The next stop on our tour of Japan was Kyoto, home of The Emperor and Capitol of Japan for much of Japan's History. During the period when the Shoguns where in Control The emperor would live hear doing to a greater or lesser extent what the Shogun told him to. As he had no real ruling to do the Emperor and his court spent much of their time developing art and finding new ways to be elegant and refined, often on a budget if the Shogun was displeased or short of cash. Kyoto has suffered much less than many Japanese cities [View Full Entry]

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Having arrived in Shimonseki from China you are left in no doubt that you have moved from one country to anther, Chinese cites generally have a fairly lacks approach to rubbish there are many people employed as street cleaners however these are needed as the common approach to rubbish is to drop it in the street and hope someone else picks it up. Not so in Japan streets are all slightly worryingly immaculate another new trend was the re discovery of the weekend. In China shops are almost universally open 7 days a week however our first day in Japan was [View Full Entry]

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We finally set out on our travels to Japan on 9th after having packed up house in Tai’an and sent everything we didn’t need for travelling on to Nanjing. (This involved quite an involved and baroque session at the Post Office, and we are hugely grateful to Emma, Jack and Gene for their interpretation and help with sewing up the postbags.) We waved goodbye to everyone, were advised by all our students one last time to wrap up warm so as not to catch cold, Emma gave Amy a pack of tissues for the journey, and off we went. Our first [View Full Entry]

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This was our first time in a non Christmas celebrating country and it was very odd. Christmas is noticed in China, shops are decorated with Christmas trees and tinsel although no mention of the Christmas story or any Christian links is made, it is noticed a bit by Students and young people who will often give each other presents, especially a special boy or girl, the Chinese government has officially declared the sending of Christmas cards to be a waste of resources although the are available if you look for them. For most Chinese Christmas day is a normal working day, [View Full Entry]

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Happy Christmas to Everyone We have had a very happy if very Chinese Christmas in Tai'an More details to follow but sleepy and must go to bed now. Best Wishes for Christmas and the new year Amy and Chris [View Full Entry]

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We decided to go to Jinan to do some Christmas shopping. First mission: Tai'an train station to buy a ticket. There are six queues at the ticket office, one for each window. Which window to choose? There's a sign for each one. Any idea what it says? None at all. Let's chance it then. While waiting we had a chance to bend our schoolchild Chinese around Buying a Ticket, a topic our textbook has not yet covered. This is what we cobbled together: 'Hello. We like go Jinan. Today morning. Two people. Thank you.' Ni3 hao3. Wo3men yao4 qu4 Ji4nan2. Jin1tian1 [View Full Entry]

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Taishan Mountain This weekend we finally managed to climb Taishan, the large 4000ft mountain which we are staying under. Regular readers will know we had been to the top of the mountain on National Day by bus and cable car although due to bad weather we were not really able to see anything at all. Our trip this time was quite different; the weather was cool and a little misty. We started from the main eastern entrance on our steady climb. Our friend Emanuel, another foreign English teacher also came with us. Emanuel’s parents are from Hong Kong he was born [View Full Entry]

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Qufu- November 4th This weekend we went to Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. Today it’s a wonderfully dilapidated mansion in the flat, flat plains of the Chinese countryside. We travelled south for about an hour in a very plush modern bus to get to Qufu and were dropped off by a run of shops on a rural road. This bus did not go into the town of Qufu so we had to get a taxi the rest of the way past herds of meandering goats. Once in the main town larger modern buildings sprang up as well as a very large [View Full Entry]

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We've been considering over the last couple of weeks: should we request to teach the second semester here, or another semester at another institution? Our current contract only runs until the end of December and six months is a long time to travel without any paid employment or routine so we'd like to do either one, but which? On the one hand, Tai'an is just beginning to feel nicely homely, and if we decide to move on it means we're halfway through our time here already, which is a bit alarming. We're getting to know and like a lot of people [View Full Entry]

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Holiday week falls disconcertingly early. We were just getting settled in, our first year students had just finished their mandatory two-week military training (seems to consists mostly of learning the basics of marching, popular military songs, and a little camping on the side) and had had their first week of actual classes, and then there's a holiday and it all stops for a week. Odd. So we went to Qingdao. Qingdao is a seaside city about 6 hours' train journey from Tai'an- quite a few of our students come from there. In fact, I did a quick poll of two of [View Full Entry]

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