Post I
This is the first time I have had the chance to pen since
getting to Japan. I hope to type it up on a blog soon, so if you’re reading
this you have either found my notebook somehow (creepy) or I have got internet
on the old island (yay). Well, maybe if I do type this up I will omit this
section, so you maybe ARE only reading this if you found my journal. Who knows?
For those who have grown to hate reading prose on the
internet, there is a handy ‘buzzfeed’ list
at the end which you can read. But I will judge you if you have to
resort to that. If you read it after the prose, I will let you off because it says some different stuff.
It’s probably not hard to tell by the weird stream of
consciousness that I just wrote down that I am tired. And I mean tired. A 3 day
piss up in Tokyo + a 10 flight + a zillion BORING lectures is bound to do that
to a man, but I am here now on The island, which I have already taken to
calling ‘My Island’ in a horribly ego inflating way. It’s probably just one of
the ways I am trying to make the best of a horribly unsocial situation. The
island is the polar opposite of orientation in Tokyo - which was essentially
just a piss up and a laugh with some pretty decent people.
Still, as soon as I arrived on the island I went straight to
the pub with my new Kocho-Sensei (principal/boss). I am going to like it here.
Having said that, I did have to eat raw octopus, which is essentially like
chewing fishy chewing gum (it takes SOOOOO long to chew through). But it
tasted really good in a weird way, and the beer was free, and it gave me time to speak broken Japanese to
a man who replied in broken English. So far, so good.
Japan, though, is weird. It’s all the little things that
seem to have added up to create this opinion. You have to pull paper towels out
of the paper towel dispenser a different way than in England, or else all you
do is rip a chunk off. You have to stand on the left of the escalator (a
feeling which my body can barely handle without recoiling). You have to call
football soccer!! What’s more, when I got off the ferry, I was surprised by a
bunch of my new teaching colleagues who had a sign to welcome me. We exchanged
awkward introductions and smiled and bowed a lot, and I had just assumed that
they were walking away with me and my supervisor. When I turned round, however,
they were trotting off in to the sun. They literally came for 30 seconds. It
was a bizarre thing to happen and it made me feel like I had let them down
because I didn’t exactly say much in our brief meeting.
Gosh I could go on and on about how weird Japan is (all I
want my toilet to do is flush, but it seems to do everything but) but I have
even started boring myself. Time to sleep, reflect on the first night on the
island, and get ready for one hell of a mission. But first, as promised, a Buzzfeed styled list to keep you entertained.
Buzzfeed styled list for people who can’t process more than a line at a time, which I like to call, a handful of stuff that I have learnt so far by being a terrible ‘Brit abroad’ in Japan.
I
Every time you think you have had an awkward social
situation, it is invariably trumped just minutes later.
II
Toilets will spray water in you bum, burn you, trap you,
play music whenever they feel like it. The flush is hidden way out of sight,
leaving you to awkwardly frisk a toilet. Gross. (well, maybe anywhere other
than Japan that’s gross- too clean here to get dirty by touching a toilet).
III
Do not come here if you are not happy to be served by an
oyster top up machine in a restaurant which issues you a receipt which you swap for food. Communication over
here is very indirect. We were handed a request book to request a song – we were
the only people in the bar – when we went to ask for the song, we were quietly requested
to fill out the request form and hand it in. Weird.
IV
Food will always be something that looks exactly like it did
in the picture, but which you will still have no idea what is. Don’t worry though,
it always tastes good!
V
Never buy cold green tea. Ever. Its gross. It is like
drinking tea that you forgot about a fortnight ago. So bitter.
VI
When you buy beer in Japan, do not say ‘Biru’ say ‘BIIIIIru’,
or else you are ordering a building.
VII
A half bottle of Johnnie walker Red Label costs 3 quid. Remember this or else you will find
out when you are already pissed, get so excited that you buy it, look for a
cup, fail, give up, then sit and drink it from the bottle in the smoking area of
your hotel with the one other person classy enough to do it with you.
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