Here’s a photo diary of some meals I had in Japan. Unfortunately, there were a few times I couldn’t resist and just had to dig in!

1. Sukiyaki in Ginza, Tokyo. Lots of fresh chicken and vegetables cooked in front of you on a stove with a bit of soup base, served with miso soup and rice.

2. On Ishigaki island, Okinawa ramen accompanied with a plate of goya chanpuru and tofu.

3. Lunch included with our tour of Iriomote island. Rice, seaweed soup and four sample dishes. Tempura, goya chanpuru, egg, fish and pork.

4. Dinner at our resort (Furisaki) on Ishigaki island. Tried local Ishigaki dark beer but was quite bitter. Also ordered two different types of nihonshu.

5. The food consisted of an array of small dishes. Sushi, sashimi (raw fish) and beef-sushi (raw beef). The beef was very fresh. The final serving was slices of beef to be cooked on a hot coal grill followed by three tpyes of dessert.

Here comes the raw beef.

6. A very nice mix of Japanese and western food at the breakfast buffet in Okinawa. Here’s my very own mix. Probably one of the best breakfast buffets I’ve come across.

7. Stumbled across a cake shop in the middle of nowhere. Was hungry so got a sweet potato cake (I think). Very soft and not too sweet!

8. Dinner with traditional Okinawa music. Ate seafood salad, sushi and ishigaki beef on a hot plate.

9. Found time to enjoy taco rice (A American-Japanese mix) during my short tour of the tiny Taketomi island.

10. Back in Tokyo. Enjoying a very fresh bowl of sashimi (tuna and other sea creatures I don’t know the name of). You put the wasabi in a small dish, add soy sauce and mix, then pour it over the bowl. Rice is underneath.

11. OK, I didn’t actually eat this but what flavour is “Tofu” flavour? I thought it was flavourless? They also have “Soy sauce” flavoured Kit Kats!

12. More seafood for breakfast.

13. At the morning market in Hakodate, north Japan. I’ve always watched this go round in a sushi restaurant but never dared try Sea urchin. It’s actually not bad. Just tastes like sea food!

14. In Hakodate, you can pay about 500 Yen to catch your own squid from a large tank. Here it is in the bucket.

This is the squid being served up on a plate. You might not want to watch this if you’re squeamish.

Just as I wanted to eat it, the damn thing started moving! My number one rule when I first visited Japan was not to eat anything still moving. Ahhh!! I decided to just film from here onwards.

15. Salt based soup ramen is popular in Hakodate apparantly. This bowl of mushroom/fungi/bamboo ramen was huge but I enjoyed it with some gyoza.

16. Back in Tokyo. This was new. Don’t know what this is called but it’s rice with some toppings on top cooked in the pot. (Update: This is kamameshi “釜飯”)

17. Apart from one KFC, this was my only other meal where I enjoyed eating junk food. Kua Aina is a popular Hawaiian burger place.

18. Enjoying syabusyabu with friends. Individual pots of hot soup where you flick slices of meat into it to cook. Then dip in your choice of sauce and eat. When finished, add rice or noodles to fill up if not already full!

19. I love BBQs. This is a bit different to the English or Aussie type but still mouth watering and full of flavours. Order the meat and vegetables then grill it yourself right in front of you on the coal fired grill in the middle of the table.

I think I may need to do some exercise after all that.
ごちそうさまでした。

Writing-Vocabulary – 60/100
Listening – 87/100
Reading-Grammer – 126/200

Overall – 273/400 (68%)

I don’t know if I’ll be ready to take the new N3 exam this year. I’ve bought the text books but haven’t opened them yet so got a long way to go. Would be good to become fluent in Japanese.

Enclosed was my pension handbook that I had when I was in Japan and a “Notice of the Lump-sum Withdrawal Payment (Remittance)”. The icing on the cake was when I read the contents and noticed that the refund was five times larger than what I was expecting it to be, even after deduction of 20% income tax. Now I don’t feel so bad as when I left Japan and I was hit with one years worth of Resident’s tax in my last month – that left me feeling poor. Very poor.

The amount refunded is higher than expected because it appears I was contributing to an Employees’ Pension rather than the National Pension. I’m pretty sure I filled in the forms wrong (to claim the lump-sum), considering it was mostly Japanese and the English equivalent was pretty dire. At least the Japanese Pension agency knew what to do with it and has given me, what I would say, a fair refund of the contributions I had been making into a pension system I would probably never be able to receive any benefits from.

I did apply for this all the way back in July 2009 so it’s taken 6 months to process but I have a feeling that they waited until the new calendar year for the (resident) taxes to sort themselves out and to confirm my (non) residency status. The system is quite mysterious if you don’t understand Japanese.

For those in a similar situation, you should check if there is some agreement between Japan and your home country before applying for the lump-sum withdrawal. For example, your home country may allow those contributions you made in Japan to count towards your pension back home. As far as I know, the UK doesn’t have this agreement yet. The only agreement between UK and Japan is that I don’t need to be liable to taxes/national insurance contributions to both systems at the same time.

Now I just hope I gave them my correct bank details!

I got in contact with a few possible tutors when I left Japan but things didn’t really fit (schedules and location etc) so I took the self study route. I’ve been at it since September and have an idea what I need to know to pass. As it stands, exactly one month before my JLPT 3 exam, I’ve yet to start learning the Kanji! I’ve just covered the grammer points and I’m hoping I’ll have time to go over all of them again as well as do some past papers! Now that sounds like a challenge.

I did surprisingly well in last year’s JLPT 4 but I did have about one and a half year’s worth of tuition by the time I took that exam. This time I have about 3 months for double the difficulty. Anyway, I’ll try my best as always.

I’ve used various sets of text books in the past including Minna no Nihongo but my favourite is the Genki series from Japan Times:

If you’re just starting out in Japanese, I highly recommend starting with Genki I. There is a sufficient amount of English explanation for all grammer points as well as plenty of exercises. If you have a lot of money to spare or a Japanese friend who can buy these for you in Japan (much cheaper over there), I’d recommend getting the CDs, workbooks and answers too! If you’re attending a class, your teacher will probably have all the audio tracks and make copies of the workbook exercises as homework, so in that case you don’t need to get it. But for me, doing self-study, I feel they’ve helped me a lot.

CDs and workbooks:

Answers to the workbook exercises don’t seem to be available in the UK but they are on www.amazon.co.jp, so you’ll need to know someone in Japan to get that.

After the exam is over, I’ll be looking to move on from “elementary” Japanese to intermediate. Any suggestions for a good text book?

The iPhone 3GS is still working pretty well. Definitely feels faster than the previous versions. I ordered a hard case off ebay over a week ago but still waiting for it to arrive!