experiences – Page 47 – goinggaijin.com

Randomised

Only yesterday, I have made another step towards my goal of becoming a good resident of Japan. Behold, ladies and gentlemen: A random citizen of Kyoto!

You’re not getting it, are you? Well, yesterday I have received a letter from the mayor of Kyoto (or at least his office) containing the “Kyoto Citizen’s Social Interactions Survey”.

letter attached to the survey I am one of only 3000 citizens of Kyoto that were randomly chosen to take part in the survey. It has around 100 questions touching different areas: Actual Social Experience in 27 different fields like environment, human rights, culture, pedestrian friendly city, housing; Importance of Kyoto city policies with respect to the above, and personal interest in city administration. The final question is especially interesting: “Do you think you are happy now?”

Well, yes for sure, thank you! No matter where I lived before, I was never deemed random enough to be asked to take part in such a survey. I cannot help wondering how random it really is though. The envelope contained four sets of questionnaires, in Japanese, English, Korean, and Chinese, which is something that is very rare indeed in Japan. The question is whether there are really so many foreigners living in Kyoto that a survey sent to a random one out of 500 citizens would warrant such a measure? But then again, I was never good at statistics…

Samurai Photographs

Yesterday I went to a photography exhibition, titled “Last Samurais, First Photographs” near the Imperial Palace. A number of 150-100 year old photographs of samurai were display, and I found them very interesting and beautiful.

Apparently, photography was introduced to Japan only in the last decade of the Edo period (late 1850s), but it spread relatively quickly, and by the late 19th century, there were both foreign and Japanese photographers working in Japan. The exhibition – from the collections of the French Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts – showed photos for example from the Japanese photographer Kusakabe Kimbei, a protegé of the Austrian photographer Baron Raimund von Stillfried who worked in Yokohama for 20 years until he returned to Europe in 1883.

Of course, at that time photographs were black and white, but almost all of the exhibits were carefully hand colored, which gave them a somewhat dreamy appearance. The interesting part about this is that they show the samurai’s armor as very bright and colorful in yellow, red, and blue, with brightly patterned kimono underneath.

Although the exhibition started with two photographs of the then shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, most of the pictures did not show real samurai, because they had been taken after the shogunate had ended and the samurai class was abolished. Although the armor is real, the people wearing them were normal people without samurai ancestry, or actors of the kabuki or noh theatre.

This can also be seen by the choice of subject. Most of the photos were just portraits, focusing on the armor and different weapons. However, a whole album was on display that depicted – again, in carefully hand colored photographs – the famous story of the 47 ronin, who avenged their master who had been forced to commit suicide. Once they had achieved their goal, they went to his grave and also committed seppuku. Another example is the photo below. It depicts two famous people from the Heike Monogatari. At the left is the accomplished female warrior Tomoe Gozen, who followed her lover Minamoto Yoshinaka (right) into the war with the Taira.

Exhibition Postcard with photo. As I said, the exhibition, although small, is certainly worthwhile. It takes place in the Toraya Gallery on Ichijo dori, near the crossing with Karasuma dori, and will be open until the end of May.

Shipping

I have been working on the basics of my company webpage today. Although I am planning nothing spectacularly difficult, I realised that as the whole world (except myself) is now using mobile phones to go online, I would need to catch up with the latest mobile design and programming models, unless I want to become the last dinosaur on the web. Or maybe the first?

Anyway, I decided to throw some money at the problem and to get myself a decent book on the matter. Yes I know how that sounds. Remember: I’m a non-mobile phone owning, actual book reading dinosaur. So, I was browsing a bit and settled on something that seemed reasonable and I can order it from amazon.

Of course, shipping stuff to Japan is prohibitively expensive, you get used to that, but what really riled me up was the estimated duration of the shipping: 3 – 6 weeks. Excuse me, how long? People, it’s a book. One single book! I know that Japan is an island, but I am sure you’re not hiring a personal swimmer even though this would explain the price… Come on people, 6 weeks is ridiculous! Shipping all my 42 boxes from Germany – on a real container ship – will not take longer than that, and yes, my things will have to go through customs as well.

Okay, I thought, let’s look at amazon Japan. I’m glad to say that they have the book too and there they have free shipping, but delivery will take just as long. Obviously they are buying the book in America themselves. I’m deeply sorry I can’t read textbooks in Japanese, although, given the subject matter, half of the book will be English words and phrases anyway.

I have resigned to not buy the book as I wanted to be finished with the site by the time the book should arrive. Although not a big fan of learning things that way, I will look for some tutorials on the web, which will hopefully do the trick. Alternatively, I can always have a look at Kyoto University’s library, I know they have a fairly good English section for the sciences.

Regaining

Today was the last day of this year’s Golden Week holidays. It is a national holiday although not really a holiday if that makes sense. Today is only a holiday because the first “real” holiday of Golden Week – Constitution Day on May 3rd – fell on a Sunday and was thus lost to the general populace. In such a case, the holiday will be made up for on Monday, or, if this is already a holiday, on the first non-holiday in the week. Which means: today. Somewhat complicated, yes, but once the Japanese settle on a cause of action they pull through with it. And thus, there have been people on holidays since at least last Saturday.

Not everybody though: I have received letters as usual, the large shops and restaurants in my area were open, and the facility next to my house – that has something to do with garbage collection I think – was operating normally, company wide open-air workouts included. On the other hand, many of the smaller shops were closed, and the little girl who cannot play outside without regular high-pitched cries of “Okaasaaan, Okaaasaaaan” (mummy) that increase in audible panic the longer they take, must have been shipped off to some place far enough to be inaudible, for the time being, at least.

I spent Golden Week working, more or less. Mostly I was busy giving my apartment a thorough deep cleaning for the first time since I moved in. Of course, I had cleaned the bathroom and kitchen within the first week already, but only now did I finish scrubbing all the hard floors, vacuum all the tatami, and clean all those hard-to-reach places like lampshades (which are mostly plastic here) and the top of curtain rails. Altogether, since moving in, I spent 7 hours cleaning those 10 m^2 of kitchen that I have – yes, it was really that disgusting! – and maybe another 5 hours on the whole rest of the apartment. Right now it is so pristine, I’d prefer to not move at all, just so that it stays that way… oh well, at least from now on it’s just maintenance.

Yesterday afternoon, as it was such a nice day, I went exploring my neighborhood, sat on this part of the river for a while and had an ice cream or two while collecting my thoughts about my new company website.

And today, I spent the afternoon writing a letter to my Japanese pen pal, in both German (which she is trying to learn) and in Japanese (which I am trying to learn). This is always a rather painful thing to do, as I want to write semi-interesting stories related to my life in Japan, which is not something my language ability is really able to support yet. So I am sitting there amongst all my Japanese books trying hard to write something more exciting than “It was nice weather today…”

Dinner

I just came home from dinner with one of my old housemates. We went to an organic, but not vegan restaurant near Sanjo-Karasuma, and afterwards to a cafe nearby for strawberry cake and mango smoothie. It was nice, I enjoyed the evening.

Afterwards we tried to go to one of the exhibitions of “Kyotographie” which is running right now, but they had closed just 10 minutes before we arrived – to the great dismay of my friend who is involved in the festival and wanted to show off a little. Oh well, some other time maybe.

Stumbling

The Geisha – or Geiko as they are called in Kyoto – are the incorporation of everything Japanese, not only for foreigners, but for the Japanese as well. A Geiko is a manifestation of tradition in everything she does, a masterpiece of art in everything she wears, and a showpiece of that Japan that is all but gone and only survives in tiny enclaves like Kyoto’s Gion. In short, they embody everything that is beautiful, sophisticated, and rare in Japan. And rare they are indeed as their art is a dying one, and an evening of personal entertainment with a Geisha is a costly enterprise.

So, you can probably imagine the lengths to which people are going to even only see a Geisha. People flock to the few yearly events with public appearances of Geiko and Maiko. They spend hours wandering the streets of Gion in the early evening in the hope of catching a glimpse of a Maiko on her way to an appointment. Some very obnoxious fellows even follow them around when they are going out, just to get that one perfect picture.

I can certainly understand the first thing – I have done so myself – but I find the second a little odd and the third outright rude and impolite. That’s probably the reason why after two years in Japan I only have taken very few photos of Geiko and Maiko. But then again, it’s not as if I had to resort to such methods, my approach is much more casual…

A while back, it was such a nice and sunny afternoon that I decided to go out. There is a tiny little cafe near the Philosopher’s Path, with maybe 15 seats, interesting decor, and great hot chocolate. I had been there before and I felt like walking a bit. When I arrived, there were five or six men occupying the largest table at the back – never before had I seen so many customers there. Well, that was not how I had envisioned my quiet afternoon, but I ordered and crouched down over my notebook anyway.

Then, suddenly, they arrived from the room in the back: a young Maiko, flawlessly dressed and made up, with perfect coiffure in which stuck those little seasonal hair ornaments that are often worn during only a few days. She was accompanied by a somewhat older woman, obviously a senior member from her teahouse. Both women then took seats on the large table and started chatting with the men waiting there.

I was very surprised and tried very hard not to stare. After a while of talking and drinking coffee the women got up and everybody left. The whole meeting – from the time the women came out from the back until the cafe was empty again – took not more than 15 minutes. Interestingly, it was the older woman accompanying the Maiko who paid the bill, which makes me assume that the gentlemen paid for the meeting including drinks beforehand.

Afterwards, the owner of the cafe, an old lady who speaks a little English, confirmed that that had indeed been a real Maiko. See, that’s how you get to see them close up, just go to the right cafe…

Delivery

About a month ago, I spent a whole day at Yodobashi Camera to buy electronic equipment for my office. It took almost six hours – plus 90 minutes on the bus – to buy: a new laptop, external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, a printer and a phone (actually two phones, one for the office, one for home, although I realize that at the moment this is the same). A number of assorted cables rounded off my purchases.

Except for the laptop I could take everything home immediately. However, as the printer was rather bulky and together with the other stuff would have overwhelmed me, I agreed to have it delivered the next day – for a very small fee of only 500 YEN. As I had an appointment until 1 pm the next day, I arranged for delivery between 2 and 4 pm.

When I returned home the next day at about 1:30 pm I found, stuck to the door frame, a notice about a failed delivery. Apparently, it had been attempted at 12:17 or thereabouts, and now I was left with an assortment of phone numbers to call and ask for a second try.

I was furious – that was exactly what I wanted to avoid, making phone calls in Japanese. With the proper vocabulary written down on a cheat sheet, and with lots of helpless looks and hand waving gestures, I can more often than not manage to get my point across if the person thus addressed stands opposite me and can watch me struggle and maybe help me along. On the phone however, I am helpless. That’s because I cannot see the other person and repeat what he may not understand (and vice versa), and because, especially if you are phoning a company, they will use very formal Japanese which I can barely understand. In fact, a friend of mine who has been in Japan for five years and speaks very good Japanese agrees that making phone calls is very difficult and even he avoids it if possible.

Anyway, after examining the notice, I found a number on the bottom that promised English service – exactly what I needed! Of course, without internet and phone line, making said call from home was impossible, so I packed my laptop and went to the closest café with free wi-fi. When I entered the number into skype I received, instead of a reassuring ringing sound, a notice that this service was not available via skype. Probably because skype does not send the dial tones that may be needed for automated menus.

That could only mean one thing: Call the driver of the delivery van directly. After my panic had subsided and I had looked up a number of choice words that may or may not be needed, I took to skype again and made that phone call. After I explained that I don’t speak Japanese well – doing that very slowly helps – I tried to tell him that I want my package from Yodobashi delivered again. He did not even care for my explanations though. All he wanted was my name and address and he promised to come by again later. It was surprisingly easy.

I was very proud of myself when he indeed arrived about two hours later and brought my printer. I was too happy to even scold him for being too early the first time. However, a few days later, when I checked all my bills, I realized that the driver had done nothing wrong. Apparently the girl who took my data in the shop got the times wrong: Instead of a delivery time between 2 and 4, she had entered 12 to 14, an understandable mistake. Not that this made it less annoying, but in the future, I will know to double-check.

Madness

Personal confession: I was a rather angry teenager. Always first in line to scream and shout, always talking back to teachers and other random adults… The fly on the wall would drive me crazy – and I’d be up it in a moment. I’m not sure what exactly has provoked the change in my life – I’m guessing it is age – but I have cooled down considerably. Especially the last two years in Japan – being where I want to be, doing what I want to do – have almost made me another person.

Almost. A bit more than a month ago, I met the first Japanese who brought my blood to boiling point. She made me so angry, within 5 minutes, I almost (!) started yelling at her. Here’s what happened:

I needed a bank account in Japan, a second one, for practical reasons. Japan has many banks, but the one with the densest branch network is Japan Post Bank. Even here, in a residential area, there are two branches within only a five minute’s walk from my new home. So, I thought, if I ever have to move again, this is the best bank to get a second account as they are everywhere. So, on an early Friday afternoon about six weeks ago, I went to the larger one of the Post Bank branches around my corner in order to open a new bank account.

This branch is large enough to have a designated person to supply you with forms and help on how to fill them in, and then hands you your waiting number. So, I went up to said person and said, slowly, but in Japanese: I want to open a bank account please. I received a rather complicated answer that I could not quite make sense of, but I understood that there is lots of paperwork involved in opening a bank account and that there is nobody who could speak English and that I should come back on Monday, when there would be some English speaker available.

Okay, thought I, slightly unhappy because I needed that account faster than that, but I relented, said thank you, and left. Fast forward to the following Monday morning, 10 am, when I entered the same branch again, placed myself in front of the same woman, and said the very same sentence as on Friday: I want to open a bank account please.

At which – wouldn’t you believe it – the woman gave me the very same sermon as on Friday afternoon: It involves a lot of paperwork in Japanese which you can’t fill out on your own, and we do not have anybody who speaks English here. I went: What? Mind you, this was the main post (bank) office for this whole city district, not one of the tiny ones staffed with three people; I would not have dreamt of going to one of those.

That was the point when I started to get upset: That woman had just wasted a whole weekend of mine! Thankfully there was another customer in the bank at that time who kindly tried to translate between the two of us. It turned out that the clerk had decided upfront that, because I am a foreigner, the only thing I could possibly want is a bank account from which I can send money abroad, and this would allegedly be very difficult to set up. I said no, that’s not what I need, I only want an account on which to receive my salary. No, she insisted, this is all very complicated, can you not bring a Japanese friend?

That was the point when my blood started to boil. She had not used the word “friend” on Friday, I would have understood that, it being one of the first Japanese words I learnt. She then gave me the impression that things could be sorted out on Monday. To the question whether there were other post bank branches where people would be able to speak English, she replied she did not know of any, and besides this is the main branch, so other branches’ staff would send me here anyway.

That was the point when I got angry – for the first time in the two years I spent living in Japan. I had not gotten angry at the immigration officer who personally grilled me at Kansai airport in February last year; I had not gotten angry at the immigration officer who sent me for the correct sized envelope. But this time, I did get really mad – and even a bit loud. I did rein in my anger comparatively quickly though, thanked the person who had translated, and left the Post Bank, without bank account. I have no intentions to go back there ever again.

In the end, I did get my second bank account that Monday morning after all. There is a Bank of Kyoto nearby, and although they were not my first choice because they have hardly any branches outside of Kyoto, I went there after all. Similar situation there: A woman handing out forms to whom I posed my request: I want to open a bank account please. From there, it took us five minutes to fill out a single piece of paper and put my hanko at various places; and after a waiting time of about 25 minutes, I had sucessfully opened a second bank account. And she did not speak any English either…

Furnishings

Since my move at the end of February, I have been living in a rather sparsely furnished apartment. Except for the bare necessities – futon, gas range, and fridge – I did not buy anything for a while. I wanted to get a better image of what I wanted my new home to look like. After all, this would be my first “permanent” home in a long time – ever since my PhD in 2006, I had to move every year or two and never invested much time or money into buying furniture or appliances. Most of it was second-hand so I would feel less guilty if I could not sell it when I packed up again and had to throw it away.

This time however, I want to buy decent stuff that will last for longer, that I will like for longer, so I took my time. By now, I think I have a clearer idea of what I want. As you can see in the image in this post, my apartment essentially consists of three parts: The office at the left, which I want to have as modern and fun-looking as possible; the middle part with the kitchen and a living room, which I will furnish in a modern western style; and the right part with the second living room/guest room and my bedroom, both of which have tatami. Those two rooms I want to decorate in a traditional Japanese style – or at least in a style that I think is traditional.

So far, I have only finished one room: the office. This was the easiest room to do, as everything I needed came straight from IKEA. In fact, I went to IKEA in Kobe twice, once about a month ago, and the second time last Monday, to buy everything I wanted. My things got delivered today in the morning, so I could spend all my day fiddling with the furniture…

The first thing I did after clearing the room completely was trying to get as many cables as possible out of sight – meaning: underneath the tatami. It was surprisingly easy to lift up the tatami by inserting a knife (experts take a flat screwdriver, which I didn’t have) and wiggling it gently. Those are real straw mats though, not the modern plastic ones you find in sports halls all over the world, and they are really heavy. I am glad I only had to lift them up and lean them against the wall, and not carry them anywhere. Here is an image of the underneaths – of both the floor and the tatami. You can see four cables running across the room: 2 LAN cables, the cable to the router and a printer cable. It took a while fiddling with the cables – the router cable is just 10 cm longer than it needs to be and the printer cable is round and comparatively bulky – but in the end I managed to get the cables and the tatami in place.

Afterwards, the usual IKEA furniture assembly routine. It was relatively easy – you get used to that after a few moves – and I did not encounter big problems when setting up this shelf and the boxes inside: The printer is not yet set up, but the phone does work. I am also thinking of a way to hide the router and the cables in the right bottom shelf, but it will take a bit longer. In case you are wondering where the other cables to the printer and the phone are – they are hidden behind the somewhat oddly placed boxes…

Finally, I brought the desks back in which I had bought already last month. Looking back, the high-gloss finish may not have been the best idea because you can see every single finger print; however, I like the way the whole thing comes together so nicely. As I have to attach a photo of my office space to my visa application, my goal was to make this the most eclectic office the immigration bureau has ever seen. What do you think? So, the office is finished except for a few small things: I still need a ceiling lamp (or rather: somebody to hang it up), the cable management underneath my desk is not optimal yet, and I want to hide the router and set up the printer. Also, there is a lot of empty wall space above the shelf and I think something should go there. I have an idea, but I’ll have to mull it over a bit longer… Anyway, all those are minor things, and they will have to wait…

Unfortunately, I have never managed to set up IKEA furniture without bodily harm. Last month, after a whole day of working with a screwdriver, I had several blisters on the palm of my right hand. This time, an attempt to undo a mistake I made when putting those little red plastic boxes together took off a large chunk of skin from my right thumb. It’s not painful anymore, but from the look of the band-aid it’s still bleeding… I’ll have a look at it in a moment.

Hanami 2015

During my time of internet absence, lots of things happened of course. In fact, I was really busy and sometimes quite happy that I did not have to write a lengthy post after a day of running around. However, I will let you know more details in the next few days.

In the last six weeks, it has slowly become spring. Mostly at least. Last Thursday, finally, the perfect day had come for this year’s hanami – cherry blossom viewing. I took the opportunity to explore new parts of the city on my search for the perfect cherry blossom. Essentially, I went south along the Takano river to Demachiyanagi where the river unites with the Kamo river and then along the other half of the V to the Botanical Gardens.

It was lovely weather, warm with bright blue skies, and as I was walking in the early afternoon, there were lots of people out for their own hanami. Throughout the city, both sides of the River Kamo are lined with cherry trees, and last Thursday was the day when they finally fully opened their white blossoms. Unfortunately, it started raining on Friday, and since then it has cooled considerably. Although the cherries are still in bloom, they have lost many of their delicate blossoms already, so even if the weather gets warmer again soon, I think the main season is over. Oh well, here are a few of the pictures I took this year: