Tuesday, 22 March 2005

Life In Japan

Welcome to the JapanEasy blog. I am Gary Wilkinson, 19, from Hull, England. I am currently taking a Gap year before I go to Huddersfield University to study 3-D Design and I plan on been an ALT in Japan after I finish. At the moment I am in Japan and have been for 20 days, but I havent had the time to set this page up yet, but I have managed to spare abit of time before I go to bed (even though I am very tired) to inform my friends and family about my time in Japan (plus it will saving me having to write the same emails all the time)

To bring you up with my events so far: On the 1st March I went to Heathrow airport with my parents to get the plane for Japan at 1pm, which was a 12 hour journey and I arrived in Tokyo on 2nd March 9.00am there time. Since I didnt manage to get to sleep on the plane it was hard to keep awake considering we landed in the morning so we had the whole day to spend around Tokyo and at about 9pm I got to sleep in the youth hostel with some of the other gap people I met.

The next day I still had Jet lag, but we went for another walk and went to the English center to use the computers and have a talk, then we went to akihabara (I can never remember the name) where I got a digital camera, with a discount as it was duty free (even though our Visa`s shouldnt have allowed it) but after the shopkeeper, who fortunatly was English realised his mistake on the other Gap person who first bough a camera, he still allowed me to get a discount after abit of persuation and luckaly I didnt have to use my passport like the previous person, who my have trouble at customs.

Fast forward to the friday, on the day of leaving and we woke up to snow, which was unusual since the previous day had been very hot, but luckily my plane wasnt cancelled or delayed.

After a 2 hour plane flight I arrived in Fukuoka abd met with David Busk and two Japanese people (One who is a reverand in Nagasaki and the other sometimes comes to visit me and speaks very good english) The woman (Mitsuko) then took me in her car to the nursery, which was a 1 hour drive and when I arrived we had a big meal and introduction to the teachers.

After spending the weekend doing many things and meeting many people I started work at the nursery for the week. My job is pretty much just to sweep the sand in the morning and pick up some of the children, then play with then for the rest of the day and sweep up at about 3pm ish and then leave at about 3.30-4.30, but on wednesdays and fridays its earlier. The nursery is great and every day is something new, also I havent cooked for myself yet as Etsuko sensei cooks my tea at 7.30pm, but eventually I will be cooking for myself.

I have only managed to get lost once, when I went for a walk and it got dark, so I couldn`t remember the way home, but I ended up at the city hall and got a taxi home.

I stayed at the house of Emiko Yamamoto (15), who goes to Sunday school and met her parents who made my tea, then the next day we went to Kumamoto castle, which was great. I will post pictures of it.

Many more things have happened which I dont have time to write at the moment, but recently on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday, I went to Nagasaki for Christian peace thing, where they discuss things like war and the atomic bomb (Genbaku) and we went to the bomb museum and did a big walk around Nagasaki, which was really interesting and I took many photo`s. On the Sunday there was a big earthquake in Kyuushu, which we felt during Sunday service and the whole building began to shake and everyone was suprised because earthquakes are very rare in Nagasaki, but this was a major one, but nowhere got damaged in Nagasaki, as it mainly hit one of the islands where a few buildings were badly damaged.

Today I went to the seinen gakuin junior high school with Emiko, for the Hogwarts Academy, where they learnt English in a fun way, because it was an option thing to do, while Spring Vacation is on (which I am pleased about because it means I get holidays off and the big 6 week summer holiday off like teachers do at schools in England.

I am going to go to bed now as I am tired and i might watch some Japanese T.V (I dont get the majority of it, but I eventually figure out whats going on, plus my Japanese is slightly improving, so I can understand some of what people say and I am learning Kanji, so I can read the signs, but I only know about 35 of the 10,000+ at the moment.

I will write about the previous days which I havent mentioned when I next have chance to use the computer, but for now its signing off.

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