Iris – Page 102 – goinggaijin.com

Midori no Hi

Today is the second of the three holidays that mark Golden Week in Japan. Midori no Hi means Greenery Day and goes back to the Showa emperor who was particularly fond of plants. It is celebrated on May 4th since 2007, between 1989 and 2006 it was celebrated on the Showa emperor’s birthday on April 29th.

The day is also called Arbor Day, and one of the duties of the Emperor and the Empress include planting seeds and a tree somewhere in the countryside of Japan. Unfortunately, I could not find any detailed information where they went this year, but I am sure as from today, there will be a few more trees growing in Japan.

And maybe, they will become as glorious as this one, the Jomon Sugi cryptomeria on Yakushima island, which is estimated to be at least 2000 and maybe even up to 7000 years old:

Dinner

I just came home from dinner with one of my old housemates. We went to an organic, but not vegan restaurant near Sanjo-Karasuma, and afterwards to a cafe nearby for strawberry cake and mango smoothie. It was nice, I enjoyed the evening.

Afterwards we tried to go to one of the exhibitions of “Kyotographie” which is running right now, but they had closed just 10 minutes before we arrived – to the great dismay of my friend who is involved in the festival and wanted to show off a little. Oh well, some other time maybe.

Showa No Hi

Today is a national holiday in Japan, called Showa Day. It is celebrated in remembrance of the last – the Showa – Emperor (Hirohito) who was born today in 1901, acceded to the throne in 1926 and died in 1989.

Showa Day has only been called that since 2007, when the main opposition party finally gave green light to the renaming of the day (which had been celebrated since 1989 as Greenery Day). However, they proposed that the day was not supposed to be a holiday to celebrate, but rather one to reflect on the Showa emperor’s 63 years of reign. His reign – the longest of any monarch in Japanese history so far – was a quite turbulent one with lots of major events taking place, not just in Japan, but all over the world.

Just to name a few of these events:

Economic collapse starting in 1928 leaving many people unemployed and starving.
Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the installment of a government there under the Chinese emperor Pu-Yi. Some historians count this as the start of the World War II.
The second Sino-Japanese War starting in 1937.Entering World War II by creating the Rome-Tokyo-Berlin Axis in 1940 and the attack on Pearl Harbor one year later.
Surrendering in 1945 after two atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the total Japanese death toll mounting to around 2.7 million people, among them 600.000 civilians.
Occupation of Japan, which saw a complete change in government and the first democratic elections in 1946, where women were allowed to vote for the first time.
Japan became a sovereign nation again in 1952, after the signing of the San Francisco Treaty with the United States.
The “economic miracle” of Japan starting in the 1950s, where the economy grew three times as fast as that of other major nations. By the end of the Showa era (in fact until 2011), the Japanese economy was the second largest one in the world.

Jane Doe

Over the weekend, I have completed the last bits of my visa application, and I have just heard back from my lawyer that they will submit all the documents tomorrow afternoon, if possible.

Now, all I can do is wait… The procedure to change the visa can take up to two months, but the good thing is that I can stay in Japan even if my current visa expires during this time. How fast I would have to leave the country in case the new visa is not granted, I do not know – and I am certainly not keen on finding that out.

But that does not really worry me, I’ll take care of that problem when it arises. I am much more worried about the following: For my lawyer to be able to submit the paperwork on my behalf, I had to give him both my passport and my zairyu card, and he will keep them throughout the application procedure, however long this may take. (*) You know that those two are the only two documents proving that I am who I am, here in Japan…

I find this quite scary, to be honest. Although I have received a “certificate of deposit” that states that both my IDs are with my lawyer and even include photos, stamps, and his mobile number, this is not quite the same. I will try not to run into the police of course, but what if there is some sort of emergency? Besides, not wanting to leave the country is one thing; not being able to, is a completely different thing…(*) Added one day later: Just to clarify: It is not strictly necessary that my lawyer keeps my IDs throughout the screening procedure. He needs them only twice: in the beginning when he is filing the application (proof of application is stapled into the passport, by the way) and in the end when the visa has been approved and he goes to exchange the old zairyu card for the new one. The reason why he wants to keep them is to simplify and speed up the whole procedure, and, yes indeed, I have agreed to this (after some agonising back and forth…).

Stumbling

The Geisha – or Geiko as they are called in Kyoto – are the incorporation of everything Japanese, not only for foreigners, but for the Japanese as well. A Geiko is a manifestation of tradition in everything she does, a masterpiece of art in everything she wears, and a showpiece of that Japan that is all but gone and only survives in tiny enclaves like Kyoto’s Gion. In short, they embody everything that is beautiful, sophisticated, and rare in Japan. And rare they are indeed as their art is a dying one, and an evening of personal entertainment with a Geisha is a costly enterprise.

So, you can probably imagine the lengths to which people are going to even only see a Geisha. People flock to the few yearly events with public appearances of Geiko and Maiko. They spend hours wandering the streets of Gion in the early evening in the hope of catching a glimpse of a Maiko on her way to an appointment. Some very obnoxious fellows even follow them around when they are going out, just to get that one perfect picture.

I can certainly understand the first thing – I have done so myself – but I find the second a little odd and the third outright rude and impolite. That’s probably the reason why after two years in Japan I only have taken very few photos of Geiko and Maiko. But then again, it’s not as if I had to resort to such methods, my approach is much more casual…

A while back, it was such a nice and sunny afternoon that I decided to go out. There is a tiny little cafe near the Philosopher’s Path, with maybe 15 seats, interesting decor, and great hot chocolate. I had been there before and I felt like walking a bit. When I arrived, there were five or six men occupying the largest table at the back – never before had I seen so many customers there. Well, that was not how I had envisioned my quiet afternoon, but I ordered and crouched down over my notebook anyway.

Then, suddenly, they arrived from the room in the back: a young Maiko, flawlessly dressed and made up, with perfect coiffure in which stuck those little seasonal hair ornaments that are often worn during only a few days. She was accompanied by a somewhat older woman, obviously a senior member from her teahouse. Both women then took seats on the large table and started chatting with the men waiting there.

I was very surprised and tried very hard not to stare. After a while of talking and drinking coffee the women got up and everybody left. The whole meeting – from the time the women came out from the back until the cafe was empty again – took not more than 15 minutes. Interestingly, it was the older woman accompanying the Maiko who paid the bill, which makes me assume that the gentlemen paid for the meeting including drinks beforehand.

Afterwards, the owner of the cafe, an old lady who speaks a little English, confirmed that that had indeed been a real Maiko. See, that’s how you get to see them close up, just go to the right cafe…

Earth Day

Today, April 22nd, is Earth Day, and many events take place worldwide to support the environment and its protection, or at least raise awareness in that respect. I am not aware of any local events here in Kyoto, so I did not participate in anything, although there may have been some in Tokyo or in other large cities around Japan.

However, I tried the Ecological Footprint Calculator on the Earth Day homepage. You have to choose the country where you live (or the one closest to it) before you start calculating, because obviously, your footprint not only depends on your own actions, but also on societal factors that are a bit harder to influence for the average citizen.

I did two different calculations, one for Switzerland, as a central European, and the one for Japan. Interestingly, the questions are very different in both calculators, for example there was a large section on recycling for Switzerland, which did not feature in the Japanese one at all. In both there was the question “How much of your food is produced locally?”, which I found a very tough one to answer. I mean, I know that the rice I eat is definitely Japanese, but even the Japanese chocolate I consume so much of is made from imported cocoa beans… The strangest thing I encountered in the Japanese questionnaire was the question for the size of your home. Apparently, the average Japanese lives on something between 150 and 200 m^2 – that can’t be right, surely?

Anyway, me living in Japan means that my lifestyle would consume 1.8 Earths if everyone did it that way (the calculation for Switzerland gives a result of 2.4 Earths). How large is your footprint?

Endspurt

After my company was established, you would think that I deserved a break from paperwork for a while. Oh no, no such thing. The next goal was to apply for a new visa, one with which I am actually allowed to work for my company…

So, again, I needed to produce yet more paper. Have I already mentioned that the Japanese love paper and paperwork? The more paperwork you’ll give to the authorities, the more sincere they believe you to be… In this vein, I collected a copious amount of documents, the obvious ones like Curriculum Vitae and university degrees, and the interesting ones like various photos of my office space and the nameplates on my door and mailbox as well as the rental contract for my apartment that had to state in writing – and with the hanko of my landlord in place – that I was allowed to use one room as an office for the company.

Slightly vexing was that I had to prove that the start capital of my company was indeed my own money – and how I got to have all that cash. Okay, I can see that if you are buying yourself a visa with that investment, it should be your own assets. Mind you though that it was not good enough that I had transferred the money from my own account back in December last year. First of all, because the magic timeframe for anything in Japan seems to be “within the last three months”, so December was too late – or too early? This is the reason why I needed that second Japanese bank account under my name, so that I could transfer the investment from one account with my name to yet another account with my name… To be fair, even Japanese citizens have to do that if they want to open a company. Anyway, that was not good enough. I still had to show where I got all that money from in the first place, which thankfully was easy.

Today I finished the last piece of paperwork: A business plan and a budget for the next two years. Interestingly, this is something that is only required for the visa application and not for the business establishment itself. I hate writing these sort of self-adulations and extensive accumulations of empty phrases and buzzwords, and to be honest, I have considerably procrastinated on this task. Thanks to a good friend of mine who has experience with running a small business, however, I could push myself over the finish line today.

Now I have some time to rest, and maybe even time to catch up with all my emails… The paperwork is now with my lawyer and he promised to have a look at it in the next few days. With a bit of luck the business plan with its seven pages of manifested blood sweat and tears is satisfactory and we can finally hand in all the collected documents to the immigration office. Let’s hope there will be fewer instances of the drama “fun with immigration” than last year…

President

Time to confess the biggest thing that happened during my absence from this blog:

Exactly one month and one day ago, the paperwork was finished and the registration finally took place. Since that day, I am the owner and president and CEO and only employee of a little start-up company in Kyoto, Japan.

It’s a little one-woman online media company, run from the tiny 9 m^2 office I showed you in my post a week ago. For now, it will stay this way until I can see that the business is viable and can make a stable profit. If this happens, I have plans to expand. I don’t want to go into details here, but the company is set up so I am able to do a variety of things: teaching, translations, editing on the one hand, and, honoring my education, IT consulting, web design, algorithm design on the other hand.

Meanwhile, I have already received lots of new paperwork. All the documents that pertain to the establishment of the company of course – all of which are in Japanese and I cannot read… Or the tax documents intended for no less than three different tax offices (city, regional, national ones). Or the proof of registration of my company inkan, only one in a set of three inkan that my company has for different purposes. The registered one is for official use, then there is a special hanko for the bank once I open a company account, and then there is the hanko for daily use with which to sign letters and invoices for example.

To be honest, now that I have arrived at this, I have somewhat mixed feelings. I am certainly proud that I made it so far, and I am sure that my business idea is viable. On more rainy days I realise that this is just the beginning of a really long journey, and that, no matter how good the idea is, it is not certain that I can make it work…

Delivery

About a month ago, I spent a whole day at Yodobashi Camera to buy electronic equipment for my office. It took almost six hours – plus 90 minutes on the bus – to buy: a new laptop, external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, a printer and a phone (actually two phones, one for the office, one for home, although I realize that at the moment this is the same). A number of assorted cables rounded off my purchases.

Except for the laptop I could take everything home immediately. However, as the printer was rather bulky and together with the other stuff would have overwhelmed me, I agreed to have it delivered the next day – for a very small fee of only 500 YEN. As I had an appointment until 1 pm the next day, I arranged for delivery between 2 and 4 pm.

When I returned home the next day at about 1:30 pm I found, stuck to the door frame, a notice about a failed delivery. Apparently, it had been attempted at 12:17 or thereabouts, and now I was left with an assortment of phone numbers to call and ask for a second try.

I was furious – that was exactly what I wanted to avoid, making phone calls in Japanese. With the proper vocabulary written down on a cheat sheet, and with lots of helpless looks and hand waving gestures, I can more often than not manage to get my point across if the person thus addressed stands opposite me and can watch me struggle and maybe help me along. On the phone however, I am helpless. That’s because I cannot see the other person and repeat what he may not understand (and vice versa), and because, especially if you are phoning a company, they will use very formal Japanese which I can barely understand. In fact, a friend of mine who has been in Japan for five years and speaks very good Japanese agrees that making phone calls is very difficult and even he avoids it if possible.

Anyway, after examining the notice, I found a number on the bottom that promised English service – exactly what I needed! Of course, without internet and phone line, making said call from home was impossible, so I packed my laptop and went to the closest café with free wi-fi. When I entered the number into skype I received, instead of a reassuring ringing sound, a notice that this service was not available via skype. Probably because skype does not send the dial tones that may be needed for automated menus.

That could only mean one thing: Call the driver of the delivery van directly. After my panic had subsided and I had looked up a number of choice words that may or may not be needed, I took to skype again and made that phone call. After I explained that I don’t speak Japanese well – doing that very slowly helps – I tried to tell him that I want my package from Yodobashi delivered again. He did not even care for my explanations though. All he wanted was my name and address and he promised to come by again later. It was surprisingly easy.

I was very proud of myself when he indeed arrived about two hours later and brought my printer. I was too happy to even scold him for being too early the first time. However, a few days later, when I checked all my bills, I realized that the driver had done nothing wrong. Apparently the girl who took my data in the shop got the times wrong: Instead of a delivery time between 2 and 4, she had entered 12 to 14, an understandable mistake. Not that this made it less annoying, but in the future, I will know to double-check.

Madness

Personal confession: I was a rather angry teenager. Always first in line to scream and shout, always talking back to teachers and other random adults… The fly on the wall would drive me crazy – and I’d be up it in a moment. I’m not sure what exactly has provoked the change in my life – I’m guessing it is age – but I have cooled down considerably. Especially the last two years in Japan – being where I want to be, doing what I want to do – have almost made me another person.

Almost. A bit more than a month ago, I met the first Japanese who brought my blood to boiling point. She made me so angry, within 5 minutes, I almost (!) started yelling at her. Here’s what happened:

I needed a bank account in Japan, a second one, for practical reasons. Japan has many banks, but the one with the densest branch network is Japan Post Bank. Even here, in a residential area, there are two branches within only a five minute’s walk from my new home. So, I thought, if I ever have to move again, this is the best bank to get a second account as they are everywhere. So, on an early Friday afternoon about six weeks ago, I went to the larger one of the Post Bank branches around my corner in order to open a new bank account.

This branch is large enough to have a designated person to supply you with forms and help on how to fill them in, and then hands you your waiting number. So, I went up to said person and said, slowly, but in Japanese: I want to open a bank account please. I received a rather complicated answer that I could not quite make sense of, but I understood that there is lots of paperwork involved in opening a bank account and that there is nobody who could speak English and that I should come back on Monday, when there would be some English speaker available.

Okay, thought I, slightly unhappy because I needed that account faster than that, but I relented, said thank you, and left. Fast forward to the following Monday morning, 10 am, when I entered the same branch again, placed myself in front of the same woman, and said the very same sentence as on Friday: I want to open a bank account please.

At which – wouldn’t you believe it – the woman gave me the very same sermon as on Friday afternoon: It involves a lot of paperwork in Japanese which you can’t fill out on your own, and we do not have anybody who speaks English here. I went: What? Mind you, this was the main post (bank) office for this whole city district, not one of the tiny ones staffed with three people; I would not have dreamt of going to one of those.

That was the point when I started to get upset: That woman had just wasted a whole weekend of mine! Thankfully there was another customer in the bank at that time who kindly tried to translate between the two of us. It turned out that the clerk had decided upfront that, because I am a foreigner, the only thing I could possibly want is a bank account from which I can send money abroad, and this would allegedly be very difficult to set up. I said no, that’s not what I need, I only want an account on which to receive my salary. No, she insisted, this is all very complicated, can you not bring a Japanese friend?

That was the point when my blood started to boil. She had not used the word “friend” on Friday, I would have understood that, it being one of the first Japanese words I learnt. She then gave me the impression that things could be sorted out on Monday. To the question whether there were other post bank branches where people would be able to speak English, she replied she did not know of any, and besides this is the main branch, so other branches’ staff would send me here anyway.

That was the point when I got angry – for the first time in the two years I spent living in Japan. I had not gotten angry at the immigration officer who personally grilled me at Kansai airport in February last year; I had not gotten angry at the immigration officer who sent me for the correct sized envelope. But this time, I did get really mad – and even a bit loud. I did rein in my anger comparatively quickly though, thanked the person who had translated, and left the Post Bank, without bank account. I have no intentions to go back there ever again.

In the end, I did get my second bank account that Monday morning after all. There is a Bank of Kyoto nearby, and although they were not my first choice because they have hardly any branches outside of Kyoto, I went there after all. Similar situation there: A woman handing out forms to whom I posed my request: I want to open a bank account please. From there, it took us five minutes to fill out a single piece of paper and put my hanko at various places; and after a waiting time of about 25 minutes, I had sucessfully opened a second bank account. And she did not speak any English either…