WTF?!? level four?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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?...

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?...

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?...

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...

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...

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...