Category: experiences

Trembling Earth

Japan lies in a volatile part of the planet, where three tectonic plates meet: the Pacific, the Philippine and the Eurasian plate.

This is the reason for all the volcanoes in Japan (Mt. Fuji is the largest), the abundance of hot springs – onsen – and the almost regularly occuring earthquakes. There are about 1500 earthquakes on the Japanese isles per year (that’s about 4 per day!), but the majority of them are harmless, and people don’t even notice them. If you do perceive one, however, and you are on a higher floor, trust me, the experience is not pleasant, especially if it’s your first earthquake.

The Japanese have a very easy way to determine what to do in case of an earthquake: If the shaking is horizontal, left-right, it is quite harmless, and there is no need to do anything, except waiting for it to pass. If the shaking is vertical, up-down, however, you should try to cover at least your head (a pillow will do), or, better still, get underneath a table. Stay away from windows (as they may break) and heavy furniture like bookcases (as they may move or even topple). Wait until the shaking stops, then leave the building (using the stairs), preferrably without rummaging for any stuff to take with you. Once outside, follow the locals – in every city in Japan there are special evacuation zones where people should gather in such circumstances.

In any case, whatever type of earthquake you encounter, there will be some report about it very quickly, either on the designated internet site of the Japan Meteorological Agency (which would issue a tsunami warning within 3 minutes) and on TV, and most likely also on local radio (I don’t know that for sure though).

My first earthquake?
One evening in August 2011, when I was in the 7th floor of the Toyoko Inn in Kabuki-cho, Tokyo.
At first I thought the person in the neighbouring room had dropped his heavy suitcase. Then I realized that suitcase-dropping usually does not last for several seconds. And then I held on to my desk with a slightly panicky feeling of “And what do I do now?” and a slightly worrying prospective of having to run downstairs in a too small hotel yukata.
When the trembling stopped there was – nothing. I mean, no sirens, no official announcements, no running people on the corridor, just silence. When I took a peek onto the streets, the people appeared to be uninterested about the incident and carried on with their business. So, I decided to do the same, although I have to admit I did feel a bit queasy…

However, don’t worry too much about earthquakes. It is very unlikely you will encounter one when you are visiting Japan. My first earthquake described above only happened on my eighth trip to Japan.

JLPT results

I just received the results of the JLPT (Japanese language proficiency test) I took last December.
I failed.
Not spectacularly, as I passed the minimum requirement for each part the test, but I failed to gather more than 50 % of the points overall. Yes, this is disappointing, but not altogether unexpected.

First of all, with all the goings-on in Austria last fall, that required me to travel quite a bit, I was occupied with other things, so my studies had to take a back seat, unfortunately.

Second, I did not know enough vocabulary – by far not. That means, I spent too much time in trying to figure out the meaning of certain words from their context – and even without doing this, the time for the test is very limited, especially for the reading part. So there were many questions I didn’t even get to before the time ran out.

In the end, I only have myself to blame for my failure, of course, but still, I learned some valuable things:

  • Grammar is important, but vocabulary is paramount. I will have to bite the bullet of boredom and invest more time learning new words.
  • There’s not enough time for pondering, really. There’s no workaround here. Moving on to the next question is of limited use, as they become increasingly difficult. Answering by wild guess may help, but with four possible choices, selecting a random set of answers doesn’t get you very far (unless you’re much more lucky than I am).
  • My listening comprehension is better than I had expected. This is good! Out of the three sections, I earned the highest mark there. Or maybe it was just easier to narrow down the right answer there?

A few facts about the JLPT:

  • In good old Japanese tradition, the JLPT has “kyu” levels – from the lowest N5 to the highest N1.
  • There are three scoring sections:
    Language Knowledge (Vocabulary/Grammar)
    Reading
    Listening
    (The former two are combined in levels N5 and N4).
    To pass the test, you need to pass each scoring section individually (with about one third of the maximum points) and you need to have more than half of the total number of points.
    I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it ensures that you know at least something about each area. On the other hand, you can have full points on two sections and still fail if you miss the minimum target by a single point in the third.
  • You will never be tested on how well you actually speak the language – which is quite in line with how Japanese kids learn English.
  • All instructions on what to do for each exercise are in Japanese. There is no translation whatsoever available. Yes, that also holds for the lowest levels of the test.
  • You get an exercise sheet with the questions and an answer sheet where you have to mark the correct answers. Only the latter will be graded.
  • Grading is done by machine in Japan, and it takes two to three months for the results (and the certificate, should you pass) to arrive.
  • Tests take place twice a year in Japan (July and December) and at least once a year (usually December) abroad.
  • Extra fun fact: After a few listening exercises, a bit of music will be played to relax a bit and rest your ears…

Want to take the test yourself? Check out the JLPT site – with all sorts of hints and tryout exercises and links to institutes where you can take the test and learning materials and…

Burdening Possessions

When moving, especially internationally, the first and most important task is to minimize the amount of possessions one has to ship.

I have tried to do this as much as possible in the last few years already, primarily by not accumulating too many new things. I am an avid reader, but have tried to get most of my material from the local library or online as e-texts or audiobooks. I have tried to “make do” and “use up” as many other things as possible, clothing for example (thank goodness I work in a very fashion unconscious profession) or household goods (how many sheets or towels do you really need? And more cookware would only lead to my doing the dishes even less frequently…;-))

So, when starting to plan my exit strategy to Japan, I thought I could move with a minimum amount of necessities, even without getting rid of too many things.

But then, of course, while you’re busy making plans, this life thing happens… Last autumn it so happened that I inherited the family home back in Austria. It is a large house with basement, attic and garage, and while my family was not prone to hoarding, the house was still full to the brim with 20+ years of accumulated clutter.

It took me many weekends and my complete Christmas vacation to deal with, well, most of it. Some things were easy: outright junk, most of the furniture, family heirlooms. The other 70 percent, however, are the difficult ones: books, kitchen ware, linens, towels, memorabilia, assorted “I don’t really want it, but I just can’t throw it away”. However, I managed to unclutter and toss and whittle those 70 percent down to 12 cubic metres.

12 cubic metres, a great part of which I still don’t need or want, but need more time to sort through and make decisions about.

12 cubic metres that have just arrived and clutter up my apartment…

Who’s afraid?

The black-yellow symbol for radioactivityWhenever I talk about my plan to emigrate to Japan, people get curious. Interestingly, the question I hear most often is: “But, Fukushima – are you not afraid?”

Short answer: Nope.

Long answer: No. But look at this: Where I live right now, the two closest working nuclear plants are about 100 and 150 km away, respectively. If I do move to Kyoto, the nearest nuclear plants will be about 80 and 100 km away, respectively. I don’t think that makes such a big difference, really.

The distance between Kyoto and Fukushima is about 600 km. Of course, that’s not much of a distance for radioactive fallout to cross – just remember Chernobyl in 1986. There, a large part of the fallout travelled as far as Central Europe, that’s more than 1500 km.

The admittedly big problem of Japanese nuclear plants is the frequency of earthquakes in Japan. Every day, somewhere in the country, the earth shakes, more or less. Also the fact that virtually all of their plants are situated near the coast (for cheap and easy access to cooling water, I assume) does nothing to instill a really secure feeling into me, I agree.

Still, let’s not forget that most of the nuclear accidents the world has seen so far had much more profane reasons that earthquakes and tsunami: fires in the plants, operator errors, failures of the cooling system.

So, no, I’m still not afraid. No matter where you live or what you do, there is no absolute safety, no complete danger free zone, that’s the way it is. And in the end only one thing counts: To be scared to death still means to die.

Japan Festival

Sorry for not writing last Saturday, but I was busy. Together with a friend I went to the 5th Japan Festival in the Urania in Berlin.

It was wonderful – wJapan Festival 2013 - Logoe had such a great time! There were two stages with non-stop performances of all kinds: various Japanese martial arts with and without weapons (Aikido, Ju-jutsu, Karate, Iaido, Kendo…), talks and demonstrations of Japanese culture (Anime, Ikebana, Sumi-e…), and music groups (J-Pop, a women’s choir, Taiko drums,…) We have watched several of them, but my favourite was the Taiko group. They were very good, the rhythm electrifying, the whole audience (about 900 people) was excited.

Off the stages were countless booths with Japanese wares, either imported or made by artists in Germany: ceramics, manga, t-shirts, swords and bokken, yukata, tabi, daruma, calligraphy… I really had to force my hands to stay in their pockets, especially as there was such a gorgeous sumi-e of a cat by a German artist…

The place was comparatively small, so it seemed even more crowded that it really was. As in the evening there was a cosplay casting, many people were dressed up in typical attire:  kimono, school girl’s dresses, samurai, young girls with short dresses and crazy hair of all colours – I even saw Sailormoon! Just standing in a corner watching the people would have been completely satisfying.There would have been a small booth to dress up and take a picture, but neither one of us was really excited about doing this.

The only thing I was disappointed about: We couldn’t find the food stalls at first. Very well hidden on the fourth floor – reachable only via some narrow back stairs – were sellers of green tea, sake, sushi, mochi… Unfortunately, by the time we found them, there were no more o-nigiri left, something I really wanted to have and was looking forward to.

Well, only a few more months…