Iris – Page 100 – goinggaijin.com

This is a tie-in to my rant of last Friday about the ubiquitousness of plastic bags here in Japan. I am not entirely sure whether Japanese like plastic (bags) better or (writing) paper. There are lots of stationary shops in Japan: The ones that are part of a shopping centre or a book store and cater to school kids with their notebooks and folders in every colour of the rainbow and then some. The stand alone ones that sell everything related to writing and paper crafts, including ink brushes and expensive foreign fountain pens. And the tiny ones where you can buy hand-made Japanese washi paper that feels like silk when you touch it.

This love of paper spills over to other parts society of course. Every larger purchase needs to be documented with several pages of paperwork and printouts. I still have to go through the stack of paper I received when I rented this apartment to weed out the unnecessary ones – probably half of them – and don’t forget that the agent kept all of them as well, and some copies went to the landlord too. And the reams of paper I needed for my business and visa-application… I’m not sure I want to know how much more my lawyer had to provide.

Interestingly, I receive relatively few advertisements in the mail. There is the occasional one for pizza delivery or Mac Donalds or a new beauty salon. Nothing seriously obnoxious, except for one type of advertisements: real estate. On average, I get one sheet of paper per day, more in the weekends. They mostly look the same – cheap printouts in two or three colours – and they mostly come from one and the same agency that is trying to sell the same types of houses to the same type of people… Interestingly, when I was still living in the old house, there were never such advertisements. Apparently they only distribute them to people in apartments, which is strange because there are both houses and apartments on offer, in pretty much equal shares.

advertisements for real estate I don’t know what annoys me so much about these advertisements. Probably the fact that I’ll have to take them up to the fifth floor where I have to store them until the beginning of the month to haul them down again for paper collection. That’s probably it, such a waste of energy everywhere…

Plastic Bags

I have recently read that the European Union wants to greatly reduce the number of plastic grocery bags used in Europe. Right now, the average EU citizen uses some 200 of them per year, that makes more than 500 million bags in total. If even only a small number of those end up in our oceans – which they inevitably will do – this has disastrous consequences. Tiny plastic particles have already made it into our food, and I think that any measure that can be taken to prevent this should be taken.

Looking at the numbers a bit more closely, one finds that the EU states differ greatly: While Ireland and Luxemburg’s citizens use 18 plastic bags per person and year, in Slovenia, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and a few other states the number is close to 500 bags per person and year. Austria, with 45 bags, lies only a little bit above the final goal of 40 bags per person per years, which should be reached EU-wide in 2025.

Seeing these numbers, however, I cannot help but wonder what it would be here in Japan, or in Asia as a whole. Part of the problem in Japan is that wrapping gifts has been elevated to an art, and the bag from the store – whether plastic or paper – is always presented to the recipient together with the gift. In fact, the bag is used to carry the gift to the recipient, then the present is taken out and the bag neatly folded and placed underneath the gift when it is handed to the recipient – with both hands and a deep bow, of course.

This goes so far that you may receive extra plastic bags when buying multiple pre-packed gifts. For example, I once bought three packs of Yatsuhashi for different friends – and I promptly received three (folded) plastic bags of the store to go with them. Hilarious – or frustrating?

Of course, that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. No matter what you buy and where, you will receive plastic bags. In a bakery, your items will be individually placed in small plastic bags and then in a large one at the end. When I recently bought 100 sheets of loose leaf writing paper – already wrapped in plastic – I was offered another plastic bag to take them home in. The other day I bought a few stamps which were also put in a tiny plastic bag, where even in Austria we use paper. And let’s not talk about the fact that even cookies here are wrapped individually – in plastic of course.

Although the supermarket I now frequent for my groceries is not offering free plastic bags any longer (you have to buy them for 5 YEN apiece) they still provide large rolls of bags at the places where you pack your groceries. Although they are without handles and cannot be used to carry things home, people happily pack their already plastic wrapped meat, sushi, or vegetables a second time, probably to prevent leakage on the way home (which never seems to happen to me).

Not every plastic bag is bad of course, they can be very useful. But is it really necessary to use that many for everything – especially if you know that you’ll throw them out the moment you reach your home? There is nothing wrong with putting my baguette into a paper bag, or just tossing my already plastic wrapped onigiri into my backpack without further ado.

Even though I carry at least my little backpack with me at all times; even though I have an additional cloth bag (which in Japan are called eco-bags, by the way) with me when I know that I will go shopping; and even though I am refusing plastic bags left and right, I still end up with so much more than I could possibly ever reuse. And it annoys me greatly, that at this point, there is not much I can do about it…

Re-education

It’s summer time, and as Kyoto is a relatively flat city, there are lots of cyclists around these days. There are young children with or without their parents, elderly people with or without their canes strapped to their bikes somewhere, middle-aged salarymen and office ladies in their best outfits…

Today I received a little pamphlet in the mail with a list of traffic rules and how they pertain to cyclists. Of course, this being Japan, you can’t just write a plain list – you have to include cute little pictures – which help understanding tremendously:Some things are very obvious: Don’t jump red lights or train crossings, don’t ride your bicycle in a pedestrian zone or path, don’t drink and cycle, don’t use your mobile when on the bike… It even includes my personal pet peeve: Ride on the correct (i.e., left) side of the road! Interestingly, it does not say anything about using lights in the dark, but maybe the list was incomplete.

However, the pamphlet is very clear on what will happen if you get caught doing any of these 14 things (and possibly more): If you get caught twice or more in a span of 3 years, you count as “repeated offender” and will be sent to a special re-education where you will be instructed as to the rules. These classes cost 5.700 YEN at the moment; I am not sure whether you’ll have to take a test at the end – although, as this is Japan, I would not be surprised.

Expensive, isn’t it? This would be a reason for simply not showing up to the re-education, but there is a catch: If you prefer not to show up to your class within three months of being asked to do so, there will be a fine of 50.000 YEN! I have never heard of such a steep fine being levied for not behaving on a bicycle. Seems to be better to do the right thing after all…

Rudeness

Every now and then I feel like I have to leave my apartment and go somewhere else for a change of scenery. I then usually pack all the things I am working on – except for the laptop, I like to work offline then – and go to my favourite cafe downtown.

Today was such a day, and I arrived at my cafe at around 3 pm, as usual. By now the staff know me; I get my hot chocolate in a porcelain cup instead a paper one, and I can always sit upstairs even if it is not that busy and the stairs are roped off. Usually I have a hot chocolate in the beginning, then I sit upstairs on my favourite spot to write and think for about two hours. When I’m tired of that, I get downstairs again to order a small ice-cream – I make a point to try all their flavours – and once that is finished too, I make my way home again.

So, when I was ready to wrap things up today, and went down for my ice-cream, there was this American woman standing at the counter trying to order coffee and to make a choice from all the sweets on display. I had not even laid eyes on her when I felt an intense dislike.

Not so much for what she said “Oh no, that’s not got enough ice-cream on it, I want two scoops”, but for how she said it – she was plain rude to the staff. She was one of those people with the attitude: “I’m an American, look what we’ve done for the planet so you owe me. I won’t bother to even try speaking your language, and if you can’t understand mine, I’ll just say the same stuff over and over again, just a bit louder each time.”

Not all Americans are like this, I hasten to add, I have met plenty of very nice Americans, and a large amount of obnoxious people from practically everywhere, including Austria. But every time I encounter somebody like this, I wonder what they are believing to achieve with being rude like this. Even if people don’t understand your words, the tone of your voice and your body language will make a difference in how they treat you in return. It even puts me off helping such rude people because I really see no point in enabling them.

What is so difficult about being nice?

Differences

Several months ago, when I visited the cafe of a friend of mine, I came to talk to a Japanese lady, and since then, we have been meeting once or twice a month. Her name is Junko-san, and she has moved to Kyoto only a few years ago, after the death of her husband. She is fun to be with and a very interesting person, and she has lots of interests and various hobbies. While we have lots of fun together and we both like to laugh, I cannot help finding a number of differences in our views and how we approach life, but our substantial age difference has nothing to do with it.

One day we were talking about travelling and I said that I enjoy to be as free as possible in my vacation. I make a rough list of things that would be nice to see and then I set out in a general direction. When I was travelling in North America, I rented a car for two weeks and essentially drove inland, without big plans, just stopping where things looked interesting. In that case, I didn’t even have hotel reservations, but as it was summer, I was prepared to sleep in the car had it been necessary.

My friend was shocked. Junko-san recently travelled for four days to an island in the Pacific Ocean with her sister, and she said she only left the resort for shopping. Usually, she would book a very expensive hotel – preferably a large, well-known chain – and then enjoy the luxury, the food, the pool, the service… According to Junko-san, many Japanese are concerned about their safety, and they do not endeavour to go out alone.

Another day we were talking about work. Junko-san said she was working as an editor and writer (probably freelance) for large companies for 18 years of her life. She said she did not like the job very much, and she had to work very hard (she only slept for 2 hours in the busy season), but she did it for the money, about 1.5 million yen per month. She said many Japanese work solely for the money, and they don’t really like their job, even if they spend all their days and nights in the office.

I was shocked, and I explained to her that in the West, we strive to work to live and not the other way around. Also I told her that I know quite a few people who would happily have a less well paid job if they would feel more fulfilled doing it. I said that we want to have a balanced life of fun and work while we’re still living – after all, if you postpone all the fun until after your retirement (as many Japanese seem to do), how can you be sure you won’t drop dead on your last day of work.

As I said, it is great fun to talk to her, she talks very openly about her life, her ideas, and Japanese society as a whole. I think I can learn a lot from her! At least, there is one thing we both love doing, regardless of our background: we both love solving sudoku…

Reachability

A Japanese address is much longer than a Western one. Generally, it can have the following parts:

JAPAN
Name of Region (-fu)
Postcode and Name of Town (-shi)
Name of City District (-ku)
Name of City Subdistrict
Name (and number) of Neighborhood (-cho)
Number (and name) of building (and/or apartment)
Name of Person

Note that this from-large-to-small approach is the normal way of writing a Japanese address, very much along the idea that the group is everything and the individual is nothing. Also, in Japan, there are hardly any street names, and if there are any, they are rarely used in an address. Instead, the neighborhood (-cho) and the number of the building are used. Of course, building numbers are not given out consecutively along a road, but consecutively according to the date of building the house…

As you can see, instead of the usual Person-Street-City address that takes up only three lines, the important parts of my address take up six, if I ignore the first two lines which are not really needed for a large city like Kyoto. With a bit of squeezing, I can get it down to five lines, but it is still too much for the average Western database.

I still have an account in Germany and I am still using their credit card, mostly for online purchases. Unfortunately, my German bank insists on sending me physical, paper credit card bills instead of electronic ones, and they just cannot wrap their mind around my address. The last three letters I have received from my German bank used three different subsets of the six lines of my address, but never the complete one.

Once the city district and subdistrict were missing, which is not too bad because the postcode is very specific and this is part of the coding. Another time the building name and number were missing. Thank goodness, the neighborhoods in Japan are very small, and my neighborhood only comprises an apartment complex with a management office, so it is still possible to find me. And so far, only a single time the full post code was present, but luckily the last and thus most important of the seven digits were always there.

I have no idea how this can happen, I have already had several email exchanges with my assistant at the bank about this. It fascinates me that the mail still reaches me, although somewhat delayed of course. Thank goodness the letters are never urgent, and thank goodness there is a post office worker somewhere in Japan, possibly in Kyoto, who goes through all the trouble to find out the correct address so I can receive my mail.

Still, I wish it would be simpler and faster, and I would not cause any extra work for anybody. I will contact my bank in Germany about this. Again…

Tsuyu

I was looking forward to the beginning summer, with open windows all day and night, a long siesta during the hottest hours of the afternoon, tons of green tea ice cream… And what do we get? A serious drop in temperature. Last week we had highs of up to 32 degrees, today it was barely 20. And it started pouring in the afternoon – just when I had to go out, of course.

Hello tsuyu, rainy season! According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, it starts here in Kinki or Kansai (the region around Kobe-Osaka-Kyoto) on June 6th and ends on July 19th. Yes, Japanese are that precise. However, that does not mean that it will rain every single day (although that has happened), but it will probably not stay as cool as today, and when it is getting warmer, the humidity will increase and make this time quite unpleasant. I have even heard that homes can get mouldy and food left outside of the fridge can spoil very quickly during this time even if it is not that hot. I hope there will be not too many rainy days and enough sunny ones in between to be able to air out the apartment, just in case.

3rd Kyu!

Last Saturday was my 3rd kyu soroban test. For the second and third levels, the test ist not during normal classes anymore, but in a special meeting only for those who take the test. It is still in the normal soroban school; from first kyu on and throughout the dan levels, the test will be administered somewhere else with even more official feeling.

Well, yes, I have passed this test, and now I am a third kyu level in soroban. I did quite well, in fact, I passed every one of the six parts of the test. Besides the usual multiplication, division, and addition/subtraction – all three must be passed – there are three more tests on mental calculation, word problems, and denpyou, where you may fail one of the three and still get an overall passing grade. I usually have problems with the mental calculations – I am too slow – but as I used a slightly different method in the test than the recommended one, I even managed to pass this part of the test.

I think I did quite well, passing four exams in only one year, but I did homework every day, and I believe that from now on the tests will be more difficult. The word problems especially become more difficult, for example on third kyu level all of them boil down to very basic arithmethic, but for second kyu there are now exercises involving percentages and rounding, and more than one simple operation. The other problems stay essentially the same, only the numbers are getting larger. Still, that means a considerable speed up to be able to finish enough exercises in the allotted time.

The next exam will be in two months. I don’t know whether I will become fast enough to try the next level then. We’ll see.

Curtain Call

Wouldn’t you believe it? After all I have been through (by proxy through my friend) to get internet, one would think that everything was finally sorted and done, finished, file closed. Well, not really… My internet problems got a final curtain call:

Last week I received my first internet bill, and I wanted to set up automatic payment as I did for my other utilities. I was already familiar with the necessary form and I knew that there was an extra space for NTT. So, I took the bill to my bank, filled in the standard form and – that’s where the problems started.

NTT is traditionally a telephone provider, and the form for automatic payment is simple; all you have to fill in is the phone number of your landline. However, strictly speaking, I don’t have a landline. I have a VoIP internet telephone as part of my internet package that I bought through NTT. So, while I could give the phone number on the form, said number is never mentioned on the bill, interestingly. All the bill mentions is my NTT customer ID, but there is no space for that on the form, obviously.

Panic ensued among the clerks, but, this being Japan, I was asked to sit down and wait as usual. From my spot on the couch I could watch the clerk who was serving me repeatedly scratch her head, look unhappily from the bill to the form and back, ask for advice from other clerks… Finally she gave up and with a face of resignation sat down on a desk and made a phone call – presumably to NTT.

Banking in Japan – unless you do it online – is never a speedy business, even if you do not have to wait in line. For that reason, all Japanese banks provide seats and sometimes even newspapers and other reading material. However, with almost an hour for such a simple transaction I must have set a new record.

When I finally received all my paperwork back – with the assurance that everything had turned out alright – the clerk explained to me that the problem was the combined internet/phone bill, but apparently they have found a way to deal with this. Well, I will see next month if it indeed worked…

Eruption

Today, at 9:59 in the morning, another one of the many volcanos in Japan erupted and spewed ash as high as 9000 metres. Mount Shindake is located on a little island about 100 km south of Kyushu, where about 140 people live. All residents have been brought to safety by now.

Check out the article in the Asahi Shimbun, which has a stunning photo taken from a nearby island and a short video that shows the eruption. Scientists are worried that this might only be the start of a prolonged series of eruptions of Mount Shindake.

Meanwhile, Mount Hakone, centre of a very popular hot spring destination south of Tokyo, has also started rumbling. The ground there has risen 15 cm within two weeks by sulfurous steam emitted from the flanks of the mountain. The Japan Meteorological Agency has raised its warning level to two in the beginning of May, urging people to stay clear of the crater of the volcano. Although another scientist places the probability of an eruption of Mount Hakone at 4%, I think I will not go there any time soon.

Author: Iris

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