goinggaijin.com – Page 109 – A European's move towards Japan

Repairs

It was a slow day today, as I was very tired. Although it has cooled down quite a bit – it even rained today – it is still warm enough in the night to sleep with open windows. I have windows in two walls, which is very nice during summer when there actually is a breeze; one set of windows faces West, the other towards the neighbours’ house, maybe 5 metres away.

It seems that somewhat unconsciously I am changing my habits to accommodate the cold season. Although I have always been a night owl, I am staying awake now much longer than in summer, and because I also need eight hours of sleep, I get up accordingly late. That means, I would love to – were there not the neighbour’s boy who sets his alarm at 6 am. How I know that? Did I mention that our windows face each other and he also leaves his open… It’s not a big deal when he wakes up and turns the alarm off quickly, but today he only put it on snooze, and then apparently left his room, because the alarm started again a few minutes later – without any further response except my growing annoyance. By the time I felt it proper to close at least my window, I was too agitated to go back to sleep.

It would not have done me any good anyway, as around 8:30 there began vigorous knocking in the house, or rather: on top of the house, as our roof is being repaired. I am not entirely sure what exactly the builder is up to (there is no spot from where you could watch him), but he uses heavy drills and knocks about a lot, and sometimes it sounds as if the stones from the roof structure are loosening and falling directly on the ceiling above my head. Not a nice feeling, knowing that the ceiling is 5 mm thin… (For details about our roof construction, have a look at my old post here.)

So, I decided, to finally try and get the headset fixed that I bought in June and which is broken already. I went to Yodobashi camera and wanted to see if there was a warranty so they could simply replace it, but it seems there is no such thing, at least not for the cheap type of headset I had bought. Anyway, there is a repair corner, and they will take care of the whole thing for me within the next 2 – 3 weeks. There was a very young shop assistant there, who spoke quite good English, and he went through great lengths to ensure I would understand what’s going on. On my receipt for the headset it says: Repairing takes about 2 – 3 weeks. Please come to Yodobashi Kyoto 1.F whenever you want, we work 9:30 – 22:00. Now, THIS is service! (Hello, Germans!)

Afterwards, I went around Yodobashi a bit. Our vacuum cleaner is broken and beyond repair – finally and thank goodness, I should say; the thing is ancient and sounded like a Boeing at takeoff – and I wanted to know what a new one would cost. The cheapest models are around 10.000 YEN, and from there the sky is the limit, of course; I have seen models for 65.000 YEN, and no, I don’t mean the roombas that were on display. I wonder whether they would work on tatami anyway.

When I finally came home I was very tired and glad that it had started to rain – no more roof repairing for the day. I took a few hours out of my afternoon to catch up on missed sleep. I will still leave my window open tonight, tomorrow is Saturday and I hope my neighbour will sleep a bit longer tomorrow.

5th Kyu!

Last Thursday I took the text for the next level in soroban proficiency, and – I passed the 5th Kyu test! But only just…

I made two division mistakes – together with the three exercises I did not have enough time for that means I only had ten correct results, which is the lower limit to pass the test. Multiplication and addition were better, although I could not finish them either – one exercise missing at each part. Anyway, I have passed, and it’s nice to be 5th Kyu now!

Sensei offered to put my name up with the other student’s – he has a Wall of Fame with the name and ranks of all his students – but I declined. It would look funny, my endless name with all the katakana among the sleek three or four kanji names of the kids…

In any case, I bought the new exercise book for 4th Kyu and I now have almost exactly two months time before the next level exam to – quite literally – get up to speed. The next exam is all about speed. The difficulty of the problems has not changed, except that there is a digit added to all the exercises (six digit numbers for division, five digit numbers for multiplication and addition), but that only means more time is needed for the exercises. As the timeframe for the exam will not change, it means one has to increase the speed considerably to finish all 15 exercises in 7 minutes.

Sensei has already shown me a way to speed up multiplication, but he says there is nothing to do about division – where I am notoriously slow. Well, actually he said there was a trick, but I should not employ it… I wonder if he’ll tell me eventually… Addition, while it appears the same has become a bit more difficult because the numbers have more variation in length (between 3 and 5 digits) and, as silly as it sounds, it is not so easy anymore to keep all the columns sorted out on the soroban… Sensei has taught me a little trick about that as well, we’ll see how it goes.

Eruption

Last Saturday, September 27, just before noon, the volcano Ontake, around 250 kilometres northeast of Kyoto erupted in what is called a phreatic explosion. This is caused by water being almost instantly turned to steam (by the volcano’s magma) and then exploding through the surface. While this sounds rather harmless compared to a full-blown eruption with liquid magma, the images (you have seen them by now) tell another story. So far, 36 people are presumed to be dead, and at least 63 have been injured, some of them severely. Given that there were around 250 people near the peak of the volcano at the time of the eruption, it could have been much worse, but still… Here is a link to the latest news from Japantimes, complete with videos and photos: article from www.japantimes.co.jp

Mount Ontake, with 3067 metres, is the second highest volcano in Japan, the highest one is Fuji. Since olden times, it has been a sacred place complete with shrine and everything; apparently it is especially popular with artists and actors who go there to seek enlightenment and inspiration in trance and meditation. Even for those of less artistic bent, Mount Ontake is a popular hiking destination. It belongs to the list of 100 famous mountains in Japan, and Ni-no-ike, one of its five crater lakes, is the highest crater lake in the country. It seems to be relatively easy to climb the mountain, and thus, around this time, when the leaves begin to turn, many Japanese nature lovers visit the mountain and the area.

Demolition

It always surprises me how quickly houses are torn down here. Yesterday morning I noticed how roof tiles were removed from a house in my neighborhood. Mid afternoon, the whole first floor was already gone, and this is what the house looked today after the builders (or should I say demolishers?) had left:I bet that the plot will be completely cleared by tomorrow evening. Only three days to demolish a house! Of course, most of the houses here are still made of wood, so it does not take much effort to pull them down. People seem to be rather brutal in their approach, they make tabula rasa in the true sense of the word. Near my soroban school, there was a nice family house in a large garden, complete with trees, a hedge and a big Japanese style gate. One evening, when I passed by there, half of the gate was gone, and a bulldozer stood in the middle of the house; and a week later, every single tree and bush and whatever else had constituted the garden was gone as well, the whole plot was a bare plane of gravel.

By now they are building one of those terrible modern Japanese houses there – a wooden structure covered with plastic inside and out. I positively hate them, they are so ugly! There is lots of building activity going on at the moment all over town. A friend told me that apparently this year is a very auspicious one when it comes to building new houses, and build they do. At another open plot, I have seen a small tent with a number of chairs in it, apparently erected for some ceremony, most likely Shinto. I find it rather odd that in the 21st century people would still worry about auspicious times…

Anyway, I am quite sure we’ll get another one of those dreadful modern houses on the plot in my neighborhood, to be fair though, there is not much space to build anything else. We’ll see…

Studying

The other day, when I was returning from my favourite temple, an elderly man started talking to me. In good English, although using simple words and sentences, he asked me where I was from, how I liked Japan, the standard chat. When I said I lived in Kyoto, he warmed up a bit more, showed me a little booklet with a number of English phrases, and finally explained that he liked to talk to foreigners because he wanted to practise his English. The reason why he is studying English in the first place are the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020 – yes, that’s 6 years from now – and he said he was making an effort in anticipation of all the foreigners who would come to Japan during that time so he was able “to give good directions”. I can’t help chuckling a little about this reason, but hey, he has a goal to strive towards with his lessons! We said goodbye with mutual “gambatte!”

Today I received a letter from the mother of my Nagoyan friend. It was a very interesting letter – written in English, German, and Japanese! She started out stating her purpose in English: She had translated a Japanese children’s song into German, hoping that I would understand what was going on despite her bad grammar – the song was cute and her translation very good. Her goal is to learn German because she wants to go and visit Germany a few years down the road, and she’d like to correspond with me to learn a bit more easily. I will start answering her letters in German and Japanese – I hope we both can learn something this way…

Comb Festival

It was a great autumn day today, 30 degrees, sunny, with a clear blue sky… I celebrated by going to a quite unique festival in Yasui-konpiru-gu shrine: The comb festival or kushi matsuri. Similar to the needle festival I visited last year, here people bring their old combs and hair ornaments to the shrine where a ceremony is held for them. Apparently the idea behind these ceremonies is, that when an object has been used for a long time, they possess spirit – imbued by their owner’s or their own – and it is thus proper to send those spirits back to the gods instead of just tossing the item. Such ceremonies are held in various shrines and temples for a number of things: needles, combs, calligraphy brushes, dolls,… Unfortunately, I could not find out what would happen to the combs and hair ornaments that were brought to the shrine, but the thing in the back of the image below is called the kushi zuka, the comb mound, so maybe they are interred there, or at least, at some former time may have been. Just like last year, there was first a ceremony and afterwards a short dance performance called “black hair dance” as an offering to the gods. The special thing about this ceremony at this shrine, however, is the attendance of about 50 young girls sporting the hairstyle of various periods in Japanese history. Of course, they wore beautiful kimono of the appropriate time as well, but the show piece were clearly the various coiffures. I asked one of the girls in an elaborate Edo period hairstyle whether this was all her own hair. In case you consider me rude: Geisha very often have rather short hair and wear wigs for their performances, so I was curious.She said her hairstyle was about half-half, that some of the longer parts were hair pieces, made in the way they had been produced in the Edo period. It was very well done, and practically impossible to distinguish the pieces from her real hair, but, taking a closer look, especially from behind, you could see for example pieces of black paper that were used to style the hair.She also said that finishing her hairstyle would take about 3-4 hours – she must have gotten up very early this morning! After the ceremony and the dance, the girls formed a long procession through Gion, but I did not go with them, I had had plenty of photo-opportunities in the shrine already.

Cooling

Today was a very cold day – barely 24 degrees. At least it was not raining, but even our new guest from Finland said she was surprised about the cool weather. According to the weather forecast, it will be warmer next week again though. I’m not ready for winter just yet! Actually, I am wondering – the summer was much cooler than usual; does that mean that the winter will be mild too? I am certainly hoping for it, still can’t tolerate cold…

I was not very motivated today, so I did some laundry, tried to vacuum my room just to find out that the vacuum cleaner is broken (to be honest, I’m not too sad about this – it was ancient anyway and made a noise like a Boeing at takeoff), and put away my fan for winter – won’t be needing that for a while now. Later in the afternoon I visited a friend’s cafe and then bought some sweets in my favourite bakery. The owner there always greets me very politely and talks to me in Japanese, one of the few opportunities I have to practise. Today he even commented on my perceived improvement speaking Japanese – but I think he was just being friendly…

Remnants

People are leaving Japan all around me.

When I woke up today and went downstairs, I noticed the open door opposite of my room. This was the room of the most long-term resident of Ebisu’s who had apparently left early in the morning without me noticing. Never before have I seen it open, it felt strange. Never before had I seen his room, so I went and had a peek. It was odd, seeing it so empty, so devoid of everything he had been. Just a pile of futons and sheets in one corner, a table in another, the tatami tattered at places. Curtains and windows were open just as the door, not much left that could be traced to him personally, only these hanging on a nail: He had lived at Ebisu’s for more than five years, he was here all the time I had been here, and now he returned to Europe. He knew so much about Kyoto and Japan, showed me the ropes in my first weeks, told me where to get what,… Whenever I had a problem he would be there to solve it – except my personal problems with spiders and cockroaches, I needed to do that by myself. I am not sure whether I’d call him simply a housemate or a friend – I’m very picky with this title though – but I liked him a lot and we had nice and deep conversations about all sorts of stuff. This is why it is odd to say: I miss him already, but it is true, besides that, Ebisu’s feels different now with that one corner room empty… I’m sorry I was too late and could not say goodbye in person – have a great time back home, I’ll see you when you’re returning to Kyoto, soon, hopefully!

Other people are moving too. My friends from Kobe, whom I visited just two weekends ago, returned to Austria today. Thanks for all the books guys, take care!

Tomorrow another one of my housemates will leave. She was only here for three months, but she was really nice to be with. Today we went to a really nice sushi restaurant, her first and last time to have decent sushi in Japan. We both enjoyed it greatly and I hope she’ll be back some day for more. Thanks for your biscuit cake recipe!

Keiro no Hi

It’s national holiday in Japan! Today we celebrate Keiro no hi – the Respect for the Aged Day. Japan, more than any other industrialised nation is an ageing society with a birthrate of only 8.07 births per thousand people (in Austria, it’s 8.76). Walking around in Kyoto and seeing all the young mothers with small children, often two, sometimes even three, does not do much to prove those statistics, but maybe Kyoto is simply a good place to raise kids.

Anyway, back to the aged, who have statistics of their own. Just a few days ago, the government has published new numbers. Currently, there are 58.820 Japanese that are more than 100 years old (that’s 4423 more than last year). Why there are so many centenarians in Japan is open to speculation; personally I’m not sure whether I’d like to get that old. My grandmother often said that everything was fine until she turned 80 – and then it went downhill…

In any case, women do tend to get older than men. Of all the centenarians above, 87.1% are women, that’s more than 51.000. The oldest living Japanese – and also the oldest living person in the world – is also a women: Misao Okawa, born in 1898, is now 116 years old, imagine! She claims that sushi and lots of sleep are the reason for her longevity. I might just go and try that – good night!

Autumn

It is slowly turning autumn here. Already several weeks ago I noticed that it would get dark earlier in the evening, by now I ride to my soroban class when the sun has completely set. That means that I have given up cycling along the river, it’s simply too dark down there.

Now is the right time to come to Japan though, the weather is very pleasant with up to 30 degrees during the day and bright sunshine and no rain. This is perfect weather to do sightseeing, as it is not too humid either; I can understand why people would prefer to visit here now instead of summer. It does cool down in the evenings quite a bit though, so I will not be able to wear my shorts much longer then, and I will probably have to start looking for a jacket.

Besides that, you don’t notice autumn much just yet. Only here and there leaves are turning yellow and bright red, but it’s by far not cold enough. And the koyo, the autumn colours, will only be at their height in November anyway. Instead, we did have some spectacular sunsets in the last weeks, I have seen people flocking to the river and taking photos there (not everybody lives in a great place like I do with perfect view on it).