November

November has flown by incredibly quickly. I can’t believe I’ll be in England this time next month. It has been the mildest November I have ever known, which seems ironic in light of the unusually cold November England is suffering from at the moment. One weekend I was cycling into the heart of Chiba prefecture in only my shorts and T-shirt and even now I haven’t yet turned the heating on.

So what have I been up to over the last few weeks? Well as I mentioned I went on a longish bike ride inland towards to the Pacific with Sam. I was surprised at quite how nice the Chiba countryside is beyond my concrete town. And with autumn in its full bloom (as it were) the shades and colours of the woodland were stunning. We cycled half way across the peninsula, without realising it and have agreed to attempt to cycle the whole thing in the New Year.

I recently went on my furthest excursion in Japan and spent a weekend in Hokkaido, visiting a friend I met at training. I managed to get a window seat on the plane there and back and had an amazing view of the Tokyo night sky on the way up plus a perfect view of Kimitsu (the town next to mine) on returning. Hokkaido was interesting. It the most unjapanese place I’ve been to in Japan. It was only settled a couple of hundred years ago and so there are no ancient shrines, castles or temples, that you’d usually find in most Japanese cities. It was also settled during a time when Japan was really opening up to western ideas and so they invited western architects and city planners to help create the cities there. So there are often very western-looking buildings that seem out of place but more often than not the architecture is very experimental. Because there is no tradition that needed to be kept on the island, it seems architects often tried something totally new and different.

Jenn lives a short drive from the airport but we went into Sapporo for a day and stayed around one of her friends in the city. I had fun exploring the city during the daytime, and did a little xmas shopping and in the evening we went to a restaurant called ‘Cheese Cheese’, which was one of the highlights of the trip.

This weekend was my Birthday weekend, so on Friday I went out for a meal with friends that live in the area and on Saturday I went out to Tokyo, to meet up with friends from further afield. The second night involved excessive drinking, which meant today was a bit of a write-off. I received some nice little gifts and cards, for which I’m very grateful.

This doesn't feel like November

I’m really enjoying the weather at the moment, despite many of the natives constantly commenting on the temperature being cold. I cycled to work and spent the entire day in a T-shirt earlier this week. Something I could only dream of doing in an English November. For the most part I’ve still only been wearing one layer unless it’s raining, however this was the first week that I put a jumper on. Above all its just been really nice to get so much sunlight, something I’m going to miss when I get back to the UK.

As many may already know, I recently received news from Teach First that I’ve been placed in the North West region of the programme, which is good news because it was my first preference. I won’t know exactly where my school is for a good few months yet so I could be potentially teaching in Manchester, Liverpool or Burnley next year but given the ratio of schools, more likely, and hopefully, the former.

I’m just about to head off to the Design Festival, which a huge event that incorporates hundreds of Japanese artists and designers descending on a large conference centre in Odaiba. There are countless stalls where you can buy all kinds of arty artefacts. Meanwhile there’s also music, comedy, performance art and dance going on. I’ve been looking forward to it for a while and hope to come home with a couple of T-shirts.