Sugoi, indeed

This is one facet of what life in Japan is like:

I spent the day studying kanji, followed by learning to wrap gifts in traditional Japanese style (I wasn't very good). I came back and ate a stir fry of vegetables, peanuts, and the (inadequate for a meal) leftover soba and ham from yesterday. Right now, I'm washing it down with a small tin of rather decent Suntory beer and a small tub of green tea ice cream, while watching a travel documentary comedy educational celebrity show about foodstuffs.

It was 35C and ferocious sunshine all afternoon. As I came home, the heavens were opening, and we had a violent thunderstorm for about half an hour while I cooked. Right now at 7.30pm it's a mere 30C, the sun has long set, the lights of dozens of apartment blocks glitters like stars in my window, and a man on the telly is eating noodles with chopsticks while simultaneously imitating an angry pig.

Before bed in a couple of hours (in order to get a bit of kip before the sun wakes me at 5am) I have a few emails from friends and family to consider replying to, homework to do, and need to consider an invitation to join a judo club. I am also, with a little part of my brain, mulling over the convenience of a TV genre whose entire script consists of the words "sugoi!", "tabetai!" and "ikimashou!" repeated in chorus at deafening volume, apparently designed for grown adults. I am not sure I can finish the green tea ice cream all at once, as it's very astringent. The amount of tea that must be concentrated in it to get it this grass-green is somewhat horrifying.

On the telly, a gaggle of people are applauding the sea from a balcony and shouting "sugoi". I'm happy for them. So few people really appreciate the existence of the sea.

Pushmi-pullyu exercises

A favourite language-teaching exercise is to make sentences using a construction you're studying. Unfortunately, I really struggle with sentence-making exercises. It's not because of the grammar particularly, it's just something I find very difficult in general, like when people ask you to "say something" - my mind goes blank.

The reason I'm bringing this up is, as you might have guessed, that they make frequent appearances in the textbook I'm currently using.

Basically I think the trouble with these exercises is they test two things at once:

• Your understanding of the grammar point
• Your ability to conceive a sentence that:
  1. Uses the grammar point in question
  2. You know the vocabulary for
  3. You know any other necessary grammar for
  4. Makes sense
  5. Isn't completely banal and self-evident (not strictly necessary, but generally it seems people's minds revolt at saying things that are tautologies, or really really boring)

Part of the problem is that they're not realistic reflections of language. In real conversation, or writing, or reading, you do not spend any of your time thinking of ways to use specific sentence structures. You think of something you want to say, and say it. Language training should guide you towards being able to do that in a different language.

Good language training will encourage you to produce increasingly complex bits of language, assembling blocks together into useful communications. You begin with scattered bits of vocab and grammar that can pass on only simple things, but built up. You learn to convey positive and negative forms; to discuss the past and future; to express hypothetical events; to disparage or praise; to add nuances like amusement, surprise, regret and disapproval; to be polite, or indeed impolite. You go from "The cat is black" to "To be honest, I think I'd prefer that the Tories hadn't implemented a benefits regime that disproportionately penalises the worst-off members of society, but who am I to question the wisdom of a bunch of Old Etonians who've never seen a day's hardship in their lives?".

Pushmi-pullyus do not reliably exercise your sentence-building muscles. This is because completing a pushmi-pullyu exercise requires you to adhere to a number of criteria that, crucially, are often contradictory to a learner. You must create a sentence out of whole cloth, which is difficult at the best of times; but the scope of that creativity is crippled by the need to include a specific grammar point. Many of the examples you might think of require vocabulary you don't have, and which may be actually pretty unusual, and not really worth looking up: "I beseeched the octagenarian cosmonaut to fricasee only the rind of the cantaloupe", for example.

In other cases, a sentence may be perfectly grammatical but not really mean anything, or seem silly, which is a different kind of error and unrelated to the point of the exercise - nevertheless, most teachers will spring on this like leopards upon a hungry gazelle, unwilling to accept the argument that it doesn't affect the validity of the grammar. "If you eat this cake, the giraffe will implode" is a perfectly good sentence; requiring the student to give a detailed explanation of the exact circumstances in which it makes sense to utter those words will not provide any substantial benefit, assuming that they do actually understand what they wrote.

As a result, these exercises can become a frustrating time-sink. It's like the classic scene in films where a fireplace or bin gradually fills with rejected drafts. The student is pulled between different objectives, struggling to make any decision like the ass between two mangers. Ideas are conceived, and rejected. By the time a sentence finally passes the series of disconnected tickboxes, it's taken far longer than most other kinds of question of equivalent length, without any substantial benefit that I can see.

There are at least two obvious ways around this:

1. Offer a set of components to build the sentence around, rather than expecting the student to invent them. Say you're practicing conditionals: offer up "cat", "flap", "open", "come in" and a student can reasonably build "If the flap is open, the cat will come in" or one of several variations, practicing expressing that kind of thought without wasting brainpower trying to come up with the situation themselves.
2. Separate out exercises. Have completion exercises to practice grammatical forms, and free-writing exercises to use creativity (these still need structure - "write something" is deeply unhelpful).

I think many authors and teachers see "write your own sentence" as fun for the learner, because it offers a chance at creativity. But that appearance is deceptive; there are too many constraints for these to be creative. They also seem challenging, but most of the time what they are is difficult.

Okay, that sounds like nonsense. Here's I'm distinguishing two things that both mean "hard" in a way that I'm mostly drawing from computer gaming. Challenging, as I'm using it here, means that something calls for skill to do well, and helps to foster that skill by exercising it. Difficult simply means that something is hard to do.

In a game, a challenging section may require that you execute a large number of moves you have practiced earlier in the game, with good timing, in response to the actions of the robot postmen trying to stop you reaching the dentist. A difficult section often means you must execute a series of jumps from pixel-wide platform to pixel-wide platform, with any mistake resulting in your immediate death, and that some of the platforms are secretly illusions. Difficult parts of games often require luck, memorisation of what is and is not safe to do, or tactics that seem inappropriate to complete them, regardless of the player's competence at the game.

Similarly, I think pushmi-pullyu exercises like "write your own sentence" tend to be difficult because they require simultaneous completion of a number of unrelated and arbitrary goals. It does not matter very much how skilled the student is at forming the past perfective, or pluralising nouns, or using the vocative; the sentence will be difficult to write regardless. In many cases, a native speaker will also have a certain amount of trouble producing a sentence that works within the given bounds.

I'm not saying nobody should ever be asked to write a sentence in the target language, or even that nobody should be asked to write sentences using particular learning points; I'm just suggesting that they deserve a long, hard look and consideration of just how useful they are in building the skills intended at any given point.

One crowded Friday

Today has been a complicated mixture. I ended up going to bed after midnight, woke up a couple of times, and eventually dragged myself out of bed around 9am. This was a deliberate decision as I didn't have class until the afternoon. Being pretty dopey, the morning slipped away via breakfast and homework.

So far I've had very little luck working out what to do here. I'm eager to find something social to do that isn't tied to the school, for a few reasons. One, most people won't stay long and I'd like some acquaintances who don't change every few weeks, speak English (or German) 99% of the time, and aren't my teachers. Two, psychologically it's good to have some separation. Three, I'd like to actually have some interaction with actual Japan while I'm here, not just with the school, which is a sort of artificial environment. Shopping doesn't really cut it.

The problem is that actually finding anything is proving difficult. In the UK, you can have exactly the same problem, but there I know how to go about finding things: library noticeboards, mentions in the local paper, parish and church noticeboards, community centres, FE colleges and so on. There's also web searching, and I know what to look for. In Japan, I don't know the cultural setup for this kind of thing, what things might be called, what groups might actually exist, or where to find the information. The school isn't able to help hugely, presumably as they have fewer long-term students than I had understood. They managed to point me at some kind of centre that apparently hosts various clubs; however, when I went there and chatted a bit, all I got was stuff about volunteering to work in a garden or some such thing. Web searching is difficult because you need specific keywords: I don't really know what terminology to use in Japanese, and the word for society/club (会) is really common in virtually any word to do with collaboration, like "association", "conversation", and most inconveniently, "company".

I went to a sort of community centre place kind of thing and had a poke around. They did have various leaflets and posters, but these mostly seem to be about events. Having cast an eye over the place, there was no particular person obvious to ask, and it had a pretty official-looking, local council sort of feel, which made me worry that it wasn't the right place to be. That, plus my fairly awkward experiences so far in asking people about this stuff, plus my general lack of self-confidence, led to me giving up and going home.

Class was okay, and I was hardly late despite a rush to get there. I did get pretty tired and was yawning my head off, but we revised some important grammar points and moved onto some actual new stuff - this was nice as most of what we've done so far I already covered to some extent with Naoko-sensei. We're also slightly tying together some points we've covered separately, which I appreciate.

After a long, hot day (33C in the shade, minimum 85% humidity) I wasn't sure I was up for much else, which was a shame as I'd signed up for a meal in the evening. Obviously, having paid and already being there, I wasn't going to cancel, and a fair number of people showed up. There was what felt like a long and confusing walk for a sizeable group, and I felt a bit self-conscious of being inconvenient for other passers-by - a turnaround from my usual experience in Oxford.

The meal was my first trip to any kind of restaurant in Japan, so I appreciated that for a start. It was an all-you-can-eat place, so no concerns about paying. To my dismay, I ended up crammed in the far corner surrounded by other students, far from the Japanese people who'd come along. The others were perfectly pleasant and I had a reasonable chat with them, but it wasn't ideal. One reason for this was I ended up next to the ordering phone, so was expected to call through with drink and food orders. I did this precisely once, wracked with nerves because nobody would actually explain the protocol to me, and I'm fairly sure I was rude in some way or other. However, drinks did arrive.

Once the food menu was passed around, I became firm. Nobody near me was able (or possibly, willing) to try reading it, so it was down to me. The menu was handwritten in blocky pen, making it even harder to read than usual. I was pleased to recognise a few kanji (thanks, Chinese!) and managed the kana fairly well, but there were only two items I actually knew how to pronounce. Rather than phoning, I buttonholed a waiter who came past and pointed at things.

The food was mostly all-you-can-eat chicken wings, which was tasty enough, if a far cry from my usual diet. We also managed to nab a small amount of rice and potatoes, which helped balance out the meat. There were various delicious coatings that I couldn't identify. It reminded me, inevitably, of Tom and Marina's pre-wedding meal, except for the lack of Hawaiian shirts and no impending prospect of giving a speech. The Japanese members of the group made a valiant attempt to converse with all of us, which basically involved shouting across the room and huge amounts of misunderstanding. Well tried, though.

After the meal, folks were keen to go to karaoke. Since I've never been, despite being tired, I said I'd tag along. However, our group quickly became separated. There was much faffing about what to do: it was decided we'd go to a park (I thought I might as well), then someone needed to make a phone call, and we ended up going to a cafe instead. This was much easier than the restaurant, and between the walk and the cafe I got to chat a reasonable amount to both the friendly Japanese ladies who'd stayed with our group, as well as the other students. Everyone was very pleasant and I enjoyed having such a varied group of people to talk to, from high school students to a member of the French army, all with interesting things to say.

Incidentally, the cafe was Travel Cafe, part of the Hakata Green Tenjin. I mention it as the staff were very pleasant, it seemed nice and peaceful at 9-10pm, and they served a very nice cup of Assam - I could probably have got milk but didn't like to push it.

After the drinks, we decided to head to Ōhori Park anyway. I've been there several times, to run, but thought it closed around 7pm. It seems like that's just the boating and concession stands, though, as plenty of other people were there. We wandered around a bit before the others peeled off to head home. I know my way back and it was only another 25 mins, nor did I know of any better options, so I just walked back. The remaining half of the circuit seemed a lot longer when I wasn't running!

It was a very pleasant close to the evening. Having been tired out and stressed at various times, the night-time park and walk soothed away my cares. We passed a heron stalking in a stream, which reminded me vividly of the one resident under my bridge in Oxford. We walked past some kind of abandoned site or something, full of columns now overgrown with trees and plants, eerie and lovely in the dark; cicadas sang thrummingly through the night air. Lights rippled on the waters of the lake, and dark figures jogged past in silence. After the others left, I strode my way through the rest of the park to head home. There were still plenty of people around: a man lying on a bench and staring at the lake; another man squatting peacefully cross-legged by the sea, with the branches hanging low about his head and the waves rippling gently at his feet, just ripe to be turned into a poster and hung on a student bedroom. I would have loved to take a photograph, but I had only my phone's rubbishy camera and it would have been deeply rude, so of course I didn't. A little further on, a sound caused me to remove my headphones: in a little temple-roofed summerhouse someone was playing gentle rock-jazz guitar, while another silhouette stood watching and offering comment. In a more romantic world, the silhouette would undoubtedly have been the shade of a great musician who passed away in their beloved park, offering instruction to a blind visitor who shared their love.

Just before the entrance, a little shape in the kerb made me halt. Just as my rising excitement had foretold, it proved to be, indeed, a terrapin! A beautiful creature, with fine red stripes along its muzzle, and a battered shell that told of a life lived with enthusiasm. It disdained to move while I was nearby, and threatened to withdraw into its shell, so not wishing to alarm the poor creature unnecessarily, I reluctantly left it. I would much have preferred to curl up with it and sing it the songs of my people, but one must respect the wishes of terrapins.

I did take some photos with my phone, but as yet have not found any way to get them off it. Sorry.

And now it's midnight, and I must get to bed.

Currying favour (or not)

This week, as I sloooowly adapt to the climate and make increasing efforts to eat a bit more in a Japanese style, I decided to follow the advice of the marvellous Pear, specifically this exclusive personal tip.

Personal recommendations for easy, substantial, one-dish-meal Japanese food: JAPANESE CURRY. The curry base comes in ready-made blocks, you only need one heat source to make it, and the finished curry can be chilled for days or frozen for months. It takes all kinds of meat and vegetables. Fruit is good in it, too, specially apple. You can eat it with rice or noodles. It's basically perfect. But that might be too rich and hot for you, even if it's though that eating exactly those kinds of things give you energy to combat the summer fatigue.
Pear, 2014 [personal communication]

Anything that will help with the heat sounds good to me, and although I'm not sure about the richness, I've been adding pepper and firebird chillies to, um, most of my food, for several years now. Somewhat baffled how to approach this in a practical, food-buying sense, I turned to some random person I found on the internet. She did a taste test and found Torokeru curry the best of the lot, so I let that sway me. My local Sunny had only a couple of options, one being some kind of cream thing and one a beef curry, so I opted for the beef.

First step was, of course, to translate the instructions.

One slapdash but probably-viable translation later, we're ready to go. Except I don't have all the ingredients they want. I'd like to at least try this the way they suggest, so cue trip to the supa.

Of recipe-hacking and allia

(a couple of days later)

Okay, I actually had to eat up some other things and running out of time, so I ended up putting off the curry for a bit, but here we are.

I'm going to be making some slight modifications to the recipe for a couple of reasons. One is size - I don't have much storage here and have various things in the fridge, so I can't make the full amount suggested. Also, beef is really expensive, and it would set me back about £7 just to get a half-quantity from what I've seen, so again, until I'm really confident this is good stuff, I'm making do with chicken. It'll be fine. Thirdly, there are some small substitutions - for which read, I have halved the amount of onion and replaced it with daikon.

This is, I think, the first meal I've made using onion in about three years, when I last made a pot of Scouse. It's also about only the second recipe I've consented to acquire onion for. In case these statements aren't clear, I really don't like onion. It's not as bad as garlic, which I will flat-out refuse to eat where possible, but I've never acquired the slightest taste for it or worked out why everyone, in virtually every country in the world, insists on putting the wretched root into just about every single dish. That and tomato.

Did I mention I also don't like tomato? It seems ironic that just the about the only three vegetables I don't like are the ones most commonly used in food...

In which our hero cooks

The cooking phase goes a little bit wobby when I realise you're supposed to add the potatos to the stew after everything else. Having sautéed all the veg together in one pan, I then spent several minutes holding a frying pan full of veg in one hand while painstakingly shifting everything but the potatoes into the stew pan. I recommend not doing this. Always read ahead!

Completed curry looks pretty good to me. It's also pretty tasty, fairly rich and filling, but without the kind of exaggerated overwhelming flavours that off-the-shelf meals or sauces sometimes carry. Something about it does say "bought" to me - I'm not sure if there's actually some material difference in homemade vs. shop-bought meals, or if it's psychological, although I feel like it's partly a texture thing. Anyway! It's nice enough, though I was a bit surprised that it wasn't spicy..?

I was 100% correct about chicken being a perfectly viable substitute for beef; it would probably have been slightly richer in flavour with beef, but I didn't feel there was anything lacking. The onion was tolerable, possible due to the sautéeing leaching out some of the more objectionable linger-in-the-throatness that I resent so much. All in all, not bad.

The Revelation

The spicy thing raised some suspicions. On careful inspection, I realise that it's actually some kind of stew mix, not curry. The clue is in the word "stew" on the front of the pack. The fiendish manufacturers confounded me by being Japanese, and thus spelling it as "Shichuu" in katakana - the white "シチュー" on the right. Although I can sort of read Japanese now, it's definitely something that requires attention, so I didn't pick up the clue just with a passing glance as I would have in English, and apparently I didn't notice or get round to reading that bit. I think, with it being so close to the company name (the huge bit) I assumed it was part of that, or a brand name or something? And I just assumed that, what with looking like the curry pack featured in the taste test, it must be beef curry. D'oh! Better luck next time...

On the plus side, I have at least a couple of portions left of a perfectly decent meal, so that's minimal cooking for the next two days.

The pain barrier: Japanese baking, part 1

This will be the absolute last time I make flippant remarks about bread in Japan.[1]

The British are, I would say, still a nation of bread-eaters. Sandwiches or soup-and-a-roll are staples of our diet. Moving outside that little realm, we also enjoy a vast array of pies, pasties, puddings, scones, cakes, biscuits, and so on and so forth. Personally, I have bread for at least one meal most days. It's convenient, apart from anything else. Often I bake my own bread, which is dense and heavy and strongly resembles Terry Pratchett's dwarf bread in its satiating properties and ability to dent the floor if carelessly dropped.

Moving to Japan should, of course be no problem. As I'd picked up from previous reading and watching, you can hardly move for bakeries here. Bunk a brick and you have a pretty good chance of it ending up atop a bag of Brown Bread.

Of course, this is essentially a vast and sinister deception run by (one must assume) some shadowy council of robed figures from the tunnels deep beneath Mt. Fuji. Products called パン (pan, from the French pain) are indeed ubiquitous here, but we must remember that we live in a world where Americans are permitted, in the full light of day, to sell beverages called "beer" and even to list "tea" on menus. Which is to say, nothing is sacred.

パン most strongly resembles the worst excesses of a reluctant French baker of more than usually delicate sensibilities and no teeth, who had always entertained the dream of being a marshmallow-maker. Brown Bread would, in dear old Blighty, be confiscated under the Trades Descriptions Act, and would have a hard time trying to pass itself off as the sort of budget white sliced normally sold in particularly undiscriminating pound shops. I have not, as yet, felt strong enough to attempt the White Bread. One can, with considerable difficulty, locate wholemeal bread, which is sold in gift-wrapped packs of three slices at around a pound a pop, making it the most expensive bread I have ever consumed; however, it does at least make a bit of toast that can look you in the eye.

Anyway, surrounded by all this mysterious bread-like stuff that other people were happily consuming, I thought there must presumably be something in it. So I decided I would embark on a voyage of culinary exploration by, at regular but unspecified intervals from now on, going into a bakery and stuffing myself with cake. These great sacrifices I make for you, the loyal reader, for your eludication and delight. To steel myself for the forthcoming ordeal I began with the least-threatening of the foodstuffs on display, also avoiding those which seemed to consist more of cream than of crumb.

Today's offerings are from Vie de France bakery, which mysteriously features neither boules nor rioting lorry drivers in its décor (okay, I will stop making fun of the French)[2]:

• Walnut Roll (top left)
• Chocolate Scone (top right)
• Chocolate and Cinnamon Twist (bottom)

Review

Chocolate and Cinnamon Twist

The Twist looked delicious, but was surprisingly bland in the end. I kept half-expecting to bite into a cream-filled centre (a dismaying prospect) because it evoked that sort of slightly nondescript cake that tends to get used in products that are primarily interested in their filling or coating. I didn't particularly notice the cinnamon, although chunks of chocolate were pleasantly prominent. Texturewise it resembled something like an eclair, neither moist nor crumbly but very slightly stretchy, which did make it tidy to eat. A perfectly acceptable cake, but not one I'll be rushing to eat again.

Chocolate Scone

The scone is the most British thing I have encountered since coming here, easily outstripping the British Pub I passed the other day and the deviant Werther's Originals I saw this afternoon.

In what sort of horrific parallel universe is the Werther's Original a caramel-filled chocolate!? One shudders to think of it.

It is a robust cake that's neither crumbly nor squidgy, but holds together well allowing for a comfortable bite without collapsing. The exterior is satisfyingly crusty but neither hard nor tough. Sizeable chunks of chocolate are embedded throughout, lending a rich and mellow tang to the pleasantly semi-sweet body of the cake. It's absolutely a munching scone rather than something you'd have with jam and cream, but I eat a lot of scones that way anyway. My only criticism is that is seems a bit dry, possibly due to having been left out all day. Would Eat Again.

Walnut Roll

This most closely resembles a hot cross bun (the bought kind) in its chewiness and high-glaze crust, but is a bit less squishy than those tend to be. It has the odd piece of walnut in, and is very slightly sweet, but otherwise doesn't really taste of anything. It's entirely edible, but again, I can't see myself bothering to buy another one.

The Wine List

Having spent several hours walking around in tropical sunshine and 99% humidity, I also grabbed a bottle of ice-cold Pocari Sweat to refresh myself on the train.

It's a mild "sports drink" with a pleasantly nondescript taste of mild grapefruit, not noticeably sweet and not carbonated. I found it deliciously soothing, and lacking the sickliness or aftertastes of so many soft drinks. It's got much less sugar than even fruit juice so also less likely to make you feel full or be bad for your teeth. Sounds good to me. Mine cost about 90p, but it's going to be rather pricier in the UK, I suspect, although I have seen it somewhere.

[1] This is a lie.

[2] This is also a lie.

The Visitant in the Room, or, the impossibility of subtly visiting tiny churches

This week, having done a bit of research, I got around to going to church. It's a bit different, considering there's little institutional history of Christianity here* nor much in the way of a modern Christian population, unlike many cities in China, say. There are about eight churches in Fukuoka, from what I can tell. One of these is Seventh-Day Adventist, one Roman Catholic, and two appear to be not churches as such, but purpose-built venues for Western-style weddings. The rest seem to be one room apiece with space for thirty-odd people. Normally I'd seek out a sizeable place that I can be a bit anonymous in until I feel settled, but that clearly wasn't an option.

Of course, my options were still vastly better than the choice of Shinto or Buddhist shrines available in Liverpool, which as far as I can tell number zero, so let's not complain.

Unlike the UK, where I can generally gauge what a church will be like from its name and a little bit of digging, I really had no idea how to parse things in Japanese. Was Japan Good News Lutheran church more or less happy-clappy than Japan Christian Organisation Fukuoka church? How liturgical was Fukuoka Glory Christianity church? Which of them might most closely resemble the tea-and-cake-based Noncomformist churches I'm comfortable with, and which would be more like an American televangelist show, or consist of three hours of tearful testimony, or worse, having to wave my arms about?

Girding my loins, I went along to Fukuoka Bible Church, and after a slightly nerve-wracking 40-minute walk I was beginning to think I'd got lost and wishing I'd remembered my map - despite the route being along two major roads - when I finally arrived. Working out how to get in took a little longer so it was the middle of the first hymn when I arrived, allowing me to slip in quietly, although there's only so subtle you can be when you are simultaneously 1/30th of the occupants of a room, 1/4 of the foreigners in the room, and the only new person in a roomful of people who know each other, and said room is the size of a double garage.

It was relatively painless as these things go. They did get me to fill in a form during the service, which I felt was a bit previous; somewhat to my dismay this was then passed up to the pastor and I was forced to stand up and introduce myself, but at least nobody ordered me to the front. I also correctly deduced that I would be asked to stay for lunch, but made my excuses and slipped away this time as the fact of first encounter had been more than enough for an antisocialite like me. Everyone seemed very friendly though, and although the service seemed a tad long, I understood slightly more than I'd expected, even being able to work out that the lesson was the Prodigal Son! The songs were pretty good too, both catchy and fairly easy to sing along to thanks to furigana.

I'll probably go back there next week, or at least in the future if something comes up next week. Presumably I should stay for lunch then. I'm not much of a one for communal lunching to be honest, or at least, only in the company of intimate friends, but this is a time of adventure and boundary-pushing, so I should probably try to open a crack or two in the rigid armour of privacy I normally surround myself with. It's nice that everyone seemed friendly, and they were relatively unpushy in the scheme of things, although personally speaking I find less is always more where that's concerned. I recovered from the experience by grabbing a few kids' books from a second-hand bookshop on the way home, trying to ignore the stares of confused Japanese children in the process.

* which is to say, the place isn't riddled with churches built within a spire's sight of each other.

End of week one

I've now got through my first full week at the school and have settled in a bit more. It's taking me a while to adjust to being in a classroom again, having daily homework, and deciding how to spend the free morning/afternoon when I'm not in lessons.

The first few days I brought in sandwiches for simplicity's sake, although saying that obtaining bread was by no means simple. Japanese "bread" sometimes superficially resembles bread, but as far as I can tell it's more like brioche than anything. Many kinds are sweet, the others are flavoured with things I haven't yet learned to identify, some contain cream or custard, and all are squidgy. Yes, even the crusty-looking ones!

Eventually I unearthed a pain du campagne in a dusty corner of a supermarket and used that, although the lack of a breadknife made for some uneven sandwiches. I've bought so much essential stuff for this apartment already that I refuse to buy a breadknife unless I really, really need to.

Anyway, having eaten said bread I've followed the general practice and bought bento lunches the last couple of days.

Mine were a lot simpler than these, although sizeable and filling. Basically the rice and one heap of mixed veg. They come in at around, oh, £3, which isn't bad.

I'll probably try to make my own (I have a lunchbox) some of the time, not least because I really resent the wastefulness of throwing away boxes every day. They don't seem to be recyclable. Also, once you're making rice and frying vegetables it doesn't really matter how many portions you make. Anything I make will be much simpler and less Japanese, of course - no sauces, fewer ingredients in general - so I'd like to keep getting lunches some of the time. Next week I'll also look into cafes.

Classes seem to be going reasonably well, although I have to fend off certain feelings of inadequacy. Having switched to a new textbook here and jumped in at chapter 17 (corresponding roughly to the grammar I've already studied) there is inevitably a ton of specific vocabulary that the textbook uses but I'm not familiar with. This makes for poor performance on the tests we have every couple of days. I'm also just not used to writing quickly in Japanese, since my previous classes were entirely based on conversation with writing left for homework, so I find tests and some other exercises tricky in that respect. I'll get better.

I deliberately didn't do any extras this week as I was trying to get over my jetlag, get used to my routines and generally settle in without getting overwhelmed. Also, while there are a fair number of interesting extra activities to do, I'll be here for ages; almost certainly I'll be able to try any of them multiple times if I want over that period, and I certainly don't want to burn through everything too early, nor to spend all my hard-earned cash up front and then run short later on. I feel like this was a good plan, because for example the amount of homework seems to vary quite a bit. Next week I'll look at signing up for one of the conversation exchange schemes; I thought I did that when I registered, since there was a little box to tick, but nothing seems to have resulted from it.

Despite the climate I have managed a couple of runs to different parks - largely because the first one turns out to be (as far as I can tell) a botanic gardens that shuts about 5pm. I'm definitely feeling the pain of being in a proper city (and downtown at that) because there just aren't the large public spaces I've got used to. I can trot around confusing backstreets with no pavements, or run in marked laps in designated places in a park during its opening hours (largely outside the times when it's cool enough for weedy foreigners to run), but stepping out of my door at 11pm and running for miles down peaceful towpaths or round farms is no longer an option.

Day One in the Genki House

So I've just finished my first day of study at GenkiJACS. I have to say that, while this is probably inevitable, it was a little frustrating.

We came in on Sunday avvy for a placement test and orientation, which seemed pretty useful in a general sense. It was also nice to have a chance to see the place and meet some folks before turning up for a first lesson, although only one of the new arrivals ended up in the same class as me. This morning we were told to turn up at 9am - lessons typically start at 9.30 so I assumed this was to allow time for the brief individual "interviews" that had been mentioned on Sunday. In practice, while I didn't check my watch, I don't think much actually happened until around 10am, by which time the existing students had turned up and the common room was a seething, uncomfortable mass, where moving from your table was like those little slizing block puzzles. On the plus side, there's free tea and coffee, but actually getting to either one, or back to your seat, was a serious feat. Another bunch of new students had arrived, which is presumably why those of us who arrived early were bumped up to Sunday.

My interview seemed okay despite being in Japanese, which was a relief. I hadn't done brilliantly on the test, which makes sense as I'm still not very good at Japanese (I wouldn't be here otherwise, right?), though the sleep deprivation probably didn't help matters. Sorting out everyone's schedules took quite a while, so that in fact I didn't have mine by the time those of us who'd had inductions on Sunday were taken out for a quick tour of the area. Thankfully a lot of this was indoors, since the rain was hammering down at regular intervals and my brolly snapped in the wind. I'd actually seen about two-thirds of the places over the weekend during various shopping expeditions, but still enjoyed the chance to wander about and get to know people a bit. I also learned that underground passes were available, which would make my life a lot easier and eke out my precious cash supplies for longer. Yuuki-sensei handled the tour very well, although my fingers twitched when she drew a route in pen on my nice shiny new map I'd kindly got out for everyone! Why, why do people do this?!? We were pointed towards various useful shops, as well as an international centre that I might pay a visit to sometime.

I still didn't have a schedule by the time I got back, so kicked my heels for a bit and was told to have my lunch. I was getting a bit frustrated by this point and would have liked to know a bit more about what was happening, but eventually a timetable turned up with classes from 2-6pm today. To be honest I would have gladly gone home at this point, especially on the four hours' sleep I managed last night, and I struggle to stay awake for the afternoon's classes, despite the very pleasant and lively teachers. There's a good atmosphere in the class and everyone seems nice. This is good news, because about half the class consists of talking in pairs, so the last thing you want is sullen uncommunicative types. I'm hoping the trend will continue when these folks leave in a couple of weeks.

Class finally finishes at 5.45, in a bit of a rush because that teacher thought we had a bit longer to finish an exercise. There are two homework sheets to finish. Class tomorrow is in the morning, for some reason - we seem to switch on a semi-random basis - which means only a few hours to actually do the work. When I get home and find time to look at them, I'm a little underwhelmed. One from the textbook seems straightforward enough, but the other is rather under-explained, so while I'm reasonably clear on the grammar point, I don't understand what we're supposed to be writing down as answers. After a certain amount of sulking I get something written down and move on with my life.

Introductory shopping

Having slept a little bit, the pressing need for food overcame me and I went out shopping.

I end up doing some googling in an effort to find out where useful shops might be: supermarkets, grocers, 100-yen shops (pound shops) and so on, as well as looking out for places likely to stock some outlandish goods like brown flour or cheese (although I won't be eating much of that here, from what I know of the prices). Getting actual locations for most things is a bit of a pain, but I get a picture - there are lots of these things one or two districts over, but very little in the district I'm actually in. What I can't work out, then, is what there actually is in this district. Research continues.

I spent a good ten minutes searching for rice in the local mini-market, baffled by the apparent dearth of the stuff in Japan. Eventually I worked out that there's a separate Rice Corner right next to the tills for some reason. Then I realised there are many varieties and I can't tell them apart, so I bought noodles and went home to research. Equipped with greater knowledge, I headed out into the main shopping district the next day.

Three hours in the bustling Tenjin shopping centre netted me three new shirts (I didn't bring many due to space), an array of household goods inexplicably absent from the flat, and some food. I was a bit surprised to find that the supermarket isn't a cheap option for, well, just about anything to be honest. It also didn't have the range of stuff I was hoping for despite its size and location, so no wholemeal flour for me, nor any cheddar. As such I picked up a loaf of bread and some jam, but that's about all. Most of the bread comes as about five slices of something resembling brioche, as bread seems to be treated like cake in Japan, but I did find a couple of French breads and grabbed one. White bread, to be sure, but at least it's savoury.

In the morning I'd been for a wander and found a sort of metro-market place called Sunny. Taking painstaking notes in my little red book, I realised that it's actually the cheapest place I've found so far - possibly an Aldi equivalent? I suspect from quick research that it's connected to Walmart, which would explain something. Anyway, they were able to provide a lot of staples like brown rice and even All-Bran, which I was very glad of. It seems that getting fibre will be an uphill struggle around here.

Today (Saturday) I suddenly realised that a bag of stuff was missing. I must've left it somewhere, which was a huge pain as it contained my new toiletries, which are both relatively expensive and vital to not being a smelly pest. I spent a while kicking myself before heading out to the station to try out my "lost property" routine, which I'd helpfully learned from Naoko-sensei just before leaving Oxford. The railway service lost property is amazing: they have pictures of all lost property with inventory lists. Naturally they didn't show me these, that'd invite fraud, but I could spot them on the screen they were looking at. Receiving apologies and shrugs on that score, I decided to spend the morning wandering back towards Tenjin (a couple of miles) to scope out the town on foot and have a long-shot ask at the stores I'd visited.

To my delight, when going off on a tangent because somewhere looked interesting, I stumbled across a second-hand bookshop, where I was able to buy a map of the town for a mere Y100. Admittedly it only covers the town centre, so not the area where I actually live, but it's still handy and allowed me to find my way back to Tenjin without asking for directions, which helped my pride. To my further delight, it turned out that I had indeed left my purchases on the counter, probably distracted by the obligatory bowing rituals, so I got my stuff back! I celebrated by getting the train home.

And then I promptly fell asleep, again, because I've been getting a few hours' sleep a night so far due to the noise. Of which more later.

Touchdown

I parted from my parents at a surprisingly reasonable 9.30am, leaving an hour for security and all that guff. We double-checked the noticeboards before I headed through, spending a fairly moderate five or ten minutes in the queue. I was briefly concerned by notices about placing electronics into trays, because about 80% of my hand luggage was electronics, but thankfully this turned out to just mean laptops really.

I emerged on the other side to see the schedule boards now reporting that the flight to Amsterdam will be delayed for 1 hour, which would cause me to miss my connection to Japan. Not Okay. Nobody at information desk. A friendly co-victim with a pleasant northern accent says he's reported it. I wait.

Eventually someone actually turns up and says they've checked the connections and there will be no problems. We remain sceptical, but accept it. When we arrive, "no problems" translates into a dash across Schiphol, skipping any chance of lunch or even grabbing something to eat later - luckily the warning at Manchester gave me a chance to pick something up there.

The flight to Fukuoka is long and very boring. I was surprised how primitive the plane seemed. Despite having the aisle seat, I was restricted in movements by inability to fold the arm, which made it almost impossible to leave the seat on the many occasions when a tray of food had been placed on my table. A minuscule screen offered a sizeable selection of films, none of which could be seen clearly from any conceivable angle, let alone when the bloke in front tilted his chair back (which is to say, always). Following my plan, I tried to catch forty winks in the later part of the flight so as to make it through a day in Fukuoka, but despite spending several hours in the dark and feeling sleep hover tantalisingly about my consciousness, it would never quite take the bait. As I write this I am knackered. Also soaked with sweat and rain, because it's 28C and raining heavily in Fukuoka.

I'd arranged to rent a phone at the airport when I arrived. I duly grabbed the map and went to the designated location. Nothing there. Hmm. Ah, it seems to be on the third floor, not here. Arriving at the marked point on the third floor, I saw only an ordinary shop, where I was met with bewildered helpfulness. Helpfully, the rental company had explained that their counter wasn't marked with the name of their company, but failed to say what it was called. I went downstairs to the information point, who sent me back up. The upstairs information point had no idea, and sent me downstairs again to look for a stall marked with the name of the company who delivered rental phones to your house, which as far as I could tell was unrelated to the actual rental company; I tried anyway, but couldn't find anything in the location she'd indicated. Here, I talked to another couple of phone rental booths, who knew nothing, but did so very politely. Returning upstairs, I made another run around various shops before returning to my friend upstairs, who phoned the delivery company and confirmed that yes, they did handle G-Call phones and had a phone for me. Heading back downstairs for a victorious final trip, I discovered the reason I hadn't found it was the information desk map was misleading. So, the information provided by both the phone rental company and the information desk was wrong, and nobody in the airport knew anything about the arrangement or the company except the lady who actually provided phones. Gold stars all round, then. I made a point of passing the word on to the other information desks I'd consulted, to make up for their effort and perhaps help out next time a confused tourist turned up.

By this time I thought I was tired, weary, hot and sweaty, but that was before I'd dragged my own weight in baggage into a shuttle bus, down several escalators, across three stations, across town for 10 minutes between two of said stations, and round to the apartment block in pouring rain. A pleasant rental agent soon showed up to introduce me to my "mansion" - of which more later.

Ready to roll?

I've just about finished packing for tomorrow. A few things (like this laptop!) will need to be tucked in first thing tomorrow, ready to head out for breakfast at delightful Manchester Airport. I'm taking one 20kg suitcase, one day rucksack and a laptop bag, which has caused a bit of consternation in some circles. The thing is though, 6 months is a slightly odd time to be going for. It's long enough that it makes sense to buy a few things in Japan if I need them, rather than carry them over (with hassle and extra cost) just on the off-chance. I need some new clothes already, so it makes sense to take a week's supply and supplement it in Japan, rather than trying to buy stuff here and then needing to transport it. On the other hand, it's not long enough to make it worth sending over large amounts of stuff that I can manage without - and let us not forget the expected titchiness of my room.

Speaking of which, a bit of research has turned up some hopefully-handy info. I discovered that the Delco Homes apartments listed by GenkiJACS here look very, very similar to the ones listed by Fukuoka YMCA here! And more importantly, while it's clearly not the exact same rooms being discussed, some of the photos on the YMCA site help clear up the GenkiJACS photos.

Above: Image from Google Street View of the address from GenkiJACS
Below: Image from YMCA of the Delco Homes apartments

These are clearly not the same apartment, but, from looking at the YMCA photo with its better angle and without a box in the way, it seems pretty obvious that the thing in the back is a kettle resting on a hob. While obviously not a guarantee, this suggests that there may actually be a hob in my apartment, rather than just a microwave and rice cooker, which would make a massive difference.

On the downside, it would seem to make getting a cuppa much more hassle than it needs to be, but swings and roundabouts, right?

The plan for tonight is to get a few hours' sleep with the hope that I'll pass out on the plane for at least a little while. I just heard today that GenkiJACS have changed a couple of arrangements, which is just slightly unnerving: the apartment manager is actually going to meet me, rather than leaving a key in a deposit box, which has upsides and downsides. Also, they want to hold placement tests on Sunday avvy rather than Monday morning. Neither is very serious, but I find it a little jarring to have last-minute changes like this.