Amanda goes to Niimi

In April I had to go to a city called Niimi for 6 weeks for work. When I was first told that I would have go away we/I didn't realise that Niimi almost 4 hours away (1 hour 30 mins by Shinkansen (Bullet train) and 2 hours by express train). Still you have to see these things as an adventure!

I became a frequent user of the Shinkansen

My upbeat attitude about staying in Niimi quickly disappeared once I actually arrived, and discovered that there wasn't even a Macdonalds! This 'city' only actually had 2 supermarkets and a couple of shops selling stock from the early 90s. It also only had 2 hotels and they hadn't been decorated since the 1970s (I think that was when the last visitors went to Niimi). Still I had a car so I could get around!

Niimi from my cell

I had to cover a Spanish guys schools. These schools turned out to be great and although I didn't enjoy being alone in such a naff place they made the experience worthwhile! In Fukuoka some of my elementary schools have over a thousand students with the average being 700ish. In Niimi the biggest school boasted 107 students whilst the smallest had just 11 students!

Every school made me feel welcome if not a little nervous (they all told me what a great teacher the Spanish guy was! No pressure then!). Many of the children had never seen an actually western women in the flesh before so they spent a lot of time touching my hair, my skin and marvelling at my blue eyes. Although a little unnerving the children were so sweet you couldn't get cross.

Being in such small schools was a real experience! I got to eat with all of the children in a canteen, which is odd as in all other schools students eat in their own classrooms. It did mean though that I had lots of 6 year old getting exciting with every mouthful of food I ate. I could hear whispers of "Amanda sensei", "oh, Amanda sensei".

In many of my schools they had lots of animals to make up for the lack of children. In my smallest school they had 2 huge pigs who roamed the playground and a goat who the children took for walks on a lead. It was really good fun at this school especially as we had to stop the pigs breaking into school. In my couple of days there I had a pig snout up my bum on more than one occasion.

Andy came to visit me one weekend and we ventured to the local tourist attraction - a cave. We also travelling 2 hours to the nearest city Okayama.

Amanda pulling a stupid face is Niimi's biggest tourist attraction.

Andy wanted to make it look like the water was falling on my head! However it turned out not to be water

Andy holding up a "cave in"

After my 6 weeks was up I was very glad to come home. After I left my schools they told my company I was the best English teacher they'd ever had! There is no chance that I'm going back though.