Day 23: If You Want to Eat 2000 Dead Animals....

I left you last night just before heading to my 3rd goodbye enkai. Before I introduced you to one of the first words I ever learnt in Japanese: NOMIHOUDAI (飲み放題). Nomihoudai means all you can drink and it is generally what you get at big parties in Japan and it is going to be one of the things I miss about Japan. That said I do understand the limitations there would be in the west. Mostly that after the first night the restaurant would go under.

That is unless they do decide to give the size of glasses that they give you in at a Japanese all you can drink.

Anyone who knows me knows that I find the best form of size measurement is comparing things to my head

Isn't he so cute and small

So we ate, drank and were generally very merry. I am sure you have all heard that rice is great if you want to eat 2000 of something. What you haven't heard is that SHIRASU is great if you want to eat 2000 animals. SHIRASU is this wondrous pizza topping:

It was actually really delicious

Shirasu in English is Whitebait or just tiny sardines. Now these are great as I say if you want to eat 2000 of something, or more to my taste, want to hold more dead things than you have ever held before. As you can see:

Each time the most dead things I have ever held, I decided to stop after 4 packs before I went mad with power

Moving on....,the food was pretty good and then half way though Kelsey and I gave speeches in Japanese. I being the organised man I am, spent the afternoon writing my speech, typed it up and printed it out. I then proceeded to leave that printed out speech in my apartment when I left to go to my enkai.

Fortunately we arrived early and I managed to recall about 90% of it from memory and gave a not terrible speech about how I will miss Japan and my friends in my evening class. Then we received some pretty awesome leavers presents.

This turns out to be the first time I have ever received flowers as a gift, Japan is still giving me firsts

I have been so lucky with my evening class, they were all such a bunch of lovely people and they really have all become my friends. Some of them took me on trips around Japan and others simply were my window to understanding life in Japan. They were always open, kind and honest and really allowed me to know Japan. I will never forget them and as I told them last night, they are always welcome to visit me in the UK any time they want.

Oh and they also taught me that saying "My house is your house" in Japanese doesn't make any sense.

That was last night, today I had an interview, this is a good thing, but also rather confusing because I'm relieved that I might have a Job but terrified at having to do a Skype interview for the first time.

I have found leaving Japan to be just as terrifying as coming here was, but for different reasons. Coming here I was worried about not knowing the language or the culture, not having friends and just generally how I would survive being completely alone and not understanding anything. As you can tell, I survived.

Returning home is a different fear. When I came to Japan I had a job, a home and a life pretty much set out before me. I may not have been able to tell the difference between cat food and human food but I knew I would have a job and a roof over my head. Coming home I know I can deal with the day to day stuff, but where and how I will be living I don't know. So just having a job interview is relieving as hopefully the fears of being homeless and jobless can soon be put to rest.

Turns out that even in Japan cat food pretty much just look like cat food anywhere

I felt the interview went well and hopefully I will hear back soon, but either way it's promising and helpful to know I can get to the interview stage. Oh, and of course, because Japan is always going to make me seem like a bit of a weirdo 2 things happened that would be fine in Japan but in an interview make me look a bit crazy.

1st- I was talking, made a mistake then said "sumimasen" the Japanese for sorry, I then corrected myself and got a bit flustered about looking weird, which of course, made me look weird.

2nd- I don't know how many times it happened but as I was saying goodbye I realised I was bowing like crazy, I'm sure I bowed loads of times in the interview and didn't even notice.

I just hope that they didn't end the interview and then say, "Oh he was a great candidate and he would be great for the job, but he mumbles to himself and bows like he has a problem. Nah lets just get someone else."