Fresh start.

Okay you sons of biatches, I now have a loan of a computer so this blog will be kept up-to-date. I promise! However it will be starting tommorow as it`s now 1:30 in the morning and I start work in the morning. EW!

Due to someone moaning at me I am going to leave all the Tokyo stuff out, overwise this blog will never get done. Instead I will just start this thing from the past week.

On the Monday it was a holiday so we went to Yumi's (in my english class) friends house where a man that was famous for making udon noodles was (don't ask me why). They were so good though! Yumi's friends were all artists or musicians of some sort, so me and Zara sat in on a sing song with them (although our singing was limited). After all this we went to this touristy place that had a goat, rabbits and ponies. I loved the goat so much because me, Zara and Yumi were sitting feeding it when a group of 19/20 year old boys came up. It was all fine until one boy decided that it would be a good idea to hug the goat. However instead of hugging the boy back the goat headbutted him and then chased him around. You could tell he was embarrassed but that didn't stop me from laughing. Also the palce sold ice cream. I will admit that it was some of the best ice cream I have had in ages, the cookies and cream one had little chunks of Oreos/heaven in it. So all round Monday was a good day for food and goats.

Tuesday was the usual, Senior High School, it was pretty uneventful. Although the Head teacher did try and teach me Japanese but the lesson came to a standstill when I couldn't pronounce "sophmore" in Japanese. That's a word I don't even use when speaking English never mind Japanese! The Tuesday night was spent at a reflexology event that the Board of Education (my bosses) had organised. I really enjoyed it until we had to massage over peoples feet and have them massage ours. I really don't like over peoples feet.

Wednesday was supposed to be the Junior High school but it was cancelled so it was spent planning our lesson for that nights english class. I teach the Advanced class so there english is pretty good. The lessons are always fun, they did a listening excercise and we also spent a bit of time imitating the man on the recordings accent. Apparently in his world "proof" is pronounced "poof".

Thursday and today were spent at 2 of the 5 nurserys we go to. I like the nurserys the most because the kids are hilarious. There is 2 wee boys that constantly seem to be running and smiling. Well that is my week. I never wanted my blog to be like "Today I did this...." but it's the only way I can really write. I will do updates on my first week in Toya etc at some point but I'm very lazy so it will take time.

Catch up - Tokyo.

Okay, a lot has happened since the last post. Arrived in Tokyo on Thursday after over 30 hours travelling, very tiring. However had to do my best to at least look alive as we were met by Mai and Aiko in Shibuya. We were told that we were going to the volunteer centre which was only a train ride away. If you think London transport is crowded you are wrong! Keep in mind we still had our bags, which Aiko insisted on carrying despite my attempts to stop her.
Once we arrived at the centre we were met by Yuki, our Japanese representative, and ice cold tea. Both I was happy to see! After being given our money for the week ( 12,000￥) Mai and Aiko took us to our hotel, Hotel suave (it really was) and then for a traditional Japanese dinner.........at Dennys. Here we learnt that Japanese waiters/waitresses come whenever you call "sumimasen" (excuse me) which is odd when you think about the half hour wait you have in Scotland before your order is even taken.
After dinner Mai and Aiko left us so we went exploring. On our travels we found about four 7/11 shops and a hidden shrine. It was quite surreal finding something so peaceful in the middle of Tokyo. After about an hour of wandering around we decided to call it a day and headed to the hotel. Not much else to say about my first day cause I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow!

My new blog.

Welcome to my brand new blog! This will hopefully keep you up to date on my year away in Japan. The organization Project Trust is kindly shipping me away to Japan for what should be an interesting year. I will be living in Toya, Hokkaido, with my partner Zara where we will be teaching English, working at the kindergarten and the local hospital.

I recently had an intense week of training to prepare me for all this work. For this I went up to the Isle of Coll with 49 other volunteers. During our stay we learnt ,what seemed like, everything we need to know about our project but hopefully there will be a few surprises left.

However even with all this information about Japan and my project I don't think the fact that I'm going away will hit me until I'm actually there. Well it's only 13 days to go so I'll find out soon!