Iris – Page 90 – goinggaijin.com

Perseverance

My life seems to have come to a complete standstill. I am not getting anywhere at the moment, or so it seems…

Business is very slow, to put it mildly. I keep applying left and right, but all I get are rejections, if I get any reply at all. No reply to a job application seems to be the modern version of “fuck off”, which I find extremely annoying. The job in Osaka I was talking about three weeks ago I did not get because the company was not willing to hire my company rather than myself. Well, I already had the impression that the interview did not go that well, so I was not overly flattened by this one.

Other jobs are perfect, but do just not exist in Kyoto. For the last one I applied – part-time translator of IT documents from English to German in Tokyo – I was told that they really, really needed somebody to show up in their office three times a week. Probably to hold hands with their developers or so? And others yet, people just cannot afford me. A friend of mine has been struggling for a long time putting together a webpage that I could do virtually effortlessly until the end of the month, but she is scared about the costs involved and doesn’t even want to talk about details… It’s frustrating.

And then there is soroban. I am still practising daily because I want to take the next exam for first kyu on March 20th. This will be my third try of taking the test on this level, which means that I have been training for more than six months already… Okay, the first try I knew I would fail. I did the test then because from this level on the tests are administered not in my soroban school anymore but in an external location, and I wanted to know the exact procedure. I did much better on the second try, but I was still too nervous and unprepared to pass. Let’s hope the third try will be the final one. The exercises are not getting any more exciting…

Well, perseverance is everything.

This is also what a friend of mine needs to do. He has been in the ICU of Kyoto University Hospital for a week now with unclear abdominal pains. He seems to be cheerful though – and is especially taken with all the young nurses fussing over him – but I still have the impression he’d rather be home. All the best for you!

Women’s Day

Did you know that today is the International Women’s Day? Yeah, me neither. I only know because a friend of mine told me this morning – when he presented me with flowers to celebrate the day.

So, guys, why don’t you buy something nice for the women in your life, like chocolates or flowers… (And while you’re at it, don’t forget your office wife aka secretary! They are greatly undervalued anyway.) Or even better: why not doing the dishes, tidy the livingroom or bring the kids to bed tonight? From my own experience I can tell you that women love men who do their bit in the household.

In any case, the whole flower thing reminded me of what one of my female friends told me: Flowers are not a good gift in Japan. Not just chrysanthemums, which are graveyard flowers even in Austria, but any type of flowers. I was quite surprised by this, and unfortunately she could not really explain why. The only reason I could come up with is that flowers – cut ones especially – will all die within a few days, so maybe this is the connotation the Japanese don’t like? However, other female Japanese friends seem to have no problems with flowers, but they have been living abroad for a long time, so this may be a Western view they have picked up.

My problems with the flowers today were more practical. The last time I received any was in the year I got my PhD, a decade ago. My grandmother had an enormous amount of vases, but except for a handful I gave them all away. And none of the vases I still have would have been fitting for the single tulip my friend gave me today. Oh well, I wasn’t a scientist for nothing; you can see my solution in the picture.

Hina Matsuri

March 3rd marks the day of hina matsuri, the doll festival. Since this time is more or less the beginning of spring, it is also called momo-no-sekku or peach festival, or, since this day is meant to celebrate the girls of a family, it is simply called girl’s day or festival. In the weeks leading up to March 3rd, elaborate displays of dolls are prepared, but since many families have inherited those dolls, the girls are not meant to play with them anymore.

The above is a typical traditional hinadan with five layers containing dolls and other accessories. They are made to resemble court nobles and retainers of the Heian era, when Kyoto first became the capital of Japan, some 1000 years ago. On top you see the two main dolls, the dairi-bina. One step below there are three ladies in waiting, usually holding cups and accessories for drinking sake. The center of the display above shows five court musicians with drums and flutes. Below them are the minister of the left – the one with the beard, since this is the higher rank and thus the person must be older – and the minister of the right. (Here, those dolls should be switched since the “left” refers to the viewpoint of the dairi-bina). Finally, at the lowest layer, there are three footmen or samurai, the lowest retainers of the court, and these are called the whiny, the angry and the merry drinker, interestingly.

Between the ladies in waiting, you can see two plates with colorful cakes; these are mochi and meant as an offering to the gods. Of course, the hina matsuri has its roots in religion, in this case in the ancient belief that the illnesses, bad luck, and general impurities of their owners would be transferred to the dolls when touching them. Very simple dolls made from straw were displayed throughout the year on the household altar in the kitchen, and on March 3rd, they would be thrown into a river or directly into the ocean in order to take away all the negativity of the past year. This practice still survives in the rituals of some shrines, where you write your wishes on a piece of paper shaped like a doll, and then throw it into the shrine’s stream.

Nowadays, the dolls are not thrown away any longer but carefully packed away during the year, a bit like Western Christmas decorations. This practice goes back to the first shoguns of the Edo period, when the dolls were given as presents to daughters of the nobility. Once the merchant class became rich as well in the late Edo period and Meiji era, the dolls became more and more elaborate and expensive and hina matsuri spread throughout Japan. Today, new sets of dolls in traditional styles can be very expensive, I have seen some dairi-bina costing a million yen and more.

The reason for this is that all dolls are very elaborately dressed in fine silk garments, but the biggest amount of work goes into the dairi-bina. They are the centre piece of the display and the most important, or in some cases, the only part. On the right side sits the male obina, and on the left side there is the female mebina. They are dressed in Heian-style clothes, which means that the mebina wears a junihitoe, twelve layers of kimono, an elaborate Chinese crown, and a tiny folding fan, whereas the obina wears a traditional headdress, a sceptre, and a large ceremonial sword. The couple above sits in front of a screen made with real gold leaf, just like the emperor and empress would, but the Japanese usually do not refer to the dairi-bina as such. They prefer calling them taishi-sama – imperial prince – and hime-sama – lady; when you remember that the emperor was a god until the last century it should be clear why.

The dolls are accompanied with all sorts of accessories in miniature. While the dolls are usually bought together in a set, or at least per layer, the other accessories can be bought at any time. This explains the difference in size that is often seen in the diplays. The above picture shows parts of a girl’s dowry: A mirror stand, a cabinet with utensils for tea ceremony, a sewing box, and a tansu – a chest of drawers for kimono – at the back. These are the standard items a girl would get from her parents upon her wedding, and with these things she would enter the house of her husband. Below you can see some more household necessities: a palanquin and an oxcart, but especially the latter was for the use of nobility only.

Also other practical things can be included in the display, for example lots of dishes, trays, sets of bowls etc. You can see the go-boards above, and below is a tiny hibachi, an oldfashioned heater where charcoal would be burned, not more than 5 cm in diameter. What is interesting about these items is that for the most expensive displays they were made from the same materials and were just as meticulously produced and as elaborately decorated as the real sized originals.

All in all the displays are beautiful, and even as an adult I need quite some time to take it all in. I can only imagine what a small girl would have to say to these dolls. Well, as I said, probably the same as one of our girls in front of a Christmas tree…

Enhancements

Some time ago, I complained about the amount of bulk mail I receive, especially those from real estate agents. But every now and then, something extremely hilarious finds its way into my mailbox. Here is one of those highlights I just had to share:

Those are only two of the … ahem … tasteful images on a flyer I received regarding breast enlargements. Mind you, the ad was not for a plastic surgeon, but for something far more esoteric. Another photo showed a young woman, towel clad, being massaged with a hand-held apparatus emitting bright light and looking suspiciously similar to the computer mouse I am using right now…

Anyway, the advertisement promised that within only 90 minutes of treatment your size will have increased and any potential sagging will have been eliminated. The procedure seems to be as follows: After an interview, where you are probably asked about your expertise regarding computer mice and other delicate questions, you first get a back and then a … umm … front massage with the device mentioned above, and in the end you are allowed to relax with your boobs covered in something … stimulating, I guess. That is all it takes for your bust size to increase by two cups! Except for 22.000 YEN, of course.

I cannot help wondering how plastic surgeons can still be in business after this amazing breakthrough. But maybe 2 cups up is all that’s possible, and the procedure cannot be repeated indefinitely. Then again, it’s a start.

Interesting also the target groups: Women in their 20s would want a size-up, those in their 30s want their boobs bigger and more perky, while women in their 40s just want them lifted off the ground. Anything older than that is not mentioned anymore; those women have obviously resigned and are keeping away from public view in order not to offend.

Anyway, I found this whole thing very enlightening. I am looking forward to receiving a similar advertisement – including pictures – for the enhancement of male appendages. Somehow I have the impression that massages will have a beneficial effect there too…

PS: If anybody is curious about details of the procedure, I am willing to go and sacrifice myself. Any sponsors, please come forward now!

Tunafish

In general, I don’t like going out in the weekends, even though here in Japan most shops, museums, and cafes are open. There are simply too many people around for my taste, and even those places that seem totally off the beaten tracks and are quiet during the week are crowded. Well, if you have ever been to an average Japanese home, you can imagine why people are fleeing them…

Anyway, I ran out of food on Sunday and decided to go shopping to the nearby supermarket. I happened to pass by the fish counter, and there was a tunafish on display, a whole Bluefin Tuna from an aquaculture, about 1 m long and weighing some 50 kg. And when I was told that they would start cutting it up and selling it in just a few minutes, I knew I had to stay and watch this.

At 11 am sharp the whole thing started; the fish was brought back behind the counter, and a young girl who seemed to weigh not much more than the fish started carving it up, under the noisy encouragements of her colleagues. First the head was removed, and then two relatively thin slices right behind the head were cut off the fish. A friend of mine called these parts kama, kind of the shoulders of the fish, and she said that these were the best parts of the animal, even though there is not much meat to them. It seemed to me that those three parts were sold whole and on the spot, but I am not sure.

Afterwards, a deep cut was made along the spine of the fish, and the skin was removed from the back in large stripes. The belly was removed next. It yields the fatty parts of chutoro and otoro, the latter being the most oily part of the fish from right under the skin and light pink in appearance. The last part to be cut from the fish was its back, called akami, there the meat is dark red and relatively dry; it is usually sold as maguro.

Both back and belly were further cut down by an assistant and then those pieces were packaged and offered to the onlookers. I bought a small piece of very expensive otoro. This little piece of 77 grams cost me almost 1000 YEN. I ate it as sashimi and yes, it was absolutely worth it!

It surprised me how much time it took to cut up the whole fish – about 45 minutes in total. The girl obviously did not do this the first time, and the knives were obviously big and sharp – and still you could see how hard she was working throughout. Every time she had finished cutting off one piece, she held it over her head like a trophy and thus presented it to the audience, and we were all clapping and cheering, which I found funny somehow. Altogether this was an interesting experience, and I wonder how this would be in the large fish market in Tokyo, at 4 am in the morning…

Never Let Me Go

Never Let me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro

Kathy is 31 years old, and for the third time her life is about to change drastically: By the end of the year she will not be a carer anymore. So, this is the perfect time to revisit and reminiscence on her life.
The first part of it she spent in the English country side, in the boarding school Hailsham, where she lived from her earliest childhood. There she is one corner of a triangle of friendship comprising also Ruth and Tommy. While Kathy is the most reserved one, Ruth is outspoken and bold and Tommy struggles violently with his lack of creativity.
When school ends the three of them are sent to the “cottages”, an old farm a group of former students from different schools have to maintain. It is kind of intermediate station on the way to adulthood, which Kathy must leave first, leaving Ruth and Tommy, now a couple, behind.
Only years later, when Tommy and Ruth have both become donors, the three see each other again and together they try to at least delay the inevitable…

I struggled whether I should post this book as Japanese literature, since Kazuo Ishiguro, although born in Nagasaki in 1958, moved to England when he was five and is now a British citizen. Also, the book itself does not have anything to do with Japan: It is set in the English country side, and we follow typical British kids coming of age in a Western world.

And still, in the way many things about this dystopian world are always present but hardly mentioned, the writing is highly influenced by Japanese culture, where everybody is supposed to know things that remain ever unspoken. At the denouement in the end, when everything falls into place and yet no real explanation is given, you feel like a part of Ishiguro’s world. And even a Japanese friend of mine says that of the modern writers, his style is probably the most Japanese of all of them.

So, judge for yourself and check this book out on amazon

Preparations

When I came home the other night, I noticed strange marks all over the stairwell in my building. I wonder what they mean, since the gas, water, and electricity lines are running in a main utility shaft at the centre of the stairwell, and not in its corners, and the rain pipes run outside along the balconies. In any case, it does seem that my hope for quiet renovations has just been killed…

Interview

Yesterday, I had a job interview in Osaka, and I already have the impression it did not go well.

It started out not too well already: I answered an online job ad, and when I was invited to the interview and asked for my time preference, I said “Monday morning or early afternoon”, to which I received the reply: “Monday 16:30 is great for us!” So much for my plans for the evening.

Since I had to go to Osaka, I printed out the directions given to me by the company as well as a map from google. It is not good to be late to an interview, especially in Japan, so I factored in 30 minutes of grace period in order not to be late. Everything looked good – and then I took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up nowhere near my destination. I asked somebody and this young woman was kind enough to accompany me to the building (I love Japan!); but even though I was just in time with 5 minutes to spare or so, I think this did not go down well.

I had to bring my passport and residence card to the interview, and my business manager visa was the next problem. The company usually deals only with individuals, and it is unclear if their standard procedures allow them to hire another company, which technically I am. Probably the paperwork has to be different. I promised to ask my lawyer about this, but I know that company policies are usually rather rigid here and people are not used to make exceptions.

The interview as such did not go that badly I think, but at the end I was ushered off the premises rather quickly. I am not sure whether this was because they were tired of me or whether there was somebody else waiting. My allotted time was up though, but in any case, it did not leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling… I will hear from them within a couple of weeks, apparently.

Altogether, I don’t think I made it. Too many little details that did not quite click. Oh well, I guess I’d better chalk this off as learning experience. Two things I have already learned: First, to give precise times when I am available (Monday from 9:00 – 15:00) and second, that no map is 100% accurate; and when I’m lost the best idea and time saver is to simply take a taxi.

Kaleidoscope Museum

When you were a child, did you have kaleidoscope? You know, that cylinder with the pearls on one side which, when the cylinder is turned, form myriads of symmetrical patterns in never-ending succession…

Kaleidoscopes were invented (or discovered?) by Scottish scientist Sir David Brewster in 1815, while researching optics and polarisation. Nothing more than plane mirrors in a dark tube with a box of beads on one side and an eyepiece on the other, the kaleidoscope became extremely popular at the time, amongst children and adults alike.

While this beautiful toy is all but extinct in the West, superseded by video games and smart phones, kaleidoscopes seem to be still very popular in Japan. I have seen many toy booths at local matsuri, where kaleidoscopes are sold, often in a tiny size, to be dangling from a smart phone. In Japanese, kaleidoscopes are called mangekyo, the three kanji (万華鏡) literally mean ten thousand flower mirror.

In Kyoto, there is a museum devoted to kaleidoscopes. Even though it is very small – only two rooms, one of them the shop – it boasts many interesting exhibits. Altogether, the museum owns about 150 different kaleidoscopes of all sizes, and some 50 are on display at any given time. Once the excitement of looking through them has worn off a little, you begin to pay attention to their outside; and all of them have been expertly handcrafted. There are the usual paper tubes, kaleidoscopes in Tiffany glass, with strips of cloth instead the beads…

As a recovering scientist, I found it a bit disappointing that the technical aspect of how kaleidoscopes actually work was only very briefly explained, and that only in Japanese. But even so, what’s going on inside the cylinder is not hard to grasp, and even if you do not, it does not diminish the beauty of the toy.

The museum is well worth a visit. Once an hour, there is a video projected onto the walls of the exhibition room. In the shop, you can buy kaleidoscopes of all sizes and qualities, and there are even DIY kits to make your own. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take photos of the exhibits, but postcards are sold portraying some of them.

The museum: http://k-kaleido.org/e-information/
Book about the Kaleidoscope by Sir David Brewster, from 1858: The Kaleidoscope, its History, Theory, and Construction

Cat Cafe

I am sure you have heard about the Japanese speciality of cat cafes. They are normal cafes housing a number of cats that are allowed to roam freely and interact with the guests. The idea is to provide people who are not allowed to keep pets, with some sort of outlet and the possibility to feel like a cat owner for a short time.

Well, since I am a wannabe cat owner, and since I am not allowed to keep a cat in this apartment, and since I am thus feeling rather cat deprived, I went to one of Kyoto’s cat cafes this afternoon.

The first thing I noticed when I entered was the warmth – this must have been the most overheated place in Japan – and the rather distinctive smell of kitty litter. There was an extra door at the entrance to prevent the cats escaping through the main entrance. I had to take off my shoes, wash my hands, and indicate how long I was planning to stay before I could get further inside. When seated, I was shown a “how to behave” list: No flash photography allowed, no harassing of the cats (or other guests), and a warning that the cats may scratch and that there may be cat hair in my tea. And then, finally, I was left to roam around freely and to interact with the cats. The place was well adapted to the cats’ needs: fluffy cushions and blankets, boxes of all sizes, high shelves to hide upon, plenty of cat toys, and sufficient litter boxes. The only weird thing was the aquarium with the single goldfish inside. Cat TV, I presume?

The cats were gorgeous. There were three young kittens in a little extra stall with extra charge and 15 adult cats in the main part of the cafe. The animals were of all colours and races – Russian Blue, Scottish Fold, Persian, and an amazing Norwegian Forest cat, among others. Unfortunately, I arrived at nap time, and all the cats were asleep. They were friendly and could be petted still, but I prefered to let them rest. Only when my hour was over, did they come to life again – and I felt a bit cheated, to be honest.

It seemed that the cats were well taken care of. Their coats were shiny and well-groomed in case of the long-haired cats, and although one was allowed to feed them, this was only possible with the food provided by the shop, a wise decision. Behind the counter there were some crates into which the cats would be placed at times to avoid overstimulation by the patrons. As for those, I expected the guests to be a bunch of elderly cat ladies like myself, but there were mostly young couples, which surprised me.

I spent a pleasant hour there, but next time I will go a bit later, after nap time. It is rather expensive – 1 hour there costs 1500 YEN, including one set of drinks and sweets – but if you’re really into cats, this is the place to go:
http://animalcafes.com/v/25475.html