Intro - a short insight to the first eight weeks

So I've finally decided to start a blog. It's only taken eight weeks, not bad really I think. I could've waited a year.

So anyways, I've been in Utsunomiya, Japan for about eight weeks now, and it's going really well. I arrived after about 13.5 hours of travel - 8,841km by plane from Auckland to Tokyo (10.5 hours), and then 95km by car (it took 3 hours - insane, right?) from Tokyo to my apartment.












I was greeted by two friends from here, as well as one of the other English teachers, Matt. Had a few drinks, and was then left to fend for myself in a foreign land for the first time in my life.

I only had one day before I started work, so I thought I would use it productively, and familiarise myself with my surroundings. Unfortunately, this meant spending about two hours trying to find the way back from the convenience store not five minutes away from home. Eventually I found my way, and relearnt (I guess I had kind of forgotten) that you have to rely on landmarks here, because most roads don't have names in this country. You learn to deal with it quite fast.

The next day it was time for work. My base school until January is Takaragi Junior High, about a ten minute bike ride from here. According to the teachers there, it's the worst school in the city, and "if you can teach here, you can teach anywhere". Personally, I don't believe them, the school doesn't seem to be as bad as they portray it to be. The first day, luckily for me, I didn't have to teach, and was just introduced to teachers and other staff. My first teaching day was saved for the next day, and was at an elementary school.

These precious little treats from Kamitomatsuri Elementary were the first kids I have ever taught in my life, and it was a great place to start. The kids at elementary schools are all energetic, and enthusiastic about English, and just the fact that there is a non-Japanese person in front of them. The lessons are extremely simple, but also very informative. For me. I have learned, for example, that Japanese people believe I am a talented artist. I doubt this. I draw a simple map of New Zealand, and another of Japan, neither of which even somewhat begin to depict any realistic image of either country, and they all applaud, and congratulate me. Although I know the truth, it does feel pretty cool to be applauded for a simple drawing.

The following week I began working at the Junior High, planning and taking lessons, and learning that being a teacher takes a lot more effort than I had given any of my teachers credit for. I'm still learning, and it will be a long and slow process. That said, it's still fun, and there are a lot of activities that kids do here that we don't do back home.



One of these activities is the annual rice harvest. Every year, the students plant rice, and then harvest it, on a rice field just out the front of the school. One point that I observed while watching/helping with the harvest was that there are at least as many frogs in the rice fields as there are grains of rice. They are full of them, I must have seen at least 200 of them in this one field alone.

Another activity that the kids do is called mochi-tsuki, where they make Japanese rice-cakes. Half cooked rice is put into a hollowed out tree stump, and is pulverised with large wooden mallets until it forms a soft, sticky dough. It is quite a fun activity, and a great way to vent any stress or frustration you have.


A few weeks after I arrived, and thanks to Facebook
(yes, there's a link, because everyone who's not on it should be), I met up with some other foreigners who teach English over here - Americans Chris, Tawny and Tim, Canericans Anthony and Sarah (so called because he's Canadian and She's American and they're married), fellow Kiwi Lisa, and Irish/Finnish Juhani. Most weekends we find something to do together, whether it be karaoke, a visit to a local izakaya (Japanese pub), or just drinks at someone's house. It's definitely handy to know other English speakers, as I frequently go days without having a "proper" English conversation.

One of the things I was happy to have done one weekend was to visit Nikko and see the Autumn Colours in full swing. Along the way we saw some Monkeys, and had plenty of time to photograph them, as what we thought would be a 20-25 minute bus trip, turned into a four hour crawl up to our final destination of Akechidaira. This was because we had not been informed that the entire Japanese population was descending on Nikko on the same day as us. It was ridiculous!

Since Nikko, nothing particularly special has happened, and this first post is already long enough, so I'll update more later on.