experiences – Page 43 – goinggaijin.com

Exhausted

Since my boxes have arrived on Friday morning, I have been unpacking and cleaning and sorting and putting away my things. I am exhausted! And I don’t even think I have that much stuff – it seems there will be quite some empty space left in the kitchen cabinets for example.

However, my apartment still looks messy, with piles of clothes in my bedroom and random ornaments on the floor in my living room, etc. Just passing from one room to another and looking at all of it makes me tired. So far, the only room without piles of anything is my office, but that’s mainly because I haven’t tackled any of the boxes containing office stuff, documents, or books. Those are essentially all the remaining boxes, and they will take quite a while to sort through, I’m sure.

Hence, I have decided that I deserve a break. First I will clean a bit more and put away some more stuff, but later in the evening I will go to the sento nearby and have a really good scrub and a long and really hot bath. I’m looking forward to this! Current number of boxes left: 11

2nd kyu!

Last Saturday was my latest soroban exam – and I passed it!

I am now a sorobanista of 2nd kyu rank, and, according to my friend, this is not very common anymore. In the old days, if you wanted to have certain positions, especially in the government, you needed a 3rd kyu soroban grade, but obviously not many people went beyond that.

Although I made lots of mistakes in the trial tests I took just before the exam, I did quite well during the exam itself. I think there may be even room for further improvement, which in this case simply means a further speed-up. Hence, I am considering taking the exam for first kyu at the next possible date, which is in two months. It is unlikely that I will pass then, but as the next level exam will not be at my school anymore but at some outside venue, I better check out the new setting before attempting the next level in earnest.

Asadora

Today was the start of the 93rd NHK asadora. An asadora is a quite unique Japanese form of TV drama series; its name derives from asa – morning – and dora – short for dorama, the Japanese spelling of drama. Those asadora air daily except Sunday, and they are very short – only 15 minutes for each episode. Even if you miss one of them, there is always a rerun on the same day at noon, and if you miss that one too, there is usually lots of repetition included in each episode so that you can catch up easily. Altogether, the whole series takes six months, so there are two asodora each year.

Since the beginnings of the asodora in 1961, the plot almost always follows the same stereotype: It centres on a young female heroine who is going through great lengths and possible hardships in order to chase her big dream. In the end, she will fulfill all her desires, of course. Some of the stories are even based on real life events.

The nice thing about an asodora is that the heroine is usualy played by a young and hitherto unknown actess. I have heard that there are even public auditions, drawing thousands of young girls, something like “Japan’s next asodora girl” or so, and that this one single role can considerably boost a career.

Now you are probably wondering why I am telling you all this and how come I even know about such thing – after all, I don’t even have a TV. Well, the current asadora edition, called “Asa ga kita” (meaning either: “Morning has come” or “Asa has come”, Asa being the name of the main character), revolves around a young woman from Osaka who becomes well known because of her incredible skills with a soroban. And as young actresses don’t have to know anything about soroban these days, they need teachers. And it so happens that said teacher is the one I have been taking lessons from for the last two years. Yes, I do feel quite proud!

Thus, I know even more background: The shooting takes place in Osaka, and Sensei has been teaching there since June or even May. He says that the whole production is very flexible and that, if the viewers don’t like the direction it is taking, things may still be changed and redone. In the worst case this will mean that he will have to teach until the very end of the airing in March.

Although it must be very tiring for him, he is also very enthousiastic, and he has received permission to make some sort of fanpage for Asa ga kita, where he talks about soroban, of course. This webpage, by the way, is the reason for our last two soroban-related excursions. Most of it is in Japanese of course, but there are also little tweets and stories in other languages and lots of interesting, soroban related photos. There are also a few English pages, but I know that there are more to come – after all, the person responsible for those is yours truly… 😉

Circus

This silver week, I felt the urge to indulge my inner child and I promptly went to the circus! Together with my soroban classmates I went to the early afternoon performance of Kinoshita Circus on Monday, and because of the holiday, we got probably the last seats at the front side of the arena. Kinoshita Circus has been around for 113 years now, and I have read that it is one of the world’s three largest circuses.

I really enjoyed the experience, there were lots and lots of acts, mostly acrobats of one sort or the other, and the pace, especially in the first hour, was very fast, with subsequent acts almost blending into one another. There were acrobats balancing on a bamboo pole or a tower made with chairs; trapeze artists and performers hanging from the ceiling on long strips of cloth; jugglers and dainty ballerinas, magicians, and a troupe of motorcyclists driving circles in a not overly large metal globe. Almost all of the artists working above the arena were secured with ropes – and the trapeze troupe used the traditional net – except for the two guys on the wheel of death, which had me gasping for air several times. Check out the images at the circus’ homepage to get an idea – I did not bring my camera, but it was not allowed to take pictures anyway.

Of course, there were acts involving animals, and I am always quite ambivalent about them. On the one hand, I enjoy seeing the animals, but on the other hand, it is obviously impossible to provide them with the environment they require while they are on tour. I was glad that three of the four acts were very short, probably less than five minutes each. The poor elephant had to do a handstand and carry his trainers on his back, but the zebras and the giraffe – which was fed with bananas by selected audience members – were only circling the arena twice before they could leave again.

The second hour of the show started with the main act: Eight white lions, two of them male. I love cats, especially the big ones, but as I said, I also feel sad for them. The act was nothing special, and to me it would not have made a difference at all if they had not shown any animals at all. However, a large part of the audience were small children (I think we were the only group of adults-only there) and it may have a different impact on them.

We did not rush out immediately after the show with the rest of the audience, and we thus had the opportunity to talk to the clowns. What I had already noticed with quite some surprise during the show, they now confirmed: There were lots of foreign artists, they themselves were Americans, but all of the Asians were Japanese. I guess that the ratio was maybe half-half, and I thought that this sounds like a very cool idea to get a working visa for Japan. I wonder – if my company idea does not really work out – whether I can still take up juggling or so? On second thought, nah, I’d probably make a better clown…

Soroban Town

As promised on Monday, here is my report about the soroban class’s trip to Ono. Ono is a small town near Kobe which calls itself the Town of Soroban. Indeed, we have visited one soroban museum, two soroban factories and one master who makes handmade soroban, there is a soroban shrine and a bridge with soroban theme, and you can buy soroban senbei… But, let’s start at the beginning.

When we arrived in Ono after a two hours drive from Kyoto, we first went to the soroban museum. There is a huge soroban showing the current year on their parking lot outside, so it is hard to miss. Their general displays were nice, but once you have seen Ogaki-san’s soroban collection, there is not much left to surprise you. I did like the display of the various roots of the soroban, from Egypt, the Middle East, and China though.

Also, somebody obviously had too much time on his hands in which he built a small model of Himeji castle out of thousands of soroban beads. One room of the museum was dedicated to the process of soroban making, which until today is still largely manual work. There were machines on display, and photos of workers, the numerous parts of a soroban and the materials they are made of, i.e., different types of wood and bamboo. I knew that soroban beads are made from wood and are cut out of thin wooden disks, but I did not know that at that point already they would be provided with their holes… Afterwards, we went to see an acquaintance of sensei’s, who owns a soroban factory, and there we could see some of the machines in action. Unfortunately, this particular factory does not make the beads, but even so, there are lots of soroban in different states of completion lying around everywhere. Although the factory is quite small – there are less than 10 employees only – they produce 18.000 soroban each year – and a variety of different wood toys on top of that.

In this factory, you even have the possibility of making your own soroban. As this activity is geared towards kids, there are numerous colorful choices for both the frame and the beads. We were invited to make our own soroban; sensei made a red one with white beads, I made a green one with all beads in all colours of the rainbow, and here is my friend working on his yellow soroban. We visited another soroban factory as well, where we learned that soroban making – as probably most of the crafts in Japan – has carried division of labour almost to the extreme: For a really good soroban there is one master who makes the beads, another one who produces the rods, and a third one who makes the frame. Interestingly, although they are so thin, the bamboo rods have a lighter inside and a darker outside, and it is very important that the outside of the rods (which once pointed to the outside of the bamboo plant) is installed towards the top of the soroban, as it is obviously harder than the inside…

Both factories naturally also had a display of soroban, from the very old to the brand new ones. My favourite was the sample that was made to showcase all the different colours of the wood – the wood here is not painted – but in the olden days, the white beads would have been made from bones or shells.

After a short stop at a soroban master who works in his garage, we went to visit the other sights of the city: From a small bakery we bought senbei with soroban motif burned onto the top, and we took pictures of bridgeheads showing soroban, of course. Finally, inside an obviously both expensive and popular onsen, there was a soroban shrine; an unofficial one, unfortunately, so prayers won’t really help, although there is indeed a god of soroban – but he resides only in China. Although the day was very tiring, it was great fun too. Before we went home, we enjoyed another speciality of Ono’s: For dinner, we had special fried noodles called hormon yaki soba. But that is a tale for another day…

Matching

For three weeks now, it has been raining on and off: Each and every day it rains a little, it stops a little, it starts again… It drives me nuts. Not that I have anything against rain. As long as I don’t have to go out then, that is. But now, no matter when and where I am going, it starts raining just when I leave my home. And even if it’s not raining very hard and there is little wind, I am soaking wet within five minutes anyway.

As it is still relatively warm, the Japanese solution to the problem is to either wear flipflops or crocs. As I shall only be seen in those after suffering a severe brain injury, I was looking for other options when yet again I had wet socks within only 10 minutes of jumping around to avoid the deepest puddles. And I found said option in rather nice rainboots. Essentially there are two types: the practical, knee-high ones in black and the barely ankle-grazing ones in pink Hello Kitty design. Luckily I found something with a slight Scottish feel in blue and green and about calf length. I must have done something right, because I have already received the most coveted of all Japanese compliments: Kawaiiii!!! (which means cute).

Unfortunately I totally failed the test for becoming an honorary Japanese when I bought a new umbrella after the old one did not survive the last typhoon. The reason is that I went shopping like a normal Western person: I wanted an umbrella small enough to fit in my handbag in case the rain is just a threat and remains one. During a break in the rain, I went to my nearest shopping centre and found a tiny umbrella, weighing less than 100 grams. I asked the shop assistant if we could open it to check the size (for emergencies it will do just fine) and then I watched her folding it again (there’s a trick to it, but she assured me that it was standard Japanese) and then I simply bought one in the brightest yellow they had. For recognition value, obviously. Perfect! I was out maybe 15 minutes altogether.

Now, a decent Japanese woman would have gone to a decent umbrella shop and spent at least 30 minutes there. The standard umbrella buying procedure for a Japanese, or generally Asian, woman is as follows: Go to the shop and peruse all the umbrellas on display. Scrutinise their outside (the part that’s on top), if necessary, open the umbrella to get a better idea. If you find one deemed suitable, definitely open the umbrella to check its inside (that part that usually does not get wet). Many umbrellas for sale here have a pattern on the inside as well, especially if it is only a parasol that many women of all ages are using in summer.

Once an umbrella is found with suitable colour and pattern both in- and outside, look for a mirror. Place yourself in front of it, the open umbrella over your shoulder and make absolutely sure that the pattern, the colour and the distance between the stretchers goes well with your hair and favourite makeup. Repeat until you are entirely satisfied.

I know how this must sound, but I am serious, I have watched several Japanese women going through the whole procedure… It seems that people here have scores of umbrellas. There is a family in my house who stores their collection outside – all eight of them for two adults and a toddler. To be fair, it’s not just women trying to go for the cute look. My neighbor has a serious looking dark green one – with an inside showing a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds. Wishful thinking, obviously.

Gas

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.

Accountant

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.

Furniture

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…

My Neighborhood

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…