What's Jappening?

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...

Last week, most students in England went back to school/university after their Easter holidays. I unfortunately missed out on this two week break, but instead have been granted Japan's springtime equivalent - Golden Week. This 9 day period that was introduced in 1948 grants not only students but many workers the opportunity to travel, spend time with friends and family and partake in activities such as picnics or a spot of tourism. It falls during the end of April and beginning of May, and encompasses a total of four national holidays; Shōwa Day, Constitution Memorial Day, Greenery Day and Children's Day. Here is a bit of insight into these four days: 29th April - Shōwa Day Originally a day to celebrate the birthday of Emperor Hirohito who reigned from 1926-1989, but after his death in 1989, it was renamed Greenery Day because of his love of nature. In 2007, it was eventually named Shōwa Day to celebrate both the late emperor and the work put into rebuilding the county as w...

In the past couple of weeks, we've had a few days of very heavy rain and, as a result, the rice fields are starting to fill up. As someone who is most acquainted with nature through the medium of David Attenborough and the like, it's very exciting for me to see the baby shoots starting to appear first hand and the changes that come with that, such as...lobsters? I was walking into uni last week when my razor sharp eyes picked up on what appeared to be a small, red lobster moving in a paddy puddle. After mentioning it to a teacher at the uni, she confirmed that lobsters do, indeed live in rice fields. Mind. Blown. (at this point, I should probably apologise for the terrible photo that I took, bit in my defence, those things are really small!) Introducing Procambarus Clarkii. More commonly known as 'Red Swamp Crayfish' of 'American Crayfish', these freshwater crustaceans were introduced from America in the 1920's as a food source for bullfrogs and have sin...