The World Journeys Podcast is here! Episode One!

Howdy all! Yes, it has finally arrived! The World Journeys Podcast!

Michael Eastwood - our very first guest!

I, your humble host, Andrew Boland, will be interviewing and chatting with a number of people this year about travel-related topics, the best of countries, the worst of countries, backpacking, taking a show overseas, the experience of living in another country and so much more.
The topic or theme of 'travel' is a wide one and there are so many possibilities, so please join me as I begin this new adventure, my first ever podcast. Podcasts aim to be between 25 and 40 minutes.









The first mini-series of 6 episodes features a range of interviews I have and will conduct with people here in Japan, and focuses mainly on living, working and teaching in Japan. I have a great line up of people with various experiences in Japan, and it's a really good look at expat life in North Asia (principally).






Episode One is an interview with Michael Eastwood, who has spent the last eight years living in Japan teaching initially for the JET program and subsequently for a company called Joy Talk. We talk about the different companies and pros and cons, and about the JET program. We talk about the highlights of living here in Japan, about the food and about the people. It's a great listen and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I recorded it. It goes for about 30 minutes.


So without further ado - Series One, Episode One is here!

How to be on TV in Japan

For two years I lived in Iwate in a small apartment with just my laptop for entertainment. I could choose what I watched and the like and the world of Japanese TV was far away, as I didn’t have one. But for the last two weeks I have been with the in-laws in Yokohama, and although I’ve done my best to avoid watching TV, during the evening hours it is on when have dinner and sit and chat and the like and well, I’ve seen ENOUGH!

How can this be explained? I don't want to know!

Japanese TV is a strange beast, to say the least (ooh! Little rhyme). Dramas exist, but I haven’t got to see many. The dramas here appear to be shot a little like documentaries, with a sort static use of the camera. The actors do SEEM to be over acting, quite a bit but that I think comes from Kabuki Theatre and the style that has been used for centuries on the stage in Japan.

Come the evening though, it’s a kind of talk show / game show thing that is hard to describe. Well, no easy to describe, harder to define. What seems quite common is a story being told, and a group of maybe 15 Japanese celebrities watching and commenting. They stop the story, chat, go back to it. Usually there’s a little screen in the top right corner of the main picture showing the celebrities’ reactions.

These stories vary greatly – two nights ago they were talking and watching a story about a famous actress who threw herself off a building, last night it was about a guy who ghost-writ a famous song. Other times they have had stories about mystery illnesses and so forth. The sets are garish and packed with colour, the sort of thing that would go do well as a backdrop for a drag show. Sometimes the celebrities answer quiz-like questions. They had a show all about the top 50 most influential people on the world - interestingly, half or more were Japanese. They seemed to dumb it down a little. The most interesting thing about Mozart was apparently that he wrote a song about ‘poo’. A man conducted the celebrities as they sang this song in Japanese.

Then there's food shows. It's not like My Kitchen Rules, which to me is equally as appalling but in different ways, but they love to eat food, show food and remark on how delicious something is as part of the show. Then there was the show when they had to guess how much each dish cost! This reminded me of a show back in January I saw where celebrities went into rich people's houses and had to guess how much their valuables cost. And these shows go on for like 2-3 HOURS!

Other times it turns into a full-on game show with strange challenges. For example, on Saturday there was a show where celebrities had a sort of stick attached around their stomachs with a giant baseball glove on the end and they had to pass balls along a line and get them into a bucket.

The days starts with typical breakfast shows as you get in Australia, the US or UK, and when it hits prime time it’s the same kind of show pumped to the max with speed. The celebrities’ opinions are clearly very important, despite them just being, you know, celebrities.

So. Imagine you want to be on Japanese TV. What are the boxes you need to tick to get on?

1/ Don’t be a woman.

This isn’t quite fair, there are women on Japanese TV. Usually hip youngsters. The number of middle-aged to older women is even less. You’d better have been a famous actress in the day. I would say 70% or maybe more of the people on Prime Time talk/game/whatever shows are male. It’s ok to be an older male, and wear a tie. That seems to help.

2/ If you are a woman, be young, be very cute and don’t have much to say.

The girls from Sanrio Puroland get asked to host shows from time to time.

Usually in a panel of 15 or so, I’ve noticed one of the co-hosts will be a cute girl who is less than thirty and is good at laughing. Then there will maybe another young, cute girl in the panel, who almost never, ever gets called on to pass a comment. The men are usually pretty loud and over bearing.

3/ If you aren’t young and cute, you can be a woman if you are really a man.

Ummm what can I say? Japanese TV is fertile ground for career opportunities if you are a transvestite. There really are quite a number of them on TV here. Last week a show had no less than 3 transvestites on its panel, and no it was not a panel about transvestites, changing your sex or anything like that. In Tokyo it’s not that uncommon to be a transvestite, so this is something society is able to accept. In fact, at one of my schools several boys dressed up as girls for the school festival and did a number on stage. It’s not seen as weird or strange as it might be in western society, although being gay is not nearly as accepted outside Tokyo as in the west.

The most famous transvestite is ‘Matsuko Deluxe’. She is a little portly, shall we say, and gets her face on every show she can. She seems to be regarded as an expert on everything and appears in quite a few commercials as well.

4/ There are two kinds of men on Japanese TV. You are respected and revered, or you are a clown.

This here is Yuki Himura, half of the Japanese comedy duo ‘Bananaman’. I don’t know if they’ve heard of the TV show from the UK voiced by ‘The Goodies’ or not. He has a strange haircut as if they used a bowl and acts as dumb as possible for laughs. Well hey, it worked for Adam Sandler, right? No, I don’t like him either.

There’s always a comedian or two on the shows, and usually they speak funny and act stupid. Balanced by a straight, sensible and knowledgeable guy. That’s your other option.

5/Be this guy.

This is Takeshi Kitano. So revered is he my spell check recognises his name and doesn’t underline with red. He has done it all – acted, directed, written, he is basically the ultimate heavy-weight in Japanese entertainment. As such, he appears in so many shows on TV. His views are widely respected and agreed with.

In Japan, age is respected, regardless of the individual. So you see a number of elderly (usually) gentleman asked for their opinions on stuff. I don’t speak Japanese, but I am guessing that they are not experts on most of the stuff they comment on. But they’ve made it past 60 or 70 and their opinion is important.

And so, if you can push yourself into one of those categories, you have a good chance of making onto Japanese Prime Time TV to sit on a panel and comment on stuff you know little to nothing about. I am off to get a bowl hair cut and wander the city saying ‘wakarimasen’ in a low, slow voice. If that fails, I’m going to have to see if there’s a shop that sells dresses that fit me. In Japan, that’s probably unlikely. Wait – where does Matsuko Deluxe shop

Living in Japan Survival Guide Point Two: Money

Continuing on with my tips from part one a week or so ago, today I am blogging a little about money in Japan. I can start by telling you the local currency here is the ‘yen’, or as the locals say ‘en’, and that it is worth just over 100 to the US dollar right now, but that doesn’t tell you what you need to know, that the way people use money here is a little different to that in ‘the west’.

Most importantly I guess, Japan still loves cash. It’s untrue to say that credit cards and debit cards are useless here as I have heard people claim, even in rural Iwate you can use credit cards at most places and if your international debit card is Cirrus/Plus connected you should be able to find an ATM to withdraw from, but it’s likely to require a little searching and you’ll need to be there at the right time.

If you come to Japan to work, already hired by a company, they will help you set up a bank account. There’s a strong chance it will be probably the most common in Japan, the Japan Post (JP) bank account. Yes, the post office here is also a bank. The thing is, companies do deals with banks for bulk transfers which means they get a discount for depositing money into accounts, so you probably have to get paid into the bank your company uses. My wife had a job last year that she had to set up a new account for, as the company only dealt with the Bank of Iwate. In Australia I don’t believe there are deposit fees, which is why it seemed strange to me.

Don’t expect you money to earn any interest. Maybe it does, but you don’t receive it. Presumably the bank is doing something with it! On the plus side there are no ongoing fees, at least with a JP Bank account. To transfer money into a foreign account you need to fill out a form and pay 2500 yen at JP Bank plus your own bank fees. For me, it cost around a total of AUD$40 to do a transfer, which is a fair whack. There are other ways which are cheaper. Go Remit has a service which used to be run by Lloyd’s Bank which is a bit cheaper, and takes around 1-2 days. JP Bank take a good week plus to transfer the money over.

You can’t do it via internet with JP Bank. ATMs are annoying in Japan, there’s no way around that. IF you are visiting and using a Cirrus-Plus system card, then the ATMs in 7/11 take these cards, and should be functional as long as the store is open, which is usually 24 hours. However, if you need to pull money out of your Japanese bank, and remember you will cop a fee if you don’t use the bank’s own ATMs, you strike a little trouble, because they close. I was at Haneda international airport at 10.30pm before boarding a plan and the JP bank ATM told me ‘Machine opens at 6.30am’. And that’s generous! Some close by 6pm or something, and it’s similar for other Japan bank ATMs.

The passbook is still king as well, more popular it seems than the bank card, but you usually get both when you open up an account. Even the ATMs are equipped with a slot for the passbook and will update it, JP Bank will update it without entering a code which is a little ‘dodgy’ – someone could steal your passbook and at the very least see how much money you (don’t in my case!) have.

The country loves point cards – such as T-point, and many shops will give you points for each purchase and they eventually you have enough points to buy something I imagine, however then they will ask you to pay in cash.

At the convenience stores you can pay your utilities and phone bills, as well as buy tasty treats like super-fried chicken. You can use a credit card there, however only for items bought from the store, not for bills, they have to be paid in cash. This is typical of how inflexible Japan can be at times, things are kept separate as much as possible.

You should find you almost always get correct change, in the supermarkets at least. Many if not most cash registers do not open, instead the cashier puts your money in, the machine calculates and spits out the change. Then there is the love for vending machines. You find them everywhere, but they are also installed inside shops. Small restaurants, even my hairdresser’s back in Iwate. You select what you want to eat, put the money in, press the button and then take a ticket to get served. In the case of my hairdressers, every cut they did was just 1000 yen. The machine was just for 1000 yen. Put it in, get the ticket, pass it on to the person to cut your hair.

When you have to pay for something at city hall, or even to renew your visa at the immigration centre, you pay for it by buying a stamp, either from a machine or a woman in a booth. But, that’s stepping into the territory of the next topic on my Japan Survival Guide. And that’s next week!

Always carry a bit of cash in Japan, it can’t hurt, the place is ridiculously honest and safe. But don’t think your cards are completely useless, just be of when, and where you can use them.

For more info and travel tips for the tourist coming to Japan, my ebook:

Short Journeys: Japan 

Shibuya

Hey folks. It's been a lovely day. I am whiling away the hours editing the latest Short Journeys here at the Shibuya City Lounge in the Loft building, which is just perfect! It's got the perfect sort of space for working with a drink and good service! Very nice. Shibuya is the funky 'in' part of Tokyo, or if it isn't that's because I'm too old and mouldy to know what's what. Here are some pics I took when the sun was shining. Next blog on Wednesday!

Meanwhile, there's my ebook - Short Journeys: Japan

You can still find a small Ramen shop in amongst Shibuya, hiding not far from a big hot dog!

Sayonara Apartment!

Well, today I said 'Goodbye' to my apartment where I have lived the past two years. If moving to Japan was tricky, leaving is not only difficult but also quite slow and frustrating.
Still, even though the apartment wasn't quite as comfortable as I might have liked, I'll have fond memories. Not so much of sleeping on a futon or the earthquakes - actually the whole building shook when a train went past or there was a strong breeze! But it has been the first home for my wife and myself and will be special because of that fact before anything else.
Last night we had the Yamato shipping/transportation company take away no less than 12 boxes from the apartment! For around $55 too so I was impressed with that. I woke this morning with multiple things on my schedule.

The walk to my front door.

My name in Katakana on my door. But, no more!

1/ We rented the fridge, washing machine and a few other things. The company was coming to take those away. They told us nine, they arrived at twenty to, thankfully it was all ready to go.

2/ Sell the last of our stuff to the 2nd Hand stores. This didn't go so well, I didn't even get 3 bucks and 3/4 of the stuff was rejected outright!

3/ Get back to the house for the gas man. He came and turned the gas and water off, which is quite a procedure especially considering it's just a small apartment.

4/ Meet the landlord who would look over the flat. He came a little late and I was just waiting for what seemed like forever in a practically empty flat. Actually he was only 10 minutes late, and five of those minutes were spent climbing the stairs. It is just one flight of steps but my landlord of the last two years is an elderly gentleman of (at a guess) 85 years, and it takes him longer than use youngsters!

Well, this took a good fifty or more minutes. He examined everything up close, especially the spot that was left on one of the tatami mats from an ill-advised use of incense in the bedroom. We knew it had to be replaced, small though it was, but he got down on his knees and stared at it for what seemed like ten minutes.
He turned every light one and off a number of times, checked the air conditioner worked and was annoyed that the water had been turned off as he wanted to try every single tap in the house too. Then we sat down on the tatami mats and he wrote on a piece of paper, circling things in Japanese pertaining to every aspect of the apartment. This took an age and then he phoned my company and spoke to them for 10 minutes, the upshot of which was, as before, he would need to get estimates before he could say how much we needed (if anything) to pay.

See, the renters are really responsible for everything here, including light bulbs that die. Fortunately in two years none did for use. One half centimetre spot on the tatami mats means the entire room with six mats will probably have to have them all replaced.
It's like that. Plus, tenants need to pay for cleaning, although the apartment is now cleaner than when I arrived in my opinion. I wouldn't mind so much but for 21,000 yen  or $210 US, you'd expect them to be able to clean more than one apartment. There's very little to do but regardless of how clean you leave it, you pay for everything to be cleaned. Apparently, I've been told, the cleaning is 'special' and includes the pipes. I guess I will never know. Here they take it out of your security deposit, unless the total is more which it may well be in our case. Here is the apartment after almost everything was taken out:

Finally, I today I recorded my fifth interview for the upcoming World Journeys podcast. I have now conducted five interviews with people who live in Japan, one a local and four English teachers like myself capturing their thoughts and opinions on this life that we lead here! I hope to record a couple more when I am in Yokohama.

Tonight I am at the Toyoko Inn in Ichinoseki, tomorrow night it is another overnight bus adventure. Stay tuned everyone, more coming soon to a blog near you!

Living in Japan Survival Guide Point One - Second Hand Stores

Hello! Today I am starting a series of points that will form a sort of informal 'Survival Guide' for those thinking of living in Japan. My time in Ichinoseki is almost up as I type - tomorrow I say goodbye to my apartment, Friday night I am off to Yokohama via night bus, so things are coming to a close here, so I hope I can depart some information.

Hard-Off : best for big things.

A lot of people come to Japan to teach English, and probably half if not more stay just the one year. If you are coming or going from Japan, you either need to buy a lot of stuff for your apartment, or you need to sell a lot of stuff as it doesn't make a lot of sense to post it back to your home country. Especially things like shelves, irons, printers or whatever.


So one thing to start with, which ever way you are using the second stores in Japan, and there are a LOT which is good news, you are not going to be a massive winner here. To be honest, when I arrived I didn't buy anything from the stores, but I have sold quite a bit building up to the leaving. Simply, in my opinion, the stores sell at pretty much the same sort of price that you could buy something new for. For example, 'Doki-Doki' was selling a Lenovo computer, very similar to the one I have now, for 39,000 yen. I paid 42,000 yes for mine new, and it has double the memory.

Don Don Down Wednesdays for clothes...

Your main stores are Doki-Doki, which sells all manner of things, Hard Off, which sells most things too but seems to specialise in big stuff - like tables, sofas and the like. Then there is Book-Off, the main line there is books, don't get too excited you'll have a lot of trouble selling English books there though, Japanese books you have a chance, and finally Don-Don Down Wednesdays. Yes, it's a truly bizarre name - I think there are special deals on Wednesdays. This store is only really looking to buy and sell clothes, and will give you a decent deal on name brands, otherwise they might not take what you've got or give you much for it.

I've found that Hard-Off gives the best payout when selling, but that are also more choosy. Yesterday I had to sell the bread maker that I paid around 5000 yen for ($50). Hard-Off wouldn't take it, and I got 100 yen only from Doki-Doki - yes one lousy buck.

..and Doki-Doki for the rest.

On the other hand, last week I sadly had to sell my guitar. I received over 3000 yen for that. And here's the thing - I was just in Hard Off again where my guitar is now on sale, and the price it had was 12,960 yen! Yes, they make a BIG profit on what you sell. And to go back to my point about buying stuff from these places - I paid, in Tokyo, 9,980 yen for this guitar, bashed it around and used it in classes for 2 years, and here in Ichinoseki, they have added 30% to the price of it brand new! It is true that these second hand shops offer better prices in the big cities, we are in the sticks here, but still!

You may feel miffed sometimes - especially with what Doki-Doki offers you for your items. I suggest that if you're looking to sell, leave Doki-Doki until last.
For books you'll be lucky to get 20 yen for a small Japanese novel. It's a mixture of surprise and mostly disappointment I must admit, with the occasional happy surprise.


Here are some examples from Hard Off of prices -

Here we have the oil/electric heaters. Second hand priced at over $100! In Australia they retail for around $30-$40.

This is a plastic container we sold to Hard Off. They are charging over $8 for it, they gave us 20 cents. It's old and warn and dull, and I paid less for nicer ones brand new when I first arrived.

An old, faded, couch second hand - asking price over $300. Just insane in my opinion! Might get $20 in Australia for the same couch. If you were lucky. Most of them end up on the nature strip awaiting the hard rubbish collection!

So. When you're leaving these places are your only choice really. There's no room for negotiation as you would have in Australia, it's what they offer you or nothing. One positive from Hard-Off is if they won't buy it they will often get rid of it for you, which can be tricky in Japan.
For new arrivals, you might as well buy your stuff brand new. Look for a 100 yen shop for stuff like plastic drawers/containers, they will be cheaper and shinier than the stuff at a second hand store.
Thus endeth today's lesson - more survival tips are coming in a week or so amongst budget recommendations, photos, life postings and more! Please stayed tuned!

My Short Jounreys: Japan is available on Amazon here!

The Final Wrap - School's Out!

Well... that's that! In a blink of an eye, somehow I am finished with teaching schools in Japan. Today, at my second school, a special needs school, I went to graduation. It was an interesting day, some happy faces, some nervous ones.

It is interesting to me that comparing the two, very very different schools, yet two very similar graduation ceremonies. Luckily, there are far less students at today's school, so the process of handing everyone a diploma took less time. Some of the students present with more severe intellectual disabilities struggled to stay still for the seventy-minute ceremony, but then again so did plenty of others! The heaters were more effective at least!
After the diplomas were done, it was time for the principal to give a speech, followed by a VIP who spoke loudly and from a non-speaker of Japanese, it seemed a little angrily. Oh well, passion is always good right?

A few more speeches, the school song (which includes clapping by the way) and we were done. Oh no, a few photos quickly. Lots of congratulations. I had a meeting with the English teachers after that and just like that, I walked away from the teachers' room for the last time.

Last week in my final classes there the students, a fellow teacher and I had a go at making some Australian 'food'. Meat pies - well you can find them out of Australia. Apart from a shortage of pastry they came up all right. See photos for references.









As for the lamingtons, well, they weren't quite as successful. I never realised how tricky they were to make. A lamington, for the non-Australian, is a very light sponge cake covered in chocolate sauce and finally dipped in coconut. The process of dipping the lamingtons was extremely... ummmm... let's say messy. I cleaned up afterwards and believe me there was a bit to clean up! And we ran short of coconut too. Plus there wasn't a lot of sponge cake so they were half-sized lamingtons. And I realised that we should have cut the crust off the sponge as well. But, once inside the mouth, little of this mattered!

So are the perils when you cook stuff you don't actually cook at home with an international audience. Certainly though, these types of lessons have always been a lot of fun. And now, well, who knows what the future will bring but for the foreseeable future, I won't be doing this sort of thing for a while.
Two years of teaching, oh and I received dozens of presents from the school too, lots of thank yous and the staff at both schools as I left stopped to applaud me which was really just awkward. Staff at special needs' schools world wide deserve applause for their patience, care and dedication. The school I was fortunate to work at once a week for two years is no exception.
And out into the wilderness. Suddenly, I am unemployed. End of the month sees my wife and I return to Yokohama for six weeks before heading back to Australia. I CAN work, but only being available for a short period is going to make it hard to employ me. We will see.

WATCH THIS SPACE - Short Journeys: Japan is coming either tomorrow or Saturday. I've spent a lot of time this week editing the first edition and it's almost ready. I have a cover too. This one will be released on Kindle, Payhip and Lulu at the same time. So many choices. It's the longest of all Short Journeys easily and has a special chapter on Iwate, the prefecture I've called my home these two years, and has more photos than ever as well. It will be a perfect introduction to Japan for someone considering a journey here.
Thanks as always for your support.

Three years on - Great Tohoku Earthquake

It's now been three years since that fateful day in 2011 when the Great Tohoku Earthquake struck. I remember the day well. I was in Vietnam, in a town called Dalat. I had just arrived, and went out for dinner with a nice chap I met at my guesthouse. We were talking through dinner and I mentioned that my next destination was Japan. Well, after a couple of weeks in Laos. My new found friend looked at me in shock and said he didn't think I'd be going there after what had happened today. What had happened? Massive earthquake and tsunami! Oh...


I spent the evening and wee hours of the next morning watching TV sucking in what was going on in Japan. The footage of the waves hitting parts of Sendai and picking everything up in their paths. I was strongly urged by most travellers I met in the next three weeks in South East Asia not to go to Japan. I was told I was mad - who knew how dangerous the Fukushima situation was?

But in the end I did go. And if I hadn't well, I wouldn't have returned and spent two years here teaching English. AND I wouldn't have met my wife. So it's funny the way things turn out. But I can never EVER fully understand what it was like to be here on that day, to live through the following weeks and months after the impact of the earthquake and tsunami. All my students though went through that. I often wondered how they were affected. My main school is 25 kilometres from Kesenumma, on the coast. It was devastated by the tsunami. My school took some students, I am sure, who lost their school because of it.

And things are not all tickety-boo three years later. There are still people living in temporary housing, clean up efforts continue and we really do not know the extent of the dangers posed by Fukushima, about half-way between here and Tokyo. In fact, the government in December enacted a law basically preventing people from reporting on Fukushima, and before that the people of Japan received precious little information about it.

I have been on Facebook today and I had planned to blog about places in Tohoku encouraging people to visit. I will save that for later in the week though, the mood on facebook from others in the region seems to be one of sombre reflection and a little anger that still not enough has been done. This link to photos of the devastation was shared on Facebook, I'm sharing it with you. Take care.

Tohoku three years after the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami

Powerful last day.

I didn't think I would do it. I was sure I wasn't. I don't do it, not because I don't want to, it just doesn't seem to happen. But today, a little, a tiny bit, I did.

Last classes today at one of my two schools, at the other, tomorrow. I had to give a speech to the teachers in the morning, well they like speeches here. And I had two classes. The first came and went, and then the second began. It started normally. Introduce the goal. Another teacher came into the conference room. I was using the conference room because I needed a screen to show a short video.
'Oh no', I thought, 'could it be a double-booked room and chaos on my last class?'. But the teacher sat at the back. She was there to watch. And more came in, a vice-principle and the principle. Teachers came and went throughout the class. I was told later it's a normal thing in Japan with a teacher's last class.
The class finished. I was given a huge bouquet of flowers much to my surprise. Every last class I had needlessly in my opinion clapped. Still, I was ok. I said goodbye to the students, they left. Some other students came to me with a class-worth of thank you notes. The third class to do so, it was very kind.

As I cleaned up and packed up the projector and so on, I also read some of the notes. These notes were from 2D, containing students I had taught both of my years here. The lower-level class. I remembered some of them, two in particular who didn't seem to know a word of English when I started. One boy seemed so shy and nervous I would never think to call on him. He didn't know a 'b' from a 'd'. When I started I would get empty worksheets back. When I tried to help, I felt like I couldn't get through to him. Still, I persisted. What is worse than sitting in a class where you understand NOTHING? How bad must that be? And here I wasn't even talking his own language.
But, this year, he improved. I saw signs, I got completed worksheets and he even came to me occasionally to hand things in. Terrified I should add - he would be shaking.
Today I read a thankyou note from him. He said, in far from perfect English, but in perfectly understandable English, that he enjoyed studying English with me. That he could understand me. That because of me, he tried hard.
The note is in front of me now.
I'm crying, just a little, again. Teaching is about realising you have a class full of students, and each one should take something from the lesson, regardless of their ability. Fellow teachers. Please. Don't forget that ever.

Thoughts on Graduation

I’m sure I am not the only Gaijin in Japan blogging today about their thoughts on graduation. Across Iwate at least, today was graduation at many high schools including my own, and it’s a very strange day in so many ways. For starters, we are saying a big goodbye to many students, students I have now taught for two years. A second year really builds an understanding of the different students, and that goes both ways. So I feel that I had a little more to do with the students graduating this year compared to last year. If I was staying for a third year, it would be even stronger for the group of students finishing second year right now.

And that’s my regret I guess, that I won’t get to see the students that started here when I did graduate. That’s quite disappointing for me. As for those who graduated today, well, when I first started teaching them, generally I found them to be the most troublesome of all the year levels, with the exception of the ‘B’ class.

The C, D and F classes I taught seemed to have little to no interest in English for the most part, bar a handful of students, and I really had to work hard to keep their attention in the class room. There were a number of students in different classes who were class ‘clowns’, for want of a better word. They were so easily distracted and even my fellow Japanese English teachers were at a bit of a loss.

However, that said, the more you work with students the more you understand them and connect. And slowly I could recognise there were a number of students interested in English and keen to progress and learn. Not only that, but I could identify students that struggled, and those who could do the work but couldn’t be bothered. And thus adapt and try different ways to reach them. And I must have reached some of them. Today I was signing year books and getting presents.

But also after a little bit of time it was clear that there were no ‘bad’ students, although I always believed that beforehand. Students have pressures and lives and different upbringings and they all lived through March 11^th, 2011, a year before I arrived to teach. I have heard people say that my school is low level, or even a ‘bad school’, but it simply isn’t true.

This year’s graduates are fine young people. I have heard of some pretty bad stuff going on in classrooms via other Gaijn teachers, but I had nothing too bad in mine other than the occasional all-boy class getting a bit loud here and there and… no that’s about it.

They are nuts about flowers in Japan. And pretty flowers about nuts too.

But this year’s graduates have so much character and life, it was almost bizarre to see them at the graduation ceremony to be honest. I think of them in the class room laughing and asking me questions, and clearly having an incredibly strong bond with each other. The ceremony was, well, what can I say?

It seems traditional first of all that everyone in the hall must be as cold as possible. The giant gas heaters are incredibly ineffective and probably should have been turned on yesterday and left on. The graduates walk in, blank faces, looking straight ahead and follow a strict line to get to their chairs at the front of the hall, it’s almost army like. Of course, some of the students cut a corner or two, but for the most part they were emotionless. In fact, the entire hall including the other students, teachers and parents had not a smile among them.

As the graduates walk the walk, everyone else claps in time to the music provided by the brass band, which incidentally was the same choice as last year. This takes ten minutes, ten minutes of clapping in time. Sounds like fun? Remember, not ONE smile.

Then every student gets their name read out, walks onto the stage and receives their diploma from the principal. That’s around 200 students and it took 40 minutes. Not a smile. They bow to the principal, with varying degrees of bowing. Some seem very orthodox and dip their head low, others it was barely a movement at all. Not a smile. 40 minutes. Did I mention? They reply ‘Hai!’ when their name is called, and occasionally one student shouts it really loud. One student from my 3F class does this, and I couldn’t help laughing a little. Luckily, the teacher next to me does too, she knows him well. Nevertheless we are still the only ones to crack a smile in nearly an hour.

Speech by the principal. No applause for speeches. Then a member of the PTA. Then another. Each are 5-7 minutes. Straight faces. Two students give speeches – one from a second grader wishing the graduates well, one from a graduate, I think the student council head. It ends in tears. We’re over 90 minutes now. I look around and there are teachers and parents asleep. There’s also an NHK crew (Japan’s main TV network) here today, one camera, filming bits and bobs of the day. Probably for a piece in the Iwate news.

Then it’s time for the school song. I’ve spent time going over the hiragana and know the tune. I do pretty well, it’s not perfect but at least I didn’t confuse the hiragana for ‘ra’ with the one for ‘chi’ which I keep doing and vice versa. There’s a few more words and thankyous. The teachers stand up and bow to the PTA, sit down again. Finally the music starts up again and to continuous applause and no smiles the graduates walk out of the hall, with a look on their faces saying they have just been through pure hell. Except – there was one student whom I never taught smiling! It’s a minor victory at least.

Kind message on a present from a student. I also got a bobble-head monkey.

Afterwards there are smiles and happiness, taking of photos and thanking teachers and the like.

おめでとう- that’s Japanese for congratulations, all round. ‘Thank goodness!’, I thought. The end of high school is something to feel happy about, to celebrate, yet the event honestly felt like a funeral. The teachers almost all wore back with white shirts. I had dark grey and didn’t stand out too much, I hope. One teacher had a light grey suit and another a blue suit that was 5 sizes too big for him.

And so a new chapter begins for 200-odd students at my school. I’m going to miss every single one. I hope with all my heart the future brings them nothing but happiness and security, and that they chase their dreams. They were a year full of colour, exuberance and character. Japan, and the world needs a bit more of that. 

Andrew Boland / World Journeys is a travel writer and blogger who has visited 69 countries. For more on his travel writing and books, please visit: World Journeys. 

One last class – what would you teach?

So, this week sees me in the home stretch of teaching in Japan. I’ve been teaching here for two years now and I’ve done lessons on all sorts of topics from favourite foods (and favourite this and that!) to ‘virtual water’, do google that if you’re interested. Once you start reading, you won’t be. So for my last lot of lessons I wanted to do something special to me and interesting to the students. Well I try to make every lesson interesting for the students. I have done a range of lessons on different travel-related topics which often involve an English grammar point, but this week I was given the topic of ‘your favourite character’ to make a lesson for the first years.

So yes, my friends will know where I went for that topic! I finally got to do a lesson about Doctor Who! Well, it’s not my first, I have used Doctor Who here and there in a couple of lessons, but never as the central theme of a lesson. And so I spent the weekend creating a short video about Doctor Who (none of my students have heard of Doctor Who except through me of course) introducing the character of the Doctor and choosing some choice bits. I wanted to explain why he is my favourite character – so I talked about his ability to change his face, about facing danger, being brave, funny and caring for his friends.

I kept the message simple – a must for all lesson plans here, not always the easiest though with some of the topics I get thrown (see ‘virtual water’). I included some scenes from Doctor Who featuring the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth Doctors (unfortunately Adobe couldn’t handle the files from the tenth and eleventh because I had some moments in mind) and it was interesting to watch their reactions. Not a lot of dialogue of course. They laughed at Patrick Troughton posing for the camera as soldiers stormed past him, and went ‘awwwww’ in amazement as Tom Baker turned into Peter Davison. The Orgons they found particularly funny in ‘Day of the Daleks’ and then the video asked them – ‘who is YOUR favourite character?’ (well, it said favorite as we are using Ameriglish here).

Mickey Mouse has proved popular, I was expect a lot of Doraemon, according to the net the most popular character in Japan. Not one from the first class! Actually, in contrast to many of the typical ‘favourite’ exercises I’ve given my first graders, I had a surprisingly wide variety of answers. And no, none of the students can borrow my ‘Terror of the Zygons’ DVD. But I do hope one or two look ‘Doctor Who’ up on the net after that.

The white board awaits the students!

Imagine it’s your last class, what topic would you like to bring to your students that is important to you and who you are?

My final worksheet

Andrew is a travel blogger and the writer of the ebook series ‘Short Journeys’. Check out his travel writings at:

World Journeys

A Very Japanese New Year

So this is my first New Year in Japan. It's kind of a big deal here, well, Christmas is a time to eat sponge cakes with cream, see Santa-san and go to KFC for dinner. No, that is not a joke! So New Year is more special, involving spending time with family and visiting temple. Which is what I did.

Lining up at the temple.

People decorate the front of their house with pine tree-branches, sometimes combined with bamboo. Actually this simple piece of decoration can be seen many places around town and Japan. We made the trip down to Yokohama on the 30th and have another day here before heading back to Ichinoseki, where it is much colder than here. We left snow, no sign of it here. Day time maximums around the 12 degrees (positive) so that's a mercy, I can tell you!

I went with my wife yesterday to Iseyama Kotai Jingu (temple) where there was a long queue but nothing compared to many other temples. People line up to make a prayer. When you finally reach the temple, bow five times, throw some money into a wooden receptacle, and clap twice. This temple is famous for a rock (without a name) too, which apparently gives off good energy. Stalls went down the street selling mostly fried delights for those who dared to test their stomach.

Food stalls.

Looking down on some Osechi.

Kamaboko

We also enjoyed a traditional New Year's food. Osechi it's called, but sadly I failed the cultural food-based test badly. Although the chicken was ok! I found most of what I was offered very difficult to eat. The hardest was Kamaboko, hard to describe but my wife likened it to ham, but to me it tasted very seafoody. In fact I was just told it's made of fish paste! It looks like some sort of sweet, but it doesn't taste like that at all!






We did get to see a wonderful sunset over Mount Fuji on New Year's Eve, but it's not so much the party-celebration western countries experience, rather it's for the family. And otherwise it was pretty quiet. How was your New Year's?