A European's move towards Japan
Today is 
the last day my current visa is valid. And the new one is nowhere in sight… There is no reason to panic just yet, because I am allowed to stay however long the visa application process will take. So, there should be no problems for now.
However, being at the mercy of some random person somewhere in the centre of bureaucracy is not a good feeling… Let’s hope the wheels will turn fast – and smoothly.
As I had to go to town on Saturday, I took the opportunity to go to an art exhibition at the Takashimaya Department Store.Yes, that’s right: at a department store. Takashimaya is one of the largest chains in Japan with stores in every large city. They are selling upscale goods and all of the international luxury brands, but not everything is prohibitively expensive. They also have a range of Japanese goods like kimono, futons, furniture, and of course, souvenirs. In the basement, there is usually a large food court, where all sorts of prepared foods can be bought, starting from onigiri to tempura, raw and fried fish, Japanese sweets and French style cakes, chocolate… On the top floor are restaurants, they are usually very good, but also rather expensive.
And on that top floor in the Takashimaya in Kyoto was the 44th Japanese Traditional Arts Exhibition. The arts ranged from woodcarving, lacquerware, to glassware and pottery. There were also little sculptures, mainly the little dolls the Japanese love so much. Of course, three walls of the grand hall displayed kimono. Although all the pieces were made in the traditional fashion, they were very modern looking.
When I entered, I was a little shocked at the amount of people. That was because somebody – probably the artist himself – gave a lengthy explanation of one of the exhibits. Once I could pass that bottleneck, the rest of the exhibition was not overly crowded.
At the exit of the grand hall was a little separate room where numerous sake cups were on display. Sake cups are interesting, they come in all sorts of sizes, shapes, and materials. I think that at least some of them were made by the artists exhibiting, and one could even buy them. A staff member came up to me and invited me to a sake tasting. At first I did not want to – it was barely noon – but I then asked whether she could explain a little about the sake and when she said she would try, I bought a ticket after all. It is not easy to find an opportunity to taste different types of sake, and this one was quite amazing.
After I had chosen three of the cups on display, I sat down on a little bar to drink. All three sake offered at the tasting were from Kyoto city itself, from Fushimi, where allegedly Kyoto’s best water can be found. Although the taste of sake is not very strong – remember that rice itself has hardly any taste at all – and I found all three of them very mild and pleasant, there was still a quite distinct difference to them. Although the taste was pretty much the same, one of them felt very heavy on my tongue, another very light – for lack of a better word, forgive me, I am not an expert. Interestingly, both of them had the same alcohol percentage, so that cannot have been the reason. I am glad I took the opportunity to do this, it is always nice to try something new.
Wow, today was a busy day. I had three different appointments in different parts of the city, something I don’t really enjoy doing, partly because I don’t like to see so many people in one day, and partly because I don’t like rushing from one place to another.
In the morning, I had my German-Japanese tandem meeting. It still goes well after more than a year, but I think my Japanese friend is a better student than I am. Today I had a list of things I wanted to ask him – about an advertisement for a sports club nearby and some very specialised vocabulary for my upcoming shopping trip – and we had an interesting misunderstanding about the German word “zu” which often has the meaning of “to” in English (zu tun means to do), but sometimes is also used as a prefix (as in zuhoeren – listen or zusehen – watch). I’m glad we could clear that up in the end.
Afterwards I took the subway to Kyoto station, where Yodobashi Camera is located. I needed a case for the hard drive I had removed from my old laptop, and although I thought I had chosen the correct one (a SATA) there seems to be a tiny variation in the pins that I could not account for. Thus the disk cannot be connected to the case, which means I will have to go back to Yodobashi tomorrow and try to find another one.
Then, I had a very quick lunch with sandwiches from a convenience store and after I had finished, I went to an appointment with another friend of mine. She is a very nice Japanese lady, and although long retired, she has the energy of a teenager. Talking with her – both in English and Japanese – is lots of fun, even if the topic does not centre around men…
It seems that my old trusty laptop, who was with me for the last eight years (pretty much on the day) has finally completely given up the ghost. Apparently the graphics card is bust, now the external monitor does not get a signal any longer, after the laptop screen broke down some time in March.
Of course, I made a backup of all the files then, and most of them are now safe on my new laptop, but I have used the old one still for a few things here and there, so hopefully I can access those new files I have made over the last month or two. Serves me well not to do a decent backup more often…
Rest in Peace, my dear old HP Pavillion Entertainment PC. I’ll miss you!
Summer is slowly coming and with it all sorts of insects… I have already stated that I am neither fond of spiders nor happy with moths eating my sweaters, so it is time to make sure that should they find their way up to myapartment, they will not make their home here.
There are mosquito screens at all my windows which help already. Also, my apartment is almost empty so far and thus easy to clean, with one exception: the tatami. Those are all real tatami made of rice straw and other natural fibres, and they can harbour enormous amounts of insects. Obviously, this is more of an issue on the ground floor of a traditional Japanese house – where said floor is more a lattice of rough planks on which the tatami are laid directly – than in the 5th floor of a modern building of reinforced concrete. Still, I have squished a moth or two in my bedroom already, and there is no need to make them welcome at all.
Hence, I went out – armed with detailed instructions of a friend of mine – to buy anti bug spray, specially made to be used in tatami. Yes, you have read correctly: in the tatami. The spray, which allegedly kills a variety of bugs, has a needle attached to the can with a tiny tube. The idea is to push the needle into the tatami at regular intervals (six spots per tatami) and then spray as usual, for three seconds. It is very easy and straightforward, and I finished my bedroom in less than five minutes.
So far, this is the only room I have thus treated, because I am not fond of spending time steeped in poisonous fumes. For that reason I will sleep for at least one night in that part of the living room that is designated as the guest room. I wanted to know anyway how noisy this part of the apartment is during the night. The rest of the rooms will be treated in the next few days. My friend suggests doing this both in the beginning and the end of summer. Isn’t it interesting how different climates beget different routines?
Today was the Aoi matsuri, the hollyhock festival that takes place at the Imperial Palace, Shimogamo Shrine and Kamigamo Shrine. When I came to Japan two years ago, this was the first festival I went to, and I have written about it then at length. Today, I had the opportunity – thanks to a friend – to see the parade again, this time from the special seats in Shimogamo Shrine.
It was just as I remembered, almost a deja-vu, but now the beautifully dressed men and gorgeous women on foot or on horses were passing underneath the large trees of Shimogamo Shrine instead of the open space of the Palace, which gave the parade a whole different feeling. I also think that it was a bit more compact than the first time I saw it – whether this was due to the different location or because of different timing, I cannot tell. The weather was nice and warm, but not really sunny, so I still have to wait for my first sunburn this year.
After the parade had passed the long sandy road up to the main buildings of Shimogamo Shrine, my friend and I had lunch at the few food stalls that were permitted at the shrine. We had yakisoba – grilled noodles with bacon and cabbage – and as dessert kasutera – a sort of small sweet buns made of pancake batter – and ichigo daifuku – sweet rice cakes with a strawberry on top.
This year, I did not stay for the horse race as I had promised another friend to see her, but it was nice to go to the Aoi festival again. There is still a part I have not seen yet, the one from Shimogamo to Kamogamo Shrine, so there is something left to explore for next year. I am already looking forward to it!
Only yesterday, I have made another step towards my goal of becoming a good resident of Japan. Behold, ladies and gentlemen: A random citizen of Kyoto!
You’re not getting it, are you? Well, yesterday I have received a letter from the mayor of Kyoto (or at least his office) containing the “Kyoto Citizen’s Social Interactions Survey”.
I am one of only 3000 citizens of Kyoto that were randomly chosen to take part in the survey. It has around 100 questions touching different areas: Actual Social Experience in 27 different fields like environment, human rights, culture, pedestrian friendly city, housing; Importance of Kyoto city policies with respect to the above, and personal interest in city administration. The final question is especially interesting: “Do you think you are happy now?”
Well, yes for sure, thank you! No matter where I lived before, I was never deemed random enough to be asked to take part in such a survey. I cannot help wondering how random it really is though. The envelope contained four sets of questionnaires, in Japanese, English, Korean, and Chinese, which is something that is very rare indeed in Japan. The question is whether there are really so many foreigners living in Kyoto that a survey sent to a random one out of 500 citizens would warrant such a measure? But then again, I was never good at statistics…
Yesterday I went to a photography exhibition, titled “Last Samurais, First Photographs” near the Imperial Palace. A number of 150-100 year old photographs of samurai were display, and I found them very interesting and beautiful.
Apparently, photography was introduced to Japan only in the last decade of the Edo period (late 1850s), but it spread relatively quickly, and by the late 19th century, there were both foreign and Japanese photographers working in Japan. The exhibition – from the collections of the French Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts – showed photos for example from the Japanese photographer Kusakabe Kimbei, a protegé of the Austrian photographer Baron Raimund von Stillfried who worked in Yokohama for 20 years until he returned to Europe in 1883.
Of course, at that time photographs were black and white, but almost all of the exhibits were carefully hand colored, which gave them a somewhat dreamy appearance. The interesting part about this is that they show the samurai’s armor as very bright and colorful in yellow, red, and blue, with brightly patterned kimono underneath.
Although the exhibition started with two photographs of the then shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, most of the pictures did not show real samurai, because they had been taken after the shogunate had ended and the samurai class was abolished. Although the armor is real, the people wearing them were normal people without samurai ancestry, or actors of the kabuki or noh theatre.
This can also be seen by the choice of subject. Most of the photos were just portraits, focusing on the armor and different weapons. However, a whole album was on display that depicted – again, in carefully hand colored photographs – the famous story of the 47 ronin, who avenged their master who had been forced to commit suicide. Once they had achieved their goal, they went to his grave and also committed seppuku. Another example is the photo below. It depicts two famous people from the Heike Monogatari. At the left is the accomplished female warrior Tomoe Gozen, who followed her lover Minamoto Yoshinaka (right) into the war with the Taira.
As I said, the exhibition, although small, is certainly worthwhile. It takes place in the Toraya Gallery on Ichijo dori, near the crossing with Karasuma dori, and will be open until the end of May.
I have been working on the basics of my company webpage today. Although I am planning nothing spectacularly difficult, I realised that as the whole world (except myself) is now using mobile phones to go online, I would need to catch up with the latest mobile design and programming models, unless I want to become the last dinosaur on the web. Or maybe the first?
Anyway, I decided to throw some money at the problem and to get myself a decent book on the matter. Yes I know how that sounds. Remember: I’m a non-mobile phone owning, actual book reading dinosaur. So, I was browsing a bit and settled on something that seemed reasonable and I can order it from amazon.
Of course, shipping stuff to Japan is prohibitively expensive, you get used to that, but what really riled me up was the estimated duration of the shipping: 3 – 6 weeks. Excuse me, how long? People, it’s a book. One single book! I know that Japan is an island, but I am sure you’re not hiring a personal swimmer even though this would explain the price… Come on people, 6 weeks is ridiculous! Shipping all my 42 boxes from Germany – on a real container ship – will not take longer than that, and yes, my things will have to go through customs as well.
Okay, I thought, let’s look at amazon Japan. I’m glad to say that they have the book too and there they have free shipping, but delivery will take just as long. Obviously they are buying the book in America themselves. I’m deeply sorry I can’t read textbooks in Japanese, although, given the subject matter, half of the book will be English words and phrases anyway.
I have resigned to not buy the book as I wanted to be finished with the site by the time the book should arrive. Although not a big fan of learning things that way, I will look for some tutorials on the web, which will hopefully do the trick. Alternatively, I can always have a look at Kyoto University’s library, I know they have a fairly good English section for the sciences.
Today was the last day of this year’s Golden Week holidays. It is a national holiday although not really a holiday if that makes sense. Today is only a holiday because the first “real” holiday of Golden Week – Constitution Day on May 3rd – fell on a Sunday and was thus lost to the general populace. In such a case, the holiday will be made up for on Monday, or, if this is already a holiday, on the first non-holiday in the week. Which means: today. Somewhat complicated, yes, but once the Japanese settle on a cause of action they pull through with it. And thus, there have been people on holidays since at least last Saturday.
Not everybody though: I have received letters as usual, the large shops and restaurants in my area were open, and the facility next to my house – that has something to do with garbage collection I think – was operating normally, company wide open-air workouts included. On the other hand, many of the smaller shops were closed, and the little girl who cannot play outside without regular high-pitched cries of “Okaasaaan, Okaaasaaaan” (mummy) that increase in audible panic the longer they take, must have been shipped off to some place far enough to be inaudible, for the time being, at least.
I spent Golden Week working, more or less. Mostly I was busy giving my apartment a thorough deep cleaning for the first time since I moved in. Of course, I had cleaned the bathroom and kitchen within the first week already, but only now did I finish scrubbing all the hard floors, vacuum all the tatami, and clean all those hard-to-reach places like lampshades (which are mostly plastic here) and the top of curtain rails. Altogether, since moving in, I spent 7 hours cleaning those 10 m^2 of kitchen that I have – yes, it was really that disgusting! – and maybe another 5 hours on the whole rest of the apartment. Right now it is so pristine, I’d prefer to not move at all, just so that it stays that way… oh well, at least from now on it’s just maintenance.
Yesterday afternoon, as it was such a nice day, I went exploring my neighborhood, sat on this part of the river for a while and had an ice cream or two while collecting my thoughts about my new company website.
And today, I spent the afternoon writing a letter to my Japanese pen pal, in both German (which she is trying to learn) and in Japanese (which I am trying to learn). This is always a rather painful thing to do, as I want to write semi-interesting stories related to my life in Japan, which is not something my language ability is really able to support yet. So I am sitting there amongst all my Japanese books trying hard to write something more exciting than “It was nice weather today…”