JAPANEXILE

I realize the order of my last posts isn’t quite right, but live with it. Thought I should give a little detail on the training week, which took place August 23rd to 28th. I had a bit of a nightmare traveling up, but that was all forgotten when the excitement of meeting the other volunteers kicked in. Arrived in Glasgow around 9am and promptly went looking for a pub which was showing the Grand Prix. I then realized it was a Sunday and not many pubs are open at 9am so went and sat up in the Galleries reading Harry Potter for several hours before meeting up with Katie and many other volunteers. We then took over Starbucks for the afternoon which was good bonding experience to say the least. We all got the train over to Glasgow in the evening where I met one of the Tokyo volunteers, Ben. Whom I had a good ol’ chat with for the 3 hour train journey, although I was regularly distracted by the amazing scenery up the west coast of Scotland. Upon arrival in Oban we dumped our bags and made our way to the pub as you do.
It was an early start on Monday to get the ferry. Here we met up the other Japan volunteers, Craig and Mike. The former being my partner, whom I had surprisingly met on the selection course. We soon became good mates, and formed the very cool group, the JPK, and from then on moved as one unit, and even began to refer to ourselves in the third person! The other country groups we were on training with included Vietnam, Mauritania, India, Dominican Republic, although the vast majority were Thailand. The week from then on was jam packed. With ‘lessons’ starting at 9am every day, finishing at 6.30pm. We took our country specific classed with Amy, where we went through things such as earthquakes, our accommodation, ways to behave etc. The lectures on general safety, illness, keeping clean, traveling etc we all took as one big group. The primary aim of the course was to prepare us for our jobs abroad. So much of the day was spent discussing teaching. And our evenings were partly spent firstly preparing a 10minute lesson, and then a 20minute lesson, to be performed in front of your group. It may not sound long, but panic sets in and it seems an eternity. Despite having a plan prepared it went out the window in the first 2 minutes of my 10minute lesson, improvisation followed, and disaster soon after.

My 20minute lesson on directions was much improved, using a favourite game of my Japanese teacher at School, Mrs Harwood. Brief explanation of the game - 9 pictures representing direction and traffic features on the board. I point at a picture, and say something, if I say the correct word, the class repeats, if I say the incorrect word, stay silent. Sounds simple enough but despite this game being designed to be taught in a foreign language, all participants were eventually caught out, 3 times. Amy was especially poor.

The best times on the training course came in the evenings. The bar was open every night, which helped. First night as it was such a beautiful day we all went down to the beach, where a giant game of Zoofball was organised. BW would have been proud. Second night was spent playing ‘Sausages’ Where you have one person in the middle of everyone else, people in the circle as the person any question, and the only answer they can give is ’sausages’. If they laugh, they’re out. So as you can imagine there were some pretty filthy questions and answers. We then changed the word to ‘moist’

On the Thursday night we first went for a swim in the unbelievably cold Scottish Sea. I ended up collapsing afterwards from the cold. So back to the warmth of the centre, where we had out farewell meal, excellently prepared by the Kitchen staff, which was followed by a traditional Scottish Kayleigh. Great fun, then went back to the beach where it poured down with rain.

Friday it was time to leave, goodbyes were said for a year to the other country groups. An emotional time. All in all I had an amazing week, and to echo a line from Mike’s blog, I couldn’t be happier with the group of guys going to Japan. Its going to be an incredible year. <a href=”http://www.japanexile.com/photography/project-trust-training/”> Click here</a> for a link to the photo album for the week.

Welcome to my Blog!

(Update: I decided today to move my blog over to a dedicated webhost rather than the free service provided by wordpress, which will allow me to upload all my photos directly into my blog, rather than the rather inelegant solution I had before of merely linking to my Flickr account. I’ve just copied over the posts from my old site so the timeline is a little shaken.)

But anyway, as this is the first post on my new site an introduction is needed. My name is Tom, I’m 18 and have recently left School and am spending my Gap Year before University as a representative of the charity group Project Trust. I was placed much to delight in Japan as a volunteer teacher.

Although Japan may at first seem strange place to be sent to do volunteer work, there is a genuine need for young people from Europe to visit there. I have been placed in the small town of Toya, located on the Northern island of Hokkaido. Toya is a small rural village with a population of only 2000 people and is situated right on the shores of a volcanic lake. Agriculture is the main industry and tourism is also very important to the region. The Village is about 2 hours drive from the nearest city and it is blanketed in heavy snow from November to March so the town is very isolated and as such gives the volunteers who go there a great insight into Japan.

I am being hosted by the Toya board of Education. My main role will be to assist with English conversation by giving lessons at the local school as well as running adult evening classes. In addition to my role as a teacher I will also be helping out at the local Kindergarten and spend one day a week doing voluntary work at the local Hospital.

Its hard to describe how excited I am at the prospect of spending a year away. I will be updating this blog whilst I am out there with my thoughts, photos, and whatever else takes my fancy whilst I am out in Japan. Selfish as it may sound I will mainly be keeping this blog as way to remember my year in the future, as well as keep friends and family updated with what I am up to. I hope you enjoy reading, please feel free to make any comments, would be nice to have some feedback on how the blog is going.