Ricardo's the Mexican, so really I shouldnt have been allowed in, but a quick proof question to someone nearby proved I was Graham, and we proceeded with the photo which has me doing my patented cheesy grin, get in!!

When we got back to the island we were pretty shattered from burning the candle at both ends for the few days it was on, but first day back Tabo-san is on the phone all day and I keep hearing "menkyo" which means licence so I wondering what hes up to, and then all of a sudden the phone is down and after using the electronic dictionary to explain the situation, were on our way to Hiroshima again to get out Japanese driving licences, a highly sought after commodity as only certain countries can get their licence translated directly, and Ireland is one of them, get in!! So over we go, ferry, walking, bus, taxi, singing form after form after form, eye test, photos, more photos, more photos, more signing forms, another few forms after that, another photo, and now the prouod owner of a Japanese driving licence, so no more poxy cycling to work for me, car or moped!! Speaking of which, I also own my first car outright, bought this hulking superbeast off Ben my predecessor, not quite an aston martin but it goes, although with the air con on full blast I could probably run faster than it up a hill!!

We also had the obon festival one of the weekends which was our first real taste of Japanese culture. I am completely oblivious to the meaning of it, but its celebrated in such a strange way. All the towns and villages of the island have colours, and each place gets a few guys to dress up in these colours in traditional Japanese dress and then they go out and have these crazy rowing races in the sea all the day. The heart and effort they put in is ridiculous, as with everything Japanese, its 150% effort or none at all, so you can hear the cries and wails of effort of the boats which are about 50m away from the shore line. Hope the judo guys arent this up for it!! They race all day until the sun goes in, then it gets really weird. Instead of racing at this point, they avert their efforts to trying to ramp the boats up onto the pier by rowing them full force directly into the bank, andf the effort at this point get bumped upto 1000% as they go crazy trying to do this. Its impossible and they never fully succeed in getting it onto the pier (despite some might close attempts) but they do this for hours. All the while they stop to drink litres of sake so as well as using a year's worth of energy, they are getting completely pissed in the process, and when they boat is either no longer sea worthy and/or the fireworks have begun, they get out and are carried aloft through he crowd as heroes and all the singing starts. It was truly magnificent to see first hand.

So to last week, the Japanese culture and language training centre. This time a 5 days learning course way up in Saijo where we were to learn all the basics. I kinda knew them already from my CD's but that didnt give me enough assurance to enter myself into the intermediate class as I havent even looked at the alphabets yet (there are 3 of them, none of which I know) which I would hae to have a grounding in, so the language classes consisted of "my name is Graham, I am from Ireland" repeated 10 times in Japanese and then the numbers over and over again. They learn by repitition over here, so it was like being back in 1st class again with the endless repeating out loud after the teacher. Ugh!! The problem here was that we were in a massive fortress way up in the hills with an 11pm curfew should we want to go down into the town, so we were kinda trapped, although some of the nights were great for getting to know people as we tended to just hang around people's rooms and play pool and what not. A night or two would have been bearable, 5 nights was soul destroying, and everyone looked exhausted and malnourished by the end of the week as the food was very very -ish. Got back last night, didnt get up until 2.45pm today which shows how wrecked I was from it.

My Japanese is coming along well. I can understand very basic things, and can say quite a number of things now. Take today in the post office for example, I was able to understand when the teller told me to fill out the sender part of the envelope and them when she told me the price of the stamp I understood the whole thing and didnt need the dictionary. On the bus yesterday I understood most of the announcements. Ben told me the trick is to not try and understand every word but pick out the ones you do and piece is together, and this has been working well with steady progress. I can ask for things in a shop, can order food in a restaurant, can ask directions, can do full introductions and an array of greetings and chit chat, much better than when I got here a month ago. Hopefully the school kids will help me along!!

Ben has gone back to the States now so Ive almost fully begun the experience as a JET of trying to get my life going here, all I have to do is begin teaching which starts next friday. Looking forward to it, I have a feel for the island and I know what Im doing and whats expected of me, just have to get on with it now. To end here is a few pics of my house, car and mooped. This is the house, of which the entire lower floor is mine. The entry way is where you take your shoes off in a Japanese house, and then the rest are of the kitchen, living room and then my favourite the tatami room or matted room. My bedroom is disgracefully messy so Ill photograph it another time, but this is it for now, I love this place and its working out better than I could ever have imagined.

Check back soon cos Im going to climb Mt. Fuji next weekend with the JET crew. Were are to set off at 9pm and hike through the night to watch the sunrise from the top of it the following morning. Should have some good photos and stories to report back.

Hope everyone is well and happy,
Graham

The Tokyo orientation.

2006-08-06T18:18:00.000+09:00

Saturday, 730am we arrive at Dublin airport all looking slightly nervous and a bit overwhelmed at the thought of a year in Japan but also at the ludicrously strict 20kg baggage allowance for the year!! First chance to meet most of them, in fact nearly all of them as I missed the orientation in Dublin as I was in China at the time. Anyway, usual airport story, queue after queue to finally get on board and on our way to London for another 3 hour wait. Thankfully my head cold had gone away at this stage, although the flight wasnt first class as was rumoured beforehand. They used to fly JETs first class when there used to be only a few per country, not now though. Got through without any baggage charges, finally on our way Tokyo. Really good bunch, strange mix of just out college folks like me, then those who went into the workforce and found it soul destroying so signed up for JET, then those who've been in the workforce for years and are bored so branching out to try something new. Flight was long, 12 hours to Tokyo and I was awake the whole way, no surprises there!! We looked like a bunch of herion addicts by the time we reached Narita airport, and then we were met by so many JET volunteers that it was crazy, literally every 8 steps there was another one to tell us "now you go this way" until we reached the bus. The Keio Plaza was extremely posh, and with 3000 Westerners in town it was mighty packed. The whole 3 days consisted of going to welcome receptions in these packed out ballrooms with the whole banquet laid on for us as well as sitting into workshops like "how to live in rural Japan" or "driving in Japan, what to expect". I hardly went to any of these but instead went out exploring Tokyo instead. It huge, immaculately clean, and nearly all of it is 100% Japanese, there are thankfully hardly any foreign fast food chains or foreign shops, its all indigenous. The food is top notch as well, its an expensive place like we expected but you get looked after at its so weird to get served in a wooden bowl with a wooden airvented tray and all the stuff you see in the films. Its so different to anywhere Ive been, including Shanghai, in fact there are almost zero similarities between China and Japan thus far, Ill see how that pans out before I do a blog about it, but at this stage they are completely different. At night we were brought out either with our prefectural groups to get to know each other or with the Embassy of our country to meet dignitaries. The prefectural night was great craic, I have a really good bunch in mine who made the night worth it. We went to Japanese, eh, well I dont know what you'd call it, its not a bar or pub, and its certainly not a restaurant, its one of those places with the paper made sliding doors and wooden floors, and you go into the room and sit down to these long tables which are placed down in the rectangular dips in the floors, so although you feel like your about to just sit on the ground, your legs go down into the dips and you are actually sitting at a table as normal. Kinda hard to get used to. Then you pay a set rate and can eat and drink as much of anything you want for 2 hours. We had a great time, but no Japanese night on the town is complete without karaoke, so we all headed out to find a place and give it some. The same as Shanghai, this time Johnny Cash came to my rescue as I was able to give a decent rendition of Ring of Fire with the yokel accent to much applause. Didnt get back to the hotel til well late, the following day was a disaster for trying to stay awake!! The 3 days flew by and then we were flown down to Hiroshima airport to meet up with our predecessors and our new boss, so Ben and Tabo-San were there to meet me. The drive to the island was pretty stunning, and then the ferry across was something else. Ive tried to describe it already but I have some photos to put up. Its Crouching Tiger meets Glendalough with the added bonus of this being my home, so although I still feel like a tourist, and will for some time, I do actually live here which is hard to get the head around!! Once on the island I had to do all the meet and greet stuff which was a bit embarassing as it consisted of me saying one word and bowing to which they replied similarly, and then the standing in solence which Ive since been told is just a Japanese thing, they dont find it awkward, I did!! My apartment is much more opulent than I need, a married couple used to live here, that gives an indication of how big it is!! Bedroom has two beds, dressing table and wardrobe, massive fully stocked kitchen with everything I need provided, sitting room has a leather couch with coffee table, computer desk with the most incredibly fast internet (1MB per second download) and bookcabinet stocked with stuff people have left behind, and then a tatami room which is like a Japanese matted room which has a massive storage wardrobe and a step out area to outside. Its way bigger than I need, feel kinda guily.....kinda!! The town I live in is small but has everything I need, including some properly scenic drives to explore on the moped, and a beach of course. My predecessor Ben from New York is living upstairs until he leaves in a week or so, so until then he's showing me around. He is actually translating for me for now, and hes only here a year which is encouraging. The first few days was spent driving around the island meeting people and seeing my schools, as well as getting used to the surroundings. Bit intimidating alright, but Im here for a year so plenty of time to get settled. Took a trip over to Hiroshima to get a mobile phone but they wouldnt let me get one without my alien card so going again next week. Mobiles over here are enormous, they dont make their technology smaller like we do, bigger and more gadgets for phones, cameras, PDAs, anything like that so I was kinda taken aback to see the mobiles which on the outside look like non-descript bricks, but when I saw the features I was gobsmacked. Global satelite navigation, widescreen mpeg capability, 3 meg cameras, an organiser which could literally plan your whole life, and the screens are the same quality as a widescreen plasma screen!! Ill show yous it when I get it next week. Nothing much else for now, will be on again soon with more news as I start work this work in the Board of Education where my job title literally tranlsates as "looking busy", so Ill get the beginner Japanese out and get stuck in.

Hope everyone is well,
Graham

First Japanese blog.

2006-08-03T17:11:00.000+09:00

Will do a full run down of the Tokyo orientation later but for now, this is the view of the sunset from the beach near my new home. This island is an aesthetic masterpiece, nothing more to be said, enjoy the photos and check back again in a day or two to see what else Ive put up.

Last Chinese blog.

2006-07-17T01:49:00.002+09:00

02.45am here the night before I go home and Im trying to pull an all nighter so as to have some chance of sleeping on the plane tomorrow. I packed my case and it weighs about as much as I do, ie. a lot!! Will probably have to cough up some money to get it on board, hopefully the €1 : 10yuan ratio will hold in the airport too.

Anyway, thought Id do a blog to catch up on some of the stuff I missed before I found the internet connection in the apartment. The first story I remember which actually sums China up quite well happened during the week I was teaching English at the summer school. On the wednesday they gave me an easy day with just one class which wasnt until 2.30pm, so I had all morning to chill out in the apartment. So there I am, sitting on the couch reading my book and half watching the world cup highlights when all of a sudden there is this tremendous pounding on the front door, sounded like an earthquake. Thought there were burglars trying to batter theor way in!! Opened the door sheepishly enough to see 2 guys standing on the porch who both began blaring at me in Mandarin full on for about 30 seconds non stop before both, in perfect synchronisation, stopped shouting entirely, slowly leaned down to take off their shoes which was meticulously done, and as soon as they had them off, began shouting again and shoved past me into the apartment. I actually chuckled at the shoe removal as it was so Chinese, everything on hold to follow perfect etiquette!! Bewlidered I began walking after them asking what the heck was going on and followed them out onto the balcony . I noticed one of them was wearing workman overalls and the other a name badge for the apartments so I was sure enough I wasnt being burgled, but was still clueless as to what was happening. The barrage of shouting began again out on the balcony until I roared "look, I cant speak Chinese, I dont know what you are saying". They still looked mega pissed off and were still roaring and trouncing around the apartment until one of them decided to draw me a picture of a box with water drops coming out of it, and then it clicked that I had had the air conditioner in my room on full blast for about 4 days straight so I pointed at it, which elicited the "whaaaaaaa" reponse of amazement, and they both became nice guys all of a sudden, both patted me on the side of the arm in the pal-ish "well done" manner with big smiles and Chinese energetic nods, and stormed toward the front door, back on with the shoes and both turned to me, bowed hurriedly, and left again, leaving me standing in the middle of the living room still wondering what just happened. Then I just cracked up laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole thing. Obviously the air conditioner was leaking outside as I had it on too long, but the two stooges who came to fix it were priceless, and the synchronised shouting which stopped to take the shoes off had me in tears laughing when I calmed down and thought about it, very Chinese!!

There was another night I missed as well. Enterprise Ireland were holding a function in the Shangri-La (uber plush hotel on the Bund) to promote trade with China with the Minister for Trade Michael Martin present. Now I hate business jargon and management speak and all that stuff, so Roisin and I decided to do as much schmoozing as possible and just see how many false reactions we could get when we answered "Christian volunteers" to the obvious chit chat "what are you doing in Shanghai" question. The place was crowded with the typical entrepreneur types, all waxing on about what company or outfit they worked for and where they went to college, so it was a prime scenario to do some business card collecting and see what stories we could make up for them to believe, my favourite being that I am Roisin's manager and she is an up and coming cellist destined for stardom, Roisin wouldnt do it though!! Despite the fact we looked like an Eastern European escort agency couple, and were obviously not the usual sort who go to these promotions, we had a great night wandering around the packed room and chatting to randomers. The food on offer was spectacular, and I had a moment of real "get in" when there was a queue of Irish people lined up at the sushi bar, and as each one was digging in like savages with the knife and fork and wrecking the food in doing so, up strolls yours truly, "sorry lads" and as I leaned past them, out with the chopsticks with perfect technique to scoop a plateful impeccably and waltz away again looking all cultured, the silence and stares from the onlookers were deafening, brilliant!! The view at night when the place dies down a bit were quite something. Its the view from the Bund looking back onto the mainland which is really great to see. We were out on a huge patio area in which lots of people were sitting out and having a drink, amazing watching the sun go down and all the lights come on. We decided after we'd heard enough business waffling from the attendees that it was a nice night to take a stroll and look for a taxi instead of waiting in the queue for an hour, so we set off to find a taxi around the Bund. Not good. Although it stunning to look at, its brutally humid and idiot here was wearing a heavy winter suit Id just got here which was not helping matters. There was a concert just finished as well so crowds were spilling out onto the street, an hour and a half of walking was the result. We ended up running into an American man who teaches science over here, and he brought us to the subway and then took a taxi to near our house. Thought it was a bit sketchy at first as it seemed like a classical mugging story of a nice old man offering to help you get home, but he was a genuine guy. I got into a bit of a discussion with him about the Mormon doctrine, told him some stuff he didnt know (Kolob, spirit babies and the like) which he was surprised at and made the taxi ride more interesting than it would have been exchanging chit chat!! Interesting night overall, exchanged a couple of words in between the camera flashes with the Minister but as he crept up on us unannounced I didnt have time to prepare a inquiry about Ryanair or something contentious like that. Also got to see a proper plush hotel, the lobby and function room belong in Buckingham Palace!!

Yesterday we went to Nanjing for an overnight and got shown around by Peter, a local Christian theologian. Nanjing is heading along the same path as Shanghai in that the development is just beginning and the multinationals are moving in as we speak. There is still lots and lots of authentic China there though as in Shanghai, and we got to see it first hand. It was early evening when we got there so we were brought to the local attraction of Confuscius' temple and surrounding bazar. I hope the photos do this place justice, my words are gonna seem shallow again as its hard to describe what it looks like, but imagine all the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas with none of the tack. The lake and old buildings look wonderful at night, and the atmosphere of the place is like dreamland, just a nice hum of activity, even the market stall sellers look amazed at the place. We wandered around and got a few things. CDs over here are very cheap, in Shanghai I bought a load of opera CD's for €1 each, the same here with even more range although this Polish import of Turandot stayed on the shelf!! The temple itself was closed by the time we got to it, but we were more than happy just to wander around the place and take in the sights. The humidity here is even worse than Shanghai so even at this late-ish hour the customary bottle of water every 20 minutes was still happening. We went to the hotel we were staying at and I was so exhausted from the previous few days that I crashed out at 1am and didnt wake up until 7. The following day was to be action packed as we had loads of places to see and had to be at the train station by 5 to go back to Shanghai. The first stop was the heart attack inducing Mausoleum of ????? cant remember which had a monstrous flight of stairs running up to it, which first thing in the morning in 30 deg heat are not the nicest things to tackle. Not much sun in this photo, right, but all of that 30 degrees is in humidity, which isnt good for stair climbing. The view from the top was worth it though, and after this we headed around several museums and local places of interest before heading back to the train station.

Thats all I can think of now as Im getting a bit tired, there are many more which Ill put up when I get back to Ireland and have a good look through the photos, all 3.5GB worth. Leaving for the airport at 8.30 tomorrow morning (ie. in a few hours!!), will miss Shanghai a lot and the YMCA staff we met here, as well as Sang Yon's hilariously meticulous nature and his and Roisin's petty arguments over the most unimprtant things!! Its been a fantastic experience all round, wish we could stay on longer but life calls us back home. Asia is a new place for me, Ive travelled to the US and Canada and the Carribean as well as all around Europe, but never East, and this is has been a great introduction to a completely different way of life and culture. It'll be weird to walk around and not get stared at, and to not have to speak really slowly all the time to those who dont have good English, but then again Im off to Japan 10 days after I get back to not much time to get used to being home!! Roisin and I have been on much different body clocks since we've been here. She goes to bed at around 9pm and gets up at 3.30am, whereas I as an insomnia sufferer cant sleep til well into the wee hours, usually getting to sleep at 5 or so and getting up at 8. As such, Roisin gets most of the sunrises on camera, so I thought Id finish with a nice photo of it, its pretty amazing looking!!

Karaoke.

2006-07-14T01:38:00.001+09:00

Oh dear, that dreaded word. First of all Ill show you some background to my career as a karaoke legend. Here, on that epic assault on the Greek islands as a mere boy of 19, you can see myself and 'oul Stumpy givin' it socks to some rubbishy Westlife which the DJ just wouldn't let us away with not singing as we were the only Irish people in the place. I think the general rule with karaoke is the worse you are, the louder cheer you get once you at least try and sing words in the right order with some semblance of the tune, so we got a rapturous reception on each of each efforts. These photos never did us justice here as the entire population of the bar is out of sight from this angle, but trust me, we were so awful we became minor celebs in that place, getting a couple of mighty cheers for the pure entertainment value we offered.

Anyway, to tonight. Kate and Crystal who are both native Chinese brought myself, Roisin and Mr. Wu out for dinner in yet another fantastic Chinese restaurant, with the promise to go out for some karaoke afterwards. Now this filled me with a certain dread as although I have graced a karaoke platform before, I was a hardcore drinker at the time and as such, had the artificial drink induced courage of 20 indestructible Samsons, but not now though in my teetotal condition, so the thought of having to actually confront my complete lack of singing talent in a sober manner in front of others didnt fill me good thoughts!! Alas, what started out as a slight concern turned into a fantastic night and we all got stuck into some heartfilled cheesy pop songs. Crystal was the star of the show with a great singing voice, Kate came in second with a competent all round range, Roisin (although a trained choir singer and an all round high calibre musician) was the first to admit she should probably stick to hymns and leave the ballads to pop idols, and then me, monotone Jack with the intonations of a deaf/mute and even less panache!! After bravely taking the mic and opening with a competend enough rendition of Brown Eyed Girl (doesnt actually sound THAT bad on the video playback) I managed to obliterate such favourites (all on my own I might add) as Hotel California, Country Roads, Batchelor Boy, Winds of Change, and a couple others I cant think of just now. Myself and Roisin did a quite good rendition of California Dreaming and a competent enough Angels, but then flunked out with a disgrace of an effort of Flying Without Wings (which almost brought a tear of nostalgia to my eyes thinking back to the Greek adventure) as well as pretty poor showings of Yesterday, Hey Jude, Que Sera Sera and Teat for Two. Mr. Wu would have stolen the show had he been able to join us as he is a college trained opera singer, but he couldnt make it unfortunately. Karaoke in Asia is much different to the island holiday experience where they sting you mid drink and put you down for a load of stuff beyond your comprehension at the time of asking, and then later when you are called stagger up to the podium still reeling from your last cocktail to try your best to read the words coherently and put on some sort of show. Here you rent a little room which is hooked up with a rig to play whichever songs you want and has all the volume and lighting controls on hand, so anyone struggling to hit the high notes can be helped along. In comparision of Greece til now you can see the majestic contrast from my earlier efforts. Before, nothing more than a pop produced boy band member, new to the industry, not much creativity, standing there reading out my lines with added emotion and the occasional wave to the front row, they loved it, they truly loved it, but now you see the all round artist, relaxed, no more dance moves, the voice speaks for itself, a demonstration of the always difficult transition from boy band pretty boy to serious artist, in control and captivating the audience with perfection!! Eh....no, I think Id be seen on the bogey highlight reel on pop star idol or whatever it is, getting ridiculed mercilessly by the panel. Even though the singing from myself and Roisin was by and large awful (except for a slightly promising rendition of "House of the Rising Sun" and "Brown Eyed Girl" from yours truly.....seriously) we had a great time butchering pop songs and catching most of it on camera. Crystal and Kate were doing really good renditions of Chinese pop and in the intervals myself and Roisin were doing our best to get a dig in for classical music by damaging pop as much as possible. We actually got a truly hilarious rendition of "I have a dream" on camera, thinking of putting it as my bebo flashbox, will play it back first to see how cringeworthily awful my "singing" is first though. Was great fun all round though, everyone got into the spirit of it and had a great time. Luckily the room was soundproofed as there would have been complaints, but just as we were finishing up and about to leave, Crystal insisted we do one more song, and as we had exhausted all possible "talent free" opportunities, we had to have a shot at something genuine and as if it were planted there just for us, O Sole Mio was just waiting to be selected. However, this is a piece Pavarotti and Domingo sing, not hacks like me, so instead of even attempting the actual piece, we gave it its more popular alias of "Just one cornetto" and proceeded to destroy this also, something Im not proud of thinking back but again, on tape, might make it to viewing at some point in the future. Overall a great night, great laugh with our mixture of talented locals and woefully inept tourists doing their best to achieve their respective aims!!

The Bund.

2006-07-13T00:58:00.000+09:00

First off a quick not to anyone who has left any comments on this page. There was a scandal in China some months back as a blogger went off on a huge rant about human rights in China and as a result viewing of blogs in China is now blocked unless you have a certain type of internet connection. As bad luck would have it the connection I get here in the apartment is not one of these connections so although I can post new blogs and add photos and all that, I cannot actually view this page in its completion, and as a result I cant see any comments which have been left. Rest assured Im not being aloof by not replying and will get back to anyone who was commenting when I get back to Ireland and get a chance to look at it myself.....kinda curious to see what it looks like!!

Today we were taken to see the Bund and what a day it turned out to be. The Bund is very famous worldwide as China's premiere skyline view and it gives a glimpse of China's colonial history as the buildings have a very authentic European look, although I couldnt find out for definite I think it must have been the French who designed the promenade and surrounding buildings having seen Paris in person a few years ago. We had a fantastic day and the timing was perfect as the sun was just coming out as we got to the promenade, seen here. The view of the buildings in the sunshine was some sight to behold, and there was a lot of activity in the harbour area itself with ships coming to and fro (wonder if poor Jack Bauer was on board any of them, although we have to wait for season 6 to find out!!). Although this is a main tourist area, it didnt really feel like one as the bus loads of tourists with masses of camera bags and matching t-shirts were nowhere to be seen, and the whole area has a lovely laid back feel to it, nobody is in too much of a hurry so we didnt have to wait ages to get a photo opportunity!! We walked around in the sun for a couple of hours and got tonnes of photos before deciding to go for dinner and come back to the promenade again when the sun had gone in to see the night time sights. I will never get used to this, a ridiculously lavish dinner for 3 people which left even me bursting at the seams, the equivalent of €10 in total!! At night the whole area has a fantastic holiday resort buzz about it, really felt like we were waking around a Greek island or Aruba in the evening as the humidity and heat were still in effect and the whole place was lit up with surprisingly non-tacky lights and signs. I spectacularly ran out of intelligence when it came to working out how to take good pictures of a far away object at night which was already lit up like a Christmas tree, but these are the ones which came out the best. Its tough being a Westerner here as they accost you constantly to buy dodgy watches and leather bags, but snubbing them becomes almost second nature after a while. I really liked the walk from the restaurant back up to the harbour, night life here is different from Ireland or Britain, much more akin to that of mainland Europe where there are nightclubs and bars and places like that, but I have yet to see one overly pissed up idiot passed out on the ground from drinking too much or smashed glass and a fight breaking out. Its laid back and easy going like how the Euros do it, and it makes for a much nicer wander around the place!! Although the place was much more packed than earlier as the sights of the place lit up at night are world renowned and everyone flocks to the promenade to get some photos of the lit up ships and the buildings, it was still a really chilled out place to be. Its pretty special looking, I cant really liken it to anything as in all my travels I have hardly seen anything like it.

We had a nice walk around here again and for the first time all holiday I got to feel a nice evening breeze which meant for once I wasnt a sweaty mess downing bottle after bottle of water!! It was a perfect evening, was almost a shame to come home, but after a day of walking around in the sun we were all pretty tired and dying to put our feet up (or rush to a computer and show everyone where we spent the day!!)

Finally I must post a photo of this young lady, a volunteer from the YMCA who brought us around for the day. Before we went to the Bund we first of all were at the Yu Gardens, another tourist area but this time in really cool looking ancient Chinese houses. Lucy, who has flawless English as she trained in college, is the undisputed world champion of bargaining. Now, anyone who knows me will know that in all the part time jobs I worked at, I hated bargain hunters who refused to acknowledge that they were buying a tv in a superstore which didnt bargain, not a rug or carpet in a Turkish market where it is expected. As such the thoughts of tit-for-tat chattering with the seller didnt fill me with enthusiasm as I am usually inclined to just pay the asking price and get on with things, but to watch a master of any discipline in action is a joy, and this was almost breathtaking. I am reminded of Henry V and the call to "imitate the actions of a tiger" when engaging in warfare, and the usually placid and softly spoken Lucy became an aggressive warrior and I stood in amazement as "1 item for 60yuan" quickly became "2 for 50" and so on, and several of the shop keepers were just left bewildered as they parted with stuff for a fraction of what they usually would. I thought our flat mate Sang Yong held the title of "world's greatest bargainer" after some of his earlier showings (helped by the fact he looks like Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat.....solid), but he never cracked the tourist districts where they dont move on price at all, whereas our Lucy was quick about bankrupting some of these extortionists. Kudos.

Anyway, enough for now, although I only realised that unfortunately our month of celebrity living is almost over as we go home on monday. This weekend we are going to see Nanjing after our farewell party on Friday (speech at the ready) so I should have a load more photos to put up next week so check back then to see what they are like.

Hope everyone is well,
Graham

New room mate.

2006-07-07T01:10:00.000+09:00

With Sang Yon (left) leaving for inner Mongolia on business for a week, we now have a new room mate, Li, also from Korea. Before anyone asks why Im doing that hippy looking peace sign, thats what nearly all young Asian people do in photos.......when In Rome!! Li speaks perfect English but unfortunately for him, my Mandarin is better than his and that is quite a statement seeing as my Mandarin has about 5 words and one sentence!! The locals know by the look of myself and Roisin and that we obviously cant speak Mandarin, but unfortunately for Li he doesnt get this consideration and it can make for some quite awkward moments for him!!

This is myself and Roisin with the Pastor of the local Church. We couldnt really talk to him due toe the obvious language barrier, but the service itself was translated for us in parts by Mr. Wu and was very similar to a service from home.

Finally I didnt get to add this photo early as I couldnt access the internet with my laptop for ages, but this is from the HangZhou day when we visited the unpronouncable tower as I call it, Ill look it up later!! I mentioned Bruce Lee in passing to the Hong Kong students so they decided we should all do stupid looking Bruce Lee poses for this photo, but as Im the biggest person there I stick out like a moron, as usual(the guy to my right is like a Chinese "gangsta" rapper, an absolute legend, Im actually gonna do a blog just for him in a day or two, he deserves it for the amount of unintentional humour he's given me!!). The tower behind us was really cool, there are actually only 7 floors inside it but from the outside it looks like there are 13 floors, and the view from the top across the lake is pretty staggering. Last day of teaching tomorrow and its the under 9's group so dont have to make any more powerpoint presentations, just some simple name games and stuff, bit of a relief, I felt sorry for the translator cos its been the same person doing it all week so Im sure she's completely fed up translating the same 30 slides and jokes 5 times a day!!

The Asian art of sleeping!!

2006-07-06T13:05:00.000+09:00

Anyone who knows me well will know that sleeping cannot be listed among my (short) list of talents, but as you can see here Asians are masters at it. This photo was taken roughly 20 seconds after the bus took off from a visit to a museum town, cant remember the name of it!! They all remained motionless until we got home about 3 hours later!!

Anyway, later in the week we visited the community centre in which the old guy gave me the magnificent painting, this time just to watch them draw and see some more of their work. One of the older members who looked as if a stiff breeze would knock him over was giving another one a neck massage, and as my neck was kinda sore from whatever way I had been lying, I asked if he could look at my neck as Id heard the Chinese were really good at this stuff. BIG MISTAKE. He turned from being a frail old man to a world strongman champion as soon as he laid hands and me, and after my initial "ahhh" noise he proceeded to torture me for about 3 minutes, which Roisin found hilarious!! Serious strength, although once the initial shock was over and I totally relaxed it was really beneficial. I thought Id cash in a bit as this guy was apparently an expert in this stuff, so next he looked at my hands which are in all honesty absolutely wrecked from judo. He told Linda to tell me Id need to have about 3 sessions a week with him to recover the damage from gripping all the time in training. Will have to see if I can find a similar practitioner in Japan!!

Here you can see my new swish wardrobe as well and before anyone comments, yes, that is an 80's style cream suit, although I wont be wearing it in Ireland a) weather isnt good enough and b) would look like a total prat. With the sun tan I got over here I looked like a member of the Ukrainian mafia when I tried it on, rest assured this will get many opportunities during my travels!!

Finally I thought Id add this. My room-mate Sang Yon the Korean's English is, well, its not great, hes learning and improving all the time, but it tends to be one or two sentences here and there after much translating and running into his computer to translate words on the internet. Anyway, the other night I just asked out of interest if he had a Chinese of Korean Bible as I was quite interested to see it. He reappeared with both a couple of minutes later and then I discovered what a great way of communicating this was as using the indexes we could exchange some verses and have a great conversation that way. I read a very old King James Version and I pointed out one of my favousite verses from it 1 Corinthians Ch 13 which is quite famous, and although it took a while he found them in his he instantly knew why I love this chapter so much. Over here Christianity is still in its infancy so they dont have the access to books and infomation like we have, so Bible reading is just that, accompanying notes and other Christians to talk to are a rarity, so this has become a regular fixture for us to exchange views and ideas on it. The photos are one Sang Yon took to show his family and he game me a copy, the first is obvious from my KJV and this one here is from his Korean Bible which obviously I cant read a word of but it shows what a great medium Christianity is for people from different cultures. (On a side note, the easy way to distinguish Korean script from Chinese is that Korean has lots of circles!!)

Only 2 classes in the school today so shouldnt be too tiring. Found out in one area of the apartment I get wireless broadband so Ive rearranged the whole sitting room to facilitate it.

Hope everyone is well,
Graham

Teaching tips from Mr. Ruddle!!

2006-07-05T16:51:00.000+09:00

Intimidating, no? They're actually not intimidating at all, just a bit scared of this giant in front of them when I walked in, a few photos from my collection of me acting like an idiot fixed that quick enough!!

This is them after they calmed down a bit and started co-operating. This was during the awful day 1 second lesson which almost gave me a heartattack, thankfully a distant memory now!!

This last photo looks nice as I actually got them involved and enjoying the class, and I cant complain too much about the first day as it was entirely my own fault. Only one class today which went well, I showed some photos of my world travels, the Greek and Aruban beaches got the biggest "whaaaaaaaaa" sounds which is an Asian sound of approval!!

More in the days to come, for now have to keep up the powerpoint shows for the class and keep making mental notes and to what works and what doesnt!! To anyone ever trying to teach kids who cant speak English

DO - make lots of hand gestures
- pull lots of funny faces
- have lots of visual material
- make jokes which involve you falling over or looking like an idiot (explaining the condition of my clothes after my first chopstick attempt went down well)
- bring as many of them up to the front or simply get them out of their seats as much as possible!!

DONT - put long sentences together and expect them to be interested in the teacher's translation.
- put up maps of the world and point to various places of interest
- be sarcastic
- or witty, both are completely lost on them.

Also, things which may seem utterly boring to you may be a real treat for them. I put up some of my US photos and as I needed to drag out the time a bit, decided to do a name game where I wrote the names of the people in the photos on the blackboard and did a cometition to see who could remember them. Sounds awful, took up a great 20 minutes with no awful silences!!

These may seem obvious but you forget when put on the spot!!

Will blog again soon.

What a difference a day makes....

2006-07-04T13:49:00.000+09:00

....24 little hours!!

So much better today, and within 40 seconds of getting home yesterday realised the ridiculouness of the day was all down to the powerpoint I did being a touch difficult for a bunch of kids who I learned since had been doing English for a little under a year, and mostly in grammar only format, so "can anybody point out Ireland on this map of Europe" was obviously a bit of a stretch!! I even feel like a bit of an idiot writing this, it seems quite obvious doesn't it? Well anyway, did a much more childish and simple powerpoint for today with a theme of "cultural differences between Ireland and China" spoken really slowly with constant translation from the Chinese teacher, and nice big pictures of chopsticks beside a knife and fork, a Chinese New Year Festival beside a St. Patrick's Day parade etc. Much, much, much better and realised that by going round the class and acting like an idiot before the bell that they were much less intimidated and much more willing to talk once the class started!! Made life a lot easier, and now apparently as I write this Im being announced over the loud speaker again, although Ill save you the details....*blushes*.

Learning some tricks of the trade now by the practice this is giving me, and I actually have a new found respect for teachers, keeping a class going and maintaining interest sound easy right? Wrong!! Trick number 1, always have enough back up material to drag out the time....

(was trying to add some photos of the classes but its acting up, will try again tomorrow)

Kindergarten Cop!!

2006-07-03T13:37:00.001+09:00

So, they brought me out to a montrosity of a summer school to teach English to some kids. Grand I thought, a chance to get some practice in before I go to Japan. Did a really cheesy Irish powerpoint last night with some photos of Dublin and Trinity and what not, and even had a rendition of Danny Boy playing in the back ground to give it some authenticity, sounded like a I couldnt go wrong!! Well, this turned out to be one of the toughest days of my life. The first class was a nice way to get acquainted with it, there was an English teacher there who could obviously translate the parts I was saying, and then we even had a little game of "5 sentences about Ireland". Then, the 2nd class. Walk in, no teacher, a gaggle of hyper Chinese kids were there though, with almost zero grasp of English and the attention span of a bowl of goldfish. Right, do the powerpoint, drag every slide out with added comments, and close with some Q&A, easy, right? Oh no, about 20 seconds into the powerpoint the noise starts to rise and I can tell they A) dont understand a word Im saying and B) are completely uninterested!! I was getting them to read out the captions but that worked for the first slide and then stopped. Plus, I could tell I was having the piss ripped out of me in Chinese by a group of lads in the corner, but I could hardly do a witty comeback when my Chinese is hardly even worthy of the title "beginner". Realised I was talking to myself and then decided to look at the clock thining there must be only a few minutes left, no no, 30 minutes left!! Actually just started laughing at how ludicrous this must look but what made is cringeworthy was while I was wandering around the class trying to distract them with my camera, the noise suddenly all stopped and looking around at the door saw a very dour looking old teacher staring at me with a look on her face like she'd been sucking on a lemon for the previous year. Slowly advanced, sorry, to which she replied "noise down". Managed to finally get them to talk a little by bringing up the world cup, and then a slight highlight as the end of class bell is a sample of Beethoven's Fur Elise, and when it cranked on it was the sweetest rendition of it Id ever heard!! Class 3 and 4 were perfect as there was a teacher to translate again and help explain the slides I was showing, but class 2 was the longest 40 minutes of my life. Ill post the photos of it next time, I was seconds away from a Kindergarten Cop style "SHHHHHUUUUUTTTTT UUUPPPPPPPP" until I regained my composure and went back to talking to myself out loud. The teachers thought it was hilarious when I relayed the story to them!! Home now to sleep for a week, got collected at 7.10 this morning, noisy kids are mentally draining, but as I said, good practice for next year!!

An authentic Chinese painting!!

2006-06-27T13:06:00.000+09:00

We were brought out to another community centre the other day to see a group of calligraphy teachers have a conference of sorts and watch them do some drawing. Although this didnt sound the most exciting thing in the world it turned out to be one of the most rewarding days so far and we really got an insight into Chinese culture and custom. The teachers were all sitting around a big table when we went in and we were trying not to disturb them, but they stopped everything when they saw us and told Linda (our interpreter) they wanted to show us some stuff. Firstly they wanted to give us Chinese names, Roisin's being easier as her name literally means "White Rose" in Irish, mine was tougher as Graham means "Home Dwelling", so they decided on Luo Ja Jwing (phonetic) for me which is quite a compliment but Ill save you the details of what it means cos Ill sound like a show off!! They then wrote the names out for us in traditional characters and then made us try and write them using the calligraphy paintbrushes which is undescribably difficult to do. They made it look really easy. Then they were talking for ages and Linda was talking to someone so we didnt know what they were saying, and first of all one of them did a portrait of Rosiin which was amazingly well done, and then just in case I felt left out, one of the older guys took out a truly amazing painting he had drawn to show us. It really is something, Ill attach a photo of it, Linda told him it took him a long time to paint it. The shocking part is he laid it out on the table and then starts drawing a load of Chinese characters down the side of it, midway through which Linda looked at me and said "oh my....", cos when he had finished he walked over, shook hands with me and GAVE me the whole thing, the writing he had been doing was to the effect of "Dear Graham, thank you for visiting with us at Dapu Community Centre, please accept this gift..." (paraphrase). I was absolutely speechless, still I thinking back on it, he could make an absolute fortune selling this to tourists but just for visiting with them for a couple of hours and having a few laughs watching me try to use the calligraphy brush, he parted with something which you could tell he was really proud of. I said I couldnt accept it but he insisted, rest assured it will take pride of place in a frame on my wall at home. Its a very personal drawing also, about a man walking through a wooded area with paradise beside the woods, but he cant see it through the trees, quite representing of Christianity in a way. We left there completely humbled by the whole experience with a promise to retuen next week to see them again, they're gonna show us how to make a Chinese stamp next time!!

Trying to load some photos!!

2006-06-22T12:31:00.000+09:00

Had a really cool few days, went clothes shopping and got fitted up for some suits and an overcoat for about 5% of what they would have cost in Ireland!!

Yesterday we went to a community centre and had a great time helping the old folks with their English lessons. They have problems with R,L and TH sounds, which makes for hilarious "lost in translation" type mishaps!!

Just today we had a lecture from college professor about the cultural history if China, with one of the Hong Kong students translating. Was very interesting and he showed us how to analyse ancient Mandarin symbols.

Going to try and attach some photos which is undescribably difficult as the screens are all in Mandarin but hopefully this works!!

Got a computer at last!!

2006-06-19T13:44:00.000+09:00

Been in Shanghai for a few days now, a truly amazing place!! We got here two days ago to find out that the welcoming party had got their dates mixed up and expected us the day before, so the day they had planned for us to chill out and get used to the time difference was now gone. We didnt mind at all but they were really embarrassed about it!! The sights of Pudong in Shanghai city are incredible, there are huge and impeccably clean looking high rise apartments on either side of the road and they are surrounded by even higher office blocks and corporative buildings. Loads of cyclists, and the roads in general are pretty crazy, indicators are a non-existant extra!!

Our apartment is very plush to say the least. We are sharing with a Korean guy who works in the YMCA as well, Ko Sam Yong. Manners and hospitality are a really big deal with the people so far, they offer you everything they have but are visibly uncomfortable with asking you for anything or receiving any gifts you give them. Everywhere is ridiculously clean, the apartment looks like a show room, Sam Yong gets up at 5.30am every morning to clean it from top to bottom!!

Due to the jet lag I woke up at 3.30am on the first morning and couldnt get back to sleep so I took the camera out onto the balcony and took some spectacular looking photos of the Shanghai skyline. There is a permanent heat haze which looks like fog at all times, but the view from our window is amazing. Ill add them in a couple of days when I bring my camera to the office cos I cant get on to blog from the apartment. We went on a trip to HangZjou on the first day which has the West Lake in it. Again, I cant really describe it properly but the photos will speak for themselves when I put them up. It was stiflingly hot for the whole day but was worth it to see everything. The food is delicious!! Lunch and dinner are taken at one of those revolving tables although the first meal was embarrassing as we ate with a group of Hong Kong students who found my lack of skills with the chopsticks hilarious!! Getting better as the time passes but the first day was a disaster, so bad the waitress brought me over a knife and fork. The following day we went to see some Buddhist temples, although taking photos of their idols didnt go down too well with the monks who were patrolling the them. The temples were enormous and they seemed to have them going in ascending order up and up on a hill until the summit had a gigantic one with a fountain beside it, all symbolic of their ethos. I managed to get some shots taken, interesting stuff. The heat throughout the day was very hard to bear, even the locals were bringing us into the shade for rest periods. Thankfully I got some days in the sun at home before we left to get used to it, otherwise Id look like a lobster by now!!

Our hosts have been extremely accomodating thus far. They are best described as both highly energetic and determined, and meticulous beyond belief in every detail. In the car from the airport they gave us the welcome pack which had a full schedule, detailed to the minute, of how the month would run, as well as travels passes and a card with the apartment address written in Mandarin in case we got lost!! We are like minor celebrities, everywhere we go people stop and stare at us, and at the West Lake the Hong Kong students took it as a great honour when we got into photos with them. Ive cracked my head off about 4 doorways as well, that stereotype is correct unfortunately, not the tallest race Ive ever encountered, and me being over 6 foot tall has a lot of drawbacks over here, my bed is only about 5 feet long!!

Today, we are meeting the YMCA staff and just about to go and see the local community centre. Ive asked for some extra Chinese lessons as it should give me a good background to start Japanese in a few months time. Our hosts have fantastic English, the written pamphlet we got about the history of Shanghai was a better standard than most leaving cert students in Ireland!!

Ill post again in a couple of days with some photos and more news, hopefully Ill have some Mandarin words to show off by then!!

Graham

Countdown to China.

2006-06-12T07:05:00.001+09:00

First post to this blog!! Few days to go until I leave for China on Thursday, starting to get excited about it, no idea what to expect at all from Shanghai.

Stay tuned.