plans and preparations – Page 21

Meishi

In Japan, everybody has a meishi, a business card, except maybe for house wives or students. But once you are working or looking for work, you will need a business card, at least one, that is, as many people carry several: one for work, one for their side business, a private one… They are used for all sorts of reasons, from the strictly business to the extremely cheeky: A friend of mine told me he once saw the meishi of a young man styling himself an applied cunnilingus scientist – he used that one to pick up girls…

Usually, people are more serious though. A standard Japanese business card contains name, job title, (email) address, phone/fax number,… the usual; once in Japanese and on the reverse side in English. Company logos and coloured paper are common, but I have also seen meishi with photos of their owner, which I found a bit odd at first, but, thinking of it, you have a better chance of remembering who gave you the card at what occasion.

Anyway, I now have my own business cards as well. I went to Kinko’s, a national chain operating 24/7 that do all sorts of printing. I ordered only a very basic, white, single-sided, English-only design, as I have no company address or phone number, at least at this point. It took me a while to figure out what job title to give myself, and I decided to simply put the old one on it, after all, this is where my expertise lies. I can always get new cards made, I only ordered a small batch, and they are not that expensive. The service at Kinko’s is amazing – it took them only 24 hours sharp to complete the order. There are cheaper online services available, but in this case I traded price for speed.

To be fully equipped, I also bought a case for my business cards. It is made from Japanese silk, and I had the choice between a more serious, business-like design or something more individual. In the end, I decided to use my gaijin-status and milk it to the last drop. What do you think of it? I first thought those are poppies, but with the branches in the back and the white, those are most likely plum blossoms.

Tomorrow I have a meeting in Osaka with the business partners of my friend there, so I hope they will be sufficiently impressed, of both me, and my business cards. I have not yet decided whether to wear my suit, my friend claims they were “cool”, and I am not sure it is a job interview anyway. However, keep your fingers crossed, please!

Down

Things are going up and down these days. After the incredible UP I had last Monday, the DOWN followed almost immediately…

First of all, I received the result of the Japanese test I took in December – I did not pass. Well, that did not really come as a huge surprise, but still, I had not expected to fare that badly on the first two parts of the test, where I scored just a third of the total points. My lack of vocabulary affected mainly the score of the reading section, so even had I been better in the grammar, it would not have made a difference. In the listening section I scored almost 50% though, which is surprisingly high given that towards the end of the 25 minute recording my brain shut down and I could not make out a single word any longer.

Second, my future business partner has turned into my ex-future business partner. We had diverging ideas of the business: He wanted his business with me working for him in a sense, while I wanted my business with me working for myself and no further interference. As not even the business ideas could have been made congruent in the long run, he decided to pull out. I cannot blame him, I would have done the same, so it is much better this way anyway.

Finally, I had to go out yesterday – the one day in the week when it was raining. I hate going out when it’s raining…

But, you are never down for long: I went to see a friend of mine in Osaka and we spent more than two hours catching up and talking about all sorts of stuff, including the business. He gave me tons of good advice and promised to introduce me to dozens of people who may be able to help me further in one way or the other. And if not, they will at least be interesting to know.

Also, I have found a very nice young man for a Japanese-German language exchange. He is very educated, speaks several languages, and is good in explaining grammar and Kanji. I will have to make quite an effort to meet my (or his?) expectations, and it’s great to be challenged!

And the main reason for going out yesterday was that I picked up a picture Honjo san made expecially for me Monday afternoon – and it turned out absolutely beautiful!

I’m not discouraged still – the more it rains, the nicer the rainbow afterwards. Besides, I brought tons of Austrian chocolate for emergencies like this.

Decisions

Entering Japan this time was not as straightforward as it used to be. On immigration, the officer seemed unhappy and asked why I wanted to come to Japan – again. I’m not sure whether he was not persuaded by my answers or whether he simply followed standard procedures, in any case he called his supervisor and I was led into a small room for additional questioning. Several times, I had to lay out my plans for Japan, where, when, and with whom I was going to put them into action, and why on earth I hadn’t had that glorious idea earlier or, better still, in my own country. In the end the officer appeared satisfied, stamped my passport – for another 90 days – and wished me luck for my endeavours with a hearty “gambatte kudasai”.

So, what did I tell her? I told her that I was here to open my own business. I know 😉 I wrote about this before, and about the requirements, and then I shied away, being too afraid of the consequences. Now, however, after another three months of unsucessful job hunting, where I have implicitly been told countless times that I’m not good enough, I’ve had it. To listen to that kind of talk, I could have stayed in Austria in the bosom of my family… Now I have made up my mind: I will do my own thing, I will go self-employed. After all, I do not mind that my Japanese is less than perfect and that I am not an English native speaker…

You want details? Well, I want to start a webpage geared towards tourists – both foreign and Japanese – coming to Kyoto, in both English and Japanese. Income generation through advertisements. I figure that a) the tourist industry in Japan – both international and domestic – is large enough to afford me a share and b) with my background I can do the necessary computer work on my own. The only obvious problem I see right now is c) my lack of decent Japanese, but I am sure this can be addressed in one way or the other. Of course, just having a dotcom will most likely not provide instant income to convince Japanese immigration to let me stay, so I am planning to set up the business with a broader foundation, for example to include IT consulting (think web design), language consulting (think translations), and content provider (think writing). I think the right mix will make the business viable and I can always shift focus later on.

So much for the grand vision. The gritty details I shall spare for future posts – plenty of them to annoy you, I am sure… In any case, wish me luck!

Time Off

I am taking some time off again, actually, I will be in Europe all through February, so there will be no posts during that time. But then again, nothing interesting will happen without me in Kyoto anyway… 😉

Finally I have decided what I’d like to do – and I need to do some preparations and meet a number of people for advice. As well as family, I will visit friends in three countries, so I guess I won’t have much time for an update here.

If everything goes right, I will post again on March 5th. CU then!

Busy

Very short update here, I am rather busy. I will be going to Europe in February to clean up things and consolidate assets and put a few other plans into action.

So, the last week I have been busy with packing, buying presents (mostly whacky Japanese food), letting friends know when I want to crash on their couch, getting my clothes washed (and hopefully dried) on time, and making plans in general.

Tomorrow is the start of the Japanese festival called setsubun. It is a kind of festival to oust the demons of the winter – and the ones lurking inside you, while they’re at it. I have not been able to find out whether this is now a Shinto or Buddhist tradition, both shrines and temples seem to be very busy with preparations for it. But then again, often there is no real distinction made between those two religions in Japan anyway. One of the bigger setsubun festivities, including a huge bonfire in the evening, will take place at Yoshida shrine near my place. With a bit of luck, I have time to go and see it.

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?

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!

Tryouts

My studies having progressed as far as they could until now, I went to the library today and did a practice JLPT test in preparation for Sunday. I’m glad it was not the real test – I would have failed miserably…

The part with the Kanji turned out quite well, surprisingly. The daily practice I’ve been doing for months now obviously paid off. The reading part was less successful, but it was clearly a question of time. My reading comprehension is not yet automated, I still have to do a lot of translating, which takes extra time that you don’t have.

The biggest problem still: vocabulary. I know a sufficient amount of words – but obviously the wrong ones… A very mean part of the test is the one where a sentence is given, but part of it – four words to be precise – is scrambled, and you have to put the words in the right order; and the question asks only for the word on a certain spot. This is very difficult to begin with, as word order can depend on the speaker’s emphasis (just like in English), so you really have to know the grammar inside out. If you know the vocabulary, you may be able to educatedly guess your way around that, but if you don’t…

I did not do a listening comprehension this afternoon as the one spot where you could do that was taken. Oh well, tomorrow again…

Voucher

Yesterday I have received the test voucher for the JLPT test on December 1st. It is a very small, postcard sized piece of paper (actually it’s A5, but folded in half) with the bare essentials necessary for the test.

The first page contains my address, the test date and time and the number of the JLPT application centre.

The second page has directions to the test site. I was hoping that I only had to go to Kyoto University around the corner, but my test is in another university to the South of Kyoto. At least I can take the subway line that is relatively close by the house. It is interesting that it says here “DON’T telephone the test site for directions.” I can only assume that the university there doesn’t know about the test – or, at least not the random person who would pick up the phone on a Sunday morning…

The third page is all about me: name, photo, registration number, date of birth, more details as to the test site; and what test I’m taking and when the test hours are. This is the page I actually need to take – together with a picture ID.

The last page contains a list of general instructions. It covers “Items to bring to the test” (test voucher, writing instruments – pencils and plastic erasers taken out of their cases – wristwatch), “cautions – yellow cards” (for things like: starting before permission is given, a ringing phone, speaking and eating during the test, engaging in what looks like cheating, copying the questions, disturbing the other examinees), and “cautions – red cards” (immediate disqualification for things like: ringing phone during the listening examination, cheating, taking the test for another person, taking the questions outside of the room, leaving the examination before having permission.) Some of the instructions seem harsh (alarm watches to check the time are not allowed), others common sense (speaking during the test), it should be no problem for me though.

What’s interesting about the test voucher is that it is mostly in Japanese and English; the Japanese is written properly, i.e., containing all the Kanji at the right places, but it comes with Furigana. The instructions on the last page are only written in English and, as you have to tear off the third page for the test, the “tear here” is written in Korean, Chinese, English, and Japanese Hiragana. Funny, isn’t it?

Anyway, it’s two more weeks – time to get nervous?

Wrapup

Celebrations! I managed to finish the second volume of my book Genki – Elementary Japanese in the weekend, and I feel extremely smart now 😉 It’s four more weeks until the JLPT test on December 1st and I still have a lot to do: reinforcing the grammar I’ll need for the test – thank goodness no honorific or humble language – studying many more Kanji, and learning yet much more vocabulary. I am not really sure how to prepare for the listening comprehension part of the test – other than speaking to people I mean – but I’ll find a way I’m sure.

Besides that, things are going rather slow. There was International Day at the Kyoto International Community House yesterday and I went there for lunch and bought some sweets. The mother of one of my housemates will come for a visit tomorrow and she got all wound up and cleaned the kitchen – which, in turn, spurred me into action and I cleaned my room. I always have the impression I hardly buy anything besides food, but I end up with so much stuff – paper in particular – that I then have to go through and sort and toss… Anyway, the house is ready for inspection now – mum can come!