All life is an experiment

"At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is your own survival. That's what humans and cockroaches are best at."

I'd be lying if I'd say the past two weeks have been a walk in the park. They've not. My life is work, coming home at 9:30pm, having dinner around 10:15pm when my rice is cooked, watching some netflix, having a shower and going to sleep. It's different, but boy I love the teaching aspect of work!

My students are great fun and with every lesson teaching is getting easier. My coworkers are great, even though we usually don't get much of a chance to have a chat because — work. However, today onwards is working days aka no normal lessons and today I have for example found myself singing "Murijaanein kuningas" at work by accident (under my breath, of course).

I'm not going to lie and say that it's been easy to live here. It most certainly hasn't. It's not been as difficult as it was back in 2012, but it's not been easy either. It's been different. At times I do miss being an exchange student, despite all its challenges, you had people to talk to and you got to just go to school. Now? At the moment, I don't really have friends. I have work 12pm-9pm or 11am-8pm tue-sat. However, I do like the fact that I have my own apartment — even if my winter duvet is a joke but thankfully amazon is an option and will help you out.

Lunch on Wednesday — some things got better and I had snow crab sushi amongst others for lunch

While I do sometimes wake up to a new day filled with dread, it's the little things that remind me of why I'm here. Like the restaurant I went to today for lunch — I got given an English menu but spoke Japanese throughout my lunch as per, and the waitresses were just incredibly sweet. When I go to a Starbucks and ask my sandwich to not be heated up, they'll apologize and say that it needs to be, they'll just heat it up a little. I go to a grocery store 15mins before it closes and the cashier doesn't have a face on that tells me "why are you here, we're almost closed?!". I get complimented on my Japanese even when all I say is "yes, it's okay" or something as trivial as that. Japan is not perfect, far from it, but I still love it. It has it's issues, my current situation has its issues, but Japan itself has not let me down. Even if for the past week all I've craved has been non-Japanese food.

I'm thrilled to have two days off, even if being alone on Christmas feels quite weird. I've never been a Christmas person, but now that I'll be alone? I've been getting emotional over 'Tiernapojat' today. Luckily, Toyama has illuminations and a potential fireworks show in the 24th, so that's where I'll be heading. In a way it is quite funny to all of a sudden to live in Japan alone — had someone told me this in May 2012, I would've laughed. Mainly out of despair and need to not be back. Now? I'm happy to be back, I do love Japan even if at times I don't.

In due time there might be a blog post with actual content to it, but this will have to suffice for now. There's only so much you can write on Facebook, right?

All the best,

Kiia

ps,

If we do normally talk on a regular basis or you would like to chat, please don't hesitate to message me! I'm off Sundays and Mondays, and 29th of Dec until the 7th of Jan — I'd love to hear from y'all but especially after work I'm just knackered. oops. I will answer when I can, cannot promise quality of responses and especially a generic "how's it going?" is pretty difficult to answer to — this doesn't mean I don't want to talk to you all. It's just.. life, I guess?

Let's pray for the weekend babe

It’s been almost two weeks since we arrived to Japan and what weeks have those been!

 The training was super intense, 10am until 7pm every day with just an hour’s lunch break. We had a number of model lessons to teach to each other, received plenty of useful and sometimes not so useful feedback, had fun, were tired, almost fell asleep and dealt with clothing issues.

 Yes, Japanese workplace dress code IS formal. Yes, you have to wear a suit, neat shoes, cover ALL tattoos and piercings, are probably not allowed to wear jewellery and need to have your hair up so that kids can’t grab it. Additionally, if you wear a dress, it needs to be plain — those of you who have seen me over the past year or so know that I don’t really do plain dresses apart from my graduation last year, so shirts and skirts it is. Unless I choose to wear a skirt over a dress (which I have done last week because my tattoo was visible through white shirts and I had no white undershirts to cover it). There can be variations depending on your specific workplace, but you get the gist. It’s regulated and you can’t deviate from it, which is certainly something new. It’s not difficult to adhere to the rules, but it’ll take some time to get used to walking in dress shoes — my shins are killing me after a week so we’ll see how it’ll be once I start my daily 900m commute to work.

While most days were spent in training, we did get some days off too. However, to be honest, I didn’t do much apart from the first day off last week Sunday when I went to see Okayama Castle and had a look at Korokuen Gardens. With the whole trying to get used to a +7hr time difference and being surrounded by people effectively 24/7 (I had a roommate for the first time… in forever, if sharing a hotel room with Nuppu this summer doesn’t count), you’re tired. Thus, whenever there was a slight chance to spend some time alone, I took it. It was nice to spend time with the others on evenings and grab a couple of beverages, but I most certainly also enjoyed the nights when I would watch Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix and just have a bubble bath.

At the end of the day, I’d be lying if I said I’m going to miss these two weeks. It’s been fun and it’s always nice to meet new people, but it’s also really exhausting and frustrating to be in a bit of a limbo — you have unpacked most of your things but you know you’ll have to repack soon, and you don’t even have all of your belongings. Hence, I’m super happy to be finally getting in to my own apartment in Kanazawa today! Okayama as a city is not something I’ll miss. It can be nice, but I feel like this time rather than making the most of our days off, I was just too tired and lazy to do much.

There would’ve been a lot of options for day trips outside Okayama, but I don’t regret deciding to just do a couple of things and then focus on getting enough rest in order to have even some energy for the week. Getting up at 6am on your day off and traveling in a suit is not ideal, but doing that and knowing that at the end of it you’ll have your own apartment and will be able to just unpack and slowly start to make it your home makes it worth it. It’ll also be interesting to meet the person who will be The Boss for your next year (at least).

 There are a lot of similarities to the PAO we had with YFU six and a half years ago. At times, we have been babied a lot — for example, for traveling to our cities, we will be met by someone at each station. I suppose it can be helpful if you don’t speak Japanese, but man do I find it frustrating that I “need” someone to help me to catch my thunderbird from Osaka. However, I know that they do mean well and it can be super beneficial especially if you’re going to e.g. Tokyo Station (like many of us are).

It’s just the tiniest things that have so far been frustrating — like not being able to have water with you in the training room and having to step out to drink. That combined with my (apparently) everlasting cough hasn’t been great — imagine teaching a lesson, having to be a student for the next one and coughing your lungs out with no relief? Yeah. It’s not fun.

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The text above was written in the train on my way to Kanazawa. I’ve now had my shadow week and taught a few lessons. Next week is my first full week of teaching. I caught a massive cold on Monday so I’ve been ill the whole week, coughing my lungs out on lessons and trying not to drown in snot.

It’s good and it’s bad and it’s everything in between. Growing pains, a bit of a culture shock and perhaps a side of things just not being ideal. Such is life, eh? It’s about what you decide and how you deal with situations that are a result of your actions and the actions of those around you. It’s not always fun nor terrible, it’s just life.

I’ll try to write more when I have the energy & time, but at least it’s time to have two days off now. It's exactly what I thought it would be and it's nothing like that.

Facing the future and the changes it brings

Well well well, it's been a while. I haven't forgotten about this, but I've had more pressing matters to attend to and quite frankly my life has been filled with work, Netflix, sleep, and a side of horse polo. There hasn't been any time to write and I've not had the need to make time for that. Thus, I'm in no way surprised that I haven't written anything since last year. I've been working on my MSc in Social and Applied Psychology at University of Kent, and I am more than happy to say that it is now over. The year was filled with stress and work, but I managed to squeeze in a ridiculous number of flights (and a few train journeys) around Europe — for work.

Over the past 12 months I have been to at least Switzerland, Finland (x5), France, Netherlands (x2), Belgium, and Japan. Out of those, only France, Belgium and Japan have been holidays, and about five days around first of May in Finland. Everything else, volunteering with YFU or WAGGGS. Safe to say I'm quite done with the commute from Canterbury to Heathrow Airport, haha.

Itsukushimajinja in Miyajima, Hiroshima

As a result of my last trip to Japan in late June I decided to do something I've been thinking about doing for a few years now; apply for a job in Japan. After all, I didn't get funding for a PhD and if I'm having a gap year, might as well do something I've thought of doing but have never really had the time for. I spent a weekend writing job applications and got an interview for one job, the other day they called me offering a position and here we are. 

I'm moving to Kanazawa in Ishikawa prefecture at the end of November and will be living and working there for a year teaching English.

It feels weird to be going back home. I'm thrilled, of course, but at the same time a little bit terrified. It's been 6 years and 156 days since I left for exchange and a lot has happened since. My exchange was in no way a walk in the park, and in a way I am really glad that I had no prior knowledge of the challenges that it brought to me. However, as I've said a thousand times before, I don't regret it. It was one hell of a ride and I wouldn't be who I am today if it weren't for my exchange. The past years of living in the UK have of course taught a lot more, but living in a foreign country where you don't speak the language during your formative years is bound to change you.

I have no illusions that I wouldn't get a culture shock this time — I'm pretty sure I will, I mean, living and working in Japan after being a student for the past 15 years and basically having very little responsibilities is going to be a shock. As is the fact that Kanazawa actually gets SNOW during the winter. However, I'd like to think that after being an exchange student, having travelled back three times and having lived in another country for four years, it would be a little bit easier. The challenges will be different, even though this time I won't be expected to be social once I get home, I'm also going to be in charge of everything myself. There will probably be times when I wish I could just be back in England where I know exactly how things work and I feel at home, but I'm looking forward to the challenges. It will be weird to be at work on the 24th of December — at least I get the Christmas abroad I've always wanted, haha.

I'm not making any promises about regular updates, we all know those would probably not be fulfilled anyway. I'm going to try to update regularly though, but we'll see. In terms of language... I don't know, more than likely to be English, but who knows if I get a sudden urge to brush up my Finnish? (unlikely).

I'm going back to Finland for over two months in a couple of weeks time and it's going to be the longest I've been there since summer 2015. It's going to be weird and I'm already dreading the darkness of October and November, but at least at the end of November I'll be heading back home to Japan. ...and it is necessary to be back there, I need to get my visa sorted and all those fun formalities you need to do prior to moving to a non-EU country. It's gonna be a lot of paperwork, but hey, I'm going home!

xx,
Kiia