Summer

sunset viewed from my window, June 12thToday was the first really hot day, with temperatures reaching at least 30 degrees, a perfect blue sky with some white clouds…

I went out for a stroll in the afternoon, along the Kamo to one of the Zen temples in Kyoto. I walked through the gardens there and then back home again, taking breaks at the river, watching people passing by.

When I came home, my room was still sunny and hot, and I have been drinking ice water ever since. I must remember to bring more water on my expeditions…

In the evening, there was a beautiful sunset and an early moon gracing the view from my window.

I love this place…

Homeopathy

I admit it – I broke down. After five weeks of being in Japan and eating the local fare (some slight cheating with the bread from a “German” bakery which tastes like the real thing), I caved in and bought foreign food – imported from Italy. It does come with a nice Japanese label though – does that count?

The tiniest jar of Nutella ever produced.This must be the smallest jar of Nutella ever produced, not counting those spoonful packages sometimes seen at hotel breakfast buffets. It is tiny, plastic, and contains only 220 grams. I cannot be the only one to call this a homeopathic dose, and already I am wondering “What do I eat tomorrow”? The price is fitting for the drug status Nutella obviously has in this country – 399 YEN per jar, which, even at the current exchange rate, is outrageous and makes every spoonful a real treat.

So far though, the jar is still unopened. I’m so proud! It’s not the price that’s putting me off or the fact that I’ll probably have the thing empty in two minutes anyway… It’s more that I’m facing a logistic problem as to one other necessary ingredient of the perfect “good morning” toast. Nah, the bread is easy to get, and we even have a toaster at Ebisu’s. The question is much more profane: Where the heck do I get unsalted butter?

Japanese Era

After writing the post about my troubles with the expiration dates, I realized that it could be even worse: They could write “25” instead of “13“.

train ticket with era dating in the bottom left cornerJapan is a monarchy, and every emperor has his own era name. The reigning emperor ascended the throne in 1989, which marked the beginning of a new Japanese era. Currently, we live in Heisei 25, and while Japan is mostly using the standard Gregorian calender, the era years, called nengo, are still used – for government documents, CV’s, or on railway tickets, for example.

The era name is used as posthumous name for the emperor reigning through it, so the reigning emperor Akihito will be referred to as emperor Heisei after his death; and he was born in the year Showa 7, the era (and now the name) of his father. This is actually in line with Buddhist customs, where the deceased acquire a new name under which they are worshipped on the family altar. Note that a new era can start at any time during a year, so for example 1989 is known both as Showa 73 and Heisei 1. After that, the era years start on January 1st as usual.

To avoid confusion in Western writing, era years can be distinguished by using their first letter as abbreviation before the number, so it would be appropriate to write H25 for the current year. It is good that the last four eras – reaching back to the mid 19th century – all start with a different letter: Going back in time, we have Heisei (peace everywhere, since 1989), Showa (abundant benevolence, since 1926), Taisho (great righteousness, since 1912) and Meiji (enlightened rule, since 1868). The Meiji emperor was also the one to decree the rule of “one emperor – one era”, as before that, era names changed much more frequently – during his father’s reign of 21 years, there were seven different eras. Then the names were changed almost at a whim – both in case of disasters or lucky events, a new name was chosen to bring more luck to the country. Automatic name changes took place in certain fixed years of a regency, and at some point in history, it was common for the emperor to abdicate after a rather short reign, yet increasing the number of eras even further.

The tradition of era names is modeled after that of the Chinese court, and it was officially and finally adopted in 701 by emperor Mommu, after two attempts of doing so before were short lived. As the Japanese don’t seem to abandon their traditions lightly, I guess their eras will be around for as long as there is an emperor – and I don’t see that changing any time soon either.

Target

Being an obvious foreigner in Japan has its pros and cons.

The pro is that you are neither assumed to speak the language properly, nor expected to know all the little intricacies of correct Japanese behaviour. If you are friendly, people will often go out of their way to help you, up and beyond standard customer service (which is very good in Japan to begin with). I recall an instance a few years ago where we – a group of about 10 foreigners unable to communicate in Japanese – descended on a nice restaurant in Sendai and demanded dinner. After some back and forth with the waitress, in which it became clear that we could not really get together, she finally pulled out her mobile phone and had the phrase translated “How much would you like to spend?” We agreed on a price – and had one of the best dinners I ever had in  Japan. Talk about service…

The con of being a Caucasian in Japan is – school kids. When alone, they are too timid to be a threat, but most often unfortunately, they come in groups and then there is always one who is plucky enough to yell the first “hello” in the direction of the unsuspecting foreigner. From there you are subjected to all sorts of well studied phrases: “Where are you from?” – “Do you like it here?” – “I love America!”, or just a general giggling of the girls. A friend of mine who lives in Korea and speaks Korean very well has learnt to counter these verbal advances with a smart “Do you want to marry me?”, which usually leaves the girls speechless and him time to escape.

group of schoolkids relaxing on the river KamoHence, my slight annoyance when, on an errand near Kyoto station, I passed a group of junior high kids starting to go “Hello!” just to be stopped by two slightly older girls with notepads in their hands a few meters later. I expected the worst, when the girls explained that they were students and wanted to ask a few questions for their homework. Not being able to retreat, I agreed. Imagine my surprise when the first question was: “What do you think about the death penalty?” The girls studied International Communications at the local university and had a few more questions in that vein: “Does your country have it?”, “What if it happened to your family?”. They wrote down my answers and opinions without further comment. For a moment I was tempted to ask what they think about it – Japan does have the death penalty – but I didn’t want to put them on the spot after all. What an interesting encounter!

First Month

Today is June 5th, that means I have been here in Kyoto for a whole month already – it certainly didn’t feel that long! So far I have enjoyed myself tremendously. In the last month I have

  • visited two shrines, two food markets, one temple, one flea market, one matsuri
  • walked along most of the river several times
  • ate numerous take out menus, o-nigiri and three avocados with soy sauce
  • participated in one rather dangerous nomi-hodai event (all you can drink) with sake and beer
  • met around ten new people – both gaijin and Japanese
  • taken around 1000 pictures, most of them at the Aoi matsuri
  • had two sunburns and got soaking wet with the rain once

Now it’s time to finish vacation and get a bit more serious about this thing though. To be honest, I would like to drift a bit longer and see where this is taking me, but unfortunately – control freak me – I am a bit worried not to get out of this mode anymore. Also, what if the authorities don’t let me into Japan after so many short-term tourist visas – that would be my biggest nightmare!

So, I have started a new online Japanese course and sent out my CV a couple of times. I have also bitten the bullet and actually asked some friends for help (I’m so proud!) with the job hunting.

Wish me luck!

Expiration dates

expiration date on a cake packageIt is funny how much those tiny little things that you never really consciously notice can make you go “huh?” when they are out of place somehow. For me, one of those tiny and irrelevant things are expiration dates every time I go shopping: “What, the 13th still?”

It appears that dates here are written in Year – Month – Day order, reversed to what is normal in Europe. It is weird: I have been here so often and never really noticed that! Thinking about it however, it’s logical: Japanese is traditionally written from right to left, in top-down columns rather than in rows. Although some modern publications are written in Western style lines from left to right, plenty of books and also manga are written in the traditional way still, and you start reading at the “wrong end” of those books which does feel weird somehow. At least it seems to be easy to figure out which way a Japanese text is written, as the columns are usually well spaced, and the hiragana and katakana entries are a giveaway..

Personal anecdote, vaguely related: You can do the top-down writing in Chinese as well of course, and there, as each character occupies the same space, it’s not so obvious as to whether something is written horizontally or vertically. I once stood in front of a large reproduction of some old Chinese text and asked a Chinese colleague of mine who was with me at the time: “But, how do you know?” to which he smartly replied: “Well, it either makes sense or it doesn’t.”
Okay, at least I can be sure that my departure from academia has not created an Einstein-shaped hole in science…

In any case and back to the dates, I have not yet made the mental switch to look for the important part of them at the end instead of in the beginning. I guess I’ll be going “huh?” for quite a while still…

Avocado

I love Japanese food. Ever since I came here I have indulged in a variety of take-home bento menues. Of course, I can’t cook any of that myself, there are much better chefs out there than me. My tandem partner Tomoko has told me that traditionally, Japanese people should eat 30 different foods every day – and once you see how many ingredients and preparation steps even the most basic Japanese dishes require, you’ll certainly believe that.

Anyway, one of the few things I can cook myself – mainly because it does not require any cooking 😉 – is this basic starter, which I first had when I stayed with a friend’s family in Nagoya two years ago. avocado with soy sauce

Avocado with soy sauce
All you need is a ripe avocado (meaning the peel must be black or brown already) and some soy sauce of the type that is usually served with sushi. Cut the avocado in half, remove the pit, fill the soy sauce in the holes. Optionally you can add some wasabi here for that extra spicy touch. Use a spoon to eat the avocado right out of the peel.

As I said, usually half an avocado prepared like this is considered a starter and the main dish with rice and fish is to follow. However, I often eat a whole avocado together with some very dark rye bread and make it a full dinner this way. It’s done in less than five minutes (certainly a plus after a long day in the office) and I like it very much. The only important thing is to make sure that the avocado is really ripe. Otherwise just spooning it out of the peel is not possible (and will result in many hard to clean soy-sauce stains) and cutting it into pieces and eating it with the soy sauce poured over it is not quite the same thing – believe me, I have tried…

Kamo

Three consecutive days of rain left me yearning to go out and sit in the sun again. So today I packed my things and went to the river that passes through Kyoto and divides the very busy center in the West from the more residential areas in the eastern part of the city. It is called Kamo river – which means duck river – and although it is now regulated down to a straight, slow running stream, it still provides some sort of inner city nature refuge.

Right now the water is very low, and on the little islands and sandbanks thus made, many different kinds of birds can be found. There is even a large group of eagles – maybe 20 or 30 animals – that usually circle above the place where the Kamo and Takano river meet in the northern part of the city. They are amazing in flight, especially when they come down low in the evening. I enjoy watching them very much, and so do other people obviously. I have already seen some daring young men trying to hand-feed them with pieces of meat and fish. So far, nobody seems to have tamed those birds though…Types of birds on the Kamo river There must be other animals as well, but the only species I can positively attest to is a large sized type of ant – a three centimeter specimen tried to bite me while I was writing this.

At the northern part of the river, both banks have been widened to make room for bicycle paths, benches, trees… It’s fun to sit there and do some people watching. Towards the evening there are many elderly women walking their dogs. Other people in business attire are going home along the river then, but even during the day there are people sitting on the benches reading or chatting or even practicing some instrument or other. Today I have seen a guitarist, two young girls with a horn and a tuba, respectively, and a small boy who seemed to practise drums: he had two wooden sticks and banged them against something that looked like a cutting board. I did not fully grasp the meaning of the exercise though, but did not dare to ask.

All along the river there are small sport fields as well, where kids – obviously from some nearby school – play football or do gymnastics. Other groups can be seen running, always motivated by a yelling teacher with a stop watch. There is a less official looking spot where teenagers gather to practice their skateboard skills – they seem to have the most fun.

Further downstream, near the center of Kyoto, restaurants line the right river bank. They all have riverside terraces built on platforms, and while they do not extend over the river proper, there is a small artificial canal running under those terraces. The purpose is to cool the area for the diners above, but how well this works in the hot humidity they call summer here, I cannot guess.

Restaurants at the Kamo riverAfter dark, it goes quiet – away from the restaurants that is. There are no street lamps directly at the river, but the ones from the street that runs parallel provide ample light – if not to read, then enough to walk home safely.

If you’re looking for a quiet spot in Kyoto, you’re probably better off in any of the dozens of temples and shrines, but the Kamo river provides more privacy and is an excellent place to watch – and meet – the locals.

Networking

Why do I find it so difficult to ask for help? No matter whether it’s big things, small things, close friends or simply colleagues, it’s virtually impossible for me to say “Can you help me with that please?”

When I am asked ta social network his question, however, I am usually delighted to help. There is a certain feeling of pride that people come to me and not anyone else and that they think I’m good enough in whatever to expect a positive result. There is always a big feeling of accomplishment when solving other people’s problems. Probably most people feel like that, no?

When I was a child I heard so often “Well, I can’t help you with that, you’ll have to do this on your own”. And in fact, most of the things that were important in my life somehow, I did on my own, without anybody to rely upon. However, this Japan thing is too big to handle alone, there are so many things that could go wrong without a helping hand here and there.

I have a list of people I know in Japan, and I have started writing to them, telling them my intentions and yes, asking for help. It’s a short list and still I know it will take me ages, but what better time to grow up than now?

Transfer

Today I had my first close-up encounter with the Japanese banking system. I needed to transfer money to a Japanese company. Of course, I could have done it from my European account, but international transfers are rather expensive and it would have taken much too long. Hence, I decided to go to a bank nearby and pay the amount in cash.

The experience was pleasant: The moment I walked into the bank, a young clerk came to welcome me with a friendly “Irasshaimase” and asked if she could help me. “Why, certainly” I said and produced the piece of paper where I had prepared all necessary information – together with the Japanese phrase for “I’d like to deposit money into an account”. After agreeing on a cash transfer, she showed me the machines and said she would help me. So we went there together, she pressed the very first button for me and said

“Please enter your phone number.”
“Huh? My what?”

At this point the tone of the conversation changed because I had to admit – technological hermit that I am – that I do not have a phone number in Japan. Nope, no mobile, also no company phone number, and no, I don’t have anybody else’s number with me either… To which revelation she politely but firmly explained:

“No phone number, no transfer.”

So, I apologized profoundly, left the bank, and went home.

I was lucky that my landlady was there and explained that banks ask for the number in case something goes wrong with the transfer, which it apparently does sometimes. And that it was no problem at all of using her number for the transaction.

So, armed with the same piece of paper – now amended with the phone number of my oya-san – and with my passport – just in case they decided to need it after all – I returned to the bank.

Same clerk, same “Irasshaimase”, same machine.
Happintransaction receiptess ensued when I produced the phone number. The procedure from there was simple: Type of account? “Deposit”. Name of Bank? “Mizuho”. Name of branch? Enter account number – surprisingly short. Enter your name and check the name of the recipient. Enter cash – yes I have coins! – coins first, then bills. Wait for return money and receipt – keep that!

The whole transaction took maybe five minutes, and it would have been completely impossible to do without help because there were so many kanji involved everywhere… I could only read the two most important ones myself: “Enter Money”.

In the end, both the clerk and I were relieved, and I even more so about one hour later when  I got a confirmation email from the company that they had received the money. I just love the swift banking in Asia…