Working 9 till 5! (well more like 6.30-18.30)

My second stint at work ran much more smoothly than the first. Everyobdoy knew what they were doing and we had fixed the schedule so all of the kids now got 40 minutes in the sea rather than 10 – also the sea was actually deep, like swimming deep, for the first time!

It is safe to say that the best thing about work is the team. My beach flag team, my water 02 team, the whole water team and the offsite team. All of them are amazing and are why my jamboree experience has been so amazing. We have team ice cream, team sauna, team tea (dinner), team mafia, team parties and team outings. It’s incredible to meet so many lovely people from all over the world; Brazil, Japan, Sweden, Australia, Germany and Finland to name but a few. Working with them really gave me the opportunity to learn about other cultures and discover how, despite many differences, we are all unbelievably similar – which is why we got on so well!

There have been many evening activities which have been such great fun. One evening the Scottish held a ceilidh in the Eastern Hub which was AMAZING. It was so cool to see people from all over the world struggling to follow the instructions (shouted in an incredibly Scottish accent) and lovely to see them succeed. It has to be one of the largest ceilidhs I have had the pleasure of attending and definitely the one where I was most scared of being trampled to death by the throngs of eager dancers!

Most evenings we just hung out in the food courts and attended whichever countries party was going on there. The music was normally pretty good, but it was hard to dance like a crazy when on a dry site! However, the Italian party was appallingly DJ’d (he managed to somehow butcher both Queen and Uptown Funk) and so we left and went to have a DMC under the stars by the sea wall.

These late evening added up and I was beginning to get pretty tired. Still, when I learnt the Japanese IST needed help setting up earlier in the morning I volunteered to leave at 6.30AM and go help them. This did come with perks as they took us to a restaurant after where we could have chocolate cake, chips, and unlimited hot and cold drinks! It was really nice to chat to the Japanese more, all of them were very keen to practice their English and one got really emotional when we told him how good his English was. This was mainly because early in that day an English leader had told him his English was terrible which really upset him so he said he was proud to hear that we thought his English was fantastic – much better than my Japanese anyway!

On the last day of work the organisers of the Offsite program threw us a surprise work party. There were some really cute speeches and I got a present of a Japanese Jamboree t-shirt from one of my new Japanese IST friends. We also played a watermelon piñata game which was great fun and the watermelon was very tasty once we managed to break into it.

Working the Jamboree has been one of the best experiences of my life, and despite being knackered I would do it all over again in an instant – bring on North America 2019!

Chilled Out and Cultural

My first day off since starting work and I planned to have a lazy day and go swimming in the pool. Turns out that the Jamboree don’t hire the pool out so we can’t use it which is annoying. Instead I went to the supermarket and bought some kiwis – I’ve been missing proper fruit! I also bought a solar charger in the hopes that I could stop queuing for the charging tent but it turns out it’s too hot for them here! How daft is that?

Luckily I found some spare sockets in the food hall so sat and caught up with my blog for a bit and charged all my gizmos. I lacked energy to do anything amazing so it was nice when Becca found me as we could catch up and chat about our respective jobs – a zero energy task!

Later that day I was booked onto the hot springs tour which was amazing. I was a bit anxious I didn’t know anyone else that was going but I think that turned out to be a good thing seeing as you had to go stark naked. It was good fun though and there were lots of different pools from boiling to cold, a sauna, a tiny electric shock pool, some monkey bars and an outdoor waterfall pool. What was really touching was the Japanese ladies there who on seeing by sunburnt shoulders got really concerned and starting pouring cold water on them and patting them. One of them got me out of the pool and pulled me over to her station where she got out some ointment and an exfoliating pad and starting scrubbing me all over. She kept getting me to feel her skin to see how soft it was and telling me that doing all this would make my skin as soft – at least I think that was what she was saying, it was all in Japanese.

It was one of the ladies who came to the hot springs birthday and so we all went to the bar near the pool and had a round of drinks. It was nice to meet more new people even though now all I can thin when I see them is… I’ve seen you naked…

On my second day off me and Becca queued up early for the World Scout Shop and were the second people inside. I bought some souvenirs for myself and a house warming present for my brother, Michael and his girlfriend Sam. After we headed over to the subcamp area with Alex to see Unit 53 from West Lancs. We joined in the activities and had some of their ‘Hunter’s Hotpot’ and built a Blackpool Tower our of straws and blu tack. We then wandered around the subcamps trying lots of different food, from Brazilian banana sweets to Mexican chilli lollipops to Canadian maple syrup pancakes! I was stuffed. It really is amazing how many different cultures you have such easy access to!

The best thing was trying to find all of the Eastern European countries we had visited on our trip two years ago and getting a photo with all of the flags (Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary). Serbia was impossible to find but mainly because we forgot what the flag looked like and were looking for the wrong one for the majority of the time – we eventually googled the flag and managed to find their camp! I also finally managed to wangle myself a Hungarian necker!

After our long walk we refreshed ourselves with some pringles and coke zero at the supermarket and then headed to the culture ceremony at the arena. This ceremony was much better than the opening ceremony. There was a stunt jet pilot who performed all sorts of wacky manoeuvres and drew the Jamboree logo in the sky; the voice actress of the main character in the new pokemon series; lots of different singers and bands as well as speeches from the Crown Prince and the Prime Minister of Japan.

A quick late dinner and I headed over to Offsite HQ for a work meeting. We were informed that due to the tides some units may not be able to get into the sea during their water module slot and were asked to think of fun alternative. Someone suggested Ninja and we had an example game. The Japanese IST loved it and insisted on playing it over and over again – it felt strange to be teaching  game called ‘Ninja’ to the Japanese!

The team then headed to the food courts where I had some very tasty Hungarian donuts but because we all had work the next day everyone headed to be pretty early. It was still nice to sit and chat with the team – meeting and getting close to them all has genuinely been my favourite part of the Jamboree so far!

Tokyo Take Two

Had an early start to meet a group in the hotel lobby who had the same Earthquake Centre time as me and my roommate. Grabbed breakfast at the 7/11 and then headed to the subway. Turned out we didn’t need the massive group anyway as Sally, a girl guide called Emily and I all got off at what we figured was the sensible station to change lines and everyone else stayed on the train and looked at us like weirdos. Turns out we got to the Earthquake centre 15 minutes before them so we felt rather good about ourselves.

The Earthquake Centre was eye-opening. A screen presentation showed us the devestation caused by the earthuwake and the following after-shocks, tsunami and fires. It’s amazing to see the resilience of the Japanese people. After the presentation we went into this room with the earthquake simulator. In groups of four we went into the simulator and braced on a pad underneath the table before it started quaking. The force we experiences was Magnitude 7 and still felt pretty damn rough – the 2011 quake was magnitude 9 (1000 times more violent).

Our group pegged it from the centre to the sky tree as our scheduled times were really close together. Made it in plenty of time and queued to go into the elevators. I thought the room we were queuing in was the elevator and was waiting for the doors to close behind us when the doors opened in front of us to the actualy elevator – one of my rare dumb moments. I walked around the Sky Tree with Emily and Sally, took some photos and browsed the gift shop for ‘height limited’ gifts but didn’t buy anything.

After the Sky Tree Emily was meeting some fellow guides to go see the Guide Centre in Tokyo so Sally and I went hunting for food. We ended up in a curry place and had Butter Chicken Curry with Naan. The place was full of Japanese people who ate the massive portions in seconds!

Sally and I went on to visit the Senso-ji Shrine which was beautifully designed but full of tourists. Whilst there it started chucking it down, there was even thunder and lightening. We sheltered under a tree and this Japanese boy started talking to us in order to practice his English and asked for a selfie – we obliged. At the shrine you could have your fortune told for a donation of 100 YEN (50p). You shook a box and a stick with a symbol fell out. You match this symbol to a drawer, open the drawer and pull out a piece of paper with your fortune on it. I got a ‘regular fortune’ so I feel I can make my own luck!

Next was the Tokyo National Museum. On the way we stopped at the Hard Rock Café in Ueno and I bought a t-shirt. Sally lost her camera cover and we retraced out steps and my eagle eyes eventually spotted it on some steps. At the museum student entry was only 410 YEN (2 quid) and they accepted my Durham University Student Card. The museum was fascinating, all of the displays were so beautiful and intricate but there wasn’t much description accompanying them. One of the really interesting rooms was the statues of Mary in Christian Japan and the fact that when Christianity was banned in Japan they began to worships statues of the Bodhisattva in order to avoid prosecution but secretly in their heads it was the Madonna and Jesus still.

After being rained on we were pretty damp and feeling horrible so went back to the hotel for a shower before our Sumo meal that evening. We met Becca and Emily in the lobby and headed off on the subway. Got to the right station but had trouble finding the restaurant until some members of staff directed us the right way. At the Sumo restaurant the four of us sat on a table together with a broth (chicken, carrot, mushroom, cabbage, spring onions, egg and tofu) which we were meant to cook ourselves. All the other tables broths were boiling away but ours wasn’t and then our flame died, turns out the canister had ran out so we got a new one but still didn’t manage to eat much before we had to go into the other room to watch the Sumo.

The two Sumo were more muscular than fat and much smaller than I’d imagined. They showed us their warm-ups and how to start a match and had some example, though very much staged matches. They then asked for volunteers from the audience, I would have been well up for it but sexist traditional rules prevent women from stepping onto the mat. The two scout volunteers gave it a good go and were very funny to watch – though the professional wrestlers let them win.

After the Sumo, Emily, Becca, Sally and I went to the near 7/11 to stock up on breakfast, lunch and dinner for the coach journey tomorrow. We found some Iced Tea and got very excited! We then headed back on the subway where a Bangladeshi young man started talking to me and Becca. Again he wanted to practice his English as he hadn’t spoken it in two years but it was exemplary! Another selfie was taken and he added us on Facebook.

Back at the hotel I met up with Dan and Amy again. Along with Becca, we headed up to the hotel bar. The drinks weren’t as expensive as I thought they would be so I ordered a Mojito cocktail. It was very strong but tatsy. The views from the bar were excellent, especially a night so lots of photos were taken, including a selfie from the window booth we were sat in! Because we had an early start the next day for a bullet train to Hiroshima we had a relatively early night (1AM).