Some random photos? Sure.

Was looking through all the photos on my phone, and realised there's a bunch of random ones I've not put up anywhere. They may or may not be of any interest to you, but I like them.

So a few weeks ago, maybe a month who knows, me, Alistair and Adam went to Kochi castle for some festival type thing they were having. We had no idea what they were doing, but when we got there we were given these big lanterns to carry. Then there was candles lit ALL the way up the many levels of steps to the castle. It was pretty smart. We were pretty happy with the lanterns, spent quite a bit of time taking photos of ourselves with them, but it was hard with the darkness.

 

Then inside the entrance bit to go up to the castle, they had loads of these amazing wee lights! It looked really smart. After this we realised not much was actually going on at the castle, but the lantern holding and light stuff was worth the journey up the hill again anyways.

 

 

At my schools English camp, a couple of my students taught us how to make these amazing ORIGAMI SPINNING THINGS =D

 

And yeah, my no dinosaurs sign was put on Facebook. But still. How much do I love this sign?!

A LOT.

 

Then there's these weird fruit things we have here. The first one I had wasn't great. I was very confused as it tasted of nothing, so I chucked it. My supervisor gave me one later and it was brilliant.

 

In the supermarket across the road from my place, there was these Pumpkin Pans. So like, pumpkin bread bun/cake thingys. Thought it looked pretty interesting. And YES it was AMAZING =D Now it makes me sad Halloween's over and they don't have the same ones in anymore...

 

One day leaving school there was a really nice sunset over the baseball field. In fact, most days theres a really nice sunset. This one was just particularly nice.

 

At my schools festival, this was the aftermath of a day of my students wanting me to buy everything. I think I did a reasonable job trying to please everybody. I will have some of this food for a while... MAYBE.

 

And then, after my friends at my local bar taking me for spicy Ramen, I discovered a whole new liking for the food! After a while of saying "I don't like Ramen" I suddenly did. And even made it at home, with loads of Kimchi thrown in. SO GOOD.

 

And there you have it. My random photos wit some random explanations. Ah Japan. Random is a suitable word for you.

Eh ken its been a while...

AYE maties. Been a bit lazy on the old blog front recently. Time just seems to be going ridiculously quickly, I mean it's like only a month and a bit til Christmas. MADNESS.

Been quite busy recently, well weekends are always mental, but during the weeks have been pretty busy too. Had my schools festival last weekend, so I had to work the weekend and missed the "all you can eat beef and all you can drink sake" festival up in the mountains. One of my students got 1st place in a speech contest, which was great. We practised A LOT.

Christmas holidays are all booked up, so well looking forward to that. Listening to Radio 1 at the moment. I do this a lot now, just keeping up-to-date with music and the world back home. I wouldn't want to come back all lost and confused.

So there's a few things I miss from back home of course. I mean of course my family and friends. But otherwise.... (in no particular order)

1. Wetherspoons. My dear lovely cheap Counting House. I miss you. I miss the cheap drinks, the beer & burger deal and the banter with the local drunk old men. And generally just being able to sit for hours chatting, with no hassle.

2. Walking Bruno. I miss going round the block on our well trodden route, going down to the green, walking along by the grafitti wall and the vision building, chatting with all our dog walker friends and getting some fresh air. I miss taking massive de-tours to avoid the cannibal and his man-eating dog and the wonderful chatter with Denzel.

3. Normal shops. As much as I like some... SOME Japanese shops, I do miss the joys of H&M, Primark and all the rest.

4. The insane Dundee/Scottish/British pub and club thing. No-one does it quite like us in the old UK, I'm seeing that now. Clubs here are not so fun. As dancing just doesn't seem to exist...

5. And lastly.. just general food. Baked beans on toast. Chips (NOT FRIES). Stews. Haggis. Dominos. My folks cooking. As much as I love Japanese food, sometimes you just want something normal.

SO that's my list for now. I mean of course there's wee things here and there. And I miss my Bruno. BRRRUUUUUNNNOOOOOO. Yes.

Rain.

So Kochi has spared us from wet feet and flooded pavements for a good few weeks. But today, it decided we'd had enough of sunshine and nice days. And here comes the rain. As in like, the past few weeks worth of rain in one day O.o

It's pretty intense.

And now it's getting a bit colder, and I'm still wearing a t-shirt because really it's still like 20oC. But I need to find some warmer clothes soon.. but finding decent work clothes in Japan is proving difficult. I can find plenty smart t-shirts and weird casual clothes, but plain shirts? HARD.

AND I just learnt that it's all because there's a typhoon passing by, so Kochi is back in the red warning zone. Yay.

DROUGHT

Yes. Drought IS too extreme a word. But, we have had no rain at all in going on a week here in Kochi City. This is very strange.

It also seems that the weather forecasting function on my phone has permanently set itself to rain so it needn't do any work ever again. Blazing sun, wonderful weather for the past while, BUT my phone says it's still raining.

The rivers are actually getting scarily dry. Meanwhile I read back home is getting floods and stuff...


The other night at Sanctuary Bar, an International bar in Kochi City, I tried Spirytus. 96% stuff. 96%!!! MADNESS. It was literally alcohol in a bottle. It was a bit burny.

 On the way to see the second last baseball game of the season on Sunday, there was a pretty amazing sunset over the river. AHH KOCHI, so pretty when it aint raining.

AND today, for lunch, I had a hotdog wrapped in a roll with sauce on a stick. It was random indeed. But good, yeah good. Every lunch I go to the supermarket I try something random from the bakery. It is good, normally at least!



I have loads more photos and stuff to put up and write about. I just need to stop getting distracted by the internet...  If that's possible.

Better Second Time Round

Yeah, school that is.

I'm enjoying working at Ino Shogyo, or Ino Kencho as it is also called apparently.

Ok, so to start with, I HATE the amount of school/teacher/pupil praising and excitement and stupid stories that are getting posted every other minute on Facebook. YES others, I am sure it's all great and you love your students. YES I am sure that they love you and they're just so cute and they make you so happy and they have big smiles and they are just like the best thing everrrr. BUT RIGHT, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

SO I am posting my little bit about how I like MY school on my blog. That way all of Facebook won't have to see my addition to the praise club. I'm at Senior High, so I don't have a bunch of tiny wee kids treating my like a "celebrity" as everyone keeps talking about happening to them. What I have is a bunch of teenagers who want to sleep a lot..

School has only been back for two weeks, and I am already getting to know the kids. They're a good laugh. I'm remembering names and all. GO ME!

Today one of the girls in my class who doesn't normally do a lot said my activity was fun. Hmm yeah, FUN *smug face* So I was happy. I had 3 kids, who don't normally bother, getting really excited about the activity.

So that's it. That's all I want to say for now. My kids really like me, obviously because I am just THAT amazing hahaaa and I'm happy. I'm not going to throw it all over Facebook because I don't need to.

SAMURAI LIFE

So back in my first week here, I decided on the Sunday to go hunt down the Samurai Residences. I'm generally good with directions, so I enjoyed roaming around the back streets looking for this place. Plus the backstreets ALL seem to have wee rivers, and the fish are proper amazing. They're MASSIVE and nobody seems to be interested at all, just me stopping.. staring... at... fish... BIG FISH.

I managed to find the Samurai Residences anyway, and wandered in then panicked as I had that sudden feeling I was just breaking into someones house. I came across the woman who worked there though, which was good. She knew as much English as I do Japanese, so stumbling along I learnt a bit about it all.

We sat chatting for a bit and then it turned out she somehow knew one of the English teachers I work with! I just recently found out that what she was trying to say is that they are sister-in-laws. This phrase I did not know and presently do still not know.

Old Samurai Residences in Kochi City

The bedrooms of the Samurai

The cute wee garden, it was raining, as always...

The kitchen were those Samurai cooked their foooood

Me and a big Japanese umbrella

The woman told me to sit there for a photo. Being an obedient foreigner, I did.

I woke up strangely early one morning, at like 5am. It wasn't even raining. Anyhow, caught this pretty smart sun rise over the hills by my supermarket.

Ryukyu, a Kochi vegetable that is the stems of... some other type of vegetable. That's me chopping it all up, the other teachers at school were surprised to hear that I didn't get any reactions from touching it. I'm nor sure what this Ryukyu does, but fortunately it doesnt concen me!

The end result. Bacon that turned out to be pork, cheapo burger cheese and Ryukyu. It was actuallly extremely good! (oh and shop bought sushi of course!)

YAKISOBAAAA

Where I go when there's a Tsunami. Like the word choice there? Not IF, WHEN. But the walls look reasonably well built... It'd be fiiiiine.

My train station.

Still at the train station, getting daaaarrrrk

So yeah, there's another wee bit of life in Japan from Pam. There will be more. OH so much more.

First Sights of Kochi- The CASTLE

So on my very first weekend, I decided to spend it wandering around the city by myself. NOT because I'm a total loner, but because I wanted to find my bearings and see stuff. One of my first stops was Kochi Castle.

Kochi Castle sits on top of this hill, which is sort of like a park, and it's bonnie aye.

So it's like one of the only original castles left in Japan. Most of them have been ebuilt..

Looking out over the city!

 Me standing on the tiny wee walkway around the sides of the castle.

The rain moving in. Back when I hadn't realised the full extent of Kochi rain...

This was at the bottom of the hill by the castle, nice.

The inside of the castle, on the top floor. There was many MANY floors, all with tiny narrow but extremely steep wooden steps. And we had to take our shoes off, so I was scurrying around in my bare feet.

Lilly Pond by the castle. It's pretty, not much more to say.

So that was my visit to Kochi Castle, a mere couple of days after arriving. I spent a good while in there, and I had just got my fancy  smart-yphone the day before, so I sat for a good hour in the top level of the castle playing with my phone. Ruining a cultured atmosphere with mindless technology once again hahaha