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...

Travelling: Tokyo, Shinkansen, Capsule Hotel

Japan has a lot of national holidays - weeks where the Monday becomes a holiday, effectively giving you a three day weekend - ideal occasions for travelling. As such, I told myself I would go somewhere and travel around Japan on each one of these long weekends, so long as I didn't have so much work I couldn't forestall it till later. This holiday was actually meant to be "Culture Day", so I suppose going to the nation's capital was a suitable way of spending the time.

Shinkansen
First though, to get there. There were three main options:

- Nightbuses run from Nagoya every evening to Tokyo, dropping you off tired and grouchy (so I've heard) at a bus depot in the early hours of the morning. This is the cheapest option, and would have given me the most time in Tokyo, but I wasn't in a hurry and didn't fancy the overnight bit.
- JR (Japanese Rail) operate easy enough trains to Tokyo, which are reasonably priced, and would get you there in maybe a few hours. But of course...
- I chose the Shinkansen, or Bullet Train. The tickets were expensive, 24,000 yen for a return (just over £120), but it's the fastest way of getting to and from any point in Japan, and I wanted to experience the fastest train on earth for myself at least once. When buying the tickets I discovered that foreign students, not being the "real" flavour of students, can't get student discounts. Hm. There was also the strange feeling looking at the train schedules that, actually, this time, there would be no scope for lateness - the trains would turn up at exactly the times shown, which, the following morning, unsuprisingly, it did.

On the train itself it doesn't actually feel that fast - it's very smooth, very comfortable and that's about it - you arrive at your destination a very short while (an hour and a half) later, no questions or complications. Of course, on the route I was taking was the famous view of Japan: the shinkansen in front of Mount Fuji surrounded by fields. However, being on the train I only managed to get the Mount Fuji bit, which was always nice to see I guess. From arriving in Tokyo station I had to find my way to Shinjuku to meet up with Woody who'd show me around for the day, and that was made more interesting by how train maps' lines aren't labelled. Stations fine, line names not. You have an interesting experience matching the shades of colour to the signposts in the ceiling to find your way, though I cheated and asked at the station office.

Shinjuku
Full of tall buildings, loud signposts, and big neon everything - a very Tokyo place to come to first in all accounts. Met up with Woody, and we had some Okonomiyaki (cabbage and whatever, cooked on a hot top) for lunch, although I failed marvellously at cooking the runnier version, Monjayaki, which instead decided to see how much of the table it could spread to while I wasn't paying attention.

Wondering around the area between all the enormous skyscrapers, we came across the Government Towers, two towers with free viewing decks on the 42nd floors. From up there you get a very good idea of just how big the whole place is.

For the evening's entertainment, we met up in Shinjuku for a trip to an Izakaya and Bar. Awesome to see everyone again - it's hard to realise we're all still on the same course somewhere. Apart from much drinking and swapping of adventures, it was back to the station before the last train.

Akihabara
The next day I ended up looking around here, dumping bags into a railway locker for the day. It's a great place... if you're looking to buy something. Otherwise, it's good for a couple of hours browsing. However, any more than that and you're likely to start going a bit mad - the whole !!we L0Ve An!mE1!! movement is very much in your face, and you end up thinking about bombing the place. But not before buying some sort of technological gizmo or other in one of the countless twenty-storey warehouses of the things.

From here I walked to Ueno, upon which was born the theory of "train station accumulation", detailed in the "Tokyo vs Nagoya" bit below. The reason being was that there's actually very little between the stations, or at least seemingly. There was a fun market like place where I sussed out some "magical" street magicians selling hopping cardboard men, and then I found myself at..

Ueno
..home of the unescapable park. Goodness knows how I did that - I got in easy enough, but to get out I had to walk down the side of a road and into a train station. True gaijin style.

Anyway, Ueno Park was great. Full of small temples, statues of this and the other, street performers, people and boys and girls on their 3/5/7 kimono visits. There was an old man playing a sombre melody with a reed sitting by one of the temples - I wanted to record him, but he managed to escape before I could try. It was also here that I had a very Japanese moment. I passed a Mum&Dad-esque couple taking turns at taking pictures of their little girl wearing a beautiful kimono. Were I in England, I wouldn't have hestiated in offering to take pictures of them all together, but some odd sense of intrusion kept me from bringing myself to ask. I didn't know these people, I told myself, and I wasn't entirely comfortable with the feeling that they were no concern of mine, but that's how Japan works. Their moment was working, and while it could be improved, it could also be dashed to pieces by a clumsy gaijin offering to take pictures for them. Doing nothing was the best way of leaving things "unrippled" as it were.

Sensoji
A short train ride away, in a place called Asakusa, you can find a temple called Sensoji. A large complex, very popular with tourists and Japanese people alike, with it's very distinctive huge red latern, is also the oldest temple in Tokyo. Not much to say here really, though the enormous shopping district in the street running up to the temple was very interesting, especially considering that people have been doing exactly what I did at Sensoji for centuries, perhaps even stopping at the same shops.

When I left, I came across a shop with a large scale version of the old English game Bagatelle (you fire marbles up and past pins to land in holes worth points) and had a chat with the owner, who was friendly enough for me to have a go. She says it is the origin of the Japanese phenomenon Pachinko, although there is only hers and another shop in Osaka left. Needless to say, I didn't win anything.

Shibuya
Following dusk, the Sheffielders met up at Shibuya again, where I've never seen so many people crossing the same road at the same time before; almost mesmerising. This was followed by a curry house where you could buy "extra hot" and "extra spice" separately. Following this, a trip to Karaoke, with a mix of feeling sorry for the bartenders for keeping them busy and feeling sorry for the company for having to put up with our singing. Karaoke with (nearly) all English peeps though was most enlightening - all the good songs came out of course, and everyone could join in.


The Capsule Hotel
Here's a bit without pictures - it didn't seem very polite to go around taking them.
I decided the best bet for staying overnight in Tokyo would be to find either a DVD-Cabin (rent a seat overnight with a film or two) or to find one of the magical and mystical "Capsule Hotels", where you're given a comfortable coffin for the night. I chose the latter, a) because I wanted a proper bed and b) because then you can tell everyone about it later.

So, I found myself a 4000-yen Capsule Hotel and checked in by removing my shoes, locking them in a small compartment and handing the key into Reception. They ask me to fill out a small form, whereupon I'm given another key and directed upstairs, where my small cupboard is waiting for me with a dressing gown (woefully short but never mind), towels, toothpaste and toothbrush and a shaving kit. You get changed into your dressing gown (ok, so it wasn't THAT short) and then go off in search of your cabin. According to my brochure, my cabin was 1mx1mx2m, though for some reason I was still a couple of inches off fitting into it. Ah well. If you don't feel like sleeping, you can wonder downstairs to use the internet, have a shower, use the beer vending machines or even stay in your capsule and watch TV. In all honestly I thought it was a brilliant experience, and had I not had a rubbish night due to a small head cold it would have been ideal. Turfed out at 10am, then wondered to the nearest bit of civilisation, Akihabara.
The website to see where I stayed is http://www.capsuleinn.com/index.html

Akihabara (again)
Waited for the others to turn up for an hour or so - like I said before, probably a bad decision, since now I feel like avoiding it for the foreseeable future lest I start thinking dark thoughts again. Anyway, we found a okonomiyaki restaurant, had something to eat, then went to a "Maid Cafe". I found the appeal of this hard to grasp - it's a cafe, where all the staff are dressed as maids, and who serve you your order with a small side-order of supposedly cute haplessness. I didn't really have time to order anything, since I had to get back to Tokyo Station and catch the Shinkansen back to Nagoya, but I wasn't sold on the cafe. I guess I'd have to give it another fairer chance before I condemn it to the murky depths of Akihabara, as hereby it shall be known (like 'being sent to Coventry' I suppose, only much worse).

Shinkansen Home
Slept. How Japanese. It was all dark anyway and since the train didn't really move a lot save forwards it was very easy. Oddly I woke up at the right time - still don't know how I managed that.


So...
Tokyo vs Nagoya
While in Tokyo, I was always drawn by the bright colours, narrow, often pedestrianised streets, and the large amount of people everywhere. Nagoya is meant to be the most "developed" city in Japan, but its much more obtuse: the streets all seem to be four lane roads with wide pavements next to tall faceless company department stores, making the city seem much much bigger than Tokyo, regardless of actual land-mass occupied. To that end as well, it is much easier to think of Tokyo as a collection of train stations, each with a mini-city spread out around it. Nagoya is just one, enormous, spread out mass of concrete, without even half the interesting places to go and keep your attention away from the spready-outness.

That said, I still wouldn't want to live there. The costs are ridiculous - student rent is five times Nagoya's, along with higher food prices and the general cost of things. Also, I heard that in the 5 odd weeks of Woody's commuting to and from University by train, it had been stopped because of train-jumping suicides no less than 4 times already. A lovely way to start (or even at least for one person, end) the day, I just wouldn't want the same degree of desensitisation. Tokyo has its plus sides of course. If there's nothing going on in your particular neck of the woods it's very easy just to hop on a train and find something else. There are a lot more foreigners around, if you see that as good or bad. There is a place for everything and anything you might want to do, and so long as you can put up with a city sprawling on all sides and half your life spent on trains then Tokyo will give you no problems.

Will I go back? Of course, perhaps in the Spring. And hopefully I'll meet up with all the peeps again for some more Karaoke and general Pub-going.

Top Signs You're Living In Japan

Sorry for the break in communications - things have been busy here as lessons have now all started and work is starting to trickle in. To mark the "You've Survived A Month!" anniversary I thought I could do some sort of summary of life in Japan, mentioning the main points of difference that have struck me the hardest after staying a month here.


Sun up
The sun rises incredibly early here. On the first few mornings when I had to be up for 8am, opening my eyes to blazing sunshine streaming through the curtains had me leaping out of bed for fear of having slept in till midday, only to find my alarm hadn't yet gone off. Evening comes soon too - the sun starts setting around 5pm-ish.

Cables anyone?
I don't know if it's because they'd be easier to repair after an earthquake or maybe it's because digging up the road might be too expensive, but there are staggering amounts of cables run throughout the streets around here. This is only in the outskirts though - going to the city centre there are almost none at all.

Please take care!
There's a lot of things in Japan that simply talk at you - the most strange are ambulances, large trucks and escalators, which as far as I can make out simply repeat things along the lines of "This is an escalator. Please take care when stepping on". When vehicles start to talk at you it's hard to stop thinking of political rallies. This is especially "fun" because living very close to a hospital hearing ambulances loudly annouce their arrival in the early hours grates a bit.

Birds in Traffic Lights
Traffic lights will either beep at you when they go green, or they also sometimes chirp at you. When the little chirping speaker is high up on a pole somewhere, it's hard to distinguish it from passing birds and you suddenly feel very sorry for any blind people trying to cross the road.

Milk
There is a huge variety of milk in the supermarkets. So, being the adventurous sort I've been working my way through them all - so far I've had milkish milk, thinner milkish milk, and milk that tastes like it's had cereal floating in it for a while (slightly sugary).

Good Ideas
Japan seems to be full of these, at least, at face value. For example, the trains stop exactly at marked places, meaning you know where you'll be getting on. Shops have models of the food you'll be ordering so you know what you'll be getting. There are umbrella stands everywhere where you can leave your soaked umbrella outside without someone stealing it. I even found an open book exchange in the subway - simply put down and pick up books as you read through them on your way somewhere. Convenience stores have warm food, microwaves and boiling water available for you to feed yourself well on the go. At supermarkets you pay for your shopping, then take it yourself to a bagging area and bag it up yourself. All-you-can-eat/drink restaurants :) Mobile phones.

Bad Ideas
ATMs have opening hours. The subway stops at midnight, leaving you stranded for the night unless you want to pay an expensive taxi home. Bread and cereal come in small packets, meaning you go through them faster than Pringles. Cheese and sausages are pretty much unobtainable, as are(/were, ish) bananas since some magazine proposed an "Exclusive Banana Diet" which quiet caught the public imagintion at the time and promoted hysterical bulk buying of the things.

Enormous Insects
Enough said really. The worst thing is the noise - because they're all so staggeringly huge the buzz is about two octaves lower, giving them a much more ominous feeling. I was almost hit by a butterfly about the size of a bat the other day - big, black and flapping in your face certainly makes you jump.

Bins
There are a lot of these (when you find them - public bins are much more a rariety in Japan). This is because of Japan's harsh recycling program, through which you must divide your rubbish first into Plastic, Paper, PET, Aluminium, Glass, TetraPak and Paper Cartons, then sort the remainder into Burnable and Non-burnable. Each has its own way of being prepared, for example with PET you must remove the label and cap (which go to plastic) then wash it out and crush it. It's actually very interesting to see just how much of what I throw out is plastic.

Gaijin
Being foreign in Japan is certainly an experience. A quote I heard in my second week pretty much summarises it: "But I don't want to be a minority!" It's not so much the fact that you're different, more that Japanese people (in general) think that they 'should' treat you differently, leading to some odd situations. You don't know what to do/how to behave because it's all new, and they don't know what to do differently because you're foreign and treating you normally is discounted for some reason. This isn't helped when you don't understand what they're saying (shop attendants in Japan speak in honorific language, or Keigo, which is the equivalent of a very wordy roundabout Jeeves style of English). It's taken me up to this point to work out when the till people are asking if I want a bag or not. This will almost certainly improve, but it's certainly a defining characteristic of life here initially.


More later...

Nagoya Festival

This last weekend happened to not only be a long one (Monday was a national holiday) but also hosted Nagoya's Annual City Festival, an opportunity to put up dozens of food stalls, erect the occasional stage and to put on quite a show through a city-wide parade. Being an annual event (although not very famous as I was told by my Japanese friends) and never having been to a Japanese festival before I was keen to attend and see what sort of things might be on offer.

Arriving at the opening, I was surprised that even though Nagoya was a big and bustling city there weren't crowds and crowds of people. The festival was a two-day 8-hours/day affair, so perhaps more people attended the second day, but I had imagined it would be a lot busier. Nevertheless, it was certainly more bustly and a noticable increase in police and "traffic-light keepers" when I arrived at the city centre and found the festival spread out around the base of the TV Tower.

Browsing around the stalls, and being close enough to lunchtime, I picked up some takoyaki (balls of cooked batter with octopus and other fillings) and perched myself in the greener bit of the Sakae to eat. Compared to the takoyaki I'd eaten in the UK, these were certainly more undercooked and gooey, but I'm not dead yet so it must have been ok.

There were two main stages - one that hosted various entertainers and band acts, and the other that was similar but had a slightly more traditional bend, hosting also traditional costumes and martial art demonstrations. These were all fun to watch, though the large majority of the language-based entertainment passed me by.

Next of course was the parade, the highlight of the festival. For this the streets were closed off, and the rush of small children and grandmas was a mini stampede to try and get a good position in the crowd. Being tall is a definite plus in these situations, however a definite disadvantage is that most of my pictures feature someone's hair.

With all of these pictures and descriptions, if I have missed something or have made a mistake and you know better, please let me know ;) The commentary was from a far away loudspeaker and was vaguely incomprehensible.

First up was Mr Toyota himself, presumably the sponsor, with either daughters, escorts or competition winners in the boot.


Plenty of marching bands and dancers in between various bits, playing various bits and bobs of music to try and keep the crowd happy. Interestingly a few were approached by a Festival Organiser-looking person and told presumably to take a hike, cutting short whatever symphony they had going and shooing them away for the next lot.

It wouldn't be a festival without floats, and there were plenty to choose from here, many holding celebrities such as the Koala here (mascot of the local baseball team) or some giant duck of sorts (???).

Towards the end there were plenty of medieval reenactment teams, some going as far as setting fire to the street and charging at each other with sharp things. Nothing like traditional slaughter in the name of a Festival.

At the end, before heading home, there was enough time to watch the Tossing of the Heavy Thing, this year's entry being big, shoulder-mounted and golden, and this year's team is Team Blue.

More soon!

PS. If anyone anywhere could tell me the significance or indeed history of these two, it would be much appreciated. The first is a bird-like creature who proceeded to touch all the kids in the audience with its feather fan thing, while the other seems like a sacred dog (of Nagoya?). Any and all suggestions welcome.

PPS. There was another result of the festival ^_^ One has already popped its clogs, but the others are living happily on in a murky plastic 100 yen breadbin.