I get quite a few emails from people who are considering going on the Project Trust Tokyo project, and up to now I’ve relied on just emailing them back or referring them to the PT site or web forum, which is a great resource. However my time to reply to emails is becoming more and more scarce, so I thought I should write a quick FAQ I can refer people to. If I’ve referred you here, have a read and if there are still questions you want to ask, get in contact.

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OK, this is a scary post. Matt and I just waved off this year’s volunteers, they fly back home to the UK today and another set of volunteers come in September.

I remember leaving last year. I just need to look at my post about it to remember everything. The flat is as clean as it was when we left last year, all the goodbyes have been said, the copious amount of bye-bye alcohol consumed… it’s like stepping back in time a year. Only without the guy from Back To The Future.

But of course, this has bad implications. Rather than being the super cool ‘Last Year’s Volunteers’, we have turned into the much worse ‘Volunteers from two years ago’, or at least we will in a few weeks. Furthermore, the next set of volunteers have a ‘Mike’ as well, the third in three years, so I turn from ‘Old Mike’ into ‘Oldest Mike’. 古くなりたくない！

But of course, there’s good news too. Meeting the new volunteers will be exciting, and of course I’m still in Japan until September 25th of this year so I still have plenty of time to explore. Matt is here for a year for study so it really, really is just like the good old days. Except we’re a little taller, a little poorer, and even more sunburnt.

(For those wondering ‘why is he writing all this nonsense, where did my funny go?!‘, I’ll do a new Translation Station in a day or two…)

Back on August 13th, 2007 I went, for the second time, to Yokohama, the city next to Tokyo. Sadly I never wrote a blog update about it as it was really just a general visit. But what I shamefully forgot to write about was the graffiti that I took a few photographs of whilst I was there. So now, just nine months late, here are a few of the shots I took. All eight photos are available here. I also hereby promise to return and take more photos of the awesome graffiti of Japan and actually blog about it within the same year!

This was the artwork that caught my eye and drew me into walking down the street alongside the station where all the rest of the artwork was, so in a way this little guy is responsible for this blog post. Don’t tell him it’s over half a year late though, he’d probably get me with that scythe…

This was probably the most shocking picture on the wall, and when you consider it was done by one person as a hobby it’s pretty amazing.

Of course it’s not all doom and gloom in Yokohama – here we have a rendering of what looks like some sort of secret cult’s logo mixed with a Pink Floyd album cover, which is nice. It’s quite suprising how neat the artwork is laid out – unlike England nobody draws over anyone else’s work – each piece ends neatly so the next artist can begin. Very cool.

Finally we have this guy. One of the biggest pieces of work along the wall, it sort of shows you exactly what the place I was walking down was like – very dark and virtually impossible to spot from the main streets. It was awesome, though, I just wish I’d gone when the guys were painting so I could see them at work. Nevermind.

So there you go. I took eight shots in all and the other four, as well as these four in bigger sizes, are available here, so do go have a look. If anyone wants them in a huge size get in contact with me and I can email them out to you.

I promise I’ll head back in the summer and find these works again, as well as loads of new ones, and do a good update to do them a bit of justice!

Last night was the Sheffield University Japan Society Halloween party. I was going to write a full update about it, but the pictures are far too embarrasing. Well, I might put one at the end if you’re really lucky…

In the meantime, I wanted to talk about the new volunteers in Japan. Last year there were four of us – myself and Matt in Tokyo and Nate and Rolf in Hokkaido. I’m not sure if that’s the same arrangement this year, but I’ve been in contact with the two guys in Tokyo and the two in Hokkaido, so I am assuming it’s the same sort of thing.

As you may or may not know, Japan Is Doomed was the first year long volunteer blog from Japan of it’s kind. Nate had one too, but I got started first. I’m like Britney to his Christina. Except I’ve not shaved all my hair off or gone berserk (yet). I’d like to think I’ve started something of a trend – and considering all four of the current volunteers have blogs, I’d say it’s working. Little do they know they owe me £10,000 each in royalties…

I’m going to talk about each of the blogs. In the interest of me being lazy fairness, I’ll do them in alphabetical order. So, without further ado;

Craig’s Craig-San Japan! (Hokkaido)
Great read, although this blog needs way more hilariously embarrassing photos, just incase I ever meet Craig. I need to have enough ammunition for when he reminds me of those horrific Santa photos…

I loved his first blog post, about the “rushed injection of insane” that everyone feels when arriving. It sums up exactly how we felt a year ago, more or less.

Tom’s Japan Exile (Hokkaido)
Tom writes an insane amount of content on a great basis, which is excellent because it means I can read it instead of studying. Wait, that’s a terrible thing! Tom you are stopping me from passing my course! You fiend!

Since Toya, the village in Hokkaido where Tom and Craig live, is going to be hosting the G8 summit in 2008 (no, really), Tom and Craig have to do media training. They’re going to get into the papers more than Matt and I did though. Curses!

Mike’s Touring Tokyo (Tokyo)
This man has the best name of the four volunteers. He has also cornered the market in pretty photos of Tokyo, which can be quite challenging as it’s all huge skyscrapers and concrete.

His post about his trip to Yokohama, which reminded me a lot of my post on the same topic, was a great read and really puts mine in perspective.

Ben’s Transform To Tokyo (Tokyo)
Again, reading this blog is kind of difficult for me, because it just brings back all the great times I had last year, and frankly someone else having them now is just not fair. My plan to sneak to Japan in some sort of complex and hilarious manner involving a briefcase, a giant snake and a Chinchilla will be put into action soon because this is torture.

Ben wrote about the introduction to Tokyo way better than I did, so go read that.

So there you are. A new generation of bloggers. I feel like an old man already. If only they made some sort of online zimmerframe, so I could carefully plod my way from “buying-old-shoes.com” to “going-for-a-nice-afternoon-nap.org” at my own leisurely pace. All this wireless broadband Internet nonsense is madness, I say. Madness!

Oh, and here’s your embarrasing Halloween picture. Thanks to Ben for taking it and Kanako for sending me it.

Darren may have the hair, and Kanako may be well dressed, but I’m the one going to jail for murder! Haha!

I’m sitting in my room at my university accommodation. I’ve finished my study for the night, but it’s only 9.45 so I can’t really climb into the giant slab of rock that is called a “bed” around here. So with time to kill, I decide to look over some of the old posts on this blog. Remember some of the best times of my gap year. Of course, whilst there’s those great memories which I love looking back over, there’s also a sense of longing. God how I want to go back there again. Whilst I do have plans to do that in the summer (more information in a later post when it’s available), it really is kind of hard to just read my old posts over and over. I feel now like I failed to get across some of the stuff I experienced properly. So I want to stave off the nostalgia attack I’m having with a few photos that I “forgot” to post over the last year, and try to dredge up a few memories about why they exist, what they mean, and why I never posted them.

The first one I want to post is one of the oldest photographs I have. Actually, it was the very first photo I took in Japan, taken on the 9th of September, my first day in Japan. The reason I never posted it is because it looks rubbish. But I think it has a lot of significance. Sadly, the camera I took it with was not very powerful, and a result it’s a blur, and it was bright blue. I’ve made it black and white here and done what I could to restore it.

We were on our way from Narita airport to a hotel where we would meet the volunteers taking us on our tour of Tokyo. I remember listening to the two Japanese people on the seats near me speaking fluent Japanese, and knowing the tiny amount I’d picked up in a few night classes wasn’t going to cut it here. I remember trying Pocari Sweat, a Japanese soft drink somewhat like Lucozade but not fizzy, for the first time. I also remember thinking “Wheeeeeeeeeeee! I’m in Japaaaaaaaan!” although the cruel working hours I started just three days later quickly beat that feeling out of me…

…nah, only kidding. I loved it.

Next up is a photo I took at Leon’s Birthday party. Leon, who beat me up, took me to see the racing and also runs a great Japan related forum and blog, was one of my closest friends in Japan.

The lady is his wife, Saori, who shared the birthday. They were some of my closest friends in Japan, and I owe them an awful lot of thanks and beer. If I can ever coax them over to England I’ll get them incredibly drunk. Then we’re even!

I wanted to finish this update with a photo from what I think was my favourite day of the entire year – the school sports day. I wrote a lot of updates about it, but I never posted this photo;

Again it’s not a great photo but it does sum up the entire gap year. I have absolutely no idea what is going on here. None of the people in the photo have any any idea what is going on. It’s a lot of people doing a lot of things in a very small space. Furthermore, every time I look at this photo my brain goes “Oh not again” and shuts down until I stop thinking about it. Just like the good old days.

So there you are. Three photos from the Mike archives. Who knows, I might do another post like this again in the future, the next time I get enough free time to do so. About 2011, then…