- Who are you, and what are "The Gaijin Diaries?"

My name's Megan, I'm from Rochester in England (it's near London) and at time of writing I am a Japanese Studies student at Durham University (which is rather far away from London). 

"The Gaijin Diaries" originally started as my LiveJournal account, which I kept during the ten months I lived in Kumamoto, Japan, as part of my degree course.  Since I have so many fond memories, I thought I'd make this website, in which the most interesting LiveJournal entries have been stored and can be viewed by anyone who's interested in what it's like to live in Japan as a Japanese language student.

 - Where is Kumamoto?

Japan has four main islands - Hokkaido (the furthest north), Honshu (the largest island, where Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto are all located), Shikoku, and Kyushu (the furthest south).  Kumamoto is in Kyushu, the most south-west "main" island of Japan.

 - I want to go to Japan!  Can I do your university course?

Sadly, no.  My year is the last year to ever do Japanese Studies at Durham University, as after we graduate in 2007, Durham will be closing down its East Asian Studies department, along with Middle Eastern Studies and Linguistics.  Yes, we're all very angry about them closing down our department; if you want to write to them or email them and tell them what a bad idea it is to close down our department, Durham University's contact details are in the links section of this website.

However, all is not lost.  You can still take Japanese language as a degree at a number of universities in Britain and go to Japan for part of the course; some of these universities include Leeds, Sheffield, Reading, London SOAS, Oxford, Cambridge, and probably a number of others.  Japanese and Chinese studies are getting more popular all the time.  If only Durham University realised that.
 

 - Throughout this site, you keep using words that I don't understand!

You can look up all the bits of Japanese and British slang I use in the glossary section.
 

 - Can you give me information on hotels etc. in Japan?

You'll find some sites about hotels and other things to do with travel in Japan in the directory section.


 - How can I support this site?

OK, so you probably weren't going to ask that, but if you do want to support this site, the best way is to purchase something at my Dad's site, http://www.spiral.org.uk.  He's got lots of lovely things there, including samurai swords!
 

 - I've got a question that's not answered here...

Please go ahead and email me at trellia@gmail.com

So, if that's everything cleared up, go ahead and start reading The Gaijin Dairies!