Welcome to Nanyo!

I have been living here for about 2 and a half weeks now - which is the longest I have ever spent away on a holiday. I think I feel quite grateful that this never felt like a holiday from the moment I got here. Perhaps Tokyo felt a bit like a vacation, but the Jet-lag and work-related itinerary were less than holidayesque! Quite a few people seem to mention that the first few weeks feel like a holiday, some prefectures seem to have larger communities and more parties and such, so in a way I was prepared for immersing myself in a Japanese community from the start. I never really feel that I’m sampling a part of Japanese culture from which I can take the memory back to England and treasure it. Everything I do here is to experience Japan to the fullest, and to make a great effort to fit in with my community and make them like me!

One of the main streets of Akayu in Nanyo -follow down this road and you reach my house!

My Japanese home!

It has taken me some while to gather my bearing around Nanyo but I am slowly doing just that now. Nanyo calls itself a city - it shouldn’t though because it doesn’t have a Cathedral, OR a University. Clearly, the suffix ‘city’ can be loosely applied to anything with at least two Pachinko parlours (There are three very near to where I live). It is the youngest city in Yamagata prefecture, around 40 years old and it was formed my merging all the small towns together. The town names are still used and it probably makes more sense to say that they are used as district markers of Nanyo. The towns that make up Nanyo are: Akayu, Ringo, Okigo, Yoshino, Miyauchi, Nakagawa and Urushiyama. All of these towns still have their own schools and I will be going to all of the Junior High Schools in each area. There are plans to merge these schools into two large schools, as the majority of the schools are relatively small now, but they seem to be in the early stages of planning such a big change.


Anyway, that’s the geography of Nanyo for you - and I am living in Akayu - the largest town in Nanyo. It is a pretty nice place to live, although it took me a while to get used to it, as you might expect. The odd thing about Japanese ‘city planning’ if you want to call it that, is that there is no uniformity between buildings, and there is no method to the layout of the city. There isn’t really a main road; there is no city centre - there are just odd shopping areas here and there. They don’t have street names either, not that I would be able to read them as they would all be in Japanese, but still, how on earth do you find where you are or where you want to be going?

A summer evening in Akayu

A view from Eboshiama park

The buildings often seem a little shabby, and their irregular shapes and colours don’t make Japan seem the most attractive place to live, but despite that, there is a charm about the place that you can’t quite put your finger on. After having explored Akayu, I have seen Eboshiama park with its many shrines and nicey shady grassy areas, and you can’t miss the beautiful mountains always in the background. But as well as that, it is the Japanese culture that seems to infuse charm into the area. Forever taking your shoes off and putting on slippers WHEREVER you go (people’s houses, schools, even the gym!), bowing to people as you pass with a cheerful Japanese greeting and the strange speakers stuck to the lamp posts on Akayu’s ‘main street’, that seem to play Japanese pseudo-traditional ‘Enka’ music all the time. They’re all a bit quirky but the sincerity of the Japanese people creates as Japanese an experience as you could get!

The start of life in Yamagata...

On the last day in Tokyo, the little air-conditioned, comfortable English speaking bubble we’d been living in for the past few days was quickly disspating. We were divided into our respective prefectures around Japan and went off in our groups by means of different transport. The Yamagata folk took a plane from Haneda airport (Tokyo’s smaller, largely domestic based airport) to Yamagata airport. The flight only took 40 minutes or so - but that was the moment when we started to realise what would become a common occurance - the 8/9 of us JETs were the only Westerners on the plane. I was sitting next to a rather quiet Japanese guy - I don’t know if he was scared of me, but I couldn’t really make much conversation. ‘Do you fly often? What’s the food like on this trip?’ - such small talk would have probably led him to smash the window and parachute down to Yamagata!
We were all getting a little nervous now. We collected our bags and I walked into the squashed arrivals foyer to see a big sign saying ‘Welcome Chris! Nanyo Board of Education’ and some tissue paper red/pink flowers stuck around it. It was a lovely gesture and later on the other JETs who were on the same journey commented that I recevied the best welcome!

Mr Itagaki my supervisor, Mr Hosokawa a very helpful friend with a good grasp of English, and one of the English teachers I will be working with were there to meet me. We got in the car, and went to the Shiiakshuo or City Office were I would be based. There I met the superintendant of the Board of Education, a lovely warm fellow called Mr Mikayama and I introduced myself in Japanese to the rest of the staff I would be working with.

After that I went to get a mobile phone (priorities!) and then I was taken to an onsen. I will assume that not many people know about the Japanese ‘onsen’ which means ‘hot bath’ - but it involves getting naked most of the time, washing yourself thoroughly before getting into a pool of, naturally hot (often quite hot) water. I wasn’t taken to a proper onsen of sorts. It was more a kind of hotel/spa resort. Not the traditional Japanese setting that you often seem to find (or that I’ve seen in photos I should say - maybe they just do the photos for promotional/tourist purposes).

Well being the reserved and prude British man that I am, it was a little bit of a surprise to have to strip down with a bunch of Japanese guys I’d met about 2 hours ago, but it was probably the best thing to do because the experience was brilliant and I’ve already done it again (in a more desirable setting in an outside location on Mt Zao) - I have no reservations or shyness now!

After a dip on the onsen, we had a very nice Japanese style meal in the same venue, allsorts of noodles, sashimi (raw fish), sushi, meat kept coming in. And of course, there was lots of beer too. I was still feeling a bit Jet-lagged and disorientated so my eating and drinking habits weren’t up to much. Still, the stuff that my Board of Education had set up on the first night was a great way to help me feel more comfortable and settle in.

The post-onsen feast of food and drink!

Welcome to Tokyo!

After a moderately enjoyable flight from Heathrow we arrive 12 hours later, the day after in a rather hot Tokyo. I say moderately because I managed to get no sleep throughout the whole 12 hours, and we didn’t see much night time through the flight. We got through the airport smoothly and then had a two and a half hour bus drive to Shinjuku – an area of Tokyo packed with massive Skyscrapers.

We stayed in the Keio Plaza Hotel for two nights. The Keio Plaza is a very flash and massive hotel and I would only guess that the JET programme would put us in a place as comfortable as the Keio Plaza because there are so many of us, and also to help us recover from jet lag. I didn’t actually do must exploring of Tokyo in those two days I was there, most of the nights were spent not being able to get to sleep, and a significant portion of the afternoons were spent crawling back to bed, unable to sit through the workshops and lectures because, of course, it would be the middle of the night in Britain in the afternoon in Japan.


We attended lectures and speeches trying to give us a helping hand to integrate into our jobs and our lives in Japan. I met some great JET participants, the majority being from the UK and we wandered nearby our hotel for food and drink. From the small distance I explored and the view up in the Skybar in the hotel – Tokyo is completely true to the images we see of it back at home. Loud, bright, full of neon lights, but also very clean and it feels very safe. Buildings are so squashed together, and equally so – restaurants and bars are often very tiny and stacked on top of each other on different floors.


The first night me and my roommate Dave found a nice looking restaurant – unfortunately there were no English speaking waiters, no English menu, no pictures in the menu – and we soon discovered our knowledge of the Japanese language was…useless. We began to panic as we sat down in a corner not quite knowing what to do. Luckily, we were sat next to two American JETs who had met up with some Japanese friends who spoke a little English. We asked them to help us and they invited us to eat with them. In the end it was a great night and we met our first very friendly and helpful Japanese friends! I realised as we were eating and talking together that that night would be the start of many similar situations and experiences – a little scary but overall very enjoyable and satisfying!

The first night in Japan!

From the surreal to the ridiculous

Hello everybody. I kid you not, I am in Japan. Well and truly in it! Yamagata is wedged between the northern and southern part of the main island Honshuu, but not only that - Yamagata is surrounded by mountains! There is no easy way out now so I have nothing else to do except try to blend in and look inconspicuous! Of course - no easy feat when you are in fact the only western face within a 20 minute drive.

After being here almost a fortnight now things are settling down and I am settling in. I don’t plan on making this a very detailed post - I plan on really give you the fine details along with some photos too - once I get the Internet in my house which should be around the 22nd August. At the moment I’m sitting in the Nanyo City board of education hearing people chat in Japanese, seeing Japanese bullitin newsletters and the Start bar on my office computer says スタート　(Sutaato). But let me reassure you that they are the friendliest bunch of people you could ever meet. They are really making me feel at home and despite the language barrier being a challenge I am meeting lots of new people and making new friends! To let everybody know - I am in Japan safe and sound and coping well with the crazy experience!

Sayounara minasan