Last week I was covering at a school and one of the kids is an absolute genius. He is the kind of genius that knows he is a genius and doesn’t really care for learning things he already knew even before he even left the womb.
I asked the class to take the word ‘travel’ and make a word chain from it.
He wrote TRAVEL > AIRPLANE > AIRPORT > BOMB > LOL.
LOL indeed.
Not so long ago I wrote about a positive trip to the bank. But now unfortunately I have to write about a negative trip to which will now be known as ‘The Stupid Post Office’.
Whilst I was holidaying in the UK (blog coming soon) I thought it would be nice to send my boyfriend a postcard of the Queen’s head. I got the postcard, wrote some lovely things and then sent it to my apartment in Japan because I knew he was spending some time there whilst I was away and I didn’t have his address to hand. Simple, right?
WRONG. ‘The Stupid Post Office’ have no record of him living at my address so they decided to hold the postcard to ransom. They sent a note to my apartment asking for it to be followed up.
The day after I got back we went to ‘The Stupid Post Office’ together with both our IDs and explained the situation.
‘The Stupid Post Office’ have strict restrictions and rules (as does everything in Japan) so even though the situation was obvious to them those strict restrictions and rules couldn’t be overlooked even slightly and they wouldn’t give us the post card. Instead they asked my boyfriend to fill in a form PRETENDING he had once lived in my apartment and once the form is processed the postcard will be delivered to his actual home address instead.
Now I understand that there are rules to follow but I also think that these rules can’t cover every possible situation, and for situations like this one a little bit of common sense is needed. The fact that they also actively encouraged my boyfriend to lie instead of bending the rules slightly also seems pretty ironic.
It’s times like this I wish I knew more Japanese so I could tell ‘The Stupid Post Office’ my exact thoughts. Instead I will spend my jetlag hours lying awake fantasising about breaking into ‘The Stupid Post Office’ and getting my Queen’s head postcard back!!
Around 5am this morning I was woken by the biggest earthquake I’ve felt in the 2 years that I’ve lived here.
I’m not sure if it was the growl of the incoming earthquake, the shaking or my cell phone’s ‘early’ earthquake alarm (that sounds like a horror film score) but when I woke up I really thought that was it, and the BIG Nankai earthquake we’ve been dreading had arrived.
It’s hard to describe what goes through your head when you groggily wake up in this situation. All the safety tips you’ve had drilled into you just evaporate and all you can think is SHITTT. I also remember thinking GET OFF OF THE LOFT BED!
The earthquake lasted around 20 seconds, which is pretty long. Usually I just feel shaking for a couple of seconds, and most of the time it just feels like the world tips to one side and then to the other, or a massive lorry is driving past.
Despite my flimsy apartment shaking violently I was glad to find there had been no damage and everything seemed normal when I looked out of the window. Trains in the Kansai area were stopped for a while so that safety checks could take place but that was the only evidence in my area. I think there have been a few serious injuries near the epi-centre, a small island just off of Kobe, which felt a magnitude of 6.3.
I was gratedul that my friend Miyuki from Osaka mailed me straight away to check I was OK, and I had a bit of banter about it with Amy. My boyfriend played it down by telling me to stop mailing him and let him get back to sleep, ha.
For me, it took a while to get back to sleep after I set up a floor bed.
Today it seems eerily quiet outside and I feel a weird connection with all of the people I see in the street because they experienced what I did this morning. I wonder what they were doing at that time and what went through their heads.
I’ve been a bit lax recently about my earthquake OCD which use to include wearing something to bed I can evacuate in, constantly searching for safety zones, leaving my bike key out on the table so that I can make a quick exit and securing my precious laptop so that it doesn’t fall off the desk. I was also putting off replenishing my earthquake kit because I’m only here for another 2 months (I ate the tinned food at a very low point a few months back). But this morning was a wake up call and I’m getting back into my earthquake OCD mode.
Also, anyone that says they want to feel an earthquake because they think it will be fun, YOU’RE A TOOL! Go to the Natural History museum.
I’m always looking for things to do in my prefecture because I don’t want to live here forever and I want to make sure I’ve covered everything before I leave.
Dinosaur Land was one of those things I had heard of and put on my to-do list, and last week we finally took a trip there! It was a 2 hour drive away through mountain roads and the weather was awful which really set the tone for the day.
When we arrived I discovered that Dinosaur Land was literally just a disused coalmine with plastic dinosaur figurines inside.
The coalmine was wet, stinky and slippery with low ceilings that were also home to sleeping bats. Beneath the dinosaur section was a “hell” section which featured fire, plastic demons with LED eyes and scary loud groans. The whole experience was absolutely terrifying!
If I had visited Dinosaur Land as a child I would be as scarred by it as I am still now by the Alien ride at Universal Studios in Florida that I went on with my Dad when I was 8 years old. Watch this if you don’t know what I’m referring to.
When we got home we made vegetable gyozas for the first time. They were so easy to make and really yummy, but I certainly suffered the consequences of eating 12 gyozas in a row, and will probably actually never eat one again.
A few weeks ago I found myself with a rare few days off and wanted to make the most of it, so we drove 3 hours south to the southernmost area of the prefecture I live in, Wakayama. The drive was beautiful, open oceans to the right and huge tree covered mountains to the left.
We stayed in a delightful Japanese style hotel, Katsuura Kanko Hotel, where we lounged about on our futons drinking green tea and looking out of the huge windows that overlooked the sea.
Our hotel had a daily “Tuna Cooking Event” where they cooked 2 massive tunas, talked about them, took complimentary photos of guests with them and then gave out free samples. What a treat for all the tuna fanatics out there!
There were also hot baths in our hotel so after dinner and a few drinks I decided to brave it for the first time.
Wakayama is famous for hot baths and onsens which are basically big public hot baths (most use water from natural hot springs which apparently have ‘healing’ powers) usually divided by sex.
Hot baths are very scary to most foreigners, mainly because there’s a certain Japanese etiquette to them and you have to be naked at the same time.
My biggest fear was that there would just be me and one other woman and I would have to make polite broken Japanese conversation with my white boobs out. Fortunately this didn’t happen and I ended up with the whole place to myself! I tried the outside bath but it was very shallow so I got really cold, and then I lounged in the inside one for a couple of minutes before I felt my insides starting to boil.
In hindsight, it wasn’t actually as bad as I thought, but it didn’t really grab my interest. I think I would rather just have a bath in my own bath-tub with a glass of wine and a book!
The next day we visited the biggest waterfall in Japan, Nachi Fall, and we also passed the sea area famous for it’s dolphins, and subsequently the film The Cove. We also visited some nice temples and shrines, but I don’t remember there names because I’m a rubbish tourist.
I’ve never come across a child with nits in Japan. Or a person with smelly feet. Do these things exist in Japan? Or does Japan have some formula it needs to share with the world?
This is an awesome post! At least click on it and scroll down to the cute Asian baby.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the March 11th earthquake that struck Tohoku. Everyone was reminiscing as to where they were at the time; I was at work. It was a short Friday, so we were all done with classes and students came in to clean when suddenly the walls and clocks began to shake. I can…
—Jim Rohn (via thenomadsland)
This was originally a post about Lent and how I’m almost about to break it and stuff my fat face with chocolate.
Creme Eggs, Mini Eggs, Starbucks Sakura and White Chocolate Fraps, Fruit and Nut Bars, Smarties, Giant Buttons, Mint Aeros, Crunchies, Peanut Butter M&Ms, Brownies, Jaffa Cakes, Malteasers, Chocolate Orange, Matcha KitKats, Toffee Crisps, Wispa Golds, Matcha and White Chocolate Muffins, Green & Blacks White Chocolate, After 8s and Flakes.
I decided the best therapy would be to write this blog and then trawl the chocolate section of the Tesco website.
THEN I CAME ACROSS THIS!! I can’t believe my favourite chocolate from my childhood is making a comeback!! BEST DAY EVER!
