Category: experiences

I spent all afternoon at Kyoto Antique Fair and I still have the feeling I didn’t see it all. There are about 350 antique dealers trying to sell literally millions of items in three days before they move on to the next venue. This fair is travelling through all of Japan and stops over in Kyoto a few times a year. The sheer amount of items for sale is overwhelming, and if you just go there to browse, without something specific in mind, it is possible to spend all three days there just looking at stuff. Most of the things on offer are at least vintage, if not truly antique.

There were thousands of pieces of jewelry, probably mostly costume pieces although I cannot ascertain that. One person sold real jewels, cut already, but without mounting, and although he offered me a “good price” for one of the jewels I coveted (a large, beautiful tourmaline, changing its colour from green to red), it was still beyond my financial capabilities.

Another favourite of mine are old chests and cabinets, especially those that were once used for medicine and have lots of little drawers. There were so many of them, some of them in mint condition – and unaffordable, of course. A very small one, with four drawers in A4 size cost less than EUR 20 but I decided not to get it because I don’t want to clutter up my room at Ebisu’s with more things than necessary. There will be other such pieces, I am sure. In a similar vein, I have seen lots of little sewing chests and one stunning writing desk which was even more expensive than the jewel I talked about above…

Much cheaper were the kimonos and obi, some of them used, some of them brand new. In fact, there were quite a number of dealers who sold brand new wares as well, especially clothing, ceramics, and Buddhist prayer beads. Other cheaper items included equipment for calligraphy, hanging scrolls, and sake cups. Of the latter there must be millions of different designs and shapes and sizes. It’s probably very dangerous to start collecting those – you are never finished. Ever.

Last but not least, there were plenty of swords (both katana and wakizashi) in all price ranges, together with accessories (tsuba for example) and a handful of complete samurai armour. Unfortunately I cannot assess the value of such items, so I would probably fall prey to a smart salesman who could tell me anything about the thing in the full knowledge that I would not be able to prove him wrong. Besides, a sword would not really help me fighting the cockroaches in our kitchen 😉 I do confess that I fell head over heels for one particular little weapon I found by chance… and I still love it so much that I am tempted to go back and buy it after all… The problem is: I’m not good at haggling, and so far my online attempts to assess its value have been fruitless.

Temptation… it’s always out there, it’s just a question of how to deal with it…

Did you ever have one of those days that already start terribly and the best, no probably the only, way to prevent complete and utter disaster is to turn around and go back to bed?

In fact, it already started last evening when I went to the community house to see a friend – who wasn’t there. I thought we had wanted to go out for dinner, but I may have mixed up the dates, so I had another one of my takeout sushi meals.

When I read my emails later in the evening, there was a reply from a potential employer, an international company in Tokyo – cancelling the skype interview that was set for Thursday afternoon. I had made the mistake of asking for an interview in English, not being confident to do it in Japanese, and was informed that Japanese fluency on native level was essential for the job and hence, no interview needed. Mind you that the advertisement only mentioned “Japanese communication ability” and not how much of it, and that the job description talked about travelling and doing business with foreign people in English, not Japanese. The email was brief, but it said that they were “impressed with [my] background and experience” (but just not enough to conduct an interview and find out how bad my Japanese really is) and that they wished me “success with [my] delightful career and future”. That’s what you get for talking only to some snotty boy from human resources, and I bet “English native level” was not one of his job requirements… Anyway, at least we didn’t waste each other’s time, but I am indeed a bit floored by this, as I am sure that that desk in that company had been custom made for me already…

Today around noon it started to rain heavily, with lots of wind that pushed the water against my main window. I had not closed it as it was so hot the last few days, and my blanket which I put up to air out got all soaked by the time I was back to close the window. As the humidity goes up quite a bit when it rains, and it also cooled down a few degrees, my blanket couldn’t dry properly and is still damp now.

In the afternoon I got an email from my real estate agent essentially telling me that I’ll have to reduce my price for the house considerably in order to be able to sell it. Once I will have paid all sorts of fees and taxes, the remainder will only buy me a one room apartment in Japan. I have not yet decided what to do, if and by how much to reduce the price. That will require more thinking.

Finally I just went down to refill my water bottle and I had to face two cockroaches in the kitchen. Only one of them was polite enough to wait for the washing-up-liquid treatment, the other one disappeared. I hope one of my housemates will come across that one – I did kill the bigger one after all.

Those were my last 24 hours (and a bit) and I’m glad they are over – it can’t get worse, can it? To alleviate the pain I spent the day surfing the internet, playing lots of stupid games, and reducing my stash of chocolate to zero.

Dang it, now I’ll have to go out tomorrow in the rain to buy new sweeties…

As I have written before, summer is here with sunny, hot and humid days, blue skies and wonderful sunsets, and people complaining “azui – hot” all around. And on top of all that, insects finding their way into the house…

So far I have had what feels like a million mosquito bites (they don’t seem to care about the window screens), I dispatched of a number of wood lice, and saw two enormous spiders in communal rooms (thank goodness in a fossilised state already, but I am sure their live offspring will soon descend unto the house) and a number of other assorted bugs. My landlady is terrified of mukade, centipedes, some ten centimeters long, with wide, thin legs and a nasty bite, and my housemate told me about the time when he found a praying mantis following him up the stairs.

To be honest, I don’t care for insects very much, especially spiders freak me out (but I find praying mantis kind of cool). I don’t mind them outside so much – there is usually enough space to avoid each other, but I prefer not to meet them inside. And the fact that my disgust will not deter them from entering does make me feel somewhat queasy about sleeping on the floor, eye to eye with them, so to speak. For those reasons I have already told my housemate that I consider him to function as the resident exterminator, insect department, while I will happily deal with lizards, snakes, anything furry… I believe this is a fair division of labour – unfortunately it breaks down when he is out…

Which was the case Wednesday night. After writing my post for the day, I went to the kitchen to get me some more water. It was dark, so I trod lightly, turned on the lights and carefully watched where I placed my feet. Turning to the sink to fill my water bottle I stared into the eyes of a cockroach. It was not very big, a non-flying variety of maybe 3-4 centimeters, but still. I am glad I had spoken to my housemate before that:

“What do I do?”
“Never squish them.”
“Why?”
“Eggs…”
“Eew… but then…?”
“Washing up liquid!”

Hence I took the bottle and tried to squirt the liquid on the cockroach – I can tell you they are fast moving beasts! It took quite a while and much too much of the precious liquid until the insect was covered, flopped over obediently and died. At least it didn’t move anymore. I felt like a hero! The feeling of relief quickly evaporated when I realized the next problem: What to do next? I mean, there was a dead cockroach in my sink, which was not going to hop into the trash can on its own devices anymore, and I was so not going to touch that! Flushing it down the drain was not really an option either – with the liquid washed off, will it spontaneously resurrect and come after me? Finally I used a piece of cardboard to sweep it into a plastic bag, which I tied closed – twice! – and put into the trash can. Let’s just hope the beast doesn’t revive itself and starts gnawing its way out of the plastic bag…

In the end I can say: I regret nothing and I’d do it again in an instant. Especially now that I know that the method works so swiftly and that I have found such a clean way to dispose of the remains. But I still hope my housemate will be home next time to be the brave knight to respond to this damsel in distress. And I mustn’t forget to buy more washing up liquid. Just to be on the safe side…

Today I had my first close-up encounter with the Japanese banking system. I needed to transfer money to a Japanese company. Of course, I could have done it from my European account, but international transfers are rather expensive and it would have taken much too long. Hence, I decided to go to a bank nearby and pay the amount in cash.

The experience was pleasant: The moment I walked into the bank, a young clerk came to welcome me with a friendly “Irasshaimase” and asked if she could help me. “Why, certainly” I said and produced the piece of paper where I had prepared all necessary information – together with the Japanese phrase for “I’d like to deposit money into an account”. After agreeing on a cash transfer, she showed me the machines and said she would help me. So we went there together, she pressed the very first button for me and said

“Please enter your phone number.”
“Huh? My what?”

At this point the tone of the conversation changed because I had to admit – technological hermit that I am – that I do not have a phone number in Japan. Nope, no mobile, also no company phone number, and no, I don’t have anybody else’s number with me either… To which revelation she politely but firmly explained:

“No phone number, no transfer.”

So, I apologized profoundly, left the bank, and went home.

I was lucky that my landlady was there and explained that banks ask for the number in case something goes wrong with the transfer, which it apparently does sometimes. And that it was no problem at all of using her number for the transaction.

So, armed with the same piece of paper – now amended with the phone number of my oya-san – and with my passport – just in case they decided to need it after all – I returned to the bank.

Same clerk, same “Irasshaimase”, same machine.
Happiness ensued when I produced the phone number. The procedure from there was simple: Type of account? “Deposit”. Name of Bank? “Mizuho”. Name of branch? Enter account number – surprisingly short. Enter your name and check the name of the recipient. Enter cash – yes I have coins! – coins first, then bills. Wait for return money and receipt – keep that!

The whole transaction took maybe five minutes, and it would have been completely impossible to do without help because there were so many kanji involved everywhere… I could only read the two most important ones myself: “Enter Money”.

In the end, both the clerk and I were relieved, and I even more so about one hour later when  I got a confirmation email from the company that they had received the money. I just love the swift banking in Asia…

I have just returned from a meeting with people from my old life. I first saw a professor from Kyoto University, and then we went out to have dinner with a number of other people from my field, or should I say ex-field? It was a very nice dinner, perfect food and all-you-can-drink, and when I explained that I’m leaving and I’m up to start something new, everybody wished me luck and said that I should follow my passions. It was lovely, I didn’t expect that at all.

Afterwards – I skipped karaoke 😉 – I went home along the river Kamo. The night air was mild, the moon – almost full – together with the street lamps from the road next to the river walk lit the scene, it was great. I felt safe, sound and serene all the way back home.

I love this place.

The time difference between Japan and Germany is +8 hours in winter and +7 hours in summer (as Japan does not follow daylight savings time), so Japan is ahead of German time. Interestingly this didn’t bother me when I arrived – I was exhausted from the trip and the moving as a whole, so I didn’t have much jet lag. By now I am back to a rather normal sleeping pattern of around 8 hours during the night, as opposed to the 5 or so hours I had the week before the move.

What does bother me tremendously is this: It’s getting dark so early here…

Kyoto lies on approximately the same latitude as Nicosia (Greece) or Albuquerque (New Mexico), and currently sunrise is around 5 am and sunset around 7 pm here – which means there are about 14 hours of daylight. In Germany, I lived 17 degrees further north, where the sunrise currently is around 5:30 am and sunset around 9 pm – meaning one and a half hour of sun more. Also I noticed that here, once the sun has set, it’s getting dark very quickly, whereas in Germany you could sit outside and read until past 10 pm.

I’m a night owl, so I enjoy having light until late, and I got used to going to bed about an hour or two after sunset. Of course, with that routine in place I get sleepy like that here as well – and it’s only 9 pm or so. I’ll get used to it in no time, I’m sure, but right now it does feel funny…