日本に1年 One year In Japan

It’s incredible to think how quickly the days have passed and joined together to form one year but, like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our Japanese lives. As I type this post however, I’m sitting back in Perth on my short break home. It feels incredibly weird to be back after such a whirlwind 365 days, almost as if like it was an apparition. However in saying that, after only 2 days back in Perth I miss Japan terribly and am totally suffering from reverse culture shock. Arguably it has been the best year of my life, full of adventure, fun, work, travel, immense happiness, immense sadness, ups, downs and everything in between. It’s been awesome. Anyhoo, let’s make some subheadings for this post and pick out some of my highlights and lowlights of my time so far…

私は私の一番好きな物 – Most favourite thing I did

This is not a particularly hard thing for me to think about. In November, I completed my first marathon, admittedly not actually a marathon – just 10km, in Horado, Seki City. It was extremely satisfying for me to complete it and to prove to myself that I could do something like this. It was also a great thing to do since it transformed just a simple exercise that I’d do once or twice a week into more of a hobby. I was proud of my time, in spite of some physical pain that I was in and proud of my place. (more on the race in my earlier post ‘Now I’m weaving a hundred words…‘). The Saturday before I left on my trip back home to Australia, I did another race, this time only 7km in one of my home cities – Yamagata. Admittedly it was a small field but I was happy with my 6th place, though I wished my time of 29mins 30secs could have been quicker, but seeing about 50 of my students did keep me motivated and even without the magic of my first, or even my home marathon, I still hope to do more and improve.

私は私の一番嫌い物 – Most hated thing I did

Not something I particularly wish to share with the world… but I’m learning from it and it’s making me a stronger person. It’s only through our mistakes that we grow and this is something I am attempting to do. And hoping I will never do again

日本の一番好きな物 – Most favourite thing about Japan

The people. After only two days back in Australia, I’ve become more aware of how kind, courteous and well mannered the Japanese people are. In contrast, I’ve already found Australians to be rude, stupid, arrogant and definitely deserving of the 2nd fattest nation in the world title. While some of what I like about Japan is down to ‘tatemae’ (the outward appearance, and always agreeing and consensus building) ,it can be hard as a foreigner to work out what the true feelings of the Japanese are and to truly believe that what they are saying is what they believe or just the public face they show. However, in any case, it’s something I think ‘western’ nations can take on board.

日本についての私の少なくとも好きな物 – My least favourite thing about Japan 

As I have mentioned in many previous posts, my experiences of Japanese roads and Japanese drivers has not been good. While in some ways I can understand that the roads are necessarily not as wide as Australia due to the size of the country, still, major roads should be easily wide enough for a car and a truck to pass through with no problems. The distractions available to Japanese drivers also is something the somewhat non-existant authorities should be looking at and the sometimes scary ways in which drivers often run red lights with little disregard has probably caused much harm to my heart and knocked a few years off my life. I admit that I am an aggressive driver, however after the first few months where my Australian driving mentality somewhat still prevailed in Japan (‘Roadrage Ben’ was my nickname after Golden Week), I’ve become somewhat more cautious and my yelling at silly drivers has just become a quiet muttering…

私はオーストラリアの見逃している何 – What I have missed about Australia

Coming from the coast of Australia and living in the centre of Japan, I have missed the beaches of Australia. I know I mentioned this as one of the things I knew I would miss before coming to Japan and that has been very true. I’ve seen many oceans and seas around the world and in spite of my less than glowing thoughts about Perth, the one thing it does have is the world’s best beaches. It’s been something, especially with the change of seasons and having a snowy winter, that I have been missing. Hopefully tomorrow I will enjoy the golden sand and warm weather.

私がオーストラリアについて欠席していないもの – Things I haven’t missed about Australia

What I haven’t missed about Australia is the feeling that I have not been moving forward in my life. In Japan I feel like I’ve accomplished something in the past 12 months, not only in my private life but in my work too. I’m always busy, I’m always happy in what I do. Sure I’m usually exhausted on the weekends and there have been times when I haven’t been at my best, but the thank you’ from staff and students at the end of the year has made me feel that not only has the year and Japan been good to me (besides the drivers! =P), but I have been good to Japan. I put this down to idea of always trying to say ‘yes’ to things. Always trying to do things at my schools on weekends when I wasn’t paid for it, going to some of the things my staff has done outside of work, finding new things that interest me and always trying to hang out with different people where possible.

It’s been a charmed year in Japan. I laugh to myself when I think back at how I was so unsure of even coming to Japan, of how I was thinking of only staying for one year when now I find myself extremely excited for the new year to come. My thoughts at the moment lead me to think that I will only stay for one more year, but after the year that has passed, I’m not sure I can say that with any certainty. All I can say is, bring it on! =D Until next time…

地震 – Earthquake

I admit it has been hard to write about something so big as this, particularly since it has been such a prominent part of the media over the past few weeks, because it has been big on the blog-iverse and even more so because my experience of it has been so miniscule, even considering my relative proximity to it all.

My experience of the earthquake was relatively minor. In southern Yamagata-shi, Gifu-ken, the earthquake measured about 4 on the Richter scale. This is nothing unusual for Japan and something I have experienced before, and would after the big one, albeit with much greater trepidation. In my case, at the time of ‘the’ earthquake, I was on the 2nd floor of my school and cleaning up the floor so I did not feel much. Only once I returned to the staff room at my school and noticed all the teachers standing around a television, did I realise that something much bigger happened than your ‘run of the mill’ Japanese earthquake. A couple of staff members, the school secretary in particular were looking very worried as the events unfolded. It was rather obvious that she was trying very hard to hold back tears and was looking intently at her mobile phone, like most people who had friends in the north of the country were.

Vague initial reports in foreign media only stated that the earthquake had hit Japan so my phone was buzzing for the next few hours as people kept messaging/ringing me for details and reassurances that I was ok. The large volume of traffic meant that calls throughout the country were rather difficult to answer and sms/mail and the internet was the best way to communicate with the world. I, like the rest of the world, watched on in amazement at what was happening in the Tohoku region. Unsure of what was happening with my own incommunicado friend (who I would thankfully hear from Saturday evening, about 28 hours after the quake) I kept Japanese , Australian and American TV on at the same time. It was interesting to see how each covered the quake in the immediate aftermath. Japanese television was very matter of fact about what was going on and would not make grand statements. American television, and to a lesser extent, Australian television was immidately going into what may best be called ‘tragedy mode’ complete with stills set to sombre backing tracks as if it were something they had on hand. They were more content going for big claims and wild rumours. For a look at this disparity check out this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703512404576209043550725356.html?mod=wsj_share_twitter

This disparity would also continue with the differences in the reactions of the governments, and still does. Most foreign governments, and consequently most foreigners in Japan, have to some extent been influenced by this high tension and some of my friends in Gifu (remembering that Gifu is about 450km away from Fukushima prefecture and the hardest hit areas) have made plans to leave the country early. For my own part, I found out that the Australian foreign affairs department contacted my family to make sure I was ok however I haven’t had any desire to leave Japan because of it. In fact, I kind of feel a little bad that my pre-arranged short trip back home comes at a time when I could be helping.

Throughout the past few weeks while so many of us here in Japan have been wondering what we can do, I’ve decided that the best thing I could do was to spend a little bit more money and help the Japanese economy. The way I see things, not only is the north going to hurt so much, but the rest of Japan is also going to feel these effects too. Tourism, service industry jobs, obviously not forgetting what damage has happened in Tohoku, will feel a massive effect much later on after all of this has gone away from the front pages as tourists will still think of Japan as a dangerous place to visit, even in the farthest corners of the country. It was this thinking, an idea that always stuck with me when I remember watching what happened with the Boxing Day tsunami, that led me to continue my own small but monetarily free flowing birthday plans on the Saturday night. My birthday, never an event I particularly celebrate was made even smaller by the events of Friday 11 March and I was in no way bitter about any of it. What my birthday however does represent, on a much brighter note, is the near culmination of one year in Japan. While I would like to remind everyone that they should give what they can to help Japan and to come see this amazing country, I will also sign off with the somewhat happier promise that I will follow this post up in the next few days with a recap on my year. Until that next time, がんばれSamurai Blue…

青春の文化

In my continuing attempt to educate myself about Japan and Japanese culture, I’ve often asked my kids what they watch. Being primary school kids and teenagers, the answers usually go towards the anime/manga areas. Trying to keep a broad mind about things, since I came here with very little knowledge of anime, I’ve watched a few of the shorter series on offer. I just don’t have the time to catch up on 200-odd episodes plus of some of the extremely popular shows like Reborn!, Naruto or Bleach… Without ranting for a 1000-words or whatever like I usually do, I thought some youtube videos should suffice…

The wonderfully titled デュラララ! (Durarara!!)

The sometimes wacky Angel Beats

And of course, there is the music. And Japan being Japan, it’s always that bit different… AKB48 (named after Akihabara in Tokyo, with yes 48 members) seems to be popular with some of my students, though I’m sure there is a different reason why for the male and female students…　Me being the cheesy pop lover that I am, I’m trying to get into a little bit of it but it sounds too sweet and often way too indistinguishable for me to enjoy. So I keep trying to expand my alternative base, but I’ve already put plenty of that on my blog so I’ll leave with something a little old… Until next time…