It gets better

You might know that Glasgow is one of my favourite places in the entire world. (If not, have I mentioned that Glasgow is one of my favourite places in the entire world? Seriously, if  I could work out a way to live there again…)

I don’t know about you, but (and this is a bit shameful to admit considering how much I like making videos and web things) sometimes I can’t be bothered to watch things online. The video below is just under 10 minutes and worth it.

It’s not just an important message for LGBT young people, it’s an important message for all young people. Really very proud to be an ex-Glasgow Uni student and a former GUSTie. Well done to everyone involved in making this.

Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

Apologies in advance as this is a bit of a political rant. If you don’t feel like that, skip through to the next post on which there is a truly awesome video. I won’t be offended, honest.

I feel a bit like I’ve been making notes for this post through Facebook comments.

Overall, I had a really good day today, considering I was prepared for a day of no lessons and was told when I got in that I’d be teaching five compared to my usual three on Thursdays, four of which would be back to back starting at 8.40 and oh, by the way, did I have my self introduction Powerpoint presentation with me?

The students made up for it though. I don’t usually get to teach the first graders at my junior high school, so it was really nice to get to meet them properly at last. Plus they had the best reaction ever to my pictures of the Carsten Holler exhibition at the Tate Modern.

About 2.30pm, I made the mistake of reading this article and my brain (which, to be honest, has been selfishly bumping along in a “ah well at least I’m not having to live  directly under the Tories at the moment even if they still are getting my tax money” kind of way) … well, sort of imploded under the weight of the reality of it all in a way that it hasn’t done for a while.*

Anyway.  If Tesco, Poundland and the like have a genuine need for people to come and stack shelves etc, they can pay people for it. They make enough in profits to do so.

Speaking as someone who has worked for free as a means to an actual paid position**, voluntary work can be valuable. There are plenty of charities and voluntary groups out there who need people to work in a variety of roles which would actually get you decent experience . If I needed the money, I would have no qualms about taking a paid job in a supermarket***. Working there for free just makes no sense. I’ve also known people on the dole who wanted to do work experience that would actually be relevant to their career field (design, TV) who have been told that they couldn’t do it because they wouldn’t be available for work.

I’ve seen a few people say “well, it’s only 30 hours a week, it gets you out of the house”. 30 hours a week is only 10 hours less than my contracted hours in my last job. If my last employer had said we’re cutting your hours down by ten a week, oh and that means we won’t pay you more than unemployment benefit, I wouldn’t be particularly happy. This scheme is not about the value of work. If it was about the value of work, people would be being paid properly for the work they’re doing.

And if these big corporations are going to be the saviours of our ailing economy and fill the gaps where the public and voluntary sector has been cut,  shouldn’t they be employing people, who can then go on to, I don’t know, buy things and pay taxes?

* I’ve been quite enjoying this opportunity to only pay nominal attention to the news in the UK. (Apart from the riots, which happened a week after we left, there would have been a very long post about that one if I had had proper internet access at the time). Going from being quite an engaged-ish citizen to being a not that engaged –at-all-really-expatriate  is a bit of an odd one though. Some of my very good friends have been a bit involved in Occupy London – if I was there I’d like to think I would be too…but I feel weirdly disconnected from it (and then weirdly guilty for feeling disconnected from it).

**To be honest, this brings up a whole set of related but slightly different issues about internships. I did very well out of my three month volunteer stint – I immediately got a paid job in similar work for another charity. But I could only afford to do 3 months volunteering because I had some inheritance money from my mum’s death which could cover my day to day living costs like bills and mortgage payments (the charity covered my travel and lunch expenses). Most people aren’t in that position.

***That is, if the wages actually covered my living costs. Again, this is a related but slightly different issue. Wow, my head’s really off in rant mode today.

Pfft!

One relatively recent phenomenon in Japan is the cat café. Cats are not on the menu, neither are they a café for cats. Cat cafes are places you can go to have a drink and spend time with cats.

It makes sense as many Japanese apartments are tiny, and also I’m not sure if tatami mats mix well with cat claws. I know our cat would be in scratch post heaven in Ben’s apartment.

Back in August, already suffering slight pangs of missing our cat back home, we tagged along with some fellow new JETs after a hard day’s training at Okayama Orientation to Pfft!, a cat café in Okayama. *

For about 1000 yen, you get a drink and a hour’s time with the cats.  The whole place is ridiculously cutesy (as you might expect, being in the land of kawaii…). Cream sofas, pink wallpaper and plenty of climbing posts and toys for the cats. It also didn’t smell as much as I expected! The cats seemed pretty, well , cat-like about the whole thing. Happy to play if they were in the mood, otherwise quite content to doze in a corner.

Just don’t tell my cat I went.

Here’s a video:

* Can I just say that I really like that the cats are listed under “staff” on their website?

I’ll go and play with words and pictures

Just finished my first video editing session in a long time (think the last time was this short thing in summer 2010 for work): a minute long clip of different English speakers for a warm up for a lesson on “different English-es” this week. It was surprisingly satisfying despite being created in the famously irritating iMovie. Good to know after all this time I can still get lost for a couple of hours putting pictures in the “right” place. I’ve missed it.

I really want, if possible, to do a video project with some of the students I teach.  Having seen some of the creativity and effort they put into the cultural festivalsI think they could come up with some really great ideas. Unfortunately having classes of forty students makes it a little bit of a challenge…

Mixed business

Ok, so I’m not doing too well on the posting every day thing. Erk.

So this weekend…

Friday we went to an Italian restaurant in Kurashiki with a work colleague of Ben’s and her friend. It was a good chance to have one of those broken English, broken Japanese conversations, which actually make me feel a little more confident in speaking Japanese. I even managed a longish sentence with all the correct particles in the correct place and everything. Get me. (Although I’ve now forgotten what it was I said.) The chef turned out to have spent time in Siracusa in Sicily which is perhaps one of my favourite places Ben and I have ever been on holiday.

Saturday afternoon I went to the lovely Café Onsaya (one of the many aforementioned all round ace cafes in Okayama-shi) and coerced some other foreigners into helping me record a short video clip for my senior high school class. Saturday night was all night karaoke where I was happily reminded of this song’s existence.

Today after recovering from the all night karaoke, I caught the train down to Yakage,  which is a tiny town south of Okayama-shi. It seems like every town or village in Japan has its very own festival, and Yakage is no exception. I was especially looking forward to this one as people I know were taking part and dressing up for it! The Daimyo Gyoretsu (or Yakage Samurai Parade for simplicity’s sake) looks back to the Edo Period, when samurai and their entourages would stay in the town. People dress up in all kinds of costumes from olden day Japan.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I love catching the train out of Okayama-shi. It doesn’t take long before concrete and neon is replaced by mountains and trees. Yet another “oh right, I’m in Japan” moment.

Happy as I am to have the convenience and the ease of living in the city, when I visit the smaller towns I am slightly envious of the totally different experience I would have if I lived somewhere like that. I don’t even know if Okayama-shi has festivals you can actually take part in, other than the huge Momotaro Festival.  Also, I loved how all the kids that knew my friends were running up and saying hi/staring open mouthed at their costumes.  Living in the city has lots of advantages (All night karaoke! Cafes! Taxis! Import food!), but I wonder if I’d be having slightly more unique experiences if I was in a tiny place.

Anyway! I enjoyed the festival and the spectacle of all the different costumes. I now need  another weekend to recover from this one…

This space reserved for a blog post

Yes. I missed yesterday’s post. Less than a week into this whole thing…

In my defence, I finish work around 5pm on Wednesdays and then go straight to my Japanese class, then have dinner before collapsing into bed.

I think I’m going to have to play catch up at the weekend…

And recording around 25 listening exercises this afternoon has fried my brain. A proper post or two soon, I promise. Possibly about Japanese working culture and how tired I can be at the end of a working day…

White noise

Hands up everyone who thinks the Croydon Tramlink would be vastly improved by some sort of cute animal character painted on the side:

Oh. Yeah.

Suddenly realising you’re looking at a very mundane thing with the addition of a ridiculously cute character on it is definitely one of those “oh bloody hell, I’m in Japan!” moments. Three months in, they still pop up, more so in some ways as I get used to things.

On the bus on the way home this evening I was looking out the window, thinking how odd it was to be living somewhere where I can barely read any of the signs and notices.  At home I devour words without thinking about it, but here, I’m basically illiterate.  Despite having studied kana for a year, Ben and I both still stumble over restaurant menus. (“Pi…za…. Pizza!”)

I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read English (in that I could read the words even if I didn’t know what they meant), but I do remember being about 3 or 4 years old and talking to friends who couldn’t read yet. I was absolutely fascinated by the idea of not being able to read. I thought it was probably like being blind. It’s not really, is it? It’s just like tuning out of white noise. Your brain can’t make sense of what it’s looking at, so it just switches its attention elsewhere.

As I begin to learn kanji, a few characters pop out at me more and more, which is kind of satisfying and ego crushing at the same time. “Oh, that says “EXIT”. That says: “Book”. Of course it does, it’s a bookshop.”

One of my friends who did JET a few years ago told us before we left about a moment of revelation where his Japanese study had got to the stage where he realised his journey home from work was surrounded by the word “Beef”. Beef was, indeed, everywhere.  I’m not at the beef revelations stage yet, but perhaps in a few months, I’ll start to make sense of some of it.