Over the past three days I have been really sick with a fever and a hacking cough. What with the entire Japanese population panicking over swine flu, my supervisor urged me to go see a doctor, which resulted in my waiting for over 3 hours at a local clinic for my turn. The doctor did a nasal swab (those things felt surprisingly invasive!) and tested for the presence of the influenza virus. 

Luckily, I don't have swine flu, but I feel as if I might as well have it, since I felt crappy anyway and it seems more justifiable to feel this crap if it was because of swine flu. 
Anyway because of this I have had to take three days off, and I'm really hoping these days are part of my sick-leave days rather than nen-kyuu (paid holidays), as I know it is common practice for Japanese workers to use their nen-kyuu for sick days. I'm prepared to fight tooth and nail if my nen-kyuu gets deducted!!

Right now it is lovely autumn time in Japan, with the air fresh and crisp, and trees starting to turn red-gold. I have been given a glimpse of how cold winter is going to be - some mornings have been really freezing, and getting up at 6am was such a daunting task. Since I was only allowed 20kg of baggage to Japan, I have no winter clothes whatsoever. Zero. Not even a hoodie. So I feel as though I'm on a race against time to buy winter gear. Unfortunately all the shops have just stocked on autumn fashion so everything is ridiculously expensive, and I haven't been quite able to bring myself to buy any. I dare say once winter really kicks in, survival will force me to spend money on a coat. 

Over Halloween, the other alts and I each bought a kigurumi and dressed up in it to go clubbing in Tokyo (entrance fee is halved if you turn up in full-body costume). Due to a certain crazy American girl's idea, we decided to wear it on the train to Tokyo, which turned out to be possibly one of the most painfully embarrassing thing I've ever done so far. People stared, did double-takes, smiled to themselves, or downright laughed. It was mortifying. The worst moment was when I was left alone by the station cos the others needed to use the toilet. It was also when a new train had just arrived so hordes of people came rushing down the stairs, right where I was waiting for my friends! Ooooh god I still cringe when I think about the startled and confused looks I got.

But I had lots of fun and feel that my dignity has sufficiently returned for me to laugh about it now

 Helloo! Just writing to say that I'm very much alive and kicking in Japan. I've been here for 2 months now, and have just finished teaching at my first school. There was a farewell assembly for me, where I had to give a speech (scary), then the students presented me with a huge bouquet and lined up to form a 'corridor' that led from the hall all the way to the staff room and clapped the whole time I walked through it. I guess that's coming as close to feeling like a celebrity on the red carpet. I'm going to really miss that school. It's unique in that it is very small, therefore all the students are rather innocent and sheltered. My next school is not so innocent - apparently it has gangs and recently some students smashed the side-mirror of some teacher's car...

I'm settling in nicely in Japan, though! Between earthquakes, swine-flu outbreaks, and typhoons, I'm faring rather well. I've also started getting urges to draw again, which, for me, is always a sign of mental well-being. 

 Can someone explain to me why anime air-times in Japan are always so late (e.g. 2.15am)?!  How the heck am I supposed to watch them?
Pandora Hearts and Requiem for the Phantom are both, like, 2 in the morning. I mean, yes, I can watch them online later on, but since I'm now in Japan, I would like to be able to watch shows live for once. 

 I'm watching the latest Naruto Shippuuden film in cinema in Japan tomorrow. I'm so ridiculously excited about this! 

I has the internet at fucking last!!!

Hello everyone! I have been living in Japan for 27 days exactly. So much has happened that I haven't had the time to write it all down. I just created another journal, exclusively for posts about my experiences in Japan. It's called sore_wa_chotto  and as from next week, it will be friends locked because I will be using real names in it.

Feel free to friend it if you are interested in reading about:

* scary flooding and earthquakes
* my fellow ALTs (assistant language teacher) and what I think about them
* my first task as an ALT - conducting interviews for future JTEs, and how I nearly made a candidate cry
* the mighty war between Western and Japanese work ethics
* acting as a judge for the annual prefectural public speaking contest
* how I have to give a lot of speeches in general and how my lovely supervisors don't inform me of this until the actual day itself
* lots and lots of photos of Japan

I will be making posts about these once I finish writing about them. They should be up in a couple of days time. 

The first post I made on that journal is a collection of Engrish words that I've found. That will also be friends locked after a week. 

See Engrish here

Okay, it's late, and I'm exhausted, but just wanted to say that I'm off to Japan tomorrow, and (at best) will be able to be online again in 3 weeks time. I was actually planning on a longer and more thoughtful post than this, but I need to sleep more.
Wish me luck, and till then!

Well, not really enough pictures to constitue a 'dump' but these are some of the art that I've done in the past few days, kind of as a farewell to using Photoshop :(((

Characters: Drunk!England, Germany&South Italy, Germany/North Italy, Spain&South Italy, France

 

 

Help! To those on my f'list who is living or have lived in Japan, how common are these fucking huge monsters spiders found in the city?

It is less than two weeks before I leave for Japan, and I was feeling reasonably pleased with the way preparation was going, and all geared up for the year ahead ... that is until I happened to visit the JET forum and click on the 'bugs/roaches' discussion thread, which more or less left my skin crawling and reduced me to a quivering heap on the kitchen floor. 

According to the thread, these spiders are commonly found in houses in Japan (I would assume more common in the countryside), usually hiding behind furniture or cracks in the wall. They span, including legs, 10 cm or more (more), are not dangerous to humans but do bite if provoked. Because they prey on other insects like cockroaches (also common in Japan) people normally leave them alone for their beneficial effects.

Frankly I'd rather have cockroaches running about my house than have these things creeping on the wall. Really, this has seriously scared the crap out of me. It's actually a strong enough factor to make me not want to go anymore. Well, maybe not that bad, but it has seriously put a dampener on my mood.

For those interested, here's a true story about one man's battle with huntsman spiders during his stay in Japan. It's actually simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Worth a read but, oh god, I'm going to be jumpy as hell in my new house. 

My MacBook Pro Aluminium arrived yesterday and I have been religiously fiddling with it ever since. It looks great, although I'm yet to become used to the keypad, but because I haven't had the chance to transfer everything from my old windows laptop (iTunes library transfer, such a hassle omg), it feels more like 'a laptop' rather than 'my laptop' at the moment. For me a laptop is a very personal thing and my previous one had my personality stamped all over it, so the new Mac is feeling very alien to me. Plus, trying to work out all the Mac-equivalent commands is a pain.

I don't know why (nor do my hard-core Mac friend) but its taking me a while to warm towards it, especially since there was nothing really wrong with my old laptop (other than the fact that a Mac is more flexible to use for when I'm in Japan). I guess I'm mostly gutted by the fact that I won't have Photoshop CS4 anymore, since I don't own the original copy. I don't know how I'm going to get hold of another copy, other than fishing out some £100+ to buy one, which isn't really going to happen any time soon. If only I could transfer programs between PCs...

Okay, I really didn't mean to sound so negative about it. All things considered, it's a pretty damn cool laptop that my parents just bought for me, and I feel a bit guilty for not really gushing over it. I think I will feel much better once I familiarize myself to it and once more programs have been installed so that it's actually functionable. 

It's now less than a month before I head out for Japan. I keep going through cyclical phases of being very excited and oh, it's going to be a blast and an adventure, to freaking-out about the kids and/or staffs not liking me, or unintentionally breaking some etiquette and offending people because I crossed my legs when I sat, and other tiny things like that.

I swear I had more things to write but my brain is crying out for sleep. 

Jetting off to sunny Greece (Crete & Santorini) for a week. See you all soon!

Huurah! Now that I'm free from finals, I can draw as much as I want. Here are some Hetalia character drawings that I've done over the past week.

Characters include (in order): Prussia, Italy, China, England, Germany, Austria, Russia

    

 

Aaaah, my oral examination is tomorrow. I think I will feel like a right idiot standing in front of the panel in my sub fusc. It just occured to me that I may need a carnation, but I don't think I will bother.
Let's hope I don't panic and forget what my grant proposal is about!

I got the acceptance letter from JET yesterday so it looks like I will be living in Japan for the next year!
After initial excitement, I am now trying to weigh out the pros and cons of accepting the offer. On the one hand, I will have employment with good pay straight after I graduate for the next year, which gives me more time to think about careers options, develope as a person, and improve my Japanese. On the other hand, I will be technically doing something unrelated to what I want to do in life (which, currently, is science), so I'm worried that taking this year out will affect my chances of getting on a PhD course/grad school when I come back.  But then again whilst I'm in Japan I may discover that I want to do something totally unrelated to science after all, so all in all things look more favourable in going.

I keep daydreaming of the food that I can eat in Japan! And shopping! And I'm amused by the fact that now I can follow shows on tv in Japan, instead of a day later on the internet.

The departure date doesn't give me much time to enjoy summer after my finals exam. Since I live in Oxford and go to Oxford uni, I've never really been away from home before. It'll be a big adventure/challenge, I think :)

 

For Hetalia fans, I am ridiculously fixated with South Italy's character song: 'The Delicious Tomato Song'
The tune is hilarious and irritating and I can't seem to stop playing it over and over! (which, by the way, is terrible for revision)

I've uploaded it here, for anyone interested. The Delicious Tomato Song

Warning: other people in your household may hate you. My poor suffering mum...