NB! Japanese layout! Reads RIGHT TO LEFT!!

Normally Irish commuters aren’t this pushy…well…on second thought maybe they are…

Part 6: Class Schedules and Maternity Hospitals

As you may already know, Japan is pretty far away from Europe. Travel between Western Europe and Tokyo can take up to 10-15 hours depending on the aircraft used and the route taken which makes short trips there unfeasible (you’d want to get a week or so there if you are going to spend an entire day on a plane). Another effect of this distance is that Japan, like much of East Asia, is in a very different timezone.

zones2

Japan is 8 hours ahead of most of Europe, so when I get up in the morning it is already later afternoon in Tokyo. By the time I finish work in Norway, it is usually midnight or the early hours of the next day for those living in Japan. This presented a set of practical issues with my attendance of the course at Manga School Nakano, which thankfully Nao had thought of when she planned the class timetable.

First off, all the classes happened on the weekend. For me, this was usually on Saturdays and for most other students this would also be true. All of the distance learning lessons were held on Saturdays and Sundays. Naturally, Nao posted the class times in relation to Manga School Nakano’s timezone, which is Japan Standard Time (JST). JST is 9 hours ahead of UTC (That’s the UK’s GMT timezone without summer adjustments, also known as ‘Zulu’ time by military folk) and it never changes for Summer Time. So, when my classes were scheduled for 16:00 JST, I would do some subtraction to figure out that my class would be at 08:00 CET in Norway. I also had to watch out for the summer changes which would shift the time by an hour.

It was a little tricky, but thanks to my time living in China, I was used dealing with this time difference whenever I would call home to Ireland. So, I would take lessons with Nao for an hour on Saturday mornings, and then use the rest of the week to fulfill an assignment she had given me.

The course started off well, with the lessons fitting in with my week rather nicely (the morning lesson freed up the rest of the day). However something happened which possibly makes my attendance to MSN rather unique. Although I can not be sure of this, it’s probably safe to say that I am the only MSN student who has had to cancel a lesson because his wife had gone into labor.

Thus as some of you might already remember back in April, Anna gave birth to my son Albert. He came on his due date, without complications and by the end of the week we had brought him home. I could go into length about that experience and also what it is like to go through it in a Norwegian hospital, but we would be here forever, so I will probably save those stories for another time. But thankfully, against all of the fears that appear to be natural for a new parent, Albert had the uncanny knack of being a perfectly healthy baby.

Thankfully, it also seemed that I didn’t need to go back to work straight away. Norwegian law is a surprisingly generous thing when it comes to this, and following the birth I had become entitled to a weeks paid leave on-top of my standard leave. So for the following week I remained at home to take care of both Anna & Albert. I have regularly raved about how awesome Anna is, and the fact that a lot of Aoife’s later character developments are based on her, and needless to say that awesomeness continued during the following week when I asked if it would be alright for me to continue taking the MSN lessons. Anna supported my wanting to take the course in the first place and continued to do so after the birth thus confirming how awesome she is yet again 🙂

I contacted Nao and got the ball rolling. My course would continue, but also Nao would introduce a new level of challenge that was about to put my drawing capacity to it’s toughest test yet.

Next week: The Rookie Manga-ka Experience.