Job description: While wearing red lights across your chest and waist, wave pedestrians around roadworks which have already been made impenetrable by very sturdy plastic barriers.

The ideal candidate should be able to stand out in the crowd assisted with a bright light sabre,a blue suit and red flashing braces and belt. Potential applicats must be natural born leaders; able to guide people through a pre-made course which people already have no choice but to follow.

• Job title: Shoe collector.

Job desription: While bowing profusously at cutomers who enter a shop, wait patiently and apologetically while hungry customers remove their outdoor shoes in order for you to put them in a box a mere 10cm away from themseleves.

The ideal candidate will have the ability to admit his own mistakes, thus ensuring his customers that he is very sorry for taking their shoes and putting them neatly in a shoe rack next to the door. The energetic candidate will be able to move swiftly and aptly from the floor to shoulder height while showing stamina with his/her ability to override summer stenches.

• Job desricptions: General assistant to Mr. Green.

Job description: The General assistant to Mr. Green will ensure that he knows when Mr. Green will flash next. The assistant will encourage the public to follow this small man’s commands by standing in the middle of the road, on the zebra crossing 5 seconds before Mr. Green shouts his commands. At Mr. Green’s  word, the General Assistant will blow his whistle and wave his arms frenetically, thus ensuring that the public know when to cross the road.

The ideal candidate will be stern, unwavvering and be able to shoot looks of dissaproval at eager crossers.

• Job title: Crowd Pusher

Job description: In the busy commuting hours you will attempt to cramp as many people as physically possible onto a small metal bullet which shoots its way under Tokyo.

The ideal candidate will be forceful, strong and efficient. The ideal candidate will know how to deal with large groups of people and force them into doing what he sees best.

Commuting to work in a heat which pushes you back, presses on your lungs and causes your skin to glue to the air, you wonder if there was any point of dressing up for the day. Wet suits and limp hair which cover kohl blackened eyes, enter the muggy train. Umbrellas form puddles under the already wet, grit covered working shoes and fans slowly shift stale, hot air towards shiny, heated faces.

Arriving at school as a bedraggled drip, alongside a skool of students in transparent rain drenched shirts, we quickly spotted our shelter from rain.  However, defeated and wet and  having already accepting our soaked fate, we floated to our bait silently and slowly.

In lessons, information sludged from mouth to ear and handouts crimpled in the humid air. Paper exercise books stuck together and worksheets were carefully pulled apart in the wet, moist air. Water breathing worksheets were passed from one student to the next and erasers like sharp hooks tore weak papers in half.

Cool classes contrasted with the sticky heat of the outside world and when forced to leave the cool sanctuary filled with desks and chair, students were forced to re-enter the world of rain, grey clouds, heat and sweat. Wading in air and breathing in moisture,  we re-commenced our rainy journeys under the sky of an evil season pelting with avengance.

Hustling but safe.

Idiosyncratic yet the same.

Welcoming while    c a u t i o u s.

It starts off relatively “normal”. The students are put into teams and cheer each other on hoping to win this year’s sporting event. Teams are given colours, red, blue, orange, green etc and the creative students make beautiful posters to support their team members.

The team spirit during these school events is truly amazing and every student must participate in at least one event . The students are encouraging and kind, and even if you are the last kid to pull yourself around the dusty field after competing against the popular students of the track and field team, every one looks on, cheers and shouts “good luck!”

However, once the serious games have been battled out and won, a Primary school sports day seeps into the days events. Fun and games ensue, and chaos runs riot; three legged races take place, a giant tug of war is played on the sand, and students stand on each others shoulders, knocking their opponents coloured caps of of their heads. Students compete to drag as many bamboo sticks across the field into their zone before the time is up, and students throw coloured balls into baskets, cheering if they succeeded to throw the most into the goal.

I’ve been lucky enough to see three sports day in the short time which I have been here and without a doubt, sports day in Japan is a lot of fun, and a far cry from the sports day which I witnessed during my five years at secondary school. Sitting in the heat, watching the real athletes compete, sports day was a day when we could sit, relax and chat with our friends oblivious to what events were really unfolding before our uninterested eyes. But here in Japan, with a strong focus on team spirit, all the students are willing to try, compete for their team and cheer on their members until all tasks are complete.

While the first years made flags and the second years made poster, the third years, the oldest and the students about to graduate get to leave their mark and dance for the school. Having made their own outfits and choreographed their own dance based on the colour and theme painted on the posters, 18 year old boys and girls dance ans smile, bathing in the positive atmosphere of their friendly and loved school! Some were dressed as yellow flowers or green Peter Pans and others as red reindeer, Pink Panther or dark demons. In bright costumes and in the sweltering heat, no one complained, moaned or sighed and, doing what no awkward British teeanager would ever do in front of his peers, all the team members danced together happily and filled the air

with music, beats, fun and happiness.

If life is a journey, as the saying goes, what is it that makes us stop, look and and actually see the world for what it is?

Eternally living in your home country has many advantages: you will rarely have linguistic problems as you continue on the highway of life. A culture which you understand and a developed mentality which dovetails with social norms is packed in the boot. And a family nearby as your AA card should you ever break down all make the journey a little bit easier and less stressful then it otherwise would be! It is, however, EASY, it makes sense and isn’t questioned, new routes don’t need to be planned and the naviagtion system is set…..but where is the fun? Where is the journey!?

Having passed a year in a city which offers bright lights, takoyaki (octupus balls), Okonomiyaki and a singsongy, warming dialect, Osaka has never once become ”familiar”. The journey has never stopped. As I sit in my living room looking out at the flashing lights of an oval shaped ferris wheel, I wonder what more this food loving city can feed me. From a ride in a beautiful egg timer shaped building,  to endless drinks which a nomihodai (drink all you can) allows, Osaka allows you the chance to meet the small windy roads and beautiful roofed Japan splashed across postcards. Osaka allos you to access convenient trains where disembarkation gives you the chance to stroke deer outside famous wooden temples and the chance to view i(n it’s natural surroundings), the ”sleeper” on the train! 

One year’s journey has come to a halt and as I continue to drive to point B (destination unknown) I hope that I will find more time to stop, re-fuel and show you the views I have had the luxury to pass. Should I forget to have that all important coffee break, rest and stretch please let me know and I will gladly rest, inform you of my route and ask you to help me plan the next part of my journey.

Pictures of the adventure that was Taiwan!

Embarking on our hiking adventures in Taroko Gorge we realised that we had left behind one vital piece of equipment:  a back-pack! Great!!!

So, what has my pink leather handbag experienced? Travelling to lands and heights that no handbag has been to before I dragged my girly companion up into the clouds in Taiwan to view a mysterious pond surrounded by green lush vegetation. Carrying my water, bamboo rice, guava and camera my bag and I perched in the long grass gazing at the secluded beauty which would have once been home to aboriginal tribes. Giving our legs a longed for rest after a steep hike of over 2000 metres we ventured (me and my pink friend and Felicity and her purple one) a little further to view settlements left by the Japanese during the occupation.

Walking in the clouds, far away from civilisation we carried on walking as the rain began to fall in the humid clouds. Reaching the white, small brick houses we saw remains of a fridges, beds and electrical appliances. An eerie feeling descended upon us as we gazed upon this secluded ghost hamlet and we wondered how the Japanese succeeded in hauling these heavy goods to the top of a steep mountain. Venturing forward to see what the next house had in store we saw a sight which made us turn, walk back down the mountain, briskly but quietly.

Over 2000metres high in the sky, we found a bed, a mattress, water, magazines; signs of inahibtation in extreme weather. Too many films made me presume the worse, who decided to live up here and why? After a joint decision Felicity and I decided that we had seen enough, reached the peak and should head down but neither of us mentioned the bed, the signs of life in the misty surroundings. Walking back, handbag securly fastened under my shoulder we headed down till Felicity had declared safety at what was the old settlement of a tribe. Still not at ease I declared I was no longer scared of someone following us but scared os who we may meet on the way down: what goes down comes up no? Say we meet the dweeler on his way back “home”. Calming down and realising that yes, I shouldn’t assume that my life is a film, haunted by memories of those such as “The wrong turn” (after all, we hadn’t yet died hitchiking) I calmed down and we decided our spot for our picnic. Arriving at our decideed there he was, the man who was going to kill us, the man who was going to hack us up on the top of a mountain where no body knew where we were. No phone, no help, no one to hear us scream. There he was, standing there with a sythe! Turning aroud he began speaking to us, talking and starring, unable to understand, his words were just sounds falling on confused ears. “Sorry, we don’t understand, do you speak English?” (Why are you holding a sythe?) blank stare, incomprehensible words, forming, floating, flying through the clouds. “English?” No…..”Japanese? Nihongo o shabemasuka?” and there it was, the magic word, the phrase that got two English girls on the top of a Taiwanese mountain speaking to a man in Japanese.

Far from death on a mountain the 18th March 2008, Felicity, our handbags and I hiked, got scared, spoke Japanese and like monkeys, smashed open our food on a rock to get to the yummy contents inside some bamboo.

Really, who said you shouldn’t talk to strangers?

So, what happens when two young girls decide to sleep in a house with three male strangers they have never met before and only seen on the interent…DEATH,MURDER, BLOOD? What happens when these two girls jump in a black car with a young man speeding to work…SLAUGHTER, RAPE? What happens when these two foreigners who don’t speak a word of the country’s language eat the food given to them by the old lady in the backseat of a car….really didn’t Snow White teach us not to eat the poisoned innocent looking fruit?

Travelling in a country with our clothes strapped to our back, a few coins in our purse and a sense of adventure, we avoided becoming a weeping mess even if we were relying on nothing but ”the kindness of strangers”. And far from being carried away, destroyed,  crazy or dead my love for humanity has only increased, the desire to help those in need grown and faith in the world and gone from nothing to indestructible.

Maybe if we paid less attention to the media, more to our instincts and looked at the individual rather than thinking of the bad apple the world would be a safer place, happier and fun