Category: experiences

I’ve returned form my weekend in Tokyo. It was nice, a little bit stressful in the beginning, but very relaxing in the end.

When I arrived in Tokyo station after 2 hours 20 (using the fastest shinkansen NOZOMI), I managed once again to take a wrong turn (I hate Tokyo station) and almost missed my friend who was waiting exactly where she promised… Anyway, we then had lunch together (after it was her turn to get lost we went for fish in miso sauce)  and then we went to Tokyu Hands together, which is a large chain store catering to … Well, in the beginning they were selling craft supplies, but by now you can buy virtually anything related to bathroom/office/kitchen/travel/ … on top of that. I will not go into details here, Tokyu Hands is worth its own Saturday post. 😉

Afterwards I betook myself to my hotel near Asakusa shrine, changed and put on makeup, and then went back to the city to the Austrian embassy or rather: to the ambassador’s residence, for the reception in honour of the Austrian National Day. It was my second such reception, and I was surprised that there were so many people. Apparently there are about 500 Austrians living in Japan – at least those the embassy knows of. The Austrian embassy is a large two story building in Minato-ku, that was built in the 1980s when that area of Tokyo was less developed, which means there was enough space to have a large garden also, including koi pond!

There was entertainment (Austrian zither and Japanese koto), speeches (the ambassador and other dignitaries), more music (a wind quartet played the Austrian hymn at a time when everybody was drunk enough to dare singing, but not yet drunk enough to have forgotten the text), and, of course, Austrian food. They did not have my favourite wine, but there was plenty of Schnitzel, potato salad, “Schweinsbraten mit Knödeln”, barbecued sausages, rye bread with various bread spreads, … all finished off with “Apfelstrudel”, chocolate cake and whipped cream (of course). It was an enjoyable evening, I met lots of people, both newcomers and those who have been here for years, both Austrian and Japanese. A Japanese woman asked me to teach her the first verse of the Austrian anthem, well, I could at least write down the text, but I can’t sing… I didn’t see her during the actual singing of the anthem, I hope she did well. I even worked up the courage (on insistence from a friend of mine) to introduce myself to his excellency, the Austrian ambassador, a very nice and pleasant person indeed.

Sunday was much more relaxing, just a bit of shopping (books! winter clothes!) before I went back to Kyoto. I guess I should go out more often.

I went out for lunch the other day to a little snack bar and well, the way things happen, I needed to go to the toilet. And there I was faced – for the first time during my current stay in Japan – with a modernized, because ceramified, version of the ancient hole-in-the-ground.

This sight usually elicits a well trained string of responses on my part:

1. Assess urgency with which relief is needed.
2. Seek other, throne-style options.

3. If the answers to the above are NOW!! and None, then:

a. Curse evolution for relative intricacy of female plumbing as opposed to male one.
b. Curse father for not being able/willing to provide a y-chromosome.
c. Curse modern dress style involving pants and knickers.
d. Assemble aforementioned garments out of the way, face the hood and get down to business.
e. Hope to not lose balance during action.

So far my greatest relief has always occured when I could leave the cubicle again, unscathed, but I realize it is simply a question of getting used to it…

Japanese food is great – and I try to sample as many different types as possible, with a certain preference for sweet stuff of course. A good way to try various cheap types of food is at a matsuri or other gathering where street vendors sell their wares. There is a particular type of sweets that is essentially walnut sized pieces of pancake batter (which allegedly contains just a little bit of soysauce) fried in a mold and preferrably eaten as hot as possible (they become tough rather quickly).

When I first noticed them I was intrigued and decided to try them. The first question was easy: “Amai desuka? – This is sweet?” – “Hai, sou desu – Yes, it is.” Good, the sweeter the better, but my objection to anything containing anko led to the second question: “Okunai wa anko desuka? – Is there anko inside?” – “Iie, anko naindesu – No, no anko.” Sufficiently satisfied I bought a small bag for 300 YEN and found the taste very nice indeed, very simple, straightforward and not too sugary – almost instant happiness. I was even more happy when the vendor complimented me on speaking Japanese so well, a compliment I modestly refused with the expected standard answer any Japanese would give in such a situation: “Iie, benkyoshite imasu – Oh no, I’m just studying…”

Anyway, a few days later when I went over my vocabulary list again my happiness was greatly diminished. I found out that “okunai” does not really mean “inside” in the way I used it, but rather “indoors”. The meaning I had intended called for the word “naka” instead… Somehow the vendor’s compliment didn’t feel that great any longer.

Any Japanese house or apartment has a meter for electricity, gas, and water. Different to Europe, where you get the bill once a year and you pay a monthly amount based on your average monthly usage of the last year; here, the meters are read each month and you pay what you have actually used. Personally I prefer this system, it gives you more control I think and it is easier to find out whether there is a leak somewhere, for example.

Each company has numerous employees that go to each house and read the meters. Usually they just enter the genkan entrance area (Japanese homes are rarely locked during daytime) and loudly announce their presence. They then are allowed inside to read the respective meters, sometimes leave a note with the current reading, and are off again. A few days later the bill will arrive. I am not entirely sure how it is here, but often the bill does not even bear a name, only the address – which makes for one less thing to remember when moving in or out… When nobody is home, a note is left requesting somebody of the household to read the meter and phone the company. I don’t think, however, that anybody in this house has ever done so, I guess in such a case the company simply waits for the next opportunity.

More modern houses than ours may have their meters in more accessible spots outside, so that entering the house is not required anymore. I have seen meters nicely hidden behind little wooden doors or holes made into fences, just large enough for the numbers to be read. Still, not all of the outside meters are placed in a straightforward manner. Our neighbour’s, for example, is mounted on a spot that is about three meters above street level – there is no way to read the numbers from there. When I first realized this, I expected some very ingenious, possibly wireless, transfer of the meter reading going on, after all, this is a highly industrialized nation! Imagine my surprise when last week, I finally caught the woman doing the reading at our neighbour’s – with very small and rather untechnological – binoculars…

It’s typhoon season and we’re having bad weather again. It seems that the first 17 typhoons in South-East Asia have left us unscathed, but now that number 18 – Man-yi – has arrived, things are turning worse.

I woke up some time before six in the morning, when the rain was pattering heavily on the roofs and there was a strong wind howling, coming in through the little cracks in the window frame and rattling the doors. When I finally got to my computer about two hours later, there was a message from my landlady (sent at 6:15) asking if everything was alright. She said an extreme weather warning – something that happens only every five years or so – was issued around 5 in the morning, and some parts throughout Kyoto prefecture had even been evacuated. Neither Shinkansen nor Hankyu trains were running, and the rivers were swollen up to the bridges in some parts of the city. She said we should listen for city trucks that may come by and announce evacuations, and suggested to “follow the neighbour’s lead”. To give you an idea, here is a picture of Kyoto’s famous temple Kinkakuji (which stands in a pond) from their web cam today at 7 am:

It’s now 10 in the morning and things have calmed down. There is only a bit of drizzle, but there are strong gales here and there. The house and its inhabitants are unharmed. The forecast for tomorrow says it will be sunny and up to 29 degrees. Until the next typhoon…

Yesterday the builder came to fix the hole in my wall that has been there since I moved in here. As this is a traditional Japanese house, the walls are essentially made of mud on a wooden frame, held together by wood on the outside and some sort of plaster on the inside. The problem with my wall was that the plaster on the inside came loose at some point, and sometimes pieces of mud would fall out into my room, usually small grains and dust, but once a piece the size of a bottle cap fell out.

Anyway, so the builder finally came yesterday. Finally, because after several appointments three weeks ago which he mostly did not keep, he came here to fix some other things around the house and on the roof to disappear again when the rains started, he needed an extra appointment on Tuesday to look at my wall again as a reminder what to do. So, all in all it took him three weeks to fix everything around the house – I guess the whole work could have been finished in a day, two at the max, but he chose not to do anything in the afternoon. Apparently this is standard in Japan, not kept appointments included. This astonishes me as the country is known for its polite people and strong work ethic…

When he finally arrived yesterday at 9 am I was looking forward to it. My landlady had described in detail what was going to happen: “He’ll take off the plaster, fix the whole with some mud and then you’ll get new plaster on top of that.” The idea was that he would redo the whole panel and not just the damaged corner, which would probably take a while, so after having removed my futon and other assorted stuff littering my floor, I sat in the corner with my computer table and patiently waited – camera ready – for the things that were supposed to happen.

Well, it started off alright. After covering the tatami neatly with large pieces or sturdy cardboard and preparing his tools, he stepped on the small ladder and started to tear off the plaster. (I keep on saying plaster, but you have to imagine it more like a very heavy type of wallpaper, about 3-5 mm thick.) He didn’t do very much though, only the part that would come off easily. He took some measurements and disappeared for a short while, reappearing with – a piece of something resembling mdf the size of the panel he was supposed to fix. My surprise turned into outright shock when he used double sided tape to glue the mdf to the wall… At least he secured it with thin slats that he affixed to the wood already in place with small nails. He then “repaired” the panel next to it in the same fashion, took his things out, and, after vacuuming my room very thoroughly (another surprise), he left. The whole repair operation took only one hour.

I think the outcome is ugly, and I don’t even mean the color that doesn’t fit to the other walls. Yes, it’s doing the trick insofar as there will not be any more dust raining down on my bed, but the room has lost a lot of its charm. I would call the work shoddy – double sided tape of all things! – and when you knock on the new panel it sounds hollow, and it feels like plastic. I am certainly not happy about this, but … it’s not my house and I think I have to be grateful to still have a cheap roof over my head.