Category: experiences

You may not have noticed, but it is indeed time to renew my visa again! Once again I had to do paperwork – although comparatively less than last year – and once again I had to relinquish both my passport and my zairyu card to my lawyer. Even though I know they will take good care of my ids, it still feels like giving away the essence of who I am… It’s hard to describe, really.

Last Friday my lawyer has submitted all the documents to the immigration office, and now we’ll have to wait. Apparently, a visa renewal takes two to four weeks at most (as opposed to the two months it took last year), so this should be over relatively quickly. Keep your fingers crossed!

I am getting somewhere with furnishing my apartment – and that barely 16 months after I moved in… This week I have finally bought a reading lamp to match the lamp on the ceiling in my bedroom. It is not bright enough to read in bed though, so I will have to change the lightbulb to something stronger, but still, I have arrived at this:

The chest is from China, and if the dealer I bought it from is to be believed, it is an antique from the 1920s. I am not sure if this is true, it was relatively cheap, so… This is the only piece of furniture in my bedroom because I sleep on a futon on the tatami. To the right of the picture is the small balcony on the north side of the building and to the left the large oshiie where I store my clothes.

As you can see, so far, I have no pictures on the walls, but I am thinking of buying a nice woodblock print from a friend of mine. We’ll see, I have had my eye on a very specific one for quite a while. By now, only the livingroom is still lacking furniture, but there is an antique market this month again where I wanted to go and maybe finally find the type of table I have been looking for so long. You will see a picture the moment my livingroom is finished as well.

I had a small surgical procedure last week. Nothing serious; I had been watching a mole that was growing an extra tail for a while, and I wanted to be rid of it, just to be sure. It’s routine, and although I had to wait almost three hours, the surgery itself took maybe 10 minutes. Very early today I was back in the hospital to get the stitches removed and to pick up the lab results. As expected, the lab tests came back clean, and the scar appeared nice as well. I am not very vain, but since the scar will be visible, it is a bonus. Everything seemed fine.

Until I came home in the early afternoon. There it turned out that the wound had completely opened again and was even bleeding! I have had small surgery before, but an outcome like this was certainly unexpected. Half frightened and half upset I called the hospital and asked to talk to a doctor – because those are the only ones who can speak English there. After some 10 minutes of holding the line, the receptionist at the dermatology department told me that neither of the two doctors who had treated me for this was available anymore. And then she apologised for that. And then she hung up on me.

Bad move.

30 minutes later – and still fuming – I was back in hospital – again – standing in front of the very same receptionist – probably – and told her about my problem – again. Since she did still not speak any English and I still had not acquired the Japanese vocabulary for surgery, sutures, and open wound, I resorted to drawing pictures – including blood – and letting “it really hurts” drop a few times (I might have exaggerated a bit there, possibly). And then I said that I wanted to see a doctor, please, any doctor would do, thank you, as long as I could see him RIGHT NOW.

Five minutes later a nurse arrived with a doctor in tow, and ten minutes after that my wound was dressed again with some ointment that is supposed to speed up the healing process. The doctor said these things happen at times, that another set of stitches would be possible (the first ones had probably been too shallow) but I declined since the one solution will take a week and the other seven days, so it does not matter. After that I grumbled a bit about having to pay again for fixing what they couldn’t do right the first time, and I also promised to be back if the wound was not closed within the ten days maximum the doctor promised me.

Now I have a hole in my neck that is covered with a huge wad of gauze making it look as if somebody tried to cut my head off… And I have a tube of ointment in my fridge which makes the wound burn quite unpleasantly, and which I have to put on once a day. Let’s hope this is doing the trick. I don’t think Dermatology is quite up to seeing me again any time soon…

Finally! After four months and a week, renovations are practically over. There are still some smaller things to be done in and outside of the building, but the main work is finished. Today, the last parts of the scaffolding were removed from the northern part of my apartment, which means that I have my view back! The first thing I did was to open up all the curtains and windows to again let in fresh air and, more importantly: light.

I’m glad it is over even though I found the experience interesting. As I suspected, nothing really important has been done, my water pipes are still as rusty as before for example. Also, I noticed that the rusty lamps on the parking lots were simply painted over without taking care of the rusty parts beforehand. I know that there is paint that allows that, but still… Then again, both my balconies received a water-proof coating, and I suspect that something similar has been done on the roof as well.

At least, everything went very smoothly and I felt well-informed about the procedures. All workers were very polite and courteous, from the two guys in charge of the whole renovations who took time out to personally repair my screen door, to the youngsters who were painting the hallway and had to get off their ladders every time I passed by.

I guess, for the next 10 years, I will have my peace and quiet in the mornings back again. Of course, not that I’m planning to stay quite as long in this place, but still, it’s good to know.

Since the scaffolding is gone from the south side of my building and it is now getting warm enough, I am keeping my windows and balcony doors open, at least during the day. Mostly my neighborhood is rather quiet, with the exception of the road next to the river. And the schools. No, I am not talking about screaming kids during breaks or sports classes. Even though there are three schools nearby, I do not hear any of them.

What I do hear though, all through the day, are the school bells. They probably come from a different school each time depending on wind direction, but still, I can hear them very often. And every time I hear them, I am reminded of my own time in school. Because, wouldn’t you believe it, the bells have the same tone, even melody, as the one we had in my middle school 30 years ago!

Is this not a neat way of bridging the gaps between cultures? Of course, this leads to interesting questions: Why this particular bell sound – and not any other? The question remains even if this is the standard setting for school bells – who thought this was a good idea? Or, maybe, there is only a single producer of school bell systems worldwide! But then, where do they come from – Austria or Japan?

Today, finally, the scaffolding was removed from the south side of my apartment building. I am genuinely thrilled of having my view back, and even more so, of not having to close my curtains during the day anymore to prevent being watched. Even though my curtains are lightweight, it got surprisingly dark in my apartment, something I really don’t like – I prefer bright rooms throughout, and a view, as I said.

It was very funny to watch when the scaffolding was removed from the building behind mine. Pretty much the moment a balcony was free, people came out with things to dry, with their laundry – and their futons. Futons need regular airing and/or drying because they may get moldy otherwise. This actually happened to a friend of mine who, after months of never turning the futons over had to throw them away… Another reason to put them away every day, although it’s not an exciting piece of housework.  Even though potential mold is not a pressing issue at the moment, since the humidity is hardly noticeable, it is nice to be able to put the futon in the sun for the first time in months.

Of course, on my quest to become more Japanese, I followed the model of my neighbours and put out my futon today. This gave me the perfect opportunity to thoroughly clean my bedroom and get my summer clothes out as well. I am now fully prepared for whatever may come in the way of summer heat…

I’m back – well, I didn’t go anywhere, but I’m back posting here. Golden Week was nice and relaxing, the temperature has picked up a bit even though it is raining now. There were several things I did last week that I had put off for quite a while, and it is wonderful to start with a clean slate, or at least, with a clean apartment again.

Finally, after all these months I have managed to unpack my books! It took me that long because there is no good spot to place bookshelves in my apartment. I did not want any tall ones in my bedroom, nor in that part of my living room I intend to use for guests – if there is a heavy earthquake, you don’t want to be buried under books. And the one livingroom wall where bookshelves would fit gets the full sunlight in winter, which is not good either. So I decided to have only very low bookshelves underneath a window, but it was hard to find the right size, and I ended up doing a significant amount of DIY there…

Anyway, I have now unpacked, catalogued, and stowed away my books – all 366 of them. Surprisingly, even though what is left is only one third of my library, there were only two books I missed (and will certainly buy again); and I do somewhat regret getting rid of my complete collection of discworld novels, mostly because the current covers are not that nice anymore. Other than that I did not feel too bad about what I kept, which is good.

Also, I have looked at furniture and lamps for the livingroom as well. As I said, I want the part with the tatami to be in Japanese style, but unfortunately, the really nice lamps I like are very expensive and the cheap ones are either ugly or plastic… I am still contemplating about some lamps that took my fancy. We will see – and I promise to post pictures once the living room is finished.

Besides that I enjoyed the nice days of last week by sitting on my balcony. Although the scaffolding is still there, the black sheets were removed from the south side of the building, so I have a (mostly) unobstructed view again. Now, people are busy on the north side, but it seems that they are slightly less enthusiastic about it there.

I also went to a special event last Sunday: The Kyoto State Guest House had open days. Everybody could go and have a look how state guests are housed and entertained in Japan – and I can tell you, it’s not shabby at all! I will write about this in depth in the weekend.

At the first day of each new month, I am always terribly busy – so I was today, and now I am very tired. I wish all the work I am doing would directly translate into money on my account, but it does not seem to do that…

Anyway, next week is Japan’s Golden Week with three holidays in a row which gives the country a reason to shut down. Well, so will I, even though I am not sure I will have the opportunity to take it very easy… But, my next regular post will be on Tuesday, May 10th. I hope I have something exciting to tell you then!

 

My accountant was here today and we finished the year-end taxes for the company. With “we” I mean that he did all the work producing all the documents for the tax office, and I signed a final document approving of what he has done. And this is why you need to have a trustworthy accountant: I have no idea, really, what I signed… Anyway, I assume he did the right thing since I will not have to pay taxes this year.

Okay, that’s a bit simplified: There are three types of taxes the company has to pay: Local/city, prefectural, and national taxes. The first two are – in part at least – taxes that are based on where the business is located, and you have to pay them regardless of whether you made a profit or not. This year it’s some 65.000 YEN for the privilege of owning a company in Kyoto.

National taxes are different – you pay them from company profits only. Since I am quite a bit in the reds, I don’t have to pay anything. In fact, I even received a tax return! And this is how:

The company owns a bank account, on which interest is paid, albeit very little. From this interest, I have to pay capital gains tax, which is automatically deducted by the bank and sent to the tax office. Now, the amount of national tax you have to pay “manually”, so to speak, is reduced by this capital gains tax. But since I don’t have to pay national tax this year, I have overpaid, and will receive that money back. Got it?

Long story short: I will receive a tax refund. The amount is a breath-taking 49 YEN (about 0.30 EUR). Yes, I know: the banking fees alone must be a multiple of this. At that rate, I can buy myself a celebratory cup of hot chocolate in about 7 years. Not that immigration will allow that, since I must make a profit in the second business year at the latest, or else… But that’s another story.