I had visited Sanzoku on my first night in Yamaguchi; only on my second visit did I realise how zonked I must have been at the time not to notice how very, very pretty this place is. The photos do not really do justice to this uber-grotto of lanterns, glades and alcoves that make up what could be termed a restaurant, or maybe a market, or maybe just a lovely place to do and hang out about half an hour outside of Hikari. They have carp the size of small dogs, and more ice-cream than you can shake a stick at, not to mention a v pretty waterfall indeed - will update with daytime photos soon!  Speaking of sticks, Sanzoku is famous for its most excellent chicken on a stick and its riceballs which are the size of a baby’s head. Behold Mitch and I being samurais, and the little people in orange hats who look after all our little people (children I mean, not the vertically impaired). Visitors beware, Sanzoku will be an imperative on your itinerary!

Kapowwwww! That was fun. Not only did I get to do exactly what I came to Japan to do, I also got to do it on a v. pretty island and goon around on the beach in the process.

To say the students were varying in ability is an understatement, and with most of them hitting that joyful period of adolescence which we all remember as being between the ages of 11 and 14, I had chance to witness Japanese students’ notorious shyness for the first time. Never have I seen so many people look so terrified of a volleyball.

For most students, however, that shyness lasted only a couple of hours. By the time dinner had finished on the Friday night we’d bullied half of them into talking and the rest soon followed suit, if only to utter the word ‘delicious’ which we had bellowed about 9 dozen times during the course of the meal like some prozac-fuelled latter-day vikings.

                                         

Koji (the bespectacled little one) has the luckiest mother on earth as not only is he unbelievably kawai, but has brains to boot along with his sister, Mitsuko. Koata, who is having a good look at the burgers alongside Koji, was in my ’skit’ group (read: Whose Line is It Anyway meets Monty Python). Our skit was about zombies. Koata was petrified, but the zombies had nothing to do with it. The poor kid’s doe-eyed terror I think was solely grounded in not knowing who the hell we were or what the hell we were saying for 99% of the weekend; yet he was the only student to recite his speech from beginning to end on the Sunday.

                                   

Kana and Ikumi (the two normal-looking ones the the centre left and right, flanked by Brooke, Amy and Sherona) were very cool indeed. Plus one of the tasks was for the students to each pair up with an ALT for an hour and make a poster about them, so Kana got to talk all about me for quite some time. Plus she was the only contestant to get a clean break in the blind-fold watermelon-smashing affair. They both wrote me some cracking letters at the end of the weekend, and both just had such a smiley positive air about them all the time. I’m pretty sad they’re not going to be my students, but glad I got to hang out with them for a weekend.

I felt so lucky that my first contact with the youngens was at Oshima. The task that lies ahead will not be all beach-balls and barbecues, but Oshima certainly involved me making a right arse of myself which seems to be part of the job description for ALTs (and not just in the classroom). In just three days their confidence rocketed; I hope I can say the same for my new students next week!

Or how do you do, as we sunny Brits are wont to bellow of a morn. After much preamble, here is my very pretty website, updating all you who hear (or read) on whatever the hell it is I’m doing in Japan. For those of you with whom I am unacquainted, I am a first year ALT in Hikari City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. Three weeks in and there’s already too much for me, let alone anyone else, to digest, so I’ll keep it as concise and chronologically precise as befits such an endeavour. Just for the record, the odd name may be changed here and there, although you can pretty much count on anyone western sounding as being the real deal…I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to be nice about everything I write.