- My Japanese teacher (private class)
- My other Japanese teacher (Monday class)
- My other other Japanese teacher (Monday class, again)
- Student (~40 years old, male)
- Student (~20 years old, female)
- Student (~45 years old, female)
- Student (not really sure at this point)
Thursday 27 November 2014
List of Japanese people I have tried to explain Yorkshire pudding to
Monday 24 November 2014
The City That Sometimes Sleeps In Pods: Part 1
I went to Tokyo in August. It's now the dying half of November and I still haven't written about it. Soz. I'm lazy, and I like clicking pointlessly around my internet tabs for half an hour more than I like writing, at least right now. I promise it'll get better when I get to that bit in my life where I write effortless short stories and learn Russian and look super-super-jacked and my hair doesn't ever do that weird thing. I predict that'll be next month, maybe.
Day 1
We stumbled off the shinkansen and into Tokyo station's nearest park, blinking in the light. As I went through the ticket barriers I made a mistake and had to be helped through by the station employee. Already I looked like a tourist, which felt like a great indignity despite the fact that in Tokyo I am one. The nearby 'park', wide and manicured, turned out to be the grounds of the Imperial Palace, which appeared to be shut, but had plenty of tourists milling about it anyway. Having a lot of white strangers around me felt a bit surreal; I look forward to having a freakout when I arrive back in the West and realise we're everywhere. The vague stress that comes with going on a trip to a new place was soothed by an ice cream from a vending machine and taking a good, hard look at this brilliant statue of the honourable samurai Kusunoki:
We lounged around on the lawns for a bit, probably both secretly imagining ourselves as samurai but not telling each other about it. After finishing our ice creams and saying goodbye to Kusonoki, we crawled into the massive spiderweb that is the Tokyo underground system. Our first proper stop was to be a museum of pre-16th century ceramics famous for the extremely fine detailing on the ahahaha actually we went to a Mexican restaurant.
This was a lot more exciting than it might sound. For visitors to Japan, one of the highlights might be getting to be experience good, authentic Japanese food. But I'd been in Japan for two-thirds of a year at this point, and for me Tokyo was a chance to get my hands on some good non-Japanese food. Frijoles is a burrito restaurant tucked into a square of Roppongi, a district known for its heavy concentration of expats. The awkward experience of ordering food in a mix of English, Spanish and Japanese, switching in and out of them mostly at random, is really quite something to go through.
This was followed by a trip to the Pokemon Centre, naturally.
I found myself getting childishly hyped up in here, despite it being a) essentially just a gift shop and b) being mostly dedicated to shit bazillionth-generation Pokemon drawn when everyone had got really tired of the whole idea and gone "oh just make it a spider and put a triangle on its head or something". A lot of the designs were a bit odd as well, despite this being the official store; note the horrifying stretched-out Pikachu (not Pikachus, I guess, since you don't pluralise in Japan). Amongst the nightmares I found a rather tasteful Raichu notebook, and my significant other got a pencil case from the limited-edition Hallowe'en-themed "Spooky Party" collection. I love spooky parties. Spooky parties all year, I say.
By the time we left, our toys clutched in our warm chubby hands, it was dark. We decided to head to Shinjuku, the business district, in order to find the Park Hyatt hotel bar, which we'd heard had a wonderful view (and also happens to be the hotel from Lost in Translation, for those of you who like films which end with a man saying a thing and you don't know what he said because he said it really quietly).
Despite being a big deal, the Park Hyatt hotel bar follows the grand Japanese tradition of bars holed up in creepily empty buildings that you're not sure you're supposed to be in. (You come across this a lot in Nagoya, I think due to the scarcity of land space. There are a lot of small bars and restaurants which are set up in random office blocks, which means that going to a new place for the first time usually goes hand-in-hand with feeling like you're walking into an elaborate setup for a kidnapping.) The building's deserted, echoing lobby turned creepy cold corner after corner until we found someone who told us in unnervingly mannered English how to get to the bar. The place itself had a stunning view, was very classy and abhorrently expensive. Also any time you left the confines of the bar someone asked to know where you wanted to go, very politely but with undertones that suggested you might try and rob any room that wasn't the toilet.
We finished the night by woozily slurping up ramen and then spending the night in a capsule hotel, or rather, capsule hotels plural. Japanese infrastructure is built around dealing with two things - natural disasters and drunk businessmen. There are quick-and-cheap eateries on every corner designed to feed businessmen late at night, and vending machines full of coffee and weird energy drinks every eight feet designed to heal businessmen's hangovers first thing in the morning. For the inbetween stage, there's the capsule hotel - a cheapo dormitory where you can catch a few hours' sleep in a Spartan pod not much bigger than your own body. You know, the kind you might use to go into 'hypersleep' if you were in a film set on a spaceship. Unfortunately hardly any of these hotels cater to women, but we found his-and-hers matching hotels next to each other in Shinjuku. The women's building only had a handful of actual science-fiction-style capsules and the rest of the sleeping spaces were just crappy little ledges with blankets on them, like something out of an orphanage in the 1940s. But for around a tenner you can't really complain, and the rest of the hotel was surprisingly nice, with a sauna, dressing tables and even a little library where you could read manga. I desperately wanted to join the three middle-aged women watching TV in the corner, smoking in their dressing gowns, talking in voices like vintage boxed wine and clearly not giving any shits whatsoever, but I was far too in awe. And using 'not-giving-a-fuck' grammar forms is a good ten or twelve lessons away in my Japanese textbook.
Day 2
After dodging lots of grumpy women in robes, I got out of the hotel and met up with my Significant Beloved Lovely-Faced One so we could get breakfast and then go to the legendary Akihabara.
Akihabara is Tokyo's geekiest district, littered with arcades, electronics stores, and anime posters. It's somewhere I've wanted to go since I was about twelve and finally being there was a little bit odd - I was excited to finally be somewhere so legendary, but due to already having spent many months in Japan there was nothing that individually seemed strange or new to me. I'd been to all these places before, there was just...more. A lot more. I wish I'd taken it in better, but I was feeling pretty ill after a few nights of poor sleep and bad food decisions. It was also around here that I got bit by a mosquito and became paranoid that I had contracted dengue fever, since a small outbreak had recently occurred in the city. But we did manage to put all that aside and crawl up the five-storey all-round nerd emporium Mandarake, poking around at the figurines, combing through the games, and gently sidestepping around the porn. To be honest it was a little overpriced and I've seen better deals back in Nagoya, but I'm glad to know that there's somewhere in the world I can buy a Dreamcast for £1000. Also their motto is "Rulers of Time", which is a touch grander than "Every little helps" or whatever.
We spent the evening in an arcade, of which I have few photos due to running low on battery after desperately Googling "dengue fever symptoms" every two minutes, but here's a game where a professor challenges a deadly mech/beast hybrid with a series of maths questions:
We played a few rhythm games, a RUBBISH Transformers rail shooter, a bizarre beat-em-up featuring the cast of Persona, a side-scrolling bullet-hell shooter on the biggest screen I've ever seen and some other odds and ends. I forgot about deadly disease for a bit and rounded off the evening with some comfort food (burgers at Bebu, a fancy-but-not-too-intimidating restaurant in the middle of yet another uncomfortably massive hotel building).
Again: in Tokyo, good Western food - i.e. Western-style food which hasn't been bathed in mayonnaise for some reason - is a salve on the little hangnail of my soul, the part that gets homesick for semi-detached houses and train delays and Walkers crisps. This Ceasar salad, and the burger I had with it (teriyaki chicken with cabbage - see, cultural) was so achingly good I brought my parents back here when they came to visit a couple of months later. The staff were accustomed to foreigners and spoke a lot in English, leading to yet more awkward slipping back and forth between languages. This is one thing I think I prefer about Nagoya - most of the time you will be spoken to in Japanese, and when you say you don't understand someone, they will either just say the exact same thing at the exact same speed again, or decide you are incapable of anything more than basic bodily functions and give up. You know where you are with that. It gives you more opportunity to practice, and feels like you're being given a bit of credit and not like you need to be pandered to. It feels better for my ego, even if it means I sometimes end up being given diarrhea medication instead of hayfever tablets.
Coming soon: The City That Sometimes Sleeps In Pods: Part 2
Day 1
We stumbled off the shinkansen and into Tokyo station's nearest park, blinking in the light. As I went through the ticket barriers I made a mistake and had to be helped through by the station employee. Already I looked like a tourist, which felt like a great indignity despite the fact that in Tokyo I am one. The nearby 'park', wide and manicured, turned out to be the grounds of the Imperial Palace, which appeared to be shut, but had plenty of tourists milling about it anyway. Having a lot of white strangers around me felt a bit surreal; I look forward to having a freakout when I arrive back in the West and realise we're everywhere. The vague stress that comes with going on a trip to a new place was soothed by an ice cream from a vending machine and taking a good, hard look at this brilliant statue of the honourable samurai Kusunoki:
We lounged around on the lawns for a bit, probably both secretly imagining ourselves as samurai but not telling each other about it. After finishing our ice creams and saying goodbye to Kusonoki, we crawled into the massive spiderweb that is the Tokyo underground system. Our first proper stop was to be a museum of pre-16th century ceramics famous for the extremely fine detailing on the ahahaha actually we went to a Mexican restaurant.
This was a lot more exciting than it might sound. For visitors to Japan, one of the highlights might be getting to be experience good, authentic Japanese food. But I'd been in Japan for two-thirds of a year at this point, and for me Tokyo was a chance to get my hands on some good non-Japanese food. Frijoles is a burrito restaurant tucked into a square of Roppongi, a district known for its heavy concentration of expats. The awkward experience of ordering food in a mix of English, Spanish and Japanese, switching in and out of them mostly at random, is really quite something to go through.
This was followed by a trip to the Pokemon Centre, naturally.
I found myself getting childishly hyped up in here, despite it being a) essentially just a gift shop and b) being mostly dedicated to shit bazillionth-generation Pokemon drawn when everyone had got really tired of the whole idea and gone "oh just make it a spider and put a triangle on its head or something". A lot of the designs were a bit odd as well, despite this being the official store; note the horrifying stretched-out Pikachu (not Pikachus, I guess, since you don't pluralise in Japan). Amongst the nightmares I found a rather tasteful Raichu notebook, and my significant other got a pencil case from the limited-edition Hallowe'en-themed "Spooky Party" collection. I love spooky parties. Spooky parties all year, I say.
By the time we left, our toys clutched in our warm chubby hands, it was dark. We decided to head to Shinjuku, the business district, in order to find the Park Hyatt hotel bar, which we'd heard had a wonderful view (and also happens to be the hotel from Lost in Translation, for those of you who like films which end with a man saying a thing and you don't know what he said because he said it really quietly).
Despite being a big deal, the Park Hyatt hotel bar follows the grand Japanese tradition of bars holed up in creepily empty buildings that you're not sure you're supposed to be in. (You come across this a lot in Nagoya, I think due to the scarcity of land space. There are a lot of small bars and restaurants which are set up in random office blocks, which means that going to a new place for the first time usually goes hand-in-hand with feeling like you're walking into an elaborate setup for a kidnapping.) The building's deserted, echoing lobby turned creepy cold corner after corner until we found someone who told us in unnervingly mannered English how to get to the bar. The place itself had a stunning view, was very classy and abhorrently expensive. Also any time you left the confines of the bar someone asked to know where you wanted to go, very politely but with undertones that suggested you might try and rob any room that wasn't the toilet.
We finished the night by woozily slurping up ramen and then spending the night in a capsule hotel, or rather, capsule hotels plural. Japanese infrastructure is built around dealing with two things - natural disasters and drunk businessmen. There are quick-and-cheap eateries on every corner designed to feed businessmen late at night, and vending machines full of coffee and weird energy drinks every eight feet designed to heal businessmen's hangovers first thing in the morning. For the inbetween stage, there's the capsule hotel - a cheapo dormitory where you can catch a few hours' sleep in a Spartan pod not much bigger than your own body. You know, the kind you might use to go into 'hypersleep' if you were in a film set on a spaceship. Unfortunately hardly any of these hotels cater to women, but we found his-and-hers matching hotels next to each other in Shinjuku. The women's building only had a handful of actual science-fiction-style capsules and the rest of the sleeping spaces were just crappy little ledges with blankets on them, like something out of an orphanage in the 1940s. But for around a tenner you can't really complain, and the rest of the hotel was surprisingly nice, with a sauna, dressing tables and even a little library where you could read manga. I desperately wanted to join the three middle-aged women watching TV in the corner, smoking in their dressing gowns, talking in voices like vintage boxed wine and clearly not giving any shits whatsoever, but I was far too in awe. And using 'not-giving-a-fuck' grammar forms is a good ten or twelve lessons away in my Japanese textbook.
Day 2
After dodging lots of grumpy women in robes, I got out of the hotel and met up with my Significant Beloved Lovely-Faced One so we could get breakfast and then go to the legendary Akihabara.
Akihabara is Tokyo's geekiest district, littered with arcades, electronics stores, and anime posters. It's somewhere I've wanted to go since I was about twelve and finally being there was a little bit odd - I was excited to finally be somewhere so legendary, but due to already having spent many months in Japan there was nothing that individually seemed strange or new to me. I'd been to all these places before, there was just...more. A lot more. I wish I'd taken it in better, but I was feeling pretty ill after a few nights of poor sleep and bad food decisions. It was also around here that I got bit by a mosquito and became paranoid that I had contracted dengue fever, since a small outbreak had recently occurred in the city. But we did manage to put all that aside and crawl up the five-storey all-round nerd emporium Mandarake, poking around at the figurines, combing through the games, and gently sidestepping around the porn. To be honest it was a little overpriced and I've seen better deals back in Nagoya, but I'm glad to know that there's somewhere in the world I can buy a Dreamcast for £1000. Also their motto is "Rulers of Time", which is a touch grander than "Every little helps" or whatever.
We spent the evening in an arcade, of which I have few photos due to running low on battery after desperately Googling "dengue fever symptoms" every two minutes, but here's a game where a professor challenges a deadly mech/beast hybrid with a series of maths questions:
We played a few rhythm games, a RUBBISH Transformers rail shooter, a bizarre beat-em-up featuring the cast of Persona, a side-scrolling bullet-hell shooter on the biggest screen I've ever seen and some other odds and ends. I forgot about deadly disease for a bit and rounded off the evening with some comfort food (burgers at Bebu, a fancy-but-not-too-intimidating restaurant in the middle of yet another uncomfortably massive hotel building).
Again: in Tokyo, good Western food - i.e. Western-style food which hasn't been bathed in mayonnaise for some reason - is a salve on the little hangnail of my soul, the part that gets homesick for semi-detached houses and train delays and Walkers crisps. This Ceasar salad, and the burger I had with it (teriyaki chicken with cabbage - see, cultural) was so achingly good I brought my parents back here when they came to visit a couple of months later. The staff were accustomed to foreigners and spoke a lot in English, leading to yet more awkward slipping back and forth between languages. This is one thing I think I prefer about Nagoya - most of the time you will be spoken to in Japanese, and when you say you don't understand someone, they will either just say the exact same thing at the exact same speed again, or decide you are incapable of anything more than basic bodily functions and give up. You know where you are with that. It gives you more opportunity to practice, and feels like you're being given a bit of credit and not like you need to be pandered to. It feels better for my ego, even if it means I sometimes end up being given diarrhea medication instead of hayfever tablets.
Coming soon: The City That Sometimes Sleeps In Pods: Part 2
Sunday 23 November 2014
On Korankei
Seasons are a big deal here.
It's a well-known cliché among expats in Japan that Japanese people think theirs is the only country in the world that has four seasons. Japanese people will tell you proudly about the uniqueness of having spring, summer, autumn and winter, and then be thoroughly weirded out when you tell them the exact same meteorological sorcery happens in your country. (And they will be doubly weirded out when you point out that Japan actually has five seasons if you count the rainy season that separates spring and summer). There's a grain of truth to this stereotype, but from my lofty velvet chair of Knowing Just Slightly Above Fuck-All About Japan, I think it's also an oversimplification. Yes, most of the world has four seasons, but there's a certain specificity to the seasons in Japan that the UK's temperate climate just can't compare to.
"It's really bloody hot!" you say to yourself one morning in June. It will proceed to be really bloody hot for the next three months. To someone unused to a stable, predictable, blaringly enthusiastic summer, the next few months seem not like a series of days and nights, but like a single unbearable epoch (especially since you can't sleep, which might otherwise have broken things up a bit). All your clothes that aren't shorts and cotton vests can go in the bin. Then one morning you say to yourself "oh, it's not really bloody hot any more", and it's autumn. Enjoy the next two months before it's really bloody cold. It's almost like someone flips a switch overnight, and it's not really surprising that so much of Japan's culture revolves around these distinct changes when the lines between the seasons feel so crisp and clear, and bring about a noticeable change in environment and mood. (The prevailing mood of summer being "everything can bugger off so I can go home and lie on the floor in my pants forever".) Not only are the physical elements of the seasons quite distinct, but Japan also tends to go in a lot more for seasonal foods, clothing, decorations and activities. This time of year it's all about koyo - the turning of autumn leaves.
The most famous spot around here for koyo is Korankei, a valley in the countryside just outside Toyota (a nice city, but one which failed to live up to my expectations by not being entirely made out of cars). We actually went there twice - actually actually, two-and-a-half times - due to accidentally going too early the first time and ending up viewing the slightly-muddy-but-still-quite-nice colours instead. This first trip was a bit of a palaver: first we wasted an hour hanging out in Toyota's McDonalds trying out the autumn special, which was mushroom risotto balls. (6/10, would not repurchase, but an interesting cultural diversion.) Then we spent another hour wandering around the bus stops trying to crack their mysterious codes. Then we finally got on the right bus, only to find that the driver had a habit of narrating the entire journey on a Madonna-style headset ("we're turning right now....we've had to stop because of a traffic light....okay, the traffic light's changed, let's go.")
It was worth it, though. The air felt fresh, alpine, and the gorge was, um, gorgeous. We arrived about half an hour before sunset and got to see the trees illuminated after dark:
I'd pictured Korankei as some huge national park-type thing, but it's actually a pretty small area, a couple of narrow paths either side of a river maybe a mile or two long before the intensity and variation of the colours dies down and the lines of tourists fade off. I actually prefer this; it made the area feel more special and like something you could peacefully spend time in without feeling a completionist urge to go all over the place.
***
A couple of weeks later we had some time off and decided to visit again, but in the daytime, since the trees were supposed to be in full...bloom? whatever the autumnal equivalent of 'bloom' is. This did not get off to a good start. We spent forty minutes on a tube to Toyota and then discovered that despite being one of the most popular tourist spots in the area, at its most popular time of the year, the buses only went twice in the morning and then not again until close to dark. Having missed the morning buses, we tried to placate ourselves by going to the local art museum instead only to find it was closed. Until November of next year. We went home to nap, muck about on the Internet, and try not to think about how much time we'd wasted.
The next day, we attempted the journey again - and, hoorah! Okay, we did have to take a completely packed bus home, standing for most of the 90-minute journey. But look how pretty:
You can even see the difference two weeks made, if you compare the picture above from the first visit - the oranges and yellows are a lot more vibrant, and the rare sprays of red weren't around at all before. Another sign of the sheer precision the Japanese seasons go in for. A couple of weeks more and they'll be gone.
Now, if you will excuse me, I'm off to build a tent out of blankets. I feel "really bloody cold" season coming on.
Sunday 16 November 2014
Five things I like to do in Japanese winter
1) Put off morning showers
Being in the shower is okay. Being not in the shower is okay. But it's getting to the point in our increasingly chilly flat when the in-between stages - the wasteland between in-shower and having-had-a-shower - are unquestionably the worst part of any day. Piles of thermal vests, jumpers, blankets and furry pyjamas are strategically placed at the bathroom door, piles that I can dive straight into at the end of the shower in order to minimise wet-and-cold-time. Speaking of:
2) Blankets
Wandering around the flat huddled in a blanket-cape and moaning softly like a lost ghost is one of my favourite winter staples. One blanket for each of us is the usual. Two blankets is a selfish luxury reserved for when only one person is in the flat. The first person to gift us two more blankets will get a lot of hugs.
3) Cafés
Why pay for heating when there are buildings that let you be warm for free?
A cool thing about the region I live in is the local tradition of "morning service", which is neither a religious thing nor a sexual thing but instead a special deal offered by cafés where you get free toast and a boiled egg if you buy coffee around breakfast-time. Unfortunately winter mornings do not entice me to go out, or indeed do anything much at the moment (see #1 and #2), so I haven't gone for morning service in a while. Instead I like to loiter in cafés in the evenings reading Discworld novels and trying out odd teas whilst secretly regretting not getting hot chocolate instead.
I also like to get cinnamon toast with honey, like the one pictured above. Bread in Japan comes in ridiculously thick slices which are impractical for anything savoury, but work perfectly to balance out sweet foods. Winter is a bastard for making me a reluctant convert to Massive Bread.
4) Leaving half-empty teacups around the house
Drink half a cup of tea in the morning before rushing out the door, leave it on the side. Drink some tea in the bedroom to try and warm up before the uncomfortable move to the living room, leave it on the side. Drink some tea, forget about it, discover it again when it's gone cold, leave it in the sink. Cups cups cups, a traditional winter decoration. Teabag still in to make it look extra-homemade.
5) Fucking everything off
Chores? Nah. Exercise? Nah. Day-trips? Nah.
Nah.
Being in the shower is okay. Being not in the shower is okay. But it's getting to the point in our increasingly chilly flat when the in-between stages - the wasteland between in-shower and having-had-a-shower - are unquestionably the worst part of any day. Piles of thermal vests, jumpers, blankets and furry pyjamas are strategically placed at the bathroom door, piles that I can dive straight into at the end of the shower in order to minimise wet-and-cold-time. Speaking of:
2) Blankets
Wandering around the flat huddled in a blanket-cape and moaning softly like a lost ghost is one of my favourite winter staples. One blanket for each of us is the usual. Two blankets is a selfish luxury reserved for when only one person is in the flat. The first person to gift us two more blankets will get a lot of hugs.
3) Cafés
Why pay for heating when there are buildings that let you be warm for free?
I think you can measure exactly how cold it is by the pinched-skull expression on my face.
A cool thing about the region I live in is the local tradition of "morning service", which is neither a religious thing nor a sexual thing but instead a special deal offered by cafés where you get free toast and a boiled egg if you buy coffee around breakfast-time. Unfortunately winter mornings do not entice me to go out, or indeed do anything much at the moment (see #1 and #2), so I haven't gone for morning service in a while. Instead I like to loiter in cafés in the evenings reading Discworld novels and trying out odd teas whilst secretly regretting not getting hot chocolate instead.
I also like to get cinnamon toast with honey, like the one pictured above. Bread in Japan comes in ridiculously thick slices which are impractical for anything savoury, but work perfectly to balance out sweet foods. Winter is a bastard for making me a reluctant convert to Massive Bread.
4) Leaving half-empty teacups around the house
Drink half a cup of tea in the morning before rushing out the door, leave it on the side. Drink some tea in the bedroom to try and warm up before the uncomfortable move to the living room, leave it on the side. Drink some tea, forget about it, discover it again when it's gone cold, leave it in the sink. Cups cups cups, a traditional winter decoration. Teabag still in to make it look extra-homemade.
5) Fucking everything off
Chores? Nah. Exercise? Nah. Day-trips? Nah.
Nah.
Friday 7 November 2014
A typical Thursday in Japan
Many of the four of you who consistently read this blog might be wondering: yes, Unperky, you go on holiday, yes, you miscommunicate with dentists, but what do you do on a regular day? So I've attempted to document one of my ordinary Thursdays (the first day of my weekend).
9.00 - I rouse myself like a drugged whale slowly adjusting to the light on the banks of the Thames.
9.20 - a shower. To the outside world, Japan is at cutting edge of technology; a tectonically violent techtopia. Friendly androids walk the streets of Tokyo and offer you green tea. Crime is low because all disputes are resolved in virtual reality battles. Toilets sing opera and recommend local restaurants in six different languages. But back in real Japan, my office asks me to send things by fax and my shower is operated by a crank handle. I hold down a switch and turn the handle; the disarmingly loud clicks can be heard in any other flat in the building. This triggers a small gas fire which can be seen through the window in the big grey unit. This fire heats my water. No friendly androids here.
10.00 - I take the underground to my Japanese class, which is run by middle-aged women whose children have left home and who now require someone new to chastise for not speaking properly. Today two of them giggle behind their hands when I don't know the word for 'honey' and have to say 'bee dessert' instead. The other one points and laughs openly.
12.00 - I leave the class as soon as it finishes, so I can go to...another class. A bit overboard, perhaps, but my second class is a one-on-one lesson and this is the most convenient time to take it. The escalators in Japan don't start moving until you step in front of them, so until you reach them you cannot tell which goes up and goes down. I accidentally step in front of the wrong one and an extremely loud and accusing buzzer blares out for five seconds, which feels like a lifetime.
1.30 - I leave my second class, conjugating adjectives in my head to distract myself from the McDonalds next door. I've started using an app which tracks your diet and exercise habits and I don't want another angry red pie chart on my hands. Next I have to go to the city centre, for a bit of shopping and to fill in some tax forms at the local government office. Oh Ms. Unperky, with these anecdotes you are spoiling us.
3.00 - I've just finished lunch at Bagel & Bagel, where I have had a bagel. I found a branch in the labyrinthine basement of one of Nagoya's infinite department stores. Back home it would be an entirely unremarkable kind of sandwich shop, but good Western-style sandwichey places are a rare treat here. For some unknown reason bagels here usually only come in sweet flavours, and all sandwiches are soaked in mayonnaise, a condiment I only enjoy when used sparingly. My occidental indulgence over with, I look over my tax forms, which are exactly as good as tax forms in England except they are also all in kanji.
3.50 - I exit the ward office. The whole event has been shockingly mild. I went up to a man at the counter and showed him the Japanese letter my employers gave me to give to him, which says something to the effect of: "please help this stupid foreigner, tell them how much money they can claim, and just do whatever you think is best when they respond to your questions by nodding or shaking their heads apparently at random." Fifteen minutes later everything was seemingly finished, though I'm sure I will get an angry civil servant at my door in a few days demanding to know why I've filled in the National Insurance Adjustment Form instead of the Insurance National Adjustment Form.
4.15 - I am walking toward Fushimi, the business district towards the western end of the city centre. There's a nice cinema here which shows films in English, as well as a few cosy restaurants and bars. Right next to the cinema is a darkly atmospheric and very expensive cocktail bar. It's located on the second floor; when you leave the waiter guides you to the lift, waits until just after the doors have closed, then rushes down to meet you at the first floor and pretends like he hasn't done anything unusual. On the way to the cinema I pop into a convenience store, hand them my internet bills and pay for them in cash, because in Japan you pay for everything in convenience stores and in cash. Milk, bills, Amazon orders, plane tickets you ordered online, everything. The entire country works like a laundering operation.
5.00 - I'm a little early for the film, so I sit in the cinema's restaurant and drink jasmine tea, enjoying the fact that price-gouging is considerably rarer in Japan (except, for some reason, with fruit). Tokyo can certainly be expensive in certain ways but Nagoya seems cheaper than the major cities of Southern England. I ask a staff member if I can take my drink into the cinema, feeling a warm glow of pride at speaking effortless Japanese to him, followed immediately by the hot glow of stupidity because of course you can take drinks into a bloody cinema.
The film, by the way, is Frank, a British/Irish semi-fictional film about an eccentric avant-garde band led by a man wearing a big papier mâché head.
8.20 - I'm out of the cinema and have gone for dinner at the Italian restaurant just under my flat, which is good because it's always nice to have a familiar toilet within a 50-metre radius. (What? It's just nice, is all I'm saying.) I really enjoyed the film but my thoughts on it are pretty boring so I won't bother to review it, just to recommend it. After dinner I go home and potter about until bedtime...
...and that's a typical Thursday, more or less. I hope this gave some fascinating insight into what I do when no-one wants to invite me to an erotic party or pay me lots of money to appear on Japanese television.
9.00 - I rouse myself like a drugged whale slowly adjusting to the light on the banks of the Thames.
9.20 - a shower. To the outside world, Japan is at cutting edge of technology; a tectonically violent techtopia. Friendly androids walk the streets of Tokyo and offer you green tea. Crime is low because all disputes are resolved in virtual reality battles. Toilets sing opera and recommend local restaurants in six different languages. But back in real Japan, my office asks me to send things by fax and my shower is operated by a crank handle. I hold down a switch and turn the handle; the disarmingly loud clicks can be heard in any other flat in the building. This triggers a small gas fire which can be seen through the window in the big grey unit. This fire heats my water. No friendly androids here.
10.00 - I take the underground to my Japanese class, which is run by middle-aged women whose children have left home and who now require someone new to chastise for not speaking properly. Today two of them giggle behind their hands when I don't know the word for 'honey' and have to say 'bee dessert' instead. The other one points and laughs openly.
1.30 - I leave my second class, conjugating adjectives in my head to distract myself from the McDonalds next door. I've started using an app which tracks your diet and exercise habits and I don't want another angry red pie chart on my hands. Next I have to go to the city centre, for a bit of shopping and to fill in some tax forms at the local government office. Oh Ms. Unperky, with these anecdotes you are spoiling us.
3.00 - I've just finished lunch at Bagel & Bagel, where I have had a bagel. I found a branch in the labyrinthine basement of one of Nagoya's infinite department stores. Back home it would be an entirely unremarkable kind of sandwich shop, but good Western-style sandwichey places are a rare treat here. For some unknown reason bagels here usually only come in sweet flavours, and all sandwiches are soaked in mayonnaise, a condiment I only enjoy when used sparingly. My occidental indulgence over with, I look over my tax forms, which are exactly as good as tax forms in England except they are also all in kanji.
3.50 - I exit the ward office. The whole event has been shockingly mild. I went up to a man at the counter and showed him the Japanese letter my employers gave me to give to him, which says something to the effect of: "please help this stupid foreigner, tell them how much money they can claim, and just do whatever you think is best when they respond to your questions by nodding or shaking their heads apparently at random." Fifteen minutes later everything was seemingly finished, though I'm sure I will get an angry civil servant at my door in a few days demanding to know why I've filled in the National Insurance Adjustment Form instead of the Insurance National Adjustment Form.
4.15 - I am walking toward Fushimi, the business district towards the western end of the city centre. There's a nice cinema here which shows films in English, as well as a few cosy restaurants and bars. Right next to the cinema is a darkly atmospheric and very expensive cocktail bar. It's located on the second floor; when you leave the waiter guides you to the lift, waits until just after the doors have closed, then rushes down to meet you at the first floor and pretends like he hasn't done anything unusual. On the way to the cinema I pop into a convenience store, hand them my internet bills and pay for them in cash, because in Japan you pay for everything in convenience stores and in cash. Milk, bills, Amazon orders, plane tickets you ordered online, everything. The entire country works like a laundering operation.
5.00 - I'm a little early for the film, so I sit in the cinema's restaurant and drink jasmine tea, enjoying the fact that price-gouging is considerably rarer in Japan (except, for some reason, with fruit). Tokyo can certainly be expensive in certain ways but Nagoya seems cheaper than the major cities of Southern England. I ask a staff member if I can take my drink into the cinema, feeling a warm glow of pride at speaking effortless Japanese to him, followed immediately by the hot glow of stupidity because of course you can take drinks into a bloody cinema.
The film, by the way, is Frank, a British/Irish semi-fictional film about an eccentric avant-garde band led by a man wearing a big papier mâché head.
8.20 - I'm out of the cinema and have gone for dinner at the Italian restaurant just under my flat, which is good because it's always nice to have a familiar toilet within a 50-metre radius. (What? It's just nice, is all I'm saying.) I really enjoyed the film but my thoughts on it are pretty boring so I won't bother to review it, just to recommend it. After dinner I go home and potter about until bedtime...
...and that's a typical Thursday, more or less. I hope this gave some fascinating insight into what I do when no-one wants to invite me to an erotic party or pay me lots of money to appear on Japanese television.
Thursday 6 November 2014
Kids make me sick.
Teaching kids exposes you to a lot of germs.
Teaching kids in a foreign country exposes you to a lot of germs you've never been exposed to before, which in my head basically equates to double germs.
Two months ago a four-year-old coughed directly up my nose and a week later I was swaddled in blankets curled up like a snail-shell on my bathroom floor. This week the SAME child spluttered blithely and without remorse into the blameless air of my classroom, over and over again like an automated snot machine, so now I'm sick again. This week's national holiday was ruined because I needed to stay home with my nausea, and I can't get into a deep sleep so I keep having weird dreams about the mundane things on my bedside table. Wonderful.
Here endeth the lesson: buy your children biohazard suits until they learn to cover their mouths like proper humans.
Teaching kids in a foreign country exposes you to a lot of germs you've never been exposed to before, which in my head basically equates to double germs.
Two months ago a four-year-old coughed directly up my nose and a week later I was swaddled in blankets curled up like a snail-shell on my bathroom floor. This week the SAME child spluttered blithely and without remorse into the blameless air of my classroom, over and over again like an automated snot machine, so now I'm sick again. This week's national holiday was ruined because I needed to stay home with my nausea, and I can't get into a deep sleep so I keep having weird dreams about the mundane things on my bedside table. Wonderful.
Here endeth the lesson: buy your children biohazard suits until they learn to cover their mouths like proper humans.
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