Chapter 3 - April 2000

Thought I might try and flesh out some of the previous Chapter, I realise that I skimmed through some things:

I've only scratched the surface {grin} it's a must visit place .. actually I think visit is the wrong term. I think you need to live in such a place to actually tell what it is about. Too many places are merely visited. Postcard holidays are enacted according to binding schedules with set itineraries. You end up back home with a set of photos that show you places you almost can't remember being in. "Oh yeah, I was there ... now where was that? Oh look I wrote the name on the back here.."

Actually this is why I think places should be lived in rather than visited. Obviously not feasible for many people/places. Be it financially difficult or culturally impossible, but still, to live with a people is to have something tangible rather than a set of postcards which show a place you still do not understand the machinations of.

To come here briefly and not speak the language is to be almost blind to everything that goes on.

Nothing can be read because of the script on all the signs, so much activity is held behind doors which do not explain, to the ignorant gaijin, what goes on inside. One might enter to find they are in an Izakaya where you can eat heaps at great prices or that you are in a Snack Bar where you will pay a minimum of US$30 for the privilege of getting your crackers and hot sausages and alcohol served exclusively by some young girls while you sing Karaoke songs. Just so you can go home pissed and broke.

Seems a lot of fellows do spend their money this way though. Relieving the stress of the long hours they do. Apparently the karaoke bars are a fair deal though. Often you can drink as much as you like for a flat fee of 2000Y [US$18] and you spend the night singing with your pals. These venues being group oriented, i.e. men and women. I recall that in many of the clubs I worked in the pissed folk were indeed singing along to their favorite songs, don't we all, so why not get handed a microphone and do a duet with your best pal, girl/boy friend.

Ginza; this is where the money hangs out, and although I was there for less than an hour I had a nice walk through the place. Very select, with a lot of restaurants as you would expect of the cashed up area. A lot of kimono'ed ladies on the street welcoming and farewelling their clientele. Manners being uppermost in their rituals. Plenty of people dressed in expensive clothes. A bright lights part of Tokyo.

Taxis abound for of course where there's money there are people too drunk to drive who can afford to rent a chauffeur to get home. It costs, if I haven't mentioned it, 600 yen [US$6] to open the door of a taxi or rather have it opened for you. The driver has a switch which operates the back door and the customer is *not* meant to override this system!

Rules are rules, tradition is tradition, ne? &gtgrin&lt

The usual abundance of bright lights and neon which now sit shoulder to shoulder with the old traditional paper lantern styles which would probably have been the only source of lighting on these streets long ago when the mothers of these woman were doing the same job[s].

[.. Cool, today's film is 'The Natural' 1984, Robert Redford, Glen Close, Barbara Hershey I can't believe it. Practically modern day! No where's that bilingual button again.. gaaaahhhh .. They televise one English language film a day. Can't let it slip by.]

The weather has come good a few times in the last couple of weeks. Some gorgeous evenings where the wind has softened to a gentle breeze with that freshness that brusque winter air often belies. The hint of summer so close it might even be a balmy summer evening that's just been pushed aside by a last minute stormy coolness from some nearby country, namely Siberia {shiver}. The air has that summer smokiness about it, I know it's really pollution but hey nice to think otherwise, ne?

Reminds of the smells from Indonesia, curry cooking scents wafting about on hot tropical air currents.

As far as desolate landscape goes it is pretty flat and industrialised around these parts, huge great power lines snaking across the countryside shouldered by giant steel skeleton armies.

There are so many power lines in Japan. Even in the local streets. I presume it has something to do with imminent earthquakes making for potential logistic nightmares when tryin' to get infrastructure back online again. The more things underground the longer it takes to find and repair them.

Speaking of Earthquakes, we've had a couple of tremors. Not so big, would just seem like a few large trucks going past, to those people that are hip to trucks passing their doorsteps. The nation waits for the next 'big one' but they are also fairly casual about them too. So the ground shakes once a week. The wind blows madly in Typhoon season [my boss lost the door to his rooftop deck area!] and the rain never gives up and the cold is *cold*. These people have made a home in a not so choice place. I reckon they're tough. Mind you they're always complaining &gtgrin&lt but at least here it's justified to some extent when it comes to the weather.

One effect is that I keep my clothes close at hand in case I have to flee the building in a hurry due to it collapsing. Glad I live out of a suitcase now ... Oh the roofs falling ... I'll just take this with me .... {scamper scamper}

[ .. Tuesday 25th ..]

Well my last week here in Katsuta. The work I scored at a small English school in Mito has resulted in a 4 month arrangement [minimum anyway as the head teacher (of 2) is going home for a vacation] and as part of the deal he is sub letting his apartment to me. I'll be a 10 minute walk from work, not to mention that he's loaned me a decent mountain bike which just needs a bit of love to get happening again.

Apparently it's a spacious apartment, one bedroom but with a lounge area as well as kitchen so I'll have room to entertain and tutor my private students.

I've also found some local computers where I can tinker with typing the local text, Hiragana, Katakana & Kanji as they are called.

So neat watching the computer translate things on the fly. The Babel fish is coming everyone.[See Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy]

It doesn't translate English to Nihongo but it does translate Romaji [Japanese written with the English alphabet] into either Hiragana or Katakana and then another button press and you have Kanji characters. Soon I'll just be talking, English or Nihongo or Japlish for that matter, and it will type away on it's own.

[..Tuesday 2nd May..]

Well I have moved into my own apartment.

The place is not so huge but defiantly adequate for one such as me. Needs some scrubbin' here and there as well as some work to remove the odour of dog. Nothing I am not capable of especially at this price!

Apparently the previous tenant is not returning to the City of Mito. He says he will live in the country upon his return to the Land of the Rising Sun so I don't actually have a 'must-leave' date. woo hoo.

So mata ne.

Chapter 2 - April 2000

OK, two weeks here, what can I say?

The people are definitely hospitable aside from the few cases of racist snobbery that do happen. I went to Tokyo last week and the little noodle shops have a set of flag/signs they hang over their doorway when they are open for business. I went into one such to be told sorry we are closed.

Must have been my haircut.... but the environment is INhospitable at the moment. The temperature must not be getting any higher than 10-12 degrees, which in itself is obviously bearable, but oh the wind. Cuts like a knife it does, and making one not only shrink into ones clothes but struggle to keep your eyes from becoming grit filled.

The landscape here, at the moment, is pretty hard. The words desolate and barren come to mind because things are so dry and windblown. The winter is hard on these islands.

Apparently the weather due to replace this winter hardness is a *very* hot and humid summer that will contain the tail of the monsoon season from SE Asia. So just when everyone is set to try and get a tan it will be non stop rain for 6 weeks. Enough flooding to stop the trains. At least the railways give you a note so you can blame them for being late for work.

Speaking of difficult there's the garbage. Or 'gomi' as it's called. They pick up burnable gomi twice a week. This is what is generally called landfill at home, most everything that you would just chuck, plastic wrappers, Styrofoam containers, little paper bits and food.

Once a month they pick up cans, bottles and paper [cardboard maybe] which is in itself a nuisance because with no backyard we have stacks of bags filled with these items awaiting that monthly pickup. Then once a week there's a pickup for non-burnable gomi.

I am still not sure what this is exactly, I think it be such items as kettles and toasters or other metal/furniture type items which obviously do not fit into the other categories. If you have a fridge to be removed you have to ring someone up to come and get it. Pay them to remove it so that they can fix it and sell it on to someone else.

Now I just want to write to the City Hall and ask why they don't switch the non-burnable pickup with the recyclable pickup. Seeing as there are bags of cans and bottles stacked all over the city awaiting the once a month pickup and yet I see hardly any non-burnable items once a week. {shrug} Oh well, it's all so Japanese they keep telling me.

Then there's nose-blowing Seems it's bad form to do it. I see it quite often though, especially as this is "cofusho" season [allergy time]. What is bad is using a 'filthy' handkerchief. Not so bad to use a clean tissue. Seems it's not 'bad' form to spit though, I see plenty of lads doing it on the sidewalk, so I figured that must be why the Japanese take their shoes off when coming indoors. The sidewalk is .. slick?

Yes, there are vending machines everywhere dispensing mostly drinks, hot & cold, cigarettes and beer. Although apparently the liquor dispensing machines shutdown at 11pm. Go figure. The vending machines which are outside Pachinko parlors [slot machines/games of chance] even have a 'chance' button. So you can try and gamble your money for a free drink.

Then there's the cuteness of many things like furniture. Our ironing board is the size of a large skateboard with little picnic table fold out legs. The cistern above the toilet has a concave lid, or sink, with a faucet over it which runs when refilling so you finish you business and flush the toilet and then just wash you hands as the cistern refills. I think that is *neat*.

I am doing well, I only hit my head on every third doorway. I wish I had not cut my hair so short now, I could do with all the protection I can get both for warmth and for doorjamb impacts.

Tokyo was good. Bustling is putting it mildly and thank god for the trains because driving a car would have been insane. A motor bike would cut through the traffic but, of course, at risk to life and limb.

I arrived during the day and found the trains system not too confusing but I did lose my bag which I had stashed in a locker. I arrived back at the same station and couldn't figure out where I was, the station being so bloody BIG with so many exits.

Then I went to Roppongi to check out the nightlife rat race but I think I did not stay late enough, leaving the are around 10pm. The hostess clubs I went to ask about work had plenty of eager staff ready and waiting and I saw enough blonde overly made up women escorting elder Japanese gents around to let me know I was in the right part of town.

Then I went back on the subway to check out Ginza, the money district. More spacious streets, better clientele etc. Did a quick walk through here just to check it out, apparently a Japanese girl I'd meet in Sydney SAW me on the platform at Ginza but she was too far away [different platform] to get my attention. She Emailed me that night. Small world, ne?

This is when I discovered that the peak hour of an evening goes from 4pm till 11pm. A constant wave of people coming home from work. The hours of most business being around 10am till 8-9pm. The Japanese are well adapted to a busy schedule with packed commuter excursions. They sleep anywhere.

When the train is really packed they even sleep standing up, the crush keeping them upright. I have an old John Wayne movie to keep me company right now, their midday movie coming on at 1pm &gtgrin< only took me 5 minutes of fiddling with the remote to get the bilingual thing to switch to English. I had to get someone in to translate the airconditioner controls and one TV in the house is still not dialed in to the local channels. Even native speakers have trouble with it. Kanji is a minDfield. Even the citizens of Japan say so.

[..]

Aha, I finally got the other TV tuned into the local stations. I was lucky enough to find the manual for the said TV and then a visitor who could read Kanji, although she still had trouble with the instructions, helped me get things going. I did most of the thinking though, she is nonplused when it comes to electronica as are many locals. As many of y'all know, I enjoy 'em.

So just another small hurdle crossed in a land of unintelligible script. I've learnt a few Kanji but be buggered if I can get my hand to replicate them. My handwriting leaving a lot to be desired when it comes to legibility even in English!

Got some hours coming up at an English school in Mito this week as well as my first private lesson for a pair of girls I met at the Duck, so gainful employment on the increase.

[..]

Well I've racked up one month [ichi ka getsu] now; My private class, two office girls, have included me in their weekly basketball and tennis nights so maintaining some semblance of fitness is a possibility now. Great facilities also.

Every such place I go is met with amazement/stares. Why would a gaijin be here? There seems to be a mutual amount of enjoyment out of it though. Also found that my name has a Kanji for it. I have no way of writing it here, maybe on another machine but it translates as "Big Gate". Heh. I found the Kanji easy to write too which is lucky.

Another trip to the supermarket and the spending of 3800 Yen [US$35] got me a couple of bags of shopping. SMALL bags. OK, off to Tennis, hope all is well where you are.

The View is Here, Wish you Were Beautiful.

[Just Kidding {wink}]

Welcome to Japan

Welcome to Japan

I left Australia mid March 2000 to see how life in Japan would be and so far so good. I've written few chapters so my friends and family around the world can keep pace with this other life; feel free to check them out.

My main reason for deciding to live in another country was to fufill my desire to speak another language so most of the links below are oriented toward learning Japanese.At the bottom of the page are some unsorted non language oriented links.

If you have any questions feel free to email me.

I've only spent a few years in Japan, not much by comparison to some of the ex-pat veterens there and in other countries, but still time to soak up a little more than the average "summer holiday" tourist might experience.

When one moves full time to another country one gets to live, work, play, cheer and boo with the locals on all manner of things. It is in doing such things that I managed to learn a bit of the language and understand a little of the Japanese mind.

I'm told that "language defines us" which means that to learn another language is to learn another way of thinking. Seems to me this is a knack we could all do with some training in. Even in our own backyards it's a common tale that men can't understand how women think and possibly vice versa - I won't presume :)

So therein lies my reason for wanting to learn. Not that learning alone isn't enough of a reason, but also just that nice pleasure in being able to communicate with another race and to help some more people find the nearest phone, gas stand, restaurant etc.

I thoroughly recommend Masao Miyamoto's Straight Jacket Society,

"An insiders irreverent view of bureaucratic Japan"

A great read it helped me see past the suits and kimonos.

Chapter 1 - March 2000

My first Chapter on leaving Oz in the third millennium.

The flight to Fiji was fairly ordinary as flights go I guess. Short, thankfully, but long enough to feed me, an important item in my day to day survive-on-not-much scenario. Met a guy, sitting next to me, Adam who was a surfer from Maroubra, who goes regularly to Fiji and he gave me the news on where to go when I fly back through Fiji on my return. He also gave me his meal so I was happily stuffed

So I stayed in the same hotel as him and the crew which he was meeting, for a wedding, and had a few beverages with them and an English couple who were immigrating to Australia.

Met Adam's ex and talked to her for a while, as Adam had taken an ecky pill before the flight and had gone off to bed totally ratshit. Had the naked midnight swim in the pool and all of a sudden it's the next morning and I am hefting my bags back to the airport.

[More:]

Back on the plane there were not many people so I got three seats to myself positioned right outside the galley, that's the kitchen for you landlubbers, so again my stomach was well tended to as well as being able to lie down. Above the galley door was a monitor so I got to watch the three movies from my reclined position.

Movies - "The World is Not Enough" (always got to time to watch 007 in action) "Double Jeopardy" (wanted to see this one for a while, Tommy Lee Jones & Ashley Judd, thank you Air Pacific) and "Bringing Out the Dead" (strange flick with Nicholas Cage, John Goodman & Patricia Arquette)

The plane had a cool display which informed me of how far into the 8000k trip we were, our altitude, up to 12 clicks above the face of the Earth and the outside temp of some minus 50 degrees centigrade and of course our speed - just under 1000 kph.

The sky was gorgeous beyond belief. Blue sea running out to the horizon where a white cloud skirt hid the merger with the sky which turned to a near black above me.

A world of blue-on-blue with cloud creatures grazing the aqua plains.

Didn't see Nihon till we were putting our wheels on the ground due to *very* low cloud cover.

The airport is a slick piece of engineering, nice little train came out to our terminal and commuted us back into customs and immigration. Except for the world of Kanji characters it is just an airport. Made for maximum people throughput.

So I found a place to buy a ticket to Katsuta and then stood in the 10 degree coolness to await my trusty transport.

Got to remember to go from a cooling climate to a warm one and not to a near freezing and snowing one!

Arrived at Katsuta, the bus leaving in front of the train station, and then lugged my bags to my friend Ben's place, stopping every 20 meters to rest my arms and pray that Ben's directions where accurate.

They were but he wasn't - there! Damn.

Next is follow directions to the gaijin (foreigner) watering hole - "The Drunken Duck."

The Drunken Duck, turns out, is owned by a Japanese lady and her daughter runs it. I went in and inquired of the Aussie barman about my friend Ben and got connected with someone who lived with him. Seems the barman, Jamie, fell in love with and married the owner's daughter and as such runs the Duck, much to the satisfaction of many gaijin residents & visitors.

I also wrangled myself a trial work shift tonight (Saturday) so that should prove interesting.

So Ben turned up eventually and the night flew by as we share some celebratory toasts "kampai" ....

My first day awaking beneath the Land's Rising Sun and Ben and I train it off to Mito, the next larger town. Actually the capital of Ibaraki prefecture.

The train stations are well laid out but needless to say the whole Kanji signage and turnstile displays are decidedly intimidating but I made it home on my own after Ben took off for work. I had to stay on and shop around for an adapter for my laptop's power lead.

Can't believe I let that one item slip me &gtshrug<>

Couldn't find one but on returning home I scoured the house for old leads and found one that had a large plug on the end like the type we use, in Oz, with old element water boilers (kettles/jugs whatever).

I unscrewed the plug to expose the metal housings which accommodate the two metal prongs in the jug and I pushed them over the ends of my computers plug, leaving the Earth unconnected, and here I am typing away! Power to the machine at last. Not to mention the music contained therein.

[..]Sunday morning:

Worked last night at the Drunken Duck. Feeling sore in the back from walking everywhere hunched over so that I don't smack my head on the shelving &gtsigh&lt. But it's got to be good for my Japanese to listen to so many drunken Japanese talking.

Note to Jok and Max, next time we speak Nihongo just pretend I am drunk and we should communicate fine {grin}.

OK, off to find an Internet bar and Bath house (Onsen).

[..]Sunday arvo:

Well the Internet place seemed closed so I went to a bath house and for 1780 Yen [US$17] I had the most relaxed afternoon soaking in HOT water then cold then HOT then sleeping in the TV room, then a feed in the Saloon. Nearly wore my shoes onto the Tatami mats [phew!]

Off to work at the Duck real soon.

OK Love to you all in Australia and the rest of the world.

nomaD

Ibaraki-ken, Japan

A Plan to leave Oz

Well I was over it. Worked a hundred different jobs and spoke hello/goodbye in six languages but I couldn't chat with any of the nations I could say "Hello" to. It was time to go abroad.

I thought maybe Europe, put the EU passport to good use, but my contact with a friend whose Ma rented rooms to Japanese boarders had given me a few more phrases in that language. Japan was also close to Oz and the chances of finding work as a teacher of English were good. And I needed that.

Some bank was fool enough to give me a credit card so I was fool enough to use it. I rang the travel agent and asked if they took Amex and when they said "yes" I replied "see you tomorrow."

So I bought a ticket to Japan, not knowing where I would stay, thinking I'd be selling crack on the streets of Tokyo and hoping I could last a week until I could organise a return seat to get home again.

But I received an email from a Sydney pal who said he was in Japan and did we want to meet up. Well I landed with US$400 and stayed in his apartment for 6 weeks so the punt came off ok.

Read on to see just how and thanx for droppin by Deezplace.