Category: experiences

I have finally solved one of those mysteries that I have been wondering about since I came to Japan and started living in this neighborhood. With that I mean, this type of small, suburban, family homes kind of neighborhood in general, not just this particular one in Kyoto, as I have come across the same mystery in several other places as well.

Let’s try a little quiz (and don’t scroll down to the solution just yet!).
What do you think is the purpose of these: So, what do you think the bottles – which are filled with water, by the way – are good for?

For a long time I thought they were used in case of a fire (and one of my housemates had a similar suspicion); it’s always good to have plenty of water around when one of the wooden houses is burning, and those plastic bottles, why, you can just chuck them in without further ado.

Then I thought, well, maybe, it could be that it’s a sign not to park there, whether a bicycle or a motor bike or even a car. Although this does not seem very useful, the close-knit way small neighborhoods work here with people on constant lookout for anybody breaking any rules, it could just work.

But no, that’s not it, and now that I have inquired with several people as to the meaning of all those bottles all over the place, and they all gave me the same answer, irrespective of location, I thought I’d share it with you: Those bottles are there…

…to prevent cats from coming to the houses.

Yes, I made the same sceptical face as you do now. The reasoning behind the whole idea seems to be that the water reflects light, and as cats do not like those type of flashy reflections, they will simply go away and take their business elsewhere. I have no idea whether this is supposed to work at night as well though, the neighborhood is not that brightly lit (thank goodness). I know that at the edge of roads that go through forests in Europe, people put up old CD’s, in the hope that the reflections from the car’s headlights at night will keep the forest animals from coming near or even crossing the road; and it appears to work. But, those a wild animals – here we’re talking about cats that are used to humans and their lights…

I obviously need a new category for my posts: All things Japanese – wacky stuff…

I’m back from spending a week with an old friend of mine and her family, and I’ve enjoyed myself greatly.

Tuesday I went up to Nagoya, and after saying a short hello to her mother, we went to see Atsuta shrine, the biggest shrine in Nagoya. The area the shrine covers is very large, and it struck me immediately that the precincts were well kept and had many new buildings. It turned out that this shrine houses one of the three sacred treasures of the emperor: the sword. Thus, it is a shrine dedicated to the sun goddess, and is considered very important. In the evening we had dinner at my friend’s brother’s place. I had met him before, but he has only recently moved back to Nagoya. Once again, he was cooking lovely food, and we had a great evening.

Wednesday we spent in Arimatsu, one of the neighborhoods in Nagoya. Although only a small place, it is known as a part of the historical Tokaido – the road between Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto. A small part of it has been restored, there are lots of beautiful old houses to be seen there. Arimatsu is also famous for shibori, a beautiful tie-dying craft that apparently goes back to the 8th century.

Takayama was our next station, and we spent Wednesday night and Thursday there. It is a rather small town in the middle of the mountains, and its surroundings remind me a lot of the place I come from in Austria. There is the Hida Folk Village a bit outside of the town, an open air museum that has a number of traditional farmhouses from all over Gifu prefecture. All the houses can be visited, and as it was comparatively cool on Thursday, there was a fire in each one of them. There are many other sights in Takayama, and we spent a lot of time walking through the inner city with its old wooden houses and breweries.

Friday and Saturday we spent in Kyoto. My friend wanted to see a few specific things, and so we went to the Western part of town, which I have grossly neglected so far, I have to confess. We went to Ryoanji temple with the famous zen garden, and to Ninnaji, which is less than a temple and more of an old emperor’s residence. We also saw the Myoshin temple complex, a huge accumulation of temples next to each other; Ryoanji is considered one of the outlying temples of Myoshin. Saturday we spent on my side of town, starting out on the philosopher’s path and then moving on to the city to do some shopping.

I had a great week and thanks to my friend I could revisit parts of Japan I loved very much, like Takayama, but could also see new things in Nagoya and Kyoto. It’s so much more fun to go with somebody else than to do everything on your own all the time. I hope her brother will visit me soon, as promised…

There have been heavy rains in several Japanese provinces, causing floodings and landslides. I have just read that in a large landslide in Hiroshima, at least 40 people were killed, and more than 50 are still unaccounted for.

In case you were reading these accounts: Kyoto has been fine so far. As I said last week, just up until the Daimonji, there were heavy rains. Apparently during the ceremony, people were not allowed to go down to the riverbank (which is a favourite spot for watching the big dai) because the river had partially overflown the banks of the Kamogawa and the current was indeed very strong. Besides that, I did not notice much effects of the bad weather in Kyoto. Here, it has been dry the whole week, and although there are still weather warnings in place, they are now in the North of Honshu and the South of Hokkaido, far from Kyoto.

So, don’t worry about me here in Kyoto – the summer has average temperatures and average precipitation here. Must be all the mountains that surround the city…

When I came to Japan last year and needed a place to stay, I decided to look for a gaijin house, a shared accommodation for foreigners who stay in Japan on a short-term basis only and cannot or don’t want to rent an apartment. I did it mostly because I was not allowed to rent an apartment (no zairyu card, remember?), because I did not really know which parts of town are the “good” ones (I still don’t, but I have a better idea of where I’d like to live), and finally, because I thought it would be a temporary thing anyway.

The first year was very pleasant, we were only three people who stayed for longer, and occasionally there were short-term guests. But every one was nice and thoughtful and respectful in dealing with the other tenants and with the house.

This year, the house has become much more busy. Three weeks ago or so was the first time all the rooms were rented out since I moved in. A lot of the people were in their mid-20s, students having fun on their vacation; and unfortunately, the atmosphere in the house turned to that of a student’s dorm…

I had lived in a dorm for long enough to have known the moment I moved out of it, that I never wanted to experience that again. Ever. So I found it especially grating to go through the same old stuff again: dirty remnants of food in the kitchen (well, the cockroaches loved it), a filthy bathroom; a general inability to turn off lights and close the fridge (great stuff in summer, that), noisy homecomings at 1:30 in the morning (banging sliding doors is an art). No amount of requests or explanations of the senior members of the household changed anything, so I was incredibly relieved when the more obnoxious tenants moved out a bit over a week ago – at least I can sleep through the night again.

But today, I had another dorm flash back, and as I was not directly involved I found it rather funny. When I woke up and groped my way downstairs to the toilet and from there to the bathroom, I found, stuck to one of the mirrors, a letter headed with “To whomever is throwing up every night”… In a surprisingly blunt tone verging on the passive-aggressive (the letter was not signed), the puking person was strongly urged, if not to change their lifestyle, then to at least clean up afterwards.

I have since ascertained who has written the letter and that said writer was indeed extremely pissed off about the state of the bathroom sink (!) last night, hence the writer resorted to such methods. I would have never thought this otherwise so gentle person being capable of this!

Anyway, I had my laugh in the morning, and the letter was gone when I went down the next time. Hopefully the addressee has received the letter and the message – and we’ll have a sufficiently clean bathroom around the clock from now on. I also hope that in the future we will get more adults who can look after themselves (and the house) and don’t need to be on the receiving end of anonymous letters…

It has 23 degrees right now – and I’m cold. Yes, I know how that sounds, but only this morning we still had 10 degrees more… It started to rain in the afternoon, and thus cooled down considerably. Apparently there are two typhoons on their way to Japan, one of them (No. 11) is coming from the South and is probably the reason for the rain.

I don’t like going out when it’s raining. Especially now as I don’t really know what to wear – shorts and sandals are not warm enough, and long pants and sneakers get soaked within five minutes. Today I chose the latter, and ran around with squishy feet all evening, which was not really nice, so I might try the long pants with sandals idea next time, as my feet will be equally wet and cold, but there is at least the chance of them drying in the restaurant…

Yes, this is what I was doing – I went to a restaurant with my language exchange partner and a friend of his, and it was really fun! He did not tell me much about his friend beforehand, only that she had spent the last year in Austria, so I was very excited to find out that she lived in Graz, where I myself had studied so long ago! We talked about Graz and where she lived and where I lived and how much Austrian she actually spoke… We talked about her favourite Austrian dishes (Bauerng’röstl, closely followed by Käsespätzle), and when she mentioned that a friend had given her a bottle of real Styrian Kernöl, I recommended her one of my favourites: Vanilla icecream with said Kernöl. She was very surprised, apparently she hadn’t heard of it, but she promised to give it a try. The evening was a short one, we were literally kicked out of the restaurant a bit after 9 pm, and I think because of the rain, nobody wanted to go elsewhere and keep chatting.

I gave her my email address and she promised that if she had time, we could meet again – and talk about Austria. She claimed that she could understand Austrian dialect but not speak it, and I’m curious to try it out… What a great evening, despite the rain!

Yesterday I received my first soroban certificate! Here it is:It says that Iris is now a sorobanista of 6th kyu rank, which is not really much but, it’s a start. Everything has to have its proper order in Japan, so this certificate is signed (see the two red seals on the far left) with the names of two famous people who are somehow affiliated with this soroban association. The leftmost of them is Yamazaki Naoko, who, in 2010, became the second Japanese woman in space… I feel honored, actually!

The interesting thing about this certificate is that is does not contain my birthdate, although it should. No, it’s not because I deleted it… It’s because this is a pre-printed certificate, where only name, birthdate, and current kyu-rank are filled in by hand. Apparently, only children take these sort of exams, so the birth year is pre-printed as “Heisei”, the current Japanese era (we are in Heisei 26 right now). However, my birthdate falls into the last Japanese era called “Showa”, hence they left this part of the certificate blank. Sensei promised me to ask next time to have a “Showa” certificate issued, I said it was not important until I’ll get the first dan grade – the equivalent to a black belt in martial arts. Anyway, it’s a nice certificate (noticed the phoenixes?) and I am sufficiently proud of it!

The other day I transferred some money from my account in Europe to my account in Japan. I only sent 50 EUR, mainly because I wanted to find out how long such an international transfer would take, and because I wanted to make sure I had entered my endless account number correctly.

The money appeared, quicker than I had expected. And also, much less than I had expected… Besides the money, I received two letters, one from my bank in Europe, the other from my bank in Japan, each letter informing me that the transaction happened (yup, I know that, thanks), and each letter telling me about the fees incurred: 10 EUR.

You are probably not reading this correctly, so let me clarify this: I paid a 10 EUR fee to my bank in Europe, and a 10 EUR fee to my bank in Japan – making 20 EUR in fees for transferring 50 EUR, that is 40 % of the amount! And on top of that, I will have to pay one Yen for each Euro whenever I choose to exchange my Euros to Yen.

I have no idea what happened, I did notice though that the money was here within a day – and most certainly I did not want that because, first of all it says there that a speedy transfer will incur larger fees, and because I wanted to test how long a normal transfer would take. I asked my bank in Europe to explain what happened – and also to send me a list of their fees (I assume that the smaller the amount, the larger the fee), but I have not heard back from them yet. Yes, that’s what they call customer service there, I’m not surprised in the least.

This summer’s weather in Kyoto is rather strange. It is not (yet) as hot as it was last year, and even though it is summer, it is mostly overcast and grey. Only for the last three weeks – just in time for the Saki matsuri parade – the sun started to come out. The last few weeks were so bad all over Japan, that at least 15 people died because of the heat – I assume mostly old people who live in houses without aircondition, just like I do…

And on top of that, my room faces West, so it gets lots of sun in the afternoon. At some point, the ventilator I have started using since Gion matsuri only distributes the hot air, and there is no more cooling effect. The best thing to do during such a day is to flee to some place where there is aircondition. I like to go to the Prefectural Library near Heian shrine, and also to Kyoto International House, either to their library or downstairs to their big meeting hall. Both places are convenient because they have desks where I can work and even plug in my computer, and you can stay there as long as you like. These days I see many more people there than otherwise, I guess none of them have airco at home, or they choose not to use it for financial reasons.

Still, the weather is a bit strange. Last Saturday we had 37 degrees in the afternoon, with bright blue sky. And yesterday, it was equally bad: 30 degrees at 10 am, and I was dripping like a leaky faucet at that time already, so I left the house then, the first time I fled that early this year. However, today the sky was grey and overcast again, we only had 35 degrees, which still sounds a lot, but I swear it was much more bearable. And this is how it went the last few weeks: A day or two of blue skies and blistering heat, followed by several days of cloudy skies.  It seems that places around Kyoto have much more sun; I think this is one of those few times when I should be grateful that Kyoto is surrounded by mountains and everything is grey and thus cool. Sometimes it is so hot that I am yearning for a bit of rain, but there is none, at least not in my area. We will see how the summer develops. Kyoto people claim that the highest temperatures are between Gion matsuri and Obon, which is two more weeks off.

One of my housemates, who has been living in Japan for about 5 years now, has studied photography. Although he does in Japan what most English natives do here – teaching English – he never stopped taking photos.

And now, he has his first exhibition! It is a very small one, in a cafe not far from the imperial palace. A friend of mine and I went there today to see it, and although it has only a few photos in black and white, they are all beautiful – and, just as he promised, you’ll have to think about them a bit and to engage with them somehow.

Here is his webpage, if you are interested in seeing his (other) pictures – check out the links to Facebook and to his blog: http://white-rice.co.uk/ If you are in Kyoto and interested in seeing the exhibition “Souls Perceived”, it is in the Cafe Kamogamo, and will be held until August 4th.