Author: Iris

It was a really great weekend. Until Sunday noon, that is. I’m not a big cook, I have never seen the point in cooking just for me. I like cooking, but cooking alone, eating alone, and then doing the dishes alone is just something I don’t enjoy. Besides, right now, when I only have a single pot, cooking is even less fun than usual, even though I have to admit that the whole cleaning part takes only five minutes which is just bearable.

Anyway, sometimes, fancy strikes me and I feel like cooking. For Sunday lunch, I had planned fish with potatoes and salad, which is quite elaborate for single me. When the potatoes were ready for boiling, I put them on the oven, turned the gas on, pushed the ignition button – and nothing happened. Nothing besides the rapid clicks of the firing mechanism could be heard, no flame was coming. I had had the problem a while back, and I just tried to repeatedly push the buttons just as I did then – but this time, nothing happened.

I was hungry, the fish was looking at me accusingly, but no amount of pushing or turning the gas on and off did make any difference. I became agitated, so much indeed, that I picked up the manual and rather painstakingly translated that part referring to error code 11 – which was shown to me on the only electronic panel of the gas range. It said “Your ignition is not working.” No, rly? “Just keep pushing the button.” No rly? I tried all three buttons repeatedly, nothing happened. At some point I thought it would be the gas, but then again, hot water – also gas heated – was working.

In case of grave distress, my to-do list is short: I call my friend with the inexhaustible patience or knock on my neighbour’s door. My friend was not reachable, and my neighbour played dead for the time being (I had the impression he was leaving later).

I panicked and decided to take matters in my own hands: I checked the gas company’s website. Their English site is blissfully short, and I found instructions of what to do in case there is no gas: essentially you must try to restart your electronic gas metre and wait for a while. Of course, despite me trying twice, it did not solve the problem.

Back to the English website: it’s devoid of any phone numbers. The gas company at least is honest and tells you that if you need something, it’s better to have a Japanese friend call them, and that the numbers could be found on the Japanese page. The only number there is on the English page, well hidden, is the emergency number for gas leaks, and it states that it is not allowed to call there in case of any other problems. Ever.

Their Japanese homepage, of course, is nicely cluttered with all sort of stuff people would not need in a hundred years instead of a simple large button “phone numbers here”. It took me 20 minutes to try all sorts of links to arrive at a page that looked like something containing numbers for their customer service. To be honest, I left it there. It seems that there is one of those awful menus behind every number, and I cannot deal with those in Japanese. It’s okay to speak to a person to whom I can explain that I’m an idiot, but electronic messages are usually not so forgiving. Thus, I sent an email both to my friend and my neighbour detailing the problem and asking for help. And then I put the fish back into the fridge and made myself a sandwich.

Help arrived at 11 pm in the form of my neighbour. He looked and prodded at the gas range, pushed the same buttons as I did and then also declared defeat. He did promise to call the gas company though, and finally, today, at 2 pm, a service technician came.

I showed him the gas range, pushed some buttons, and told him that the hot water is working. He only grinned, then he removed the tube that connects the gas range to the gas faucet, let’s call it like this. Now, inside that gas faucet is another little plastic tube. He took it out, blew through it a few times, put it back in place and reconnected the gas range. Then he pushed buttons – and everything was back to normal.

The whole thing took less than five minutes; it probably took the technician more time to get up and down the stairs… I was deeply embarrassed, but then again, how I am supposed to know that there is something inside that gas faucet, and that it needs cleaning? In all my 6 years of cooking with gas, this was never necessary. I can only assume that this little tube will stay clean if the gas range is used more regularly.

Anyway, my Sunday lunch – grilled salmon with mashed potatoes and green salad, mint ice cream afterwards – turned into Monday dinner, but it was no less delicious. And now, I can even have that Japanese red wine I wanted to try as deserved after dinner treat.

This afternoon, I have met with my friend’s accountant as planned, and everything went smoothly. Although my friend had warned me that his accountant was not speaking English very well, I was pleasantly surprised – obviously another case of Japanese understatement.

In our hour-long meeting, it turned out that the accountant has worked at the tax office for 35 years, and this is his second career. By the way, my preparations paid off: I was asked for a few documents (initial tax documents, incorporation papers, etc.), and whatever he asked for, I could produce it without flinching, which impressed him mightily. I had almost stacked them in the order he asked for them… (To my lawyer: Thank you!).

In return, I received a list of 4 pages containing financial terms in Japanese and English, and a 12 page long “Guide to Japanese Taxes and System of Certified Public Tax Accountants”, in English, thankfully. I have taken a glance at the latter, and it seems you can file taxes now electronically, at least the individual ones. And if you are not happy with the decision of the local tax office, there are three layers of appeal, the last one being taking the case to court. Fun fact: One of the taxes on private consumption is called “Golf links tax”, levied by the prefecture. I am glad I am not sporty at all…

As I had feared, the accountant insists on me doing the basic bookkeeping with Japanese software. My friend says the program is very user-friendly, but of course, it’s all in Japanese with about a million Kanji… I have resolved to make a screen shot of every page I will be using, translate all the terms, and then, whenever I have to input something, put the translation right next to me. At least, the accountant will visit me once a month in my office to check what I have done, and with my business volume as low as it is at the moment, I hope I will be able to learn at least those parts of the software that I absolutely must use before things get busy.

All in all the meeting was very pleasant, and I can state that I now have an accountant! He is a very nice person, he obviously knows what he’s doing, and I feel I can trust him, which is the most important thing. For now, his fees are ridiculously low, and I am almost embarrassed about this, but we have agreed that when my business grows, so will his income. I think this is very fair of him, and I am very happy with this arrangement. It’s good that I went with a small, local company that can be so flexible. This is exactly what I needed.

That time of the year has arrived where summer is shutting down and you’re slowly getting used to the idea of spending more time at home – and the new IKEA catalog comes with it. Yesterday I spent some time to browse through it, but I must say that I did not get as excited as I used to. I mean, I still love those sofas and armchairs in all their plushy magnificence, and don’t get me started on those PAX wardrobes with the million-and-one interiors and designated space for everything… but in the end I have to admit that there’s simply not enough space for that in my apartment.

However, there are some pieces of furniture I need in any case. Bookshelves for example, although not all of them will be out in the open. My apartment has rather large built-in closets in every room, but their sizes are unpractical: The one in the livingroom is as high as the room, almost one metre deep, with a fixed shelf at about 90 cm height that splits the closet in half horizontally. Those otherwise completely empty spaces are meant as storage for futons and other bedding, and I am glad I finally have enough space for my large suitcase and sewing machine, but for anything else, they are not practical.

Thus, I wanted bookshelves to put at the back of those closets, so I can make use of at least some of that vertical space. Well, as I am a rather stingy person, I don’t see the point in buying new bookshelves that will literally never see the light of day, so I have been browsing the local craigslist ads for a while now to find used furniture. Finally, I got lucky last week and found some in a sayonara sale (good-bye moving sales when people are leaving Japan) not far from where I live.

I went there late this afternoon, and the person selling them turned out to be a lovely young lady from the US who had just spent a year in Kyoto for her studies. Somehow, we hit it off and what was planned to be a short money-for-goods exchange turned into a chat of more than one hour where we mutually compared our experiences in Japan and laughed and complained about the same things. It was great fun.

What surprised me, however, was her disappointment with the university she studied at. For example, although they had an official exchange program with her home university in the US, and all her courses were in English, no provisions were made for her to actually learn Japanese. The classes the university provided were denied her for some reason, and going to a language school was too expensive. She also confirmed the experience of a friend of mine who, although specifically promised an English environment at his university, still received important emails only in Japanese. All in all, she had hoped to get more out of that one year here in Kyoto, and she’s happy to go home again.

I’m sorry that she leaves Japan with a bad taste in her mouth, but my own experiences are similar. Japan is not an easy country to come to; if you expect to be welcomed with open arms you will most likely be disappointed. There are so many things that are done in such a peculiar way – and it’s insisted to do it this way and no other – that it is hard not to be exasperated at all the road blocks coming up in your way. To be happy here, I guess you have to be completely crazy about Japan. Or maybe just crazy…

Today I found a detailed map of my immediate neighborhood in my mail. It shows every house in the vicinity, the larger buildings with several apartments show up with their building names, for example “Riverview Heights”, the private houses are marked with the names of the family living there.

The map also indicates places where you can find water tanks in case of a fire – underneath my building there is one marked with the number 20, which probably means 20000 litres –  although I’m not sure a private person would be able to access them; as well as the closest public Automated External Defibrillators – in my post code area alone there are four, and three more just across the boundary. There are also two disaster shelters in nearby schools, but it seems they can only hold a total of 700 people, which is not very much. Probably they are meant only for the very old, very young, and very infirm, and middle-aged, middle healthy people like myself may sleep on the streets in case of a strong earthquake.

What surprised me looking at the map were the sizes of the area reserved for the schools, but then again, every school seems to have their own athletic grounds attached, so not all of the space is used up by buildings. Also, there seem to be an awful lot of parking lots all over the place, some of them – called garage even though they may not be covered – belonging to the larger apartment buildings, but many others are just small paid parking lots, which often pop up temporarily whenever a house is torn down and not rebuilt immediately. There is one nearby that provides space for exactly two (in numbers: 2) cars. I don’t really see the point in this, it would have been nicer to plant a tree there, but unfortunately there’s no money to be made from trees…

I was looking forward to discover some new restaurants around here, but I was disappointed. The map was paid with advertisements, so only the advertiser’s shops are highlighted, and obviously most of the ads use Kanji I cannot read – so I am none the wiser. Some of the ads that I can read, however, are hilarious in their use of English. For example we have the Natural Foods shop “Help”, a restaurant obviously employing a “kitchengorilla”, and there is this shop called “pet feeling Mink”, the purpose of which I’ll leave to your imagination…

Things are starting to move with my company: I have found three clients already, and just today I had a short one hour gig for an audio recording – given the nature of this one, it will probably not be repeated though.

I have also finally received some quotes from one of the local accountants I have contacted, and as expected, they are much cheaper than the large company in Tokyo. Hopefully they are more flexible as well, for I will try to negotiate a bit more, as there are still things I don’t really need (according to my lawyer), so maybe there is a way around those too.

It’s nice to get things done and nice to be busy, and for now, I cannot complain to be overworked. Let’s see how long this state will last…

We – as Westerners – tend to have a certain image of the Japanese: always polite and correct, very reserved and formal, strictly sticking to the rules… Very often, this is indeed the case – if you meet the Japanese in a business setting, especially if you are the customer or client. However, outside of this formal environment, the Japanese keep surprising me.

Last Saturday there was our neighborhood party. Essentially, the whole block of apartment buildings consists of three smaller parts separated by a road, but the exterior of the buildings is similar, so it’s easy to see which ones belong to the same block. As the buildings are old and stem from a time when people still cared more about living conditions than maximizing revenue, there are many trees between the buildings, flowerbeds and playgrounds for the children, or simply plain lawn.

There is also an open space at one corner, where people usually meet – and there the party took place in the late afternoon and early evening. Chinese, or rather Japanese, lanterns were hung up, food and drinks were provided by the neighborhood association. There was some music, people were playing bingo – given their enthusiasm, the prizes must have been enormous – children were chasing each other through the crowds… At the more quiet corners people would sit, eat, and chat, and I even saw somebody playing Go! In another corner there was a group of young people sitting together playing guitars and singing…

The whole atmosphere was very relaxed and enjoyable. Although I’m not a very outgoing person, it’s hard not to talk to anybody while standing in the queue waiting for the next batch of yaki-soba to finish. I did my best with the little Japanese I know, and I am always happy when I can hold a somewhat longer conversation with somebody; if need be, I speak English and the other person Japanese, and more often than not, we will understand somewhere in the middle. It was fun! Pity they only do it once a year…