Category: experiences

I’m very sorry for skipping posts again… I was terribly busy the last two weeks, working for 10 hours and more each and every day, so I’m afraid I had to drop a ball or two. But the big deadline was yesterday and now I have a little more time to breathe – in fact, I even took today off – so I hope I can get back to writing here on my usual schedule.

Apparently, my absence raised concerns with some of you, because in the weekend I received an email from a friend of mine who essentially said she was hoping I was just busy and otherwise alright. And then she popped the question: “I was wondering if you have a strategy as to how to balance work and life…”

And I thought: Hey, YOU have that cushy 9-to-5 job with weekends off, mandatory holidays and a fixed paycheck at the end of each month, and you’re asking ME about life-work balance? I am literally spending 90% of my waking hours in front of my laptop and didn’t have a day off in 3 weeks and I am your go-to person for this question? You must be kidding me!

But then she went on to say that she’s taking her work home in the form of worries of the “will this turn out okay” variety, and that is indeed an issue I have struggled with myself, in particular during my time in academia. The point is that I am rather perfectionist, and I have troubles getting things done to the standards I set myself, so often it was a problem of “why even bother doing this if you can’t do it right anyway”. And during my time off, I felt guilty for not doing my job properly, so I felt I didn’t deserve that time off. Interestingly, now that I am essentially self-employed, I find it much more easy to satisfy a client and work to their deadline (and standards) rather than doing the same for my own projects, even though they are more important in the long run.

So, I talked about this to a therapist, and the answer was essentially that I put myself under too much pressure to perform at work and that I may have deficits in my private life when it comes to spare time activities, friends, etc. He also said “Sometimes the psyche sabotages because she wants to satisfy her own needs.” 

The answer was spot on. I’m an introvert, which makes it very easy to neglect the human interaction part (“I don’t really need people anyway.”) I thought about this for a while and then implemented a no-computer-day once a week. I could do anything, just lay in bed reading, or cleaning the apartment or going to a museum, or seeing friends, just as long as it didn’t involve the computer.

The important part here was not what I was doing, but to give myself permission not to work and not to worry about it because tomorrow will be early enough. I think this was the main part that helped me relaxing about work and not obsessing about it constantly. The result was that I am now more focused at work so I can get much more done and at the same time, I fully enjoy myself on my days off.

I hope this is useful to my friend, it’s a bit hard to describe what I did, but I have eased up considerably about work. I do what needs to be done, and then I move on and shut down my brain. By now, I can even handle using the computer on my days off, and even though I have been very busy for the last month, I don’t feel as emotionally drained as before. Good luck with it!

This is my sixth new year in Japan, and although I have been embracing Japanese New Year’s traditions, I am still learning something new!

As in the previous years, I have bought a small zodiac animal to display in my apartment. This year is the year of the boar (elsewhere it’s the pig, but the Japanese go more rough on this one), and I am surprised at how cute my little ceramic boar actually looks!

I did not go on hatsumode yet, some people say it’s fine up to January 7th. But I will visit Kitano Tenmangu tomorrow and write my first kanji of the year there. People do it as a symbol to what they want to achieve in the coming year. I have settled on the rather vague word “success”, but with overarching success I think I’ll be just fine.

One new thing I have learnt this year has to do with osechi ryori, the traditional Japanese New Year’s meal to be eaten right on January 1st. I had done that already (always store-bought of course, making it yourself is quite a hassle), but this year I have eaten it with the proper chopsticks too! I was always wondering about all the packs of special chopsticks that were on sale throughout December, and I had correctly identified as having something to do with New Year. However, I thought they were something like party chopsticks, but, of course, it is something more serious.

The chopsticks I mean are different from the standard ones. Standard Japanese chopsticks taper to one end, but the New Year’s edition tapers on both. The idea is that when you eat your osechi, that on the second tapered end your ancestors and the gods will eat together with you. It sounds a bit weird, but since the New Year is the largest celebration in Japan with strong religious undertones (literally everyone visits a shrine these days), it does make sense. Buddhist teaching says that your ancestors are watching over you, and in some households there is a Buddhist altar on which at least a bit of rice is offered to the family ancestors every day.

So, this year, I bought a pack of special osechi chopsticks and ate my modest (but still expensive) osechi meal with it. Everything in there has a special meaning, but the only one I can remember is the meaning of the black beans on the top left: They are meant to be lucky and also indicate industry and hard work. To be brutally honest, as far as Japanese cuisine goes, osechi ryori is not a highlight when it comes to taste (decoration can be quite different), but at the same time, it is a nice tradition and I’m all for it!

It was so funny: when I bought the little box above, the cashier in the supermarket asked if I indeed ate osechi. “Of course”, I said, and when I showed her my special chopsticks, she nodded approvingly. As if foreigners can’t eat osechi! Natto, on the other hand…

 

Sorry for yet another silence… I hope you didn’t get too worried!

Just in case you’re wondering: No, I didn’t move anywhere (and have no plans to, sadly), but the goinggaijin website moved to a new hosting provider. That was part of the reason for my absence, things turned out to be a bit more complicated than I thought… Anyway, now everything should be back and running properly, now even with a secure site, yay!

Other than this, last week I was very busy with work (even a bit more than usual these days), but it seems that for now, I have satisfied all my external clients and can focus on my own work for What’s up in Kyoto. Lots of events to add, a new highlight for January to write etc. Still, I am yearning for a day or two off, the last days where I didn’t do anything work-related were 4 weeks ago… I have all intentions to take at least Sunday and Monday off, even though I’m not religious, it’s nice to have a few quiet days during this time of the year.

Besides being busy at work, it’s the end of the year, so there are lots of bonenkai (end of year parties) that I have to go to. On Wednesday there was a lunch with two of my English students in a very nice French restaurant. The fish was excellent, as was the wine, and this may be a place worth returning to – in a time when it is not fully booked, that is.

Yesterday I finally went to the German Christmas Market in Osaka. This seems to develop into a yearly tradition, and although it’s far from real Christmas feeling, it is still a welcome opportunity to have real Glühwein, cookies, and Leberkäse…This year I even bought gingerbread, even though it comes as the heart-shaped fair variety that we don’t eat during Christmas. I almost didn’t meet the friend that I wanted to go there with, but thankfully it was not too crowded, so we could find each other on the Christmas market a bit later after all.

Tomorrow there will be our soroban bonenkai in the evening, after our normal soroban class for foreigners. For the first time, I will be in charge of the class because my sensei will have to teach elsewhere for a new movie project. He will prepare everything, so hopefully, things will turn out all right.

And next week, I have no further meetings except one, where I will go to one more final bonenkai-type of evening with another one of my English students. He promised to take me out to a quite famous sushi restaurant, a real one, not just running sushi as usual. I am curious about the place, and maybe, I will even be able to go there on my own, if they have an English menu, that is.

So far for my plans for the rest of the year. Let’s see how things pan out.

As I mentioned before, I had to write mochuu hagaki mourning cards this year instead of nengajo New Year’s cards because of my grandmother’s death. My friend told me exactly what to write and when to send them, so I was only left with finding cards onto which to print the text.

Usually, the Japanese standard postcards for various occasions have already printed fields for the seven-digit post code, and usually this is in red. For mourning cards, this must be in black because red is a color that stands for happiness and is thus inappropriate. I was not happy with the cards I could buy, so I decided to design my own, but it proved quite difficult to find postcards with black post code guides. Actually, it proved impossible… So, I ended up buying plain cards in the right size, and I was told that they would work in a standard printer. Once I was ready to print the cards however, it turned out the paper was just a little bit too thick, so I had to give them an extra push to go through the printer…

I sent them off last Sunday, on a “Buddha Day” to give the right impression. At the post office, I paid for standard postage, and the lady at the counter had already picked the stamps when she realised that these were mourning cards. She said, “oh, we need different stamps” and instead brought some with a nice chrysanthemum design instead. There are indeed rules for everything in Japan – and I am very happy people are watching out for me everywhere!

Anyway, I thought I’d show you the design for my cards. I had it approved by my friend beforehand, and I already received compliments about the “perfect wording” of the thing.

As you can see, I am on the way to become a perfect Japanese myself. As long as my friends are helping me, that is…