Unfortunately, in years of studying Japanese, I had never learned the suite of vocabulary required for this situation. Not one lesson had covered “Your tyre is stuck in a drain, do you have a jack in your car so we can leverage it out?”
Tag: Kitakata
Chapter Sixteen: Summer Festival Part Two
I had entertained the thought that being cloaked in the appropriate apparel would make me feel more involved, when in fact I felt far more self conscious and fraudful.
Chapter Twelve: Time Slip
Received wisdom about bear encounters conflictingly suggests running, standing one’s ground, or playing dead; a selection that seems fatally incompatible.
Chapter Eleven: Kitakata
Mountains are quite often used to connote that which is fixed and enduring, but in reality there are few things more changeable than the mountains.
Chapter Ten: Jennie Wren’s Nest
Once in the wake of a contact lens delivery I came back to find a thin cardboard parcel sticking out of my door like someone trying to eat a pizza box from the corner.
Chapter Nine: Gut Reaction
Thanks to simplified biological diagrams, a lack of experience of in situ viscera, and a general naivety, I had previously thought of the oesophagus as a clear drop to the stomach, like a stone well to some distant cavern below. It wasn’t until an unwelcome object needed to make the journey through my digestion that I came to realise how ludicrous this image was.
Chapter Eight: Elementary
One day Nakano-sensei asked which of the elementary schools is my favourite, and it’s possible that I answered a little too quickly with “Matsuyama.”
Chapter Seven: Nichuu
‘Language barrier’ is a phrase well-worn to the point of being threadbare, but it is not until one has experienced the communicative rampart that the barrier in question seems less like a linguistic picket fence and more of a socially impenetrable stone barrack.
Chapter Six: An Education
As an occupation, teaching can take you to soaring heights of euphoria and hell-belly lows of stress and frustration.
Chapter Five: Baptism by Napalm
Coming to the realisation that my plan was considerably flawed, I eventually decided to walk to the station, hoping that should anyone be attempting to find me, a bedraggled Caucasian by the roadside would be noticeable enough.
