Merry Christmas!!

Ok apologies first, I am sorry that I am a lazy bugger, and that I haven`t updated in a ridiculously long time, but I will change, just as Scrooge did after seeing the three ghosts (only I didn`t have 3 ghosts just some annoyed people at home :P) My new years resolution is to update more often, so please check back regularly!

Well its Christmas time, and as much as there are decorations and convenience store staff in Santa costumes it doesn`t feel like Christmas to me, we had to go into work today for the 　忘年会（bonenkai) or "end of the year party". Actually it was pretty fun, we had lots of food (sadly no alcohol as we are technically to young to drink here ;) ) and we even sang a song "Yellow submarine"(I am awful at karaoke, I am tone deaf) but then it came for us to give our speeches, in Japanese.

After what seemed like a stuttery first few lines I managed to actually give an acceptable speech, all the staff seemed to enjoy it and got claps and laughs (went for an easy laugh by using a popular comedians phrase, which I will detail in a future post). My work was over, it was then Ben`s turn, he gave a great speech longer and better than mine and everyone seemed to love it so it was great (as Ben often tells everyone he is rubbish at Japanese but in reality he is not, just a little shy thats all , you hear that Ben you are good at Japanese!)

All in all a very different but enjoyable Christmas, as I sit here now, knee-deep in packing for our trip to Hokkaido tomorrow I cant help missing my traditional family Christmas, but I am having a great time out here and have next Christmas to look forward to.

As I said we are off to Hokkaido tomorrow at the ungodly hour of 4:30am! so I better get me some sleep, I wont be back until the 3rd of January. Don`t worry I will have lots of pictures to blog about and I promise to keep you guys better informed in the new year.

Have a great Christmas and a happy new year,
Much love

Mike xxx

Hakone, black eggs and naked guys!

Well as ever we had a very busy week end, Tuesday is our "night off" so I have time to write about what we have got up to.

On Sunday we woke at the ridiculously early hour of 6am ready to meet Nishimura-san and Yoshio-san at Oji station. Why? A day trip of course, off to Hakone, the nearest big "holiday spot" for people living in Tokyo, it has mountains , lakes, black eggs(more on them later) and an onsen (Japanese hot spring spa).

We got to Shinjuku station at 8:30am to catch the Odakyu express to Hakone, it took about 1hr30mins, it was an enjoyable train journey. There were trolley dolly's just like a plane, how novel. I was expecting Hakone to be a remote, old, quiet place, it was to an extent, but there were just so many tourists, luckily this didn't spoil the day.

Our first part of this trip was to take the cable car to the top of the mountain to reach the sulphur hot springs, the ride was a scenic one, with my first sighting of Mount Fuji (Fuji-san).
Fuji-san is an incredible mountain, it has the perfect shape, exactly how you imagine a mountain to be, and you could only see the top snow covered half due to clouds round the base. This just added to its beauty . But Fuji-san wasn't what we were here for, the sulphur springs were.


England doesn't have any active volcanoes so there isn't anything nearly as interesting as this, there were jets of sulphur gas and bubbling hot water coming straight from the ground! Hakone is famous for its black eggs (eggs cooked in the sulphur springs and so turned black) each one apparently adding 7 years to your life, I had 2 so thats another 14 years right there!

Next it was off to the lake for a boat ride to take in the sights, it was a really nice trip, seeing as the leaves had just started to change colour, so it gave a really nice autumnal image. The weather was also perfect, sunny but not hot at all, just pleasant. The lake ride made me remember being in Switzerland, something about the lake and lots of mountains, I dunno but it was a really beautiful place.

After all this we were pretty tired and so headed for our final and possibly most troublesome destination, the Onsen! Onsen is a spa which uses the hot water from the hot springs to fill the pools, traditionally you enter naked (that was the troublesome part, or so I thought). We arrived at the Onsen and it looked like a traditional building, you entered and took off your shoes (as usual) then were were taken behind a wooden barrier to the actual onsen, there were 3 different pools, each with a slightly different temperature.

I thought we would be taken to some kind of changing room before the actual onsen, but nope, there are just lockers by the side and you change there, which in a way is better as you don't have to "brave" coming out of the changing rooms naked. But all this worrying was kinda silly, as no one really cares that your naked, and I didn't either.

The next hurdle was to figure out what to do, luckily Nishimura-san had it covered, he showed us how you are ment to wash yourself before getting in and then the hard job of how to sit back, relax and enjoy the height of luxury.

I can see why the Japanese love onsen so much, it is unbelievably relaxing and such a great way to wind down after doing anything, after the onsen I was ready for bed! One word of warning though, the onsen can be at times too hot and can make you feel a bit strange, the top tip is to stay in for say 10 mins then step out and sit on the bench and cool down and relax then get back in again.

Potentially the worst part of the day turned out to be the best part of the whole trip, if you ever have the opportunity to go to an onsen in Japan I say GO! don't be hung up on the nakedness factor, no one cares and you will seriously regret not experiencing this relaxing part of Japanese culture.

Here is the out side of he onsen:



Now all was left was to return (reluctantly) to busy Tokyo, of course the train ride couldn't be boring, not with Yoshio-san beer connoisseur, he made sure we had beers and a collection of canned cocktails on hand to make the train ride blur by!

We got home and I just collapsed in heap, I was so tired, but had such a great day and I am really glad we had the opportunity to go.

Well I think thats enough blogging for today, its time to make dinner! yay!

Solid stone stares!!!

Nothing can pierce you like the disapproving look of an old Japanese guy.

Yep that's me in a Pikachu suit on the Yamanote line (one of the most popular lines in Tokyo). Last Saturday we were invited to a Halloween party by a friend, and told
"there will be a costume competition", after fruitless hours of searching for the right costume Pikachu caught my eye.

After picking the suitably ridiculous costume it was time to embarrass myself even further by wearing it on the train! Most people just stared (as they do in Japan) but some younger people were like "Hey its Pikachu" all in all quite funny.

The party was at "Ben`s Cafe" there were quite a few gaijin (foreigners) there so it was nice to meet new people. I managed to come 2nd the competition, which is great considering I was pretty much just wearing a yellow towel suit!

We missed our last train home so we slept at a friends, where the drinking continued, and ended up with me waking up with the first hangover since coming to Japan (I think it was the Guinness that did it). One small oversight was that the only clothes I had was the Pikachu suit, so we walked through Shinjuku at 3pm, with me in the suit and Ben looking like he wanted to be far away from me !

It was a great night, I will try to get the rest of the photos from Ben so you can all see how the party was.

Yokohama

This week Junten is holding its midterm exams, so that can mean only one thing, we get 3 days off work (YAY!), yesterday we decided to travel to Yokohama, to see one of the best Chinatowns in Japan.


Yokohama is only an hour by train from our flat, it`s a city that has been "absorbed" by Tokyo to create a massive metropolis, it is famous for having the tallest building and fastest elevator in Japan.

We arrived in Yokohama at about 11am, stumbling through the crowds of business men to get to the massive "Cosmo clock", a huge Ferris wheel with a clock on it. We wanted to get on the clock to get a good overview of Yokohama and see what it looked like from the sky, and well it looked urban, buildings as far as the eye could see, with landmarks like the "Landmark Tower" standing out.

We then journeyed to a nearby shopping centre to have a look around, I bought a cool Sponge Bob t-shirt and a mechanical pencil (for all my teaching needs ). After our strenuous shopping excursion it was nearly lunchtime, so we headed off to the famous Yokohama Chinatown.

Yokohama was a major centre for the Chinese immigrants coming into Japan, so it is no wonder that you can find one of the biggest Chinatowns around here, and not to mention Chinese temples (check out my pictures for many more impressive pics of Chinatown).
There were so many places to eat it was hard to decided just where we wanted lunch, we finally settled on a restaurant and we had a ten course (well ten different things anyway) lunch for only 2000円(about £9) you can`t argue with value like that!

Yokohama is famous for being one of Japans major shipping ports, so we wanted to check out the port, and luckily there is a nice park alongside the port so we could have a relaxing walk whilst seeing what all the fuss was about.

We saw the ひかわまる（hikawamaru）a Japanese ship used in the war as a hospital ship, remarkable in the fact it wasn`t destroyed at the end of the war.

We then caught the ferry back over towards the landmark tower, we were ready to journey to the top of the tallest building in Japan.

Landmark tower is 295 metres tall and has the worlds second fastest elevetor that travels at an ear popping 750m/min, but the view from the top is the most impressive thing, on a clear day you can see Mt.Fuji, sadly we couldn`t quite see it, well if you squint hard at the picture you can almost see it,



We had an amazing day out, I know I will definatly return to Yokohama one day.

For more pictures click here

So hungry i could eat a horse.....................and I DID!

My little delicious pony!
Despite the rights and wrongs of the matter, horse meat is available in Japan, mainly as sashimi (basashi) but also ice cream!

Many people would hear "horse" and run a mile, but when I came to Japan I said I would try EVERYTHING once, so here I am eating black beauty. What a beauty she was, horse meat is nice and chewy and has a subtle but lovely flavour, my advice? try it you may like it, I know I did.

J-Pop....

Ok in light of the fact I have nothing really interesting enough to post on the blog (other than my futon being harder than a solid steel boxer) I have decided to write a post about the strange phenomenon that is J-pop.

Pop in the UK is normally acceptable and at the very worst annoying but stick a J infront of it and you have an entirely different monster.

J-pop consists of high-pitched attractive young ladys and lovable male "idols" but everyonce in a while some tracks come along which are either A) Wierd or B) Annoyingly addictive and slightly cool, and the latest sensation DJ Ozma seems to be a mixture of the two.

We first heard of Dj Ozma at a kareoke event at school, one of the teachers sang it and the kids went mental, suffice to say we had to find out what this song was. When we finally found it, after much internet trawling, and well we were treated to an audio feast of madness, samples and misunderstanding. The song starts with what seems like a sample of "Daddy Cool", and well you may at first think WTF but trust me this song will be in your head.



well I doth my cap to you Dj Ozma, you are a legendary figure!

Whoop whoop its the sound of da police!

Well thought I would write a post because I havent updated in a while and I have some free time.

This weekend was more of a chilled out one than the past few, which was nice. We started on friday night woth a night out in Shibuya, basically just looking round the shops and going for a meal. By the time Yuki and Mai had met up with us it was about 11pm so we headed off to TGIfridays for a meal. It was pretty nice and was good to catch up with Mai and Yuki.

By the time the meal had ended it was like 12:40 so we had already missed our last train, so Yuki suggested we stayed at hers, It was only a 15min train ride away, her apartment was literllay one room but I was so tired after last week I just collapsed in a pile on the floor, not the most comfortable night but a fun one none the less.

Saturday was "advertising day" at Junten, basically Ben and I the token whites had to hand out prospectuses and give a sample lesson to future students, It was hardly thrilling but it is just something we have to do. We got home from advertising at about 5pm we were so tired we just made dinner then went to sleep, I think this weekend is one where we get all our missed sleep hours back!


Today we went on a shopping day, we were ment to be looking for halloween costumes but things soon drifted over to electric dictionarys and t-shirts. This leads me to the title of this post, when we arrived in Okachi Machi (near Ueno) we saw what seemed like the whole of Tokyos police division blocking off a sizeable area, turns out some gangster got shot, more details: http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/420072
After all that excitement I managed to calm down and buy a T-shirt or two, a good days shop.

All in a very good weekend for relaxing, I am tired now and trying to have a conference call with my parents and sister, good times.

Festival time!

Well it has been another busy weekend for us here in Tokyo.

We were invited to a festival to 'help out' yesterday; this consisted of us carrying chairs about and such. Due to the language gap we didn't seem able to help as much as we could of, but we gave it a good go.

Now on to the fun part, the festival was amazing, so many different stalls to see and foods to taste. There was a large stage on which to see a variety of acts from taiko drumming to cheerleading.

The festival is a yearly event organised by the local community to raise funds for a worthy cause, this year it was for the victims of an earthquake elsewhere in Japan. It is amazing to see the huge amount of community spirit that exists in Japan, sadly something I fear we have lost back in England.

The highlight of the festival for me was the ‘neko bus’ or cat bus, made famous by the anime ‘My neighbor Totoro’. The bus was a large wood/metal/paper construction that seated about 20 children and had wheels on the bottom so it could move. We were told to dress up in any silly costume that we saw fit and help the bus on its journey.

We started by pushing the bus out of the park then lifting it down some stairs to get to the main street (it was ridiculously heavy). Then we proceeded to push the bus through the main streets and watch as baffled shoppers and shopkeepers watched in amazement and bemusement. It was very tiring but really good fun. After we made it back to the park fireworks were strapped to the bus and set off. Here is a video:

Neko bus video

It was an amazing and memorable time, my first experience of a proper Japanese festival and I loved it.

As always you can see more pictures by clicking the Photos link at the top of the page.

Little kids and sign language.

Ok no picture this time, I’m lazy (also next post I will get the video of my "performance" up), Today was another hectic day, but one I have enjoyed immensely.

We started the day in the usual way, a 10 minute English lesson to the middle school children. This consists of me reading a page of English and getting them to chant it back in several different ways to improve their speaking ability. After the somewhat average lesson we headed off home to change clothes to visit the nursery for the first time.

The nursery is about a 30 minute walk from where we live, with it being such a sunny day we decided not to use the train but walk to make the most of the nice weather. We arrived at the nursery to a hail of “oh”, “he’s tall”, “wow” etc.

The kids were practicing for a sports day, now this is not a normal egg and spoon affair, oh no, this is full on Japanese human pyramid crazy gymnastics kinda sports day. We watched the practice and were amazed by the skill and coordination of children as young as 3!

After the practice we got to sit down with the kids and watch “Power puff girls” with the kids while lunch was being prepared, as soon as we sat down we were swarmed by children itching to sit on us. It was great fun. I tried to have some basic conversation with them in Japanese “do you like Disney?” “Do you like pokemon?” etc. they seemed to understand me which was nice.

We sat down at ridiculously small tables to eat our lunch, another chance to talk to the kids, it was just general chit chat, but I had a great time. That was our time over with the children so we returned to Junten.

This evening we were invited to a Japanese sign language class by Nishimura-san, one of our night class members. He is one of the teachers at the JSL club. I was apprehensive at first but this all disappeared when we were greeted by smiling faces as we entered the room.

Most Japanese are extremely shy with new people but these deaf people were so outgoing, it was great meeting with them and learning something from them. They all seemed amazed by how much we learnt in the one session, our name, age, family members, birthplace, times of day, numbers. You couldn’t wish to meet nicer people I am so glad I went and that we will see them again next week.

New York, New York........in Tokyo

Yesterday (Thursday) Ben and I had the day off, so we decided to have a day of sightseeing. We started by going to Ginza to see the Sony building, a huge showroom with all the latest Sony products. We saw everything from headphones to snazzy computers, all coupled with the shop attendants watching us with hawk like eyes just waiting to whip out a “you break you buy” policy.

After the Sony building we found that, Ginza is really just a place for the rich to shop, with huge department stores full of designer clothes, certainly not a place for cheapskates like us! So it was on to Odaiba, an island-like extension that pokes out into Tokyo bay. It is pretty much a tourist location, lots of shops, restaurants and amusements. We got a photo of the Japanese statue of liberty and browsed the shops until it was time to go to Joypolis.

Joypolis is a huge arcade/theme park, owned by Sega, that has rides such as “Speed bullet” and “Wild Jungle” which are actual, ‘sit in go somewhere’ rides but there are also ‘special edition’ arcade games to. Special edition means they have been beefed up to actually make them ride worthy, using real cars with huge screens and moving them about on racing games or adding sound, spinning chairs and air which shoots in your face to shooting games like ‘house of the dead’ for example.

We had an amazing day out and I think today we are going to have a rest day (for ourselves and our wallets)

Welcome to our flat!

Today was the "wrapping up day" of the school festival, so there were presentations and such alike, but nothing really standoutish so I thought it would be a good time to show you around our flat!

Our flat surprised me with its size after being told to expect miniscule rooms with it being Japan. Our flat comprises of an entrance hall, with space to place shoes, with a small bathroom and toilet one side, and the living room the other. The kitchen is a joint kitchen/diner with gas stove, microwave, mini oven and sink. Our bedrooms are pretty big, both with enough room for a bed/futon desk with a chair, wardrobe and still with space to spare.

Well I thought you might like to see where we live, to see more photos please click here-> http://picasaweb.google.com/mikeywarren89/Flat

School Festival フォ~~~~~~~

Yep that’s me alright, hammer in hand ready to dish out pain to the naughty 1-5 class!!
"Child abuse" I hear you say, nay it is but the Junten school festival.

Sunday and Monday (today) have been taken up with the school festival, basically every class holds some kind of money making event.
There were food stalls (yaki soba, tako yaki, yakitori and so on) events such as the haunted house where the kids scare the crap out of you! (Me and Ben found ourselves screaming at every turn much to the delight of the school kids) and "expos" where clubs show off their skills (baton twirling, kendo, shorinji kempo etc).

The school festival is a great way to really get to know all the pupils, with them dragging you around to their stalls and making you buy all their products, it was soo much fun, but oh so tiring.

Today the last day of the festival meant one thing and one thing only....... AFTER PARTY. This after party was the single most weirdest yet awesomist (whoop made up word) thing ever! At first you had the kids doing karaoke which was ok, but then it came to the teachers!

Isshi-sensei and Wada-sensei took to the mic, they belted out what can only be described as "a crazy Japanese song" and the kids went mental! Like catnip to well er cats they rushed the stage and danced about, this was about 60 or so people on a tiny stage, it was really a spectacle to be seen. The other thing that made this even more fantastic is that Wada-sensei and Isshi-sensei are two of the quietest guys at Junten but give them a stage, mic and crazy Japanese song and they are transformed into asian Elvises.

All in all its been a great weekend, all that is left is clean up day tomorrow :( well at least we get thursday-sunday off!

P.s did I forget to mention I sung "can’t hurry love" by the Supremes on stage in front of parents and alike? More to come on that later, with a VIDEO!

To see more photos click-> http://picasaweb.google.com/mikeywarren89

Out and about in Ueno

Last weekend we were invited to Ueno zoo by Mai. When we arrived we found Mai's friend Ritsuko and Her boyfriend Dave waiting for us in Ueno station. It was super hot but the zoo was interesting, the usual type of thing, monkeys, rhino, giraffe and so on.

After the zoo we went for something to eat, we ended up in a trditional Japanese restaurant, and like any Japanese restaurant you get LOTS of food. We had what seemed like a feast, sushi, tempura, tonkatsu (pork cutlet) and much more. We were well and truly stuffed.

Mai then took us to a pub with Gary (an American), Eric (American), Nobu, Hiruki (yopparai-san "Mr. drunk")and Yumi. You can see mr drunk there in the photo of me and Ben with a tramp :).

The night was great and ended like any good night with a bout of kareoke, it was nice meeting all the new people, people we will no doubt be seeing again as our Tokyo drinking buddies!

Me and my hose.....

Ok day two of the blog catch up medley.

On Sunday (one day after arriving) we went to the earthquake simulator building, where you can experience and find out what to do in an earthquake. We were taken there by Mai ans Satomi, two people we had been introduced to by Yuki (our Tokyo rep) they were really friendly and showed us round Tokyo for the first few days, pretty much babysitters :p.

Anyway back to what we did, we were talked at in Japanese for what seemed like hours before we were led into the simulation room, basically a mock japanese kitchen/dining room. We sat down at the table with conveniently placed pillows right infront of us, then we felt a little tremor that shook the room, at once we all jumped under tthe table pillows in tow and proceeded to cower under the table as what seemed like the biggest earthquake was going on around us.

After the excitement of the earthquake simulator we ventured out for a night on the town, which ended up with us at a kareoke superstore. In Japan the practice seems to be you book a room (basically a bench table and kareoke machine), pay a set rate after 11pm and just sing until 5am, when informed that we could spend 6 hours doing this we thought it to be an impossible task. Little did we know it is shockingly easy to sing for 6 hours, by the time 5am rolled around we still had lists and lists of potential songs which would have to wait till next time. (Luke if you`re reading just wait till you come it will be Michael Jackson heaven)

Going to bed at 5am seemed to do wonders for our jet lag and so we were fresh and ready to depart for Junten highschool the next day!

Laptop aquired blog mode go!

Ok so I have finally got a laptop, a blinder of one at that, I can now start blogging for real seeing as how I have been here a week without any real updates I thought I would gradually chronicle my events thus far.

The picture you see here was taken the morning of the flight Tom had just found out that you were only allowed one peice of handluggage, so he was frantically putting on 3 pairs of trousers a pair of shorts and god knows how many t-shirts. Despite a few odd looks I think the staff were more impressed than shocked, well that was until Tom "Bin Laden" Clayson passed through the security he was immediately stopped for a collection of cds (which I suppose look like a bomb?). the security guys took this super seriously and made him unpack it all and pass a magic bomb finding bog brush, or something, around his case.

Security issues aside the flight to Paris CDG was relativly uneventful and a little late. We are collectivly blaming the lateness of the plane on us missing our flight to Narita and not the fact we sat in the wrong place >.>

No matter we managed to get a flight only 1 hour later so no real loss. The flight was long and boring. I spent the whole time either talking to this German guy or watching films, I spose that wraps up this segment of the first couple of days, tune in next time for the exciting tale of gaijin in Shibuya.

I have arrived!!!!!!! (6 days ago......)

Ok so I may be a little late in updating this blog and for that I am sorry, but its just been so busy.
We arrived on saturday, 2 hours later than expected becuase we missed our scheduled flight from Paris CDG, but AirFrance sorted everything out and we caught another flight 2 hours later.
As a result our baggage wasnt present at the airport so they said they would send it on as soon as they got it . (luckily it was there when i got to Junten.)

We have been doing so many things that i Just dont have time to tell you all about at the moment, but on Sunday Ben and I plan to get our laptops so it will be much easier to blog, so expect muchos updates over the weekend, covering things such as allnight kareoke, screaming school girls and kawaii (cute) kindergarten kids.!

Well thats all for now,

Mata ne (laters)

Mike.

Training done and dusted, JPK formed

JPK in full Japanese mode with Amy
Originally uploaded by Mikey Warren

Well It's the day after I returned from Coll after a great week training, learned many valuable things about my particular project at the Junten high school in Oji (a town on the outskirts of Tokyo).

I also met the other guys going to Japan, Craig (on the left with the kilt) and Tom (next to Craig) are both off to the Toya project in Hokkaido. Ben (the furthermost right) is my partner (sounds weird saying that) and of course we are off to Tokyo.

Together we are the 'Japanese Kru' (JPK), seriously though I couldn't have wished for a nicer group of guys, I get on well with all of them and I am looking forward to spending a year with Ben.

Amy is in the middle she is our Desk Officer, she is the one who looks after us overseas and sorts serious problems out. She is so nice, really approachable and can hold a funny conversation.

Everyone I met at Project Trust (including staff) were lovely and just made me want to get to going to Japan faster. We leave for Tokyo Narita on the 7th of September.

I think i have gone on enough for one post, for more photos visit the photos link at the top of this page.

In summary training was great but I can sense that this next year will be a lot better.
I am starting to realise that this is going to be much more than a gap year...

Mata ne~

First post!

Welcome all to my new blog, I shall be using this blog as a place where I can document my gap year in Japan with Project Trust.

I am going back up to the Isle of Coll on the 23rd of July for my training session prior to departure to Japan!(around the start of September).

Hopefully this blog will fill up with the many photos I will take and I will try and share my experiences throughout.

I may well update this with any news from Coll, apart from that expect my next messages from Japan!