Iris – Page 117 – goinggaijin.com

Offense

On the train to Osaka last week, I sat opposite a young woman. She was casually dressed and carried a large shoulder bag that she had placed on her lap. As such, it was nothing out of the ordinary, and I did not pay much attention to her at first.

When I put down my book, however, I noticed the writing on her bag – it appeared to be from the front page of an old French newspaper – and I felt oddly offended. The article said something about von Ribbentrop signing the non-aggression pact with Russia and I went “HUH?”. It’s history of WWII, or rather its beginnings, August 24th, 1939 to be precise, and it felt very odd seeing any such reference being used to spruce up an accessory. I realize that the young woman probably did not know the meaning of the French and the historical significance behind the headline, and probably neither did the bag’s designer. Hence, I would assume that there was no offense intended by either of them.

For myself, I cannot explain what exactly caused the uneasy feeling about the bag: Is it that talking about WWII is still somewhat taboo in Austria and always comes with mixed feelings? That my grandparents lived through it and the few tales they did tell about it were no pretty ones? Or was it simply the thoughtlessness behind the act? I thought about that for a while and I still have no answer…

Hours

One thing that keeps baffling me after all the years in Asia are working hours. I’m not talking about those seemingly 12 hour days you have to spend in the office. Seemingly they are indeed, because often it is a question of “warm body on chair” rather than being productive throughout. A colleague of mine, for example, upon returning from lunch, would reach for the large pillow in his drawer, put it on the desk and then take a nap for an hour or so, all openly and undisturbed by anybody else in the office. Surely there is a huge peer pressure going on in such a case – you have to be there before your supervisor and cannot leave before she does. In Japan, there is even a fixed phrase that is employed when leaving before anyone else: Minna-san, osaki ni shitsurei shimasu, which essentially means that you are sorry to be so rude to leave early.

Anyway, these are big companies. But even small businesses seem to have interesting hours. For example, when I returned to Ebisu’s from Europe, one of the faucets in the bathroom was leaking badly. I informed the landlady and she called a plumber to come by and at least have a look at the problem. For a week nothing happened, except that we had to keep the front door unlocked so the plumber could enter at any time. Finally, when I left the house yesterday afternoon to go the library, there he was, rummaging around in the bathroom, fixing the faucet – on a Sunday afternoon at 1:30 pm… Strange working hours indeed…

March Was Made of Yarn

March Was Made of Yarn
Various Authors

This book is a collection of writings by various Japanese authors on the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe.

My personal favourite is “lulu” by Shinji Ishii: Lulu is a little dog that sneaked into one of the numerous shelters for orphaned children that were established after the quake. In the night, she sees mysterious, ghost-like women, who, coming down amidst a shining light from the ceiling, comfort the sleeping children. All of them, except five, who seem too wrapped up in darkness for the women to notice. So, Lulu decides to comfort these children on her own, in the only way she knows – the way of a dog…

Another story I enjoyed, although it is much darker, is “Grandma’s Bible” by Natsuki Ikezawa, where a man called Kimura tells his story to a rescue team: Though born in Matsubetsu, he lives in Tokyo, but has an offer to move to Arizona for business, which he is going to accept. Wishing to travel light, he packs his most valuable belongings into a trunk and sends it to his brother, still in Matsubetsu, for safekeeping. However, during the scheduled delivery, the tsunami comes and wipes out the little village, and Kimura now feels obliged to stay…

Note that not all of the stories talk about the tsunami or have a direct connection to it. The book is simply a collection of stories expressing the writer’s feelings at that time; in Japanese many things are left unspoken. A part of the proceeds will go towards disaster relief in Japan.

Check out the book on amazon.

Down

Things are going up and down these days. After the incredible UP I had last Monday, the DOWN followed almost immediately…

First of all, I received the result of the Japanese test I took in December – I did not pass. Well, that did not really come as a huge surprise, but still, I had not expected to fare that badly on the first two parts of the test, where I scored just a third of the total points. My lack of vocabulary affected mainly the score of the reading section, so even had I been better in the grammar, it would not have made a difference. In the listening section I scored almost 50% though, which is surprisingly high given that towards the end of the 25 minute recording my brain shut down and I could not make out a single word any longer.

Second, my future business partner has turned into my ex-future business partner. We had diverging ideas of the business: He wanted his business with me working for him in a sense, while I wanted my business with me working for myself and no further interference. As not even the business ideas could have been made congruent in the long run, he decided to pull out. I cannot blame him, I would have done the same, so it is much better this way anyway.

Finally, I had to go out yesterday – the one day in the week when it was raining. I hate going out when it’s raining…

But, you are never down for long: I went to see a friend of mine in Osaka and we spent more than two hours catching up and talking about all sorts of stuff, including the business. He gave me tons of good advice and promised to introduce me to dozens of people who may be able to help me further in one way or the other. And if not, they will at least be interesting to know.

Also, I have found a very nice young man for a Japanese-German language exchange. He is very educated, speaks several languages, and is good in explaining grammar and Kanji. I will have to make quite an effort to meet my (or his?) expectations, and it’s great to be challenged!

And the main reason for going out yesterday was that I picked up a picture Honjo san made expecially for me Monday afternoon – and it turned out absolutely beautiful!

I’m not discouraged still – the more it rains, the nicer the rainbow afterwards. Besides, I brought tons of Austrian chocolate for emergencies like this.

Three Years After…

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, and of the resulting Fukushima nuclear disaster. At 2:46 pm, people all over Japan held a minute’s silence to commemorate the almost 16.000 dead and the more than 2600 people still missing. That doesn’t sound much, does it? What about 270.000? That’s the number of people who still – three years after – could not return home and live in shelters, often just simple container villages. Some of them will be able to eventually go home, once the reconstruction in the devastated areas – a total of about 560 square kilometers of land near the coast were flooded, and more than 1.1 million buildings were damaged – will be complete. Others will have to wait longer, at least three more years or, more likely, forever: Those who are from what is euphemistically called in Japan a “difficult to return zone”, meaning those areas that are contaminated by nuclear fallout of the Fukushima plant.

So, what has happened in the last three years? Well, all of the 48 nuclear power plants have been shut down after the tragedy and are still offline, but the plans of the former government for an energetic turn to renewable energy sources were shelved with the election of Shinzo Abe as prime minister. Although the standards for nuclear power plants have been tightened, and not all of them will go back online because of that, more and more people start to openly oppose nuclear power in Japan.

Dissatisfaction also rises within the survivors of the catastrophe. Many of them believe that the memories of that day are beginning to fade, and that the Olympics that were awarded Japan for 2020 will only take away attention from the areas that are still in need of being rebuilt. They also believe that the reconstruction in the devastated areas goes too slowly, and there are fears that the constructions necessary for the Olympics will further hamper the ones in the affected areas.

Interestingly, Shinzo Abe has promised to speed up building a highway through the destroyed area – in order to increase tourism there. Part of the highway will run through areas that are at the moment still heavily contaminated, and although decontamination is in progress (it is unclear what is happening with the removed soil though…) – would you go to Fukushima as a tourist?

Artistic

I had a most exciting afternoon today…

First I went to an appointment with my (future) business partner, and for about 2 hours we were discussing how, when, and what, and if we needed a plan B and what it would be. Afterwards he asked me whether I was free in the afternoon, and when I said yes, we went to see a friend of his in town.

The friend turned out to be a woodblock print artist – and, just so that you know: I love woodblock prints!

The idea of a woodblock print is simple: You carve a design into a block of wood, paint it in a single colour and print the design (or rather, its negative) onto paper. Each colour of the picture gets its own carving, so you need at least as many woodblocks as you want colours in the finished image, and the image slowly grows layer by layer, colour by colour during the printing process.

We spent several hours in the gallery/workshop, and I got to ask all sorts of questions: How exactly does he make the prints, how many carved blocks does he need for one finished image, what is the colour he is using, how long does it take for a design to be completely finished, can he really recreate a print he has made before, how does he trace the design onto the woodblocks, what paper is he using… I was very eager to ask all those questions and find out all the details and he seemed to be equally happy to answer them. Finally I was so bold as to ask whether I could see some of his actual carved woodblocks – and he picked up a whole package of an old design from his storage in the first floor. I was – and still am – extremely excited, as I said, I love woodblock prints!

By the way, the artist’s name is Masahiko Honjo and his homepage is here: http://www.eonet.ne.jp/~marugo/index.html

I will not go into further details about woodblock printing in this post – this topic deserves an elaborate and well researched Saturday posting – but here is one of my favourite prints from one of my favourite artists, Hashiguchi Goyo.

Full Japanese Menu

This complete Japanese menu has five dishes plus dessert, and except for the dessert which comes last, there is no strict order to the food. Japanese people take a nibble from here and there, according to their own tastes and preferences. The bitter gourd recipe is the only one that is not standard Japanese food, it’s from Okinawa and thus tastes different, well, bitter. Many Japanese enjoy Okinawan food, though, so it’s worth trying.

Main Ingredients
(4 people)

Chestnut Rice (kuri gohan)

– 80 g chestnuts
Peel the chestnuts and soak them in a bowl of slightly salted water.

– 200 g Japanese white rice
– 60 g sticky rice
– 1/2 teaspoon salt
– twice as much water as rice (by volume)

Mix and wash the rice and put it into a rice cooker. Drain the chestnuts and put them on top of the rice. Do not mix them under yet. Add the water and salt, then cook the rice as usual
When the rice is cooked, mix the chestnuts into the rice.

Grilled Chicken Skewers with Vegetables (Yakitori)

– 400 g chicken thighs
– 2 spring onions
Cut the chicken into small cubes (3 cm side length) and the spring onions into 3 cm pieces.

– salt and pepper

Soy-based Sauce:
– 2 tablespoons of whole soybean sauce
– 3 tablespoons of sugar
Mix the soy sauce with the sugar.

Coat 300 g of the chicken with the soy-based sauce.
Thread the chicken and spring onions alternately onto bamboo skewers, thread the remaining chicken onto skewers and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Grill the skewers on a grill or open fire.

– 1 paprika
– 8 green peppers
– 8 shiitake mushrooms
Trill the vegetables (or fry them in a pan with oil) and garnish the skewers of meat.

Boiled Chrysanthemums With Radish (daikon no hana no oroshiae)

– 200 g daikon radish
Grate finely and drain from the resulting water.

– 2 blossoms edible chrysanthemums
Take the petals and boil them quickly, then put them in cold water and drain.

– 150 g cucumber
Slice thinly.

– 2 tablespoons baby sardines
Pour boiled water over them, then drain and let them cool.

Sweetened Vinegar as Dressing:
– 2 tablespoons of vinegar
– 2 tablespoons of sugar
– 1 teaspoon salt
Mix together.

Mix all the above ingredients together and dress with the sweetened vinegar.

Stir-fried Okinawan Gourd and Tofu

– 1 bitter gourd
Cut in half lengthwise, remove the seeds and slice in 5 mm pieces.

– 1/2 pack deep-fried tofu
Cut into slices of about 8 mm.

– 1/2 tablespoon oil
– 1 tablespoon sugar
– 1 tablespoon miso

Fry the bitter gourds in oil. When they are softened, add the sugar and the miso. Towards the end, put in the tofu and fry for another minute or so.

Japanese Clear Soup (Dashi)

Dashi:
– 1 litre water
– 20 g dashi konbu (dried seaweed)
– 20 g katsuo bushi (dried bonito)
Put the konbu into the water and heat up. Just before the water starts boiling, remove the konbu and add the katsuo. Boil for one minute, reduce the heat and wait until the katsuo sinks. Strain the dashi through a wet cloth.

– 1/2 pack tofu
– 1/2 pack nameko mushrooms
– 1/2 pack daikon radish sprouts
– 1 tablespoon light colored soy sauce
– 1 tablespoon salt
– fragrant garnish (suikuchi)

Prepare the dashi, add salt and soy sauce. Place the tofu into the hot dashi and boil it. To serve, put the tofu, nameko, daikon, and suikuchi into a soup bowl and pour the dashi over it.

Potato Rice Cakes (Imo Mochi)

– 100 g sweet potatoes
– 1 rice cake
– 80 g red bean jam (anko)
– some kinako (soybean flour)

Peel the potatoes, cut them in 1 cm slices and put them in water to eliminate the bitter taste. Put the potatoes on a dish and cook them in the microwave for 5 minutes.
Water the rice cake and heat it in the microwave for 1 min.
Crush the boiled potatoes in a bowl and mix with the heated rice cake. Put the mixture into a bowl covered with kinako, and make four pieces.

Divide the anko into four pieces and wrap it with the potato mixture. Lightly sprinkle the finished rice cakes with kinako.

Decisions

Entering Japan this time was not as straightforward as it used to be. On immigration, the officer seemed unhappy and asked why I wanted to come to Japan – again. I’m not sure whether he was not persuaded by my answers or whether he simply followed standard procedures, in any case he called his supervisor and I was led into a small room for additional questioning. Several times, I had to lay out my plans for Japan, where, when, and with whom I was going to put them into action, and why on earth I hadn’t had that glorious idea earlier or, better still, in my own country. In the end the officer appeared satisfied, stamped my passport – for another 90 days – and wished me luck for my endeavours with a hearty “gambatte kudasai”.

So, what did I tell her? I told her that I was here to open my own business. I know 😉 I wrote about this before, and about the requirements, and then I shied away, being too afraid of the consequences. Now, however, after another three months of unsucessful job hunting, where I have implicitly been told countless times that I’m not good enough, I’ve had it. To listen to that kind of talk, I could have stayed in Austria in the bosom of my family… Now I have made up my mind: I will do my own thing, I will go self-employed. After all, I do not mind that my Japanese is less than perfect and that I am not an English native speaker…

You want details? Well, I want to start a webpage geared towards tourists – both foreign and Japanese – coming to Kyoto, in both English and Japanese. Income generation through advertisements. I figure that a) the tourist industry in Japan – both international and domestic – is large enough to afford me a share and b) with my background I can do the necessary computer work on my own. The only obvious problem I see right now is c) my lack of decent Japanese, but I am sure this can be addressed in one way or the other. Of course, just having a dotcom will most likely not provide instant income to convince Japanese immigration to let me stay, so I am planning to set up the business with a broader foundation, for example to include IT consulting (think web design), language consulting (think translations), and content provider (think writing). I think the right mix will make the business viable and I can always shift focus later on.

So much for the grand vision. The gritty details I shall spare for future posts – plenty of them to annoy you, I am sure… In any case, wish me luck!

Return

I’m back!

I had four wonderful weeks in Europe, visiting numerous friends in Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. My friends took me shopping – I desperately needed winter clothes and shoes and a new watch – we spent a huge amount of time eating, drinking, and chatting – the longest session took until 4:30 in the morning, accompanied by three bottles of prosecco – I got to know their kids – who quite surprisingly seemed to like me; I’m not good with kids at all – and we went out, for lunch and breakfast, to the movies, the library in Wolfenbuettel, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam… The highlights: Two birthday cakes, and, in Gmunden, the museum for ceramics. Sanitary ceramics, that is. Mostly toilets, to be precise. I loved it! In those four weeks I got showered with sweets and attention – it was wonderful – thanks to all of you!

Well, I’m back in Japan, five kilos heavier than before. I missed the biggest snowfall of the last 50 years or so (which does annoy me quite a bit) but at least I now have decent clothes to withstand the cold – and it feels especially freezing now after the central heating all over the place in Europe. Unfortunately I have caught a cold a few days before my departure, so the flight was less than pleasant, but by now it has almost passed. I will wait to see my Japanese until I have fully recovered though.

As for my future plans, well… I’ll tell you on Friday.

Nice to be back!

Time Off

I am taking some time off again, actually, I will be in Europe all through February, so there will be no posts during that time. But then again, nothing interesting will happen without me in Kyoto anyway… 😉

Finally I have decided what I’d like to do – and I need to do some preparations and meet a number of people for advice. As well as family, I will visit friends in three countries, so I guess I won’t have much time for an update here.

If everything goes right, I will post again on March 5th. CU then!