Narrative Disorder… in Japan!

As the hostess of this month’s Matsuri, I posed the question: What has Japan taught you about yourself or your home country? A few brave souls took on the challenge, dug deep and provided us with the posts outlined below. If you submitted your post via the blog widget and did not also put a link on my original matsuri post on this blog my apologies but it will have been lost in a system I seem unable to navigate ( I received no email and cannot find any listing anywhere) so please do email me or add your link in a comment on the original posting and I will gladly update this post to include it

Alex at Bad at Japan shared his self realization about the way he works

and gives us an insight about how he plays with others!

Jason focused his Random Thoughts on both the physical and psychological changes he has undergone because of his big move to Japan.

Liv who eats her pigeons gave us a wonderful interpretation of the culture shock process as growing up all over again

Over at The Soul of Japan, Tony  warns us never to take anything for granted in Japan but reminds us that this also includes the good things - take time to stop and smell the onsen salts!

Nick’s entry at The Long Countdown had him looking back at England (at risking his mother’s wrath!)

Shane at The Nihon Sun has found that she has learned to live a more simple and less frantic life with an increased awareness of everyday beauty - something we could all learn to do.

Sheena at Girlish/Sheena in Japan shares what she learned about being American in the wake of Obama’s election and the reactions of some the Japanese around her.

My apologies for the tardiness of this post, I’ve been unavoidably off the grid for the last week or so and will probably continue to be so for a little while after this post is up.

The subject of learning Japanese while one is living here can get a little heated. There are those who don’t want to learn the language at all, for various reasons and there are those (many of them in the blogosphere) who think none of those reasons could possibly be legitimate and subscribe to the wtf-of course-you-should-learn-the-language-what-are-you-some-arrogant-jumped-up-tourist-learn-the-language-or-gtf-out-of-the-country opinion.   Though I lean towards the learning the language side, the latter opinion is a touch harsh and, if examined honestly, based more on principle than practicality.  So, I thought I’d explore the question of how much, or little, Japanese one really needs to live here from a practical and perhaps a little more compassionate point of view.

To calm those reading this who are already sitting with tight chests, faces growing red and poised to skip straight to the bottom and flame me in a comment I’ll get this over with: OF COURSE there is no such thing as too much Japanese. And, also of course, utterly refusing to learn any Japanese and expecting everyone to understand your language (even if it is English) in all situations and doing the good ol’ shouting-slowly-as-if-they-are-deaf-or-stupid is plain boorish - there’s no excuse for it. But, as always, I want to pay respect to the people at whom these blog posts are mostly aimed - the expat wives,  people often forgotten by the young buck gaijin blogger crowd (and I say that with affection ) who blithely rant about being here voluntarily and about what “should” be done. 

Expat wives and their families are here for a finite amount of time, the average being three years but that is exaggerated by a small number of people who stay for much longer periods (and somehow remain on the ICT roll instead of being transferred permanently, lucky buggers!) I have only met two ICT’s here (remember 176 of them arrived just in the week we did) who are here for more than two years and many are here for 1 year (some 6 months but you don’t get to bring your family for that small a stint). Fact: you will not become fluent in that period of time even if you put an inordinate amount of time into it - and most expat wives don’t actually have that much time.

Most expat wives are, or suddenly find themselves happily on the brink of being, mothers. They have a husband who is basically absent, thanks to the hours they work here, and children to help settle in to this new country who had, potentially, only just got settled and made friends in the previous one. Spending more time than necessary learning a language which you have no chance at becoming fluent in, is just plain impractical unless you passionately want to do it and no one should be made to feel guilty if they don’t. Better to work out what you need to know to help you live well here and focus on that. 

That being said, let me give one little suggestion which may actually be a bonus for an expat wife with children. If your children are going to learn Japanese at school you have, I think, something that those of us without children don’t have - the best teacher in the world! If you get right in there with them, learn Hiragana with them and follow along with their work you will be likely to pick up a lot and you’ll have a great bonding experience. Every kid uprooted from home would, I’m sure, love the opportunity to teach Mum or Dad a thing or two - so why not Japanese!

So on with the advice! *Note - I originally had a LOT of kana in this post but unfortunately it seems Live Writer could not input it properly to WordPress and I have no idea how to find out why not Sorry.

 

Doesn’t everyone speak English over there anyway?

The simple answer is: speak English, no. I am told that every Japanese high school graduate will have completed at least five years of English language study - this does not translate into speaking English. Both anecdotal evidence and discussions with Japanese tell me that those five years are spent learning to read and write English with very little, if any, emphasis on speaking or listening to the language which means that most Japanese are quite timid about speaking English, especially if they have given it a try and found you didn’t understand (exactly the same as us in Japanese, ne?)

I noted in Tokyo that many more people were far more fluent in spoken English and were appropriately more confident in speaking it - but these were mostly people who had been hired for their English skill, at the hotel for example.

Nevertheless, it is surprising how little you really need to use Japanese at all if you are just living your life as usual - shopping and keeping the family going. With charades and a basic smattering of phrases and an ear and mouth tuned to “katakana Engrish” you can get along fine for everyday excursions (as long as you know you can call on a translation service in an emergency - most consultant companies which move you over here will give you details on that.)

Where to start? Katakana

As I outlined in a post several months ago there are actually three types of the “Japanese writing”: Katakana; Hiragana and Kanji. Hiragana and Katakana are the two alphabets which are the straight out phonetic scripts - which means if you learn them you will be able to pronounce anything you see written in them by simply sounding them out. Except for a few extra combinations of symbols in Katakana, the syllables both scripts represent  are the same, the difference between them is purely visual (katakana being somewhat more angular) but only those words considered to be natively, or “purely” Japanese are written in Hiragana.  Katakana is used to write those words which are borrowed from other cultures whether English, French, Chinese or even Swedish.

So, why start with Katakana?

First, katakana is EVERYWHERE. It’s very trendy, or so it seems, to use the non-Japanese word for things, even where there is a legitimate Japanese word - especially in restaurants and cafes and other such tourist frequented places.  Shop and company names, even if they are Japanese, are more often in katakana it seems - the first katakana that I read without thinking was Bic Camera  and I’m sure I’m not alone in that!  So it’s very useful to find shops and such.

Second, if you can read katakana there is a huge chance that you will, after rolling it round your tongue for a bit, realise that it is actually an English word and you know what it means! For example in a restaurant you might see ko-ra  (cola) and  ko-hee, hoto, aisu(coffee, hot, iced) or even ba-ga (burger.)  And this is why I suggest katakana before Hiragana - even if you are lucky enough to see a word spelled completely in Hiragana rather than a combination of Hiragana and kanji, you still need to translate the word - not so with katakana! If you know a little French, you’ll be even better off, in Nagoya at least it seems there is a lot.

Finally, I have a third, more subtle reason for you: you will be training your ear.  No matter how little Japanese you intend to learn, you will want to be able to hear people clearly, at the least to recognise your own name!  There will be phrases repeated at you that you will want to pick up eventually so that you can respond properly - for example being asked if you have your loyalty card or whether you want hashi for your konbini lunch and whether you want it heated for you. If you don’t want to spend your entire stint in Japan in a fog of Charlie Brown’s teacher-style “Wah wah wah”ing, you will want to tune your ear to the syllables being spoken.

In my opinion, the best way to tune your ear is to hear your own language spoken with a heavy accent so that you have a reference point from which to work when you strive to change your mouth shapes to achieve the sounds of the other language - katakana gives you exactly that!  If you spend sometime getting used to the extra vowels the Japanese insert into their spoken English and the changes from ‘v’ to ‘b’ and ‘h’ to ‘f’  etc… you will also be able to make yourself better understood as the Japanese may recognise words they were taught to read rather than pronounce.

For a great site to help you drill your katakana, in various types of font, too, you can go to Real Kana

What about Hiragana and Kanji, then?

Well, if you found learning katakana easy and relatively painless then, by all means, learn Hiragana but it will be fairly useless to you without learning kanji, too. I know Hiragana but I have not yet begun to learn any kanji and so I could spend hours on trains reading “kanji imasu”?”kanji imasen” so the most I know is that there is something that I could do or something that is somehow in the negative but I have no idea what because the rest of the verb is in kanji!  So my advice is that Hiragana and kanji can be put in the “only needed if I’m going to learn the language” column.  You will come across various kanji in your day to day life (like on the stop signs for example) and you will learn them because you will be prompted to ask about them and then you will have the context required to make the memory stick.

There must be some words I really need to know?

Of course there are and here’s a list of things to learn before you arrive (if possible.)

Numbers
The Japanese have a basic set of numbers which you should learn into the thousands and tens of thousands for money. When it comes to counting things, though, the Japanese have different variations on the number words which go with different suffixes depending on what it is you are counting.  Don’t worry too much about it as you will gradually pick up the correct counting suffixes as you go (you learn that the suffix for “floor”, as in second floor, is “kai” very quickly as your lift announces each floor it stops on in your hotel!) To start with, though, learn the basic counting which children are first taught and which will be okay to cover everything until you learn better - the basic starts with “hitotsu, futatsu, mitsu,” that’s one, two, three of something where “ichi, ni, san” is just one, two, three.

Money.  
Leaving the actual exchange rates aside, the Japanese don’t really have the equivalent of the word “dollar” and instead count in “en” (which is where ‘yen’ comes from) and is the equivalent to a cent (meaning it is the base currency). You will need to get used to dealing in hundreds of yen instead of dollars and thousands of yen instead of tens of dollars etc… but it is fairly easy as it is straight numbers with en on the end.  Supermarket shopping will really help you with this - not just in the obvious way when working out your payment at the end but the check out person will say the price of each item they have just scanned as it comes up - even if they scan 6 of the same things in a row  they will say the price six times - so if you listen and watch the price coming up you will get used tot he money really quickly!

The Usual Pleasantries

Such as:  (note - once again apologies for the lack of kana, when it comes to the Romaji, English letters, a twofold warning - first, I haven’t learned my Japanese using romaji and two, there are different ways to write things so it may be different to what you are used to - this is one of the reasons I refuse to learn Japanese in romaji, with kana there is less confusion about pronunciation.)

Good morning = ohaio gozaimasu - used till about 11am 

Good day = konnichi wa - any time is cool

Good Evening =  konban wa  - use after 5ish or sundown

Please (as in please do sthg for me) = onegaishimasu

Please (as in please give sthg to me) =  kudasai

Please (as in please, do come in or feel free to do sthg) =  douzo - as in “please do come inside” or “please do take my seat” if you are offering a seat to an elderly person on a train - in these cases you only need the word douzo and the gesture toward the inside or the seat.

I’m sorry (for doing something wrong)  = komenasai - a bow works well with this one … as with all of these really lol

Excuse me/Thank you (for going to such trouble for me) =  sumimasen - use this when pushing through a crowd as “excuse me” or as a “thank you” if someone picks up something you have dropped or puts themselves out in some courteous way

Thank you = (doumo) arigatou (gozaimasu) - add gozaimasu to be polite, i.e, all the time, and all three to be extra polite (as far as I understand)

Do you speak English?  Eigo ga hanasemasuka? 

I don’t speak Japanese. Nihongo ga hanasemasen.

There will be countless other phrases you will gradually learn during your stay and it will be made easier if you have tuned your ear by learning katakana.

A Last note on addresses

You will note fairly quickly that the Japanese address system is difficult, to say the least. The system is based around blocks rather than street names and numbers and all but the largest of Japanese roads have no name at all. This is why when you manage to ask someone where something is they will give you a long list of directions and buildings it is near. I suggest that you have your address written in Kanji and keep it with you on either business type cards or even in a small notebook which you carry everywhere so that you can just show it to people when you need it.  This still may not help, though, I have found that many people (particularly taxi drivers) don’t know how to find our address even when looking at the kanji and so it is best to just tell them the station nearby and the name of the biggest road and then wave madly saying migi! (right!) or hidari! (left!)  and then Hai! Ima! (Yes! Now!)  So get to know the routes to your house that you might need to guide a taxi along!

I think that will do for yet another ridiculously long post! I hope it is useful and that it has put your mind to rest if you were losing sleep about the language issue. 

If anyone who has been through the move has any other thoughts or phrases to add - please do pop them in the comments - every bit helps!

After the flurry of posts the week before last, I spent last week in a similar flurry of busyness which kept me from blogging - every bit of it utterly enjoyable!

Highlights were:

A birthday/bon voyage night at Red Rock for my friend NZ. K who is going home for a few weeks for the first time in quite a while. Good luck,  K,  sending good thoughts for a smooth trip and looking forward to coffee for debrief when you get back!

Going shopping for our costumes for an upcoming Halloween party (which was enough fun in itself) and finding actual autumn decorations - just like for Christmas but for autumn celebrations! Autumn is a really tough one to decorate my festival tree for in Australia, the main celebration going on is Easter so there are flowers and eggs and bunnies and baby chicks galore but of course that’s all Spring stuff so inappropriate. My origami skills, which I used one Summer to fold 250 butterflies to flutter around my tree, are not quite up to autumn leaves (something I must fix while I’m here!) and pumpkins are plentiful and appropriate to Harvest but have commercial Halloween references and you can’t do the same thing every year.  Finding the beautiful, can’t-believe-they’re-plastic Japanese maple and Cherry tree autumn leaves was wonderful!

But the biggest highlight came the Sunday before all that and was having four friends over to fill the house with chatter and laughter and use all six dining chairs! I had finally got round to getting a bamix-like appliance (nothing beats the real thing but of course my 14yr old workhorse is Australian power) and so I invited everyone over for no reason other than to celebrate opening my precious jar of tahini which I had brought from Australia.  (My friend, UK A., tells me that you can get tahini here but it’s just called sesame (goma) paste instead but I didn’t know that so it was worth celebrating lol!) I started by getting the meat marinating at around 10:30 am and spent the whole day blissfully pottering around the kitchen making everything from scratch.

The bread was the most fun of the day - obviously with the hommus and babaganoush and Lebanese grilled chicken and lamb we had to have flatbread but I have yet to find such bread here. Our supermarket sells something that is called “pita” but they are big soft, rather delicious but highly leavened bread rolls. Making things more difficult is the oven situation - ovens are not usual in Japan and all I have is a tiny convection microwave which, if I were more of a baker, I probably could have used but didn’t feel confident to do so. I was sure that I had once had dips in a Greek restaurant in Melbourne with some wonderful bread which, upon bringing our second helping, the waiter had said they cooked fresh on the grill. An hour or so of hunting for the right key phrases and I finally found a recipe here for Lahuhua, a flatbread from Yemen which is made from a batter much like pancakes (the thick kind) but using yeast and water instead of eggs and milk. It was a strange experience for me - I recognized what was going on as I started combining the same ingredients one would combine for bread but the amount of water seemed like way too much! Usually I don’t follow recipes, I just use them as a muse to get an idea of techniques or flavour combinations and then do my thing but I was all at sea with this one. I trusted the recipe and poured in the water and watched it turn into what looked like a very thin, bread-coloured milkshake - certain I’d be sending Superman up the street for bread later. Sure enough, though, after the first “rising” the milky liquid had become more of a batter and after the second it was perfect! One hint, if you leave the bread in a stack for a while before serving, the cooked side of the pancake will soften and then it is the most delicious, soft bread you will ever have tried! I highly recommend it!

Dessert worked out really well, too and I have had requests for the recipe so I will put it below (since I made it up when I couldn’t find any turkish delight so I guess I have copyright lol.)

Sorry I have no pics of the food, I was having too good a time! This is what it looked like when everyone was gone, though! Thanks again for coming US A. & R. and it was lovely to catch up with you, UK A. and to meet the lovely French Canadian I. I had SUCH a ball and invitations will be out to you all again soon!

Honeyed Figs with Rosewater Yoghurt

Ingredients:

The Figs:

Figs - 2 medium sized per person (however many you would like!) quartered

Caster sugar - enough to lightly sprinkle over figs (about a tblspn and a half for 12)

Ground Cinnamon - enough to sprinkle a little heavy-handedly over all your figs (say, a third of a tspn per quarter fig)

Honey - enough to drizzle generously over the figs (probably three quarters of a cup for the twelve figs) - Note: this is sooo much easier if you drizzle it straight from a squeezy bottle but do try to get a nice honey to do it if you can. In Japan honey is a bit “beggars can’t be choosers” but avoid anything which would be overpowering like a Blue Gum honey - the key to this dessert is the delicate flavours.

The Yoghurt:

Natural, Set Yoghurt -  1 1/2 cups (none of that sweet, runny, custard stuff - REAL yoghurt lol!)

Caster sugar  - 1/2 cup

Rosewater - around a teaspoon or to taste depending on the one you have. Obviously best quality you can find/afford but be a little careful as too much can be overpowering and with some rosewaters your yoghurt will smell like your grandmother’s soap!  If you are unsure about using it, buy it in plenty of time and make yourself hot milk with sugar and a drop or two of rosewater before you go to bed at night for a few nights - it’s incredibly soothing and a good way to get used to how much, or rather how little, you need!

Method:

The Figs:

Start your oven heating to a low heat - about 150 Celsius - either before you start preparing the figs or five minutes before you are going to put them in the oven. You don’t want it to be pre-heated as such, just not cold when you put the figs in.

Loosely line and ovenproof dish with baking paper so that the juices don’t bake into it and they are easy to get out to pour over the figs when serving.

Quarter your figs and lay them out in a single layer over your dish.

Sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar and drizzle the honey over them.

You can leave these aside ready for the oven till 40 minutes before you need them.

Place in the warming oven for 40mins. The figs are ready when you have beautiful juices running round the bottom of your dish and the figs are soft but still holding their shape.

The Yoghurt:

This should be done at least half an hour beforehand and can be done up to a day before hand but the yoghurt might lose it’s texture if done too early.

Mix all ingredients.

Place in fridge to keep it chilled but also to allow the moisture of the yoghurt to melt the sugar crystals through it (this is why you need at least 30mins)

Serve the figs and the yoghurt, not forgetting to drizzle some of the pan juices over the yoghurt - you won’t BELIEVE the colour!

Happy cooking! Do let me know if you try it!

As with any house move the greatest stress, I find, comes with the juggling act that is needing to leave packing to the last minute because, frankly, you are using your stuff to live! When moving overseas, particularly for a finite amount of time based on a project or some such, there is (more often than not) the extra stress created by the fact that you have to choose what to bring and what to leave behind in storage.  This article strives to help you with that. Please do add your own thoughts to the comments if you’ve been through it, too - “moving to japan” is one of the most common key phrases that link people to this site and I’m sure it will be much appreciated!

Tip 1: Find out your shipping options early and take your own time.

The first thing to do as early as possible is to find out what your shipping options will be. If a sea shipment is not a possibility for you then, frankly, that takes a little pressure off since it rules out bringing anything really substantial and cuts down your need to make a decision but, then again, you won’t be able to bring anything substantial… If you are being transferred by your company you will no doubt at least have an air shipment but it is likely to be fairly small: whatever you can fit into about the size of 4 standard (tea chest size) boxes seems to have been common to the couples that moved over with us - hopefully if you have children you will have more and/or a sea shipment option.

Whatever your options, most international shipping needs to be professionally packed for insurance and import reasons so you will likely have at least one consultant come to your house to assess how much stuff you have and give your company (or you if you’re self-funding) an estimate. They will want to book it as soon as your company calls them because they may be competing for the business but here’s an important tip:
Don’t be hassled into doing it until you feel you can give them a fairly precise idea of what you want to take because you will be held to that quote with very little leeway.
When they call you, ask them what they were told would be the ballpark - at the least they will know whether they are quoting for a sea shipment as well as air freight.  After you’ve asked your questions,  make the appointment within a week to be fair but to give you time to do what you need to do. Which leads us to:

Deciding what to bring.

So, how to decide what to bring? Well, I’m going to give you a list of things you may have trouble finding when you get here but beyond that I’m going to reiterate my advice from my previous post in the series:  however humble or temporary it is going to be, create a home for yourself - you’ll need it.

Tip 2:  Take an unabashed emotional inventory

Before you get into the nitty gritty, make some time for yourself and a cup of tea, grab a pen and paper and sit quietly for a bit. Ask yourself what stuff makes your home home. We’re talking emotionally here and it’s totally valid and will be worth the time however rushed you feel you are. Now is not the time to be tough with yourself or build some ideal about not needing ’stuff’ to be happy - just be gentle and honest with yourself. My husband was honestly happy to leave all his books behind, if he needed something to read he’d buy something new. On the other hand, I knew that I had to have at least some books with me - it was partly rational as most of the books that I’d consider “mine” are non-fiction and are references for my writing projects but it was also hugely emotional: my books are part of what is home for me. I also realized that it was important to have my Grandmother’s china with me - it’s not hugely valuable or several generations old but it was hers and came to me via my Aunt and its one of the few family things I have - we barely use it but it’s here and I’m glad it is.

Don’t forget, too, that it’s not just about what you would miss having around if you were feeling down - think about what you do when you celebrate, too. Do you always toast with particular glasses? Do you have special Christmas decorations you’ve had since a child? I have a what I call my festival tree which is a cone shaped “tree” made in Africa of vines woven together and then dried which was made as a Christmas tree but which I decorate for all sorts of occasions - people think it’s weird as hell but it came with us!

Of course you should also ask the rest of your family to think about that, too. If they poo-poo you and you can’t convince them it’s important then maybe take some guesses yourself about what is special to them, though it’s best to have it from them of course.  If you come up with a huge list then you will probably have to cull it so think hard about what is really important to you.

Tip 3: Things you might find hard to get in Japan

Okay now down to what the practical among you will find the most important - list time.

Furniture (Sea Shipment):

Really only two suggestions here - everything else you will be able to lease in some form without too much trouble.

Your double (or larger) bed.

Obviously if you can’t have a sea shipment or you’ve one of the many apartments or houses in which a double bed would not fit then this is impossible but if you have a good bed that suits your back give HUGE consideration to bringing it. If you’ve been on a trip to Japan already you’ll have noticed that the beds in hotels are very hard and so are most beds in Japan - and I don’t mean firm and supportive, I mean H A R D. Unless you have a few thousand dollars (US $) that you are happy to spend on a bed just for use over here or can spend most of your furniture lease budget on it, any bed that you lease or buy on the cheap here will be a) probably two single beds locked together and/or b) a very firm mattress sitting on a wooden box with a single, stiff, metal-reinforced wooden board underneath - no slats, no yielding to your body at all.  A traditional futon in a room with tatami matting may genuinely be better for your back since tatami has more yield than the boards I’ve seen under mattresses - and is something to consider, too, anyway.

Bookshelves
If you won’t have more than a few (say 20) books then again this doesn’t matter but if you do, and you have a sea shipment, consider bringing enough for the books you are bringing (keeping in mind the size of your new home, of course.) There are some ingenious space solutions here for books and CDs etc which are shelves but they are mostly quite chunky and won’t hold books much larger than a DVD case.

Appliances (Sea or Air):

Obviously if you come from a country with a different electrical standard (which basically means anywhere other than the US as far as I know) you will want to lease as many of your appliances as you can because you won’t be able to use them back home.  We decided some things were worth bringing over and getting a big transformer to power them.

Computers and peripherals:
First of all, our furniture leasing wouldn’t cover computer gear anyway and our consultant said that was “normal” so don’t expect to be able to lease the latest whiz bang stuff because you are in Japan. Also, if you get a computer here it will have a Japanese OS and need compatible software and it’s more of a big deal than you’d think. So consider bringing your computer gear in one of your shipments. We chose to fill 3 of our 4 air shipment boxes with our computer rigs - we couldn’t wait 6 weeks for them to come by Sea! (note: it’s interesting to ask people what they put in the air shipment - it can be very telling and if you find someone with the same stuff you know you have something in common!)

Ironing board
This sounds silly but Japanese ironing boards tend to be the table top type and the surface itself is also  very small so, if you plan to iron Westerner size clothes and want to be able to stand up straight while you do it - put your ironing board in your sea shipment or sweet talk the movers into finding some way to pack it into the air shipment!

Consumables (a little by Air, a lot by Sea)

There are several drug-store type things we were warned to bring and we have been soo glad we did! I suggest you pack about 6 months worth of these supplies - many Gaijin stock up on annual trips home and/or arrange for families and friends to send care packages at regular intervals.

Deodorant
Starting with the one that makes some blush to get it out of the way. We were advised by many that Japanese deodorant is “useless” and when you are struggling with the heat and mugginess of the Japanese Summer it’s the last thing you want to worry about. Since being here I think I have realised why the Japanese deodorants seem inferior - they don’t seem to use anti-perspirants. Most “deodorants” in Australia and the US (from my experience) are actually anti-perspirant deodorants - that is they control sweating as well as odour. I have not yet seen anything that was more than just a deodorant here (and the couple I’ve tried seem to do the job they are meant to do perfectly well) so that is probably the issue - nothing to do with Asian skin or being used to the heat!
Medications
Prescription meds: Obviously if you or anyone in your family is on regular medication you can arrange with your doctor to get a special prescription for more than the usual amount of medication that is usually allowed at once to ship it over (in Australia anyway). Just make sure you pack a copy of the prescription into the box with the medication and do not open a single one of the packets - do that and you should be fine.

Cold and Flu Tablets/Pain killers:
Again we were advised that cold and flu tablets available here were not as effective as the ones in Australia, I’m still not sure if it is true but we did pack a bunch of stuff like aspirin (soluble aspirin is something I haven’t found here yet), panadeine, naprogesic and lemsip. It wasn’t that I had a lack of faith in Japanese pharmaceuticals but more because I knew that we were likely to be in need of such medications at some point waaaay before my language was good enough for navigating the chemist to be anything but miserable!

Shampoo and Conditioners/Cosmetics - this is for the girls (unless you’re Japanese)
There’s just no getting round it, different races have different hair and I’d advise that unless you have Asian hair you either make sure you have uncoloured, untreated hair when you come here and use the most basic of products you can find or you bring your own. I didn’t and I’ve really regretted it this last couple of weeks as I struggle to find something to replace the single bottles I arrived with.  What does “struggled mean?” My hair is slightly coloured a little darker than my natural dark ash blonde hair so at home I’d use a colour care for the UV but something light that didn’t weigh it down. I picked up a Vidal Sassoon colour care here and I have been washing sticky gunk out of my hair for days! Seriously: 18 washes and rinses, the last 6 with plain body soap and it’s only just coming out! For asian hair to be coloured at all it has to be stripped to the point where my causcasian hair would probably have broken off and so their colour care conditioner is literally loaded with sticky product to coat it and weigh it down.

When it comes to cosmetics the only thing I’d say is that if you have quite sensitive or dry skin you may have a few, but not too many, issues here. The homogeneity of the society means that, like with the shampoo, they only have to cater to a small range of skin types so a) there isn’t much for Irish skin and b) as a point of commercial differentiation the cosmetics companies seem to resort to scent much of the time so if you are sensitive to that it can be hard.IF you have oily or acne ridden skin you are in luck - the Japanese seem to struggle with this greatly and there are all sorts of products to help out!

There are some lovely things here, though - matching skin colour shouldn’t be a huge problem for anyone because the Japanese can tan astoundingly dark but also prefer to keep the skin as pale as possible. At either end of the scale you won’t be able to get the really cheap discount stuff at the bulk stores (which includes SKII and great brands) but you will probably find a skin tone match if you’re happy to pay full price.

Well! I think that about covers everything - it’s a long post but actually if you count it all up there’s not that much that you can’t get here. If you just focus on making sure you have what you really need both physically and emotionally you should do fine!

Again, I’d urge anyone with experience to feel free to add your tips to the comments section and to those just starting this adventure - good luck and try to remind yourself every now and then that you’re coming to live in Japan! Japan! This is exciting!!

For months before coming to Japan I read blogs of ex-pats living here to give me some insight into what the experience might be like. Since arriving, I have become involved in a small online community of ex-pat bloggers. I have now ‘met’ and communicated with many of those bloggers I used to read and it’s been both fun and a great support. One of those bloggers is Shane (of the blogs The Tokyo Traveller and A typical life) who, like me, is not an English teacher or married to a Japanese citizen (mind you she is female so that one is less likely anyway teehee) but the wife of a man who is working here. Shane recently saw a comment I had made on Twitter and shared an old blog post with me on being an ex-pat wife and the assumptions many people make about we strangely old fashioned creatures. I related to it immediately and was quite touched by it and so I thought I’d link it here.

Shane has had the gig longer than I and has obviously got her act together while I am still finding my way/identity here. I don’t have the multiple international households to run and don’t have enough visitors to be run off my feet like Shane has been the last couple of months (hope you’re enjoying the rest now, Shane ^_^) However, moving to Japan doesn’t mean that I’ve suddenly started to see “shopping” as an activity in itself nor do I desperately need to know where the closest “international” food store is so that I can find “real” food, the Japanese supermarket does me fine. Nor do I want to spend my social life with other ex-pats simply because they are not Japanese, occasionally taking a class in some “quaint little Japanese traditional craft” as one’s tightly controlled ‘cultural experience’ once a month (with said ex-pat acquaintances, preferably in the safety of the home of one of us, of course).

Certainly, there are many ex-pat wives who live their lives in essentially this way (especially in Tokyo) and I imagine falling into this life is a great way of insulating yourself from the stress of changing cultures constantly. If one develops a life wherein you arrive in a country and become part of ‘the foreign wives club’ which is amazingly similar to the club anywhere else then I’m sure it’s a wonderful support for many but it is just not my scene. Maybe one day it will be but, for the moment at least, I am not trying to emulate my life in my home country and so need to buffer myself against everything I therefore feel I am lacking. That does not mean I’m trying to be pseudo-Japanese, either - as the wonderful people who gave us our inter-cultural training before we left said “You want to be a first class Australian not a second-class Japanese.”

All that being said, due to language and not working, I don’t have that much opportunity to meet Japanese people and the friends I have made so far are ex-pats (some are ex-pat wives) but they are people with whom I share interests and with whom I can have a good conversation and a good laugh because we have things in common other than that we are strangers here. To quote another of my online community in his comments on Shane’s post: “…my foreign friends here in Japan are cool people who would be my friends back home, too.” Obviously being a foreigner and new to Japan is a great ice-breaker and it does make it easier to find new friends than it is being at home, but it can’t be the only thing you have to talk about - for my money anyway.

Technorati Tags: ex-pat wife,japan,living in Japan,friends in Japan

Now that the sea shipment is unpacked and this move which feels like it’s taken 4 months is over, I figured I’d write a post which would have been great to find at the beginning of the process. I guess a couple of qualifications first:
1) I am in Nagoya, I’m sure that there are many differences moving to, say, Tokyo or to a rural area;
2) My experience is not as someone moving to Japan by the seat of my pants or without a job (albeit my husband’s job not my own) it is most definitely the point of view of an ICT (Inter Company Transferee)/ICT wife. I found very few blogs relating to ICTs but since 176 of us arrived just for our company in the one week then it’s certainly not an irrelevant point of view!

Tip 1: Get help!

Unless your Japanese is nearly fluent AND you can read Japanese legalese AND you know how Japan works - get help. If you are an ICT then your company will no doubt arrange/choose a company or consultant to help you out. If it is just a suggestion or an optional extra - take it! Even if there is some arrangement whereby you will get some extra money if you don’t use the consultant, take the help. Japanese rental contracts are HUGE (in comparison to Australia anyway) and there are all sorts of things which need negotiating which you wouldn’t think of in a million years!

The truth is that even if your Japanese is excellent, unless you have some kind of intermediary in the form of a consulting company or even the HR dept of your company you will find your choices limited to say the least. Japanese estate agents don’t want the trouble involved in dealing with someone with whom they cannot communicate with ease. That doesn’t just mean language either, Japanese bureaucracy has its very own style and they don’t need to be part of your learning curve coming to terms with it!

Which brings me to:

Tip 2: It is how it is because it is how it is.

This is possibly the most important thing to grasp as quickly as possible in Japan but you probably won’t till you’ve experienced it yourself (I certainly didn’t quite believe the people who told me.)

Whether you’re dealing with an immigration issue, trying to get a bank account or license or just trying to buy a movie ticket in advance online - you will not change the way the process is done there is no point in arguing … with anyone.

You will definitely find yourself in situations in which you think a little “logic” or “common sense” will speed things up or get you round an administrative obstacle but do yourself a favour and just breathe, let it go and come back with the right piece of paper or whatever it is that is required of you. It’s not that the Japanese are not logical, nor are they stupid (as I’ve heard many a gaijin mutter under their breath in the short time I’ve been here) - they are perfectly intelligent and may even be able to see your point but it will not make a difference and they won’t do that “I understand you, sir, but I’m powerless” thing that western customer service reps do nor will they explain why something is as it is - they will just smile gently and repeat themselves over and over. Things are simply done the way they are done, IF any change happens it happens slowly and won’t be the direct result of your (possibly perfectly understandable) tantrum!

A kiwi friend of mine who has lived in Japan for many years now says the best thing to do is to expect that everything you attempt will take you three tries to get right - that way if it takes less it’s a bonus, if it takes four well it’s only one more than three!

Ok back to real estate specific tips!

Tip 3: Up front costs

If this is not the first article you’ve found while researching you will have come across the phrases “key money” and “non-refundable deposit” as well as the more usual “deposit” and the first month’s rent. Both of these are essentially once-off gifts to the landlord - that’s all. If you are inclined to jump to the conclusion that they are bribes (as I have heard others call them) well, you may not think they are right or fair but they are not bribes because anyone will have to pay this amount (and the amount should be set in advance) so no-one is getting any advantage by paying it.

Japan has a long ‘gifting’ culture and this is simply part of it and you will most probably have to lump it - most companies that are picking up your moving or accommodation expenses should include this as it is a standard cost (unless it’s a particularly exorbitant one in which case you will prob need to choose another property).

In the scouring of ads that I did, I rarely saw a demand for both of these - 99% of the time it was one or the other.

Tip 4: On-going costs: Beware! It’s not just the monthly rent!

Assuming you have any choice in where you live and are not just being deposited in company owned housing, you need to be aware of expenses beyond the monthly rent which you need to be careful to factor into your budget.

Parking:
I start with this because if you live in a large city chances are you know parking is extra but it can be extra here even when it’s built into your own building! I saw parking costs from 3000Y ($30 a month) to 20,000Y ($200 a month) so watch out for it!

Maintenance:
Most of the houses and apartments I browsed on the web had a maintenance fee of some kind.

The above costs should be listed on any property ad but there are some costs which you should ask about if it is not in the ad. A standard Japanese rental property will NOT include the following and you will need to buy or (more likely) lease them and so will be a further monthly expense:

Window treatments:
Curtains, blinds etc… some of the cheaper apartments will actually have brown paper over the windows when you go to view them!

Air-conditioning/heating units:
Any property built in the last ten years or so will have the holes in the walls and the electrics all set up for you but you will need to rent the actual units themselves - and you WILL need them, don’t skimp on this you will need them for cooling, dehumidifying and heating in winter! If you want to save money - seriously, don’t do it with air-con!!

Light fittings!
This is the one that really surprised me - electrics done in the ceiling but no bulbs or fittings of any kind whatsoever.

There are some places which include some or all of these things but they are by no means the majority and do tend to be the higher priced homes. If you are thinking to yourself “I wouldn’t know how to go about leasing such things” again, that’s where having local help comes into play - it’s all commonplace here so just ask your consultant or HR bod.

Tip 5: Be Involved -  create a home, however humble!

Tip 1 was to get help but here I am also advising that, unless you are the worker heading over with no family and you are absolutely certain that you will be working every hour god sends AND will never have a low point or be ill… don’t just leave it up to your consultant to find your Japanese home for you.

I am using the word ‘home’ throughout this post because you really need to think to yourself what it is that you need around you to feel you have a home and try to set that up here. Living in another country is an emotional roller coaster - things you would take in your stride where everything is familiar will be magnified tenfold or more depending on your state of mind. The very fact of spending your entire day actively having to strain to understand the language (or wild hand gestures) around you is exhausting and being exhausted makes anyone irritable.

You need somewhere you can retreat to.

If we had wanted to, we could have simply chosen an area from the area descriptions given to us by our consultant and then flown over here to be shown what they thought was best for us during our orientation visit. It was tempting to do that, there was so much to be done anyway BUT I am positive we would not have ended up in as great a place as we have. Why? Well, first of all we were able to work out exactly what we were willing to spend to get a home we could enjoy - just because your company gives an accommodation allowance doesn’t mean you have to stick to it if you can afford it. By scouring our consulting company’s listings and emailing the ones I was interested in I discovered that by going up even just 13,000 yen ($130) a month put us into an entirely different level of accommodation simply for going over a certain price point (every city has these price points you just have to find what they are.)

Also, by looking for ads that attract you and sending links to your consultant she/he will get a much better idea of what you are looking for than by just writing them a list. They can also check things for you in advance (like whether your pet is allowed - cats are much harder to get accepted than dogs btw) so you don’t waste time when you are actually here.

By the time we got to Nagoya for our house-hunt trip we had a list of properties to see which had been well and truly streamlined. We were able to be fairly quick and decisive and, most importantly, I knew the market and so we weren’t in the position of thinking “hmm I really like this one but I don’t want to apply in case there’s something hugely better” - in fact we beat out at least one other couple for this place because I was really only confirming that it was as good as it seemed on the Internet and I immediately put a hold on it so that we would have first dibs! We looked at the last few places just in case but I had no qualms holding this one because I was pretty sure.

You may, as I did, feel like you are being the most annoying client in the world but it’s a toss up between being annoying before the house-hunt trip but being efficient when here or being the vague one asking all the questions and not being able to make a decision when you get here! Also, though, you are actually helping out your consultant, she or he may have 20 other clients they are juggling and you can’t expect them to be able to do what you want if you don’t communicate with them and be willing to remind them of who you are (we were “the ones with the cat” I’m sure!)

Of course, if your company doesn’t provide for a house hunting visit then it is even more important that you get stuck in and ask as many questions as you want!

That will do for this post - next instalment: To ship or not to ship and furniture leasing!

Technorati Tags: Moving to Japan,ICT,Moving to Nagoya,Housing in Japan,Living in Japan

Okay, so it doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal and, in fact, I had assumed it would not be that big a deal but it’s hard to find a wok in Japan! Well, in Nagoya within non-car walking distance from the house, with very little knowledge of the city lol. You can find plenty of different cooking vessels for both Japanese and Western style cooking but an honest to goodness, non-electric wok is not that common (I checked Tokyu Hands and everything!) We used our (well, I say ‘our’ but it was actually Superman’s brother’s which he asked us to season and use till he needed it back many, many years ago) wok a LOT in Australia - not just for stir fries but for steaming, deep frying, poaching and on one occasion, which I have admitted to no-one till now, an attempt at smoking (Elizabeth Chong said it could be done, I swear!) Anyway it was beloved but the wooden handles were scorched and the more I learned to use it the more I realised that there is a reason purists push for the round-bottomed type, so we discarded it before the big move (Flash, if you’re reading this, we’ll buy you  a new one any time you need it!) After all: OF COURSE it will be easy to find a good wok in Japan!

Saturday night I was really, really in need as we had friends coming over to whom I had promised tempura and I really didn’t have a pan which wouldn’t be sorely tested, if not destroyed, by deep frying.     Et voila I found one! Don’t you love serendipity? It was in a little shop which stocks all sorts of special cooking things both Japanese and not and with which I am quickly falling in love. It was the same place I bought my superwhizbang pastel-yellow enamel steamer/double-boiler/stockpot which I also adore!

I seasoned the wok last night and made tempura (which the wok directions suggest you do as part of the seasoning process - more serendipity!) and  I finally found out what the weird springy metal thing is that sticks up in the middle of the hotplate on the right on my stove. Under the "firing  button" on the left there are 3 temperatures (160, 180 and 200) with a little tempura prawn picture next to it. Obviously I new this was about setting the temp for tempura but I didn’t realise that the springy thing was … the thermostat! While I was cooking the tempura the flame was constantly firing up and slowing down to make the perfect tempura! Okay, okay maybe I should have guessed thermostat but I just didn’t connect them.

When I cleaned and hung up the wok I noticed that the flames had made a lovely, metallic rainbow, flower pattern on the bottom! I’m not sure whether I should try to make the flames hit the same spots in subsequent uses or see if I can get a layered rose petal kind of effect lol!

So, we enjoyed the meal on the new dining room table which had arrived in the mid-afternoon. After a month of anticipation our living/dining room is finally complete!

With miso, sashimi, tempura and plenty of beer and chu-hi we had a great night and the table began it’s life as we hope it will continue: at the centre of much merriment - thanks for coming A&R!

Technorati Tags: wok,japan cooking

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!

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…

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 co