Narrative Disorder… in Japan!!

So very, very tired… and the move is only just getting underway! On Friday I drove our second car down to Albury (on the Victorian border) to take it to a dealer that my Aunt and I lined up to buy both of our Hondas. Selling them was the practical thing to do considering our upcoming move but, even though I wasn’t able to get my license until I was 30 (5 years ago), I’m a bit of a car-lover so it was sad to say goodbye to what was my first car (a fairy-blue 2003 Jazz)  and my dream car (a sleek, black, 1998 Prelude vti-r, tiptronic transmission with full sports pack, gold badging and tinted windows - they’re classics now, they stopped making them in 01…okay, maybe "closet rev-head" is closer to the truth!)

Here’s my prowler all cleaned up after the long journey and a few minutes before turning her over

I’d barely driven her since coming to Sydney because there simply isn’t anywhere to enjoy driving it because of the traffic, so it seemed a nice idea to get a really good run in her at as close to full throttle as Australian law will allow. And it was nice…even when I got lost trying to cut through the mountains to the Hume… even when I found the Hume and, hoping I’d be well past Canberra was presented with a sign reading: Goulburn Exit 2km … pretty much it was nice till about hour 7 when I should have been well and truly at my Aunt’s house in Beechworth but still had 3 hours to go… The travel-hangover made it a little easier to give her up the next morning lol.

I spent a lovely Saturday with my Aunt shopping in Albury and found a great book for learning Kanji - Kanji ABC by Andreas Foerster & Naoko Tamura! I returned by train on Sunday which was yet another another delayed journey, though only 9 hrs this time, so I am somewhat wrecked at the moment but I have little time to recover as things are really starting to swing into action for the move:

Our visas and "alien registration cards" are well underway, along with our katakana name blocks which are used instead of signing one’s name in Japan. 

On Thursday a consultant is coming to look at our belongings and ask us which of them will be coming to Japan and which will be needing storage - so we need to work that out asap!

I spent a few hours yesterday scouring the Relojapan home search site for properties for our consultant Abigail to show us when we are there. I have been watching one gorgeous little house on the Higashiyama line which looks perfect for us on every level (right price, right location, not too small but not too big, light but still cozy), it became available in march but is not yet let so I’m crossing my fingers it will still be available when we arrive for orientation!  I just know that the few weeks till then will fly by.

As if they knew I was missing my cars, Superman’s company sent an email today asking us to choose a company car with links to websites in Japanese and cars which are only available in Japan! So I have spent a good couple of hours today hunting for reviews/details about the cars in English - luckily a couple of them are marketed under Toyota’s other make so I was able to find

the info I needed. We think we are going to go for  "The Harrier," a mid-sized 4WD which is too low to really go off-road (and therefore will be safer to drive!) but spacious, comfortable and with GPS and apparently power to spare thanks to the V6 engine (which is remarkably fuel efficient at 11.1/100km) for the trips we are planning around the country.

Personally I am looking forward to the vertical take-off feature, it’s not listed on any of the specs I could find but, seriously, they couldn’t name it "The Harrier"  without it, could they?

Actually, now I come to think of it, we’re going pretty well with preparation. Selling the cars was probably the biggest thing we have to do on our own and that’s done so… yay!

‘Course now there’s the matter of the Typhoid and Avian Bird Flu immunizations …

Well our flights are booked for our first sojourn to Japan! Superman’s company is flying us out to have a week’s orientation in Nagoya after which we will return for about a month before we head off for the long term. We will be met in Nagoya by our relocation consultant who will show us around the city in general but more specifically she will show us rental properties for our stay. She is having trouble finding places which will allow our cat - in Japan many rental properties are "pets negotiable" but the convention is that this means dogs!  Apparently they are considered preferable - exactly the opposite to Australia, who’d have thunk it? I’m a little worried about living in a "pets negotiable" apartment complex if it is filled with yappy pups, I hope the walls are sound proofed!

Brigid doesn’t know it yet but her journey to japan begins on Monday with the first of her round of vaccinations, her international chip implant and pet passport certificate! She did well coming here to Sydney (for a very nervous cat) and she has definitely mellowed a little up here but I have to admit I’m concerned about a 14 hr plane flight for her. Luckily Australia is a rabies-free certified nation so she will only have to stay in quarantine for 12 days instead of 2 months.

We will be flying via Hong Kong and landing in Nagoya airport which, once again courtesy of Mike McKinley at his blog, I am now aware is actually on an island off Nagoya which is man-made for the purpose - this is it on google maps. Very anime futuristic, don’t you think?

It is a 9 hour flight to Hong Kong and then another 5 or so hours to Nagoya so with the one hour stop to stretch on Hong Kong as well as flying business class I’m sure we will arrive at least in as good shape as I did after the 14hr non-stop to LA in ‘05 which really wasn’t so bad at all. What’s more we will be arriving on Sunday evening and so will be able to get a good night’s sleep at the hotel before the week begins. Anonymous-car-manufacturing-concern certainly looks after their people!

I’m looking forward to posting my own pictures from Nagoya but for now here’s another from Mike MacKinlay’s blog taken from above Nagoya Central station. This will be Superman’s station for getting to work and I’m not sure but from the research I’ve done, the shadow cast across the city in this shot may actually be Superman’s building - if not it’s definitely close.

…"crickets".

At least that’s what it feels like here in Sydney.  Buses are particularly bad here. In their attempt to be seen to encourage public transport the State government "encourages efficiency and punctuality" by fining transport companies if a certain percentage of their buses or trains are late according to their own timetables - sounds good right? In theory maybe, in practice not so much. Because transport companies are also rewarded for having a good number of services running per day, and I assume also because idling buses cost lots in petrol, buses are timetabled according to how much time it takes the bus to get from terminus to terminus WITHOUT PICKING UP PASSENGERS.  The up shot is, in order to get a bus to stop, one has to risk life and limb jumping about on the road to flag them down or else they will pretend not to see you and whiz right past you and heaven forbid you don’t know what ticket you need or have exact change. The harassment older people get when getting on a bus (if it’s stopped at all) because they are slow is simply ridiculous. "Come on, come on, I don’t have time for this!" one bus driver complained on a bus I was on (that’s how I got the above information about timetables, I had laughed lightly and said "You don’t have time to pick up passengers? What else is a bus for?")

So what would happen if you were standing at a bus stop with a bike (which frankly would be needed to just get to the ridiculously positioned bus stops in The Shire)?? According to Michael MacKinley who’s blog came onto my radar while hunting for Japan posts (stand by for post on Nagoya airport), this is what happens in Calgary:

And just think, it snows a good deal of the time in Calgary so either people are biking through the snow or these contraptions are not used at least 40% of the year - such waste!! 

It would take a re-education of galactic proportions to implement something like this in Australia but oh my there’s a lesson in what happens when people who are truly committed to doing something put their minds to it!

Much has been said about the culture shock of Westerners moving to Japan and in typical anxiety disorder management style I am putting my research skills to use to attempt smooth out the shock as much as possible. Obviously the first thing to do is crank up the expectation of difference to 11 - done, second: start learning the language - done, third: scour the blogs from other gaijin going through it themselves - in progress…

7:10 to Tokyo » Featured Story » Garbage & Recycling in Japan - Get Your Degree in GOMI!  
Garbage recycling takes on a whole new meaning!

Get more for your yen with a 2000 yen bill
Apparently everything in Japan comes out with limited-time-only/seasonal  variations … even the money!

Get Cheap Stuff At The Recycle Shop
The Japanese are obsessive upgraders so if we don’t mind being oh sooo last week we can save some yen in these second-hand shops.

How To Find Shoes That Fit You In Japan 
A tricky way to deal with oversized, western feet!

Pedestrian’s Best Friend: The Bicycle Bell

And finally a way to deal with pedestrian congestion in Japan - on the street or even in the shops. I don’t have the mind-set to do this but it’s a good laugh! Enjoy!

I know that there are many cockatoos who fly around the area from the national park but noone can tell me that this not-so-little guy who visits me everyday at around 5:30 daylight savings time is not the same bird - I mean seriously that’s a pose struck for a friend, don’t you think?

One day I’ll catch him with a Qantas Melbourne flight streaking up behind him (I’m just guessing Melbourne but hey it’s going in that general direction and what else is down there?) Not sure my phone camera will make it clear enough though, it makes everything seem so much further away - the ocean never looks as clear in these shots as it is with the naked eye. Can’t wait to get a real digital camera for shots of Japan!

Some people are City people, some people are mountain people, some feel landlocked if they are not on the coast - myself, I can live anywhere if there is enough sky. From our balcony here in Sydney sky is plentiful and spectacular. My high school geography tells me its the meeting of the mountainous terrain and the coast that does it but here in Sydney we get frequent, intense storms which I adore. Lightning and thunder do their show-off thing at all times of year but the thing I love most about them is the incredible cloud formations as the storms roll in. I snapped this shot from my balcony a few weeks ago - it doesn’t quite capture the astonishing domed shape of this cloud which drew across the sky from the south in the space of about 10 minutes but you clearly see the discrete edge of this astonishing formation. When presented with clouds like this I am always struck anew how small we are on this planet and how vast is the universe beyond them.

I wonder what the gods were doing up there that they drew this curtain between us?

Barely five minutes after this was taken visibility was barely a foot as this massive cloud hurled itself to the earth with it’s full weight. The skies were bright blue again within ten minutes and, as with most Sydney storms, the temperature did not change more than a degree either way from before this formation made its appearance.

I wonder what Nagoya storms are like…

Now THAT is a proper working office… I bet he knows exactly how to lay his hands on anything he needs, too. Note that he has the TV on as well as those 3 monitors pumping away - how can he possibly get anything done? He doesn’t - he gets everything done!! hehe Clutterbugs UNITE!!!

I took this a couple of months ago and forgot till I was clearing my phone’s memory card.

I know Christmas and Easter have become a commercial opportunity to clear the shelves of excess product… but Lent?

I know I was going to be lighter today but once again the priorities of those in the society in which I live show through and I am disgusted and saddened.

During investigations for a report entitled “CHILDREN IN STATE CARE COMMISSION OF INQUIRY: ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL ABUSE AND DEATH FROM CRIMINAL CONDUCT” which was delivered last week , Australians…

“when asked to place in order the matters in society that concerned them most, rising petrol prices came first and child sexual abuse came 14th out of 15″

Do please follow this link and read Sen. Bartlett’s post.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that people care so little about helping children who are not their own, given my own history, and yet that shocks me, it truly does.

Every Monday at 6pm and Thurs at 5:30 pm for the last few weeks, a 6ft, willowy Japanese woman named Akiko (written with the kanji meaning “bright”or “shining” & “girl”) comes to our humble flat to teach us Japanese. She will do this for the next few months in preparation for our move to Nagoya in the last weeks of June so that Superman can begin work at the home office of the large car manufacturer he works for (who transferred us from Melbourne to Sydney just over a year ago.) As a lover of japanese design and animation since a small child, this trip will be a dream come true - to actually LIVE there for 18months or so rather than to just be a tourist is how I have always hoped to see the world. The language requirement of such an adventure is of course paramount and is, or so I’m told, a major consideration which stops many Australians (and probably English-speakers in general) from accepting transfers to countries in which English is not spoken at least as a second language by the majority of citizens. That Australians particularly, who grow up in this cornucopia of cultures, surrounded by other languages and English spoken with accents thereof, are afraid or even slightly reticent about language seems both sad and absurd to me - especially when the company is providing the cost of the language study.

We are not complete new-comers to Japanese, as fans of anime we are certainly used to it’s sounds and rythms and we even studied it for a few months in 2004 - just before we decided to take the plunge and allow me to give up work to write and had to tighten our belts - so we knew what to expect. Being presented with hiragana was not an issue as we had already learned that it is actually far easier to learn in kana than in romaji/roman characters because it is phonetic. What I didn’t expect, though, was that learning Japanese would effect my rusty school-girl French and my approach to language in general.

I have long heard the theory that it is easier to learn a third language after learning a second and easier still a fourth and so on… I have always assumed that this referred to having learned a second language to fluency but my French is far from fluent (even given that Superman is right that I have always underestimated how good it is) and yet I am finding a profound effect. Of course there is the obvious issue of being familiar with the general concepts of language learning but something more fundamental seems to be happening to my brain. As I learn new words I’m finding that the French for the same word or phrase will come to mind totally unbidden and that my entire world is becoming more abstract. Objects and actions are less tied to the words which name them - in a fundamental way. It’s difficult to describe, and when I do it sounds silly and basic but I’ll try anyway.

When we are children and we are told what something is called we are not literally told “that is named ‘a book’,” we are told “that IS a book.” Perhaps we take on a metaphysical belief about the essence of ‘book’ so that when we are taught other languages we simply learn by rote that “un livre” is another name for what is actually, fundamentally ‘a book.’ I wonder if the words of the mother tongue continue to be the fundamental basis not just of all language but of reality itself unless something is done to breakdown that metaphysical conditioning.

Those who become fluent in a language know the importance of the moment when you start to ‘think in

‘ When you are no longer translating, even at extreme speed, then you are genuinely fluent but this is not what I am referring to. When I was still studying French and even now when I am watching a French movie or le Journal in the mornings I have those moments (not for terribly long when it comes to le Journal I’m afraid). I know exactly what is going on, I laugh at the jokes when it’s appropriate for the French rather than the English subtitles and it will take me a jarring moment to switch back to thinking in English if someone speaks to me or asks me to translate precisely for them. But this new thing isn’t just ‘thinking’ in another language - I certainly don’t know enough Japanese to come close to doing that - it’s thinking outside language, observing beyond language to the core of things without need to impose a name or even a description until there is a requirement to communicate … everything simply IS.Hmm sounds fairly zen, really, doesn’t it?

I wonder if children raised with multiple languages from birth have a completely different metaphysical outlook?

After we arrive in Japan, we will continue to be given language lessons for the duration of our stay so there is a real possibility of achieving more than a survival level of fluency. Perhaps I will even be able to make a rudimentary translation of Shadowkeeper for pitching to the Japanese anime production houses which have inspired and influenced my writing since I was a child. At the very least I should be able to collaborate intelligently with a translator. Standby for posts in kana!