Getting A Re-Entry Permit

Today I took the day off work and went to get my re-entry permit (sai nyukoku kyoka) You need this if you want to leave Japan and then re-enter during the period of your work or study visa. As I'm going home for Christmas, I need it so as not to be turned away at the airport when I get back. 

You need - 

1. Your gaijin card

2. Your actual passport (not a photocopy, they stick the permit in your passport). 

3. 3000 yen for a single re-entry permit or 6000 yen for a multiple re-entry permit. 

4. A book. It might be a long wait.

I got mine at the Immigration Bureau (nyukoku kanri kyoku) in the nearby Big City. I had to get two trains and then a taxi because I wasn't quite sure where it was. I was pretty sure that if a foreigner got into a taxi and asked for the Immigration Bureau, they'd know where to go. 

The taxi headed off immediately, and when we were a few streets away from the train station the driver asked if it was in a certain area. Having checked the address, I confirmed. When we got there, it was deserted. Clean rectangle on the side of the wall where the sign had been. 

Taxi driver hummed to himself for a while (meter running all the time) and then took off across town. Eventually we arrived at another building. I'm pretty sure I got screwed. 

Anyway, I arrived during lunch so I filled out my form (you can download and print the form here and bring it with you) and watched some tv. Learned about cleaning products. Saw the bento lunch that was served to world leaders at the G8 summit in Hokkaido this year. 84,000 yen. That's $840 dollars for a small box of fish, rice and veg. Nice. 

At 1pm exactly the curtains opened. I was elbowed out of the way by a middle-aged Japanese man (what he was doing at the Immigration Bureau I have no idea) but made it to second in the queue. I was told to go to another floor where I had to pay 6000 yen and was given some stamps. I returned, waited a bit for the lady I had been dealing with to be free, handed her my form, my gaijin card (Certificate of Alien Registration) and my passport. She stuck the stamps to the form. I sat down. Watched a little more tv. My name was called and I got my passport and gaijin card back. Walked out of the building. Time? 1.21pm. 

All hail Japanese efficiency. I had brought my ipod and a book to pass the time, but it wasn't necessary. Obviously, I think it would be a different story in Tokyo or Osaka, but in a less-populated city it was a breeze. 

I walked back into the city centre. I wandered round some shops and marvelled that it's almost Christmas (it seems to have passed my little town by). I had a coffee from St*rbucks. I got the train home. 

Easy. 

Tales Of The Classroom

As previously mentioned, I teach English in a small after-school place in rural Japan. 

I've been there 3 months now and the fun just never stops. Not really. It's often not fun. It's often hard, tiring, boring and annoying. The lesson plans are pretty repetitive, the kids are boisterous and I get no breaks between classes. 

However, at this point, I've started to bond with the kids a bit. It's tough, considering I teach well over 100 different kids. In fact, there are two sets of over-100-kids. I have one set and the other teacher has the other. Every two months we switch. Last time, it didn't make any difference to me, I didn't know any of the kids anyway. This time (1 December was the switch date), it was hard. I've been busting my butt to learn all their names and it's so damn hard. I mean, for one - they're Japanese. 

Not to say that "all Japanese look the same" or anything, but they kind of do. They all have straight dark brown hair and brown eyes. Every single one of them is ethnically Japanese. In many countries there would be variations in skin, hair and eye colour. Not here. Also, I don't recognise the names. If they were called John, James, Sarah and Claire, it wouldn't be so bad. 

Here, not only do I not recognise which names are boys' and which are girls', a lot of the names are the same, or very similar (in one class I have a Tatsuma, a Tatsuya and a Takuma - there's a Takuya in another class). It's an exercise in frustration to try to address them by name. 

Anyway, now and then funny things do happen. This week - 

1. In one class, I have six girls and one boy. He's a slightly weird little kid (maybe 6 or 7) who refuses to sit (kneel) like all the other kids in the circle. He turns around to face the other way, mashes his face into the carpet and points his bum at me. His skinny little bum. It's weird. Anyway, the other day while breathing in carpet fluff, he found a hair on the rug. A long, blond hair. Mine. He showed it to me and the class (who got all excited about it - it's not like they don't see blond hairs on my head every damn week). I apologised and told him to put it in the bin. He put it in his pocket. Then resumed his butt-pointing. 

2. On Wednesdays, I have a class of 1st year junior high school boys. They are rowdy as anything. Yesterday, I decided to let them watch the movie "Robots". One of them was sitting where the tv is supposed to go, so while two other boys were carrying it across the room I tried to get the boy to move. I gave a quick "Hup! Hup! Hup!". The other boys thought I was saying the f word (in Japanese there's no proper f sound, it's more just blowing through pursed lips, like the start of "which" if you don't say it like "witch"). The two tv-carriers set down the tv and almost wet themselves laughing. The others started doing star jumps around the room shouting "F*ck!!" I tried to shush them and not laugh at the same time. I failed. 

Oh, if you're wondering, that's one of my little ones dressed as a ladybird for Hallowe'en. He has an apple in his mouth. It's a teeny tiny mini-apple. Yes, he's that small. 

Snowboarding at Yeti

So I finally went snowboarding last weekend. After a rocky start to the day (read - slept in til 11am when was supposed to be on the bus at 7, again) I met up with my new friend and convinced her to come with me. She has a car!

Note to Yeti Snowpark - your directions are rubbish! No directions should include the phrase "Find route 24". It nearly killed us. Much simpler would be "if approaching from south, turn left onto route 24 when leaving expressway", or "if approaching from north, turn right onto route 24 when leaving expressway" - we could work it out ourselves. Sheesh. 

An extra hour of driving around and stopping into five (5!) convenience stores for directions, we found route 24. Jubilation all around. 

Yeti park itself is a small snowpark by Mount Fuji. On the way there I took about 40 photos of Fuji, even though Friend said that once we got to Yeti we'd have the most amazing view. Good thing I ignored her, by the time we got there it was dark. 

Because it's so early in the season there were only two slopes open. Or rather, one slope with two start points - they converge in the middle. There was only fake snow too, which usually would irritate the hell out of me, but because we arrived so late they had just spread a new layer for the night session so it was fine. 

Quick stop at the rental shop as Friend had to rent gear (2500 yen for clothes) and then on to the slope! It took a few goes to get the snow legs back and lose the Fear (the last time I snowboarded I fractured my nose) but soon I was careening down the mountain like the best of them (the beginners that is). 

It was my first time boarding at night, but I liked it. According to Friend, the park is packed during the day at the weekend. Buses come from the nearby cities and unload hundreds of people all at the same time so there are queues for everything. Tickets, rental, lifts, food, drinks, toilets. At night there was no queueing for anything. Even the lift queue moved as fast as I could skate on the snowboard, so it was perfect really. The slopes weren't even that packed. 

The only downside of Yeti is the cost. You have to pay to go on the private road up to the park (500 yen). Then it's 1000 yen to park. Plus the cost of the ticket. Plus rental. 

I didn't have to pay for rental because I had already bought all my gear. (Post forthcoming on how to kit yourself out on the cheeeeeap.)

In conclusion - it was fun. I took a few spills, and there were a couple of crashes, but nothing a hot bath wouldn't sort out. 

There was a minor freakout on the way home though when three rest stops in a row didn't sell gas and we had to leave the expressway to get it. The poor car was running on vapours by the time we found it. 

Lesson - fill up whenever you can. You never know when your car's next meal is coming from. 

Reasons To Clean

As said before, I live alone. I find it hard to motivate myself to clean when no one else will see it. Also, the apartment is tiny and I haven't gotten around to acquiring storage furniture (plastic boxes). 

It's not actually dirty, just very very untidy. Piles of books, clothes, blankets, bits of paper, cosmetics, you know. 

Today though, I think I'm going to have to clean. 

1. I seem to have lost all my clothes. Particularly socks. I just wear the same few pairs over and over again (I do wash them). 

2. Right now there is a bug so big I can hear it moving around and I can't find it in the mess. 

Arg. I'm fairly sure I have a bag of cleaning products around here somewhere...

Not Snowboarding, Again

Ugh. 

I don't know what it is about winter that ruins my sleep pattern so. 

I couldn't sleep last night til after the time I was supposed to be getting up to go snowboarding. I told myself that I would just delay a couple of hours. Again, I got up mid-afternoon. 

Now, it's 4am. 

Next weekend, I promise...

Not Snowboarding

Image from snowjapan.com

Well, the plan for today was to go snowboarding. There's a small resort a few hours away from me and I thought I'd pop up for the day to test my boarding legs. After all, they've been out of action for two seasons, and they weren't that great to begin with.

I dutifully set the alarm clock for 5am, intending to get the first train out of my town, then another train to local Big City, then a bus. I woke up at 9am. Then again at 2pm. Good god. I minced around the house for a bit, then dried some clothes and bought some food for dinner, but was so hungry I ate a bun outside the laundromat. That curbed my desire for dinner so when I got home I lay down to read a book for a bit and BAM! Asleep again.

It's now 11pm. DAMN!!! All week I invent exciting plans for the weekend, and then when the weekend comes I spend it all bloody asleep. No idea where this mystery exhaustion is coming from.

I'm going to try to go tomorrow but in the meantime, here's a photo of some Japanese snowboarders, all fashiony and such. Check out the cow suit! Enjoy!

Image by glemak

Mikan!

I got my first gift in work today!

My area is famous in Japan for producing mikan - they're really sweet mandarin oranges. They're particularly easy to peel and have very little pith. The whole town and surrounding area is filled with mikan trees, which have slowly been turning orange since I arrived.

Above is a picture of my very first mikan. I was given a whole bag of them (maybe 20, you can see half of them in the background of the photo) by one of the mothers in the school. I'm happy to report that even though I generally don't like oranges, this one was delicious. I've eaten half the bag already and now my keyboard is all sticky. Yum.

It was a nice gift, they sell here for 4 dollars for a bag of 6, I'm sure they're more expensive elsewhere in Japan.

It's the very start of the season so hopefully I'll get a few more bags for free. When they're on all the trees around my apartment I just can't justify spending so much on them.

Oh, and for those that celebrate it - Happy Thanksgiving! (I had beef on rice... no oven here.)

Funny Things That Happened At School Today

1. I went into the bathrooms, found both stalls occupied, so waited my turn. I heard maniacal giggling coming from one of the stalls. A minute or so later, two little boys (6 or so) came out. I asked what they were doing. They looked at each other confusedly, then hugged by way of explanation.

2. The owner of the school's dog somehow got into my classroom and refused to leave. I had 8 13 year old boys chasing a hysterical poodle for ten whole minutes. I sat on the floor with my face in my hands and yowled with laughter.

I made a friend!

So I finally hooked up with the girl who lives in the town nearby. Not romantically hooked up, just met up. I invited her over last night to have dinner and watch a movie. (Though that does sound like a date).

We decided to try a restaurant I'd never been to before. It was tiny, only four tables and a bar, and ONE guy working there. Somehow this didn't seem like it would be a problem...

We ordered drinks and some appetizers to start, meaning to order the actual food when he came back with the appetizers. That took well over an hour. Service in Japanese restaurants is often slow, but come on. 90 minutes? For some fried cheese in batter? It wasn't like the place was full, only two of the three other tables were occupied, and one group had finished eating when we arrived and were well into the drinking. The other table was a couple. I was struggling to hide my anger from my new friend (best to wait til they know you better to unleash the crazy right?) but she was annoyed too. We ended up leaving after the three minutes it took to eat the cheese and getting konbini food on the way home.

It was such a treat to have someone to speak English with who isn't my boss! We somehow ended up staying up til 7am talking about living in Japan (she's been here over 2 years), home (she's from the US) and all sorts of other random things.

It's not often I get a girl-crush, but this could be great - a friendship borne of a shared love of food, books and lame movies. With a little cynical rage thrown in.

(I've just realised how weird it would be if she read this. Do I sound like a stalker?)

The JLPT Dilemma

I got my JLPT test voucher in the post the other day.

I applied for it way back in August before I jumped on the Heisig/All Japanese All The Time bandwagon, when I thought it might be a good thing to do. Now, I've paid my monies and am scheduled to do it in the nearby Big City. It's on the 7th of December this year.

There's been a lot of debate on the interwebs about whether or not the JLPT is any good, or whether having a JLPT qualification actually means anything. I can see that really, the Japanese is probably not all that useful in daily life. When I started out, I was using the Japanese for Busy People textbook. Once I actually started working though, I realised that the kids only use informal Japanese, so all the verb forms I had learned were inappropriate - some of the littlest ones just look at me blankly when I use the polite forms.

I can see that having the Level 1 certification could be very useful for getting a job and many universities here require it for foreigners wanting to take courses. Even though having level 1 doesn't necessarily mean you are fluent, it will get your CV past the first round of consideration by employers.

The lower levels on the other hand seem kind of pointless. I'm a long way from level one (the highest level), I'm way down at level four (the lowest). I'm not even likely to pass level four. I've been plugging away at Remembering the Kanji, but I haven't yet covered the 100 odd kanji needed for level four, never mind all the readings. I know words like riot, icicle and nitrate, but not week or station.

The other consideration is that that weekend is the only weekend I'll have free to go snowboarding before I go home for Christmas. The weather had been pretty warm up til about a week ago (now it's flipping freezing) so there was little snow anywhere close by, but now it's really dumping down.

So - should I just ditch the JLPT and go snowboarding?
Any advice??

Teaching English In Japan

I work at a private English school in the countryside in Japan. I teach kids from 2 years old up to 18 or so.

Most of the kids come for 2 hours. Half an hour of either tracing the alphabet, filling in the blanks on worksheets or hardcore grammar work depending on their age, then an hour of "conversation" (that's me), then another half an hour of tracing/grammar.

The school runs from 2 or so until 10.30pm. I usually have either four or five classes a day, split into a 3 or 4 class run, then a 30 minute break, then one class, or sometimes two. Obviously I arrive later than the Japanese lady who does the tracing/grammar, and leave earlier.

For anyone considering coming to Japan to do similar work, here are my tips...

1. Give Up Smoking.

As mentioned, sometimes I have to work 4 hours straight. Maybe I'm just a lazy spoiled Westerner, but I've never had to do that before. I've had a few of the normal 9-5 or 5.30 jobs, where you work 9-11.15, have a coffee break for ten mins or so, then lunch is 1-2, then another break around 4 for ten mins. Unless things were really mental, I never worked more than about 2 hours straight. I've also worked 12-hour shifts in a hospital. There I never worked more than 2.5 hours straight.

I should point out, that I'm a smoker. Even when things were really busy in work and I was eating lunch at my desk, I was always able to nip out for 2 minutes for a smoke. Not in this job. Apart from the obvious not wanting to stink of smoke around the kids and parents, it's just not feasible. The classes are an hour long. I can't let the kids out early because the tracing/grammar lady won't be finished with the previous class. I can't come in late because the kids will be tearing around the room and generally raising hell. So, no smoking. I've invested in nicotine patches. Seriously. 4 hours straight with 14 five year olds? Some days I feel like Krusty the clown wondering if there's some space on my butt to stick an extra patch. (Not really, I only ever have one patch on... just in case you were worrying).

This brings me neatly to point 2...

2. Develop Excellent Bladder Control.

This is way more of a problem than the smoking thing. Realising you kind of have to pee, then looking up at the clock and knowing you won't be able to for three more hours is torture. Obviously, sometimes I do have to leave the hellions to their own devices for a few minutes, but I try not to. I limit how much liquid I consume before class and try not to think about waterfalls.

3. You Don't Have To Like Kids, But It Helps.

Before I took this job I had never worked with children. I had worked rather extensively with babies, particularly very very small ones (see hospital job above) but never with kids who could walk and talk. I presumed I liked kids. I mean, who doesn't? Not many people would ever openly admit to not liking children. It's like not liking peace, or flowers or something.

Since coming here, I've realised that actually, I don't love children. I don't hate them either, I'm just not your typical super-awesome-wow-fun camp counsellor you usually get teaching 3 year olds.

The first week was a real eye-opener. I thought that knowing a lot about babies and having a teenage brother would be useful. Wrong wrong wrong. Children are dirty and loud and rude and violent. When they get together they can be vicious. I spend plenty of time breaking up fights and handing out tissues and generally being a zookeeper. I seriously considered packing it in, going home and breaking out the power suit and high heels and going back to the office.

4. Japanese Kids Are People Too

After a few weeks, something happened. I started consistently remembering their names, and sometimes I even matched the name to the right kid. I started to get to know a few of them. I started to find them funny and cute. It stopped being a blur of snot and noise, and I found myself looking forward to going in to see a particular class of exceptionally cute four year olds or bright 13 year olds.

No matter where you work, there'll always be people you don't like. In my last job, I had to buy an ipod just to drown out the voice of this excruciatingly annoying guy who spent most of the day making personal calls and yattering on about his latest night out. (Given, the stories were funny the first time, but there are only two weekend nights and five 8 hour working days. They wore out quickly). I used to time my breaks to avoid running into a really nice overly friendly guy who always wanted to sit with me, because he chewed with his mouth wiiiiide open.

You just have to suck it up. You can't avoid the infuriating people in the world, particularly when you're getting paid to teach them English. You just have to overlook their poor personal hygiene and appalling social graces, and get on with your day.

Sometimes, you even have to accept the occasional slapped bum. Somehow, I don't think the director of the school would entertain a sexual harassment charge against a 3 year old.

I Am White Trash

This was the first post I wrote, way back when I first arrived. I didn't actually post it anywhere though. It's a little out of date, but hey, I'm not perfect.

1. I live in a tiny apartment surrounded by farmland.
2. My tiny garden is full of trash - bags of rubbish, piles of cardboard, assorted broken electronics (including a tv).
3. I mostly wear a vest and knickers.
4. I have given up religion, save the worship of the aircon unit.
5. I am illiterate.

How did this happen? I used to live in the capital city of a European country! I used to frequent wine bars! I used to work in finance! I used to commute goddamnit!

I moved to Japan. To a small rural town.

Why? Well, for the laugh. Teaching English seemed like a fun thing to do while I'm still young and child/mortgage-free, so I ditched the hated job in finance, packed some stuff, and here I am.

One piece of advice - if you are not from a hot country, do not move to Japan in summer. It's hot. Like 35C. Which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so damp. It's the humidity that's giving me this headache, not the heat. So, that's why I only wear clothes to go outside (oh irony - it's hotter outside than in the apartment). Incidentally, the humidity also means that even though the temperature is in the 30s (celsius), most of my clothes have been hanging on the line for three days. And they're still wet. As for point 4, I wasn't religious before I came here, but now, that aircon unit is the object of all my praise.

Every single morning I wake up and thank the god of electrical appliances for the happy invention of air conditioning. I would happily work anywhere, ANYWHERE, so long as it has aircon. I know that when winter comes I'll have abandoned my new found love in favour of some sort of heating, but for now, it's my baby. I am so grateful to the god of electrical appliances that I can easily forget about the pile of broken items littering the garden. Anyway, it's not his fault. It's the Japanese.

I used to be a recycling evangelist. I used to take the plastic off my cigarette packets and put the cardboard bit in the recycling bin, and the plastic in with the trash. I dutifully rinsed out the milk cartons. I pontificated to my mother who refused to bother, about saving the planet, or money, depending on my mood. Now, I want to abandon it all. Refuse is collected every weekday, and it's a different kind every day. There is no regular trash here. There's burnables, non-burnables, plastic recyclables, cans, glass and PET bottles (drink bottles).

There's no way to tell what goes in what bin. Obviously, bottles go in the bottle bin, but what about the caps? And the labels? Recyclable plastic? Burnable? There's nothing like standing over your five bins with a bottle cap in your hand, fretting over which bin to put it in to make you feel like an outsider. Note to the Japanese - Everything is burnable! Just turn up the heat!

And it's not like you can just chuck it and forget about it. Noooo. Trash isn't collected from your house. You have to put it in a clear plastic bag (throwing out something embarrassing? Everyone knows....), label it, and then bring it to your trash centre. Which could be a 15 minute cycle from your house. Imagine cycling through your Japanese town with a stinking bag of rubbish clutched in one hand, sweating in the heat and humidity. You used to work in finance? Now your hair is a scrubby bush, you're drenched in sweat, and there's bin juice on your flip-flop clad foot. Welcome to humility.

Sometimes, your bag won't be collected, it'll be deposited back on your doorstep. Clearly, you've put something in the bag that shouldn't be there, but there's no explanation. You just have to figure it out. Which means going through the rubbish, because they won't collect it until it's fixed. Or, you can just put it in your back garden and forget about it. See point 2.

All this could probably be easily solved, if only you could speak Japanese. Or, failing that, read. In most countries, with the help of a dictionary (or the internet) you can figure out most things. But getting a leaflet about the trash and it being filled with little picture things like this 余帯? You're sort of screwed. It's not like you can just type it into google translate. And living in the inaka means there's noone to ask. So, you just stumble on, hoping that some day you'll figure it out. Meanwhile, your garden fills up with bags and all the locals know you as the white person with all the trash.

I am white trash.

Things That Keep Me Sane

When you live in the back end of nowhere in a country where you don't speak the language you need a few things to keep you from losing it. Without a few lifelines I'd either end up either in an institution, or rehab. Or maybe a residential locked rehab programme.

The main tool of survival is food. I guess this is the same anywhere, but when you can't read the names of foods in the supermarket or the instructions on the backs of packets, you need a little help.

As soon as I arrived I discovered the joy of my local convenience store. In Japan they're called konbinis, and they sell almost everything. Frozen food, readymade food, drinks, cigarettes (most of them anyway), magazines, newspapers, porn, makeup, shampoo, cleaning products, underwear, socks, and lots of other stuff. Did I say porn? Yes, magazines. Real life and cartoons. Yes, manga porn. It's right there beside the teen, house, food and baby magazines. My junior high school boys take great joy in telling me who has been caught reading "nasty magazines".

But anyway. It also sells food. At home the convenience stores sell greasy artery-clogging crud. Plus junk food and the occasional bag of pasta. Here my 7-11 sells fried chicken, noodles, rice dishes, onigiri (rice balls), sandwiches and sushi. The sushi from the konbini is as good as any I've had at a restaurant at home. Given, I wasn't going to the nicest sushi bars in the world, but still, it's great to be able to buy good sushi at 4am for a few dollars. Konbini food is cheap. Maybe not US standards cheap, but certainly Europe-cheap. If you buy a noodle dish they'll microwave it for you right there, give you a wet wipe for your hands and chopsticks. Excellent.

The next thing on my sanity list is the local library. Here's a picture of it - just because I love it so much.


It's actually a great building, three stories high, all glass and pitched roof and light. It has reading rooms, study rooms, giant widescreen tvs and headphones for watching movies, a conference room and really squishy couches. Obviously I can't read the books (apart from the baby ones, which I borrow for practice in using a Japanese dictionary), but they have DVDs!! Hundreds of them! Which you can borrow for up to 15 days! All for freeeee! You can get 3 at a time, and most of them are Hollywood movies with an English language track as well as a Japanese dub track. Given, they're not exactly new releases, but still. Freee! Getting a library card was a bit intimidating, but all I needed was my gaijin card. I go there about once a week and get 3 DVDs and a few kids' books. I usually neglect to watch at least one of the DVDs, but whatever. If they had wanted people to watch Troy, they wouldn't have made it 3 hours long.

The final thing that keeps me from drinking all the time is the Foreign Buyer's Club. It's a website run by some Americans out of Kobe and it imports food and other stuff from America and other places. It provides me with things that are impossible to get out here, like wholewheat crackers, proper brown bread, wholewheat pasta and cheese.

I am a cheese fiend. Soft, hard, white, red, blue, edam, cheddar, stilton, brie, gorgonzola - I love it all. I could happily sit down with a block of cheese and a knife and eat til it's gone. Japan is not good for cheese. Most Japanese don't like it. I hate to tell them that it's probably because their cheese is rubbish. Greasy, tasteless, rubbery and boring. You might wander into a shop here and see camembert - don't be fooled. It's just processed crap.

So, I did some research and found FBC. I bought the stuff I mention above, and a kilo of sharp white cheddar. It wasn't cheap, but I needed it. Like a Japanese person needs rice. FBC charges for delivery, and then extra if you buy cold items (like cheese) and extra again if you want frozen items (I bought frozen bread), and more still to become a member (1000 yen a year membership) but I just wrote it off as a sanity expense. I got through that kilo of cheese in two weeks. Alone. It was awesome.

Weird Things II

A few more weird things I've been forced to part with my cash for in Japan.


This was the first weird thing I saw when I arrived. It's a coke can with a lid. Just in case you can't drink a whole can in one go. This was taken on the train from Narita to Tokyo station.

Next, some tea-flavoured things. Not green tea. Regular tea. Green tea flavoured things are everywhere around May, when the tea is harvested. You can get a green tea McFlurry in Mickey D's. But this is just black tea.

Here are some hojicha kitkats. Hojicha is roasted green tea. Not black tea, not green tea. They smell kind of like honey vanilla coffee beans. Weird. The first one was awful, but then I inhaled the entire bag. The other 19 weren't so bad.


Next up, English milk tea ice cream. This tastes like plain (not vanilla, just nothing-flavoured) ice cream gone bad. With sugar added. When this particular brand makes flavours like chocolate decadence, white chocolate raspberry truffle and mango, why would anyone buy milk tea except to laugh, take a picture of it and post it on the internet??


Lastly, triple berry kit kats. Kit kats are mental over here. They come in all sorts of strange gross flavours, and some nice ones. I'll source a few for you next time I go shopping. These ones were nicer than the strawberry or blueberry ones, but still a one-off purchase. I think I'll stick with regular flavoured chunky kit kats for now.

Becoming Official In Japan - Part Three - Getting A Bank Account

A bank account is not as essential as you might think. Most bills can be paid at your local convenience store and many employers will pay you in cash.

I opened a bank account because my employer wanted to pay me by bank transfer as I get paid monthly and it was hassle for her to pay cash, or something.

Really, it was easy peasy. I looked up "new account" in the dictionary. I told the woman behind the counter. I filled in a form with some help - name, address, date of birth (in Japanese! I needed help with the Japanese date...), employer and so on. The lovely counter-woman and I figured the forms out between us with the help of a dictionary and some hand gestures.

By the way, no proof of address was needed, and no other ID than my gaijin card (which I also didn't need proof of address for). I thought that I would need my passport, but I didn't. Woman behind the counter took my gaijin card and my hanko and disappeared for ten minutes while I waited on a plastic chair and looked at the pictures in a magazine. Then I was shown a sheet with various ATM card designs on it, picked one, was returned my ID and hanko and left with a box of tissues as a gift and my passbook.

The passbook is sort of like the oldschool books you used at banks before they had ATMs, and are still used in my home country for post office savings accounts. You can use either your ATM card and PIN or card and passbook at your bank's own ATMs. No, I don't see the point of them either.

My actual ATM card was delivered to the house by courier a few days later. I had to hanko for it.

Note - do not forget your PIN. It's not like at home where you get 3 tries. One bad entry and your card is kaput. Although, of course, the message that tells you that is in Japanese. So, you have to go back to the bank and be irked that your card is broken, only to be told "bad number" and hang your head in shame. Then you need to pay 1000 yen to get a new card, and wait for that to be delivered. Not that I would ever do something like that. Nooooo.

Becoming Official In Japan - Part Two - Getting A Hanko

The next step to becoming official was to get a hanko. A hanko is a stamp that is used instead of a signature for most things in Japan. They are used in banking, for signing contracts, accepting packages, pretty much anything you'd use a signature for in the west.

Most Japanese have at least two - one for really official things like marriage contracts, buying a house or car, and an everyday one for accepting packages, signing a memo in work etc. Some people will have a third mid-range one for banking too. The more official ones (called inkan) are registered at the local ward office and are locked away in a safe or hidden at home, the less-official ones (called hanko) are just kept anywhere - in a handbag or by the door at home.

Most inkan are handmade by a professional. Almost every small town will have a shop, even mine. For an everyday hanko, you can buy them off the shelf if you have a common Japanese name. Obviously, as a foreigner I had to have mine made. You can pay anything from ten dollars up to thousands depending on what you want yours made of, from plastic or wood up to ivory or semi-precious stones. I went with wood and paid 50 dollars. It turns out that this was really expensive, but I went to my local little old lady shop and it was the cheapest one on display. I didn't really have the Japanese to haggle. I wrote out my name in katakana, pointed at the one I wanted, then came back 5 days later to pick it up.

You can choose almost anything you want for your hanko - I chose my full name in katakana to match my gaijin card just to make things easier. If your name is James Smith you could have that, or J Smith, or Jim S, or JS, or whatever. You could go all out and have someone convert your name to kanji and get that.

I got a pink case with my hanko, with a little ink pad and everything. I didn't choose it, but when I opened the box there it was. I suspect that a lot of the 50 dollars I paid went for the case.


I had to use my hanko to open a bank account and get a cellphone, though I suspect that a signature would have been fine for the cellphone, the woman was surprised when I whipped it out of my bag.

A word of warning though. Make absolutely sure that you spell your name correctly for the person in the shop. Have them read it out to you. Do not realise three weeks later that actually your hanko says Jum Smath. You'll feel like a fool going back to the shop and getting them to change it. Belieeeeeeeve meeeee.

Becoming Official In Japan - Part One - Getting A Gaijin Card

I'm not talking about becoming an official, like trading in your English teacher's license to sit behind a desk and wear a short-sleeved shirt and tie and ruin ordinary citizens' lives with bureaucracy. I'm not even talking about learning to march about purposefully with files under your arm so that you look official. I'm talking about becoming a real person in Japan.

You see, until you have burdened yourself with paperwork and bureaucracy to the point that you want to just leave Japan and come back another time when there's less of a queue, you are not a real person. You are a tourist.

For those of you who are already real people, or are never planning to become a real person, you can just skip this post. In fact, I feel jealous of you unreal people. I imagine you spend your days frolicking in zen temple gardens, eating green tea icecream and mooning over the efficiency of Japan. Oh, the transport system! Ha. I used to be like you too.

So, in order to stop being a tourist and start being official, you need to get a few things in order.
You need a gaijin card, a bank account, an internet connection, a driver's license and a cellphone. Unless you have these things, you are pretty much a lesser being. Well, I guess that if you live in a city you won't need a driver's licence. But just wait until your hot new Japanese girlfriend wants to go "for a drive". And if there are internet cafes around, you probably won't need an internet connection. Unless of course you never get a Japanese girlfriend, in which case, well, let's hope your local dvd shop is liberal.

Anyway.

1) Gaijin card.
The official name for this is the Certificate of Alien Registration, which is stupid, because it's a card, not a certificate. And you're not from Mars, you're just another gaijin. Japanese people will always use the official name though.

In Japan, it's the law that you have to carry ID. Everyone does, even the locals. Possibly even the kids. If you're a tourist, you're supposed to carry around your passport, but if you actually live here, you need to get a gaijin card within 90 days. Since 90 days is the limit on even the most liberal tourist visa, you can't get one unless you have a proper visa.

You'll need this card for everything. Opening a bank account, getting a cellphone, renting a car, opening a library account and so on. If you're stopped by the police for anything (like walking along minding your own business) you'll need to show them your card. If you don't, you could be hauled downtown for a chat. Even if you're just popping to the 7-11 for milk wearing your PJs, bring your card. There's been a lot of chat on the internet about how racist it is that they always want to see your gaijin card - but hey, it's the law to carry ID.

Anyway. Getting a gaijin card isn't all that much hassle. In fact, the simplicity of it lulled me into a false sense of security about how easy things are in Japan. I asked my employer where to go get one. Answer - my local ward office. I asked how to get there - get the local train a few stops up, then go into the giant building across from the station. I went in, the receptionist immediately knew what I was after and herded me over to the Alien Registration Desk. I was shown to a row of plastic chairs while I waited.

I waited, I looked around. I looked at some posters and tried to remember my hiragana. I looked around some more. Then, I made a startling realisation. I was the only customer in the entire room. The full first floor of this enormous government building was one open-plan office. And I was the only person there who didn't work there! Now, when was the last time you went to a government office for something, anything, and there wasn't a huge queue. Or at least one of those ticket machines where you take a number and wait to be called. Nope. Nothing.

I still had to wait though. God knows what the 50-odd workers were doing, but it took about 20 minutes for one of them to help me. (Actually, they were probably playing janken, the Japanese version of rock paper scissors to decide who would have to help me. It's the cornerstone of Japanese society after all). Eventually I was brought up to the desk and the dude whipped out a rake of forms and looked at me expectantly. I told him in my shoddy Japanese that my Japanese is, well, shoddy. Fear passed over his face. He scampered off and came back with a giant book which he heaved up onto the desk and started leafing through, giving me terrified glances every few pages.

This book was genius. It had all the instructions, rules and regulations pertaining to foreigners in it, with Japanese on one page and then English and Portuguese on the facing page, all the sentences nicely numbered. The guy found the relevant sentence in Japanese, and then pointed to the corresponding English sentence. Brilliant. I had to fill out the expected details, name, address, employer (you can leave this blank if you don't have a job yet), telephone number (also can be left blank), home address, place of birth etc. I gave him a passport photo of myself. Then I waited on a plastic chair again for about ten minutes.

The guy then gave me a receipt and told me I could pick up my card in 3 weeks. Apparently that receipt can be used to open a bank account and get a cellphone, but as I was in no real rush to get either, I waited til I had the actual card. I just showed up on the appointed day with my receipt and was handed my card.

I was partly official.

Weird Things

By weird things I mean weird products. There are enough weird things in Japan to fill an entire department of a university so I won't get into it right now. Actually, I think they might have done that already.

I'm a sucker for weird or cute things, or things that are weirdly cute. Japan was not the place for me to come to save money. I walk into the shop to get milk and before I know it I'm walking out with a bag full of novelty stuff for the apartment and novelty products I can't even eat because they're too... novel.

Anyway, here are a few of the weird things I've bought in the last few days...

A white chocolate strawberry KitKat. I actually bought a blueberry one too, but I ate that. It was weird.



White Pepsi. It's a yogurt and cola sparkling drink made by Pepsi. Seriously.

I tried this too. I bought it on a whim and brought it to school. I showed it to the kids and I could see the disgust plastered all over their little faces. We tried it anyway. It was so unbelievably gross that they literally rolled around on the floor yowling.

On the upside, I learned a new word - きらい - dislike/hate.

And lastly, my personal favourite...


Hello Kitty toilet paper! Good grief. I was stunned into a good 30 seconds of silence in the supermarket. I had to buy it. How poor Kitty ended up with her face on TP, or how the lords of sanrio thought that this would be a good idea I'll never know. But there she is.

There's probably no point in opening that savings account after all.

Sick / Little Kids Are Gross

I'm sick and it's no fun. Managed to drag myself through work this week, and finally succumbed on Friday night. Spent the day sucking on ume (Japanese plum) flavoured Vick's, sleeping and watching My So-Called Life on the internet. (Didn't you just love that show? Jordan Catalano was my first serious crush. In comparison to him all the boys in my class were so... well, 11.)

I used to work in a cubicle in an open-plan office. The aircon unit was directly above my cubicle and blew cold air and germs down on my head all winter long. I had a cold from October to April there. I thought that once I escaped that office my general health would improve, but when I was thinking about coming to Japan to teach English I forgot one very important fact -

Little kids are gross.

They rarely wash their hands. They wipe snot on their hands and sleeves, they cough and sneeze on your face, they (true story) flick the dried bits of snot that have collected around their noses at other kids and you. They pick their noses, examine what they get, wipe it on the carpet and then touch the flashcards. I wash my hands between every class and disinfect my hands with alcohol spray whenever I can. I avoid touching my face. Still, I am now sick.

I'm guessing that I caught something from one of the gross little kids. The weather has finally turned here, it's now actually cold at night, so coughs and colds are moving in. At my school I have kids from two kindergartens, four elementary schools, two junior high schools and three high schools. It's pretty much a cesspit of germs. The fact that little kids have questionable standards of hygiene and don't know to cover their mouths when they cough means that the spread of illness is rampant.

I hate that parents send their kids to class when they're sick. It's not like a regular school where the kids sit far away from me at desks, we're all on the floor and they're coughing right in my face. None of them are even wearing masks!

Ahh, the masks. If you've never been to Japan you're probably wondering what I'm talking about. It's kind of like a surgical mask, or something your dentist would wear. Paper or cotton, rectangular, elasticated straps around the ears. One day everyone looks normal, and then the next you're on the train surrounded by Hannibal Lecters. Although, the kids' ones come with cartoon characters like Hello Kitty or Mickey Mouse, just for added cuteness. Here's a picture of a girl wearing one.



Although I can see that they're a good idea, and I probably wouldn't be sick right now if everyone wore them when they were sick, I still think they look weird. In class, most of the kids are terrible mumblers when speaking English, so the mask just makes a bad problem worse.

So far I've only had one child wearing one, and that was weeks ago. I thought she was just an anomaly and that she had some kind of facial deformity or something. I had to just pretend I understood what she was saying. Then the next week she came in maskless, with a perfectly normal looking face, so I just wrote off the mask thing as a glitch in the matrix, something that probably never happened. Now, they're everywhere but at my school.

Anyway, annoying as it is to be sick at the weekend when I could be doing something fun, I'm glad I don't have to work. Jumping around the classroom playing tag? I can barely keep my balance anyway, never mind with a temperature.

At least I'm not properly sick. Trying to go to the doctor in Japan is something that I'm not quite ready for just yet.

Back to bed.

(Disclaimer - I don't actually hate children. I just think that when they're sick they're kind of disgusting. You work in an office? Imagine the person next to you refuses to stay in their chair, they're always climbing on your lap and wiping their snotty nose on your jumper. They come up behind you and then cough right in your face. They never use a tissue. They have dried snot all around their noses, above their mouths and encrusted on their fingers. They want to shake your hand. See what I mean?)

Learning Japanese Part Two - The Ecstacy

After becoming more and more frustrated with my slow progress I stumbled upon a website. All Japanese All The Time. The tagline on the website is "How To Learn Japanese, On Your Own, Having Fun and To Fluency". The guy learned Japanese to "native-level fluency" in 18 months, while living in America. That includes reading and writing over 2000 kanji. Obviously, I was intrigued. Basically, his method has three parts.

The first part is that you should be listening to native Japanese ALL THE TIME. Like 24 hours a day, even while sleeping. If you live in Japan, you just turn on the radio. If you don't, you have to be a little more creative. DVDs, internet radio, whatever. Eventually you'll start picking out words, then phrases, then sentences, then eventually you'll understand most of it. This listening should run alongside the other two parts.

Part two is that you should learn to read. The method he (and actually, millions of other people including many universities) advocates is to use a book called Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig. This teaches you the English meanings of the kanji (but not the Japanese words). So, you know that 女 means woman, even if you don't know it's pronounced onna. This seems counterintuitive, but believe me, being able to read is a massive step up. The method connects the English word to the kanji, and then later you connect the Japanese word to the English word, and the Japanese word-kanji connection makes itself. A way better explanation of the RTK system and a review of the book can be found here.

The third part is that you should learn to understand 10,000 sentences. Not learn them off by heart, just be able to understand them. You know how you know when something just sounds wrong in English (or your native language) even though you don't know all the grammar rules and names of types of verbs? That's what he's aiming for with Japanese. You're trying to feel the language rather than just cram it in. Obviously, 10,000 sentences is a lot to keep track of, so using a spaced recognition system program for your computer takes care of all of that. I use Anki.

It takes a long time, but it works. It's not even his method, he adapted it from various studies and from the methods used by a bunch of Polish guys to learn English. I figured that my own methods weren't working, so I might as well give this a try.

I continued renting dvds from the library, and started working my way through Remembering the Kanji. Straight away kanji started popping out at me everywhere I looked. Signs that were just gibberish to me now made sense. I realised that the warehouse near my house sold tools. All sorts of useful things!

My first breakthrough came when one of the kids in my class used a word that I had heard many times while watching The Incredibles - it means hurry up, and just from the context I was able to put it together. The words that you learn like that you never forget, unlike the ones you try to cram in from a textbook. After that more and more words started cropping up all over the place - and I could understand them.

The menu at my local restaurant is still a mystery, but at least I know what's fish 魚 and what's beef　牛.

All in all, the AJATT method is hardcore, and sometimes I do feel like I'm drinking the kool-aid, but then I learn something new and that little victory spurs me on.

So, my recommendation is this.
1) Learn the kana. It's essential if you're planning to move to Japan.
2) Read the AJATT blog.
3) If you live in Japan, turn on the tv. Don't turn it off. If you don't live in japan, get an amazon.jp account and buy yourself some dvds you've already seen. (I would never advocate getting stuff for free from the internet. Nooooo.)
4) Start ploughing your way through Remembering the Kanji. Join the Reviewing the Kanji website. It's an srs for Heisig's book specifically. It has some good statistics features, but mostly it'll save you typing in over 2000 entries in kanji into your own srs.

Good luck.

Learning Japanese Part One - The Agony

For anybody moving to a new country, learning the language is one of the most obvious ways to make your life easier and stress free. A few years ago, I lived in Spain for a while. My Spanish was at a high-school level, I had good grammar but weak vocabulary and not much confidence in speaking. So, while I could understand the general gist of what people were saying, actually speaking was tough. With time though I did improve to the level where my mistakes were only hilarious rather than totally incomprehensible. I thought that this experience was a good forerunner to moving to Japan.

Boy was I wrong. Somehow I had forgotten that I had spent years learning Spanish. Classes every day, homework, studying for exams. I thought my Spanish was bad, but I wasn't a complete beginner. I also missed the most important difference between learning Spanish and learning Japanese. I could read Spanish. If I didn't know a word, I just broke out the dictionary and looked it up. If I was in a store looking for something, I could just compare the words to the dictionary and easily find what I wanted. Sure, it was a little more time-consuming than shopping at home, but really, it was no sweat.

When I got to Japan, I realised that I was illiterate. Totally illiterate. I couldn't read push or pull on doors. I wandered into the men's bathrooms. I tried to fry things in mirin instead of oil. I tried to bleach towels in toilet bleach instead of clothes bleach. It was unbelievably frustrating.

So, I went about the task of learning the kana - the two sets of phonetic symbols that Japanese uses. There are 46 symbols in each. It wasn't all that fun, but it was so essential that really I didn't have a choice. I did hiragana first - it looks like this ひらがな. Then I moved on to katakana - カタカナ. I used the old write/cover/check method. I tried to read anything and everything I could find and eventually it came together. I still sometimes confuse similar-looking symbols like シ (shi) and　ツ (tsu), ン (n) and ソ(so), but mostly I'm ok.

Before I came to Japan I signed up for a class. It was run by a language school near to where I worked, and the class was for 2 hours a week. Ten minutes into the first class we had all introduced ourselves and I had realised that it was going to be a hideous waste of time. Nobody else there had any intention of moving to Japan. Their answers were variations on "I'm going on a 2 week holiday in eight months" and "I love manga". I was moving to Japan for at least a year in two months. The teacher had no intention of teaching us to read and write the kana, never mind any kanji. If we could stammer out "Watashi wa John desoo" she was happy. I thought sheesh, why can't they just buy a phrase book and be done with it?

So, I rang up the owner of the school, explained my situation and got a refund. I took the book (Japanese for Busy People 1) and worked on it myself. I got through a fair bit of the book before arriving, but hadn't really anticipated the illiteracy thing. The whole book was in roman letters! Still, I didn't see much of a problem with it and ploughed on even after I arrived.

The book came with a cd that I loaded onto my iPod and listened to over and over. Eventually I realised that I was learning a lot more from listening than I was from trying to memorise things from the book, so I joined the library here and borrowed some dvds. I got out things I had already seen in English that had been dubbed into Japanese. I watched them, but still I was lost.

I needed a new method.

Living In The Inaka - Part Three

Apart from the staring, the other two factors to consider if you are moving to the inaka are 1) the lack of anonymity and 2) the almost total lack of English.

I've only lived in my town for a few months and already everyone knows who I am. They know my name, where I'm from, my age, marital status, how many brothers and sisters I have, where I live, what my cellphone provider is, whether I have the internet, what Japanese food I like and don't like, my favourite colour and whether I can speak Japanese.

They like to tell me where they've seen me - on my bike, in the bank, at the store, on the train. They look in my basket at the supermarket and comment on the contents - "EEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHH?!?!?!?!?! You like rice?!?!"

I should point out that none of this is in any way nasty. They're just trying to make conversation. Also, it seems that asking inane questions is the way to make friends here. It's sort of expected to be asked what your favourite Japanese food or place in Japan is, but your favourite colour? Animal? Number? Weird.

The English thing is a bit more difficult. Now, I know that coming to Japan with little to no Japanese is a bit foolhardy, but I came here to learn. I try my best. I study. I try to practice. But all of a sudden basic things like shopping become exhausting trials, never mind anything more complicated like posting something, or opening a bank account or buying a cellphone. Standing in the condiment aisle for over ten minutes trying to figure out which is salt and which is sugar, giving up and buying both gets tiring, as does carrying around a large dictionary.

There is one person in the area who speaks good English - my boss. While she's very helpful for some things, I can't really be calling her up for every little salt/sugar emergency. Mostly I don't want her to think I'm an idiot, and partly because it's all part of the fun (?)

Without a good grasp of Japanese it's hard to make friends in the inaka. There are no other foreigners around. There is however another gaijin girl who lives on the same local train line who is lovely, and I can get a local train and then a Japan Rail train into the Big City. If I time the connection right it takes about an hour, so probably not something I'll be doing that often. I'm imagining that I'll be spending a lot of time just pootling around the countryside, at least until the snowboarding/skiing season starts!

The town has everything you need for daily life - it has a supermarket, 3 convenience stores (in Japan their food is unreal, nice, healthy and cheap), a giant pharmacy, a gas station, a liquor store and a LOAD of craft shops/paper shops/traditional Japanese stuff shops. Also, you can buy rice almost anywhere (like in the place where you pay your gas bill). For western food or books in English, I'll have to go into the city.

The one thing that keeps me sane though, is the library. Opening an account was the usual ordeal of dictionaries and bowing, but I got my card and now have access to any of the materials in any of the 20-odd Big City and surroundings libraries (some day I will figure out the computer system). As well as thousands and thousands of books, there are a few hundred dvds. Most of them have and English language track! The selection isn't amazing - they have more back seasons of ER than Disney movies, but it's still sweet. The old man in the library knows me well by now, I go there weekly, and he's always super helpful and never fines me when my stuff is back late. Actually, I think he's just terrified of having to try to explain "fine" in English, another joy of being a gaijin.

Of course, there are a lot of things that are really good about living in the sticks. The celebrity aspect can be great - people are always willing to help you out if then can. They want to make you feel welcome and show you the best side of Japan. If you make the effort to learn Japanese and talk to people you'll slowly become part of the community. People will be happily surprised with your efforts and do their best to understand you. The countryside is beautiful - clean air, wonderful scenery, lots of greenery. There's never any traffic to speak of. The pace of life is slower. There are no crowds. People are nicer. Everything's cheaper. You can see the stars at night and hear crickets and frogs calling out into the silence. The dirt and noise and crowds and expense of Tokyo seems like another country.

So, with my dvds, bike, coffee shop and year's supply of salt, I'm pretty happy to be living in the inaka.

Living In The Inaka - Part Two

I don't start work until 3 or 4, so I used to spend the mornings pottering around the house. When the flat got too claustrophobic I would make my way down to the local coffee shop. It's run by a husband and wife team, and they sell coffee, tea, slices of toast an inch thick, cut into three and spread with some sort of bean paste, ice cream and curry. This fine establishment is usually filled with elderly people.

Now, at home, "elderly" means 70 or so. Not in Japan. What with their diet of fish and whatnot, coupled with cycling around the place and working in the fields, the Japanese get old. 80, 90, 100. The oldest man and the oldest woman in the world are Japanese. These old people aren't sitting at home either, they're congregating around the entrance to the supermarket, pushing bikes up hills, hanging out at the bank in noisy huddles and going out for ice cream and coffee. This is where I usually run into them.

Anyway, they seem to have worked out some sort of schedule for the local coffee shop (the only one in town). There's only ever loads of old ladies OR loads of old men. God help the one that gets the day wrong, they'll be sitting alone forlornly trying to finish their ice cream as quickly as possible so they can go find their friends. Whichever group it is, when I walk in with my basic Japanese textbook they all turn around in unison and stare. The women usually start in with the "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHH?!?!?!?!?!" and then screech with laughter and giggles. Sometimes I can catch a word here and there - "gaijin", "kawaii". The men just give me the "EEEEHHH?!?!?!?!" and then exchange surprised looks. (Bear in mind I've been going there at least twice a week for nearly three months.) I sit down, order my coffee and break out the textbook. The women take it in turns to come over, look at what I'm doing, marvel as I struggle through the most basic hiragana sentence while reporting back to her cronies. The men slide into the chair opposite me and ask me where I'm from, why I'm here, have I been to Kyoto and so on. (All in Japanese. I can pick out bits and pieces by now, because I get the same questions over and over.)

All this was quite sweet at the start. I thought they were friendly and interested. Now, it's a bit exhausting. It's every single time I go in there. I just want coffee! I never thought I'd yearn for the anonymity of St*rbucks, but I do now.

Japan! What have you done to me?

Living In The Inaka - Part One

In Japanese, the inaka is the countryside. Of course, as everywhere, the term "countryside" is relative. To someone who lives in Shibuya in Tokyo, Nagoya is almost the inaka. To someone from Nagoya, my local "big city" is the inaka. To someone from the Big City, I live in the inaka. I think that if you can get to 3 convenience stores in 10 minutes, it's not quite the wilderness. But anyway.

Living in the inaka is very different to living in Tokyo or Osaka, or even a big city. You are usually the only white person in the area, possibly even the only non-Japanese. This automatically makes you something of a celebrity, but not the good kind of famous where people want to talk to you, more the kind that just attracts staring.

The Japanese have a word to describe you - gaijin. Gai means outside, jin means person. Together it means outsider. "Gaijin" can be considered a little bit rude and pejorative, but get used to it, that's what you are. Even if you learn Japanese to perfect fluency, marry a local, take on citizenship, have 5 kids and 25 grandkids and spend your life growing rice you will never be Japanese. You will always be a gaijin. A more polite word is gaikokujin (outside country person), a person from a foreign country, but noone really uses this. Best to just get over it and accept your gaijin status. Or rather, you can revel in it. You see, not being Japanese frees you of many of the obligations and responsibilities that the Japanese have. You can get away with a lot. Also, you'll always have a free seat next to you on the train, even if the train is totally packed and people are standing face-to-armpit in the aisles.

Anyway, not only am I white, but I'm the kind of white that's almost blue. I don't tan, even after I burn. You can see my veins. I have blue eyes and freckles, and (dyed) blonde hair. The only things that would make me more stare-worthy are 1) if I had naturally red hair, or 2) if I was black. (Both these things are rarer than pale blonde white people in Japan.)

This staring happens everywhere - on the street, in the bank, on the train, in the supermarket, everywhere. Most people will look away if you notice them staring, but children who don't know that it's rude to stare and old people who don't care will just carry on. If you are really out in the sticks, many children will never have seen a white person in real life. When they first clap eyes on you, one of two things will happen. Either they'll rush over and natter away in their baby Japanese, trying to paw your face and claw at your hair, or a look of total shock and fear takes them over and they'll be locked into staring. My favourite is when they can't stop looking at you, but their little hand reaches out to find the reassuring leg of their mother. Sometimes they even run away, crashing into the nearest pair of Japanese legs they can find and clinging on for dear life. Sometimes, it's not even their mother. While traumatising small children is undoubtedly a fun pastime, eventually all the attention does get a bit wearing. I need other things to fill my time.

My apartment

My apartment is small, and my rent is cheap. Coming from a big city, it seems almost too cheap. Like, less than my electricity bill at home was per month.

It has two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen/living/dining room. Hmm. That implies that the second room is big. It's not. It's a living room with a kitchen crammed in the side, with a fridge hanging out on one wall with a microwave on top. Even to call the kitchen a kitchen is a bit of an overstatement - it's a sink and a 2-ring gas stove with a tiny broiler/grill for fish (or a single slice of toast). Most older Japanese homes won't have an oven, so no lasagna, roast chicken, casseroles or baking.

I think that theoretically the bedroom is supposed to be living space too, since one wall is taken up with giant deep closets for storing futons in during the day, but I never seem to manage to put the futons away, so for me it's a bedroom.

The bathroom area has 3 parts - a little entrance way with a washing machine crammed in, and then a shower/bath room and a separate toilet. The bath is a typical Japanese one, small and deep. It's for sitting in rather than lying in.

In addition, I have a little hallway with the usual raised platform. I come in the door, take off my shoes and then step up into the apartment. There's a small storage area for shoes there.

All in all, when I arrived the apartment seemed quite western. There was a regular bed, there were no tatami mats (I was disappointed about this at the start, but now I'm happy with the wooden floors since I'm such a klutz - tatami is impossible to get coffee stains out of). There was a tv and a coffeemaker.

Since I've arrived I've made some changes. The bed is gone in favour of futons on the floor. The idea was that I'd be able to put the futons away during the day and have more space (see above). Also, if I made friends and wanted to have them stay over, futons are easily moved around to make two beds where there once was one. This might have been a mistake - partly because I never put the futons away, partly because I haven't made any friends that I would invite over yet. So, the net result is that I've just lost the storage space under the bed. Oh well.

I also got a new couch and chairs. The old couch was kind of gross and really uncomfortable, so I shelled out $49 and got a new one. Yes, it was brand new at that price. The chairs were $15. I'll post a photo, and when you see them you'll think they look weird. They do, that's because in Japan furniture is traditionally on the floor, as in, without legs. This has the effect of making the apartment seem much bigger because it's not crammed with furniture. Also, the couch and chairs can be folded flat and the table's legs can be removed so the whole living room set could be crammed into one of my futon closets, if I ever wanted to try.

Hmmm. What else? I don't have a garden, or any outside space. There is a parking space with the apartment, but no car as of yet. I do have a bicycle for getting around though!

Where do I go on my bicycle? Details of the town to follow...