Hiroshima

Ok, so it's been a while! I can never be bothered to do this when I'm fully awake, I normally remember just before bed so I'm forcing myself to do it now.
I'm going to write about my long weekend trip to Hiroshima. I went with 3 of my friends from the Interac group.

The main reason for heading down that way was to attend a sake matsuri in Saijo (basically as much sake as you can drink for about £15 and a free cup!)

I took about 3 hours and 3 trains to get there but we arrived early afternoon and spent a good few hours becoming true sake connoisseurs (getting drunk).

The atmosphere was amazing. There were a lot of other gaijin around who were nice to chat to but the hammered Japanese were the best. Everyone was ridiculously friendly and always willing to pass on a sake recommendation.

I would have liked to stay longer than we did but we had another 2 trains to catch to our hotel so we left relatively early. Checking into the hotel we met a New Zealander  named Gareth and his parents. Gareth joined us for the night which we spent sat on a fairly industrial piece of coast chatting and listening to music.

Up bright and early the next morning to check out and change hotels. We left our stuff in lockers at Hiroshima station ( I locked the right one this time) and headed for the Peace Memorial Park, museum and A Bomb dome. I've been before but it's still a pretty shocking afternoon.

The museum is very interesting though and the Peace Park, very relaxing and beautiful. The longer you spend in Hiroshima the more you feel you could be in Paris. The architecture, especially around the river, is very similar.

We ate Okonomiyaki for lunch.
 Totemo oishii!!

After a brief wander around the shopping district and a glance at some wannabe 'idoru' we were ready to head home and primp for a night out. Like most places in Japan most of the bars were the size of a decent sized living room but there did seem to be more actual clubs here than I've seen elsewhere. Another night spent talking to lovely , drunk Japanese people.

The next day came and we were all tired, hungover or both so a relaxing day was needed. We boarded yet another train and headed for Miyajima Island. 

As before, the views were stunning, the deer were intrusive and the tourists were out in full force. We did manage to get a couple of rocks with an amazing view of the floating shrine and were content to sit there for an hour or so.

We took the Shinkansen home (45 minutes instead of 3 hours) and had a well needed early night.

It was nice to finally see Hiroshima City properly but I have in no way seen all that I want to. Hiroshima has a  really welcoming atmosphere and I hope to head back soon and see more of the city itself

It wouldn't have been as epic were it not for the company though. I loved the fairly random assortment of folks I went with and if the next few months are as awesome then it's going to be one hell of a trip!

Enkai!!!

On Friday night I experienced my first enkai with my JHS teachers.
It was awesome!!
Enkai is basically a staff party but maybe with more drinking and certain etiquette. For example, you don't pour your own drink. Either wait for someone to do it for you or offer a re-fill to someone else who will then re-fill your glass in return.
As I entered my enkai I was asked to pick a card to determine where to sit. I ended up sitting with the other English teachers, some of whom I sit with every day anyway, but there were some new faces. The school councillor, who I time-share a desk with and who left me this.....

....was sat next to me and she was lovely!!! I am very sad that I don't actually get to work with her.

There was also a slide show of the sports festival (which I missed), lots of food and a song to end the evening. 

We then headed over to karaoke, lead by the principal who is apparently a karaoke addict. Admittedly a lot of the songs were Japanese and although I can now read hiragana I can't read it at speed to a tune. However, I did bond with one teacher over Blondie and Journey, and with another over Barbie Girl.

I think my favourite part of the night was just speaking to the other teachers. I don't think there is a bad one in the bunch. Lots made the effort to come and speak to me but one in particular surprised me. He's technically a Japanese teacher and although he says his English is not good, he lies. It's awesome! He's also into rock climbing so I'm hoping he can suggest somewhere to climb (just need  to find someone to belay now!). He made sure I had someone to chat to all night and I felt included throughout. He also tried to teach me some Japanese which was greatly appreciated. So all in all enkai was awesome. Even if all this bonding is completely forgotten/ignored on Monday, it was nice to see all the teachers out of school.

On a separate note, and because this is also a form of diary for me, isn't it weird how quickly you can do a complete 180 flip on your opinion of someone?
I saw something on facebook the other day and it made me realise just how self-orientated some people really are. I've been on the receiving end of this, from the same person and only last week in fact, and I'm so happy I can see clearly now. Some people really do just need to always be the best and always be right and that equals a pretty insecure person. There is no need to highlight other peoples flaws to make yourself feel good, especially if it's completely out of the blue. Any way, it appears that like attracts like and I just hope I'm not around witness this too much.

I'm a pretty quiet person; I don't enjoy people that have to be the centre of attention but unfortunately the world is full of these creatures. Oh well, I'm pretty happy in the knowledge that I know who I am and I don't feel the need to be loud or adapt my life to suit others.

Discipline in Japan

I've been in Japan over a month....how weird is that!?

Primarily here, I want to share a bit about Japanese schools.

My main issue with this place is the intense lack of discipline. I know most people's assumption is that Japan would be either really strict on discipline or that the kids would be so polite and well behaved that discipline wasn't particularly needed.....neither of these points are true.
Admittedly discipline doesn't seem to be needed a lot because Japanese students are generally fairly conplient however, not every student is up for education. This can go one of two ways. Some students get to class, put their heads on their desks and literally go to sleep. Can you imagine what would happen if you decided to do this in the UK!? In Japan the teachers gently prod the student awake, maybe ruffle their hair a bit and move on. Queue student promptly falling straight back to sleep. WTF???
Way two generally involves the student becoming a 'Yanki': dyed hair, lack of uniform, no respect for rules. I am very lucky that the only Yanki kids my school has are really young and not fully fledged yet. I have heard from less-fortunate ALTs though, that their kids wander around the school, no uniform, doing whatever they want, occasionally stopping by the teachers lounge for a chat and a smoke. I don't think they're even particularly nasty, they just don't want to be there. By this point in the UK these kids would been excluded, maybe expelled and would probably be out harassing pensioners on the streets. The Japanese education system does not particularly do exclusion/expulsion for precisely these reasons. It's all about not making the children feel excluded and singled out so, although it's great for social harmony, it's not amazing for teachers. The Japanese Sensei is seen as 'the third parent' and with the amount of time the children spend in school you can see why.
Luckily, my schools are generally pretty lovely. A lot of this is down to some amazing teachers who can manage their classes without shouting or threats; the perfect teaching in my eyes. However, some classes just don't respond well to this and need a more strong-handed approach which some teachers just refuse to give. Again, in the UK this would end in anarchy but in Japan it just makes for fairly loud disinterest, The thing is, all it would take to remedy this is a routine, maybe a way of keeping the kids on their toes with random selection rather than skipping them out if they don't feel like answering. (This is just my naive opinion anyway.)
Going by UK standards, I'd singled out the kids I thought were going to be trouble makers in my classes but it hasn't been the case. The popular guys here who shave their heads and do kendo are all really loud but in a good way. Maybe they are being obnoxious in shouting out answers but at least they're the right answers! And so far my wannabe Yanki's have either sat there looking bored but not causing an issue, or tried really hard to give answers whilst still trying to look disinterested.
It's hard to give a proper opinion as I'm still just doing intro lessons so they're vaguely more stimulating than the kids are used to but so far no disasters! I have all first grade JHS tomorrow with a teacher who constantly tells me how scared she is of them...I am not excited!

On a different note, feeling a bit homesick.

A lot of interesting things are happening back in Leeds and I miss all my friends. I feel like I have to work so hard to keep friends here and be included. Don't get me wrong, I'm good at being on my own but not all the time. I don't want to feel like I'm making a nuisance of myself where I'm not wanted but sometimes I feel a bit like I'm forcing myself on other people's plans.
Maybe I'm over-thinking this and taking everything a bit personally. I'm still enjoying myself, I just don't really know where I fit yet......

Okayama so far....

Ok, so I haven't updated this since I got to Japan....like a month ago!

The Flight - absolutely fine because I had Stef with me all the way. Plain sailing, apart from the very unhelpful and monumentally strange Lufthansa information people at Frankfurt airport.

Arrival - It was HOT!! And neither of us had had that much sleep. we were 'met (we had to find him) by a rep from Interac (who had just quit the company and clearly didn't actually care about us). Luckily, all the other prospective ALTs that turned up were lovely and we managed to find a bus to take us to Okayama (longest 4 hours of my life!).

Training - Helpful, although now that I'm on the job some of it was fairly redundant.
The first day was terrifying. The scariest person ever was training us; I very nearly gave up there and then! Luckily he 'niced' up (a bit) on the second day and, apart from having to deliver a pretend 25 minute lesson on the last day, training went pretty smoothly.

A lot of the things they told us haven't been particularly relevant to me but I suppose they have to cover their backs and at least training helped to prepare me mentally.

Okayama - Okayama is nice. It's not huge so it's a good substitute for Leeds. It has most of the things you could need - an arcade, BTSSB, AP, many other excellent shops, a castle, swan peddle boats, nice places to eat and plenty of places to drink. Our resident haunt is the Aussie Bar (of course). Most places here are tiny and some of them turn into mini clubs at about 11. There are some actual clubs but I have yet to check them out.

The river here is swimable and flows tight by Koraku-en Gardens which are beautiful.

Living - So after a week in a hotel with many new friends at my beck and call, the time came to move to our new apartments. They're not as small as I was expecting and slightly more modern than I was expecting. I'm happy with my tiny apartment. I'm not near enough to walk to anyone else but it's fairly easy to just get a train. I'll also hopefully get myself a bike soon too!

Schools - Very brief over-view for now.

Luckily, both of my schools are fine (so far). My JHS is terrifying but I haven't had a horrendous class yet. I introduce myself and then stand around and read what the JTE tells me to. My kids have actually starting saying hi to me now too.
Elementary school is amazing. The teachers are all lovely, speak a lot more English than I was expecting and help a lot with the lessons. The kids are adorable. Pretty much always up for games and none have been rebellious. Tbh, the teaching style here is completely different to the UK but it seems to work for them.

I'll do better posts at some point but there's an over-view of the past month.

Now I'm here, part of me feels like I should've been doing more with my free time but then I have to check myself. I've moved half way around the world to do a job I've never done before. That's pretty full on already. Who cares if I don't city-hop every weekend just yet? For me, this is already a huge step.

I'm glad that I have an English speaking cohort behind me, even if it is splitting up from what it was that first week (which makes me sad). I appreciate that friendship groups will form but I'm hoping it doesn't lead to cliques. I'm happy enough for now in my new life, and in time I'll find out who my true friends are within the group but for now I'm happy to take life as it comes. Eventually I will stop comparing myself to others. I am so proud of myself for doing this; anyone who knows me knows how hard I find it to be sociable and talk to new people. I have been out of my comfort zone so many times I've lost count but I'm surviving and I'm enjoying it.
Douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu

EEEEEPPPP!!!!!!!!

I LEAVE IN LESS THAN A WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so unprepared, and it doesn't help that I've only just been able to go apply for my visa. I won't actually get it until Thursday and I fly on Saturday!! WTF!? 

I've spent a couple of days with Stef who I'm travelling with and is also in Okayama with me and luckily we got on (from my pov anyway! :p). Her boyfriend is already out there and seems to be enjoying it, although he's a trained teacher so it's not quite as challenging for him.... ho hum. (I am currently very tired and emotional so maybe I won't dwell on this or I'll get myself in a right state again!)

Anyways, I have lots to do this week including lesson planning, last minute panic buying, laminating, packing and seeing all the people I haven't yet managed to see. It's manic!

 Luckily, last week was slightly calmer. Lots of friend-seeing and good times. Not being at work has given me full days off so I've just been using them to make the most of my time in the country. Possibly imbibing in a tad too much alcohol too... :s. But I've ended up with some amazing memories to take into my new life, although some have just been a bit of a mind-fuck!

Massively loving Bastille at the moment though. They're wonderfully melancholly. This song seems to hit some sort of chord with my current train of thought. 

But if anything is coming from this entire experience it's to grab life with both hands, and I'm really trying to. Not doing this would have been the biggest regret of my life, and I have a few other little things I don't want to regret before I go. I'm leaving the country, what better time to just go for things!?

My First Cosplay!

Firstly, I'd just like to say that cosplaying is FUN!!

 I've always fancied it and with my imminent departure I figured Manchester MCM Expo would be my last chance in a while.

I chose Grell because, as I think I have made quite clear, I LOVE GRELL! (plus it seemed like a fairly easy start, even if I do have a degree in costume design.)

I was pretty happy with my final outcome. I made my waistcoat, coat and neck-tie from scratch and I was really happy that I managed to get the right fabrics (especially the stripes). I think the wig could do with being styled slightly more but tbh, I'm not a serious cosplayer so this will do for now.

I stole Michaela's scissors as I forgot mine!

I did get quite a lot of attention but it was really different to what you get when you're in loli. In Lolita, people take photos because you're exciting or exotic or prettty and it's purely aesthetic. Cosplayers get photographed by 'fans'. Literally, I had young girls 'fangirling' over me and I've never been asked for hugs from strangers so much in my life! It's so nice when people know who you are and compliment your outfit but after a while you do feel a pressure to become the character.
I don't have the right attitude to be Grell and my acting abilities don't quite cover it so maybe I'll work up to that but I would definitely cosplay again!

All photos courtesy of the wonderful Intrinsically Florrie

One does not simply walk to Zombie School. Oh, wait.....

On  slightly happier, less TEFL note I attended Zombie School yesterday. SUCH FUN!!!!!!!!!

Has anyone else heard of the game 2.8 Hours Later? This involves running around a live city late at night trying to reach certain check points without being attacked by a horde of blood thirsty zombies. Sounds pretty epic yet amazingly terrifying at the same time!
I've never actually played but I was in Leeds City Centre one night last year when it was being played and man, did it look fun! So this year I applied to be a zombie and surprisingly I got an invite to Zombie School.

I don't want to wreck the façade for people who are playing but safe to say that that zombies get fully trained!! I now know various zombie walking styles, how to turn corners, how to run whilst screaming and how to balance a lemon on a wooden spoon whilst zombi-ing! Most importantly however, ZOMBIES DO NOT RUN IN THE ROAD!!
I am massively excited for the actual event. I'll hopefully be doing the Thursday and Friday (and then off to a battle royale themed night out on Saturday - fake blood galore!) so it's going to be a tiring couple of days but worth it!

So if you're in Leeds City Centre on the 24th, 25th, 26th and 27th of July between 5-11.30, just be careful!

Watch out Okayama, the Brits are invading!

So, since my last post quite a lot has changed.
I manned up. I spoke to my friend who has been TEFL teaching for 3 years now and she calmed me down a bit. Her experiences sound mainly positive and fun; you wouldn't do something like that for 3 years if you didn't enjoy it. She's had her challenges but she's overcome them.
Soon after this meeting I got a phone call and was offered a placement in Okayama City.

Okayama is in the South of Japan, about 3 hours from Kyoto and 4 from Tokyo (on the Shinkansen). My schools, apparently mainly elementary (primary), would be in Okayama City so I wouldn't be stuck in the middle of nowhere! I have also recently found out that one of the girls I kept in contact with from my interview will also be in Okayama City. This has proved the most successful in calming me down!

I have also been put in contact with a friend of a friend (of a friend) who is from Ehime, literally just across the water from Okayama. She in turn has introduced me to her friend in Kyoto who sounds lovely and also enjoys Lolita fashion. So I have contacts and friends there now. Literally, my only worry now is the actual teaching. Having attempted a grammar test on the Interac website and not even finnishing in the allotted time has massively scared me. I really hope I am in elementary schools, not ridiculous tenses there!

My date for arrival is currently the 12th August. So soon!! I was hoping for later August  but never mind. I am slowly becoming more excited. I really hope I'll be OK!

MAN-UP HANNAH!!!!!!!!!!

I am currently very much in 2 minds as to whether I can do this!
Ok, I can deal with living in a different country, I've been before and I realise I will probably be the only foreigner wherever I am but it's not like being stared at for being different is a new thing. And the language barrier can be resolved with a phrase book and probably some pretty wild gesticulations.
No, my main issue is the actual teaching. I've been doing some research, looking at people's blogs etc and I have officially terrified myself! My overall view is that the teaching system in Japan is very different to how it is here and teachers don't seem to have half the support they get here. I've read blogs where the ALT basically just stands there and occasionally hosts a game, holds a card and is used for pronunciation but then I've read other blogs where the the English Teacher is harrassed by all the kids and has no help at all from the native teachers. I'd be happy with scenario 1, I don't particularly want a lot of responsibility. I know at our interview the Interac rep there said that we'd be team teaching with the JTE at the school and that they would handle discipline etc and I really hope that's true.
I know that here no-one would ever be allowed to teach an entire class on their own with just a certificate and 3-day course but I'm not sure that's the case over there.

I may be getting over stressed. I imagine for every blog I've read there are hundreds who have had an entirely lovely experience and I really hope that I can rise to the challenge of becoming more of an assertive person to survive but I suppose at least I know the common pitfalls I'm likely to face.

I'm meeting my friend this week who has been teaching abroad for a good few years now (and will also be in Japan when I am,hopefully) so I'm hoping that she can sort me out! I figure it can't be hideous if people can do it for so long but then again, maybe they're different sorts of people?

I will kick myself if I don't do this, and I'm not sure what I'll do with my life if I don't but at the moment reality is hitting hard!

ALT, me?

This morning I awoke to this e-mail...

"Dear Hannah,

Interac Co., Ltd. takes great pleasure in offering you a position as a Language Instructor." 

....meaning that I get to go live in Japan for 7 months. SHIT!!!!!!

This all started just before Christmas when i learnt what TEFL was (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). I like English; it was always one of my favourite lessons at school and I like to think that I'm pretty good at it. Plus, since nothing else was happening on the career front why not use what God gave me? Apparently you don't need to know a foreign language or have prior teaching experience to teach English in the rest of the world! With this in mind I enrolled on a 120-hour TEFL course with TEFLEngland. I completed the 3 days worth of practical lessons and came away thinking 'I enjoyed that but man, I am one crap teacher!'. Teaching is hard, even harder to teach English to people who already know it; you can't really judge how successful you've been but it's good practice.
I then plodded on through the grammar and the video course and every other section over the next few nights. I decided to look at summer schools in Europe to ease myself in and applied for a few.
One night, and I am not proud of this, I really wanted to watch 90210 but I had far too much to do to just sit around watching television! So, I thought I'd have a look at teaching in Japan, my ultimate destination. As well as having a look at the JET scheme, which I missed the deadline for, I found a scheme run by Interac for Assistant Language Teachers. It seemed like a pretty simple profile to fill in, easy enough to complete whilst watching Liam, Naomi and the rest do....whatever it is they do in California. Unfortunately, to complete said profile, I encountered two small essays. Since I'd come this far I figured I may as well battle on. 3 hours later (at about 1 a.m.) my application was finnished and I toddled off to bed safe in the knowledge that it at least looked like I was taking my life seriously.

A week or so later I received an e-mail from Maria informing me that I had successfully passed round one of the selection process and would I please ring her to arrange a phone interview. Well, this was one thing I was not expecting. Apparently doing work at 1 a.m. as a way to kill time works for me so I rang. Maria was lovely and after asking me various general questions about myself things got slightly less general -had I been to Japan before, did I speak Japanese, what qualities did I think an ALT needed. It turns out that 'ring to arrange a phone interview' is code for 'ring for an impromptu phone interview'. Needless to say I was caught completely off-guard and having put the phone down signed off on my dream of a Interac placement.
A good month later, whilst checking my e-mails, I recieved another message from Maria inviting me to an interview and seminar in York in 3 weeks time. For a second time Interac had surprised me with an offer. This time was more hard-core. As well as taking numerous official bits of paper I had to do 2 small pretend lessons, read a given script and introduce myself (using as much Japanese as possible). It took a while to prepare and having got this far with no preparation or thought whatsoever I was a little skeptical of succeeding with 3 weeks prep. But the seminar was interesting, the other candidates were lovely and the day went pretty well.
Shortly after this, reference requests were sent out, sent back and then a wait. Having got this far half my head was already living in Japan but I tried to reign in the daydreams. Luckily for me my references were successful, leading to yet another wait to find out whether I had been given a placement.

And that brings us full circle. I now have to formally accept my offer, fill in lots of forms, sort my visa, have an uber CRB check and arrange an x-ray to test for TB.

Although I'm ridiculously terrified, part of me is pretty calm. I've spoken to a lot of people, some with more experience in teaching or Japanese than I, and it's taken them countless applications to even get an interview. This was my first big application and I got it. It kinda feels like fate and with everything leading to this place I can't help but feel that everything will work out from here.....

Someone just posted this on Facebook, seems like a good way to end!

Jubilations and Celebrations!

It's been a busy an epic weekend this week; International Lolita Day and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee (basically an excuse to eat lots and lots of cupcakes!)

Baked goods supplied by The Calverley WI, nom nom!

International Lolita Day was a bit rainy so an indoor picnic was organised courtesy of Michaela.

Masses of fun was had by all derping around and creating new friends.
I got to wear my new Squirrel Party OP and my ears!!!

(pics stolen from Charlotte who has a big posh camera!!)

Rule Britannia!!

Simply one hell of a project!

So a while ago my friend was wanting a couple of Black Butler cosplays for may expo. I offered my services and then immediately flailed as I realised what an immense task I had just taken on! Two basically Victorian suits in 5 months, with a part time job, a social life, a TEFL course to complete and various other commissions!? AM I CRAZY!?!?!?!?!? The answer is yes, crazy busy! I managed to slip in a fitting at Hyper Japan in Feb but as my friend lives in London it wasn't possible to arrange to meet any other time!! These are the suits she wanted:

.......and......

                                         ...this Ciel.

I ended up making one of the patterns from scratch and using an authentic Victorian Men's coat pattern for the other. I'm quite happy that my first cosplay commissions were fun ones. It also made me sit down and watch the series. (I really enjoyed it! Now that I have a bit of free time I feel a Grell cosplay in the making...!)

These are my finished suits. I pretty happy with them, to say that I only had one fitting!

It's fun making garments form cartoons. The clothes are designed to look good and not adhere to construction rules. It's really interesting working out how to make the costumes. I hope I get to make more soon!!

I blame Claire and Michaela for this....

Look what is coming to me in the post........

..................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All ears....

If any of you know me and our Leeds crew then you'll know about the Unicorns Vs Bears war that rages from meet to meet. I am all for Unicorns! Masively! They are clearly the best animal ever, fullstop, period. However, there have recently been a lot of 'eared' accessories floating around and unicorn ears just don't have the same 'cute' appeal as bear ears so for this one time, I sold out.
I have invested one of these....

.....from CuteCandyClouds on Etsy. I asked for yellow ribbons instead of turquoise on mine and was rewarded with a quick and positive reply form the owner Shelby Cloud.
It took about 2 weeks for my headband to arrive and when it did, it looked like this.....

.....cute, right? I have a business card, a handwritten receipt and a money-off voucher.
The actual headband looks like this.....

(Me, no make-up, it's early, excuse my face!)
I love it! It's soft and fastens with a yellow ribbon like I asked. Although it has been made to fasten under the chin I prefer fastening it under my hair at the back. I still need to experiment with  hairstyles that suit (I'm thinking big, messy pigtails!). SHelby was lovely to deal with and I would highly recommend her shop!
I'm sure it will be worn soon so I shall post a better picture once that happens!
In the mean time, to appease Karma, here is my favourite unicorn...

Sew and sew and sew....

So guilty pleasure for me last night after a busy bank holiday evening at work was reading behind-the-bows and I came across this......

....and it got me thinking. When I first started looking into Lolita my main source was the Fruits Fashion books and a lot of the stuff in there was hand-made. This seemed like an intrinsic part of loli to me and went so well with idea of the fashion itself. Since getting into Live Journal and making some awesome loli friends, Brands have started to take over my vision of loli and tbh I'm not cool with that.

I agree with this statement, to an extent. I don't own much brand because I can't afford it and there are only certain prints I'd be willing to blow £2-300 on anyway. So I think from now on I'm going to concentrate more on making my loli gear. A lot of my Lolita is hand-made anyway and although it's hard to find fabric as nice as Brand dresses that doesn't cost a fortune, there's decent enough prints out there if you know where to look.

So my mid-year resolution will be to stay away from the burando and make my own way in the frilly world.

(Can I just add that I'm not against brand!! Buy/wear what you want, I don't care! This is just for me!:) )

They took my battle ostrich!!!!!

Sat on the sofa, eating chocolate digestives (dark chocolate) and watching re-runs of 'The Big Bang Theory'. What shall my first post be about.....maybe a little book review?

Like a lot of the population I have recently been on a Hunger Games high. Why are they so addictive? I don't know, but I couldn't put them down! And once I'd read them all (in a week) I decided to go right ahead and re-read them straight away. I then decided that maybe this was a little sad and I should probably surrender my Kindle over to my housemate so that she could experience their wonder. This lead to a dilemma: what do I read now!? I hit the YA Dystopian Romance Fiction blogs and came up with 'Unwind' by Neil Shusterman.

The principle of this book is that once a child becomes a teenager, they can legally be unwound at any point until they turn 18 should their parents wish. Unwinding is a process of harvesting all the person's organs and limbs without actually killing them, allowing them to live on, just in a different form. The book follows Connor, Risa and Lev; 3 unwinds drawn together by accident.

Having read 'Never Let Me Go' and 'Breathers' before starting 'The Hunger Games' this plot appealed to me. Why not carry on the dismembering and organ donating theme? And although 'unwinding' hangs over the heads of many of the characters involved, this is not a particularly dark book. I found it a really effective substitute to suppress my HG induced cravings. It's fast-paced and plot-filled! The book changes character view-point with each chapter so you get a well-rounded opinion on each teen. When you finally experience the unwinding process, it's quite unsettling, mainly because of the bits you don't get told. There's also a bit of romance, not as much as HG but enough to keep me happy!

All in all I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to those of you trying to break the HG cycle. It did only take me 2 days to read though, so please view this as a quick fix.

Now, what to read today.........?