Cold...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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.