AUGUST II 2003
Stupid Webspawner grrrrr. They won't let me type as much as I want on a page, grrrr
AUGUST 15th
Hi again. I’m back in the office doing my Homer Simpson impression (coffee, doughnut, nothing), so I’m going to entertain myself for half an hour by pouring out mindless drivel onto the internet.
The typhoon hit on Friday and Saturday, but was really quite a disappointing affair. I think what they call a typhoon in Japan is what we would call a particularly wet and windy day in Northern Ireland (though possibly it blew itself out over Okinawa). Having said that, my umbrella collapsed, ripped a chunk of flesh from my thumb, and then spontaneously separated from itself, rendering it defunct, so I guess the winds were rather powerful.
I spent most of the weekend attempting to leave Shiraoka, because it’s incredibly boring, especially if you haven’t been given your Alien Registration Card yet and aren’t allowed a Video Store Card for an all day DVD session. Nevertheless, Omiya and Tokyo aren’t too far away, and provide ample shopping opportunities. Omiya, as I’ve already said, is just on my doorstep, and is excellent for just spending a day walking around and looking at stuff and people. It had more shops in a single department store than there are shops in Belfast!! The Japanese are complete shop-a-holics; one can get absolutely anything in their department stores – imagine a typical city street as a row of Harrods and Fortnum and Masons. The choice and multitude of places is bewildering.
As you step out of the train station at Omiya, you’re greeted by huge billboards of Western Icons (especially David Beckham and an American kickboxer called Bob Sapp), very much like Picadilly Square. The difference here is that there are several levels of public footpaths, one of which is attached to the third floor of the department stoors on the outside, maybe 10 meters above the traffic (quite ingenious). Store service is very different in Japan than in Britain or Ireland. When I walk into a shop in Britain (especially a local cornershop), I often think that my presence and custom are loathed and detested by the owner (my university friends will know what I mean if they think of the Tuck Shop on Holywell Street). Shopping in Japan is a hilarious experience. When you enter, you are greeted like a long lost friend with a chorus of: “Sumimasen”; “Konninchiwa”; “Arigato Gozaimasu” and what-not – smiles and bows abound, the customer is king.
I finally got around to buying a guitar, but my apartments still lacks a sofa, sound system, and let’s not forget the digital camera that I crave. Unfortunately, I think I’m going to have to take the guitar back because it’s impossible to tune, a shame as it’s so pretty. I’m off now to have some sushi, write to you later.
MONDAY 18th AUGUST
GOOOOOD MORNING VIET…..Japan. Sorry that it’s been a while since I last wrote. For the first time in five days and nights it’s actually stopped raining! I had begun construction on a small ark on my balcony, but I see now that it’s not needed. Still, the temperature has been hovering around a much more manageable 23 degrees (though set to get back to normal by Wednesday).
I got a few things sorted out over the weekend. I finally exchanged my guitar for a much better (and much more expensive) acoustic from “Hard Off”, the local second hand shop, about £85 reduced to £50 or so. I also got my giant Indiana Jones poster from loft, and my apartment is very slowly beginning to look less drab and dreary (though still with a long way to go yet). Did I mention that I haven’t been paid yet, and have spent £500 in three weeks. I don’t know where the money went!!
Once again I spent most of the weekend in Omiya, doing a spot of shopping, some people watching, etc. On Saturday night I went to an Isikaya (I think that’s how it’s said). Basically, it’s very hard to find a British/American style pub/bar in Japan. For that, you need to go to Tokyo (but also bear in mind that the last train home from Tokyo leaves about 11!! Some people go to all night pubs and clubs, but I haven’t had the energy thus far. An isikaya isn’t like a British pub, as you sit at a table with friends and order snacks as you drink. It’s very pleasant, but I couldn’t afford to do it every night. The cheapskates option is therefore to drink in the street, and buy beer from a vending machine. Yes, both are legal in this wonderful country, You could probably swig an Asahi SuperDry outside a kindergarten, walk up to the nearest policeman (Keisatsu), belch in his face, and survive!! Not that I’ve tried it.
I met Josh’s Japanese friend Toshi at the Isikaya, who I then proceeded to call Yoshi for the rest of the evening (SuperMario Land, anyone?). He’s absolutely hilarious, and loves learning the worst type of English, then using it in the least appropriate ways. Do you understand, M*****F*****? Toshi kindly leant me Austin Powers 3 on DVD, so now you know what I’m going to do with the rest of my day!
On Sunday, Jeff and I went into Omiya again, to meet a Japanese teacher that I discovered on the internet. I’ve no idea how the prices of her lessons compare to anyone else (she charges £8-9 for one hour of tuition). She told me she would be wearing summer gloves. SUMMER GLOVES. Only in Japan. Anyway, I think its probably the best way for me to learn Japanese. Seeing as the only things I’ve picked up since I arrived have been “Chotto made kudasai” (“Please wait a minute”), “Osaki ni shitsurei shimasu” (“Please excuse my rudeness in leaving before you”), and “Shi-ne!” (“I wish you a horrible death!”), I think some discipline is needed. As long as I have homework, a deadline to work towards, and am spending money, I know that I’ll try to learn!
Anyway, I don’t want to wear myself out so early in the morning, I’ll save some energy for an update in a few days. Just a short word to Carolyn – my friend Reina (from the Oxford group) surfed my website. She thinks you’re cute, and she thought Alan was my brother!
EARTHQUAKE!!! (19th AUGUST)
Just a wee update to say, Ahhhhh!!!!! I lived through my first mini earthquake last night. T'was quite good fun really, the apartment started shaking from side to side, and continued for about 10 seconds. Then the sound of sirens as ambulances started leaving the byoin (hospital) next door to me. Clearly some hadn't escaped as easily as me. Looking at my apartment, I'm pretty sure that if there was a big earthquake it would collapse like a house of cards, as it appears to be constructed entirely of cardboard and papier mache. On the plus side, I won't have any breeze blocks falling on my head!
AUGUST 21st
Hi! Its another one of my "I'm in the office and bored so I'll write something" updates. In front of me is the quite ridiculous picture of five foreigners (one Canadian, one American, one Australian and two Irishmen) with their laptops sitting around a small table in an air conditionned office, separated from the native Japanese workers. The maxim here seems to be "We're paying them money so they'd better be at work, but they're hideous big nosed foreign dog hearts who can't use chopsticks to catch flies, so we'll stick them in a tiny office where we don't have to gaze upon their hideous visages". I'm absolutely positively wasting my life at the moment. I spend seven hours a day on the internet, listening to The Hives, and occasionally updating my site with nonsense like this. PS, a site I found recently when whiling away the hours:
www.realultimatepower.net
might provide upwards of, oh, say fifteen minutes of distraction. Off to soba for lunch, probably won't write again until Tuesday at the earliest. Bye.
AUGUST 24th
Wow, I’ve been here one month!! Time has flown by, despite long days trapped in a broom cupboard. I’ll start work for the first time on Friday, and it’s a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I also haven’t been to the office for five days, so that might explain my upbeat mood!
On Friday we had our “Saitama Orientation: Part 1” (Part 2 is tomorrow). The conference itself was really tedious. We had a hilarious demonstration on “Anti-crime”, and received a book on Drug Prohibition that is so funny I’ll have to show it to you; to attempt to describe it would do it a huge disservice! I got quite annoyed at the Japanese classes. Before we came to Japan we had classes teaching us “Konnichiwa; Arigato etc”, yet only one month later we seem to be expected to be able to understand classes and leaflets taught entirely in Japanese, to understand the Japanese alphabets and Kanji, and to be able to read at full speed!! Tomorrow I’ll be skipping them, as I felt like a dyslexic moron.
After the orientation a bunch of us went into Shibuya in Tokyo, the young persons’ capital. Having missed the last train at about 10.30pm, Jeff and I had to stay awake until the morning, so we set about shopping and drinking (in no particular order), and managed to do it. We even discovered some nice western style pubs where we didn’t have to eat as well. Somehow I navigated back to Shiraoka in the morning on the railway system, and now feel confident that I can use it as often as I need.
On Sunday, I thought I should treat myself to a little culture. I caught the express to Ueno, beside a huge Park hosting Tokyo’s best museums, a zoo, a huge lake with pedalos and rowing boats, and plenty of people watching opportunities. Thankfully the Tokyo Museum of Western Art has an Archaeology section in English as well as Japanese. Unfortunately, you have to pay to be educated here! I headed down south of the station after noon to find a bite to eat. There’s a tremendously colourful market area underneath a Shinkansen line that howls and rattles past every few minutes; it’s worth the bulk of a day for browsing in at least I’m sure. I wandered into a sushi bar for lunch, and happily started selecting dishes to try: squid, octopus, sea urchin, natto… Never ever eat natto – its partially fermented soy bean. It tastes and smells somewhere between rotten feet and vomit, causing me to choke and wretch, much to the amusement of the Japanese sitting beside me! They were really nice though, and offered to purchase the rest from me in return for what turned out to be a free English lesson I guess! As the day drew to a close I decided to catch Terminator 3 at the cinema, as it appears to be on the way out here. Perhaps not the best idea I made – tickets were about £10. Budgeting is beginning to become a worry, as I spent £50 a day at the weekend going around, eating and drinking.
Part of the reason for my more upbeat nature of late is that I am beginning to understand how things work around here. I’ve managed to teach myself hiragana, and I’ve made a start at katakana. Words are beginning to pop out at me (though this is just the beginning of course!), and I’m slowly becoming able to make myself understood, if only in a purely utilitarian sense. I’ve also been paid for the first time, I’ve got my direct debits set up, and I’ll soon be getting internet in my apartment! Things are definitely looking up :)
AUGUST 28th
Something I’ve noticed recently is how much middle-aged or elderly Japanese men seem to hate me. Perhaps it’s because I’ve got the biggest nose within a fifty mile radius. Whatever the reason, I’m beginning to notice little things all the time. I was eating at the Yoshinoya (a big discount beef stew chain – it’s my favourite!) in Urawa yesterday during my lunch break with Jeff and another Canadian (Bob). Bob turned to me and said – “you see that old guy there? He was sitting beside you and eating when he first came in, but when the other guy left, he moved away from you”. It’s just a small gesture, but it drives home the fact that some people in this country will never accept my presence. It’s a bit like the out-of-sight, out-of-mind ethos that prevails in the office whereby the foreigners are all stuffed into a broom-cupboard.
My attempts to get the Internet have also been hampered by aging Japanese businessmen. I tried to get my supervisor Yamaguchi to translate the form, or tell me what to write in each space. “mmmm, muzokashi” (mmmm, difficult…). Tell me please, Mr. Tamagotchi, if that is your real name, why is it so damned difficult for you, a native speaker of Japanese, to help me fill in a form? He was just too lazy to even want to help me. Ricky, the guy from Belfast who is now in my office too (and has already lived in Amamioshima) explains this quite succinctly as “Mie tatamie”, Japanese basically meaning “Public face, private face”. It’s a very important part of Japanese society - so when Yamaguchi said “Mmmm, difficult”, what he really meant was “I can’t be bothered wasting my time helping you”. Nice.
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