Category: experiences

Last Saturday, the adult members (i.e., 3 people) of the soroban school I am visiting took a trip down to Osaka to visit a soroban museum. It is run by an old soroban teacher who is even more enthousiastic about soroban than mine, which I found hardly possible. Although the museum is very small – it is just two rooms on the second floor above his school room – the owner says that he has more than 1000 soroban, and he collects anything that is in any way soroban related, be it ever so slightly.

The first room houses the collection of soroban. There are old ones from China and Russia (which look more than the abacuses we have in Europe), and all sorts of soroban that are either made from an interesting material or have some story to them. We saw soroban made from pearls, glass, ivory, and  a very expensive one from tiger’s eye.

There was a rather beaten up soroban that survived a tsunami somewhere, was found in a rice paddy afterwards, and had its history carved into the back of it. There were beautiful soroban from China with ivory inlay in the back or in metal boxes, a brand new binary soroban. Also, two soroban with integrated pocket calculators (or is it the other way around?) made by Sharp, and three different types of soroban for blind people.On top of that, the first room houses everything that depicts a soroban in one way or the other; from paintings and noren curtains to clocks and lamps, netsuke and jewelry, and of course, toys. It was a wonderland of soroban related things, and I still think I may have missed something. The second room was more of a study with a small, traditionally Japanese work place, and a library containing exclusively books about soroban. Not just textbooks (some of which dated back to the Edo period), but even art books where at least one of the images somewhere showed a soroban. Altogether we spent about two hours in the museum, and at the risk of sounding extremely nerdy, we really enjoyed ourselves there. Afterwards the owner invited us to dinner and coffee, and of course we kept on talking about soroban all through the evening. Isn’t it nice if you have a hobby like this?

As I have mentioned in my post from last week’s Monday, the apartment building opposite my own has been prepared for renovation. Nothing much happened last week after the scaffolding was put up in the pouring rain, but this week, finally, work has begun.

On Monday and Tuesday two workers were busy doing something to the roof and the facade of the building that seemed to be sandblasting. It was very noisy, took the best of two days, and now the colour of the roof has turned from a shiny black into a dull grey. I cannot see the facade, as it is behind the scaffolding which is now covered in grey protective sheets, but I would assume that something similar happened there.

As I said, this work was extremely noisy, and the noise was almost constant. And although it is rather cool at the moment for this time of the year (only around 30 degrees), the humidity is high enough that open windows are very pleasant, no, almost a necessity. By early afternoon on Monday I’ve had enough, packed my stuff and went to a cafe that is close by but far enough as to not be affected by the noise. It was a good decision – I got quite a lot done that afternoon!

When they started again yesterday morning, I was all but packed to go out to a library for the day – when it started pouring down and I decided to stay home after all and move to the bedroom at the back of the apartment instead. I thought I could endure the noise for one more day, and indeed they seemed to finish yesterday in the early afternoon.

However, it never rains but it pours… Yesterday around noon, another company has started to tear down a wall on the other end of the parking lot that lies just underneath my balcony… And as this is a very old (and beautiful too, let me state that) brick wall, more than three metres high and maybe eight or more metres long, this will take quite a while for people yelling at each other, jack-hammering, throwing bricks onto lorries… (*)

It seems there will be noise going on for quite a while, and there is not much I can do about it other than fleeing to some cafe or library, if I want to get some work done. I hope they are finished soon…

(*) Fun fact: The parking lot underneath my balcony is a private one, only people who live in our houses (and their guests) are allowed to park here, which means there is a chain at the entrance. It is mostly empty, many people don’t seem to drive their cars on a daily basis. Also, the parking lot exits onto a very quiet, straight, one-way road that is mostly used by cyclists. However, one of the about 10 people tearing down the wall is standing there with a signalling stick to make sure all cars get in and out safely. Talk about job-creating measures…

Japanese people love food. They spend a lot of money on it and they celebrate it whether eating at home or at a fast food joint – even that stuff is really tasty. There are food stalls everywhere, from specialised market streets for delicacies from abroad and Japan, to people who drive around in their vans and sell organic produce from their farms out of the boot. Even the supermarkets at highway rest areas mostly sell local food, often pickles and other things that are non-perishable.

Because Japanese people love to give foodstuffs as presents. I like this idea because whatever you receive, you don’t waste space for eternal display; and if you fear that you won’t like the gift, you can either open it immediately and offer it back to your guests or you just pass it on (which seems to be another Japanese pastime, by the way).

Last Wednesday, when I was on the way to the cinema to watch Macondo, I had to pass through the Teramachi shopping arcade in inner city. It is always busy there, and I try to avoid it in the weekends, but every now and then it’s nice to walk through. Last Wednesday there was a group of students at Teramachi, all of them dressed in bright red Japanese Happi vests. All of them were shouting something I could not understand, some of them carried banners, and some of them proffered plastic bags (of course) to people passing by.

Just when I was wondering what this was about, a stout youth stood in my way and said something in Japanese while he handed me one of the plastic bags. It turned out that those were kids from some junior high in some prefecture in Kyushu (that’s all the way south), and they were giving away bags containing a guidebook about their hometown and – a small package of rice, also grown there.

Looking at the guidebook, the place seems to be more rural than I tend to like it after spending years successfully escaped one of those places… On the other hand, they do seem to have some extremely stunning lakes there; their almost precisely round shape makes me wonder whether those are all old volcanoes… Well, maybe it’s worth going there after all. Some time in autumn, probably. What a little bag of rice can do!

For the first time in oh too many years, I went to the cinema tonight. From today until July 12th, the EU Film Days will take place in Kyoto, after they were in Tokyo for more than a month. A number of contemporary European films are shown, from all over Europe, in many European languages. The films are subtitled, mostly in Japanese, but some also in English, so it’s possible for me to at least see some of them, if time allows, of course.

So, today I picked up my friend from Bulgaria, and together we went to see Macondo, an Austrian movie from last year.

It’s about the young, fatherless boy Ramazan who is an immigrant to Vienna from Chechnya and over time becomes friends with another Chechen man, Isa, who turns out to have been a friend of his father’s. Their relationship becomes a bit strained however, when it seems as if Isa wants to take the place of Ramazan’s father…

The film is very quiet and slow, often there is no dialogue, and you just watch the people. In a way, it is typically Austrian, but I did like it. I found it interesting that there is only a single scene where somebody speaks real Viennese Austrian; in all others the people speak more or less high German, for example the immigrant children, or Austrian officials who speak to the immigrants. When the film deals with Ramazan and his family, they speak Chechen, of course.

After the film, my friend and I walked home and when we passed by a little bar with Italian food and wine, we decided to have a glass of wine or two. All in all, it was a nice evening. I should go out more often…

Japanese people are well-known to be hard workers. Their extreme commitment to the job and the company they work for, often for 10 hours a day and more, is shocking to Westerners. Work-Life-Balance is something that does not exist in Japan. Your life is work and your work is life…

It appears that the house opposite mine – a small, three storey apartment building – will be renovated. Last Friday a number of people came to put up the scaffolding. It took them all day. Have a look at this photo, taken from my balcony. Do you notice anything?

Well, while they were happily running up and down the half-finished scaffolding and throwing the parts to each other, it was raining. Not just a light drizzle, it was pouring heavily. All day long. They all kept working regardless, a few minutes before that photo was taken, the man in the black jacket even went to the roof working there.

All this happened without any type of safety gear I could see, except for the hard hats. I don’t know what type of shoes they were wearing, but it’s probably not a good idea to run around on wet metal scaffolding or wet roofs in any case. However, they did not seem to worry about anything at all and kept working at a steady pace all day.

I think that this would not be possible in Austria. If it’s raining, construction work like this simply does not happen, you would have to wait until the rain stops before completing the scaffolding. I wonder whether this is because of different laws regarding safety at work or too tight a schedule (note: I did not notice anyone working there today, although the weather was nice). Is Japanese work ethics really so much different that people would disregard their own safety?

I have a brand-new gas metre. I have no idea why I needed one, whether the old one was defect in one way or another or whether gas metres are automatically replaced at more or less random intervals… The good thing about this was that I did not have to pay anything for it, and that it needed almost no input from my side either. Let’s recap:

About two weeks ago, I received a postcard from the gas company informing me that the metre would be replaced some time in the week between the 17th and the 24th of June. Okay, I thought, I am mostly home anyway, and when I’m not, well the metre is outside the apartment in a publicly accessible utility cabinet, so feel free to help yourselves.

Of course, the technician showed up on the one and only afternoon I had an appointment and for some reason or other he did not replace the metre but rather left a large note – in green – saying he’ll come back again. On the 23rd. Or maybe on the 24th. Some time between 9 and 5. Probably. Which left me wondering about what single people do who have employment outside their homes. Do they seriously have to take a day off or two to wait for the gas guy?

Anyway, he did come yesterday afternoon, and my communication with him was done in the grand total of 2 minutes. The first time he rang at the door he announced – slightly out of breath – that he had arrived and would proceed with his work. And that he’ll ring again when he’d be finished. Which he was after about 20 minutes, and he was happy to tell me that it would be safe now to use the gas again.

That was all he needed me for. He did not even have to enter my apartment to turn anything off or so. In the end, I received a note about the successful completion of the job which I duly filed among all the other apartment related paperwork, but that was it. Which left me wondering why I needed to be home in the first place. A friend of mine said that it was not possible to install a new gas metre without my consent, which does make some sense. On the other hand, on the postcard they did not seem to ask permission for the work, they simply stated the fact that it would be done.

Oh well. I needed an excuse to do my dishes anyway…

This is a tie-in to my rant of last Friday about the ubiquitousness of plastic bags here in Japan. I am not entirely sure whether Japanese like plastic (bags) better or (writing) paper. There are lots of stationary shops in Japan: The ones that are part of a shopping centre or a book store and cater to school kids with their notebooks and folders in every colour of the rainbow and then some. The stand alone ones that sell everything related to writing and paper crafts, including ink brushes and expensive foreign fountain pens. And the tiny ones where you can buy hand-made Japanese washi paper that feels like silk when you touch it.

This love of paper spills over to other parts society of course. Every larger purchase needs to be documented with several pages of paperwork and printouts. I still have to go through the stack of paper I received when I rented this apartment to weed out the unnecessary ones – probably half of them – and don’t forget that the agent kept all of them as well, and some copies went to the landlord too. And the reams of paper I needed for my business and visa-application… I’m not sure I want to know how much more my lawyer had to provide.

Interestingly, I receive relatively few advertisements in the mail. There is the occasional one for pizza delivery or Mac Donalds or a new beauty salon. Nothing seriously obnoxious, except for one type of advertisements: real estate. On average, I get one sheet of paper per day, more in the weekends. They mostly look the same – cheap printouts in two or three colours – and they mostly come from one and the same agency that is trying to sell the same types of houses to the same type of people… Interestingly, when I was still living in the old house, there were never such advertisements. Apparently they only distribute them to people in apartments, which is strange because there are both houses and apartments on offer, in pretty much equal shares.

I don’t know what annoys me so much about these advertisements. Probably the fact that I’ll have to take them up to the fifth floor where I have to store them until the beginning of the month to haul them down again for paper collection. That’s probably it, such a waste of energy everywhere…