Ultimate Crumpet

Let me start by saying I’m sorry for the sudden disappearance. Ultimate Crumpet is back now and you can all expect a number of updates throughout this week. For the last few weeks I have been truly snowed under with work (writing a 90 min speech about The Beatles, writing and translating articles for a CIR newsletter, preparing materials and interpreting for foreign delegates visiting Shimane and organising my first official events. All of this has seen me sitting at my desk from morning til late afternoon staring directly into a laptop screen and tapping away at a keyboard for hours on end. This then obviously resulted in my wanting to stay well clear of my computer when I got home from work and hence a general absence from the world of information technology! Anyway – The work load has been intense and my willpower/motivation was tested but I have today just said sayonara to the last of the work so now I am FREE!    In the wise words of Hiro Nakamura, “YATTA!”

It has been a while since the first instalment of Home for the Holiday and almost 2 months since I was actually there so a lot more has happened between the holidays and now. I hope to fill you in on most of this but please bear with me, as it will take some time for events to catch up to date. I will keep the rest of this post relatively brief and will get back on track with Japan/JET Programme related content.

I talked last time about how food was a major highlight of my time back at home and just reading back over the last post has got me really craving some good ol’ british cooking. Hmmmm…

I am getting off the point already! This is the grip that food holds over me!

So after being in Liverpool for a good week or so and spending Christmas with the family and enjoying all the perks of being home, I made the trek over to London to spend a few days down south in the capital. Whilst I was there I got to see Avenue Q in the theatre (a very adult-oriented and themed skit on Sesame Street), which was really enjoyable. I did not know what to expect when going in there but the whole thing was superbly executed and the crazy mix of nostalgia and adult humour hits you like a bulldozer from the get go. There are muppets on stage accompanied by their puppeteers but after the first five minutes you begin to forget that there are even people controlling the puppets and are too busy laughing to focus on anything else. With songs like “Everyone is a little bit racist” and “The Internet is for Porn” – how can you go wrong? Highly recommended!

I headed back to Liverpool just after new years for another week spent at home before heading back to Japan. During that last week there is really no story to be told! I was mainly indoors – sleeping, eating and generally relaxing and that  was just what I wanted to do. Of course I popped into Liverpool town centre a few times and did some shopping etc but relaxation was the mission and I must say mission accomplished!

The time to head back to Japan and back to work eventually rolled around and I flew back Manchester and arrived in Osaka at around midday on the 9^th. Five hours after touching down in Japan, I was in Osaka Castle Hall standing in a huge arena waiting for Muse to take the stage. That’s right – I went to a gig straight from getting off the plane! I was incredibly jet-lagged and I kept falling asleep every time I sat down but once Muse took the stage then all traces of tiredness and jetlag disappeared from me and I was sucked into the sheer electric excitement of the crowd. I have been to a fair number of gigs in Japan and it is very rarely that I see a crowd looking so alive! The entire hall was on their feet, including all the people who had tickets for the balcony seats. Before Muse started there was a arena-wide Mexican wave sweeping around and I don’t think a single seat was in use for the entirety of the gig. Muse were on tour for their latest album “The Resistance” but played a healthy mix of new and classic songs. I have to give credit to the sound and lighting crew for the incredible show they put on to support muse. Behind every great band is a whole bunch of unacknowledged and unknown folks that work incredibly hard to make that band great!

That just about sums up my lovely time at home, I know I missed out huge chunks and details but it really is time that I move on and actually do some explaining about the place I am now living and working in! Thanks to all that stuck around during my absence – you’re dedication shall be rewarded with many a silly picture and videos in the near future! For now I shall say GOOD NIGHT!

Home.

I’ve been using the word a lot over the last few weeks but for very good reason – that is where I was over the Christmas and New Year period. At Home! I never truly appreciated how great it is be at there until I had been separated from it for an extended period of time. I lived away from home when I was at university, popping back every couple of months for some delicious home cooking and some quality time spent melting into the sofa in front of the television and I did pretty much exactly the same this time around after heading back from Japan.  The phrase “home is where the heart is” really rang true when I with my family and the better half Nelle Macbeth over the holidays. This time around, I had been in Japan for little under 5 months but stepping back through the front door back in Liverpool, it honestly felt like no time had passed at all.  It seemed like I had only just popped around the corner to the shops and hadn’t even left the town, let alone the country and I was surprised at how immediate readjustment to life back at home really was.

My amazing granddad Tony passed away a few months ago whilst I was in Japan and I was determined to spend Christmas with my family this year as it has always been a time when all my family come together and I could not spend this time apart from them, especially so this year. My biggest concern with going home was not the cost but if I would be able to get the time off work. With my current job I find myself being asked to work at numerous events on weekends and in the evenings (outside of usual work hours) and for working these I can claim time in lieu or daikyu to take time off during usual work days. Thanks to a week long interpreting gig I did in November, I had managed to rack up around 5 full days worth of daikyu and combining this Japanese national holidays and a smidgen of annual paid leave (nenkyu), I was able to spend a full 3 weeks back in England over Christmas and New Year – and I enjoyed every minute of it!

If I had to describe my experience back at home in one word, It most certainly would be – foodalicous. What? That’s not a word? It most certainly is! I think you”ll find in the dictionary between fandabadozy and foxymoron. I work quite closely with another bloke from England in Matsue, my ALT counterpart PA Rob, and for the last month or so we were discussing what should be my first meal when I get back to England. For those of you that don’t happen to know both Rob and I, you should know that according to real scientific research carried out by real scientists in a laboratory where experiments of a scientific nature are carried out scientifically – 98% of our intensive discussions revolve around food and the consumption of said food. You’ve been scienced! Anyhoo – It was a toss up between a Full English Breakfast or a Roast Dinner. Both are equally delicious in their own amazing ways but my first meal was completely unexpected but trumps both of them. As I stepped through the door and walked into the kitchen, a full pan of Scouse (a type of stew and THE dish of Liverpool) was waiting for me along with the customary mountain of white bread waiting to be buttered up and dunked in.  It was the perfect thing to shake off any post-flight grogginess. Thanks mum!

Food was a major theme across my time back in England and most of my time in England was spent eating or at least considering what to eat next.

This is what happens when you lose control when making toast.

As you can see, I got my desired breakfast in the end when I cooked this beast (click for full size image). The Full English. Fry-Up. The Big Boys Breakfast. The Works. Whatever you want to call it, it was bloody delicious. Funnily enough when I started cooking it, I only wanted a couple slices of toast but it seemed to escalate and I lost control and ended up with this bad boy.

I think I will stop the food talk there because:

1)    It is saddening me that I have extremely poor access to the ingredients to make this food and therefore making it close to impossible to recreate accurately here in Japan.

2)    I don’t think I can hold your attention much more with my textual drooling over food that has long since been digested.

3)    There are many other, more interesting things to be said and shall be said in the next edition of Home for the Holidays: Part Two – The Turkey Strikes Back!

I shall depart by bestowing upon you a final fun food fact – Foodalicious may be the word to describe my holiday back at home but “Fattening” was a very close second. I amazingly managed to gain an extra 5 kilograms (just under a stone) during my time home but – I don’t regret a single minute of it!

Hello and welcome to Ultimate Crumpet! Allow me to introduce myself – my name is Jason and I will be your guide during your stay here.  I’m a 22-year-old Englishman who graduated from Sheffield University last year with a BA in Japanese Studies. Nice to meet you!

I’m currently residing in Japan – specifically Matsue, Shimane Prefecture, working as a Co-ordinator for International Relations (known simply as a CIR) and Prefectural Advisor (PA) on the Japanese Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme.  You may have noticed that the JET programme has a whole wealth of abbreviations that are commonly used amongst its participants and will be used here on this blog too. Here’s a very brief guide to some of the more common JET (and therefore Ultimate Crumpet) abbreviations:

JET/JET Programme – Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme

ALT – Assistant Language Teacher

CIR – Coordinator for International Relations

PA – Prefectural Advisor

JTE – Japanese Teacher of English

CO – Contracting Organisation

PC – Programme Coordinator
Phew! There are a bunch of others floating about within JET but these are the most commonly used so try to keep them in mind! I must admit when I first arrived in Japan on the JET programme and thrust into the 3 day crash course Tokyo orientation before being sent off to our various contracting organisations, these abbreviations were being used constantly and I felt extremely confused and out of the loop but you soon get used to it.

Now that is out of the way, what exactly is Ultimate Crumpet and how on earth can a crumpet be ultimate?

Ultimate Crumpet is simply the title of this blog and (sadly) completely unrelated to the actually content you will find here. This is a blog from a current CIR on the JET programme and aims to provide an insight into an individual’s work and social life in Japan. I sincerely hope that what you will find here may prove to be useful and informative source for insider information about life on the JET programme and life abroad in Japan.

Moreover, I created this blog as a way of letting family and friends back at home see exactly what I am up to here as I am generally pretty hopeless at keeping in touch with everyone on a regular basis.  For this reason, not all posts will be work or JET related but merely some random info into recent events. Credit for the design of the ultimate crumpet you can see at the top of this page goes to the lovely Nelle Macbeth.

I will also be posting photographs and videos from my life here regularly to help further illustrate and support what I write as I have no confidence in my own writing and descriptive abilities! Links to my photo albums/video channel can be found in the links column.

If you are here hoping to find the recipe for the ultimate and tastiest crumpet, I can tell you that now that a full blog is rather unnecessary – Just slap some butter and jam on there! Simple.

I hope that you enjoy reading this blog – Please stick around and do try the complementary virtual crumpets on offer. All comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thank you and farewell for now!