A quick caveat: make sure you know what the importation rules are for your country before you buy them – you don’t want to find them confiscated at the other end!

I’ll break this down into a few sections:
Where to go
Handy Japanese Phrases
How to decide what to buy

Where to go

Kappabashi, specifically Kappabashi Dogugai Dori between Kototoi Dori and Asakusa Dori, and its side-streets, is the place Tokyo restaurant and cafe suppliers go to get all the hardware they could possibly need, whether it’s cooking supplies, ceramic ware, bento trays, enamelware, plastic utensils and storage, or four foot tall,ornamental (I assume) cheese graters – and it’s where you should go, too.  Even if you aren’t shopping for knives, if you have any interest in ceramics or home wares, plan at least a half a day there. It is a dedicated supply area, though, so bring water and expect to have to go elsewhere to eat as there’s not much around. Also expect the occasional store person to grunt “20 minimum” at you in some of the shops – but only some, most are happy for the tourist trade.

The district is easily walking distance from Tawaramachi, Ueno, Iriya and Asakusa Stations.

So, where to go for the knives?

THE BIG SECRET:
Don’t buy your knives on the main street!!

As I said, Kappabashi Dogugai Dori is the main street that you will turn down when you get there and you will soon come across plenty of knife shops with many of the brands you know (including some German ones) and the prices don’t look so bad – a bit cheaper than they would be in the States but not impressively so. These guys are very welcoming of tourists and so they should be because I’d say tourists would be the only people who don’t know that they are spending soo much more if they buy there than if they just went up the street a bit more and round the corner!

If you keep heading down the K. Dogugai Dori you will find Kappabashi Hondori – a very small street which doesn’t look like much but it’s the place to go.

Turn East up Kappabashi Hondori and just a couple of doors up you will find the tiny, but chock-full-o-knives, Union Commerce knife shop.

In Union Commerce we found the same knives that we saw in the main street for 50 to 120 US dollars LESS.  Yes the extreme examples were on sale but, and here’s the trick, some of it will always be on sale because there is another little knife shop directly across the street and their blackboards and posters were clearly competing with each other!

I can’t tell you what the customer service was like in the shop across the road because I didn’t do much else but peek at the sales board but it’s probably worth a look inside.  At Union the staff (owners?) are passionate about knives and have seemingly endless patience for broken Japanese and charades! I left very happy with my beautiful sleek black boxes having saved approximately 450 USD over the five that I bought.

If you are looking for a hand-crafted knife (as against the hand-finished or entirely factory made ones which are, obviously, cheaper) I believe (through a friend’s friend who is a chef in Tokyo and did so himself) you can order them through Union but if you’re going to spend that much then hire yourself someone to translate for you when you go!

Handy Japanese Phrases

Hocho= Knife (you will also hear the word ‘bocho’ if you are listening well – this is the same word but ‘h’ is turned to ‘b’ after some syllables for easier pronunciation)

[Brand name] no hocho = [Brand name"] knife. Use this if there is a particular brand of knife you are looking for (though I suggest you have some flexibility unless you’ve really done your research!)  e.g., Shun no hocho; Misono no hocho; Maku (Mac) no hocho

Misete kudasai (Meesehtay koodahsigh) = Please show me. You can use this any time, it’s very handy when shopping, just point to what you want to see and say “Misete kudasai” with a bit of a question in your voice and they will bring the item for you to see more closely.

You now have a sentence, btw,  Misono no hocho, misete kudasai? = Could you please show me a/the Misono knife/knives? (no plural in Japanese)

Kore o kudasai (koray oh koodahsigh) = Please give me this one (or I’ll take this one) Use this after you’ve done all your exploring and decided on a knife that you want to buy. Try not to use this one before you are ready to buy – use “misete kudasai” if you want them to just show you a knife so that they don’t get confused.

Note: “kore” means “this” or “this one just here that I am pointing to right at the moment, see?” and is used when the thing is close enough to touch – store people will often point and say “kore?” to confirm it’s the one you want – to which you can nod and say “hai” (yes) or, if you want to sound clever, “Hai, sore” (which means yes, that one just out of my reach and close to you over there )

to (toh) = and. As in “kore to kore to kore to kore o kudasai” because, seriously, who can buy one knife?

Kirenaga (keeraynahgah) = a term which means the length of time that a blade will hold an edge. Using this term got me a big smile and guided toward another shelf of knives entirely – the Damascus steel ones, see below for why

Honyaki Another type of forging which uses only one high carbon steel. These knives have longer kirenaga but are less flexible and so more easily damaged. They also need oiling and greater care because they are, obviously, not stainless. These knives are more expensive than kasumi knives because this process is less common because of the precision required. The knives made with this process tend to be the traditional and professional Japanese knives (like the Usuba) and often have an edge on one side only, and so are usable only by either right or left handed person, AND require a curved cutting motion which takes both instruction and time to perfect.

Kasumi This is a type of forging in which a high carbon steel and iron are used so that the knife has strength and flexibility – this is the process by which samurai swords were made. Knives made with this method of forging don’t hold their edge as long as Honyaki but they need less care to be kept sharp, too so, especially for a non professional, it evens out.

NOTE: There is a Japanese knife brand named after this process so if you ask for “kasumi” you are likely to be shown these – not that it’s a problem they are very good knives at a very reasonable price (in Japan lol).

San Mai = Damascus/Damascened Steel This is another kasumi forging method which uses layers of laminated steel, and achieves a very pretty but also stronger and longer kirenaga result (still not as long as Honyaki but better than plain kasumi). The knife companies seem to be bringing Damascus into the home knife ranges whereas previously it was much more of a specialized blade (particularly popular with assassins blades, from my web research lol).  There is a great post on the forging style on a bladesmith’s blog, here.  I can only imagine that either they have found a way to make it more commercially viable or the home enthusiast market has just expanded to make it so, and considering the number of people who recently watched the final of “Masterchef” in Australia, that is a definite possibility.  I mentioned that it makes for a very pretty metal, this is because you can see the different layers of metal in the end result – as you can see in this shot that Superman took when I brought my knives home and he went into enthusiastic-husband mode

How to decide what to buy

When talking about knives, a lot of talk focuses on the blade but the most important thing about choosing a knife is actually the handling of the knife, and that’s a very personal thing. Hence the rather tortured heading of this section – I’m not going to recommend any particular knives just give some suggestions (from an enthusiastic amateur cook) on what to take into account.

The right knife for the right job
This might seem obvious, but it’s actually a safety issue to have the right knife for the job. A good pairing knife will have a slightly different centre of balance to a chef’s knife, not just because the blade is smaller but because of the way it is used. A great list of all the Japanese knife types with links to individual descriptions can be found here.

If you can only afford one good knife then either a Chef’s knife or a Santoku is the best way to go – the Santoku being the more Japanese of the two, obviously. “Santoku” means “three graces” meaning that it can be used for meat, fish and vegetables. The Santoku was developed after the Japanese were exposed to the European chef’s knife and saw the utility of a single knife which could do everything.

A pairing knife for topping & tailing beans and peeling etc… is a good second knife if you have to choose, so that you have a safer option for smaller jobs.

The right knife for the right kitchen!
A confession. When I went to Kappabashi, I fully intended on buying a professional knife: a Misono UX10 to be precise. At the shops on the main street, the store men nodded with a smile and said “besto knife” and praised my good taste. In Union Commerce, the store man gave me that fond, grandfatherly smile (which is only a hair away from patronizing but an important hair), picked one off the shelf and handed it to me. I nearly dropped it. The thing was soooo heavy and the blade was almost 2 feet long – just the BLADE, the whole thing was almost 3 feet long – that’s longer than the width of the bench on which I would use it! I asked if there was a smaller one – and he giggled and said “Profeshonal hocho”.
There is no shame in buying a knife made for the home kitchen – that’s what you are going to use it for. There are lots of companies that put as much quality into their home kitchen knives as they do their pro stuff. A home kitchen doesn’t need the same durability as a knife that is being used eight hours a day, every day (or second day if the chef alternates sets) and so can also get away with being a little more design friendly (in the same way that at home you can use much nicer pans than would be financially viable in a working kitchen.)

Be open to brands you haven’t heard of
Which brings me to the issue of which brand knife to buy. As I said, I’m not actually going to recommend any specific series of knives but if you’re reading this article, and continuing through this section then I’m going to assume you are going to be doing all the research on good quality blades from the various brands available. Try to remember there are going to be brands here in Japan that you might not have heard of but are equally good or better than those you may have so what you want to do is know your stuff about blades rather than having brand blindness.

It’s the knife series you want to research, not the brand.
Why? It’s the same with any products that have professional and amateur markets, a company might corner the market in quality on, say, full-frame cameras but not put anywhere near the same quality into their mini-digital ones – amateurs buy them because of the reputation within the pro community and are usually disappointed (while at the same time thinking no other brand is likely to be better which is by far not the case). So, while you’re researching take your notes on the reviews of the specific series of knives, don’t just assume all knives from a brand are going to be great.

In the end, forget the blade…
Sacrilege? Not really. Once you are looking at the quality series across the brands, the practical differences are so minor that it really won’t matter; after all, you’re not using them solidly eight hours a day. What matters is how it feels in your hand.
One of the things you will notice about most Japanese knives is that most have plain, wooden, very straight handles rather than the ergonomic handles of Western knives. These handles are also very light and make for a knife with a lot more weight in the blade than Westerners would be used to judging as ‘good’.  Shun and some other Japanese knives strike a balance by using similar materials to Western companies, addressing the balance issue but keeping the shape. Other Japanese companies address the comfort issue by copying the Western shapes but using extremely light materials (like pressed linen) so that the Japanese-style balance is achieved.
In my exploration I found that Mac, Misono and Kasumi seemed to err on the side of Western handle shapes and balance (which makes sense since they do sell a lot of knives in the West); this, as well as the extra weight of the knife overall, was the reason for my final choice – the Mac Damascus series. My friend chose some Kasumi blades because she enjoyed the balance and she prefers lighter knives.

A final recommendation:
Nothing to do with the knives, really, but if you do have a passion for cookware and home wares, consider making it the focus of a couple of days in Tokyo. I took the Shinkansen in one morning met a  girlfriend who lived just outside of Tokyo (another expat I now miss) and we got ourselves a lovely room for the night and spent two whole days just exploring Kappabashi. My knives now are not only a wonderful treat every time I use them but also a memory of a lovely time spent sharing a passion with a friend.

I think I’ve mentioned before how much faster Amazon orders arrive here than in Australia but I think that is partly due to orders probably waiting Stateside until there are enough orders for Australia to justify putting them on a plane – many more planes and airlines coming to Japan than Oz. Nevertheless I am now convinced that, once they hit Japan, packages take far less time getting around than in Australia or possibly anywhere! That’s a big statement, I know, but I’m basing it on experience. I recently placed a large order of (it turned out wonderful) clothes from the States, they company sent me an email to say it had been shipped and to allow 1-3 WEEKS for international delilvery – obviously the time frame they feel necessary to quote based on their experience. It was at my door 5 days after shipping!

So how do they do it? Like the train system here, the postal service just works like any customer would hope it works – frequently and seamlessly. Deliveries here to our inner east suburb are twice a day on weekdays and once on Saturdays AND Sundays – so that’s a speed-up right there, more delivery days = more sorting = less time sitting around in piles. Deliveries keep going right up until 9pm, too. It’s also wonderfully regular – my morning delivery is always btn 10:30 and 10:45 so I know not to be in the shower or doing anything where I can’t here the doorbell around that time and I can also plan my day around that if I am expecting a package. In fact I have ordered so many books from Amazon that last delivery the conversation with the postie was the following:

“Many, many books. You like a lot to read, yes?” I agreed at which he smiled and said confidently while writing it down at the same time,  “Ru Shi Na, yes? I remember today! Please sign.”

If I am not home when they arrive they will try again later that day and if I am still not home, they will leave a slip of card in the mailbox which looks like this:

This is an “Undeliverable Item Notice” and means that a package which required your signature or personal delivery was unable to be delivered and is now at your district post office.

SO – what do you do with it?

A third of the way down you will see some hand written dates – the top date is the day it was dropped off/delivery was attempted and the second date, is the expiry date or the date until which it will be held (I’m not sure what happens if you don’t pick it up).

The last couple of times I got these I went to the district post office and found the package counter and picked them up myself and I was planning to with this one but just hadn’t managed to get there. So I flipped the card over and went to the web address on the back and got to the English page. It explained that you can arrange a re-delivery either by calling the number on the back or filling in the box which makes up the bottom half of the front of the card and posting it back to them. I decided to give the latter a go and was pondering the old kanji-or-romaji question when I noticed the small print in English at the very bottom of the back of the card:

“A postal item addressed to you is being held at our delivery center. Please contact us. Should need help in English please call: 0570-046-111″

After giggling at myself for a while remembering the time I had painstakingly used my denshi jishou to translate the kanji of first one of these that I got, I gave them a call.

Before anyone real answers a robot will tell you that you are being charged for every 20 seconds of the call and give you a chance to hang up. The customer service officer that I got was fluent, fast and efficient so I felt it was fully worth it.

She asked me for my name and then to tell her the package identity number (I think that’s the phrase she used) anyway it wasn’t the 6 digit number in the top left above the bar code but rather the 2 digit number which the postie had circled in the list of options in the middle of the card (which I assume says what kind of package it is.) Armed with my name and this info, she pulled it up on her computer, verified she had my address right (asking me for the details of my block number and apartment number I assume for security) and then asked when I would like it delivered.

Here’s where the culture clash showed up (note it was 5:35 pm when I called)

Me: “Well I can be home tomorrow morning if it’s not too late to organize.”

She: “Um well if you’d like…”

There was a hesitation so I offered: “Or the afternoon or evening – any time tomorrow would be lovely if it’s possible.”

She: “Well, because… I can have it delivered between 7 and 9 tonight, if you will be home.”

Me: “Really?!!!!!! Yes! That would be wonderful!”

So here  I am waiting for my package – I know which book it is so no big surprise though I’m eager to get my hands on it.  If only I’d seen that small print earlier I could have had it days ago!

Update: It arrived at 8:03 right in the middle of the time-frame

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!

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

The study the day the sea shipment arrived!

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!!

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!

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