Narrative Disorder… in Japan!

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

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.

 

We have furniture! Yay! Doubly ‘Yay’ because frankly this house is going to be where we will be for the majority of the  next 2 months or so - partly because Superman is just doing the 9-5 Mon-Fri thing pretty much as he was in Australia and I’m not going to go discovering too much when he can’t, but mostly because it’s just too darn hot! 

I know, I know, we’re in Japan, we should be travelling around, taking every opportunity to explore this ancient and extraordinary land! And we will. Just not yet. Festivals or special occasions close to home - definitely, especially if they are at night, but seriously look at the weather widget on this page (not that it shows the full, oppressive, extent of it)! At the moment here it is hitting 29- 30 degrees everyday with humidity from 42 - 80% and that’s when there is a less than 30% chance of rain and we haven’t hit peak yet!

The Sun here is also particularly vicious - more so even than in low-ozone-layer Oz. The women here unselfconsciously use parasols. At first I thought they did it only because of the obsession Japanese women have with being as pale as possible, and it is largely because of that, but it is something I have taken to doing, too, (the parasol-using, not the unselfconscious-about-it-being - yet) because that bit of shade makes SUCH a difference!  In fact, I neglected to take my parasol when I went camera hunting today and my scalp was burned within minutes of rising into the light of day from the cool depths of Sakae station.

So, the next couple of months will be filled with Japanese study, writing my novel in the air-conditioned study with the pretty green view from my desk (yay I have a desk!) and researching digital photography so that I’m ready to shoot up a storm with my DSLR (yet to be purchased) when the heat goes.

So, fair warning, blog posts are not likely to be particularly touristy, nor keenly numerous, for a while either.  Now, back to DSLR research…

Have I said how magnificent the early evening winds are here? Seriously worth the heat of the day (esp if you can hide from it inside with air-con but even then…)

/happy sigh

Well! Our air shipment arrived today - exactly on time according to the shipping people so we are hoping the sea shipment will also be on time in a few weeks (though it is taifun season.) Brigie is happy to have her food bowls here and even more happy to have her brush - got some good brownie points time with her this afternoon heehee.

We also now have our computers and on the 11th of July we will have desks to put them on - yay! I can’t wait to have sofas and a TV stand for this ridiculously huge (and yet the third biggest we could have chosen) flatscreen TV they’ve given us. I’ve been watching as many melodramas as I can find that aren’t actually Korean or Chinese because they speak slowly and repeat everything over and over to each other hehe. However I have to admit our favourite TV experience still looks more like this:

 

Damn Colbert and Stewart are on their two weeks off which they seem to take every three weeks at the moment though lol

So, as promised though a little late, here is a virtual tour of the inside of our new digs - not hugely interesting for many but just the sort of thing I was hoping to find when I was hunting for info on moving here the last few months so here goes.

 

 

 

Welcome! This is our little genkan (entrance way) where everyone will leave their shoes so as not to track dirt inside or damage the floors. This is probably the most "Japanese" part of the whole house - at least traditionally, the place is filled with very modern Japanese house-gadgets but I’ll get to them later.

 

 

 

To the left of the entrance is this lovely shoe closet, again very normal in Japan but different for us. What I can’t show you is that the shoe cupboard smells wonderful! It seems to be impregnated with some kind of wood oil - makes total sense of course, shoes being shoes, but was a nice surprise.

 

 

 

This is the kitchen window (to the left of where I was standing to take the above picture and looking out onto the entrance porch) it is a sliding door and so it can be left open if you are expecting visitors or just to let air through - at around 4 each afternoon I turn off the air-con and open up and get a wonderful breeze through the whole house.

 

 

And this is the cute galley kitchen (looking a lot neater than it is today with all my cooking utensils all over the bench.) The little window below the stove is a fish grill - ovens are fairly unusual in Japan unless it’s a really swish place or one of the houses important holus-bolus from the States. We have a dual microwave-convection oven which will likely get some use in winter as a conventional oven if we start to crave a roast chicken or lamb tandoori or some such.

But this shot is tastefully hiding something…

THE RUBBISH!! Anyone who has looked into living in Japan will have come across someone lamenting the complexity of recycling here - and it’s true! First you must use the bags from your local supermarket as the marking on the bags include which council you are in so you’d best not shop near work if you work far away. Then you have to separate the burnables and organics (red printed bag) from non-burnables (like old cameras or leather gloves - green printed bag) and then the recyclables must be separated into different blueprinted bags - PET bottles together in one, paper and cardboard into another, tins and cans in another and then plastics that aren’t PET (called pura) into another - oh and all glass jars and bottles or steel cans into baskets out front without bags. Almost everything has little symbols on to help you out and some packaging is quite complex as, for example, a PET bottle may have a pura label which must be cut off and of course the lid is also pura. I actually had to go out and buy a pair of scissors so I could do the rubbish! At the moment we are getting mounds of pura since we are eating from the wonderful fresh bento you can get from the supermarkets until we have the facilities to cook.

So there you go - if anyone in Australia doesn’t recycle because it’s too much trouble then there’s a different perspective for you. What happens if you get it wrong? Well, there are no fines but your rubbish won’t be collected if the men see the wrong thing through the clear plastic bag and it may just end up on your doorstep with a stern admonition from the neighbourhood "Queen Bee" - we haven’t met our yet but I’m happy to believe there is one and do everything to avoid her lol!

So, back to the tour.

This is what is known as our LD (Living/Dining) (this view is from beside the fridge.) It’s a great space and should have plenty of room for the two two seater sofas we have coming and a dining setting we will buy later so we can have people to dinner. You can see the monster air-con unit which cools the whole downstairs beautifully and also the doors that I open up for the wonderful tropical breeze - no issue with privacy as the wall of the terrace is one story tall.

A note about renting in Japan: most places will require you to provide not only your own air conditioner (which will be vital) also window coverings and even light fittings - so be prepared. We are paying a little more for our place than we intended but, unusually, it included all of those things AND basic fibre optic internet AND parking in the rent with no monthly maintenance fee (also usually required) so the extra monthly rent was totally worth it. Definitely something to look out for :) 

If you look carefully on the shadowy orange wall on the left of frame in the picture above, you can see two white panels, one is the light dimmer and the other is one of the house gadgets - it’s basically just the hot water control BUT it has a button on it which will automatically fill the bath upstairs for you! Lovely idea though you still have to go upstairs to put the plug in so… hmmm

Looking back from the glass doors you can see down the hallway to the front door and the stairs. Under the stairs there is a small powder room with an ingenious toilet with a hand basin fitted above the cistern and makes use of the clean water that comes in to fill the cistern by routing it through the tap wash your hands with before it goes down into the cistern. There is also a little laundry with a washing machine which sings to me as it starts and finishes a load and is also a dryer (though it crushes everything almost beyond ironing!)

But there’s something missing in this picture…

 

 

Ah, that’s better. Brigid has decided that her Japanese persona will be "the cat upon the stair". I’m not sure what she likes about it, maybe it’s because neither of us can sneak upstairs or down without her knowing where we are or perhaps it’s the point the air-con hits with it’s monster fans but she seems to love it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the top of the stairs and straight ahead is our study (or will be when the furniture arrives.) You can see how lovely and light it is and how green the view. This was the room that sold me on the place (and allowed me to put the big orange "feature" wall behind me hehe.) The top three windows open wide and you can get a good breeze through the top floor, too. 

This is a close up of the view, you can see that across our little step-street is a traditional house - I will put my desk at the window so that it can inspire me! No excuse not to sit at the desk and write everyday with a view like that!  I am fairly sure that the trees on the right of the photo are prunus trees so I can’t wait till next Spring to find out!!

 

 

 

 

Boring orientation shot - this is from the study door looking past the bathroom door on the right to the bedroom.

 

 

 

 

This is our oddly large bathroom, well half of it, and here the gadgets really begin - yes as you can see below we have an automatic flushing toilet with a bidet - no heated seat, though, at least not that we’ve worked out lol!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the other half of the bathroom: the shower which is actually more a a big wet-room with a bath in it. The Japanese have a stool beside the bath and a large bowl which they fill and then wash from before getting into the wonderfully deep bath for a good, mind & muscle relax. We mostly just stand and shower - switching on the water and letting it run on the floor takes some getting used to! I’ve never been into baths but I’m getting into them here - after all it’s the most comfortable place in the house at the moment! I must get myself some good onsen salts soon.

The panel on the wall near the bath is a wonderful house gadget - it is connected to the one downstairs and also has an auto fill button. Up here you can set the water level you want and the temperature you want and it MAINTAINS THAT TEMPERATURE FOR AS LONG AS YOU ARE IN THE BATH. The fiddling with taps to try to keep a bath warm is the main reason I’ve never been a bath person and this feature is what has won me over.  There is a "warm up" button, too, so you can start the bath cooler then reset the temperature to warmer if you like.

 

And the last house gadget I’ll rave about is also in the shower room. See the rods over the bath in the picture above with towels hanging from them? Well, with the use of special monster-sized versions of the clever little things you can hang on a line or clothes rack with multiple pegs on them from which you can hang socks and smalls, you can hang at least a couple of loads of washing in there and dry them beautifully!

Here is a shot of the water-proof shower door when it’s closed and you can see the panel just to the right of it above the light switch.

 

Here’s a close up - the wonderful relocation consultants have put little white labels with English translations on all the appliances for us.

This snazzy little machine keeps the shower room ventilated at all times but also allows you to push a button to warm the room in winter, dry the room and bath (and your towels at the same time) after bathing or you can push another button for "clothes drying" whatever is hanging on the rails - either cool air or warm air as you wish - set the timer for anything from half to 12 hours and Bob’s-your-uncle!

If you’re looking for a place in Japan I highly recommend getting one of these. In the Summer you will be showering almost every time you return to the house - that’s lots of laundry and lots of towels if they haven’t dried since your morning shower!

 

And finally the bedroom, view not as good but there is a little green and it is wonderfully light, though you want to keep your blinds closed to the heat till the afternoon.

 

 

And, to come full circle, here is the view of our little terrace from the bedroom window.

We are very happy here - it should be the perfect place to spend a couple of years, in fact, I reckon it will be hard to leave - but then, I’m currently in the Euphoria stage of the culture shock cycle so bring on the roller coaster LOL!!

 

 

SO, where are we exactly? Nagoya is on the main island of Japan, south west of Tokyo. In the map below the sprawling brown, tree-less area on the right edge is Tokyo (or part thereof) and the compact brown, tree-less area to the South East, surrounding a bay is Nagoya.

 

Here it is from just 40 miles.

And we live east of central Nagoya in an area called Kakuozan which you can see in the green area on this map - it’s not outer east but not inner east either, it takes 12 minutes by train to Nagoya Central station. 

 

Nagoya is one of those cities which has semi-highrises and huge multi-lane roads and motorways all over it so it can be hard to tell where the ‘city’ as such ends and the suburbs begin - but we are definitely in the suburbs.

 

 

Nagoya is a city of contrasts… sigh, did I actually write that? Well, it fits. In Nagoya the old and new stand side by side - though not necessarily happily as much of the old is below code and is gradually being either lovingly brought up to standard (which means won’t collapse in an earthquake of 5.5 Richter) or, unfortunately, knocked down and replaced. This photo below was taken the car park of our local supermarket.

 

 

 

 

 

And this is around the corner from the supermarket on my way home, it really is a beautiful thing to see - I hope it doesn’t disappear…

    

 

 

 

Even the new has its cutenesses though, this is our local florist As well as the obviously cute name, if you look carefully on the left of the door (your left, not the door’s) you will see white pointy things hanging down - these are small paper cones about the size and shape of a large waffle cone from a generous ice-cream parlour and they have small posies in them! There is something so delightfully child-like about them they always make me smile when I pass.

 

 

Bringing you closer to our new home now, this is our street - it is off a major road (6 lanes, I think) called Higashiyama-dori (dori being Japanese for road) - our railway line is Higashiyama and apparently it runs under the road for most of the way - I assume the railway line came after the road, though.

So, as I was saying, this is our street which is very green for Nagoya. I have no idea what the street is called - it does have a name but it’s in kanji which I can’t read and the addressing system is not related to your road so I have not yet had a chance or need to find out.

FYI the addressing system is rather confusing, everyone lives in a ‘cho’ which is an area and you live in a block within that cho - we are in the first block of Otana-cho - needless to say the GPS system in which you can enter phone numbers to find places has taken off here as even the Japanese find it difficult.

 

 

Kakuozan is very, very hilly and off our street are roads which are either like this not-so-steep one (seriously there is one near the supermarket which is more than 45degrees - no exaggeration!)

 

 

 

 

 

Or pedestrian-only streets like this one.

If you look carefully on the left edge of this shot, you will see Superman standing at the (out-of-shot) gate to our apartments!

 

   

  

 

And these are they - DEFINITELY a member of the ‘new’ architecture faction! I didn’t take this shot very well it looks like the building could go up and up forever but actually the window on the left (which is our study) has no building above it. The block is really more of a set of two story villa units built up the hill. You can’t see the first floor of our apartment at all because of the wall around the entrance porch but our front door is below the study window, as is the kitchen.

 

Not hugely interesting pictures I know, there has been little time for sightseeing as yet - there is a temple near by which I will visit soon and a local fire festival soon, too but for now the above is pretty much all of Kakuozan I have seen outside of ward offices and supermarkets/shops that sell things like bathmats and laundry supplies! Touristy pictures will flood in once I am a) driving and b) living in an apartment with furniture… but you’ll see how it is next post in a fascinating tour inside…

 

As you will have gathered from the change in blog title and in the weather widget in the sidebar…we’ve arrived!
Superman and myself were installed in our new little villa unit in Nagoya on Monday 23rd and Brigie joined us (somewhat sorry for herself but extra cuddly) on Wednesday 25th. The new house is pretty bare except for a temporary bed until our sea shipment arrives and appliances as we were unable to organize leased furniture from Australia. We organized that the day after we arrived and we should have somewhere comfortable to sit in a couple of weeks. In the mean time, we are making do with two floor chairs we picked up for about Y3000 each ($30AUD) which are made for tatami rooms. The fluffy blue pod which Brigid is stubbornly looking at rather than sitting in cost twice the price of the floorchairs but of course Brigie won’t use it - we never learn lol. The floorchairs are actually quite comfortable but not having a table and so, for example, resting my laptop on the box the transformer came in as I write this makes for back-breaking work. Our desktop computers are arriving by air next week (we had an allowance of 4 teachests by air and we filled most of them with our computers - priorities, priorities…) but we will likely not use them till the desks arrive even though all my current email and skype addresses are on the desktop and I am hanging out to contact everyone!

I’ll make this a quick post and get working on a couple of longer ones I’ve been planning. Standby - pictures incoming…

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