I thought, for those who are interested, here is the Japanese resources I have on hand with me at the moment, lost in my packing madness. I know I have some more at my dad’s but they are a bit more low priority. For instance I rememeber I have some JLPT 1 books that I got for like a $1 second hand a million years ago.

Anyway, books were super cheap in Japan and not knowing (at the time) when I’d be back I wanted to get enough reading and learning material to last me years. I have several text books in various difficulties for grammar, kanji, listening, reading and even speaking. I researched what books (fiction intended for native Japanese people) other language learners recommend and also got a few that seemed interesting to me and I would like to try. If you have any questions about my books feel free to ask. I’m sure I’ll get around to talking about them all eventually. I am a believer that you can never have to many books! Plus if I get bored or stuck in one book, I can give it a breather and go onto something else, instead of being stuck in a rut.

My manga collection is atleast double the size of this… Long live Book Off.

Let’s see, what else have I been up to?

Was in Brisbane City and saw a Dalek. Got excited. Then noticed that the Doctor was around too.

I went to a Metallica concert. It was pretty awesome.

Photos taken with the awesome camera of the iphone 3g.

My neck was a bit sore after from looking up. I would say statistically people who love metal are male, white, and frickin tall. I fall under one of those categories.

Here’s the setlist from the show – totally different from what I thought they would be playing. It was great. Setlist nabbed from setlist.fm.

That Was Just Your Life
The Four Horsemen
Ride The Lightning
The Thing That Should Not Be
The Unforgiven
Harvester Of Sorrow
I Disappear
Sad But True
No Leaf Clover
Orion
One
Master Of Puppets
Fight Fire With Fire
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman

Encore:
Blitzkrieg (Blitzkrieg cover)
My Apocalypse
Seek & Destroy

Well, I should get some lunch and continue the packing/clean up. See you on the other side Or should that be \m/

I admit that I have barely touched a text book since I got back from America. I have been doing a fair bit of manga reading (there’s some manga next to the toilet…) but that’s all. I was putting more energy into my job looking since money is nice.

Which lead up to today… The day of the interview.

I was super nervous. The most nervous that I’ve been in forever. To be honest, I wasn’t confident at all. I knew all the grammar patterns that are taught to grade 12 students in QLD. But it is more my conversational Japanese isn’t up to scratch. I knew that from a year in Japan that my listening skills had improved ten fold… but that didn’t necessarily mean that I would be able to respond.

I went into the interview and she began asking simple questions in Japanese, I responded in pretty crappy broken Japanese sentences. It didn’t help that I was super nervous and began forgetting simple things such as “primary school” But I could understand what she was asking… Did I mind being in the middle of nowhere teaching, what grade level did I want to teach, what other subjects did I want to teach if I didn’t get into Japanese.

Next I had to write about myself. Heh. Here I didn’t really know what to say so I waffled on in Japanese about how I taught English in Japan so now I want to teach Japanese in Australia.

Finally I had to read an article. I was nervous here. I could understand the words but I wasn’t sure I could get the sentences as a whole. She then asked me some questions about the article and I fudged my way through, or so it felt.

Then she gave me feedback. She said I was the first to comprehend what the article was about. She didn’t mention my speaking at all. And she said what she wanted me to focus on was producing Kanji. She said that even herself she forgets Kanji a lot these days because she is often typing on the computer. I know it is something I need to focus on, it’s much easier to read.

Then she circled “competent” and started telling me about how she was going to run the course next year….

In other words, I passed. I don’t officially find out if I got into the course until I think January, but I can’t see any reason why I’m not in. I’m so happy and relieved. I really want to be the best I can be, though, so next year is going to be tough. And after I get through next year I still have to actually pass another interview testing my Japanese competence before I can actually become a qualified Japanese teacher. I wonder at the other level of wannabe Japanese teachers. I feel for sure if there were Japanese ALTs coming into my school they’d feel just as frustrated at my level of Japanese, just like many ALTs in Japan are frustrated at the level of English that English teachers have. But I know a year is a long time and I feel so close to getting over that mountain hill to run down the other side….

I have been watching Jamie Oliver try to revolutionise school lunches in American schools.

In Australia it was totally different for me. My mother would pack my lunch each day. It was often a sandwich, apple, and a packet of chips. Once a week mum would give me money to buy something from the tuckshop (from the word tucker, an Australia word to mean food). This is when I would have something like chicken nuggets or a chicken burger or something like this for lunch. So for me lunch was something I liked, a bit healthy but some treats too. Maybe not 100% healthy but I am seeing now that it was healthier than what a lot of others eat…

In Japan it was my first time eating provided lunch. It didn’t mesh well with me. Now that I’m not eating it I think back on it more fondly than what I did at the time. You can see an example of what kids in Japanese schools eat here, and I have more photos to come.

My major gripes with it was: lots of seafood. Lots of deep fried food. Large quantities of food. And I think overall it just didn’t mesh well with me somehow deep inside of not having the choice to eat what I wanted. I can definitely see the value in making children clean their plate. But as an adult it doesn’t mesh well with me. Plus, never having being in a situation like that, maybe that had something to do with it.

Watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution was an eye opener. Wowsers. Pizza for breakfast every day? Then nuggets for lunch? Flavoured milk every day? Then, not forcing the kids to finish their meals? Wowsers. I’m just speechless.

One thing that’s telling, perhaps, is the amount of fat kids in the Japanese schools. My data may be skewed – I was working only in small schools in the country. Still, it was similar to what I experienced when I was at school… the token fat kid. Where as there was one or two fat children per grade when I was at school, there was one fat kid per school in my experience in Japan. And zero obese kids.

A thing that really struck me, in the video above was how the kids did not know their vegetables at all. At their age I didn’t know strange fruits and veges, and didn’t really know them until I worked with produce. But I knew what a tomato was even if I didn’t like them. It would have been really tough to teach in Japan if kids didn’t know what fruit and veges were in their own language, let me tell you that.

In other food related news, I want to eat healthy, fresh, unprocessed food as much as possible. But I enjoy food, and love trying new things. Last week the local Brisbane radio station “invented” a new burger at McDonalds and it went on sale at local restaurants for one day only. I believe it was called a Chick-cow burger.

It was lettuce, tomato, cheese, chicken fillet, beef patty, and tomato sauce. Apart from getting gipped on the lettuce, it was really yum. Plus no pickles to take off.

McDonalds is OK as a sometimes food but it turns to cardboard if you eat it too often. I have found I can keep my weight off, even still lose weight if I am conscious of what I’m eating, eat smaller portions, but still indulge in unhealthier foods from time to time. It really is about balance after all.

Talk about what you ate at school in the comments!

• I had two interviews. I didn’t get one job, I was under qualified, but still not sure about the other. It’s nice to actually be getting interviews but there aren’t many jobs going at the moment and I’m worried I’m going to end up with nothing
• Went jogging twice before my week exploded. It was good to get some exercise, however…
• It turns out I’m allergic to something in my area. I grew up in Victoria (an Australian state) and used to get a rash all the time, but hardly ever got it when I moved to Queensland. I know it is some kind of plant as I would always get it when playing in my grandmother’s garden. Well, since moving back to Australia I’ve gotten it twice, and both times after walking/running around the neighbourhood. Well, I’m NOT happy and I’m never going outside again!!!
• That said, those two jogs have bought me down to a weight of 59.9kg!! It was my goal to get under 60kgs! Hahah. Let’s see if it stays that way and isn’t some crazy fluctuation. I am still thinking of aiming for 55kg but really what ever, I’m in a healthy weight range now. I would love to be size 10 pants though, I am just a muffin top away…

I also got notice for an interview for University. I have to prove that I’m competent in Japanese in order to teach it. Oh crap.

I’ve sort of been tutoring someone I know already in Japanese. He is visiting in two years and so his goal is just survival Japanese at this stage. Has been interesting.

For those who don’t know, Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. What happens is for the month of November, a whole heap of people commit to writing on average 1667 words a day to complete a novel of 50,000 words. Quality isn’t needed – or perhaps even wanted here! What matters isn’t even telling a coherent story. It’s all about just getting the words down.

But it is a great exercise that can be tailored to what ever your goals are. It could be great, for instance, for finally finishing a piece if you are one of those people who start many things but never finish. Or it could be great for getting a writing rhythm, teaching yourself to write a little each day.

November isn’t a particularly good month for those of us in Australia because typically it is exams month at university. I know personally for the past couple of years I had be either too busy with exams or in my own personal journey (mostly Japanese language learning) to take part in Nanowrimo.

However in 2003 I took part and won (you ‘win’ by writing those 50,000 words) with my badly written young adult adventure which I can’t remember the name of right now, as it is hidden away on one of my external hard drives.

Nano (as it is called for short… haha) has certainly grown since that time. Now, unless I get an extremely demanding job or something before November, I plan on taking part this year. My story… no idea. Well I have some ideas but I haven’t really developed them at all yet.

One thing I have been reading through but not actually doing is Holly Lisle’s How To Think Sideways course. You can see a bit of the beginning stages of the course on my post called Breathing Again. It’s a fantastic course, I recommend it whole heartedly to anyone interested in becoming a novelist. In the least, it has made me a more mature and sophisticated novelist.

My plan is to use the HTTS course to help plan for my Nanowrimo novel. While I am not really expecting much from my Nano novel, I am thinking it’ll be a fun project and I really want to get more into the HTTS coursework. So my plan for October is to do some planning for Nano.

A lot has happened since my last post. One exciting thing is that I have lost almost 15kg which is awesome. My main piece of advice is to eat less, eat healthier and exercise more. But it is also about a state of mind. You’ve got to want it bad enough to get there.

I’m missing rice fields and I’m missing Japan. For now, however, I’m planning on studying Japanese like there is no tomorrow. Next year I’m planning to get my post grad in education and I’m hoping that I’ll be teaching Japanese in high schools soon. I really loved teaching in Japan, and the biggest frustrations to me were because I wasn’t a “real” teacher. We’ll see how we go anyway.

My year on JET was the best year of my life. I don’t regret it at all. I leave feeling both sad and happy. I would have loved to stay another year. However, at the same time I feel like I have to move on with my life. Which is why I’m going home to Australia soon.

While in Japan I was too busy living life (heh!) to post much here. I’m hoping now I’ll be able to catch up with all the adventures I went on. I have so many photos to go through.

My biggest disappointment is that Ikuta Toma is coming out with so many movies and TV shows and I’m not there to witness them live. Just so typical.