Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
kitami, Japan
hello all!
well as you may or may not have noticed i fail at the whole blog thing. but this is about to change! oh yes, hold tight to your seats as i am about to give you the lowdown on my life in japan! also i told ni i would like six weeks ago...
ok, so i left england on the 3rd march in a rather typical fashion of suddenly realising, 30 minutes before tube to heathrow , that the correct weighing scales at my aunt‘s house actually highlighted the fact that the ones at home were wrong and i was 3kg over the limit! much panic and hair-raising screeches on my part and frustrating comments that i should really be more organised from my family. anyway, somehow i made it to the airport and met all the other volunteers, including my volunteer partner carol, who i live with in our humble abode. the plane ride was pretty much the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me ( who knew 13 hour flights could be so thrilling?) oh the fun i had, watching countless unreleased movies, drinking the plane dry of mini-chardonnays and watching people sleep. i expect it is wrong of me to admit that i was excited then about the plane ride home where i know harry potter 6 will be showing.
before our placement began, we had a 3 day orientation stay in tokyo where we were able to see a few sites, attend some speeches about what to expect, properly get to know everyone and settle in etcetera. tokyo is like you would imagine and if you cant imagine it then it is kind of hard to explain. one of the first things i noticed was how clean the streets were ( no chewing gum!) also they have heated toliet seats! i will never get over this fact. the bottom experience is so different in england, twill never be the same...
everywhere you go is a novelty. the shops on harajuku street pretty much sum up the buzzing metropolis,anime-like futuristic- feel of japan, but then we went to the meiji shrine ( a shinto one dedicated to the emperor meiji, or the souls of his consort) which was just around the corner from harajuku st. and was so so beautiful and calm. we went there when there were some buddhist monks doing some sort of procession for a woman who was sick. we also went to akhihabara. this is like an electonic shop- district haven with lots of futuistic gadgets on cheap sale. here i met the love of my life, my future husband. a bloke rapping outside his computer shop to the tune of lady gaga‘s poker-face completely unfazed by the fact that this was actually scaring away any potential-buyers. what a guy!
after the orientation we took a flight to kitami, where our placement is. kitami is in hokkaido, the northen- most prefecture of japan, and it isn‘t the most touristy of places. which is by no means a bad thing since i can deffinetly say i am getting a feel for japanese culture, since i‘ve been told that being in a placement in a large city like osaka can after a while just feel like being in any modern city. kitami, as a place, is growing on me alot. the weather is getting a lot warmer and the flowers are coming out making the whole place look alot more colourful. in the summer we get the highest sunshine rate in the whole of japan which could be a good or bad thing ( apparantly the nurses fight over who‘s turn it is to change the ice-packs!)
our flat is quite spiffing, if i may so, aswell. big rooms and full of mod-cons (even sky tv?) very strange. its not exaclty preparing me very well for uni halls, but there we go. im enjoying it whilst i still can. but yes, the volunteer placement which im with i really recommend. we get 50,000 yen a month which is more than enough for food and going out. we get three japanese lessons a week (each 2 hours long), a free lunch and bikes to ride every where with.
the work at the red cross hospital is actually really fun. alot of time is spent talking to the other nurses. my favourite is morita-san who is so lovely and teaches me origami!sometimes it can be a bit hectic because im on the emergency ward and the langauge barriers make me feel like hitting my non-bilingual head against the wall from time to time, but aside from that its good! i feel like im doing something useful, even if its just the little things like transporting patients around and stuff.
im really enjoying the japanese lessons. one of the teachers is absolutely brilliant. he is 74 but has the spirit of a teenager and tells the strangest most entertaining stories. my favourite was him going to sydney and seeing a sign outside a building for ”topless and bottomless” and not understanding its meaning, so asked passers-by but they were too embarassed to tell him so he went in and was very shocked by what he saw. haha, it was the way he told it. twas very amusing. anyway, i can now sort of write and understand hiragana and am moving onto katakana ( kanji is just in a different league of difficulty.) its funny how you pick up quite a bit of the language unknowingly just by hearing it all the time.
at weekends and evenings we spend alot of time with the jets( japanese english teachers) living in kitami or nearby. most of them are from america and they are all really fun to be around. there have been countless parties at our apartment. im seriously considering becoming a jet after university. it would be amazing to be one in kyoto. you teach what i imagine would be flawlessly well-behaved children for around 5 hours a day and get paid , excluding tax the equivalent of 30 000 pounds a year.
the hospital also arrange things for us to do and kitami is a good place to go out on a saturday night (500 bar = all you can drink for 6 hours for about 10 pounds, the most fancy coctails you can think of included. madness!) and they play really good music. i had a bit of a personal rave to pulp the other night. and louise- they love avril here! thus i have lots of avril lavigne raves! good times. i am so cool.
the surrounding areas are really pretty. we went to rubeshie for a barbeque last weekend, a little town surrounded by mahossive mountains and it was so lovely and green! and there are dears!
golden week is coming up which is where everyone gets a week off in celebration of the sakura season (cherry blossom), we have lots planned, i will report back soon.
- comments