Narrative Disorder… in Japan!!

On our first day in Nagoya we discovered a new solution to the age old travellers problem of "How to Get Directions When you Don’t Know the Language."

Step one:

Find a car showroom (any will do but of course we recommend Toyota)

Step Two:

Take inordinate interest in a car with latest technology.

Step Three:

Boot up the touch screen GPS!!

Et voila! You have a map which tells you where you are and which with the use of nothing more than your finger on the touch screen you can find anywhere you need - even a specific address in Nagoya as you can enter phone numbers if need be - so no language issue either!

Happy travelling!!

Since the Japanese drive on the left as we do here in Australia, the main concern Superman and I have about driving in Japan is not being able read the street signs. I’ve been hunting for something which would allow us to learn them before we move but have had little luck till today (when I used the term "road sign" instead of "Street sign" D’oh!)

So for anyone interested here’s the link!

New International and Japanese Road Signs

Small quibble - on the first page two of the signs look remarkably similar and yet have, admittedly slightly, different translations… I think if I see this one I’ll just stop anyway hehe

This was our one really touristy outing - we really only had one day to ourselves. I have had various pictures of Nagoya Castle as my desktop for months so it was magical to be able to be there in person and take my own!

The original castle was a small castle built in 1525 but was only occupied briefly. In 1610 Tokogawa Ieyasu (the first Shogun of the Tokogawa shogunate) had a larger castle built on the site. Tragically, the old castle was destroyed by American bombs and the resulting fire on May 14, 1945 (it was targeted as a district army headquarters and POW camp.) The building we see now is a replica of the donjon (the keep) only which was built in the 1950s - the palace itself has not been rebuilt though there are plans for it.

The Entrance proper, to the right of the ticket booth (above)

As you enter, the castle peeks at you over the trees, ah wonderful, blessed, green trees …

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the castle is surrounded by an impressive moat which is actually what cuts through the city looking like a river from Google Maps …

But right up at the base of the castle the moat is currently dry and a haven for other inhabitants…

The path around the castle takes you around the moat and gives some magnificent views…

(BTW above on the right is Superman and in the middle is his colleague, Duc, who is also transferring with the project. )

At last we come to a small entrance across the moat of this fort…

The forecourt is now rather like a school quadrangle with a few ranger cars and some benches and tables in front of a cafe - I’d love to know what this area would have been filled with when this castle was the hub of life in the early Edo period. This is the ramp up into the castle.

No photography is allowed inside but there wasn’t much I’d have taken anyway. There is no sense of what it would have been like to live in the castle, the first 6 floors have simply been made into museum rooms - the displays are lovely but, again because of destruction, many of the displays are "examples" either from other areas or complete reconstructions from modern times.

The 7th story of the castle has been turned into a viewing room with windows all round (and a shop full of touristy bits and pieces including Disney in Nagoya things - very odd.) From this vantage point you can see how vast and sprawling is the city we will soon be calling home and why the lush and beautiful gardens are a haven from the concrete city surrounding it.

All over the gardens and castle there were signs first in Japanese then with white English translations beneath - except for this ancient little hut opposite the castle, just over the internal moat. The sign you see is Japanese only and I so wish I could find out what this little thing is but I could find noone to ask. If anyone knows an answer to my little mystery, please email me and I will post when I find out.

Requisite vending machine shot - yes that’s canned hot coffee in some of those

Dotted all over Nagoya are what look like slot machine parlors and are filled to the brim with suit-and-tie salarymen at all hours of the day…

in fact they are called ’slots’ on many of the windows…

But gambling is illegal in Japan, right? Well, yes. But these "pachinko" machines are, essentially, vertical pinball machines and it’s NOT illegal to play them and win extra metal balls for high scores, NEITHER is it illegal to trade said balls in for prizes NOR is it illegal to take said prizes to various, totally independent, stores around Nagoya which buy them from you - for cash. Apparently it is also not illegal to perpetuate ear-destroying noise in these places - seriously don’t go in if you value your hearing!

We spent a good part of our time in electronics stores checking out solutions for bringing our computers and peripherals to the different voltage of Japan. These cord ties for keeping your under-desk spaghetti neat demonstrate the attention to detail as well as the love affair with customization in Japan. Gone will be our rubbish bin ties for colour coordinated, padded ties…

And if that’s too boring for us well, there’s always these cuties…

And speaking of attention to detail and cute, I bought some aspirin for the trip home and got a fix for my tins and boxes addiction…

No longer will I endure the indignity of having a loose slide of aspirin floating around in my bag hehe. I think I’m going to fit in juuust fine! 

Down on the streets in Nagoya it is mostly a lovely modern city with beautiful street art… This one you already know…

I particularly loved this one outside an entrance to Toyota Midland Square building (Superman will occasionally have meetings here but will be working further down the street) Inside there are uber expensive designer boutiques and some wonderful restaurants (the Shanghai restaurant was Chinese food like we’ve never had before but look forward to trying again - particularly the Vanilla Ice cream with Chinese Vinegar - trust me it’s incredible!!)

The newest building on the skyline is gorgeous and perfectly suitable for the art and design school it apparently houses… (that’s Superman at the bottom left of the shot btw )

So, Nagoya is like many cities around the world, could almost be anywhere but every now and then, right next to the skyscrapers…

And even…

So, we landed in Sydney at about 8 am local to find ourselves shivering in a 9 degree morning! It was somewhat of a relief though, since planes are always a little stuffy and the Hong Kong airport responds to the 28 degree evenings by having the air con at about 26 degrees (I’m told this is a practice in Japan, too, to avoid chest colds due to extreme temp changes) so it was nice to feel actual cold for the first time in a week. Of course we are prepared for Nagoya to be hotter and wetter after we return as the typhoon season will be hot on our heels!!

I promised pictures of our new digs when we returned but I haven’t yet worked out how to download and edit video from our camera (and I have a feeling my film was frankly dreadful beyond editing) so there will be some more wait on that note. I have, however, managed to download the stills we took so here begins the slide show. I should note though, we were so focused on getting our arrangements made that there wasn’t much tourist time, we have more pictures of furniture we might want to lease than great tourist shots, so call these a down payment on more interesting stuff when we have more time there. 

Nagoya Midland Circle - This is the view from our hotel right on top of Nagoya Station. Had to take this shot as I’d been looking at the similar one that Mike McKinlay took for ages as the first real view of Nagoya that I found.

View of Nagoya from our hotel room - there is a definite haze over the city which is called fog or mist but looks pollution-esque to us. Nevertheless the air is clean and fresh though quite damp at this time of year so perhaps it is moisture.

Zooming in on the same view - Nagoya Castle is beautiful in the afternoon light.

And further in the golden dolphin on the peaks of the roof just visible. Believe it or not, the city you see stretching beyond the castle with it’s multi storey buildings for miles are considered Nagoya’s suburbia - we found it kind of hard to tell when the city ended and suburbia began.

We have a home in Nagoya! At least the paperwork is going through for us to move in on the 19th of June!! It is in a hilly and quite green (for nagoya) suburb called Kakouzan which is about 15 minutes by train to Superman’s station in the centre of Nagoya - we are really happy with it and pictures will follow when we get back to Sydney.  We spent yesterday being given a tour of the area from restaurants to pharmacies and supermarkets.We are getting quite confident about using what little Nihongo we know because if you try even slightly people will happily take your stilted grade 1 vocab and your insane gestures and work out what you are saying. When we were in the pharmacy I took some items to the counter and made my first purchase in Japan (Superman has been holding the money and doing it mostly lol) and the phrases we had been taught really worked hehe! The lady at the counter responded in Japanese (instead of breaking into English as most people do) and asked me if I had a loyalty card and if I would like some coupons for next time - I choose to believe she thought I lived here teehee. BTW getting the yen thing down is quite easy if you think of the yen as cents - it so happens that one yen = about one australian cent atm (and milk and groceries are about the same as in Sydney - 269 yen for 2 litres of milk for example or 315 yen for half a dozen free range eggs) but even if it did not it helps to think of them that way to get your head around the huge numbers you are working with. There is no such thing as the japanese “dollar” they simply speak in cents.

Last night we found the most AMAZING restaurant in the Fushimi district called “Show Ryu”. We were walking down a road closed to traffic, which is kind of like China Town in Melbourne with lots of restaurants, and I heard some saxophone coming from somewhere - we followed it up some stairs found a restaurant with a menu out front with NO ENGLISH or even romaji except for “Charcoal Grill and Sushi” and “modern japanese cuisine” so, of course,  we ventured in. It turned out the sax was not live but the food was AMAZING - particularly a mackerel sushi which was very very lightly seared on their charcoal grill so there was a slight smokey/char flavour to it. The lady who greeted us at first did not speak English to us but was patient and sweet as we did our best to order. “what is the fish of the day” became “today, what is fish?” hehe and then when she said it we realised we didn’t know what the Japanese names of fish were so we got it down to a white fish and a blue fish (which turned out to be red bream which IS kind of blue!) Each time she returned to the table she ventured a little more English  - she didn’t have much but by the end of the night we had communication going well! It turned out that her name was Yoko and she and her husband were the owners and her husband the sushi chef whose food we were complimenting. I asked her if she could slowly tell me the japanese name of the fish we were enjoying so much and she did and then returned a little while later with the names written down in kanji, hiragana and English so I could find them at a “sakana ya.” (fishmonger) We will be going back on Friday night to try some more of his delicious dishes!

At the moment Superman is off buying a nintendo DS because you can get Japanese dictionary programs in which you can use the stylus to draw in kanji and it will translate it for you! Of course he won’t be buying any games to play at all hehe!

Tonight we are going to a restaurant recommended by some other Toyota guys called “Szechuan Restaurant Chen” - the Nagoya restaurant of “Iron Chef Szechuan” Chen! It will be a big change from the subtle delicacy of Ryuji’s food but I’m sure it will be wonderful!
Superman’s colleague will be waiting at the lift soon so I’d better get ready - ja’a mata!

There is something very strange about suddenly standing in places you have been looking at in pictures for months and months. Well, not exactly suddenly, it is a looong flight (9 hrs to Hong Kong and then another 3.5 hours in a small rattly domestic sized plane hehe) but still, compared to the time I’ve spent longing to come to this country, it was a blink of the eye.

The overwhelming impression of Japan is genuinely of order and cleanliness and friendliness. That observation has, of course, been made but many but I always assumed that it was a kind of stereotype akin to “all Aussies are surfers who eat meat pies and love cricket” but it is not. Things just flow here. We got off the plane at the new Nagoya airport (which is absolutely spotless) and found the Meitetsu line station right there in the airport complex as we exited customs. There were HUGE signs saying Nagoya Eki Y850 and we were tired but decided to brave the train instead of a taxi. Superman easily used one of the many little machines to get us tickets and we wandered on to the waiting train. I was very pleased with myself as the train driver announced the stops we would be making and then that we would reach Nagoya at 10pm - and I understood it hehe!. The limited express was fairly full but not full enough to be able to say we have really experienced a packed nihon no densha (Japanese train) It stopped 8 times at stations I had gotten to know while surfing for housing in the last few months and we were at Nagoya Eki in around twenty minutes. THEN our Toyota planning kicked in as we took the lift from the platform to find ourselves facing a sign with our hotel’s name on it and found that it was in the skyscraper right above the station! We easily found our way to the 15th floor reception where we were greeted with a friendly “Good evening Mrs Ruschena, Mr Ruschena” by the first we saw as we exited the lift. It was a little confusing though very impressive  - we had come up the back way so there had been noone to call ahead and tell them we were coming up, they must just all know who is expected at what time (btw this was not the over exaggerated enthusiasm from TV thank goodness since that would have been a bit much in that state, it was just polite and seemingly genuine friendliness.) Dazed and tired had negotiated the transfer to the hotel - on public transport - something I wouldn’t want to try in Sydney!!

So after a night’s sleep (in a very hard bed) we woke to our day to ourselves. We met Superman’s colleague Duc, who is also transferring on the project, for breakfast (the mackerel is to DIE for - I’ll get shots at some stage) and then spent the day being tourists - and I mean tourists lol. I’m afraid I embarrassed Superman a little taking photos like… well,  a Japanese tourist! I will post them with a bit of a commentary when we return to Sydney as, unfortunately, we left the usb cord that connects the camera to the computer at home :(  Essentially though, we wandered away from the hotel to see what was around and found our way to a big permanent market - mostly of fish it seemed. It was closed at the time but we think must have been open earlier because there was cleaning going on.
We then found an enormous electronics store - in which we spent a good couple of hours exploring all 6 floors. It was really lovely to see so many computer and related products all together in a large, spacious area rather than having to slink your way through the packed and invariably dusty shelves of tiny PC stores and have to settle for what they happen to have because you just don’t want to have to go to anymore stores!!  “Geeks unite and be proud!” the store seemed to shout - hehe. And SUCH variety too - never in Japan is there only one version or colour of anything, it seems.

In the afternoon we decided to go to Nagoya Castle (which we can see from our hotel window - again pictures later.) We struggled successfully to work out which bus routes would take us there and then experimented with a little Japanese asking one of the many uniformed men who are scattered around the city and catch your eye and give you a quizzical “do you need help?” kind of look but do not speak much English. We are pretty sure these guys are not police but the same uniforms direct the odd bit of traffic and we were told not to hesitate to ask a policeman for directions so we are not sure. Anyway, we managed to communicate that we were looking for a bus stop “sumimasen, basu (big pause) juu-yon (big pause) wa doko ni arimasu ka” which I think actually means “excuse me, where are fourteen buses” but when we added “nagoya castle” and then remembered that “Nagoya-jo” is how to distinguish it from Nagoya Castle Hotel - we got some directions to go “that way, one (big gesture indicating across which we read as street) , two, three and left” and we actually found the bus station!!

Then we couldn’t find where to buy a ticket.

So we chickened out and caught a taxi lol! The taxi driver was lovely and laughed kindly at our attempt at Japanese - I had written in my phrase book how to ask “do you speak English?” but not how to say I don’t speak Japanese! So I said I was a student of japanese and then managed all but the negative verb conjugation for I don’t speak japanese and he very gently, and slowly, reminded me of “masen” and then whooped happily for me when I tried the sentence again as a whole hehe! It was really lovely. Of course Superman had said “nagoya castle onegaishimasu” when we got in the taxi so we pulled up in front of the hotel that shares its name but it was just across the river (which we realised was actually the castle’s moat) so we were able to point and try “Nagoya-jo” again and he confirmed that was the right name and we drove around to the right place, getting a wonderful view of the moat as we did.

It was SUCH a delight, almost relief really, to get in amongst the greenery of the Castle gardens - huge old trees (one actually from before the original castle was destroyed in the WWII air raids) and prunus trees I can’t WAIT to see in bloom and positively hordes of giant azalea bushes which must also be astonishing in bloom. I took plenty of photos outside but there was no photography allowed inside so I will hunt down what I can on the net when I post about it when I get back.

As I write this we are having a few hours break before dinner - being a tourist is tiring! Superman is busily drilling kanji graphemes (he has just burst into laughter having discovered that the kanji for “china” is made up of “water” and “difficult” - the difficulty over the water lol!) and we have the Sumo on the TV -it’s quite exciting, we will have to go some time. Tomorrow we are off to househunt with Abigail our relocation consultant, who is British and has lived here for 9 years and so is a font of information.

Jaa mata! (till next time!)

Well, poor Brigie went off to the cattery this afternoon, the suitcase is as packed as it can be before the pre-departure showers, any liquids or gels required on board have been replaced by solid versions or decanted down to under 100ml and I very cleverly didn’t get much sleep last night so I might just be able to sleep tonight - at least until 4:30 am when we have to get up. Not that I’m complaining about the hour - if we were going economy we’d have to BE at the airport then! Cheers once again to anonymous-auto-manufacturing-concern for looking after us so well.

My self-made phrase book is fat with counters and particles and I think we are ready to face the Japanese speaking world - for a week anyway. Our relocation consultant Abigail has sent us our schedule - we land Sunday night and then have Monday to ourselves to explore a little, Tuesday we will view some properties and apparently choose one because on Wednesday we will return to the chosen property and work out our furniture rental needs. On Thursday we will be test driving cars (btw we have been driving the Prius for the last few weeks and I will be posting a review soon - it took some getting used to but if the Harrier proves too large on Thursday I’ll be pushing for a Prius instead.) Friday Superman will be in meeting the new coworkers so I will be out on my own - I’m thinking Shinkansen to Kyoto for the day - unoriginal I know but there’s a reason it’s first stop on the cultural map (also it’s nice and close.)

Watch this space for pics and vids of the new digs though I can’t promise it will be during this week as we aren’t sure whether the connections at the hotel will be upload-friendly. We’re on the overnight flight Saturday 24th and back early Sunday.

Ittekimasu!!!!

I picked up this book because I was interested to see how another writer might handle a contemporary fantasy which invokes ancient gods in the modern world. That the ancient gods were Asian (specifically Chinese) and that it was set in Hong Kong were also attractive for obvious reasons.

I expected a fantasy action novel - certainly there is a war going on amongst the Spirits, Immortals and Demons on the celestial plane and leaking down to the Earth. You’d think that there would be plenty of material for the conflict that is required for an interesting story. You’d be wrong - there is simply no conflict at all in this book and the potentially interesting story is lost to a romance which made me cringe.

There is action and fighting, certainly and it’s well written and keeps you glued (it was what made it possible for me to get through to page 478) but action is not conflict. Plot-wise the action is mostly training for threats which come few and far between. When at last the real tests come and one of our characters is, of course, mortally wounded - there is always a way to heal or even return from Hell so any real concern for life and limb goes out the window fast. (Hell sounds interesting, right? Don’t get your hopes up we’re too busy watching the romance while the other characters are there.)

Anything that might possibly add a little conflict/interest/suspense to the story is handled by the author by making her protagonist … how can I put it… just so… ace! Other characters continually point out that Emma is "cold-blooded"* and able to take virtually anything without emotional effect, The heart of a story is the emotional journey taken by the protagonist  - what is the point of a protagonist without emotion? I am truly baffled.  (I lie, sometimes she is moved - she is often shocked into gaumless "No way"s at the sight of great wealth). Emma learns everything soooo easily and is sooo remarkable and is sooo wonderful that even the Gods are second to her and don’t think twice when she is placed in ridiculous position amongst them because one of them is in love with her.  And no, that MBA by correspondence she has nearly finished is NOT proof she will be capable of administering a celestial realm - how are we supposed to suspend disbelief for something THAT ridiculous?!

The closest our protagonist gets to conflict/potential for emotional growth (the whole point of a decent, let alone good, story) comes in the form of a spurious, bodice-ripper, Mills and Boon style love-upon-which-she-must-not-act romantic plot, which becomes the main plot of the book. Yet again the author removes the actual conflict by making the protagonist just too in lerve! Death is nothing if she can be with her man! URGH. She’s 28 for goodness sake and he’s several thousand years old but they act like teenagers (or, as every single character seems to get a chance to say multiple times  "Fools" - isn’t it romantic to be foolish boys and girls?)

You may have noted by now that I found this book and it’s characters exceedingly annoying. I’m sure there will be people who love it but it needs to be marketed to them and put on the romance shelves, not the fantasy shelves. We are given so little of the celestial war that the Gods plotline becomes little more than an explanation of the romantic interest’s extraordinary wealth. Similarly, the significance of the very promising, well written action scenes is reduced to an excuse for physical contact between the forbidden lovers and the occasional expression of deep concern and therefore lerve when someone is injured (which we know will be fixed in no time either by a little magic or because Emma is sooo extraordinary).  It reminds me very much of the many romance novels I produced on audio, from Mills and Boon to Danielle Steele, in which the "every day" servant girl (did I mention Emma is the nanny…ick), "refreshing" in her down-to-earth, wide-eyed-at-wealth character, falls in love with a man and then has his immense wealth and power forced upon her (she’s too "real" to accept it willingly) as proof of his devotion.

It’s not that I don’t want romance in my drama novels - it can be a rich addition as a PART of a dramatic plot but that is not what we have here - the romance usurps the entire novel. For a romantic subplot to be a realistic part of a drama a few different things are needed (in no particular order):

• a plot which would stand up on it’s own without the romance and is the main focus of the novel (i.e., the characters must have some goal beyond falling in love)
• two characters which are well fleshed out before they fall in love so that the reader can actually be invested enough in the characters to also be invested in the success of their relationship
• characters which are able to spend more than a couple of paragraphs without melodramatically lusting after the object of their forbidden affection.  Why? Because if the characters themselves don’t find the plot interesting enough to grip them, how on earth is the reader meant to be engaged?

So, how does it fair as a romance novel? Probably very well judging by the novels which sell well. The values in romance novels is almost always "anything for true lerve" and that is certainly the case here, both Emma and her romantic interest show the most appalling character not just in indulging in a nanny-widower relationship but even use the child as a "shield" for physical contact between the two - I won’t explain, it’s just.. yuck. The romance between them has both the intensity and sense of longevity that a teenage crush has - Emma’s willingness to die for him is explained, many teenagers in love feel that strongly - but there is no sense of a foundation that would last. They lust after each other, they are in the classic MINO** circumstance by way of her being the nanny and so the classic widower-nanny thing happens, they may state that this is a once (well actually twice) in a lifetime love but we aren’t shown that. One of the characters, when giving his blessing to the union, says that he resisted at first because he had been close to the first wife (and mother of the child which Emma is nanny to) and he had thought Emma was trying to take her place - frankly I don’t know what changed his mind.  The coy "family moments" which we are given over and over and the giving of gifts and taking of trips and public declarations of love really do make him look like a foolish old man (and not in the sweet way the author means when over-using that term).  There is no sense of having witnessed a love develop - as we are shown in one of the most extraordinarily uncomfortable examples of cheating the rule of third person intimate POV I have ever witnessed, it was "love at first sight" so that the author could get on with the melodrama of self-denial.  Not that showing real love develop is easy - but when you have decided to give yourself the entire Chinese folklore universe to play in - why of why would you restrict yourself to the POV of such a small, small person as this woman who feels no emotion for anything but money and good looks (I’m deliberately not including the child)?

To be fair, this novel may be suffering from "series-itis" - this is book one in a series called "Dark Heavens" and it may be that Chan has been asked by the publisher to pad her story out to make it a trilogy or whatever it will be. It is possible that Chan has a great story over all and it will eventually develop into something interesting beyond just a romance but I just cannot bring myself to read another word coy, conflict-less, protagonist-flattering word.

*the author uses that particular phrase for a different and quickly obvious reason with which the author clearly thinks she is teasing us. There is a LOT of this dropping hints and teasing out when the protagonist will find something out (accompanied by Emma incessantly whining about not being told something) long, long after we have worked it out and are either annoyed with Emma for not working it out herself or just bored with the whole topic.

**MINO: Marriage In Name Only is the name given by Mills and Boon authors which describes any situation in which the characters live together but are not together for [insert reason here] and is the most popular settings for romance novels