Throwback Thursday: One Year in Beppu

 

I’ve gotten really behind with posting again, and I apologise for that. I’ve never been good at sticking to a routine, no matter how hard I try. But I’ve been wanting to make a post for a while about how I’ve now completed my first year in Japan!

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Hi No Umi Festival

Last weekend was Beppu’s biggest summer festival – the Hi No Umi (translating roughly to ‘sea of fire’) Festival. It takes place every year at the end of July, and has festival stands selling food and toys, music and dance performances, and the main event – fireworks!

Throwback Thursday: Beppu’s African Safari

One of the things I was most surprised to find that Beppu had in the surrounding area when I got here was the African Safari. Although it’s located a bit further away from the central city area, it’s still a popular tourist spot and a good way to spend half a day or so, plus you can get there by bus from Beppu Station.

But the best thing about it? You can feed the animals!!

Throwback Thursday: April “Ido”

After sakura season comes “ido” season, which I experienced for the first time this year.

“Ido” means ‘change’, which is a fitting word to describe April, as both the fiscal year and the school year actually start in April, unlike back home where the school year starts in September. This is why in a lot of anime or manga, at graduation or school entrance time for the characters, there’ll be cherry blossoms everywhere, rather than autumn leaves.

So, April is a month of new beginnings for both children and adults, with children starting a new school year, or depending on their age, starting at a new school entirely, and for adults, a lot of companies have their new employees (especially newly-graduated new employees) start in April. For the already established employees, there’s “jinji ido” (人事異動),  which can be translated as the “personnel reshuffle” or “staff reassignment”.

Throwback Thursday: Sakura in Beppu

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I returned home for a week to visit my family so that prevented me from writing for 2 weeks and then the last two weeks have just been very busy. I’ll try to catch up and get back to the regular schedule~

This week’s Throwback Thursday is about sakura (cherry blossom) season, a much anticipated time of year in Japan and a time when everything is cloaked in a beautiful layer of pink.

Throwback Thursday: Going to the Opticians in Japan

Since coming to Japan, I’d noticed that my eyes felt a lot more tired than usual. I wasn’t sure whether this was due to my slightly unideal sleep schedule, the fluorescent lights at work, or using computers too long now that I have an office job for the first time. But after half a year here, I’d decided it was time to try to do something about it.

Throwback Thursday: Christmas in Beppu

I’m finally getting to the end of last year’s planned posts! I was going to post about a course I went on as part of work-related training, but as I don’t have access to the info I need right now and also since I posted about CIR stuff last week, this week’s post will be about how I spent my first ever Christmas away from home (as even on my year abroad I went home for Christmas).

Throwback Thursday: Settling In

I thought today I’d talk about my first few days at my placement~

I started work, or had to go to work, the very first day I got to my placement, but it took a few days to actually get started with actual work. Each placement is probably different, but I figured this might give prospective CIRs an idea of what they might end up doing in their first few days.

Where Am I?

Okay, so, time to tell you guys about my placement, i.e. where it was decided I would work for my time as a CIR. I’ll start by saying I didn’t get any of the ones I put down as my preference (apparently that’s not very common, so try not to get your hopes up too much ^^;;)
So, where am I, you ask?