I told myself that if I came back from London feeling like I wanted to stay put in Japan for the time being I would treat myself to an oven. And here it is…

It’s taken a while to put this blog together about my trip to London. I just didn’t know where to start… 

It was great to see some of my BFFs, dance to 80s music, do some cheap underwear shopping in Primark and see all the United Jack paraphernalia in the run up to the Jubilee and the Olympics, but the trip actually gave me no real desire to move back any time soon.  My real friends and family will always be there no matter where I am in the world, and when I visit them or they visit me (HINT) everything will just click back into place.  It was reassuring to see that London is still there, nothing has really changed and that really I’m not missing out on much. 

On my first night back in England I fell straight into severe reverse culture shock, and thought I wouldn’t be able to leave the house alone for the next 10 days. Everything was LOUD, toilets were gross, there was no bell to call the waiter over in the restaurant, people were openly discussing their sex lives on the phone for all to hear and it made me feel extremely anxious. But by the second or third day everything felt just like it was before I left, stressful and boring.

Another big surprise to me was how many obese people I noticed going about their business now that I’m so used to seeing malnutrition on a daily basis. And talking of obese, the food I had been craving all year was a disappointment however I still managed to put on 4KG in just over a week.

The trip made me realise (as terribly new age and cheesy as it sounds) how much I’ve grown as a person over the last year. I’m content here and grateful that I’ve had the guts and opportunity to escape a life that wasn’t working for me.  I’m now going full steam ahead with everything here which includes purchasing an oven tomorrow to start a bakery in my Leo Palace.

EDIT: Also a MASSIVE shout out to Korean Air! Jurassic Park and a K-Pop channel on the plane and a yummy meal with the main ingredient being hot sauce.

Whilst I’m trying to put together a post about my trip to London please enjoy this K-Pop video that I watched on the plane. I was LOLing so loudly that the man next to me asked me which film I was watching because he wanted in on the action.

Hi Fans,

A quick update before I head home to England for a week or so…

March was the month of the cherry blossom. Stereotypical drinking and eating was done underneath them:

I took the longest ride of my life on a bike with no brakes on a sunny day to beautiful Kiimidera Temple:

Miyuki visited the ever disappointing Wakayama for the second time in a year and her only souvenir is this blurry photo:

And the highlight of the month… SUBWAY OPENED IN WAKAYAMA!! (although it may have now closed down because 4 foreigners visiting at the same time blew it’s mind)

Obviously I’ve done more this month such as visit the supermarker, slept, worked etc but those weren’t picture worthy events.

This time next week I’ll be on my way to London on vacation. It will be my first visit back ‘home’ since I left to live in Japan a year ago. I was only meant to be staying in Japan for a year but things have changed and I’ve never been so content so I’m staying put for the time being. I’m a mixture of emotions about the trip - excitement and nervousness, happy and sad.

Here are the things I’m really looking forward to:

*BFFs

*Nandos

*Diet Coke / Fanta Zero

*Boots

*Non sweaty weather

*Thinking I’m well cultured and that

*My Mother and the massive bag of peanut butter m&ms she claims to have purchased for me from Vegas

*Buying bras, especially of the Primark variety

*Stocking up on new games for my students

*Not waiting like a cock at traffic lights

*Getting everything that can be waxed waxed

*Dry shampoo

*Not living in fear of being run down by a bicycle

*Having some kind of an idea about what’s going on around me - reading signs, listening to conversations etc

*Not having to pretend I’m interested in what my students ate for lunch

*Not hoarding garbage because of anal recycling fear

*Just fading into the background and not being gawped at

*No surprise fishy or bacon treats lurking in my seemingly vegetarian meals

And here are the things I’m not looking forward to at all:

*The flight

*My stomach exploding from all of the Nandos

*Questions about Japan based on sushi, love hotels and toilets

*Lack of green tea flavoured candy

*Being mocked for the faux Australian / Peppy accent I now talk in

*Not having a phone or Internet 24/7

*My use of American words because everybody learns American English here (except Miyuki)

*Chavs and their dogs that like to rip off faces

*The only stores being open 24/7 being dodgy corner shops dealing crack in the back room *Lectures on cross cultural breeding by my Father

*A visit to the dentist

*The amount of engagements and travel I’ve agreed to fit into 10 days

*Being mugged / raped / murdered

*Missing my Wakayama people

*Overpriced delayed tube journeys

*Paying £££ when my suitcase is over weight on the way back to Japan

*Bumping into people that I’ve selectively dropped over the last year

*Having to say Goodbye all over again!

After a year in Japan I finally got the chance to visit one of the Wakayama Hot Spots - SHIRAHAMA.

It’s a seaside town about an hour and a half drive from my house - a drive that’s mostly spent in mountain tunnels, passing hoards of mikan (that’s an orange to you foreigners) and fish paraphinalia (2 of Wakayama’s greatest exports!).

As expected Shirahama was a bit of a ghost town when we arrived late on Sunday afternoon. A bit like any seaside town out of season at the end of the weekend.

I was surprised at how familiar the town seemed. With hotels on the cliffs, a beach of imported Australian sand and small windy roads with the odd scattered dolphin light on a lamp post it could have been a seaside town anywhere in the world. There was even a mini roundabout!! It’s a cute town though and the evening was spent watching the sun set on the rocks followed by a dinner where I accidently inhaled chicken.

The next day the weather was predictably shit. We bought a massive umbrella from the local conbini and then headed to the famed Energy Land, which we had no intention of entering but as it’s a bit of a Wakayama in-joke I had a picture taken outside.

Then it was on to Adventure World. A kind of animal park / themepark. Think Chessington World of Adventures but with less rides, more pandas and no animal rights clauses. 

It was pretty eye opening for a white girl! I was shocked by there being 3 penguins swimming in the entrance fountain with no obvious Adventure World minion minding them - If that was in England the penguins would have been stolen or killed in less than 3 minutes. I also couldn’t believe that there was an honesty box for animal food - you put 100yen in the box and then take ONE pot of food. Again, in England the food and money would be gone in less than 3 minutes.

At first I thought the majority of animals were actually kept in quite good conditions by Japanese standards and that the park had potential had the rollercoaster been running… The panda hype was brilliant and very “KAWAIIIII”, and the real life pandas were living the actual dream:

Unfortunately there were 2 enclosures that really upset me and I won’t be going back there because of them. A problem shared and that…

This was where the ‘baby’ penguins live before they go into the big penguin display next door. It’s literally just a concrete room covered in shit.

And then there was this poor chimp that just sat staring out of the window. It was so disturbing because his body language was so human like.

Sorry for ending this otherwise cheerful blog on a depressing note. Japan really needs a kick up the bum when it comes to animal cruelty.

This is a brilliant worthwhile blog…

Another handy thing I’ve taken for granted whilst living here is the simplicity of putting a duvet cover on. (Ask Kate, putting on a duvet cover was never a skill I possessed…).

In Japan the duvet covers have a ribbon on each inside corner so that you can tie it to the corners of the duvet, shake and voila DUVET COVER IS ON!

Simple yet effective.

Here’s a quick update on what I did with myself in the month of March…

I saw Jack’s Mannequin play in Osaka with Clare who it turns out is also a Superfan. The tickets said it started at 7pm and it ACTUALLY did start at 7pm i.e. we got in the venue at 3 minutes past and had already missed a song. In typical Japanese gig style the audience were half dead or just being polite (I get the 2 confused).

But I must say, Andrew’s hair is looking ferosh these days and it was obviously a BRILLIANT show!

You’re not allowed to even take phone photos at gigs here but I got my foreign on and took this abysmal photo:

I went to the Sumo Wrestling Tournament in Osaka with Miyuki. It was by far the most exciting Japanese-esque thing I’ve done whilst I’ve been here. The audience were so excited and it was great seeing half naked chubsters push each other off the stage and onto the little skinny Japanese men in the audience:

I also got whisked away on a romantic trip to Kobe (although it may’ve been me doing the whisking…). In Kobe I saw a real life jellyfish, kawaiied over panda paraphernalia in China Town, ate amazing nachos, discovered a mutual hate for Crocs, had late night drinks on the prettiest roof terrace lit with fairy lights and went to the Earthquake Museum where I was treated like a princess and given my own English speaking Tour Guide (who made us watch EVERY single possible video and demonstration). The highlight of the Earthquake museum was actually looking on the interactive map to see how my apartment is likely to fare in a big earthquake / tsunami - I’m apparently pretty safe therefore I now have a slight fear of leaving my apartment…  Here are a couple of photos from the trip:

On the way home from Kobe I went to the Aquarium in Osaka. It has an interesting layout - You start at the top and wind around to the bottom. In the middle there’s a massive tank filled with manta rays, sharks etc. Actually as animal ignorance goes in Japan it wasn’t too bad. There were far too many children about though - whose idea was it to go on a Saturday? Not mine!

This month I’ve also eaten some more interesting food produce…

A strawberry naan

Oreo cookies with green tea filling. BEST.

Tomato chocolate. WORST.

Gut curry (obvz I just shouted EEEW at the menu instead of giving it a try)

Thank you for your patience with my awful photo blogging.

Well it seems that Spring is already in the air and Winter is pretty much over as today is the first Hanami event of the year. I missed out on Hanami by about a week last year so it’s something I’m keen to get involved with this year - It basically involves getting drunk, eating and gossiping under the Cherry Blossoms.

Winter wasn’t as soul destroying as I imagined it was going to be. I was anxiously on the edge of my seat waiting for it to appear but it just didn’t.

I think my expectations were mainly based on opinions by my Australian friends that had never experienced Winter until they moved to Japan…  To me it was no different to Winter in the UK, expect perhaps a little less grey and rainy. The days were generally bright and crisp.

Now we await the dreaded Summer and the return of the sex crazed cicadas!