areyoumonster

My name is Josie. I come from the UK, but moved to Japan in 2011 to teach English and to be closer to the music, theatre and TV that I love. While I spend my weekdays teaching English to kids, my weekends usually involve trips to see my favourite actors on stage or at lives. Both my work and my free time are very close to my heart and I really love to talk about them, so if I have the opportunity you will probably find that I do.

Having been teaching for six years, I'm always grateful to receive new items and pictures that I can use in my lessons to teach my students about other countries and cultures (Japanese kids tend to be pretty sheltered and getting them interested in the world outside of their country is difficult). Things from my own country are also very much appreciated as I do not often get the opportunity to go back home.

When it comes to myself, I write a lot of letters to my favourite actors, and so I'm always on the look out for new stationary. I'm sure the guys I write to regularly get bored seeing the same old paper, pen and stickers every time so receiving things I can use to brighten those up would be greatly appreciated.

My apartment isn't particularly big and I have a habit of accumulating junk, and so I really like to receive things that are either useful, or things that I can use and then replace. I understand that things are sent to me with a great deal of love and attention, and so I feel bad if I receive things that just sit and get dusty. Having said that, if you find something "useless" that you think I simply must have, then I definitely won't hold it against you.

As I said above, I love stationary. Aside from letter-writing stuff, I get through pens at work like crazy, and also like to give my students stickers. I have a slight addiction to small notebooks and post-it notes, and like to seal my notes and small letters with tape.

In my classroom we wear socks and no shoes, and because I use them so much my socks wear out really fast. I never seem to have enough and my students always notice when my socks are super cute.

In general I'm not a postcard lover, but the exception is that I love postcards from different cities and tourist attractions all over the world. My geography knowledge is terrible and I feel like I learn a little every time I receive one.

I really love items with "galaxy" themed patterns because my favourite band here in Japan is called Gingadan, which translates as "galaxy cluster". I also love anything that is black in colour.

My favourite animals are sharks, turtles, giraffes and elephants. However, I really don't like pigs and dogs. I have way too many soft toys already, but anything else featuring these wonderful wonderful animals would definitely make me happy.

I take a lot of showers. Sometimes two a day in the summer when it's super hot. I don't really take baths though (I'm too impatient to sit in them for more than 5 minutes).

I really miss food from the UK, especially the chocolate. Every time my family send me Cadburys chocolate I eat it in a day and then I'm left missing it all over again. It's kind of a tragic circle. Not only chocolate though! There is very little British food I do not like. Send me a bag of crisps and I might just love you for the rest of my life.

Also. I really really like hamburgers. And not just to eat. If it has a hamburger on it, I'll take it. Don't they just look amazing?!