What's Jappening?

As I'm writing this, I'm actually working on a reflective essay for my uni, but it's got me thinking a little bit about culture shock. Prior to leaving for Japan, I was very anxious. I was told by lots of people that I would experience culture shock and, whilst that's totally ok, it was also something I should be prepared to experience. The truth is though, now that I think back, I don't think I ever really experienced culture shock. If you do a bit of reading online, you will quickly see that culture shock is usually broken down into stages ( thanks Wikipedia ): The Honeymoon Stage: Every little thing is amazing and exciting and life is as if you were looking through rose tinted glasses. You may remember this phase from your last relationship The Negotiation Stage:  The honeymoon period is over and all those little quirks that you used to love now kind of piss you off and remind you of how they were better back at home. This is the phase most commonly referre...

So term has ended and, before long, I'll be heading back to England. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing my dog after what feels like forever, as well as his new little brother whom I can't wait meet, but I'm somewhat less excited about starting my third and final year at uni. When did that even happen? So, in true denial style, I've decided to do a little pros and cons comparison of England and Japan by listing what I think each country could learn from each other. Let me just say here and now that I love both England and Japan very much, and these are just little things that I think could make each country even better. What England could learn from Japan: Separate bag-packing areas at the checkout - I'm certainly not the only one who finds the process of packing your bags after you've paid at the checkout intensely stressful. You're trying to pack your bags properly whilst also taking the change and receipt from the checkout person whilst ...

Whether I wanted to or not, it was inevitable that in my time studying abroad here in Japan I would compare my home university (UCA) and my host university (NUA). So today I thought I'd take a little look at how the classes differ between the two unis. Obviously, I can't compare everyone's timetables and lessons so I'm just going to compare my timetable in UCA with my friend Kato's timetable here at NUA. The reason I'm not comparing it with my timetable here at NUA is that I only had to take five classes in order to get enough credits to pass the year back in England and I wouldn't be able to take a lot of the classes due to my pretty shaky Japanese. So here is Kato's timetable: By comparison, my timetable at UCA goes as follows: Monday       9.00-12.00 Illustration                       12.00-1.00 Lunch                       1.00-4.00 Illustration Tuesda...

So this is a bit of a strange one. Since coming to Japan, I've obviously noticed a whole bunch of differences between here and old blighty. Some of them were to be expected, such as the food, some of them were a surprise, such as how cheap eating out is, some of them were not a big deal, such as the train/subway system, and some of them were totally random and unimportant and yet somehow completely threw me. This is a post about one of those things. Now the majority of the eastern world uses the Roman alphabet (a, b, c...) and whilst the order of these 26 letters is fairly arbitrary, we never really think about it. It also makes sense that the vowels follow the same alphabetical order. Now Japan doesn't use the Roman alphabet. Instead, it uses Kanji (Chinese characters representing words), Hiragana (a set of 46 syllables, or sounds, used to construct words), and Katakana (the same 46 syllables but with different characters, mostly used for foreign words). Hiragana and Katak...

It's no secret that I don't exactly blend in here in Japan. My relatively different appearance has earned me many a comment, but there's one that keeps popping up time and time again. かわいい. Pronounced 'kawaii', this word is usually translated to mean 'cute'. Now the word 'cute' in english has two meanings; cute like a puppy and cute like Zac Efron, neither of which are descriptions I would usually assign to myself. Being generally larger than most of the people I've met here, I can't be seen as cute like a puppy, and I highly doubt everyone's been hitting on me. So what's the deal? Well, just like how the word 'cute' has many meanings in English, so does the word 'kawaii' in Japanese. The first and foremost meaning of 'kawaii' is something that is cute, small, and generally makes you want to make high pitched noises and squeeze something. The second meaning is a little more subtle and is generally used to...

Well, flat really. Having successfully unpacked everything into my new home, I'm really starting to feel settled in Nagoya. Though I haven't explored much yet, I've already found loads of interesting differences between living here and living in England: For starters, there's no central heating. There is however, an air-con that can heat up and cool down a room (though not simultaneously, of course). As someone who avidly dislikes the radiator, I thought that I would barely notice the difference, but then a thought occurred to me; where do I hang things that I want to dry a little quicker? I'll have to work that one out... The hot water system is. Genius. Let's say you want to take a shower, you turn the hot water on and set the temperature. Then, when you get in the shower, the hot water heats up as you use it to the exact temperature that you set! No need to fiddle around with knobs and dials to get just the right temperature, you get the perfectly warm ...