Narrative Disorder… in Japan!

Superman and I are off to Tokyo for a few days for a slightly over the top wedding anniversary (traditions must be kept and we have one that seems can only be done in Tokyo lol!)  Not gloating, just letting you know in case more wonderful Blog Matsuri entries are sent my way and you grow concerned from a lack of response or approval of comments!

See you Thursday!! 

(hmm many exclamation marks, the sign of the slightly mad, must be this getting up at 5 am for the Shinkansen - why, oh why, did we feel getting into Tokyo before 9a.m was in any way important lol !!!!!!)

As some of you will already know, November’s Japan Blog Matsuri will be hosted here at Narrative Disorder. Chris did a wonderful job stepping in at the last minute for October as you can see here and I look forward to finding out just how big a job it was!

The most public part of the job of host is, of course, to set the topic. I’ve racked my brain trying to think up a fantastic theme which would inspire a bevy of posts full of keen observations and ever-so-clever witticisms which would teach us all something new and wonderful about Japan and which, and this is key, hasn’t been done before…  In the end, my brain and I have decided that turn about is fair play:

This month, I’d like to hear about what Japan has taught you about yourself.

Funny or serious, good or  bad, whether you are an expat already living here or just loving Japan from afar - what have you learned about yourself in your interactions with Japan and/or it’s culture and what was it that gave you that insight (that’s the essential Japan bit for the Japan Blog Matsuri )?

For example, I have discovered that I’m okay with bowing to people as an equal and even as an inferior to my husband’s superiors at his work but when the teenage porter at a hotel bows low as I enter a lift and stays bent right over looking at his shoes for the full hour and half it takes for the lift doors to close I get increheheheedibly uncomfortable.

If you are reticent, or it’s just not your blog’s style,  to write about such personal insights then a post on what Japan has taught you about your home country (and how it has taught you that of course) would also  be fine

** Edit: The blog carnaval site is back up and running so in the sidebar you will find the widget to make submission easy (though emailing me the link or putting the link in the comments to this post is also okay) Last moment for submission is 21:59 on November 20th!

So fire away! And if you find yourself procrastinating on it (as I have done the last two months that I have been aware of this Matsuri ) think about me and my fellow NaNoWriMo-ers who have committed ourselves to writing a 50,000 word novel, from scratch, in November and send some good vibes our way before getting back to it!

One of the things I am really enjoying about living in Japan is re-discovering my love of and respect for the seasons, which had faltered somewhat due to various stressors and, frankly, living in Sydney which doesn’t really have them. The seasons are celebrated here with gusto! Throughout the year there are various religious festivals (matsuris) both national and local, usually based at a particular shrine or temple where the Kami in question is reverenced. Seasonal festivals, like Natsu (Summer) Matsuri which we celebrated in Gifu, are some of the biggest.

The map featured, from Japan Guide.com, forecasts the turning of the leaves all over Japan and are available at websites for the Japanese not just for western tourists looking for views. People will plan holidays or onsen weekends around soaking in the beauty of the turning of the leaves or man’s attempts at controlling the snow and communities around the country will celebrate their local (usually rice) harvest.  Similar maps are available in Spring for the Hanami or cherry blossom viewing which is a HUGE celebration.

Melbourne, where I grew up, has its seasons but they are pretty much ignored beyond whether to bring a brolly or a coat (and boy do we know how to read a forecast).  The joke, of course, is four seasons in one day but it’s really only true if you consider that getting a little cool and a little rain on a Summer day constitutes winter-like. As I understand it, the local indigenous population consider that Melbourne has six seasons and I can kind of see that (and wish I could find out more but it’s really, really hard.) The only hint of seasonal celebrations that come to the general awareness of the Australian populous are Easter and Yule though, of course, in their Christian form and they are actually at the time of Harvest and mid-Summer in the Sthn Hemisphere anyway. (Yes, I know that the non-Christian elements are still hugely strong within those festivals but that doesn’t mean those of us who are Caucasian and not “of the book” can celebrate openly - calling it Yule, for example, is only acceptable if it’s assumed I’m using the German term lol.)

The cynical (or those offended by the fact that I’ve just revealed I don’t hold Judeo-Christian views ) will remind me how commercial the festivals seem - Hanami particularly with companies competing for the best spots and it being very much “the thing” to do rather than being focused on which Kami is being celebrated. They will point out that the change of the seasons for most people just means new flavours of drinks and snacks in the konbini or changing wardrobes. Well to that I say: Shenanigans!

First of all, if they know that Summer is being celebrated then they know which Kami is being celebrated and frankly it’s kinda hard to miss. Secondly, those new flavours are seasonal flavours (watermelon kitkat in Summer and apple breath mints in Autumn, how much more harvesty can you get than apples!) being aware of the earth in your every day life is an acknowledgement of the Kami (however you want to define them, I find the similarities to Platonic Forms extraordinary) that effect it. Changing your clothes to warmer ones because its cold is a reverence to the seasons at the most basic level and possibly more so when there’s little need to change clothes beyond your coat with heating available indoors.  But that’s me getting all kitchen-witchy on you so from a more traditionally western “religious” oogity-boogity framework I say: look at the excitement on the faces of the people in their Yukatas on the way to the fireworks. Listen to the laughter and awed “Sugoi!” at the art form that is man’s attempt at mastery over fire. The smile elicited by the sheer beauty of a cherry blossom or the colour of a leaf. That is real emotion, whatever the affectations of the day to please your boss or your boyfriend, and that is the essence of all this - opening yourself to the rhythms of the earth. Even if they only do it once a season, they come together and allow themselves to be effected by the extraordinary beauty and power of this planet which, no matter how much we learn, can still shake us off its back with a good earthquake.

Whether the Japanese population flocking (and boy do they flock) to the many matsuris and enjoying the food and carnival atmosphere are intellectually cognizant of exactly what is being celebrated doesn’t really matter to me (though frankly I think most of them are).  It does a heathen girl good to be able to look ahead to at least a whole year in which she can celebrate by simply joining in with an entire nation!

This past Saturday we went for a drive with a couple of our American ICT friends to the open air museum Meiji Mura. “Meiji Village” is a park with over 60 original buildings from the Meiji era (1868 -1912) transported and restored so that we can get a feel for what it was like during the period when Japan was opening itself to the West. I believe that by train it is about 45 minutes to the station and then there is a bus but parking was plentiful and cheap and as long as you stay off the expressways driving was probably just as cheap - and far more enjoyable too!

The park is in the hills about an hour out of Nagoya and Just being amidst the greenery and smelling air infused with soil and leaves and fragrant wild flowers was magnificent! Of course the DSLR got a good work out. Enjoy!

We were caught right in the middle of the recent Nagoya storms and it was quite an adventure! We were at Red Rock which is an “Aussie bar and Grill” in Sakae (which is no longer owned by an Aussie but by a lovely American who is a lecturer at the Universities here and a member of the writers group which I will join and post on when it resumes after August hols.) We were there for the Thursday night  quiz, which I highly recommend along with the steak, and we could see that it was pouring down but since the bar is on the first floor we didn’t quite get the extent of it till we left  - the streets were streaming!

The water was lapping right over our shoes anyway but the speed with which it was running meant it easily drenched your trousers up to the knee - this was fine, though, as it completed the outfit because the rest of you was drenched anyway - umbrellas did very little but protect your face a bit. Gutters and any depressions in the pavement were fast moving lakes and the thunder and lightning really made you wish your umbrella wasn’t made of metal!

We tried getting a taxi but they either didn’t see us (totally possible) or didn’t want the wet people in their pristine cabs (also totally possible) so we headed for the subway. Except for the people, the subway was blissfully dry and once again I marvelled at the utility of these subways with their exit tentacles reaching out under the city. If it had been before 11:30pm when the outer exits are closed we may have barely been wet at all getting to the train! Unbeknown to us, some of the outer lines were already closed and Anonymous Car Concern put a bunch of Superman’s colleagues up in hotels overnight because they were on the closed line which I thought was interesting, I’m not sure who would pay for that in Australia. Luckily, the line was fine to Kakuozan.

What was really lovely, though, was the reaction of the everyone. The streets, even at that time of night, are usually so quiet in Nagoya, even the groups of drunken salarymen lower their voices when they pass another group, but everyone was giggling and panting and some even shrieking with laughter as they dashed for cover or shared their useless umbrellas. Down in the subway people were actually smiling and sharing a giggle with strangers instead of just avoiding each other’s gaze - even with we gaijin!! Maybe it sounds as though we had all gone mad but there really was  something just so funny about being that wet and I’m sure I’m not getting it across properly. On the way from the station I stopped at the convenience store for milk and such and the bag was half full of water by the time I reached the apartment! I spent the next couple of days carefully drying out my wallet,  PDA and mobile phone which were snugly in their pockets in my bag… we’re talking WET here, people!

But the adventure did not stop when we got to the apartment block. The noise of the rain nearly drowned it out but the fire alarm in the apartments was wailing and the fire brigade was there! No spectacular truck though - they arrived in the rain on push-bikes!! No one else in the block had their lights on or came out to investigate so the poor guys were left with the non-Japanese speaking gaijin to help them get into the building (kind of odd to me that they had no way to get in, I mean they are the fire department!!) Once in the property they found that one of the sprinklers was dripping and had a short which was causing the alarm but they couldn’t get into the cabinet to turn off the damned alarm!

I ran inside to find the folder with our emergency numbers in it and I was too wet to run through the house without drenching the floorboards so I just stripped off my jeans in the entrance, ran through half naked, found the folder with the numbers and pulled on some dry trousers to go back out. At this stage I didn’t even bother with the umbrella - there was just no point! At last they made the call and the fireman used the dictionary on his phone to find the phrase “entrust to us” and said thank you very much and finally, at 3 am, we managed to get inside and have a shower and dry off. It took another hour before the security team arrived to turn off the fire alarm but that was fine because it took as long to wind down.

So there you go, even a storm is a happy adventure for us here - though several people did die, including a fireman washed down the river not just people doing silly things, and some of the outer train lines were still closed the next morning so it wasn’t all fun and games.

Technorati Tags: Nagoya Storms

While browsing the NIC newsletter the other day I noticed they have a regular photo contest. This Summer’s theme is “A Japanese Summer” and I thought: what is more Natsu than fireworks except, perhaps, for flowers in full bloom so I thought I’d enter my “Hanabi no Hana” from my Gifu Natsu Matsuri evening. It probably won’t be particularly unique lol but it can’t hurt to enter, right? Getting involved is what being here is all about after all!

Here is my entry:

Information about entering can be found here

If you do enter, best of luck!

Technorati Tags: NIC Summer photo contest,fireworks,photography

More cream and pink crockery I’m afraid!    This teacup and bowl are part of a set available at Nitori for around 299yen a piece. I got plates too which are a lovely organic semi oval shape.

The five-petaled flower is a very popular design here, indeed I almost bought another set which had the same flower and was much more pink - very pretty as individual pieces but as I began to load the full setting into my basket I was quickly overwhelmed by the amount of pink building in one place and the repetitive nature of the uniform design. This setting has just a blush of pink on each one and the design and colouring are not strictly the same on each piece making for a much more elegant effect on the whole.

If you are wondering what on earth the teacup is sitting on, it is actually the lid of the box in which the floral fan of the post “Prettinesses Pt 2″ came. The traditional box is made of wood with a lid exactly like a sushi mat and a leather thong with a wooden badge on it to close it. I have taken to using this as a case for my fountain pens which get lonely when left in the plush boxes they were bought in but are too delicate to flop around in a pencil case!

Note also the peach slices in the bowl - a Prettiness all nature’s making! For those in Sydney (or California, from experience) wondering what the red blush is on the inside of the slices not just on the skin - that’s what happens when peaches are allowed to ripen ON THE VINE lol. The flavour of these peaches is magnificent as is the flavour of most of the fruit and vegetables here in Japan - things just taste… right!

Any native English speakers living in Japan will have experienced Japanese English speakers/students when lost for either words or courage flip out their electronic dictionaries and deftly tap away with their thumbs till they come up with the English word they need. At this point they will either show you the screen or say the word, depending on their level of confidence, and instil in said native English speaker denshi jisho envy. If only it could be so easy to find the right word from the other direction… to BIC CAMERA POST HASTE!

Unfortunately, browsing of the denshi jisho available in Japan quickly deflates one’s excitement - they are so clearly made for Japanese learning English and not the other way round. If you have an intermediate or above knowledge of Japanese I’m sure they would  be great and I know many translators use the big ones with the extra technical/medical etc… dictionaries but they really are inaccessible for the complete beginner.

First, only the Canon Wordtank series has an OS available in English so even working out how to use them is less than transparent and the second main restriction is that they simply contain the wrong dictionaries for us. Say you want to know what a particular kanji means - now assuming you have bought one of the new ones which allow you to draw the kanji on the device and therefor you don’t need to know the furigana to type in order to look it up at all, the dictionary meaning you first get will be in Japanese and you then have to translate that by “jumping” to the Japanese to English dictionary to translate whichever word you highlighted in the first definition - assuming your model has that “jump” function. What’s more, you have to keep re-entering the kanji to get back to the definition to “jump” again if the first word you translated wasn’t enough for you to understand the meaning.  And still you are unlikely to find the translation you need unless you know for sure you have the starting kanji of the compound (as most will only let you search for kanji in the first place of a compound) and further still, only the very expensive models have extensive Japanese to English dictionaries 50,000yen upwards. SO, the upshot is - there is no cheap and cheerful denshi jisho that will work for a beginner AND there isn’t really an expensive one which will do the job either until you are far more advance in your language.

What about that DS lite kanji dictionary? I hear you ask. Well I have to say that Superman bought this one before we left for Japan and he has had good success with it. It doesn’t require that you know keystroke order and he says he uses it at work quite a bit. It is, however, only for kanji and again the application itself is all Japanese so it takes a bit of working out.

But all is not lost for those who want a true denshi jisho for English (or German or some other languages for that matter) speakers!! A lovely guy named Peter who lives in Japan has taken it upon himself to meet the need of this rather large niche of people by providing a product which is actually far beyond a denshi jisho. It’s not his day job but his commitment to improving his systems and his customer service wouldn’t give that away!

All the information you could possibly need is on his site: Japanese Language Tools Site the site itself is mostly text and screenshots doesn’t look that swish but he doesn’t need it - the system speaks for itself. In brief, he offers a fully reconditioned, recent model ( I chose the Dell Axim x51v, though there is another option) PDA with a dictionary application called Edict and a several dictionaries including Eijiro/Waeijiro installed as well as a range of more advanced dictionaries which you opt to either have installed on your original  system or can later download or buy on memory card if and when you feel your language needs more. He also offers the whole system on card or for download IF you already have a PDA which is setup to read Japanese text as well as English. If you are in Japan, though, the full system is the only thing which is worth getting as PDAs are not available here and the whole system costs about as much as buying a brand new PDA which you would still have to set up to be compatible in the first place but of course it would be up to you.

Why I love it!

Drawing Kanji: Obviously, being a PDA and a touch screen, you can write your kanji directly on the screen - it does not seem to require a stroke order at all but if you are at all interested in learning it, the kanji dictionary (”kanjidic” hehe) will give you not only the meaning but also a stroke order diagram for next time! This is what I have used it for most of all - checking the kanji on food in the supermarket or to work out what mysterious pieces of paper with my name and address on them in the mail are lol!

Cross Searching: This doesn’t just mean being able to search in all dictionaries (which you can do) but searching for more than one word at a time so that you can actually find phrases in both languages for example you can put in “reside” “for” and you will get example sentences for how to tell someone how long you have lived in a place (very useful). Three days after I received my PDA I got a failure to deliver notice for a package I was expecting. Using Kanjidic and Daijirin I worked out that they were keeping the package for me at a post office but I couldn’t quite get the kanji for what was clearly the place but definitely wasn’t Kakuouzan (place name kanji is notoriously difficult, working on different rules and so I wasn’t surprised it didn’t find a local place name though it was probably user error anyway!) So I mosied up to my very very local post office tapping away at my dictionary and by the time I got there I was able to ask at which post office the package was being held and which train station and exit it was near. That seems pretty basic, I know, and I had many of the words I need already from the study I’ve done but there were some key words I needed to actually make my communication work and the PDA made it easy because it allows for cross searches (unlike most denshi jisho) so I was able to search for the phrase “pick up” and get an example sentence I didn’t quickly get by putting in “collect”.

Clipboard facility: Like any windows PDA, you can highlight any word or words and put them on a clipboard for pasting into any other application and is sooo useful if you are using the dictionary to decipher more than one word or kanji at a time.

Customer Service

I sent my first query email on a weekend, had a response from Peter on Monday and had my system in my hand the Sunday after (mail 7days a week in Japan)! The PDA looks absolutely new - came in all the Dell packaging including a sync and charge cradle and all the cables you would expect in a new PDA. It also comes with CDs and license keys etc… for all the software - there is nothing dodgy going on here! So how much was it? Well the full system on the Axim starts at 55,000yen - which is where any denshi jisho with even a basic set of Japanese to English dictionaries and a kanji drawing facility would cost - and you can add options/dictionaries from there. I added one extra dictionary to the standard set and you can see to the left all the choices I have on mine. Yes, you can get the Kenkyusha intermediate and the big one (he would have to get you a price for the big one though) BUT you may not even need them as it has dictionaries not available to the Japanese denshi jisho which will likely do you just as well.  Of course you also have a fully functional PDA as well - it’s my calendar and alarm clock and everything but my phone now!

Peter is absolutely lovely (from the emails, I haven’t actually met him) and will happily answer any questions you have before buying - just fill in the contact form with just the minimum required details and type your query in the space, he won’t be mad it’s not an immediate order and he will answer!

Though I am basically just hiding from the heat while Superman works and sleeps and works again, we did manage to get out on August 2nd  and take in the fireworks in Gifu. Gifu is somewhere that I have longed to go all my life as they have some astonishing flower festivals in Spring.  I’m delighted to know it will be an easy drive so I can take as much camera equipment and picnic gear as I like! (Assuming we finally have our Japanese licenses by Springtime!)

The fireworks were, of course, beautiful and went for about three hours all up AND no silly music, popular or otherwise, to bare with as there usually is in Australia. It was simply tens of thousands of people happily celebrating the beauty of light and fire.

At 3pm we met some of our new friends/Superman’s colleagues at the Golden Clock in Nagoya Station to take the 45min train trip to Gifu Eki. From there we joined the long queue sauntering through the heat for about 10mins to the bus terminal to get into the blissful airconditioning of the buses instead of walking for 45mins in the heat.

As I was previewing this picture I noticed the man in the yukata and his partner are looking at the camera (she is making the ubiquitous “V” symbol) This is something I have noticed a lot when uploading photos here, I rarely take pictures OF people exactly but blow me down if the Japanese aren’t as aware of a camera as a cat! Now, you may say “Hey, I saw the pic of your camera in a previous post and it’s pretty hard to miss.” Sure, I’ll give you that - but here’s the same shot with my zoom lens set at 50mm equivalent (that’s human eye equivalent)…

I call that Eagle-eyed!

Natsu Matsuri (Summer festival) is an excuse for the girls who wish to do so to dress up in their light, cotton Yukatas. I am told that they can be cooler than dressing up in modern clothes but it depends how heavy your obi is and how tightly you tie it around your waist - mostly, though it is a full dress-up occasion and comfort has little to do with it!

The Yukata fun is not just for the girls!

I’d suggest that mostly the men did it to impress the girl they were taking to the event (lots of couples there being sweetly romantic) but it’s entirely possible that they simply wanted to. Japanese men LOVE to dress themselves up and primp away at least as much as the girls, if not more!

So, the bus took us through Gifu to the banks of the river (I think it’s called the Nagara.)  I’m not sure if the 200 yen we paid as we jumped off the bus was fare for the bus or an entrance fee but it was a pittance to pay for either!

This was the view from our spot - you can see the crowds across the river just beyond the bridge which was the prime spot in front of which the fireworks were fired and the low lying ones danced. To get those spots you had to be very, very early but we were happy being less crowded and saw plenty.

From the hills off camera to the right of the shot above, Gifu Castle watched over the scene. It was a loong way off (my zoom was at max for this shot) but I couldn’t help wondering what the fireworks must have been like from there!

Of course a festival isn’t a festival without sharing food - so we made our way back up to the road where there were lots of food stalls with delicious things-on-sticks!

The fireworks began about 45 minutes before sundown with some fireworks which didn’t so much sparkle as explode in multi-coloured smoke. They were few and far between and unfortunately those I managed to catch were badly exposed either one way or the other, as I fiddled with my settings trying to access the long-ago archived photography folder of my brain, in the fading light.

As the sparkling ones began, the dusk light made for some delicate colours, almost pastels…

At one stage, everything went pink and I turned to find the sky had gone all sentimental…

(this photo has been cropped to remove some head-silhouettes along the bottom but not colour-processed in any way - it was truly breathtaking)

At last, the sun set over Gifu…

And the show began!

This was my first chance to play with my camera and I was excited to take some fireworks shots but, as we were going with friends and I didn’t want to be too anti-social, I didn’t want to bring a tripod which is really essential for good fireworks shots. Nevertheless the handheld, and therefore faster (yet still too slow for the hand) shutter speed, made for some interesting effects not entirely un-pretty…

Zoom was fun too…

And this one was even a little eerie…

The audience was mostly silent but would ooh and ah and swell with “Sugoi!” (Amazing!) at the big fluffy ones which produced the most light but my favourites were some I hadn’t seen before which exploded in the shape of flowers…

and, my very favourite, butterflies…

or perhaps they were magnificent birds dancing for the joy of Summer…

Afterwards, the crowd made its way to the stone steps in the wall to  climb up from the grass. No amount of Pentax built-in Image Stabilization was going to make up for the jostling as I took this dreadful shot but I had to get it. Obviously we were already up by the time I took it, some 45 minutes after the fireworks ended - imagine how huge this pool of people was at the beginning!

Everyone was actually very patient and calm - we were just pushed together. I can’t imagine being given safety permission to hold an event with such a bottle neck of an exit in Australia!

The walk back to the station was leisurely in the warm (still 28 degrees) evening and had something of a community feel to it as we streamed through Gifu’s streets. The convenience stores en route were having what must be one of their biggest nights of the year as we all piled in to buy drinks and use their “facilities.” An hour and a bit later we were on the train and an hour after that enjoying cool, cool showers before collapsing happily into bed feeling it was worth breaking the vow not to leave the house till Autumn!

NB.. For those of you who have stumbled on this page looking for directions and aren’t interested in a review of the shopping district of Osu Kannon (to wit: is it really the best place to go for cameras et al.) - scroll down to a little above where the photos begin.

Okay, I’m not actually accusing any person or persons of deliberately spreading propaganda but false impressions have definitely been made. If at any time during your stay in Nagoya, however short or long that may be, you happen to ask anyone where the best place to buy [insert anything at all except fresh food and furniture] you will no doubt be given the same answer: Osu Kannon.  In fact, one of Superman’s colleagues during his orientation day asked where he could buy a camera and was either sent or taken to Osu to do that that very day. When I was planning the purchase of my new camera I was given the same answer "Osu Kannon" however, in every case, that is where the specific advice ends.

Follow up question: Oh? What shops should I go to?

Answer: Any of them, there’s heaps.

FUQ the second: Is it cheaper?

Answer: Yeah. (Now, no Japanese person would actually say "yeah" but I’m trying to get across the non committal nature of any further statements about Osu.)

FUQ the third: How do I get there?

Answer: Osu Kannon station - you’ll see it.

This vagueness isn’t limited to humans in the real world either, NOONE and I am including the ENTIRE INTERNET AND IT’S COMMUNITY could give me a specific place to go (as in which shop to go to for a camera or even for electronic goods) or even how to get to this plethora of shops. The best I could do was that it was near the temple but the general idea was that the shopping area was easy to find. The truth is if you aren’t with a local and you aren’t that interested in temples, or are hell bent on finding this easy-to-find-thing and so don’t have time for temples - you won’t find it easily at all. So, before I continue with my review here is the thing I couldn’t find anywhere on the net:

PRECISE, ILLUSTRATED DIRECTIONS TO OSU KANNON SHOPPING DISTRICT FROM NAGOYA STATION

1. Take the Higashiyama Line (the yellow one on the maps) going towards Fujigaoka (not Takabata) and get off at the next stop which is Fushimi - if you hit Sakae you’ve gone too far.

2. At Fushimi follow the signs from the platform to transfer to the Tsuramai line (the light blue one on the maps)  and get on a train on the side that says "to Toyotashi" (not Kami Otai) I say "on the side that says" because the trains will have various destinations on them including Toyotashi because it is a line which goes beyond the subway system(Toyotashi is the Toyota station). You can get on any of the trains on the Toyotashi side except one that is express or limited express or the like.

3. Take the Tsurumai line train one stop to Osu Kannon.

4. At Osu Kannon, exit by exit 2 (if you haven’t worked out the extreme importance of station exits in Nagoya for both locating places and avoiding the extreme weather well, now you know.)

5. Upon reaching street level and not being able to see anything that looks particularly like what you were expecting, walk forward for about 10 metres, if that,  (you’ll be on the left side of the road from your point of view) till you come to the first corner - it has a konbini (convenience store) on it and, when looking slightly to your left, gives you this view:

 

6. If it is hot I heartily recommend you go into the konbini which is ooc to the left of this shot and get yourself a large bottle of drink to take with you on the journey that awaits you.

 

7. Walk down the road in the picture and go through the gate as in the picture below. I can actually see the very edge of the entrance to the shopping area in this photo but I bet you can’t!

 

8. After passing through the gate, take a moment to enjoy the view and be reminded that you really, really are in Japan and it really, really has places just like in the pictures! Also note the lady in the bottom left of the picture has a parasol - if you are coming to Nagoya in the summer buy one when you get here and use it - no matter how silly you feel. My scalp was sunburned while taking these shots and I was in the sun for all of 5 minutes!

 

9. After you have or have not been inside the temple (there’s a free handout with history on it in English inside and the woodwork inside is beautiful but I’m not one for taking photos inside sacred places, sorry) follow the pale concrete path past the temple and you will see this at the end:

 

 

 

10. Welcome to Osu covered shopping district! See? You’re not silly if you couldn’t easily find it from the station! Under the soaring roof you will see lots of shops, some tiny and shallow some double-fronted and deep and lots and lots of people! Not that all of Osu is undercover, many cross streets are not and so there is plenty of light and fresh air (I don’t think it’s actually air conditioned at all.)

 

It really is very nice IF it’s not too hot and IF you’re not "on a mission" to find something specific and get home and out of the heat again. In one cross street we found the Fuji Sengen Shrine which dates back to 1495…

 

 

 

…but is made minute next to the shrine to commerce!

 

 

While I said you can’t get everything you can get a large variety of things though sometimes you have to look hard - is this a gun shop in low-violence Japan?

 

 

 

Actually no - it’s a bike and scooter shop - of course.

And if your aquarium needs stocking…

… not much of a range but at least you can officially include fish in the list of the "Everything" Osu Kannon has and it was certainly unexpected!

Below is the biggest electronics store we found though there are a few small ones less easy to see as you push your way through the throng (which doesn’t look that much of a throng at this point in time.

 

Cleverer shrines than the poor little Fuji Sengen know how to keep themselves relevant… get themselves swept up in the crowds!

Yes, that is a shrine! On the right of the above shot there are tables which were set up with things for kids to do though whether this had anything to do with the shrine I don’t know. Still, despite the better traffic flow, not many people were paying any attention to the shrine itself and just whizzed by - though maybe that’s because its guardians had their bibs on for lunch and looked hungry!

 

THE REVIEW - IS OSU KANNON THE BEST PLACE TO BUY ELECTRONICS OR, INDEED, ANYTHING?

After having spent two days schlepping round Nagoya looking for the best prices on the specific camera I wanted as well as looking at pricing on denshi jisho (electronic dictionaries) AND the Wii, I am confident in saying that the thing about Osu Kannon is:

It is NOT cheaper and it does NOT have everything. It’s a myth.

In fact, the range at all the electronics shops (once we found them) is remarkably limited in comparison to the large stores and the prices are no better than anywhere else in the city. I’m sure that if Japanese prices are better than in your home country and Osu is the first place you go to shop you would remember it fondly as  a place for a bargain but it is an illusion.

Specifically on the things we were comparing:

We found the Wii in all but one shop to be 25,000 yen just as it was at Bic Camera and Eiden and 113 yen more expensive than our Tsuyata down the road in the one shop where it was different it was 24,700 - 87 yen cheaper than Tsuyata.

I wasn’t able to find any DSLRs that weren’t Canon or Nikon and they were the same price as Bic Camera (though a Nikon D80 was 10,000 more expensive than Top Camera in Sakae) - digital cameras were mostly just Canon but I have no idea about them since I wasn’t in the market - I have a feeling anything truly commercial might be cheaper because they might buy it in bulk since they don’t feel the need to supply different colours or styles of everything as other stores do. Though, of course, you can’t get much more commercial than the Wii at the moment!

Denshi Jisho were much more expensive on their tickets (by up to 7,000yen compared with Bic Camera which is a lot for something which costs around 40,000yen)  but the "discount" when you enquired (which many shops do and is the closest you’ll get to haggling in Japan) brought them down to Bic Camera prices - and they didn’t have the range that Bic Camera has (I couldn’t have got the model I wanted in pink for example )

So, why is everyone sent there? Superman asked at work after our Osu experience and was, frustratingly, given the answer that it’s one of those "you have to know where to go" places. To that my responses are a) fair enough but that means that what is being advertised to tourists is not accessible to non-locals and so it still should not have the profile it does among tourists and b) AARGH!! If you (whoever it was, I don’t actually know so it’s not personal but I know Superman was asking for days and I asked at a department dinner) knew that and you know which are those stores to go to why did you not tell one of us when we asked outright????? To which, of course, the answer is: the Japanese don’t give straight answers … sigh.

I have my own, kinder theory though and it means ignoring the issues of range and price which are what are likely at the top of a westerner’s mind when they ask "Where’s the best place to buy [insert product]?"

I think, and I may be wrong of course, that they think that it’s the most entertaining place for a non-local to go. With very best intentions they are sending us to somewhere where we certainly won’t get ripped off but which will be an experience we would not have where we live (and lets face it if you have that sort of money you live where you can "experience" a mall any time.) I think they want to show off the city and give us a good time here and Osu Kannon is definitely, infinitely more interesting than a mall - you just have to be in the right state of mind.

CONCLUSION

If you are looking to buy a very particular thing and you want to be able to get in, find out the price and get out again if it’s not lower than the other places you’ve tried - this is not the place - it will drive you INSANE. If, however, you are the kind of person that considers "Shopping" a noun (which, at least grammatically, all Japanese do) and you enjoy spending hours wandering about among throngs of people in what is definitely a tourist-worthy spot rather than an air-conditioned, light-conditioned, character-less mall then it is probably an excellent place for you.  It certainly looks like a giant market with cleaner, more professional stores rather than stalls - and it is - but that also means that the lack of overheads which allows market vendors to sell products more cheaply is missing and therefore so are the cheap prices. In fact, I’d bet the store owners are paying at least as much as anywhere else in the city, if not much more, for their position on this popular strip! You will be able to make all sorts of purchases from a $5 parasol to a $500 wallet or a $4000 entertainment system - but you will get the quality you pay for no more, no less.

For  me, though, the shopping experience in Osu Kannon misses what I find to be the key to the Japanese shopping experience. The truly Japanese experience is found in the larger stores where the range is bigger than anything you find in Australia or my limited experience of the States. Sure, in the States you can buy huge amounts of things but they don’t stock 37 different shades of the same felt tip pen, or give you the choice between plastic ties to tidy up your electrical cords or soft, velvety ones or Velcro ones with tiny soft animals on the end or computer mice which flip open transformer-style and become a Skype phone!  When it comes to electrical goods at Osu Kannon, IF you find the model you want you’re unlikely to get a choice of colour and they will only stock what ever everyone else is buying (except for those weird wild-west-style places selling oddly cumbersome and heavy things made out of thick, poor quality leather which I just can’t imagine would have much of a market) - and the prices don’t make up for the lack of that experience. If you are the kind of shopper that wants a bargain, get your camera/denshi jisho/whatever elsewhere and go to Osu when the heat is low and the day cloudy and you are in a lazy, wandering mood.

 

Note: My days of looking for the best price on the Pentax K20D and the Tamron 18-250mm with Macro lens took me to Top Camera in Sakae - they had the Pentax body for 20,000yen cheaper than anywhere else and the lens was also a little cheaper than Bic Camera (which was the only other place I could find that particularly new, 3rd party lens) Their prices on all the other camera bodies were also substantially cheaper except for the Olympus E520 which was cheapest at Asahido Camera. For kit lens bundles they were pretty good though some bundles were cheaper at other places  and Bic Camera had the biggest range of lenses. Top Camera Sakae is super easy to find - take exit 6 at Sakae station (Higashiyama or Meijo lines) and literally pivot to your right as you reach street level - minimal time in Nagoya’s extreme weather.