Exiled to Vending Machine Island

Tastes like nuts...

2010-09-20T04:52:00.001+12:00

I can only assume these are only aimed at the local monolingual market segment.

Density

2010-05-10T00:42:00.003+12:00

Just one of those things you spot every now and then about the place. Still largely comprehensible...

Next to no crime

2010-02-22T21:57:00.004+13:00

Tokyo has next to no crime. This is generally a good thing, but unfortunately it makes you somewhat complacent. So while I would likely have kept my bike indoors were I still in NZ (or indoors AND locked up if I were in wainui), I thought that leaving my bike locked up in front of my apartment would be safe. Turns out it wasn't.

Anyway, the bike isn't sold in Japan and I imported it myself so there is a chance I will be able to track it down, but if you see a Beone Storm in Japan please contact me or the cops. I would like to think that the cops would find it themselves, but thats extremely unlikely and I think the apology that "We can't make it safe in Japan for foreigners to come and live here" is the most help I'm going to get. They generally do a reasonably good job though...

私のビーワンストームの自転車は新宿のアパートの前から盗まれちゃったんです。ビーワンの自転車は普通に日本で売られてないので写真と似てる自転車を見たら私に連絡してください。メールアドレスはluke.mccrohon@gmail.comです。

Yes We Can

2009-01-22T01:40:00.003+13:00

Yes we can, buy awesome Obama masks in Japan.

Theme Dining: Taiwan Style

2008-12-18T19:19:00.003+13:00

Themed restaurants in Tokyo offer amazing variety, from christian cathedrals, to prisons, vampire castles, a rabbit hole (of Alice and wonderland fame) and of course many comic book adaptations. Now the boom years before the Asian economic bubble burst apparently offered an even better selection (I am slightly disappointed that I missed the chance to eat ice cream together with real live penguins...), but even then I don't think they would have beaten this particular Taiwanese restaurant in terms of unexpectedness.

How many Japanese does it take to Change a light?

2008-12-18T18:27:00.002+13:00

I finally moved to a new flat. The word "Finally" is going to take some elaborating, so I'll save that for another post.

Since moving in I have had to spend two or so weeks sorting out all manor of Japanese paperwork and red tape. Some of it you expect, filling in the real estate contract in triplicate, getting official seals stamped on the contract, getting official documents proving that the official seals stamped on the contract are legitimate, et cetera.

That sort of thing is frustrating, but expected. Its all the unexpected things that are annoying, and there are a LOT of those. Take for example the fact that Japanese apartments don't come with light fittings. I'm not talking a lack of light bulbs, they don't even come with the appropriately shaped hole to insert them into. I was reasonably lucky that the previous resident of my place had left one very old and slightly broken fitting behind. I decided it needed replacing.

Naturally being as old as it was it didn't make use of the now standardized interchangeable power connector so I had to call an electrician to get it changed. The electrician I called wasn't able to tell me what days he was available when I called, and said he would call back later. He did after 3 days to ask "Is now ok?" Not really what I had been expecting, but I was just up the road shopping so thought it would be ok. Met him back at my place, he came in, looked at the light fitting and said "oh, that type, I didn't bring the right tools for that. Is it ok to come back tommorow?"

Next morning he now shows up with another guy, seems to have the right tools, gets halfway through and realizes he doesn't have the right kind of screws, so sends his partner back to the shop to get them. AKWARD 30MINUTE CONVERSATION. Guy comes back with screws and finishes the job.

Payment time. Using carbon paper to write out an invoice he manages to carbon copy my name onto the cover of his notebook, but somehow not onto my copy of the invoice. I can live with that as I know my own name. I hand over some money to pay for it, and the two guys spend the next 5 minutes going through both of their wallets trying to find change.

They give up eventually and leave promising to be back in a few (Of course at this point the combined contents of both of their wallets were at this point sitting in two small piles in the middle of my floor). One of them comes back eventually with my change, and needs me to remind him about the two heaps of coins and notes in the middle of the my floor that he might want to take with him.

How many Japanese does it take to change a light? Only 2, but it takes far more drama than you can imagine. Oh and I have the plumber coming next week.

except...

2008-11-12T01:05:00.002+13:00

Other Processed Foods

Items such as cookies, crackers, candies, cereals, dried noodles, etc., may be brought into Japan. Most types of nuts (with the exception of walnuts, which are prohibited) may be brought into Japan, particularly if they are salted, dried, or roasted.

I was just looking at the customs laws of what I can import into japan and found the wonderful quote above. I would like to believe there is a nice sensible reason why walnuts are considered particularly dangerous, so if anyone knows please tell me.

On the same page I also found I can import 100kg of rice duty free per year, so if anyone coming to visit me has some left over weight allowance how about bringing me a sack? Preferably long grain, and definitely not that nasty non-stick stuff! (try and eat it with chopsticks if you wonder why)

A wedding gift

2008-04-14T11:33:00.002+12:00

I normally use this blog to write about all the strange things that I come across in Japan, well at the moment I am back in NZ which unfortunately isn't quite as weird. I am of course working to change that, and here is evidence of that....

Shopping List

2008-03-21T18:04:00.003+13:00

I sent an email to most of my friend in New Zealand with a list of items I could buy and bring back for them when I come next week. The most popular of these was a hello kitty personal massager, so in case anyone had any doubts what I meant heres a picture of what happens when sexual liberation and the Japanese fondness for cute intersect.

(And yes, if you are interested in one let me know by Monday, same goes for ipods)

Clockwise

2008-03-21T15:54:00.004+13:00

I was slightly surprised a few months back to see Nazi arm bands for sale in a store in Harajuku, and couldn't help but laugh at the idea of Japanese dressing up in costume wearing them. I passed it off as Japanese people not really knowing the significance, which when you consider how much history of world war 2 they learn in school is entirely plausible.

Recently I was slightly more surprised by the swastika shaped spa pool I saw being advertised in Shinjuku. Yes I know its actually a sensible shape for certain things, but it is one of those things you probably wouldn't see in the rest of the world.

A little bit of history...

2008-03-21T05:03:00.004+13:00

One of the things I most enjoyed while traveling around Europe was spending an hour or two going through antique shops in each new city I visited. They were like museums filled with exhibits that if you really wanted to, you could purchase.

Japan of course has antique shops, but for some reason I don't find myself as attracted to them. There is a difference between browsing through 2ooyear old furniture and books, and 30 year old godzilla figures and comic books. I shouldn't compare, its just you don't see "antique" used to describe something made of plastic.

Halloween Special

2008-03-21T04:53:00.002+13:00

Can't find a pair of shoes to go with your Jack O' Lantern Halloween Costume? If you live in Japan wouldn't be an issue thanks to the inspired design of these limited edition special Halloween Vans sneakers, available in not 1, but 2 Halloween styles!

Oh and by the way, I took the photo in February so perhaps they weren't enough of a limited edition.

Im lost

2008-03-21T04:46:00.004+13:00

Now if you are a person who has trouble with reading maps you might want to take a guide while looking for a toilet at this Tokyo subway station. They kindly provide a map, but its the sort of map that I think Escher might be proud of having drawn. Its still comprehensible, but considering this is a map of only a quarter of the station, I think the full version might be slightly scary.

Perfect for Chocolate Cake

2008-03-21T04:38:00.003+13:00

Ok, I have to admit this is neither strange, nor unbelievable, but is simply a good example of Japanese style. Spade shaped spoons. Cute and slightly unpractical, but still very cool.

Umm, well ok

2008-03-21T04:31:00.004+13:00

There are times when I just don't know if its a mistake or if they actually know what the English they are using means. This poster advertising a concert locally is a good example of that sort of English.

But I don't want to carry it all day.

2008-03-21T04:26:00.004+13:00

The following picture shows the rules for use of coin operated storage lockers at Shinjuku Station. Click for a larger view. All pretty standard until you get to 2.7...

Of so its prohibited to store this corpse I have been lugging round the city with me all day while I go and do some shopping? What am I supposed to do with it then? If I leave it here, someone might steal it and then I'd have to go report it to the police...

Eggs in a hurry

2008-03-21T04:08:00.002+13:00

If I had to describe Tokyo in one word it would be "Convenient". The ubiquitous 24hour convenience stores, wonderful public transport, shops selling every service you could imagine, and vending machines selling six packs of eggs. The last being something I discovered while riding in one of the less densely populated parts of town.

Admittedly I don't often wake up at 3am in the morning and think "I need eggs", but if I do I now know where to go. Its not using the services that matter, just knowing they are there if I need them. But to be honest, I think the watermelon vending machine I found in Nara is still my favorite.

I guess you could say I am fluent

2008-03-21T03:40:00.003+13:00

In the run up to my entrance exams at Tokyo University I had to deal with all manor of paperwork at a time when I would have much preferred to actually have been studying. I eventually finished all the application documents and took them over to the administration office only to be told that I needed to include my TOEFL score.

Now for those who dont know, TOEFL stands for Test Of English as a Foreign Language, and due to the F component I naturally assumed that it wouldn't apply to me. I pointed this out to the people at the office, who agreed that my taking it would be completely pointless, but continued to insist that I take it. Bureaucracy.

Ok, so I looked into taking the test (and how to pay the $170 it cost) and found out that I had missed the application deadline to have my test results back before my entrance exams, so went back to tell the office that I couldn't get the results in time. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but their response was that because I am a native speaker my results don't really matter that much... relief, I just saved $170 I thought... but it just matters that I can show I took the test. What? They want me to take the test even though they won't get the results in time?? Apparently.

So I take the test, it wasn't actually all that easy and felt horribly artificial. Moreover it is a completely inappropriate test of English language ability for average Japanese people which is what it is used for. I sadly didn't get a full score, but considering my speling it is lucky that I only lost one make in the essay section. So I am now able to Prove that I speak mostly correct English.

Cold...

2008-01-18T05:56:00.000+13:00

My refrigerator broke a couple of weeks ago, waiting for the replacement could have been quite inconvenient except thanks to the weather the my balcony is quite capable of keeping my food as cold as my fridge ever did. Unfortunately if I wait a few more weeks my milk will start to freeze, which is going to make breakfast unpleasant... Hopefully the replacement will arrive and stop my food from getting to cold before that happens.

The Abyss

2008-01-08T19:32:00.000+13:00

I must apologise for a month without posts, this is not because my life has suddenly regained some level of normality, but is due purely to a series of run ins with Japanese bureaucracy at its finest. Essentially due to several seemingly minor mistakes in the paperwork concerning my scholarship, I was told that although the Japanese government was quite happy to keep paying me for the next 18months, they wouldn't pay for me to actually do any study during that time or afterwards.

Now an 18 month paid vacation is always tempting, but I am reasonably keen to do a PhD, and I am even more keen to have them pay for me to do it. This lead to an adventure through the Japanese paperwork jungle that took 3 weeks, and was filled with as much weirdness as you would expect from Japan. I won't give a full account, but here are some highlights.

Startlines and Deadlines: In Japan Applications not only have a deadline when they have to be submitted by, but they also have a startline which they not be submitted before! Generally the difference between the two is about 1 week.
Triplicate: Whenever submitting documents multiple copies are required, luckily this is why we have photocopiers right? Unfortunately in many cases all of the copies have to be hand written!
Internationalism: Despite my scholarship being only available to foreign students, with no requirement of Japanese language ability, all information about it is only available in Japanese. And not the sort of friendly Japanese you see in the real world, that type of impenetrable legalistic Japanese that caused several of my Japanese friends to shrug when ask about its meaning.
Submission: I went to the office and asked where I needed to submit my application to. They said "here", so I preceded to hand it over, only to be met with shocked faces. Turns out that although it has to be submitted "here", it has to arrive by post.

A few of other interesting points:

Less than a third of the staff at the international office speak a language other than Japanese.
Any time you apply for anything you must submit a passport photo.
CV's in Japan must also be handwritten. And yes, this means if you make a single mistake while writing them out you start again.
Students start looking for jobs over a year before they graduate university, and if they haven't got one less than 6 months before its generally seen as too late.

Immoral Effects

2007-12-07T21:10:00.001+13:00

From a foreigners prospective living in Japan does seem strange, and unsurprisingly this isn't a new phenomenon. I recently came across scans of a book ‘Sketches of Japanese manners and customs’　from the 1860s written by a British guy living here at the time.

The book is available online here. If you've got a few minutes to kill, which judging by the fact that your reading my blog you probably do, have a look. It reveals a lot not only about Japan but about western attitudes as well.

One nice example is a comment the author makes about the Japanese custom of communal bathing, 'It would seem natural to conclude that such a system must have immoral effects, but the Japanese attribute no evil consequences to it'. Westerners are really such prudes... but they really did a good job of moralising Japan.

How to avoid being a sexual offender

2007-12-04T02:48:00.000+13:00

I forgot to pay my internet bill, again. This means that for the next few days I have to come down to the lobby of my building to use the web, which has the one advantage that I can also watch TV while I'm here. Japanese TV is one of those interesting experiences that is hard to explain without watching. For those wanting to see an example of something I found on the web recently, have a look here.

What I saw today was a little stranger however. A special on one of the talk shows about how to avoid be falsely accused of sexually molesting people on crowded trains. To put that in context, sexual offending on trains is such a big issue here that most trains have carriages reserved only for women. So its not surprising that the occasional innocent person my get accused of doing it, but it seems a bit strange that there is a show in prime time specifically teaching ways to avoid being accused.

The show had a section explaining different ways of standing so that your hands are always visible, or ways so that you can avoid being close to females. This was followed by a section on what to do in case you are falsely accused, and then an interview with one guy who claims to have been falsely accused and spent 3 months in prison for it.

Oh and of course, the excuse the falsely accused guy gave for it not being him, "It wasn't me, it must have been the half standing behind me!". Half is the wonderfully politically correct term for those with one Japanese and one foreign parent, who are invariable considered by most Japanese as criminal foreigners just like the rest of all. Sort of reassuring that they somehow managed to find a way of combine the endemically Japanese phenomenon of train perverts and the fear of criminal foreigners in a single story.

Information Density

2007-12-02T23:32:00.000+13:00

In Japan you often see small two dimensional bar codes that cellphone cameras can decode as a web address. They are normally about a cm square, and are often found on the bottom of advertisements and occasionally on the business cards of certain Japanese companies that want to seem tech savy.

Last week I came across this somewhat larger than usual example, about 16square meters... which to store a single web address seems like overkill. Interestingly no text, so the only way to know what it was advertising was to scan it.

Stairway to Heaven

2007-11-27T18:38:00.000+13:00

The times when Japan seems the most unusual are generally those times when you are doing something which would otherwise be completely ordinary. Last weekend I went hiking up what the Japanese refer to as a mountain, that is a reasonable high hill with some trees on it and a few souvenir shops at the top.

Now for reasons I don't want to get into the day I went was the middle day of a long weekend, and so was the sort of day where a fair portion of Tokyo's corporate drones decided to take there families to see some 'Nature'. Naturally it wasn't the untamed remote dirty kind of nature you might find in other countries, it was nature that had its own train station, plenty of stairs, handrails and vending machines in case they got thirsty.

I think the only way I can describe climbing the mountain is as "standing in line for 3 hours on a slope". I wish that was an exaggeration, but for your consideration I submit the attached photo as evidence. It shows the suitably tamed nature, the aforementioned slope and the queue of people waiting there turn to get to the top of it.

The two things I found surprising about the whole experience was that this particular hill/mountain was surrounded by other hills/mountains that simply by virtue of not having their own train stations had no one wanting to climb them. And secondly I was also surprised by just how well prepared the Japanese people were for their wait in line. Not only the expensive Jackets, hiking boots, day packs, walking poles that would would normally convince me that these people were going on a multi day cross country trek, but also the occasional person carrying a compass just in case.

Ghosts

2007-11-17T00:13:00.000+13:00

Winter is coming, and Tokyo is slowly getting colder. What better way to keep warm, and display latent geeky tendencies from a childhood of video game worship, than these Balaclavas designed like Pacman ghosts?

Pseudo-Vegetarianism

2007-11-16T23:27:00.000+13:00

Vegetarianism is not an affliction that many people suffer from in Japan, but in more progressive areas you occasionally come across a restaurant with a vegetarian option, or even somewhere with an all vegetarian menu. I came across one yesterday, but looking at the first item on the menu I have my doubts about how serious they are. A no meat Beef Bowl, perfect for all those vegetarians out there looking for a no guilt, karma free, beef fix.

Freedom of Choice

2007-11-11T01:45:00.001+13:00

This is something I came across when I was in China recently. I had heard that China was taking environmental protection a bit more seriously these days so was pleased to see the recycling bins, but still I can't help but think that giving people the option of unrecycling things is a bit counter productive.

The Anti Sale

2007-11-10T20:45:00.000+13:00

To replace my last camera which was unfortunately dropped into a hot spring in China, I went shopping last week, found one, but wanted to check its price online before buying it. Turns out the price at the shop was equal to anything I could find online, so the next day I went back to the shop to buy it.

Only problem was when I got there, there was a big sign on the camera "limited time only, special price". Not normally a problem except that the special price was 20% higher than it had been the day before! Had a word with the salesperson and he checked in the computer and said that yes, the price had gone up, but that I shouldn't worry because it was going on sale again next week anyway and I should just come back then.

So it turns out that the price was special, and only for a limited time, but probably not in the way most people would expect. As for me, I brought the camera, on that day, at the cheap price.

(Sushi) Bar Fight

2007-11-06T02:12:00.000+13:00

I have long heard that Japan had a problem with bullying, emotional and physical, in the workplace, but until today I had never actually seen it. I was having a late lunch at a sushi bar near the university and I was the only customer in the shop, sitting at the counter and ordering sushi piece by piece direct from the Chef. Was enjoying it, chatting with the guy and enjoying sushi as fresh as it gets.

Then in walks the Senior Sushi Chef, calls the guy over to him and punches him in the shoulder and complains about something. It was a full on punch to, to which the first guys response was, "sorry". The head chef then back hand slaps him across the face and says something I didn't catch, to which guy one bows slightly and say sorry again, for which he received another back hand slap. This hitting and bowing repeats four or five times at which point the boss storms out.

No other staff member says anything throughout the little incident, and once it was over the guy on the receiving end simply returned to making my lunch, with the impression of his bosses hand still visible across his face. Two other customers had walked in halfway through the exchange, and were doing a very good job of being awkwardly silent, which seems to be the appropriate Japanese response to this sort of thing.

Me, I was shocked, and slightly angry. Random violence is something I think I understand reasonably well after living as I have in NZ, but the idea of someone just standing there and bowing to a guy busy taking swing after swing at him is not something I can understand.

The new flavour sensation

2007-11-05T06:51:00.000+13:00

There are many reasons why Japanese food will never completely catch on in the rest of the world. Many find eating raw meat and fish a bit off putting, others have issue with eating endangered animals, and some people just don't like the idea of fried chicken organs on a stick. Unfortunately the above reasons don't seem to be enough for some people, and they have begun a campaign to release even harder to swallow foods into the world.

I came across one such food yesterday. Someone had the wonderful idea of combining two popular Japanese snacks, chocolate, and dried squid. And hence squid-chocolate was born! Unfortunately for me, and anyone else brave (stupid) enough to give it a try tastiness is not addative, yummy chocolate + yummy squid = very very unyummy snack.

I only tried one variety and to be fair it comes in 4 flavours, green tea, white chocolate, dark cocoa, and something yellow, but for me one was enough. Though I will be happy to send a pack to anyone wanting to try the others.

Sadly this is not the only such strange combination I have seen recently, there was also the vanilla and salt flavoured candies, and the ice cream and noodle soup.

Birthday Shopping

2007-11-04T06:37:00.001+13:00

As often happens at this time of year, I had a birthday last week. Which thanks to the capitalist culture in which we live, is an acceptable excuse to receive presents. And there was one particular present I wanted to receive, and to ensure that, I went shopping for it myself, a bottle of Sambuca.

Now this isn't exactly a common drink in Japan, but it is something that on occasion I have had the opportunity to pay $8 or $9 dollars for a shot of at a bar, so I know it does exist somewhere. Over the course of a week I visited about 10 different bottle shops that I found on my travels around Tokyo, no luck. Until the day before my birthday.

At a tiny little shop just down the road from where I live, on the back of a shelf, which I had to climb over some packing cases to reach, was a dusty old bottle of Sambuca. I climbed up and got it down, only to find the price tag had faded into unreadability, but then this is what bar codes are for so I took it to the counter.

They scanned it, and well, turns out it had spent more time sitting on the shelf gathering dust than I had expected. The bottle pre-dated the computer system, so its bar code wasn't in the computer! They refused to sell it to me, without a price tag, no offer I could make would convince the people behind the counter to part with their newly discovered rare and pressure drink. Damn it.

Saint Che

2007-10-26T20:21:00.001+13:00

I've made plenty of comments in the past on the skill with which Japanese people manage to include western ideas and customs in their daily lives without having any idea of the cultural significance behind them. Today's wonderful example of this comes from the women sitting next to me on the train, or more specifically her cell phone's background picture.

The picture was that more than slightly over used poster art picture of Che Guevara, but with the addition of a few love hearts floating around his head. Ok, cute, nice and Japanese. The surprising thing though was the subtitle of the image "Jesus loves you". Umm, ok its hard to be sure what jesus looks like, but I am reasonably sure he didn't have a nice communist star on his hat.

Endangered Curry

2007-10-22T05:24:00.000+13:00

Japan often receives a lot of criticism internationally for its whaling program, but Japanese people here normally completely fail to notice any of it as the Japanese media never mentions it. Of course when it does its to explain the fallacy of all there ridiculous reasons the nasty foreigners are trying to use to deprive the Japanese people of there traditional (diesel powered, explosive harpoon) whaling culture.

A lot of this sort of propaganda makes its way into Japanese language text books to educate all those poor misinformed foreigners who end up living here. One such text book had a lovely article summing up the Japanese peoples views and international views, and then asking the reader to decide what they thought and discuss it with the class. Surprisingly it managed to do this without using the words extinction, endangered, threatened or overfishing. Strangely I still don't know the Japanese word for "biased".

But to be honest, perhaps a little to much attention is given to scientific whaling. The Japanese aren't particularly hung up about which threaten animal they eat. The photos are of a range of canned curry products I found at a shop not far from where I live, amongst the different flavours I found whale, bear, and fur seal. So in case you were wondering what the Japanese were studying with their scientific whaling, its quite possibly part of a much larger study of the correlation between how endangered a species is and how good it tastes in a curry.

Loose change

2007-10-18T04:03:00.000+13:00

Just a two random things that I have discovered recently.

In Japanese Green peas and Greenpeace are written and pronounced exactly the same. Realising this I couldn't help recalling with more than a trace of irony the green pea and whale soup that I saw for sale at a festival several months ago.

People often wonder why Japanese people struggle to learn English, whereas most Europeans seem to get on quite well. One problem I have seen is the quality of dictionaries here, mine is full of mistakes, outdated words, and misleading examples. It is also the most popular dictionary in Japan. Today's discovery, what is it called when a marriage ends? A divorcement (yes, my spell checker is underlining is in red)

UPDATE: apparently not an isolated example, a friend of mine today asked about a datement she thought I was going on.

Warm Welcome From Japan

2007-10-14T01:29:00.000+13:00

Ok Japan is mostly a warm and welcoming place. Yes of course there are some arseholes, and a fair portion of the population do think foreigners are mostly criminals, but they are civil about it and don't normally bring it up. Well, except for the nationalist who hold rallies in front of some of the train stations on weekends and shout over the megaphones about how all the nasty "gaijin" should go home. But apart from that, Japan is quite welcoming.

Still seeing this friendly little sign on the door to a shop in Shinjuku was a bit of a surprise. "Japanese Only", somehow I doubt they are talking about the language. Luckily, as those of you who can read the Japanese in the picture probably realise, this is not really a shop I was likely to go into anyway, but still they could of been more polite, "Japanese only PLEASE"...

The prize goes to...

2007-10-13T20:32:00.000+13:00

More than occasionally I comment on the wonderfully inventive ways the English language is put to use in Japan, but so as not to appear biased I thought today I would share one particularly fine example from China.

Its not the most surprising, funny or ironic example I have ever seen, but I think it is the most efficient example of an English mistake I will ever come across. Normally in Japan they have to write an entire sentence, or at least a single word before they mess something up, at the Chinese hotel I stayed at they managed to do it in a single letter. More interesting than staying in room F.

Informative Advertising

2007-10-13T05:47:00.000+13:00

Shopping in China is quite an experience for many different reasons. Firstly there is the fact that the shop keepers despite not speaking any English are quite willing to make a very valiant and wordy attempt to convince you to buy anything you show an interest in. They aren't picky in deciding what constitutes "showing an interest", in my experience walking past something is normally enough.

If you do decide to actually buy anything there is then the question of price. If you are lucky enough to be buying something that even has a price tag, the amount printed on it normally bears no relation to how much you will have to pay for it. 20%, 50%, 70% discounts from that price aren't just possible, they are normal. Of course if there isn't a price tag, you may face the natural disadvantage of being western in which you have no chance of getting a normal price.

The third interesting point about shopping in China which I didn't realise until I got back to Japan is the problem of accurate advertising. I bought a bunch of cookies and snacks for my friends here as souvenirs (its a Japanese cultural thing), and shared them round while we were having dinner at the university. I had no idea of any of the brands or types of sweets so I just got a random selection of things that looked interesting from the super market.

One such was the box in the photo. Purple, heart shaped, with Chinese writing and fill of big pieces of almonds. Opened the box and found it was fill of the small brown dog biscuit looking things that I'm holding in the picture. Not only are they not purple, heart shaped, un-written on, and completely lacking in almonds, but they tasted like sand. I couldn't believe it, so I showed it to one of my Chinese friends here and she just shrugged as if it was normal.

Final Impressions

2007-10-12T03:40:00.000+13:00

I am now back home in Tokyo, and before I forget I thought I should just write a few of my general impressions on China.

Judging from the prices of Chinese imports in NZ and Japan you would possibly expect China to be a reasonably cheap place to live. But in the places I went to at least, this isn't really the case. Guangzhou is a big city, and it has the sort of prices you would expect in a big city anywhere else in the world. Basic stuff is pretty cheap, trains, food stuffs, but anything that could be considered a luxury item in anyway is pricey. Still cheaper than NZ, but not much. Of course, I am sure it would be different if I went to one of the smaller cities, but that is an experience for my next trip.

The food is variable. It is one of the few things that are cheap, and even if you go to the particularly expensive restaurants, it is still less than half what I would normally pay on an average night out in Tokyo. As to the quality, depending on where you go it is either literally poisonous or some of the best tasting I have ever eaten. I say literally poisonous as I got food poisoning twice. But don't think its just my weak western stomach, my Chinese companion did as well, on both occasions.

Of course being China you do see the occasional surprising item on the menu. I saw the standard shark fin and birds nest soups of course. The more interesting fried beetles, stewed cows stomachs, chicken feet and hundred year eggs (which should probably be avoided due to the heavy metal content). But the winner for weird food item that I didn't eat was pigeon and pork spine soup.

ps. I would add photos of some of these dishes but someone dropped my camera into a hot spring.

Chinese Internet

2007-10-08T17:23:00.000+13:00

I'm still in China, and ever since I got here I've only had sporadic internet access. Its partially to do with the fact that the hotel I am staying in hasn't updated their network since the early 90's, and partially to do with the fact that I am lost somewhere behind the Great Chinese Firewall.

As soon as your try to goto a blocked page you just get a "problem loading page" message, and thats it. I of course knew the government censored a lot of the web, but its surprising what they censor. For example I can goto www.blogger.com where I goto post on this blog, but I can't goto www.blogspot.com where I go to read it!

I think the most annoying lack is that I can't goto wikipedia, or certain other news sites, but I think it would be worse if I lived here long term because of some of the specifically censored stuff. Just to give it a try I googled "tiananmen square" which is something the Chinese are particularly sensitive about, of the first 10 results that came up, I could load 2, neither of which mentioned the unpleasant events from 1989.

Made in China

2007-10-01T03:56:00.000+13:00

Im currently sitting in an internet cafe in Sanya, China, and while they are still fresh and unperverted by too much rational thought, I thought I would share some of my first impressions. China is perhaps the oddest place I have ever been and I would reccomend the experience to everyone. I would also recommend they find someone to show them around because no one speaks English, which unfortunately doesn't stop them trying to rip you off or steal your wallet.

The first thing that really struct me was the view from the bus between Hong Kong and Guang Zhou. Lining the highway on both sides were hundreds of three to six story high, office block looking buildings. It was about nine in the evening and the lights were all still on, so I was able to see in through the windows. Row after Row after Row of sowing machines... I wonder what brand clothes they were working on...

The next thing that really struck me was getting on the plane in GuangZhou to come to Sanya. After having going through security, check-in, boarding and finally sitting down on the plane there was the standard welcome message in Chinese and English. Welcome aboard .... Thanks for flying with ... The flight time is.... the destination is.... please check your tickets and make sure you are on the right flight. The last comment was slightly disconcerting.

Other random things, the guy behind me at the internet cafe is watching SM porn with the volume turned to full. Everything in Sanya costs exactly three RMB, well almost everything, drinks, snacks, coconuts. People stare at me wherever I go, and I don't just mean people in the distance. I had one guy walking about a meter in front of me and just turn round to stare at me for about a minute...

Beetles, not the band

2007-09-27T05:22:00.000+12:00

I came across another interesting speciality shop in my travels around Tokyo recently, this one only sells beetles. Well that is not entirely true, it also sells beetle food and beetle cages, oh and books about beetles.

This seemed slightly strange to be then I realised, its sort of just speciality pet store. The only difference between it and the ones that only sell dogs, is that if you are not careful you may end up having to scrape your recently purchased new best friend of the bottom of your shoe.

中国に！

2007-09-25T05:46:00.000+12:00

Almost time for my second summer holiday, this time, China. I'll be going to Hong Kong on Thursday and then heading round a couple of places in south China in the following two weeks. Its a trip I have wanted to take for a very long time, and I am looking forward to getting myself completely lost in an unknown city or two.

My European trip did a very good job of making me feel confused with respect to my future plans and what I should be aiming at while I am in Japan, I am hoping this trip should do the opposite. I currently have no real idea what country I will be in a year from now, what I'll be doing there, or who I'll be do it with. I don't have deadlines in my life these days, but I feel like I need a goal, or at least some idea of what I want.

Life goes on

2007-09-22T04:59:00.000+12:00

Every now and then I hear stories about what's going on back in NZ, and occasionally they involve things even stranger that what's going on around me in Japan. I recently heard one such story from my mum.

Last week she had a car pull out in front of her in Wainuiomata, she couldn't stop in time, hit it, totalled her car, and needed to be taken off to hospital in the back of an ambulance. Good news is she is OK, no lasting damage, bloody lucky (well as lucky as someone who has been in a car accident can be).

Strange thing is, when my dad when to recover the car that night, it was gone. Someone had stolen a car that had been left smashed up on the side of the road following a car crash. It wasn't even a particularly nice car, worth only about $2000, that was naturally before the accident!

Rang the police, the next day, only to be informed the car had been spotted in Porirua or somewhere driving away following some crime. That explains where the number plates had gone, but why take the rest of the car as well?

Oh well, thats Wainuiomata for you. Currently however I live in a city of 400,000ish people an on average less than 10 car thefts a year. But the really strange thing is that here, people are scared of the high crime rate.

Social Networking Sites

2007-09-21T22:34:00.000+12:00

Judging by the number of friends requests I've gotten lately it seems that Facebook has become pretty popular in New Zealand since I left. I still don't like the idea of using one of these nasty sites where I have to choose who my "friends" are, but I have succumbed to peer pressure and registered for an account. Saying that I still have no intention of actually using it, but feel free to add me using my luke.mccrohon(At)gmail.com address.

On the other hand fed up with the lack of opportunities I've had to practice Japanese since I got back from Europe I have signed up for the Japanese equivalent, mixi.jp. If I am going to be wasting time on the web anyway, I may as well be learning Japanese while I do it. If you have an account please add me (same email address), or if you would like to start one ask me and ill send you an invitation.

Rove and Lomance

2007-09-17T22:18:00.000+12:00

Well as Japanese typos go this is nothing particularly shocking, but the idea of a nice glass of wine by the grass on a summers day is kind of romantic. The only problem would be the choice of wines, Rouge Wine or Brown Wine, and no, thats not what it says it Japanese.

Mouth Expander

2007-09-17T19:51:00.000+12:00

Occasionally you come across some pretty weird little gadgets in Japan that occasionally make you doubt your own sanity. I just simply can't believe that I am the only person in the country that finds this particular device weird for example.

What it is is a mouth expander, you stick it in your mouth for 5 minutes every day and it stretches your mouth so that you can sing Karaoke better. Costs about $15 and I've seen it on sale in two shops so far.

The grass is greener...

2007-09-11T19:35:00.000+12:00

and the sun shines brighter, at the other end of the station.

This is a sign I spotted at a train station in Tokyo, and yes there is a perfectly good reason for it, but I prefer not to think about it. Its just good to know that if the weather is getting me down, I now know where to go.

Hello Panda

2007-09-11T19:27:00.000+12:00

While in Poland last month I happened to be in Gdansk while there was some massive festival going on. As part of the festival there were street markets spread throughout the town, which were all cheap and stocked full of things that I couldn't possibly imagine uses for.

One stall I found was stocked full of cheap imitation brand name goods, complete with all the usual misspellings of names. There was also this particularly nice example, a Hello Kitty wallet... well so it claims, but if that is a Kitty its probably the scariest I've ever seen.

3 Day Weekend

2007-08-15T01:56:00.000+12:00

In the weekend in the middle of the conference I took a bus halfway across Ireland to visit a Japanese friend of mine living in Galway. Dublin hadn't exactly felt Irish, particularly as everyone I met was from overseas, but Galway had a very Irish feel. Full of pubs and drunk people. Also the nice small lanes, churches, and country side, but mainly the pubs, which strangely all close at about 1 am.

From Galway we took a day trip out to the Aran Islands, which despite Ireland's almost perpetually damp and unappealing weather, have to be one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Fields divided by ancient stone walls, castles thousands of years old, and even a white sand beach. But best of all, it actually stopped raining for most of the afternoon and turned into quite a pleasant day.

We hired bikes as it was about 10kms to the main castle we wanted to visit, and there were a lot of things along the way that buses wouldn't have stopped at. Explored a couple of nice castles along the way and one very nice ruined church. Check my brand new mechanical pocket watch that I had brought in Japan, and seeing we had time, even stopped for a bit at the beach.

Finally got to the castle, and had a nice relaxing lunch lying in the sun on the side of a 100m cliff plunging into the Atlantic. This time checked the time on my cell phone, and was somewhat shocked. Turns out I had forgotten to wind my watch that morning, and it was actually about an hour later than I had thought. The next 30 minutes of my life involved a quick trip down a hill and an energetic bike ride back to the boat that was about to leave. Got there 4 minutes before it set sail.

Europe Trip

2007-08-01T01:31:00.000+12:00

Tomorrow I am leaving Japan, and going to Europe. Ill be there for nearly 4 weeks and will be visiting Dublin, Gdansk, Malmo and Madrid. So you don't have to google it, ill be visiting Ireland, Poland, Sweden and Spain. Its sort of an educational thing visiting a summer school in Dublin, with a holiday tacked on the end, that I hastily arranged about 3 weeks ago.

The choice of places to visit was based largely on a night spent using www.skyscanner.net a wonderful web page aggregator of information on European budget airlines. The trip is already costing me far too much and I couldn't really afford to visit specific places, so my apologises to all those people I would otherwise have come to visit. As it is though, I got flights from Dublin to Gdansk, Gdansk to Malmo, Malmo to Madrid and Madrid to Dublin, for about 100euro. That's less than the 137euro I'm paying to rent a room in a flat in Dublin for 10 days... The other days will be spent on couches and in hostels.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do in any of the places, but they all of nice churches and I've heard rumours of a castle or two, so I'm sure ill find ways to spend the time. Its going to be quite bad for my Japanese though, a month of not using it at all would be enough to forget quite a bit, but then i guess its easy enough to find Japanese tourists anywhere in the world.

Godzillas Birthday Party

2007-07-30T19:45:00.000+12:00

Every now and then in Tokyo I come across a speciality store that only sells one kind of product. Occasionally its a type of food, or a shop that has every imaginable type of firework. But then other times its a shop that only sells balloons.

And you might wonder how you can full an entire shop only with balloons? Well they don't just stock regular party balloons. The one in the photo is a 90cm diameter one I brought to try out. Unless you've seen one of these in person you have no idea how fun they are, or how hard they are to blow up!

But the best thing is, 90cm isn't as big as they have. They go up to 160cm in diameter! I don't want to consider blowing one of those up without a pump...

So next time anyone is thinking about filling someone's office with balloons, let me know. With these it should only take 7 or 8 to fill a reasonable size office.

The shortest 6 months of my life

2007-07-29T01:34:00.000+12:00

I just finished my Japanese Language course, which was actually pretty good. I can read and speak a lot better than when I first came, and a lot better than if I had only been studying on my own for the last few months. As part of the course I had to give a 10 minute presentation in Japanese on a topic of my choice, mine involved semantics with reference to a cat shaped robot from the future. The one really surprising thing about the course though, was that in just over 3 months they managed to complete the promised 6 months of Japanese language training that I was supposed to be given as part of my scholarship. Japanese efficiency...

Oh I should probably mention that I have decided that I will probably not being doing my masters degree here. I've learnt a lot more about the Japanese system since getting here and I don't really think the masters degree would be worth it. One of the biggest points is the time it would take, if I was still in NZ I would finish by the end of this year, but here I wouldn't even start until next April and it would take two years after that. I would have to spend a few months studying for the entrance exams, which are in areas completely unrelated to what I want to study and which have no bearing on what I've studied until now in New Zealand. Add to that rumours that the exams and courses require as much rote learning as actual understanding and it doesn't seem like my sort of thing.

So my current plan is to stick around until next year at least and decide whether I want to try and get into a Phd program here, while spending my time on my own research and hopefully get a paper or two published. If I decide not to stay I will look at getting another scholarship and moving on to Europe to do my Phd there. Of course during my time here there are a lot of people I can learn a fair bit from, and I will of course be able to improve my Japanese. Plus to be honest, the lifestyle here is enjoyable enough that I'm not in any hurry to leave.

Vending Machines at the Top of the World

2007-07-20T22:46:00.000+12:00

This week I climbed mount Fuji. Its not an impressive accomplishment once you realise the number of retired people who reach the summit everyday, but it was still good fun. I climbed it with a couple of my foreign friends who I often go hiking with here. We started climbing at about 9pm so we would reach the summit at sunrise. Yes, yes, its very Japanese climbing a mount for a photo opportunity, but I have to say climbing a fog covered mountain by torch light is one of the most surreal experiences I can imagine.

It was foggy when we started so pretty much all you could see was the beam of your flash light fading into the middle distance. But once we got above the fog the view was excellent. Stars, so many stars, including 23 shooting ones. It was a nice change from the Tokyo sky where I've never seen more than 6 stars at any one time...

The climb isn't actually too bad, a well marked trail and to be honest, restaurants every 500 meters or so. We stopped at about 3000m for a bowl of noodles in a restaurant that didn't really look a lot different than the ones where I normally eat dinner. Got to the top at about 3.30am, and watched a reasonably unimpressive sunrise. Once the sun was up however the view was magnificent, like the cloud layer seen from an air plane, except there was a mount rising up from it under your feet.

Oh and I cant remember who it was I joked to about there being vending machines everywhere in Japan, and suggested there was probably even a few on the way up mount Fuji. I was wrong, they are not on the way up, they are at the summit! (oh and a bottle of coke costs about $6)

Drinks in a Dungeon

2007-06-25T17:52:00.000+12:00

Neil and Chris came to visit Japan for a couple of weeks recently. It was good catching up on news from NZ and having an excuse to avoid my Japanese course and go sightseeing. It was pretty much the standard Japanese holiday, temples, raw fish, sky scrappers, small explosions, electronics, crowded trains and a few gardens. Well the only exception was Neil trying to avoid eating fish, which is decidedly unjapanese, and not the easiest thing to do in this country. (Neil if you eat fish you will have something in common with your cat...)

I don't know what there impressions of Japan were, but considering Neils first full day in Japan ended in a simulated dungeon, with two Japanese girls, fighting off monsters with a mace, drinking shots from test tubes, and trying to avoid eating fried balls of tobasco sauce and octopus, his impression should atleast be interesting. I've come to accept themed restaurants as part of the Japanese experience, but still I am occasionally surprised. I came accross a new one last week, unhappy with just a prison or hospital theme, it decided to combine the two, giving Alcatraz Prison Hospital Restaurant.

On the day they were leaving we had lunch together in Shibuya, with Neil complaining that he "wished he could stay longer". Well in an inspired stroke of unconscious planning, he confused the departure/checkin times for their flight back, missed the plane, and got an extra two days in Japan. He also got a sizeable bill for Chris and himself to share, but I'm sure he was able to look on the bright side about it.

もう一回

2007-06-01T18:52:00.000+12:00

I'm back in Japan, and after an abortive attempt at keeping a blog on a wiki, I have decided to resurrect my old Japan blog. I will try and post frequently, but as past experience shows this is not something I am particular good at, so my apologies in advance.

If you didn't know me back then, please feel free to have a look at some of my older posts, Japan was equally as strange two years ago. I would appreciate comments, so long as they don't concern my spelling or grammar.

Luke

Too Many Foreigners

2007-05-31T20:21:00.000+12:00

The Japanese attitude towards foreigners is something I could say a lot about, but its not something I could even pretend to understand yet, so Ill avoid that topic for a year or two. But occasionally I am going to hear/see something so ridiculous that I have to say something about it, such as today when I found out the number of foreigners living in Japan.

Now its obvious that there aren't a lot of foreigners here, I can remember by the end of my stay in Nara that if I went to a place and saw more than 2 foreigners I would start to wonder what was going on. But its always good to have a number, and today while reading an international newspaper I found one, 1.6% of the Japanese population is officially a foreigner.

Ok now lets compare that to NZ, 17.5% of people living in NZ were born overseas as of the last census. Now before I said 1.6% of people in japan was OFFICIALLY a foreigner, well what makes you a foreigner in Japan and NZ is slightly different. Of that 1.6% over half were actually born in Japan! They just had the misfortune of foreign parents, so cant possible join the exclusive Japanese club.

BANG

2007-05-26T20:20:00.000+12:00

One of my favourite things about Japan has always been the fireworks, and generally the ones that fly or go bang, not just the cute little ones. You can buy fireworks at any time of year here and they aren't tied in to any particular holiday, so its something you can do a couple of times a year which is what makes it even better.

Of course its still too early in the year for the massive 2 hour long fireworks displays, which make summer evenings fun, but that didn't stop me and some friends letting off our own in a park one night last week. Ok you might think that doing them in a park is a bad idea, but this is Japan, where else are people going to do them? Well the first pair of policemen who we met in the park also thought it was a bad idea and suggested we do it in our gardens.

Now about 90% of the population of this city we don't have our own gardens, so we didn't really know what to do with our bag full of fireworks. Though when we were leaving an hour or so later we thought that letting off a few little ones would probably be ok. The second set of police men didn't think so... and I am so glad that it was a different pair. The chances of be recognised there are now much to high and I wont be able to do fireworks in that park for at least a month, which is a pain as its the only large park nearby.

That night left me with a large surplus of explosives sitting on the shelf in my room. That particular surplus got a lot larger today when I discovered a fireworks wholesale shop. It was paradise, a shop where everything was cheap and explosive! Some very interesting types including rocket propelled toy cars! And the best thing was right next door was another shop exactly the same. I now have a truly scary amount of fireworks in my room though...

Natural Onsen

2007-05-21T20:18:00.000+12:00

As I said in the last post I went to Nikko over the weekend, and one of the things I wanted to do while I was there was goto an Onsen. Now my past experiences with Onsen have be somewhat mixed, ranging from natural hot springs in the middle of forests, to essentially large bath tubs and given Nikkos reputation for natural beauty I was hoping to find something of the former.

Having been somewhat lazy about organising the trip I just decided to ask at the Tourist information centre which of the onsen are of the more natural kind, and was told about 3. Me and my friends chose the cheapest of these which turned out to be owned by a hotel. That's quite normal here, so I wasn't overly worried. We went there paid our money and were lead to the onsen.

Turns out what the tourist information centre consider natural is in the basement of a building, with no natural light, tiled wall-to-wall, with several rocks to one side of the room and the hot water coming out of a tap. I hate to think what the others were like.

We did find another one while tramping that was about as natural as you can get, some hot puddles in the middle of a swamp. Unfortunately they were only big enough to bathe your feet in, still was nice.

Crime in Japan

2007-05-21T20:14:00.000+12:00

Well despite 6 months worth of warnings last time I was in Japan about all the things I shouldn't do because of the crime rate here, I never actually saw any crime. That changed yesterday when I saw a theft from a souvenir shop in Nikko (Oh yeah, I went to Nikko, nice place). Of course the theft was by a monkey, so it doesn't really contribute to the crime rate.

Cute little bastard walk over to the shop, took one of the bags of snacks, and then just bolted. I call it a bastard because like every other animal in this country it tried to attack me, all I wanted to do was take its photo...

Oh yeah and as to crime I recently heard on the news that there had been a rash of gun related crime, apparently last year there were 53 shootings! 3 of which were fatal. Considering that the population of Tokyo alone is over 3 times that of NZ, how do you we compare.

No I dont hear Voices

2007-05-15T20:11:00.000+12:00

This week is "health check week" at Tokyo University. Apparently the University wants to check all students, except for first years, to see if they are dying or not, and apparently its something I'll have to look forward to every year while I'm here.

I guess its good that the University cares about its students (well, except for the first years), but I really wonder why they want to know? If they find that I have some horrible incurable disease does that mean I don't graduate?

Thinking about it, I expect they are more practical than that, and I would probably be passed on to the medical department for study. I want to be involved in writing a few papers here, but that's not the way I have in mind. I find out in two weeks.

They were thorough, blood tests, X-rays, ECG, etc. and then just for foreigners a mental health survey. I have at times thought the Japanese consider most foreigners to be crazy, but I was somewhat surprised that the mental health survey was reserved solely for us.

No I don't hear Voices that no one else hears, and in the last year I haven't believed anyone was out to get me. I answered no to so many questions that by the end I was starting to get slightly nervous, it was like sitting a multi-choice exam and answering A to every question.

Oh and apparently I am 168cms tall...

Fucking Bird

2007-05-02T20:10:00.000+12:00

Why is it that every animal I feed in Japan attacks me? Last time I was here it was the deer in Nara park, this time a bird. I was sitting under a tree eating lunch and a raven landed nearby and was just hopping round looking for crumbs. Everyone here thinks they are horrible birds, but until today I quite liked them, so I threw it a chunk of bread. It took it and flew off, seemed happy enough, a couple of minutes later it came back. Landed on the seat behind me, snuck up behind me and tapped my back. I went to look round and the bloody thing bit me. If all the wildlife here is like what Ive met so far I understand why the Japanese don't pay much attention to looking after the environment.

Chemical Brothers

2007-04-28T20:08:00.000+12:00

I went clubbing with some friends last night to a club called Womb in Shibuya It was my first time going to an actually dance club in Japan, so I was expecting to be surprised. I was, both positively and negatively.

Although it wasn't a surprise the door charge wasn't pleasant, 3500yen, it was worth it. The dance floor was brilliant, with lazy light show and an almost 2m diameter disco ball. The music wasn't bad either, but will be better this week, they have the chemical brothers coming.

Me and pretty much every other international student from the hostel will be going (most of the Japanese people we've mentioned it to have no idea who they are). Only costs about $40 to get in tonight, so isn't even to expensive. Oh and I got membership last week which means I get a $10 discount.

Membership is one of those strange Japanese things, nearly every bar, restaurant, shop or Internet cafe has a membership program. They normally cost nothing to join, and get some pretty good discounts and special offers, just takes a few minutes.

Unlike all the other membership programs I've seen though, the one at the club didn't give a membership card. Instead they take a digital thumbprint scan! Not only does it mean I don't need a membership card, but also I don't need to carry ID to get into the club, just a scan at the door.

As to the negatives, there were a few, the worst being the gender ratio. It seem liked there were at least twice as many guys as girls! Tonight may be better

L and R

2007-04-27T20:06:00.000+12:00

There are so many examples of bad English being used in Japan, so its not normally something worth mentioning. Occasionally though you come across a case that is particularly funny or ironic, and those can be worth sharing.

To be fair I probably make similar mistakes when speaking Japanese, so I don't normally find mistakes when people speak funny (Except for the Japanese guy who was talking about "the big election", but always confused L and R). However lots of Japanese companies use English in advertising campaigns and you would kind of expect them to have someone check it first.

Last time I was here I worked for a company which on their website offered "professional transration services" which fits the ironic category. One I saw last week might beat it though, an advertisement for a talking electronic dictionary that helps people learn English. The picture in the ad of course had a speech bubble, and what was it saying? "Lets Listening!"

The best Ive come across so far this time was when I went to karaoke last night. Lots of the songs are western and of course have the words in English, though not always the words you would expect. For example missing a space turned "I want you to hold me at night" into "I want you to hold meat ..." and a slight confusion between "you" and "your" gave "I want you baby" a whole new meaning.

WTF?!? level four?

2007-04-20T20:04:00.000+12:00

Well last week I had a japanese language placement test and interview. The test went ok and the interview went well and they told me I would probably in course 3. There are five courses, from beginner 1 to advanced 5, and to be honest I was quite pleased with myself for getting into level 3, its what I was aiming for.

Yesterday though I found out what class they actually put me in, level 4, I am so buggered. I just finished my first class and in 2 hours there was a grand total of 3 words of English. I can survive the explanations in Japanese, my speaking/listening isn't to bad, but the problem is the writing.

I've only ever studied Japanese on my own, so I always skipped over the boring bits, ie how to read, and just concentrated on speaking. So of the thousands of Chinese characters hat are used in Japanese I know about 100, most of which refer to different types of food.

In class however Im supposed to know 600+, so it looks like im going to have a fun few weeks trying to catch up. Hmm maybe I should stop complaining, its just after months of complete laziness I have to actually do some work.

11mm Cell Phone

2007-04-18T20:03:00.000+12:00

Living in Japan without a cell phone is difficult, well actually not difficult, just bloody boring. When you have a city of 12million people you don't often run into friends by accident.

Of course like everything else here it take a fair amount of paperwork to get one, but annoyingly you also need to have an alien registration card before they will let you get one. I waited until I had mine then went shopping, which involved about 4 hours talking in Japanese with sales people that had to constantly keep checking what rules applied for foreigners to buy one.

Following that I decided to get a phone from softbank (they used to be vodafone and so my phone will work in NZ when I come back). I got a 2 year contract, at $15 a month, for which I get a free phone, free txt/pic/video messaging to all other softbank users, and free calling before 9pm to softbank users. Other messages cost 4 cents, and calls are 40 cents a minute.

The free calling is great, I convinced all the other foreigners I know to sign up for the same contract and so apart from my Japanese friends all my calls are free. The actually phone is pretty cool, much like a RAZR (but thinner I think, 11mm), has a 2 mega pixel camera, blue tooth, Internet, micro SD etc. Ok its not the wonderful compared to what you get here, but you've all seen what sort of phone I use in NZ, and this one was free!

$115 Bike

2007-04-16T19:58:00.000+12:00

My rent here is cheap, but thats only because I'm a student staying at the on campus hostel, but some things in Japan are cheap regardless of who you are. Tokyo is flat, and even though it is quite large most of the interesting bits are close together, its perfect for biking.

I've been thinking about buying a second hand bike since I got here, but hadn't seen any second hand store. Well it turns out that its not much of a problem, because brand new bikes are ridiculously cheap anyway. I'm not sure what I'm going to buy yet, but this one is only 10 400 yen, which is about $115. Japan isn't really that expensive.

First Months Rent

2007-04-14T19:56:00.000+12:00

I thought I should probably say something about what my accommodation is like in Japan, it is small, cramped and somewhat tiny, that is to say it is Japanese. I didn't really have any problems with that, but the kitchen is completely unusable.

I have a mini-fridge that could probably store 12 cans of coke, no freezer, no microwave, a single cupboard, no drawers and a one element stove. I was thinking about buying a microwave, but then I realised there are also no power points. Umm I haven't been doing all that much cooking since I got here.

The bathroom is similarly minimal, it has a toilet and a shower, though not both at the same time. You slide the sink to one side an there is a toilet, to the other side and there is a shower head.

On the plus side the location aint bad, its walking distance from Shibuya which means there is lots to do nearby. Have been going there most nights for dinner, but have been having a hard time convincing any of the other international students to do karaoke with me.

I was planning to move out and find somewhere closer to the university to live, but then I got the bill for the rent. Only $130, including expenses, and being japan thats per month, not per week! Unfortunately Ill only be able to stay there for my first year, but at that price, i should be able to save a bit, or more likely do some traveling.

USB Missile Launcher

2007-04-13T19:54:00.000+12:00

I was walking through Akihabara last week looking for a new cell phone when I found the coolest USB device I have ever seen, a USB Missile Launcher!!

It cost 1000yen, so about $14, and fires three foam darts. Using the arrow keys you can rotate it through 360 degrees, up and down and then fire using the space bar. Bloody powerful too, can easily fire from one side of my lab to the other which is about the same width as Memphis.

Here's a photo of it, and I'll try and get a video up later.

Yes I'll go back and see if they have any more, Memphis needs one of these. Also if anyone else would be interested add your name to the discussion page and I'll see if I can send some back (Postage might be expensive).

We want 10yen back

2007-04-12T19:52:00.000+12:00

I'm in Japan on a scholarship, and quite a nice one. I get 170000yen a month, my airfares paid for, tuition and subsidised accommodation. The only thing I have to do for this is some research, and a lot of paperwork.

Last week I was looking at the list of things I needed to take to the international office at the university, lots of official documents about enrolling, a copy of my passport, some photos, and 10 yen. 10 yen is nothing, sort of like 10 cents in NZ, but it was one of the things on the list.

When I got to the office I found out why. Everyone needs to open a savings account, so you need an initial deposit, thats what the 10 yen was for. I ended up waiting in line, for about 10 minutes while a lady asked everyone in front of me if they had their 10 yen or not. I shouldn't complain, after all they are giving me plenty of cash, just so strange the lengths they had to goto to get 10yen of it back...

30000yen Taxi

2007-04-10T19:50:00.000+12:00

Before I came to Japan I had almost no idea as to what I was going to be doing once I got here. I was under the impression that I would be told once I got here, though apparently that wasn't what was planned.

I got off the plain with one very dead sunflower, cleared customs and was met by a guy from the Japan Student Association. He seemed to be quite disorganised, and initially didn't seem to want to believe that I had come from New Zealand.

Having convinced him I was not in fact Renald from Australia I was taken via 5 other people, each of whom wanted me to sign my name and fill in some part of a form. After this I was told to wait, still having not been told anything, but having received an envelope with 25000 yen. I waited.

An hour or so later I was told that my ride was there, and still not knowing anything I was thrown into a cab with the single other NZ student and a cab driver who spoke no English. I asked how long it was going to take, and found out that it would be a few hours. I spent the next 2 hours watching the fare go up, and up and up. I had no idea who was going to be paying for it, which made me slightly nervous when it hit 300 000 (about $400).

Oh it was about that point where the Taxi driver got lost. I knew he was lost not only because we had gone past the same intersection 3 times, but also because he turned round and asked me if I knew how to get there. We did make it eventually, after stopping and asking pedestrians, and I discovered that the bill wasn't for me.

To this day I still haven't been told anything much, but apparently I have a Japanese test on Thursday and might have classes at some point after that. I'll let you know.

...not just buddists...

2006-02-21T05:00:00.000+13:00

When I first came to japan I believed there were no churches. After a few months I found a few, most of which were run out of rented rooms in apartment blocks or in convertered warehouses. So I came to believe there were no churches here worth taking photos of.

For a couple of months I filled my photo albums with pictures of temples and shrines, and the massive stone churches I had seen in germany became a distant memory.

I had given up hope to soon! I found one right in the middle of osaka a couple of minutes walk from the main train station. Looking at it i couldnt tell if it was actually built of stone or not, but as things go, it looked pretty authentic.

The only issue with it was the location....

...built 10 stories up the side of a hotel.

...bunny rabbits...

2006-02-11T04:42:00.000+13:00

Japan is obsessed with cuteness, and wherever possible cuteness of the small, cute, fluffy and fuzzy kind. I think everyone probably knows who hello kitty is, but what about totoro? or doraemon? or spulin? or the other million odd characters that live here?

And unlike NZ they arent confined to a solitary life at the foot of the bed or in kids toy boxs, they are everywhere. I cant make it to the kitchen without coming across a few, let alone the end of my street. But more about these little parasites later, because there is another thing certain japanese people seem to like, anything "western" (by which they invariably mean "american").

These two things were bound to combine in some way, so ask yourself what is american, small, cute and could be completely misinterpreted in someway? The playboy bunny of course! You see it everywhere here, on notebooks, bags, keyrings, clothes etc.

The one place you dont see it though is on playboy magazines, i cant remember seeing one in japan! This could have something to do with japans bizzare censorship laws which would leave them very pixelated, but thats another story.

Ive asked a couple of my students who came to class wearing playboy sweatshirts if they knew where the rabit came from, and none of them did. All im going to say about this is can you imagine explaining what playboy is to a group of japanese housewives in their 50s with limited english ability?

One of the most surprising places the rabbit turns up is on school uniforms. School dress codes are much stricter than in NZ, uniforms of course, no jewellery, uniform jackets, uniform schoolbags, I even heard of students being taken out of class to the hairdressers because their hair wasnt the right shade of black!

The one small shred of individuality that can creep into the uniform is in what brand of socks a student buys, with each brand having its own 1cm square logo. Most choose eiffel tower socks, or something similar, alot however choose the bunny.

...im sorry its having a break...

2006-02-08T23:30:00.000+13:00

I thought i should be slightly more scientific about vending machines, so I decided to count how many i passed on my way to Nara today; 67 of them. Now to put this in context its less than a 30 minute walk, so i was passing vending machines about once every 25 seconds...

Considering how well endowed japan is with vending machines, youd think it shouldnt be to hard to find an ATM either. The truth is its not really hard to find one, its hard to find one thats open. Because unlike the inhumanely treated dispencers of tea, sake and cigarettes, which must work 24hours a day, ATMs are allowed to take a break every evening, and on weekends.

After about 8pm on weekends, and maybe 4pmish on saturdays, banks shut down there ATMs, which means if your out of cash your in trouble(because there isnt any EFTPOS here either). I have no idea why they do this, i can only assume that the ATMs in japan have a very good union, because they spend less time working than many office workers here!

Im left to wonder what the ATMs do on sundays, play space invaders?

...midnight watermelons...

2006-02-08T04:21:00.000+13:00

have you ever been awake in the middle of the night and thought "what i really feel like right now is a watermelon"? But as you go check the fridge you realise you dont have one? Its never happened to me, but if it does japan has a solution: Watermelon Vending machines!

The number of vending machines in japan is higher than the population of NZ. They can be found in the most unlikely places (shrines) and strangely you will often find 4 or 5 of them sitting right next to each other selling almost identical things (one from each of the main vending machine companies).

And its not just watermelon vending machines, heres a list of some of the others ive seen:

Water melons
ice cream
green tea
cigarettes
soft drink
news papers
batteries
Alcohol (upto bottles of whisky)
cup noodles
pornography
fresh vegetables
sex toys
rain jackets
hot chips
soup
etc

If someone told me they had found a giant vending machine which you could buy vending machines from, it wouldnt take much for me to believe them.

Annoying thing is though, the vast majority of them only sell drinks, ive been to one place where there was litterally 12 vending machines, and not one of them sold any kind of food!

...dogs...

2006-01-27T00:37:00.000+13:00

i honestly cant remeber seeing what i would consider a real dog since i came to japan. There are however plentiful examples of what several thousand years of selective breading (and the occasional random mutation) can acheive, dogs capable of fitting in handbags.

Im not entirely sure why they are so prevalent, whether its the fact that they are the only dogs that japanese people have space for, or if its just because japanese people like cute little things, im not sure. I have nothing against small dogs, they are essentially just cats which wag their tails, the problem i have is that japanese people tend to dress them in clothes.

Naturally the clothes are not home made, this is japan, i know of 2 stores who only sell dog clothes. These arent little stores in someones garage either, one is right in the center of osaka in between fashion stores and shoe shops.

Availability isnt a problem, but i still wondered why, so i asked a student:

"Ahh its winter and hes little so we need to keep him warm"
"Isnt that why dogs are covered in fur?"
"oh not any more, we gave him a summer style haircut"

poor dogs.

...for your information...

2005-12-26T04:54:00.000+13:00

Some umm useful signs ive seen around the place in japan.

You shouldnt climb into the baggage storage lockers at the trainstation.

And this one should be self-explanatory.

If anyone knows a decent freeware/crackable batch thumbnail converter for windows please send me a link.

...kurisumasukeeki...

2005-12-25T23:59:00.000+13:00

Hi,
I havent written an email in awhile, and so most of you wont have heard anything about what Ive been upto over here in freezing cold japan. Sadly im not in a story telling mood, so your going to have to wait awhile longer (im back home in 8 weeks).

For now ill just say that I am no longer a german POW, it didnt snow on christmas and despite being upto my third textbook, I still cant speak japanese.

If your looking for more details about my life here, you can stop reading now. All im going to say is abit about christmas in japan.

The only job ive had in japan where i needed to wear a suit. I wasnt complaining until they came at be with the tube of PVA glue...

EMAIL 6: Japanese Christmas traditions

They do have christmas here. They have plastic christmas trees, they have chubby middle aged white men dressed up as santa claus, they have shopping malls covered in christmas lights that tens of thousands of people crowd round to see, but most importantly they have amazingly overpriced cake.

In many ways its like christmas anywhere else in the world, capitalism at its best, the only real difference is that here there is no pretending that christmas means something. Except maybe for the 0.7% of the population who are christian. To everyone else its about kids getting gifts, tacky mass produced decorations, and eating cake.

Cake is from my observations central to christmas here, many people dont give gifts, or have a tree, or realise what the first 6 letters of christmas mean, but cake seems to be universal. And unlike in other parts of the world they arent picky about what kind of cake, there is no traditional christmas cake here, its simply a matter of what you feel like.

I asked my students what they would be having, chocolate cake, cheese cake, strawberry cake, fruit cake, sponge cake, ice cream cake, baum kuchen, melon cake, green tea cake, seasame cake, pound cake, etc. Oh and naturally cake comes either from cake shops or department stores, and all flavours have one thing in common, the price.

For a 17cm diameter cake you will pay $40 or upwards. I have seen cake advertised for as much as $250 (for a 19cm diameter cake, with a 15cm cake placed ontop). Why does cake cost so much? Students answer varied from "the chef is famous" to "strawberries are expensive in winter".

This 20cmish cake cost $47 from the local cake shop.

There is of course the matter of what to have for christmas dinner. For many the logic seems to go like this, in america they eat turkey for christmas, chickens are like turkeys, KFC is american company that sells chicken, lets go to KFC. And so is by far KFCs busiest day of the year here.

Well happy holidays, and see you in a few weeks. If your feeling bored between now and then you can always visit my blog arity.blogspot.com, it has photos...

luke

ps I didnt have cake today or KFC.

...kurisumasu...

2005-12-23T02:45:00.000+13:00

well its two days before christmas and id say there is about a 50% chance of it being a white one. Weve had snow on and off for over a week and as its still damn cold I wouldnt be surprised.

Started off just being snow on the occasionally car roof (no it wasnt that localised, the cars brought it with them), which was very frustrating. I wasnt sure how japanese people would react to finding a strange foriegner harvesting snow from their bonnet, and im not sure if my japanese is up to explaining that i needed it to build snowmen with.

I thought it might be easier to explain if i just built the snowmen on the car, but then i realised such snowmen would have had a significantly increased automobile accident mortality rate. Snowmen are generally short lived as it is, and i just didnt think it fair.

Eventually we got more snow, which was when i realised something surprising. Japanese snowmen are of a completely different genus than the ones ive met in the past. Unlike the ones im used to they are made of only 2 balls of snow and consider wearing a bucket as a hat highly fashionable.

A foriegn snowman

I got some odd looks, after having stacked two, when i went away to make a third snowball for the head. I asked my students about this, who seemed a little shocked by the possibility of giant foriegn snowmen, and it seems all japanese snowmen are of the 2 snowball variety.

Im hoping for a big snow sometime, i want to try building a japanese style snow house, which is likely as febuary is the coldest month so there is plenty of time.

have a nice warm christmas.

...how do you say karaoke in japanese?...

2005-12-12T03:55:00.000+13:00

Im in japan to learn japanese, and when im not sitting teaching people english, or pretending to be german, i do spend alot of time studying it. I know im getting alot better at it, but as it always is with languages, i dont actual feel that i am.

Random (slightly) annoying things about japanese.

Vowel length. The difference actually matters between saying "o" and "oo"! When i was in tokyo there were two train stations, oyama and ooyama, which was somewhat confusing. Now the reason this is not just annoying is that oyama means small mountain, and ooyama means the exact opposite, big mountain. I think somehow that could be simpler...

Intonation. Its not as bad as in chinese, but sadly it too, matters in japanese. Depending on it, "kaeru" means either "return", "can buy" or "frog".

And then there are all the loan words from english. I acutally find these quite funny, I was at a restaurant last week when the girl behind me ordered:

chizuu omreisu esu seizu

Looks reasonably japanese right? well its based completely on english words:

cheese ommlette-rice s-size

Oh and just in case your feeling hungry there is also emu and eru sizes:)

...can you buy this here?...

2005-12-11T22:58:00.000+13:00

Had a lesson a couple of weeks ago where i was asked "what do New Zealand people put on their toast at breakfast?". Peanut butter, jam, nutella, were easy enough to explain, but then i came to vegimite. I spent abit of time trying, but knew i wasnt making much progress once i heard "so its like vegetable jam?".

It may have been slightly cruel, but i decided i would have to demostrate. I had one single serve packet of vegimite left from the ones i had borrowed from a cafe at auckland airport so took it to last weeks lesson.

It was my bosses son who had asked the question, so it was easy enough to arrange a piece of toast (butter was harder). I was expecting the normal reaction, one bite, and then a second just to be sure that it really tasted that bad. I was looking forward to a piece of toast for lunch, but in less than a minute my dreams of lunch were gone, as was the toast.

I thought this could just be him being polite, but he then asked me where he could get it in japan. Seemed rather disapointed that i didnt know. Thought it tasted abit like miso. Go figure.

...im fine thank you, and you?...

2005-11-25T03:46:00.000+13:00

Its time to say abit more about teaching in japan, which i feel must be one of the easiest jobs possible (prehaps only second to being a movie extra).

At the moment im teaching 2 days a week, which gives me more than enough money to survive here. I normally get paid around 2700yen an hour (about $33) and japan isnt that expensive, so im not having to do that many hours. I think overall ive saved abit since getting here, but the currencies dropped so overall i think ill come home with the same amount I brought with me.

So heres abit about english teaching in japan.

Teaching in Japan

All junior high school students in japan are taught the following exchange:

"Hello, how are you?"
"Im fine thank you, and you?"

Nothing overly wrong with it, except that everyone here seems to believe this is the only proper way to start a conversation in english.

First result of this is regardless of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, japanese people are always "fine" (Ive had a student litterally in tears, who around sobbing, was able to tell me she was "fine").

Second result, its very easy to confuse people by asking them something other than "How are you?" at the start of a conversation. ie

"Hello, im luke, whats your name?"
"ahhh....ummm....Im fine thank you and you?"

Ive had this conversation atleast 20 times and have given up being creative. It would be wrong to say that all people follow this pattern without exception, there are those who seemingly slept through junior highschool english class:

"Hello, how are you?"
"Hello, my name is hiroshi"#big smile#
"My name is Luke, and how are you?"
"eeeee?" #smile disapears#

Its normally about this point that some bright students decides enough is enough, and adds:

"He is fine thank you and you?"

I spent several lessons today trying to convince by students they dont need to be perpetually fine, but im sure come next week theyll be fine again.

Luke

...let them eat cake...

2005-11-22T01:22:00.000+13:00

Just got back from a week in Tokyo, which was very interesting, and leeds me to believe that there are many strange things about Japan that I havent even considered yet, for example, cake.

Sometimes I like coffee, sometimes I like cake and coffee, and sometimes I can afford both these things so it seems perfectly sensible to goto a cafe and buy them. This is a sensible course of action in japan as well. Be warned however, if for some reason you feel like cake, but not coffee, your misguided common sense could lead you into trouble. Mine did.

I went to a cafe while in tokyo that had some really nice looking (and eventually, tasting) cakes on display in the window. Id had alot to drink at lunch, so didnt really want anything more, I just wanted the shiny chocolate cake. Reasonable enough right? Well on the menu it only had the price for coffee and cake sets, but this shouldnt really be a problem, so we ordered it. Just to be safe hiroko asked how much the cake was going to be on its own.

This line of questioning made the waitress feel slightly uncomfortable, to the point that she had to run away and ask the manager. This was to be as far as cakes independence from coffee was going to get, apparently cake and coffee are inseperable in certain parts of tokyo. I never found out why, prehaps cake just gets lonely easily?

I ended up with a drink... good cake though. Strange cafe.

luke

...the ghosts in the machine...

2005-11-12T01:29:00.000+13:00

well it finally happened, robots have decided they are better than us and are going to do something about it.

It happened yesterday, I went to visit some robots on display at ATR labs, and as I walked past one of them raised its heavily padded arm and punched me in the back. It may simply have been resentful that I had patted it on the head, or it may be a sign of something deeper...

...let there be packaging...

2005-10-31T18:20:00.000+13:00

hi,
here is yet another diversion from luke in japan.

Random happenings.
I got a call from my umm agent(who i seem to have acquired from my movie job) asking me if i wanted to audition for a television commercial. It was an ad for curtains, and my role would have been to look out the curtains at some girls standing outside. Despite this being the only job conceivably easier than teaching english I had to turn it down as I already had work on the day of the audition.

Last friday was my birthday, and I am having a party this saturday, to which you are all welcome to attend. Might be abit out of the way for most of you, however there will be cake.

If you are the sort of person inclined to feel bad about not wishing me a happy birthday, please dont. My email account was bouncing all incoming messages so I dont know who actually did:) and besides, i have either forgotten, or will forget, most of yours anyway...

So that its easier for me to send pictures and things, Ive decided to turn these emails into a blog. The address is:

http://arity.blogspot.com/

This way people can comment and point out any of my glaring inaccuracies.

EMAIL 5: Japans packaging fetish.
Since getting here ive noticed that most stores are abit overzealous when it comes to how they pack things.

First an example of what I mean, lets look at the traditional sushi you can buy in nara. The only thing making this sushi more traditional (and expensive) than regular sushi is the fact that it is wrapped in persimmon leaves. This was a nice enviromentally friendly form of packaging in the days before plastic.

But moving to the present things have changed, first you take your traditional leaf wrapping, and then wrap in a layer of paper, place in a box, wrap again in paper. Now add chop sticks (also wrapped) and place in a plastic bag, finished.

Five layers of wrapping means you probably shouldnt order this if your in a hurry to eat, or if you actually like the environment, but it does taste good once you get to it.

Things arent normally this bad, but generally anything you buy is given to you in a plastic bag, even if its something you are obviously about to eat as soon as you walk out the store or something that is in a bag already. I think the strangest thing so far was when i bought a table, somehow they managed to find an extra large bag for it:(

Because of this it took me less than a week to work out how to say "I dont need a bag", but still I have abit of a collection in my room from all those times where i just wasnt quick enough. This wouldnt be so bad, but most japanese families go shopping everyday...

well ive got to get up before 5am tommorow to get to the movie on time, so thats enough for now. cya

luke

This was the third scene we shot of us crossing a bridge, so far we have been tired, happy and sad. Strange Movie.

In the beginning...

2005-10-29T20:02:00.000+13:00

It may simply be an overdose of hello kitty shapped chocolates, but I thought it might be a good idea to turn some of my emails into a blog.

Of course eventually i will run out of chocolate and go in search of real food, so please dont expect me to post regularly, but in the meantime here are some random photos:

A very umm, natural, looking japanee garden.
The overly friendly and rather hungry deer from Nara park.

The robots at the toyota pavillion of the Aichi EXPO.

Alas, the chocolate wore off.

EMAIL4

2005-10-26T19:34:00.000+13:00

As pointless emails go, this one has reached new heights, please disregard it.

The only things of any real interest are the following two japanese english sentences:

"Once you try our pizza, bouno gonna shoot you!" (ad at the local pizza shop)

"Please go back to the places where you were tommorow" (instruction from my movie job)

Email 4: Lukes random friends

There isnt that many european foriegners in japan, so the ones who are here are treated as abit of a novelty by some people. These are some examples of interactions I have with the locals...

Primary School Trips.
Alot of schools come to nara on school trips from osaka and their teachers march them around the city like minature armies (the military style school uniforms really adds to the effect). Now alot of the time the teachers make them wait in one place for ages, for reasons known only to the teachers, and the students look desperately for some relief from the boredom. So you can imagine their relief when a foriegner comes by, for this is there chance to display their amazing english skills (consisting of "hello", "how are you?" and "Im fine, thank you"). This of course takes courage, so generally it start with one or two kids (invariably boys) who call out "hello", now if their prey shows signs of responding, ie smiles, waves, the chorus of hellos spreads quickly. But god help him if he actually says "hello" back...

The Super Market Sample Lady.
Its her job to give out free samples of products to shoppers, which would have been enough to make her my friend, whenever she see me she calls me over and gives me something to try. If it looks like i like it, she gives me another sample, followed by another, until i run out of hands. We also talk (in japanese), and im reasonably sure our last conversation ended with her telling me details of how to get to a cheaper supermarket down the street and pointing out that this one was a rich peoples supermarket.

Helpful Unemployed Guy.
I always run into him when im shopping, and like the sample lady, he also occasionally offers me samples of things (however unlike her, they are not his to offer). I met him when studying in the food court oneday, he came upto me and just started talking, asking me if i had any questions about the japanese, what i thought of nara etc. Then he found out i spoke german and I had a new best friend.

Others.
There are lots of other people as well, like the highschool girls who wave at me and then trip over the gutter if i wave back, or the english students who got school 6 days a week and also goto cram school for 6hours a day 4 days a week (in addition to english class) or little kids who shout "gaijin gaijin" (foriegner foriegner) and go hide behind there parents. Yeah, some people are strange, but there all friendly. luke

EMAIL3

2005-10-21T19:53:00.000+13:00

Just a short one,

EMAIL3: ice cream.

Summer here must be nasty, i only caught the tail of of it, but this still
often ment leap frogging from one air conditioned building to the next if
you wanted to go anywhere in the middle of the day. Temperatures were
often 30+, but the real killer was the humidity that was not at all
friendly.

To overcome this, there is of course, icecream. Now like every other
western seeming thing in japan, it has been subtlely changed into something
japanese, that would occasionally be unrecognisable to most westerners.
With ice cream, this process has produced a real interesting assortment of
flavours.

Since being here i have tried the following:

black sesame seed
sweet potato
chestnut
red bean
grape
green tea
red bean and green tea

There were also to others which i have no idea what they were, but im sure
you ive never seen them before. Greentea is actually really nice, sesame
is good if you dont have to much, but then it just starts tasting weird.

im sure ill find more,

luke

EMAIL2

2005-10-21T19:28:00.000+13:00

hi, yes, i know its been 2 months and i havent written anything to most of you, i sat down about three times to write a nice long email describing all the unusual things ive done but never had time to finish it so i gave up... Hence lukes new plan, short emails that dont really mention much of what ive been doing, but that will hopefully be more plentiful. EMAIL2: Luke new job. Well i quite my old job at berlitz for reasons that ill explain elsewhere and have been looking for something that will let me have time to explore and learn japanese. My first new job is a teaching position that i got offered last week, it pays $200NZ for a 7hour shift once a week. Is a teaching job, and isnt overly interesting, so just imagine luke sitting somewhere encouraging a room full of old ladies to practice speaking english. However my other job, which i started today is slightly more interesting, the only downsides being crap pay, long hours and the fact that ive got to travel over an hour to get there. I got a job as an extra in a movie:) And a low budget world war one movie at that:P So after coming all this way to japan, what ive ending up doing is pretending to be a german POW in a japanese prison camp. There are of course a certain lack of people who look anything like germans here, so it was eay to get the job, all i said was im from new zealand and speak some german and they hired me over the phone. First day today, go to the studio in kyoto, they dress us up in really low quality generic uniforms, that look more like british army than german ones, and then asked us to wait for two hours, then we walked over a bridge looking unhappy, then we had lunch break, followed by 15mins of practicing a chant, followed by an hour break, and then for something a little different we walked in a straight line looking unhappy. Its great, i have loads of spare time to practice japanese, they feed me lunch, and the other people are an interesting mix, because most of them are people who cant get english teaching work, which just means theyre non native speakers. Including as many german speakers as the company could find in kansai, which was good practice for me. We were supposed to take photos, but we all did anyway, ive attached a small one of some of the people in uniform. I also have an interview for more teaching work on the weekend, but the cool thing about this is i can just do it on whatever days i have free:) ill write more soon, luke summary: i am having fun as a prisoner of war...

EMAIL1

2005-08-23T18:23:00.000+12:00

hi, ive been here 10 days and ive done some reasonably interesting stuff, so its about time to prove most of the people receiving this wrong, and actually write an email about it. im sending this to everyone who gave me their email address, i know ive missed a few people so if anyone is complaining about not hearing from `that bastard in japan` please get them to send me their address. this could be a long mail, so for those with better things to do, i am now in japan, i have a job (surprisingly enough as an english teacher) and am renting a room in a house in Nara. I have eaten alot of sushi, seen 3 different festivals and learnt a little japanese. the rest of this email is mostly irrelavant, so please disregard it. Far more detail than most of you will want to know day 0) got to the airport at some horribly early time, after having gotten up and an even more horrible time. Standing in the checkin queue realised that 3 people in front of me was a friend of mine who turned out to be going to china, but were on the same flight as me to auckland. Also happened to be seated next to each other, so made that flight slighlty more interesting. On the next plane i was seated beside a retired japanese guy who was very happy at his new found chance to practice his english with me. I was more interested in sleep, so as soon as the seatbelt lights went off i dashed for a block of 3 unoccupied seats in the middle of the cabin. I was met halfway by a japanese guy with a similar idea and what ensued was a battle of attrition which i eventually won and was able to lie down and sleep alot of the way to japan. The food was horrible, but thats to be expected. Before getting off the plane the old guy who i had been sitting next too on and off during the flight handed me his email address on a piece of scrap paper, incase i got in trouble. While putting it away i turned it over, was written on the back of a note from his doctor explaining how he had a viral throat infection and should have bed rest for a few days. Hmm would explain the coughing, but wasnt exactly what i wanted to catch on my first day here. Getting off the plane in japan I was surrounded by comments of "atsui yo", "atsu" and "atsui desu ne", all of which mean to one degree or another "hot isnt it?". The temperature wasnt to bad 33C, but the humidity was awful. Met Hiroko at the airport and she helped me through the warren of the osaka subway to the business hotel where i stay the first few nights in the centre of the city (near osaka castle park). Day1) went to the working holiday makers association where they list lots of jobs available to foriegners. Picked up a copy of the local english language classifieds paper. Had lunch at an all you can eat soba noodle shop, was great, and very cheap. That night went to see fireworks in Nara, the weather was terrible, but the fireworks were great, sitting on the banks of a river they lasted about 75minutes and afterwards all the food stores were fun. day2) went to internet cafe to apply for a couple of jobs from the paper. also had going-around sushi... day3) moved to my next cheap hostel in the slightly dodgy though interesting south part of osaka. Got an email back from one of the jobs, called them up, interviewed on the same day. Went to the toukae festival in nara, parks full of hundreds of thousands of candles, was beautiful. day4) went shopping for a cellphone in nipponbashi. Heard back about the job, i got it. day5) started and completed the 9 day training sesion in 1 day. Am now supposedly "a highly qualified and trained teacher" if u believe the advertising... day6) start teaching classes at berlitz gakuenmae nara. 2 lessons with adults and 1 with a child, was umm interesting. earnt about $65 kiwi. went wandering in the evening and found another festival involving people writing on candles and monks walking round in circles. I actually walked past this school everyday on my last trip to japan and didnt even know it was there. day7) long lunch with hiroko followed by teaching finishing at about 10pm. got home at 11 and went to the 100yen shop to find dinner. Hundred yen shops are like 2 dollar shops, except slightly cheaper and with significantly better range and quality. day8) had 6 classes in a row starting at 9am. I didnt get much sleep. But earnt $140ish. Went to see about a flat in nara, $100 a week including utilities, and wireless internet, sweet. Went to a day laborer noodle house for dinner, $2 for a big bowl of udon, pity i couldnt taste it, i burnt my tounge. day9) moved into the aforementioned flat and now live in nara 2 train stations from my job. about a 4 minute walk to my favourite temple from my previous trip. went to buy a futon bed, and bedding. The cheapest pillow happened to be a meter long and shaped like a fish of some kind, comfy though. What i failed to take into accound is that even in japan fish shaped pillow cases are something of a rarity. day10) went to the japanese equivalent of the libary of congress with hiroko. very cool, hmm interesting modern architecture, dunno if i like it, but they have all the books published in japan, and free access! yes yes i know i cant read japanese, but all the technical stuff is in english anyway. (Grant did u go there on your trip by any chance?) that pretty much takes me upto now, except for assorted battles ive been having with my clothes line and a fair number of strange new foods ive tried. Sorry about the length, the next one will be shorter, mainly taken up with the issues im having with my job. Generally Im good, employed, housed and well fed. luke cellphone (Japan) 090-6371-5216 address luke McCrohon 562-28, horen-cho. Nara-city, Nara, Japan 630-8113