Going Falmouth

Hi! My name is Kristyna Hrivnacova and I started this blog to keep track of my experience as an international student in Falmouth (UK). Since then, I've also been an exchange student in Sweden, an au-pair in Spain and I currently teach English in Japan. Welcome to my travel log, and if you have any questions, please submit them in "Questions?" in the menu!

[goingfalmouth]

7 moments from a Japanese elementary school

I’ve been teaching at my elementary for almost four months now. Let me show you seven funny, odd or thought-provoking moments of it.

1. There are boys in my classes wearing T-shirts that say babydoll. While I’m not trying to shame anyone, you surely understand why it’s sometimes difficult to keep a straight face.

2. The kids use rulers a lot. Like, a lot. For drawing tables and notebooks on the worksheets, for underlining words and, most bafflingly to me, to connect answers when the exercise is formatted into two columns. Ain’t nobody got patience for that where I’m from.

3. The Japanese language works in syllables and there’s this thing called katakana pronunciation, where tawaa is tower, souru is Seoul and harii pottaa is Harry Potter. A girl was asking me how to spell kiyui in English and after five minutes of confusion I gave up and asked the Japanese teacher. Kiwi. It’s kiwi.

4. We play gesture games where the first in line gets a word (swimming, judo, playing the piano) and has to send it, silently, to the person behind them. One day, we started with cooking, and apart from correct answers also got badminton and kendo – Japanese sword fighting.

5. Elementary schools apparently don’t really do tests in English, but we did have a few, and once some kids finished early, every single one of them pulled out a book or a manga to read. Imagine my surprise and sheer delight.

6. We were writing about summer holidays and one boy had I slayed Hiroshima as his thing-I-did. He meant I stayed in Hiroshima, but the first version is admittedly much cooler and it took a lot of self-persuasion before I corrected him.

7. My last name isn’t easy, but my favourite attempt so far is by a fifth-grade girl who made haribokuma – a Harribo bear – out of Hrivnacova. I’m down.

 I’m finishing here, but do check in some other day – maybe I’ll have a new stash of moments.

[goingfalmouth]

Storytime: My first visit at a Japanese home

And how it went from objectively horrible to actually nice.

(Photo is completely unrelated because for reasons that will become obvious, I did not think of taking pictures. Kudos to my friend Fathme for the pic!)

Some weeks back, my Japanese teacher invited me to have lunch with her and some of her friends. We’d make sushi together, drink some tea, I’d practice my Japanese and they’d practice their English. Wonderful.

I’d say the bad streak started the night before the visit when I realised I hadn’t bought a gift. You should know, there are a bunch of rules about visiting a Japanese home and bringing a well-wrapped gift and being on time are just about the two most important rules. After lightning-fast research and calming of nerves, I resolved to wake up earlier and buy some fancy chocolates.

I did wake up earlier. I bought the chocolates, but they didn’t have gift bags in the shop and I thought, this is fine, I still have some time to spare. I’ll stop by a different shop.

They didn’t have any.

The next one.

Closed.

By this point, I was running a few minutes behind schedule but man, I knew bringing the chocolates as they were might actually be worse than bringing nothing because it meant I knew what I was supposed to do and half-assed it anyway. And I was committed to bringing a gift by now, so I doubled back, got a gift bag, and ran – in my skirt, nice shoes, holding an umbrella because it was raining, obviously – for the station.

I got to the meet-up place 10 minutes late which made me and my teacher 10 minutes late to her friend’s house. In my head, I was re-playing how to correctly greet everyone, how to give the gift (there’s a special phrase for it). We stopped, got out of the car, went through the gate. As I was closing it, my umbrella caught on something.

Stressed, I didn’t think and tugged.

And pulled down a flowerpot.

It crashed to my feet along with my hopes for the perfect introduction.

After five seconds of stunned silence, I started apologising profusely. And my teacher started apologising profusely for me. It was a whole thing. We went inside and, in my shock, I completely missed all the introductions and tried to give the gift to the wrong person. Most of my Japanese blanked out and I was basically silent for a good half an hour; in fact, our whole party was mostly quiet for half an hour. The tension was real.

Somewhere between cutting up seaweed and setting the table, it broke, thank god, and the rest of the visit was amazing. We made chirashi sushi (because I’m vegetarian), ate some Japanese cake thingie, talked about travelling, school, even politics, which surprised me. I left with a lingering feeling of disbelief that we pulled it off after that disastrous start, though I’m still not sure whether I was forgiven for my blunders.

Either way, I lived. And I will for sure prepare well in advance next time.

[goingfalmouth]

Quick catch-up: BLM protest, rose season, elementary school job

Surprised to see me still alive?

A lot of things have happened over the last four weeks but here are the three things that stick out the most to me:

 1. Black Lives Matter protest

On Sunday, June 7, about a thousand people assembled by the Osaka City Hall in support of the BLM movement. It was my first time in a protest, and I am extremely glad I had a bottle of water, a hat and a friend with me, otherwise I probably would’ve freaked out a bit in that crowd.

It was a moving experience to hear black people speak about their experience in the US and in Japan and just how differently they are sometimes treated compared to – well, people like me. I documented the march on Insta and put in links to resources. If you can, please help.

2. Rose season

On a completely different note, the rose season came and went, and I had the chance to see some of it in Suma Rikyu Park (I seriously love that place; Insta story here). What hits me the most is that all kinds of people seem to be invested in a flowers – men and women across ages, business people, friends having a picnic, alone, on a date, with a group. It’s amazing to see so much appreciation.

3. Elementary school job

Since so many ALTs couldn’t make it to Japan in this situation, many schools scrambled to temporarily fill their place – so I am temporarily filling a place at a small elementary school, twice a week helping to teach English to students from grade 3 to grade 6 (cca 8 – 12 years old). I was on home office in May and only met the kids on June 15, but even only two weeks in, I can already say I like that job.

The other teachers are great, the kids are mostly shy but also very curious, I can play the piano in the music room and on Wednesday, I got to see the welcoming ceremony for first years. Everything in school seems to be at least in part a ritual/ceremony, but I will delve into that some other time.

 Alright, I’m done. Watch out for next post, it’ll be story time.

Stay safe, stay sane!

[goingfalmouth]

The Housemate Test

I’ve lived with a bunch of different people in the past years, gender-wise, nationality-wise, level of night owl-wise. And knowing what I know now about things that tick me off, here’s the Housemate Test I’d put each and every potential flatmate through if given a chance.

1. Arrange these dishes on the drying rack, would you?

If bowls and cups are bottom down, I’m not taking you. How are they supposed to dry if water collects on the bottom?

2. You’ve just finished your shower. What do you do?

Correct answer: Get hair out of the drain. Leave shower stall door open and open the bathroom door or window. We’re a house, not a mould-farming establishment.

3. It’s 2am and you’re waiting for your spontaneous toast to get crispy. Video-sound on or off?

It’s a trick question. I don’t care as long as you wipe the breadcrumbs.

4. You’ve just finished cooking your food. Now what?

Wrong answer: Leave the shared pots and pans dirty for a week so no one else can use them.

5. What should coming home from a night out look like?

Another trick question. As long as you turn the lights off, I’m game.

6. Oh no! The doorbell!

Get up and get it. We’re all adults with Amazon packages coming.

7. The toilet paper roll is done.

Change it. And throw away the core (and the plastic packaging, if applicable) while you’re at it.

Seven is the most powerful magical number, right?

If you’re my previous housemate aware of doing some of these, please know that I appreciate the hell out of you no matter what. If you’ve ever caught me doing any of those, I sincerely apologise. And if anyone’s thinking, “Eesh, isn’t she a bit particular?”, well.

Duh.

[goingfalmouth]

Virus Holiday: A Continuation 2.0

The first continuation is over, but it got extended, yay! (Or not yay.) Life is set to begin on June 1 now, but in the meanwhile, here’s some of the stuff I’ve been doing over these past few weeks, from ambidexterity to really long live streams.

(I do leave the house every once in a while.)

1. Working out

I don’t honestly know if I can call it that since holding a plank for 30 seconds makes me feel like dying. But I have 45 minutes of (indoors) exercise a day which for me is a damn achievement.

2. Japanese study

My kanji-count is going up nicely, grammar as well, and I’m reading short articles now. It’s still frustrating (I’ve searched for some translations so often Google now offers them after the first character), but it’s getting better!

3. BangBangCon

I’ve watched 12 hours of BTS concert stream twice and scrolled Tumblr at the same time because nothing makes you feel like a part of something as freaking out with other people. What a weekend.

4. Ambidexterity

I’ve wanted to learn how to write with my left hand for a while, so now I am re-binge watching Supernatural and penning down the dialogue. My u and v look like the same letters, not to mention the c and o. But hey, I still have weeks to go.

5. Keeping up with people

I’ve messaged some people I haven’t talked to in months, I’m keeping up with my family, there were quiz calls with uni friends. I can’t complain.

6. Studying up

I’ve looked up some master’s degrees for next year and now I’m trying to get as much info in as I can since I plan a switch from journalism/writing to international relations/politics. I started with Japanese and Russian history. If anyone has any study and/or resource tips, do share.

7. Figure skating

The Skating Union streamed the Saitama World Championship (that was 16 hours online) and they’ll be streaming the Helsinki WC starting tomorrow, I am EXCITED. Overall, I think I’ve watched/read about a 100 hours of skating material and I have no regrets.

(And these are the quotes I live for. “Yeah. Some might find it surprising but I cry on a pretty regular basis, albeit it’s never that serious.” - source)

8. Dungeons & Dragons

We had two more sessions of D&D. I still don’t think I am the most gifted player but man, I like this game.

9. The Movie List

If you ever recommended me a movie, you probably heard me saying, “I’ll put it on the list.” Well, now I got to the list and finally watched The Shape of Water (don’t know how I feel about that), started Aquaman (gave up 15 minutes in) and The Phantom of the Opera is up next.

 I’m going to stop here.

Stay safe, stay sane!

[goingfalmouth]

Virus Holiday: A Continuation

Has it even really stopped? Here’s a run-down of the past three weeks, emergency declaration included.

To give you a timeline: the first Virus Holiday lasted from March 3 until March 22. On the 23rd, we went back to work, though as I mentioned in the previous post, the number of students was super low. On the 24th, the Olympics were officially postponed and lo and behold, the number of infections in Japan suddenly ballooned, most notably in Tokyo – have a look at these charts, if you’re not sick of charts yet. Please note the lovely rise going from March 24th onward.

Coincidence? I think not.

During the weekends of March 28-29 and April 4-5, people were advised (not ordered, advised) to stay at home. My company decided to close on those days, pretty last minute, but hey, it’s paid. As of April 7, Tokyo and six other prefectures are in a state of emergency for a month, including myself in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture.

What does that mean? Not much. The government itself cannot order the people to do anything, apparently. A nice sum-up from the Japan Times (shortened, highlights are my own):

 [Given the emergency status,] Japan’s governors now have more legal authority to take what measures they deem necessary […]. To secure adequate supplies of medicine and other necessary goods, governors can fine uncooperative businesses […]. Prefectures can also appropriate land and buildings for use as temporary medical facilities without the agreement of the owners. […]

Other measures can be taken by the prefectural governors as well. But these are more along the lines of strong requests, and violators won’t be fined or arrested. They include strongly urging people to avoid unnecessary travel, as well as crowded spaces […], pressing for sports and cultural events not be held, and asking people to refrain from using school facilities.

However,

Japan’s state of emergency declaration does not empower prefecture police to legally enforce the closure of public and private facilities or set up roadblocks to inspect vehicles going in and out of the prefectures affected by [the emergency] declaration. Nor can the governors legally proclaim curfews. There’s a chance people loitering in public places could find themselves stopped by police and asked what they are doing. But they won’t receive fines for not staying indoors.

 And that’s it. Basically, I’m not supposed to do anything, but nothing’s going to happen if I do. Are these measures sufficient? I don’t think so, but it’s not my country to run.

My company is closed for the month, hence the “Virus Holiday: A Continuation”, but I can promise you this one is going to be much less exciting. I’ll make the post about Kyoto eventually, because it was awesome, and I might post about my new/second job, because I’m excited about it, but we’ll see how the situation unfolds.

Stay safe, stay sane!

[goingfalmouth]

Virus holiday 3: Returning to work

That’s right. After three weeks of sunshine, copious amounts of tea, and so, so much reading, I’m back to business. Help.

(View from Goshikizuka in Maiko.)

While the first two weeks were full of doing the active kind of nothing, such as trips, I wrapped up my holiday by doing the passive kind of nothing – sitting in the park with a book or in a café with my Japanese. Looking back, I think I was soaking up the last hours of calm before the inevitable storm.

Work.

See, after three weeks of being the absolute king of my schedule, putting my suit back on and shuffling back to the office felt about as natural as Easter eggs on a Christmas tree. I was a tiny bit excited to see everyone again, teachers and students, but also worried because I had fallen out of the teaching rhythm. That fear expanded into adrenaline levels I haven’t felt in class since my first lesson back in November and I’m lowkey sorry to my first student because let’s be honest, those forty minutes were not my finest work.

To make the situation stranger, GABA (my company) introduced precautions, one of which is that we all have to wear masks on the premises. It’s an understandable rule I think, though I really hope it ends soon because a) it feels like we’re in an apocalyptic movie, and b) my glasses fog up all the time and that ish is annoying.

Finally, not many students are coming in. In a week, I’d usually teach about 35 lessons. This week, it so far looks closer to 15. We expect it to pick up eventually, but nobody is really sure when that ‘eventually’ might happen. Wish us luck and let me wish you some back. Stay safe and if you’re stuck at home, don’t do crazy stuff– and if you do, at least send pics.

[goingfalmouth]

Virus Holiday 2: Osaka, hiking, a planetarium

School are still closed, and my holiday was extended by a week! Here are three highlights from the last eight days.

We have Osaka at the start. I’ve been there a few times, but I finally found my favourite place, I think – the Nakanoshima Park. Lying on an island in the Tosahori River, it has everything from lovely well-kept gardens to open lawns perfect for picnics or, in my case, a quick snack. You can follow the edge of the island past the Osaka City Hall all the way to the Nakanoshima-shikinooka Park and the National Museum of Art, which is such a nice walk.

I also met with my friends for a lunch afterwards and finally visited the Umeda Sky Building with its amazing view– thanks to the guys for taking me there!

(Turns out I didn’t take pics in the park. Whoops.)

Next up, hiking. I finally figured out how buses work around here (and what an amount of nerves it cost me!) and went back towards Futatabi, this time from the other side. It was Friday morning and not a soul walked in the woods except me until the Mt Nabebuta observation point, which was just incredible.

In the Futatabi area, there’s also the Kobe Foreign Cemetery. You can’t really visit anything but the viewpoint, but it’s the calmest place I’ve seen in a while. It’s a basin surrounded by hills, full of trees, and when I’m gone, I want me a place like that (I don’t have pics, it seemed disrespectful to take any).

(View from Mt Nabebuta; for more, see my Instagram story.)

Finally, the city of Akashi and its planetarium. I love the space so not going wasn’t an option – they even had a show! Everything was in Japanese so I understood, like, 10 %, but hey, the pictures and night-sky projections were cool, I can say Jupiter in Japanese (mokusei!) and the observation deck was awesome. 

Cookie points go to the Akashi Park as well – it kind of looks like the Hyde Park, actually, what with the lake. There are wilder, very forest-y parts, quaint little nooks and a castle ruin. Brilliant.

And that is it for now! Look out for the end-of-holiday update – unless they extend it again!

[goingfalmouth]

Holiday time! Karaoke, second-hand shopping and D&D

Due to COVID-19, my company announced a two-week paid holiday. We’re halfway through now, and it’s been great. Apart from the copious amounts of sleeping and reading that I’ve been enjoying, there has also been some more exciting stuff: karaoke, second-hand shopping and Dungeons & Dragons.

First, karaoke. Since the whole company is closed, all the teachers have free time – at the same time, which pretty much never happens otherwise. So we went out for food (the Torikizoku chain, very cheap, much recommended). And after, karaoke.

In many cities, Jankara provides karaoke rooms that you rent out, either just for yourself or for a group. They offer drinks and some food and a very decent range of English, Japanese and Korean (and Chinese, I think?) music, and let me tell you, we sang everything from My Heart Will Go On and Circle of Life to Super Bass and Bang Bang Bang. In short, I lived.

Next up, second-hand shopping. In England and even in the Czech Republic, I buy second hand a lot (cheaper, environmentally friendly, unusual pieces), but in Japan, I’ve been having trouble finding a good shop. Then I found Second Street, fell in love and now I have two more skirts, a blouse and a lacy cardigan-y thingy than I did before, all for nearly ¥4000 (£30). It would cost me two to three times as much in a regular store. As I said, I’m in love.

Lastly, a Dungeons & Dragons session. D&D is a roleplaying game where you pretend to be a fantasy character and along with a bunch of other fantasy characters, you go on a quest. Needless to say, as a complete newbie, I was lost most of the time. Despite that, I do like my character (wood elf, druid) and I’ll keep him for the next session because let’s be real, I absolutely am a nerd enough to dive nose-first into this magical, adventurous shebang.

I almost forgot! I lost my commuting ticket three days ago, because I’m a dummy, so I filed the Lost Item form at the station. Not only was the lady extremely nice, she also called around the stations to have someone check the train. They didn’t find it and I thought, whelp, it’s gone, right? Wrong. I got a phone call today (on Sunday!) that they found it. Someone handed it in instead of using it up. Made my day.

Okay, that’s it. Keep your eyes peeled for the second week of holiday update!

[goingfalmouth]

I survived my first tax season!

Since I’m an independent contractor, it’s my job to sort out my taxes, and since I’m still pretty much fresh out of uni, I had no idea how to do that.

The internet resources on taxes in Japan are vast but, rather unsurprisingly, that just means it takes about .4 seconds to get into a downward spiral of confusing and sometimes conflicting information – which was why I ended up pestering various co-workers for actual inside info.

I ended up having a nice folder full of expenses and income sheets, receipts, health insurance payment slips and bank statements. With that and literally every other paper that seemed vaguely important, I made my way to the taxes help centre.

Now, this being my first year, I had basically no idea where to stand, which forms to pick up, and how long it was going to take. It also didn’t make me feel much better that the first group of staff spoke little to no English because let’s be honest, I barely get taxes in Czech and English. There was no way I could do it in Japanese. The staff kept explain things to the waiting crowd and I understood nothing. Twenty minutes of waiting later, I was having an inward panic attack.

And then I was ushered two floors up and my saviour appeared. Hashimoto-san deserves an award, and also a cup of tea and a week of holiday because I think filling out the forms with me made him experience a year’s worth of anxiety. It took us half an hour to finish three different forms and sign me up for E-Tax, which includes him asking questions in shy English and me fumbling through the materials to look up the 75th different important number. I really hope he went on a break afterwards. God knows I had to sit down when it was over.

But it’s done! My first tax season is done and, fingers crossed, the next one will be much smoother.

[goingfalmouth]

One-man Travel: Osaka Edition

One-woman? Anyway. Here’s my Osaka trip, with copious amounts of pics, of course.

Last Thursday (Feb 13), I treated myself to an overnight stay in Osaka, though I'm not sure why I'm using 'treated' when Osaka is literally half an hour away. In any case, I got awesome weather (short sleeves!), the plum blossom season in full swing (the smell, you guys) and not that many tourists (Coronavirus, probably).

(Ikasuri Temple)

Osaka is great for travelling in the daytime because the city offers, for a start, about a hundred different shrines, and that's being conservative. I made it, most notably, to Tsuyeten, Temmangu, Ikasuri and Namba shrines, and I would recommend the Tsuyeten first, simply because the shrine sits surrounded by skyscrapers and the contrast is staggering.

(Temmangu Shrine)

Next, there's the Osaka Castle. You cannot talk about Osaka without the Osaka Castle. Built in the 16th century, it's surrounded by moats and parks, it has a cherry blossom and plum blossom areas and the castle itself is a vision to behold.

Once the night comes, Osaka transforms into a mix of lights and smells. Amerikamura is an odd little place full of Japanese-style USA shops where young people dressed in cool clothes hang around in groups or pairs and chat.

(Both: Dotonbori)

Shinsaibashi, Dotonbori and Namba are colourful, full of life and absolutely worth seeing during the night. There’s about a thousand food places with Japanese cuisine, my shoutout, however, goes to the Belle Ville pancake café because the stack of goodness they gave me tasted heavenly.

And that’s it for Osaka for now, but hey, more stuff is planned!

[goingfalmouth]

Suma Rikyu Park, Feb 12, 2020

Suma Rikyu is a park and botanical garden with a greenhouse, and currently, it’s plum blossom season. I wish I could send you the scent because honestly, that would have been the best part of this trip if it weren’t for one, a super-nice slide I was allowed to go down on, and two, this old Japanese lady who came up to talk to me (needless to say, I have to study Japanese harder).

[goingfalmouth]

The pros and cons of being an English instructor

It has been four months. Am I fully qualified to pass judgement? No. But am I going to try anyway? Absolutely.

Basic info: I work in an English conversational school that provides one-on-one lessons to anyone from kids to retired engineers. Let's pick it apart.

1. Scheduling

You pick your own schedule, that's an absolute plus. Every month, you submit the hours you'd like to open in the following month. If you don't like mornings, you book the afternoons; if you've planned a trip, you just don't open any lessons and ey, you're free to go.

On the other hand, you have to take into consideration when students are free - usually after work/school and on the weekends. Another one is, there's not much room for random events/meetings because you're basically forced to think a month ahead when submitting a schedule.

2. Bookings

Especially on weekends, bookings are great. I'd open ten lessons on Saturday, ten would book, and there's a quarter of my weekly workload ticked off.

On the other hand, there's no guarantee lessons will book, and sometimes, mostly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, you can be left with big windows, having lessons from 1-2:30 pm and then 5:30-9 pm, which kinda sucks.

(This is where I hang out when I’ve got big breaks.)

3. Students

I get to meet so many different people. There are high school students, housewives, businessmen and women; I had a cardiologist, a farmer, a dancer, people interested in musicals, motorcycles and Apple tech. Most are motivated and want to learn and they have so many stories to tell.

Then you have the odd student out who doesn't want to talk and lowkey doesn't care, though personally, I find it the hardest when the person doesn't understand but doesn't tell you. Those ones get difficult real quick.

(Lunch breaks are the best.)

4. Being an independent contractor

Essentially, I'm my own boss. We have an advisor in the school who can help me if I have a problem and can suggest areas to improve, however, he can't really order me to do or change anything.

On the other hand, you need to adhere to the rules if you want to stay (we re-sign every 6 months), and you should keep it professional if you want to keep your students or get a raise. As an IC, you also have to pay your own health insurance, sort out your taxes and make sure you get enough bookings to pay the rent.

(View from the school/office.)

In summary, there's a bunch of cons and a bunch of pros. Bookings can be low sometimes; some Tuesdays are full and some incredibly sparse; I can't just up and go out on any given evening and weekends are my best workdays, so I miss out on a lot of events. But then again, I make my schedule which allows me to go to Kyoto for four days without hassle, and it'll be the same when I finally plan that trip to Korea. I usually don't have to wake up early and I get to talk to an insane variety of people (which is awesome for my writing), plus the teachers are from all over the world, which is just brilliant.

Is it an ideal job? Hell no. But being straight out of uni and used more to part-time than full-time positions, I think it fits me just fine right now.

[goingfalmouth]

Getting over culture shock 101

The easiest way to describe culture shock is to use Home Alone. Imagine yourself to be little Kevin. At first, you’re excited to be by yourself, to do with your life as you like; everything is perfect. Then problems come knocking at your door and at first you‘re just confused, then a bit frightened and if the situation goes unchecked, you’ll barricade yourself in the house. It doesn’t have to be like that, though.

(Kobe Chinatown, decorated for the Lunar New Year.)

Living abroad is an amazing and enlightening experience, but once the initial excitement subsides, the realisation that you are not home anymore really sinks in. That moment could be anything – a joke you don’t get, a tradition you don’t know, a type of spice you can’t find. Something is missing and it’s on you to decide for how long you’re going to wallow in that sad feeling. Here are a few tips on how to overcome the hurdle that is culture shock.

1. Make your room a home

Your room/flat is your kingdom and you’ll probably spend a lot of time there. Make it look and feel like a place where you belong, a place where you can be yourself and that makes you feel welcome. I always travel with my red alarm clock, a pillow, a selection of photographs and a string of fairy lights; those are the things that immediately transform a room to my room.

2. Find people to talk to

Housemates, if you have them, come first. They are the people who you’ll be living with for god-knows how long, so establish from the start what kind of person you are to avoid having to pretend at home. Same goes for classmates and co-workers. 

If you know about other people from your country who live around, make friends; if only a few foreigners live in your new home, find them; if there’s a foreigners’ club or an international office, join it. They’ll understand and help if you struggle. I didn’t have much luck bonding with other Czechs in Falmouth, but the Slovaks were amazing – speaking in your own language helps a lot.

(We went out for okonomiyaki, a savoury pancake kind of thing.)

3. Enjoy your home country's culture

I never listened to Czech music much or was a big fan of Czech films. Now they're on on a regular basis because they include Czech humour and way of thinking, both of which I miss when abroad. I watched S tebou mě baví svět/With You, the World Is Fun the other day and almost laughed the house down.

This part includes food, too, and holidays. If you’re used to celebrating something, celebrate it; if you want one of your traditional meal, make it and enjoy it. 

If you want to roll all three into one, set up your ‘day off’. Pick a day when you’ll make home food, listen to music in your mother language, watch a typical movie, call your family and friends, and invite over other people from your bit of the world. Take those twelve hours and get your fill of home.

The final words are: don’t beat yourself up about missing home or not fitting in quickly and completely. You are allowed to be frustrated with other cultures, traditions, languages and people, and you are allowed to miss your home, friends, family, food and swearwords – just don’t let the frustration grow into resentment and the homesickness into isolation.

[goingfalmouth]

The worst things about living abroad

Staying in a foreign country is a package deal. It comes with a whole bunch of amazing experiences – but a buffet of pains and hurts, too.

I’ve talked about the positives of living abroad before, plus I’m sure you can recognise a nice, enriching encounter when I write about it. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though, and this blog would be painting a pretty inaccurate picture of what living abroad is if I didn’t bring up the downsides as well. 

Let’s start with family and friends and see which way this thread of misery uncoils.

If you are not particularly close to your friends and family, congrats, going abroad will be fine. If you are, though, it will be pretty damn hard. Your initial few weeks will probably be filled with excitement, amazement and a healthy dash of adrenaline. Once the dust settles, things will get difficult.

Relationships and trust take time to build, time you haven’t had yet in the new country. The moment where you realise there’s no one to run for help to – no one you fully trust, anyway – comes very abruptly. When that happens, you should be prepared for a few serious blows, and when I say blows, I mean you will freak out over little things; you might lose appetite; falling asleep could be difficult and the same goes for getting up. And don’t even get me started on motivation. The October of my first year was literal hell and I’m still not sure how exactly I got through those deadlines. (The fear of failure, probably.)

Don’t be afraid to cry it out. I’ve cried countless times by this point, I’ll definitely cry some more in the future, and I always feel better afterwards. It drains the tension out of you. Once that stress is washed away, once you let that emotion out, you can go back to appreciating the wonderful opportunity you’ve got. Don’t feel bad about it. No one can be strong all the time.

If you feel down, stay away from social media. One thing I’ve realised by now is that seeing my friends and family getting together, celebrating and going out is not particularly helpful. Nothing feels worse than missing people, opening your Instagram and seeing those exact people hanging out. At that moment – and it’s a pretty vulnerable moment already – it hits you that if you didn’t leave, you’d very probably be in that photo too. It makes you remember all the other events you’ve missed, all the birthdays, pub runs, random encounters, trips – for me, the worst ones are summer camp meetings, simply because there are so many amazing memories attached to them. And ‘lo and behold, the situation is suddenly sixty times worse.

It hurts, sure it does, and not just mentally. Your throat goes tight; your chest feels as if there’s a house sitting on it. Your eyes water and your hands get shaky and your focus is shot to hell. Food tastes wrong, you’re thirsty and not thirsty at the same time, both restless and tired. A pro-tip: Just give up for the day if you can. I usually get chocolate and ice cream, maybe some junk food, and watch an animated movie because those always end well (so if you’ve ever seen me watching Disney with a blanket and some snacks, yeah, that was a rough day, thanks for being nice).

I’ll stop here. In short, living abroad can be so damn hard sometimes. Next, I’ll be writing about the ways that can make the adjustment easier, so if you’ll be staying abroad soon and are worried, keep your eyes peeled; my tested and tried methods of staying sane are coming up soon.

[goingfalmouth]

15 more things about Japan

At the beginning of my stay, I wrote a post with my first fifteen impressions. Because some time has passed since then, I’d like to add a few more things.

(Please enjoy this random pic from the Minatogawa Shrine on the New Year’s.)

1. The Japanese people don’t like to be direct with their speech. Which is why, I suppose, a lady told me she was maybe born in Kobe.

2. For such a developed nation, Japan likes its paper. I’ve filled out more forms and received more letters in the first month of my stay than I did in my whole previous life.

3. Many cars are weirdly boxy and kinda small. I guess that’s because symmetrical vehicles are way easier to park, especially if there are hundreds of them.

4. Men wear women’s bags a lot. I know, I know, bags have no gender. It’s just strange to see middle-aged businessmen with a purse my mom would buy.

5. Speaking of businessmen, golf is popular among them. Apparently, new-younger male employees will be invited by their senior colleagues to play golf on some weekends.

6. Midday is not written as 12:00, but rather 0:00. Which is why you can watch your news while eating lunch with the TV saying this:

7. DVD and CD stores still exist in great numbers. There is one about five minutes from my house and I find it somewhat hilarious.

8. I talked about people cycling a lot in the last post, but I’d like to add that many people will cycle while checking their phone or, if it rains, while holding their umbrella.

9. Shrines are sometimes surrounded on all sides by modern buildings. Which is why you can find this one, squeezed between an IKEA and a drugstore.

10. People will dress up big time on the weekends. If you go to the city centre on a Saturday afternoon, it’ll look like everyone is either headed to a wedding or the theatre.

11. On the topic of clothes, jackets/coats in any colour other than a shade of brown or grey will stand out big time. Even my pastel pink one shines, let alone the wine-red parka.

12. I don’t know about other cities, but in Kobe, you can walk for miles and do your shopping without ever feeling the fresh air because some malls and stations are connected by tunnels and glass walkways.

13. As I said before, Japan is very clean. This goes for the public toilets as well, so if you ever need to use one, don’t hesitate to dip into the ones in parks or on the beaches. They’ll in 95% of cases be perfectly fine.

14. Men being androgynous and wearing make up on the TV is viewed as perfectly acceptable, however, as one of my clients enlightened me, it’s very much frowned upon in real life. Go figure.

15. Lastly, elderly Japanese ladies have no fear. They don’t fear death as they walk across the street without looking, nor injury as the incoming cyclist swerves madly to avoid hitting them. It fills me with admiration and a great deal of alarm whenever I walk past one.

[goingfalmouth]

The first Christmas away from home

In summary, I have mixed feelings about this experience.

(Santa Clauses in Kitano, Kobe)

Over the past three years, though I had been studying in England, there had been one occasion I always returned home for – Christmas. This year, however, I decided to stay abroad. As I only arrived in Japan at the end of October, it seemed silly, from both the financial and time-managing viewpoint, to fly back to the Czech Republic so soon. Thus, I just experienced my first Christmas away from home.

In all honesty, it went more smoothly than I had thought it would. With less than 1 % of the Japanese people being Christian, this holiday isn’t really a big deal. There was no expectant, excited atmosphere in the air, only minimal decorating (though the Luminarie Festival of Lights, pic above, was amazing) and the TV wasn’t too bothered about it either. In the face of this lack of enthusiasm, Christmas approached, and I barely noticed.

On the day, the song went a little differently. I made myself pancakes for breakfast, went for a trip to the Venus Bridge (the view was brilliant, pic above) and made a somewhat scaled-back version of a Christmas dinner, putting on the Czech version of Cinderella that airs every single Christmas. It was the movie that did it, I think, because I have never watched it alone before. It’s the one film we always watch as a family, once the food is gone and the presents are opened.

There were tears, there was tea and there was chocolate. I think I wallowed in my misery for about ten minutes but as per usual, once I cried, I felt better. My family called about an hour later and by that point, I was just sincerely happy to see them.

I can’t properly describe how odd the experience was. To me, Christmas lasted for about six hours. I went to work on both the 23rd and the 25th, and once I finished the call with my family on the 24th, the Christmas spirit also disappeared. I suppose it would’ve been harder to be alone in a country that genuinely celebrated Christmas, but here, it felt more like a single flicker of an orange-scented candle on a regular day off work. It wasn’t easy, hell no. As I said, there were tears and wishes I had gone home to see my family and friends. At the same time, though, I expected it to be so much worse.

Would I do it again? Probably not. Though I’m not a devout Christian nor a hardcore Christmas enthusiast, the holidays are still a time when we’re all home, when the family meets and when I see the friends I never see otherwise. I’m happy to know I can do Christmas alone, but if I have a choice, I’d rather be home next year.