experiences – Page 58 – goinggaijin.com

Seijin no hi

Today was a holiday, the seijin-no-hi, Coming of Age Day. In Japan, you become a legal adult at the age of 20, and seijin-no-hi celebrates all the young people who turned 20 in the last year. That this is a special day can even be deduced from the language: 20 years old is irregularly named hatachi instead of nijusai as would be normal.

All over Japan, there are official celebrations at government offices, and groups of youngsters dressed up in their best finery (i.e., kimono with sleeves to the ground for the girls and hakama and haori for the guys) can be spotted everywhere all day long. The young people are obviously having a blast, and the atmosphere is lighthearted, joyous, and festive, despite the low temperatures. The nice thing is, that they are all happy to have their pictures taken, and both Japanese and foreigners seek out the best places for a photo opportunity.

One part of the celebrations – besides official and family parties – is to go visit a shrine for a quick prayer. So, I went down to Heian shrine this afternoon to take some pictures of my own. I took more than 250 photos, even though I only stayed one hour until my fingers froze to the camera… Here are a few of my favourites:

Connections

Mid December I came across this great job online. A university in Nagoya was looking for somebody…

… with a PhD from an internationally recognized, reputable university (field irrelevant) …
… a strong track record of working in international environments …
… native level fluency in English …
… willing to travel overseas and to relocate to Nagoya …

… to fill the position of director of their international relations office. Foreigners (i. e., non-Japan residents) welcome, speaking Japanese nice but no requirement… and then there was a list of those blah-blah things everybody can claim: organisatorial and people skills, team oriented, eye for detail, flexible, whatnot. Mind also that the majority of the international relations of said university are situated in Germany, The Netherlands, and France; except for the last one all countries I have lived in and the languages of which I speak fluently. Hence, I thought: Hey guys, here I am! and applied.

The advert also said that if you are not contacted within two weeks, you can consider the application unsuccessful. My landlady suggested that with all Christmas and New Year celebrations and such, I should be patient until the end of this week. So, patient I was – none of my key virtues, I have to admit – until I did some further job searching last night. Where I found the very same advert for the very same job from the very same university except for one little detail; in fact, only three little words added to the requirements: Native in English.

Fuckers.

I talked about that to two friends of mine. The first said that it is likely that the position was filled from the beginning and they just needed to do something official and show that their candidate is the best one fulfilling points 1, 2, 3. When somebody else came along (I’m not even suggesting this would be me) fulfilling points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, they decided to extend the search period, and add point A to the advert, something only their candidate can fulfill. The disaster of having to hire somebody else prevented, everybody was happy.

The other friend of mine, who has been in Japan for 20 years or so, said that the Japanese society as a whole is very insular and closed off and that trust is everything here. If A knows and trusts B, and B recommends C, then A will hire C even if there are better qualified candidates out there. Hence, it’s not about who you are or what you can do or what you know, it’s about whom you know.

Thinking about this for a while, this is actually true in a lot of places and companies, not just in Japan. Since my Masters degree, I have worked in 5 different places, and I only had an interview for the very first and very last position. To all the others I have been introduced by somebody in the know; but to be fair, I don’t think those positions were officially advertised anywhere and thus potentially wasting the time of somebody. And, especially for mid level university positions (assistant/associate professor), it is known that the adverts are tailored so the desired candidate will just so happen to fit it perfectly.

I should have known better than to hope for a decent job here without any connections. But I’m still angry. So, I have made up my mind to look into other ways of coming to Japan. All I need is a stop gap solution for the beginning…

Layers

Today was the coldest day in this winter so far, with the maximum temperature at 6 degrees only. It was raining all day, not improving the temperature at al. So – a good reason to snuggle up at home. Technically at least, because the “snuggling up” part would imply that it is warm at the place where you’re doing it…

Which it is not. I probably said it before, Japanese houses – old and new alike – are made for summer, where every breeze is a relief, and not winter. Here, the walls are maybe 10 cm thick, essentially made out of dirt on a wooden frame. Here and there are cracks in the walls through which you can see the outside, and the windows – single glazed – don’t close properly. I’m glad I live on the top floor though, because the floors on the ground floor below consist only of simple wood boards laid down without any further insulation. The tatami do help a little, but not enough – there remain the cracks between them.

Of course, there is no central heating in the house. Every guest room has a small electric space heater, but it is more to take off the worst edge rather than to heat the space properly. Something else I do have in my room is an electric hot carpet, similar to an electric blanket, just for underneath. I put my futon on top and turn the carpet on (reading this again it sounds very funny, but that’s the way it is…) before I go to sleep for that extra toasty feeling. As the cold seeps in from the top, however, I am now using four blankets – a thin sheet, a thin blanket and two thicker winter blankets. I feel like a veritable princess on a pea – just in reverse. So far, I can still sleep wearing only a T-shirt and socks, but I have a thick pyjama ready for the really cold nights.

Except for the computer room, the other rooms in the house have no heating at all – and that includes the bathroom… I have taken to very long and very hot showers, a big relief. One of my housemates – her room is on ground floor – essentially wears the same stuff in- and outdoors now. I’m not quite there yet, but I spend a lot of my time either in bed or with a thick blanket wrapped around me. Occasionally, I wear gloves to keep my hands warm when typing. My other housemate says it will get worse in February – I wonder how far I’ll have to go to stay warm…

Start

Today – January 6th is not a holiday here like in Austria – was the first working day in Japan again after the week long New Year’s holidays. It’s time for everybody to get back into the rut – and so it is for me. I have decided to start looking for a job even more aggressively than I did up to now, and I will go and print out a number of my CV’s to personally hand in at companies in town. There is one application I sent off in mid December, but according to their guidelines this is probably the last week I can except an answer from them, so I can just as well get started rightaway.

Wish me luck!

PS: Oh, by the way… Yesterday I went to Heian shrine, and in the spirit of both the country and the season, I was thinking of buying a good luck charm. I wanted something useful and asked if they had anything to do with finding a job or job related to begin with. The salesman pointed at the most expensive charm (of course), which bore the English description: Against general evil. Do you think that’s a sign?

Japanese New Year Traditions

In Japan, the New Year is the most important holiday. It is celebrated with efforts the West reserves for Christmas. There are lots of routines, rituals, and traditions surrounding New Year’s in Japan, so I will focus on the two things I did myself this time.

Joya-no-Kane
Like in Austria, where the large bell of the Stephansdom in Vienna rings in the New Year, temple bells play an important role in Japanese New Year’s Eve. In a ceremony called joya-no-kane, Buddhist temples all over the country ring their large bronze bells. It depends on the temple how formally this is done; for example in Kyoto’s Chion-in, one of the most famous spots for the ceremony, the bell is rung exclusively by the monks of the temple, whereas in many smaller temples, even normal people can ring the bell. In any case, the bell is struck 108 times at New Year’s Eve – once for each of man’s earthly desires which, according to Buddhism, cause suffering. Each time the bell is rung, one desire is eliminated from those who listen, so they can start the New Year with a clean slate.

A Buddhist temple bell is a huge affair, the one in Chion in being 3.3 metres high, 2,7 metres in diameter, and 70 tons heavy. It is rung – or rather, struck – from the outside with a large wood beam, and it takes 17 people to do so. The sound of such a temple bell is very loud and deep, it carries a long way and when you are close enough, it resonates deep within your body. Only when the tone has completely stopped, the bell is struck again – so, the larger the bell, the longer the joya-no-kane will take. The starting time depends on the temple. In Chion-in it is timed so that the 108th strike happens in the New Year. Other temples have different rules. This time, I could year temple bells from around 11 pm to 1:30 am approximately.

Hatsumode
Once the joya-no-kane is over, it is time for your hatsumode, the first shrine visit of the year. People go and make their first prayers, buy new Omamori charms of various types (from general luck charms to getting married and easy delivery), and buy O-mikuji, their “personal” fortunes for the New Year. Those fortunes are either paper strips directly pulled out of a jar, or you draw a piece of wood with a number on it in exchange for the fortune strip. There are both luck and curse fortunes of various degrees, and a neutral one. No matter which one you draw, it is best to leave it at the shrine, tied to a pine tree if possible. A curse will stay at the shrine and wait for your return, and a good luck will multiply for you at the shrine. Especially now this is popular, I have never seen such masses of O-mikuji tied to twigs around shrines…

In Kyoto, the most popular shrines for hatsumode are Yasaka jinja, Heian jingu, and Fushimi-inari Taisha. As you should perform your hatsumode as soon as possible after New Year, these places are packed with people. I have heard that Fushimi-Inari alone drew 2.5 million visitors in the first three days of this New Year…

My New Year? I went with my housemates to Shinyodo temple where we were allowed to ring the temple bell. I did not count, but we must have been cleansing ourselves of desire #35 or somesuch, hopefully something serious. After having some of the hot tea served there by the monks (it was freezing…) we went to Yoshida shrine for our hatsumode. I did not buy a charm, but I prayed for a new job – you’ll never know. Anyway, as fireworks are forbidden in Kyoto, the New Year came very quietly, without making a huge entrance like in the West. I liked it, it very much matches my own style…

Busy!

I had a few very nice days to celebrate the New Year in a truly Japanese fashion, which essentially means I was very busy…

On New Year’s Eve, together with my housemates, I went to a Buddhist temple near Ebisu’s for the joyo-no-kane, the ringing of the bell, and right afterwards we went to a nearby shrine for hatsumode, the first visit to a shrine in a new year. I will write a bit more about this in my weekend post tomorrow.

Yesterday, some American friends of mine visited Kyoto, and we went to Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine – together with what seemed like a million other Japanese who went there for their hatsumode. Fushimi Inari, together with Heian Jingu and Yasaka Jinja are the most popular hatsumode destinations for Kyotoites and many other people from all over Japan come here on this occasion.

And finally, today, I was invited through my housemate to a party at her Japanese teacher’s place. We learnt how to prepare Okonomiyaki, a Japanese speciality especially popular in Hiroshima, and ate a ton of other wonderful Japanese food amidst the teacher’s family and other students. It was great fun, and an interesting glimpse into Japanese family life (and a beautiful old machiya too) but all the eating and drinking made me very tired…

All the small shops closed on January 1st (a few of them even before), as this is one of the holidays where everybody is expected to travel home. Hence, now is maybe not the right time for extensive travel plans, although, as I have found out when I was travelling during Obon two years ago, only transportation is crowded, it is relatively easy to get a hotel room (if you’re not too picky that is). I expect the city to go back to normal this weekend however, and it should become a bit more quiet in the next weeks now that the really cold part of winter will finally come to Kyoto…

Construction

Walking through Kyoto these days I noticed that right now seems to be the season for road repairs. Lots of roads are being repaired or at least have their road markings repainted, and many more are already finished and present themselves with a brand new, shiny black asphalt covering.

While my European self finds it a bit odd to have this kind of work done in the middle of winter, it actually makes perfect sense: The temperature is just right considering that you are working with hot asphalt, it’s not freezing so there is no snow and in general it is comparatively dry, and, most importantly, the influx of tourists and their cars and buses – Kyoto is famous for both hanami cherry blossoms and koyo autumn colors and seems not to rest in between – has dimished to a mere trickle.

The whole work appears to be extremely organised. Only comparatively small portions of a road are blocked at any one time, but the result still looks seamless when it is completed after a week or two. What is interesting to see is that there is always at least one person on each end of the road block with reflecting sticks regulating the traffic, whether this is actually necessary or not, for example, even if there are additional traffic lights. The Japanese take to full employment?

In any case, I guess construction work is one way of making the city “clean” for the next year. And there is a lot of that going on right now! Wandering around the streets I have seen people cleaning the pavement before their houses, or their cars. I have seen one woman cleaning the floor of her little bar with what looked like a very small brush. One man was busy replanting his bonsai trees… Looking around my room I guess it would benefit from some old year cleaning as well to start fresh and clean into the new one… I better get started!

Dinner

My housemate invited me to (a slightly belated) Christmas dinner tonight. Because she’s French – and obviously missing French food – we went to a tiny creperie near Teramachi – only 6 seats.

The owner, chef, and only employee is a young Japanese man with an interesting story: When he was a child he knew that one day he would have his own business, his own shop. However, as adult he worked as flight attendant for airlines in Europe. He spent seven years in Great Britain (and speaks great English). Despite his job he still liked travelling and on one of his trips to Britanny he came across French crepes – and there it struck him: This is what I want to do! He spent several more vacations in Britanny to learn how to make (sweet) crepes and (hearty) galettes, gave up his job at the airline, and now owns this very little restaurant in Kyoto…

True story, true outcome – he seems to be very happy with what he’s doing, just like all the people who follow their dreams… Very inspiring!

Postcards

Today, I wrote a few nengajo – New Year’s postcards – to Japanese friends. Nengajo are rather unspectacular postcards, and just like Christmas cards in the West, there are thousands of variations, from the ones with Disney motives and other cartoons, to nengajo with elaborate calligraphy and paintings of the year’s animal from the Chinese zodiac (2014 is the Year of the Horse, by the way).

I went to the Loft a few days ago to buy my cards; it seems that there are literally thousands of them sold every day, as the procedure was a bit … unusual. First of all, the real cards are not on display, meaning you can’t just take them. What you get is a large display wall showing the different designs, each one wrapped in a heavy plastic envelope. When you have made your choice(s), you pick up one of those envelopes and go to the cashier, where you are asked how many you want. In the case of the Loft, you can’t buy a single card – you buy them per package, each containing four cards.

I paid 540 yen for them and was rather happy with it, after all this is Japan, and prices are steep. The nice cashier explained that because it says “New Year’s Card” on the back, the post office will deliver them on January 1st automatically, and I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to explain this at the post office… This is one of the nice things about those New Year’s cards, if you mail them between December 15th and New Year’s, the post office will deliver them on the right day – in Japan, of course, it won’t work abroad unfortunately. It must be an extremely busy time, I have heard that students and other part time workers are hired just to get all the mail out on January 1st.

You are supposed to send out New Year’s cards to essentially everybody: family, colleagues, teachers of any kind, people you did business with in the last year,… The only people you are not allowed to send a New Year’s card to is those who had a death in the family – the idea is “how can they have a Happy New Year if there is somebody missing?” and it would be rude to wish them one. How do you know that? Well, the bereaved are supposed to send out cards – well before the deadline of course – apologizing that they won’t send any New Year’s cards because of a recent death in the family… Japanese etiquette – truly a minefield…

Anyway, I wrote my cards today and I hope people won’t be offended by the fact that my handwriting in Japanese resembles that of a 5 year old – another one of those etiquette things – nengajo are at least addressed in handwriting to show off your skills in calligraphy – and posted them immediately. The big surprise came at the post office: Apparently the price of the stamp was included in the price of the cards! That means I only had to pay the extra 20 yen for the cards going abroad – what a pleasant surprise!

Sizes

My Jeans are falling apart. I know that holes in jeans are not necessarily a sign that you should toss them – at least at some point when I was younger it wasn’t – but this hole is at a rather indecent spot for a grown-up woman… Besides it’s winter and it’s cold and the last thing I need right now is extra cooling.

Hence, off to town I went, shopping for new jeans. I chose Uniqlo, first because I like their stuff in general, second because they have clothing in great colors, and third because they are an international company (though based in Japan) and know about international sizing. Size is a problem for me when it comes to clothes shopping in Asia. In Europe, I can be considered of normal size, possibly a bit of the short persuasion, but in Asia, quite simply put, I am fat. Not American style grossly overweight, but still fat enough. The other problem is shape. Even when losing another 10 kilos, I would still have (excuse my French) tits and and an ass, which is something the usual Asian – especially the Japanese women – don’t seem to have. They all look like straight ionic columns, while I am distinctly an hourglass, which is quite a problem when shopping because all clothing, even if the size is right, fits above my breasts and below my hips, but not in between. And as I don’t cherish to look eternally pregnant… (okay, I am vain, so? A woman’s prerogative.)

Anyway, I went to Uniqlo because I am so happy with the last sweater I bought there which not only fits perfectly, but is only a size L and not the multiXL I expected. I went to the women’s department and took a look at their jeans – a whole wall full of jeans in various styles and sizes. And again, that’s where the problem started: styles. The vast majority of Japanese girls and women are blessed with something I have not: beautiful legs, long and skinny. And they all know that and enjoy showing them off. Usually that means wearing miniskirts and tights, but every now and then they wear trousers as well – which then fall into the categories “slim, tight, stretch, skinny…”. This doesn’t look good on my at all (vanity again) and besides, I’m not even sure my foot would fit through the opening at the bottom…

Well, this is something I could get over with by the simple observation that I’m buying jeans that I will wear only when running around with my camera and potentially getting dirty. But then I looked at the sizes, conveniently displayed on signs: 21 – 28 inches. That means 53.34 – 71.12 cm of waistline is all that Uniqlo allows a woman to have – in Japan at least – if she wants to wear their jeans. Okay. I have lost a tremendous amount of weight and several sizes when I was in Germany, but 71 cm of waist is something I had when I was a teenager, and the chances of my body reverting to that stage are slim, forgive the pun. I do realize that Uniqlo is geared towards a younger audience, and I do realize as well that I can’t expect them to carry American sizes in the middle of Japan, but I have to say I felt somewhat discouraged. And then I thought, oh what the duck, I’m a gaijin, and went upstairs where there were stacks and stacks of Uniqlo jeans with a great cut in my size. The difference? Men’s department…