Tools of the Trade

Eesh, it's been almost three weeks since I last wrote. I couldn't say where the time has gone - the weeks go by quickly, since it's very easy to simply concentrate on a day-by-day rather than some sort of larger scale. Work and lessons are going well, though we have enough tests that they are no longer something special and it is easy to miss revising. In terms of extra-curricularness I haven't managed to acquire anything yet. I suppose I can use some sort of language acquisition still-early-days as an excuse, but it's stark contrast with my life in Sheffield where I was almost never in my room during daylight hours.

So what has been happening? I managed to make it to Tokyo for one of the long weekends (Japan has plenty of bank-holiday-like Mondays off), which I will try to mention more about in a different post. I've been slightly ill for a time, but nothing serious enough to put me out of lessons. I had a birthday - thank you very much everyone for all your messages/presents/confetti bombs hidden in inconspicous cards! - I managed to have a small celebration, as it fell on a Sunday most people were either away or buried in work, but I still had a good time. I've finally managed to acquire bananas, but at the expense that my room is now regularly invaded by small (fruit?) flies which incredibly annoying. Ah well.

Anyway, for this blog I figured I could do some small descriptions of one or two things I find useful for life in Japan, at least, life so far.


The Bike
Three main reasons for getting a bike in Japan: in Japan bikes ride on the pavement, so it's a lot safer; there aren't any rules about safety equipment, so it's much easier just to hop on and off wherever you feel like (bikes are extremely popular in Japan so businesses/places in general are a lot more cyclist-friendly); and finally most of Japan's cities are built on largely flat ground, meaning it's easy to get around.

My bike cost ¥10,500 (roughly £50) second hand and in very good condition. It is about as cheap as you're going to get, as second hand bikes are very scarce. This is mostly because of the Japanese respect for others' property - when people abandon bikes, no-one is prepared to remove them unless they're distinctly getting in the way. There are actually bikes on campus half-assimilated by bushes, happily rusting away, which could otherwise be taken away for a bit of oil and a resale.

This bike is single speed, with a handy basket for shopping and whatnot. There is no real lock as you might expect - seeing a bike chained to something here is a rarity - instead it has a small bolt you can lock through the rear spokes. It makes things a lot easier getting around Nagoya, since although the university is only a 10 minute walk away, it speeds up getting to the shops, which are more at the 20 minute mark. It also encourages exploring a bit, as it's all too easy to simply rely on the subway map for all of your geographical interest.

The only downside to getting a bike is the registration process - once bought, you must register it in your name and put goodness knows how many stickers on it (my bike already has enough to shame the average rally car), and after that you might have to register it at whatever institution you want to park it outside (eg universities/dormitories, supermarkets and other public places are exempt fortunately). The registration process also restricts your bike to the city you register it in, but to be honest with this kind of single-gear bike you're really not going to stray far in any case.


The Phone
Ah, the magic of Japanese technology. The phone is a Toshiba 912T model, with plenty of the bells and whistles you might expect (although I've yet to use most of them).

Text messaging in Japan is slightly different to how things are in the UK, and much more efficient and common-sensical. Like UK phones, they have normal text messaging (SMS) and can call other phones. However, what the UK calls "MMS" or Multimedia Messaging Service (ie sending pictures, music, videos etc) and is charged for at a set rate per message (50p minimum on O2!), the Japanese have simply used normal email protocol, and charge for the number of packets (size of the email in data), for some tiny fraction of a yen per packet. As a result, most Japanese phones can also send and receive email like a normal computer without having to sign up to some ridiculous overpriced "Internet Access" plan as you have to in the UK. Since they work using data packets, they can usually also browse the internet, and retrieve all sorts of news and information from all over the place.

My phone's functions thus stand at something like: voice call, video call, text messaging, email, 3G internet browser, SaifuKeitai (Wallet-phone, I can pay for things by waving my phone at the till - haven't used it yet as I have to link my bill to a credit card), 3.2megapixel camera, OneSeg (free to watch TV on my phone), mini-SD card slot, and a spinnable screen for easier watching of TV and picture taking. Oh, it's also got a GPS feature, but that's an extra 300 yen odd a month, and I haven't yet got lost enough to need it.

Sounds expensive? Well, I bought my phone from Softbank, one of the main companies in Japan (the others being Docomo and Au). All emails, messages and phone calls within Softbank phones anywhere in Japan are free from 1am-9pm, and most of the the foreign student community here use Softbank also. I also bought my phone before October, meaning I got a special student discount - so long as I paid a (discounted) price for the phone, which was 19,500 yen (just under £100), I could pay a meagre 350 yen (about £1.75) a month for use. This roughly works out at around £10 a month for effectively unlimited use of my phone, since the things you have to pay for are extremely cheap in comparison to the UK. If I manage to sell my phone before I leave the country I will have paid peanuts for a great phone service.

The Dictionary
There are a lot of reasons not to get an electronic dictionary in Japanese and an equal number in favour. One on hand you might end up too reliant on its speed of use and easy to check kanji functions, while on the other hand there really is no way to guess words in Japanese if you don't know them without a wordy work-around explanation. In any case, my Denshi-jishou (electronic dictionary) has been consistently invaluable throughout my learning of Japanese, and I will always be thankful to Amako-san for her huge generosity in kindly bringing it back from Japan for me all those years ago. Having started Japanese from scratch, I'm still learning how to use it, since they are designed for Japanese people learning English and so have no real "English Menu" option for the reverse situation. The irony of using it to look up its own terms isn't lost on me of course ;)

Prices for Denshi-jishou can range from anything from £50 to maybe £300, depending on what features you require (more modern dictionaries have more than one language, character recognition, touch screens and even TV tuners), so if you want one choose carefully. I find that a simple word or kanji look-up is enough for me - the extras (list of Japanese proverbs and automatic formal letter writing!) are more than enough. I think I've changed the battery in it once in about three years, so they're fairly long lasting, also this one has survived the same time living up to its portable nature in some pocket somewhere. If you have the money I'd certainly recommend one but by no means think you are losing out without one.


More in a bit...