Kon'nichiwa (hello) from Japan – the Travelling Bee is off once more on another great adventure. It feels like this has been a long time coming – when I first qualified as a TEFL teacher, this was where I wanted to go. Japanese teenagers were my first language students – they’d come over to the UK and I was their part-time teacher, an experience which got me into TEFL teaching and inspired me to move abroad. I applied for the JET program (Japanese-English Teaching) and was fairly sure I’d be offered a position, but because of a lack of employment opportunities in the UK that year, three times as many people as usual applied for the JET program and so I didn’t get in. Which is why I wound up in China. So basically, I’ve eventually got to where I wanted to be - I just took the scenic route.
One thing I was sure of before I started looking into this trip – getting a job in Japan would certainly be harder than getting one in China. In China, they are desperate for English teachers. It’s still a new market – language learning is a contemporary thing in China, and right now it’s booming. But in Japan, there has been a Western influence for decades, particularly since its occupation by the American’s in World War 2. People here have been learning English for a long time, and as such their need for English teachers is less frantic than in China. Browsing online jobsites for teaching opportunities in Japan, many schools won’t offer an interview to anyone who doesn’t currently reside in Japan – and that seems to be fairly standard. So here we are, in Japan, and I don’t yet have a job.
Sasha’s job is through a well-known company that hires teachers for Japanese Universities, and he’s been placed in Tokyo. I wasn’t too keen on living in Tokyo as I’m not much of a big city person, but you need to go where the jobs are. Actually, the area we’ve ended up in is nothing like the ‘big city’ I imagined. We’re in Tokyo, but we’re not really in Tokyo – we’re in a city called Kawasaki, which in itself is also pretty huge. Our area is Asao-ku – one of the seven wards of the prefecture.
So far, our local area seems lovely. It’s green and fairly quiet, even with a main road only 100m from our window. It’s not too built up in this area – there are some apartment blocks like the bit we live in, but for the most part it’s just individual houses of two floors, which look all the more smaller for their cute, compact design. Today I went exploring and found two tiny parks that are near our house. They’re little more than children’s play areas with some trees and patches of grass, and both of them were overgrown, but in a charming sort of way. Like how British parks have currently been featuring these ‘wild’ patches to encourage insects and animals to live there, except I don’t think the overgrown patches in these parks are planned.
We’re a 15-minute walk from the Shin-Yurigaoka subway station, which is surrounded by shops, restaurants and the like. Our local supermarket is only five minutes away and also there is a big one at the station, which is called Aeon. ‘Topvalu’ is like their own-brand and a good choice while we’re still working out how much things cost. It’s much harder to calculate than in China. In China you just divided by 10 for a rough idea of how much things cost (100 Yuan = about £10), but with Japanese Yen you’d need a calculator - £1 is about 175 Yen, so a bit tricky for me to work out in my head. I guess I’ll get used to it in time – once I’ve bought a few things and compared prices in different shops it’s easier to remember what’s good value and what’s not.
Thursday was our main admin day, and amazingly we managed to get lots done even though jet-lag completely messed up our sleep and we didn’t get up until after 2 pm. We had to go and register and show our residency cards, which we were given to us at immigrations at the airport, and also sign up for the National Health Insurance. The NHI in Japan is amazing – with the insurance you only need to pay up to 30% of medical costs, though fingers crossed I won’t need to use it at all.
The place where we’re living is block of little flats that are private or dormitory room style. Needless to say that we have a private room! We have a bedroom, small caravan-style bathroom and a corridor with washing machine and fridge/freezer. On each floor there is a tiny communal kitchen, and a large kitchen/dinning/living room on the ground floor. It’s not ideal, but as Sasha’s work is a short contract we’ll likely only be here for 3 months. Housing is expensive in Japan, and until I find a job we need to try and save money. It’s small, but it’s cute and functional. Easier to clean too as there is so little that needs cleaning!
So far, I love Japan. The main thing is the food, which is just amazing. Japanese food has always been one of my favourite cuisines, with the added bonus that it’s good for you! In China, I struggled with the food as the diet there contains lots of wheat (noodles, dumplings, bǎo zì, pancake) and everything is fried in so much oil all the time – I like Chinese food, but it didn’t make me feel very well. But Japanese food is so simple and clean, and at the same time – delicious! Just plain sticky rice and clean, healthy fish… yum. Obviously we won’t be eating sushi and sashimi platters all the time – it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than in the UK but it’s still not the cheapest thing, so while I could happily chomp my way through a plate of sashimi every day, we’ll be keeping it to special occasions.
As well as sushi, there is an abundance of fish in general at the supermarket. We’re cooking at home a lot to save money, but it’s easy to make tasty meals when you can get fresh pieces of fish for cheap. Our trick is to go to Aeon at the end of the day – at about 6:30 they reduce the prices of fresh things and the reductions are considerable. Last night we got a packet of delicious chunks of fish for about 150 Yen, which is less than a pound.
Something I had been told by friends who lived here is how much the Japanese love pastry. In general I try not to eat too much cake and bread because of the wheat, but I make an exception when it comes to things like donuts, which I love. So as you can imagine, we’ve only been here for 4 days, and we’ve already been to the ‘Mr Donut’ shop where you can get a basic donut of 100 yen (about 60p). Sasha had a ‘curry donut’ – someone he knows bought one of these by accident and got a nasty surprise when he bit into it, but Sasha likes savoury things and chose the curry option in full knowledge, enjoying it thoroughly. I had a sweet donut with yellow sugar crystals – I can see myself working my way through their menu over the next few months!
Yesterday we went to the harajuku shopping area, mainly to go to the ‘100 Yen Store’. As we’re not sure exactly how long we’ll be here, we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on appliances and furnishings, so this store was perfect to pick up those few things we needed for the flat – cushions, mugs, soap etc. We didn’t realise it before going there, but the Takeshita-dori shopping street seemed to be some sort of popular tourist destination, as it was fairly busy with Japanese and Westerners alike. There were loads of little cafes, bars and restaurants, as well as street-food vendors selling, of all things, crepes. We didn’t have much of a look around the area but it’s one we’ll be going back to.
So today Sasha went for his induction at work, and I’ve been madly applying for jobs and just getting things done here really. That’s it for now, but I’m looking forward to the next adventure and being able to share it here on my blog. So it’s Sayōnara for now. (So tempted to put ‘zàijiàn’ at the end there but I need to get used to my new sign off!)
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