And Sometimes Why

Category: Japan

  • It’s the Little Things #3

    Pictured on the left is a wall plate of five Japanese light switches. They’re always mounted to switch horizontally (as opposed to vertically in the US). The little oval mark is the “on” position, which always seems to be on the right. The bottom two switches are for vent fans (I took this picture in a commercial kitchen), which when switched on, are backlit by a red light.

    Also interesting is that most switches are outside of the room they’re switching, so you have to turn the light on before you enter a room, or you’ll have to go back out if you forget.

  • Just when you think you’ve got it down

    I just had a humbling experience at the bank.

    As you may or may not know, I’m a rather independent person. Much to my mother’s chagrin, I used to take lots of things apart when I was young, just so I could see how they worked and put them back together. I like not having to rely on other people’s help to fix things, or get stuff done, you know?

    In fact, part of my motivation for coming to Japan was that it would force me out of my comfort zone- because I knew I wouldn’t understand Japanese life, I knew I would be “off balance” and have to figure many things out anew. When I first arrived, I quickly discovered that you can’t have pride if you don’t understand your surroundings; you need to be willing to ask for help and rely on the kindness of strangers.

    After living here for almost a year and a half though, you get into the routine of daily life, and it’s easy to forget the helplessness that was at first a daily experience.

    Anyway, I recently completed the registration process for a GoLloyd’s account. It’s commonly recognized as the cheapest way to send money home, but I’d put off the signup process for a long time because it involves mailing copies of your passport and alien registration card to their headquarters in Tokyo with your application form. With the welcome packet, I received general instructions on how to transfer money using GoLloyd’s, and some pertinent terms in Japanese. Armed with their instructions and list of kanji, I went to my local bank to use an ATM to send some money, and quickly realized I was in over my head.

    Japanese ATMs are wondrous pieces of machinery (one of which is pictured above), allowing you to complete all manner of transactions, including the inter-bank transfer I needed to do. Unfortunately, only a few ATMs have English menus, and only for basic functions. I fuddled my way around the menu system for a few minutes and got about halfway through the process while a bank employee stood about eight feet behind me, waiting to see if I needed help. I eventually gave up and tried to ask her, but ended up at a teller window after a brief wait in line. The teller then walked me back to the lobby attendant and asked her to help me do the transfer using the ATM. All semblance of self-reliance now gone, she read in Japanese from the help page GoLloyd’s sent (thank goodness they included Japanese instructions- written specifically to Japanese bank staff to help confused gaijin) and walked me through the process. I tried to follow along, but there were too many menus in kanji I didn’t understand, and knew I wouldn’t be able to repeat the process.

    I’d heard that getting a separate ATM card specifically for transfers simplifies the process, so after the transfer was done, I asked her about getting one (so I could hopefully be self-reliant in the future). She kindly walked me back to the ATM and showed me that my ATM card stored the transfer settings for future use, making it even simpler than having a separate card for transfers. I thanked her profusely and left the bank.

  • It’s the Little Things #2

    In Japan, patrons get a little plastic basket to hold movie concession items. At the end of the movie, employees stand outside each auditorium to collect the baskets (now containing each patron’s refuse).

    Also possibly related- Japanese theater floors are not sticky.

     

    Basket pictured in front of a Terminator 4 (ターミネーター4) poster

  • It’s the Little Things #1

    I’m starting a new series of posts on my blog today. It’s basically just a quick blurb about something unexpectedly different between America and Japan. So, without further ado, here’s “It’s the Little Things,” part the first.

    Pheer my mad Photoshop skillz 99% of the time (anecdotally, of course) locks in Japan lock with what I’d call “underhand” rotation, meaning that the lower part of the lock matches the movement of the bolt- as opposed to American locks, where the movement of the bolt typically mirrors the movement of the upper part of the lock.

    Pictured is my apartment door, currently locked.

  • Shimanami Kaido, Episode I

    I’m going for a ride on the Shimanami Kaido bridges again tomorrow, so I figured I should at least post about my last trip first, to avoid any confusion. Serena, May, and I rode northbound from Imabari (Sunrise Itoyama, specifically) in the middle of Typhoon #6 a few months ago. (Japan numbers their large meteorological events instead of naming them. I guess it’s to keep them at arm’s length in case they don’t call in the morning.)

    Sunrise Itoyama is a bicycle rental place in northern Imabari, very close to the start of the bridge system spanning the Seto Inland Sea. (I rented a bicycle instead of trying to ride my craptastic mama-chari one speed Japanese clunker of a city bike across sixty kilometers of sparsely populated islands and bridges.) It’s a beautiful ride, with bridges hopping across a series of islands that peek like giant stepping stones out of the water.

    The weather forecast for the day said that the typhoon might be right where we were, but we were hoping it would just graze us. Regardless of the weather, we couldn’t change the details of the ride, as it had been organized as part of Bicycle for Everyone’s Earth (BEE), a group here in Japan that promotes environmentally conscious living through eco-friendly education and consumption. Each year they organize a two-month, 3000 kilometer ride from Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido to the southernmost island of Kyushu, and the three of us joined them for the day they planned to ride north across the Seto Inland Sea.

    So we all brought our rain gear, and it’s a good thing we did. It was just lightly sprinkling rain when we set out, but by the time we made it onto the first bridge, we were in the middle of a deluge. We turned around when we didn’t see the BEE team in the first bridge, as the rain just kept getting heavier and heavier. By the time we got back ten minutes after starting out, the water was deep enough on the street in front of the bike rental place that you couldn’t pedal- the water was above the pedals’ lowest point.

    When we got back inside, we found the BEE team regrouping; they had set off just after us and come back just before us, and were already hard at work drying off their clothes. We talked to them about their travels while waiting for the rain to slack off a bit then and set back out on our grand adventure.

    The day quickly turned into a series of fiascoes, though. The BEE team suffered through a number of flat tires, two broken spokes, and a broken rear pannier rack, and eventually told us three interlopers to go on ahead of them. That was the last we ever saw of the team…

    We got a late start and were riding slow because of the rain, and as a result May was running short on time and had to bail in Omishima, just shy of the halfway point. Serena and I pressed on, actually making a wrong turn at one point that ended up being a “shortcut” through a rural area instead of following the major highway on the other side of the island.

    It rained on and off the whole day, but luckily it was never as heavy as it was in the first ten minutes. It also got dark surprisingly quickly. Fortunately, a couple of the bridges had separate, well-lit decks for bicycles. It was totally dark by the time we arrived in Omishima, which was an unanticipated problem. The rental place had ostensibly closed an hour before we arrived, but there was still an old man sitting in a shack on their lot, whom we convinced to take out bikes off our hands. Then we had to figure out how to get back to Matsuyama. “The guy” at Sunrise Itoyama said there was a late southbound bus back across the bridge system, but it wasn’t running that Sunday. By the time we realized the late bus didn’t exist, the last actual bus had, in fact, just left the bus depot.

    One of the waiting bus drivers took pity on our plight once we managed to explain it, and he got a waiting taxi driver to take us through some super-secret door on the highway overpass to a pickup point just ahead of that last bus we needed, where he personally waited with us and made sure we got on the bus. I tell you, between learning that the depot had no more buses home, figuring out how to get help in Japanese, and waiting for the bus on the bridge, that was a seriously stressful hour or so, and I am still amazed at the generosity of the Japanese people.

    The bus ride back to Imabari was uneventful, Serena and I just unwinding from the day. Then it was an easy train ride back into Matsuyama and blissful recuperative sleep.

    Wow! Now I’m ready to go do it again! 😀

  • Hanami

    It’s spring in Japan, and that means enjoying the cherry blossoms (花見 – hanami). You’ve probably heard the Japanese word for cherry blossoms before; it’s Sakura (æ¡œ), and it’s also used as a girl’s name here. These trees are all over the country, and the small flowers that cover the trees make them look like little clouds on dark knurled columns.

    Without the flowers, the trees aren’t very attractive. They have sort of a dark mottled bark, and when the flowers bloom, the contrast is surprising, to say the least. There’s a lot of variance in flower color, too- everything from deep red to pure white, though light pink seems to be the most common here in Matsuyama.

    On Sunday, I went to Dogo Park, and it was an absolute madhouse. I think it was a national holiday weekend of some sort, and half of Matsuyama’s residents were in the park. Every reasonably flat surface was covered with blue tarps and roll-up mats where people were enjoying the beautiful day. There was a general festival atmosphere, with booths set up along the main footpaths selling everything from cheap plastic toys to cooked food to “fresh” charcoal.

    People were playing games in open spaces, and it was really neat to see all the families and friends just out having a good time. It’s days like this that make me appreciate the Japanese sense of family. However, it’s also days like this that make me wonder if maybe some people might be happier if they weren’t in the thick of the throngs all doing the same things at the same time, if they considered breaking from the pack.

    As I mentioned, hanami is a popular pastime, and people often bring their whole family or group of friends to the park to grill meat over small barbecues. The first picture shows some of my friends out at Dogo Park enjoying the day. The rest are from trips to Matsuyama Castle and Matsuyama “General” Park.

  • Untitled

    I didn’t really know what to call this post, since there’s not really a cohesive theme; I just wanted to share a few pictures. I have a lot to post, I really REALLY do, and I keep putting it off and it just keeps getting bigger. But just to keep things flowing, here are a few of the pictures I’ve taken recently with my phone’s camera.

    This is Takashi. He was one of my favorite students before he moved to Tokyo for a really good hospitality program there (not sure which school). His English wasn’t fantastic, but he had a certain knack for communicating using body language, and classes with him were never boring. As any teacher can attest, favorite students are not necessarily the best scholars.
    I occasionally eat lunch at a place called “Freshness Burger.” (I can tell I’ve been in Japan a while because that name doesn’t even strike me as odd any more.) It’s a Japanese fast-casual hamburger chain in direct competition with Mos Burger, a considerably larger chain. Anyway, on this particular day, I decided to try their Spam burger combo with a lime soda. I was a little wary (which was part of the reason I ordered it), but the thing turned out to be really good. If you look closely, you can see the little mustard smiley faces they put in our ketchup thingies.
    This picture may not strike you as all that unusual if you’re from the US. Lots of cars still sport these little bears, years after the Grateful Dead disbanded. (Heh. Disbanded.) But here in Japan? I don’t think their legendary touring schedule brought them out here, and I’m pretty sure they never sang anything in Japanese. That being the case, I wonder if the owner of this minivan just bought it because it was a cute bear with a rose, without knowing where the image of the bear came from. Anyway, moving on…
    I went shopping yesterday at one of those used clothing stores that tries to sell thrift shop clothes at designer prices. Holding up one of their display tables, I spotted this crate with a Goleta Lemons label on it. Assuming you didn’t contribute any genetic material to my being, I’ll excuse you for not knowing I was born in Goleta Valley Hospital in Santa Barbara, where these lemons come from.
    The Wayans brothers called. They want their “In Living Color” wardrobe back. Also taken at the overpriced used clothing store.
    None of the fitting rooms I’ve used in Japan have had locks, but all have had this little area for you to set your shoes so they’re easily visible from the outside. It’s like a cute little designated shoe removal area in every dressing room. 🙂

  • Toy car?

    I spotted this car last week in a parking lot near my office while walking to Sukiya to grab a quick bowl of gyudon for dinner. This is Japan, so it has to be cute, right?

  • Konpeito = Star Bits

    I spotted these on the shelves with all the other Japanese candy at a supermarket. If you’ve played Super Mario Galaxy, I think you’ll agree that they look exactly like star bits. (As always, click on the picture to see a closeup.)

  • Bunny Island, Part 1

    Preface:
    I wrote this about a trip I took in August over summer break from school. I started writing it just after I got back to Matsuyama, but the process of arranging all the detail in this post exhausted me, and I still haven’t written about the last two thirds of the trip. I think this is my longest post to date, and it only covers the first part of my trip. I hope to get to the rest very soon. 🙂

    I don’t remember when I first heard about Bunny Island, but I think it was about a year ago. Then earlier this year, I read a blog post written by a JET ALT who went there in February. A month and a half later, I was happily accepting a position in Matsuyama, pretty close to the island.

    Its actual name is Ohkunoshima (with the accent on the first elongated “O”). It was once home to a secret weapons plant (where they actually hid WMDs!). Many Japanese people, even from the cities nearest the island, have never heard of it.

    The site itself fascinated me from the first moment I heard about it (A super secret island in the Seto Inland Sea that still has ruins of an illegal WWII-era gas plant? Oh, heck yeah!), so when I learned our school’s summer vacation was two weeks long, I figured that would be the perfect time to go.

    This (excessively long) post is about the good luck, good people, and good experiences I was fortunate enough to encounter on that brief two day trip.

    ***

    8/8/08

    When I woke up late two days ago, I knew I’d have to rush to make the 10am bus. I’d already skipped a day in my plans to go to Ohkunoshima because I wasn’t yet ready to leave. (I wanted to buy a book for the trip, but the bookstore was closed by the time I decided. A lame excuse, especially since I didn’t end up reading it, but I wanted an extra day to relax anyway.) So I scrambled to get ready and get out the door at about 9:40 for the fifteen minute ride to the city station.

    I added my bike to the hordes of bicycles already gathered and concentrated like so many lengths of tangled Christmas tree lights, and briskly walked back to the empty platform where my bus would soon be. Relieved that I’d made it in time, I used my five minute buffer to go inside the station and ask again whether or not I needed to buy a ticket before boarding the bus. As you might imagine, I don’t always know if I’m getting good information when I speak to people in Japan. Usually we speak in a mixed form of “Japanglish,” so I’m never sure if my takeaway message is exactly what they meant, and I wanted to be absolutely certain that I could get on the bus without a ticket. I got confirmation that the fare was determined and payment collected upon leaving the bus.

    Relieved, I went back outside to see that my bus had just divested its passengers and was boarding to leave in about thirty seconds. I stepped on with a confused look on my face and the driver smiled and pointed to the ticket dispenser on my right. “Take ticket,” he said, his meaning already clear. I took a ticket labeled “0,” and wondered what it meant.

    I’m not sure what I expected, but I think I was the fourth person to get on the full size touring coach at that terminus, and I was surprised to see the bus as empty as it was. The bus was pretty nice, with deep red velour seats, and actual curtains on the windows. Another thing that surprised me was the fifth foldaway “jumper” seat in the aisle of every row, whose use would completely block the exit for passengers behind that row. Different safety standards for different countries, I suppose.

    The bus left as soon as I sat down. We had one more stop in Matsuyama, where I realized that oncoming passengers were collecting tickets labeled “1.” At that point I figured out the price board above the driver’s head and the pricing based on how far you’d ridden, and understood why my ticket was labeled “0.”

    I took a few moments to finally relax and let some of the dampness evaporate out of my shirt. Even though it was still early morning, I’d ridden pretty hard to get to the station on time, stopping once to put the chain back on Rusty’s rear sprocket. He gets crotchety when I ride in a spirited manner. The air conditioner on the bus was adequate, but nothing spectacular. A nice touch was the adjustable automobile-style vents placed above each seat, which I directed at my back. This was my first long-distance trip since I started working in Japan, and I saw some of Matsuyama that I hadn’t seen before, so I took a few pictures of the city as we passed.

    Every time I mention wanting to go to a beach in Matsuyama, people tell me to go to Hojo (a town on the northern outskirts of Matsuyama) instead of Matuyama’s beaches, so I was delighted to see the bus stop right at a beach complex in Hojo. After that, civilization thinned out until it was just a highway rest stop / beach restaurant every mile or two. Even that held my interest though, as I think Japan has some very interesting geometric artificial breakwater blocks, and the restaurants and small populated coves are fascinating.

    Civilization started picking back up as we approached Imabari, a small city on the northern tip of Shikoku (the Japanese island on which Matsuyama is located). The outskirts seem very depressed, and reminded me a lot of the images you see when the US evening news talks about Detroit. Downtown Imabari was another story though, and reminded me very much of a small California coastal city. There was a rest stop and driver change in Imabari, and with the bus door left open for a few minutes, you could smell the sea air and see the boats slowly bobbing in the docks, only a hundred yards away from the bus station. Even passing through for as short a time as we did, I got the impression that life travels a little slower there.

    We were back on the road in short order, heading northeast toward the series of bridges and islands that connect Shikoku with Honshu (the biggest of the four main islands). There was a lot to see on the way, and I felt like a total tourist, snapping pictures of anything that caught my eye. I gave myself permission to play tourist for a while, disregarding the mild amount of attention it brought the only gaikokujin on a slowly-filling bus. I half expected someone to remind me that I wasn’t on a tour bus.

    At each stop, I checked the kanji on my bus schedule with the kanji on the board at the front announcing the next stop, and (when I could understand it) the “next stop is …” announcements from the speakers in the bus. I felt a little tension growing as my stop approached, because I really didn’t have a plan for what to do once I got off the bus, but I tried to relax and enjoy my first trip through the real Japanese countryside.

    When it came up though, it was easy to spot, letting off in a large bus turnaround area with a few bus stops around the perimeter.

    From my bus stop, I didn’t know where to go for the ferry I needed, or how I would get there if it was too far to walk. Just looking at a map, the bus stop seemed to be a tiny outpost next to one of the bridges, and that turned out to be about right. The area around the bus stop has a highway rest stop and a small collection of highway trap businesses, including a restaurant, a gift shop, a small convenience store, and (thank the gods) a bicycle rental shop.

    I took a few pictures of the scenery, ate a lunch of octopus tempura and udon at the restaurant, and set about finding information on the ferry I needed to catch. I first asked the waitress at the restaurant where I needed to go to catch the ferry, and she told me the name of the town I needed to get to. Having never heard the name and finding it quite a mouthful, I promptly forgot it, but she walked me next door to the convenience store and handed me a ferry schedule with the town’s name on it. She exchanged a few words with the convenience store clerk, and both ladies said something to me in Japanese I didn’t understand at all. Through a few iterations of smiles and language retries, they told me I should go next door and rent a bicycle.

    I later learned the bicycle rental shop caters to people who rent bikes to ride across all the bridges between Honshu and Shikoku- an understandably popular attraction in that gorgeous countryside, especially for someone who likes bridges as much as I do. The area is a mix of different types of classical Japanese scenery, with little wooded rocky island hills popping up out of the sea and Japanese people wearing classic kasa (those stereotypical wide, flat, cone-shaped hats) while working terraced rice paddies alongside the most modern and impressive of bridges. If you have any interest in bridges or modern architecture, it seems like riding the island highway would be a fantastic way to spend a few days, as most of the bridges are constructed in different styles, and the sea breezes are refreshing even on the early August days I was there.

    The young lady at the bicycle shop was quite helpful, providing me with a map of the island we were on (Ohmishima) and a brochure for the bridges-by-bicycle tour I mentioned. I plunked down my ¥1500 (~$15.00), signed on the line, and rode away on one of their cruisers.

    I had about an hour to ride the three miles from the bicycle rental shop to the ferry landing, an easy cruise up the coast of the island. It’s been so long since I’ve been to the beach, I just wanted to take big heaping lungfuls the sea air. I could feel my lungs thanking me.

    Now, as near as I could understand her, the woman told me to ride up the main road until I got to the ferry port. I hit a bit of a snag though, when the main road veered away from the coast. Straight ahead was a small road, barely wide enough for two cars to slowly pass each other. Thinking that couldn’t be the way I needed to go, and that the road must just be temporarily veering around some coastal feature I couldn’t see, I followed the main road as it turned inland, not suspecting I’d just turned away from the road I needed.

    I passed a very small local beach and made it to the ferry dock with only a few minutes to spare. Looking around, I realized that I didn’t see another bicycle rental shop to which I should return my bike, so I stopped to ask a man if there was a bicycle rental shop in the dock area. He was already getting out the paperwork to check my bike back in when I realized this guy had been working in the office where I had just rented the bike an hour ago. He gave me back a ¥1000 (~$10.00) deposit I hadn’t even realized was two thirds of the cost of the rental and collected a copy of my rental form. He loaded the bicycle in the back of a small van, and turned on the road to go back to the main office. This guy had just driven from the main office specifically to collect my bike at this small town.

    Smiling and amazed at their “system” for collecting bicycles (so that’s why she asked where I was going), I went inside to buy a ticket for the ferry. It was at this point that I realized I was really moving down the food chain of Japanese cities. Matsuyama is not a metropolis, but it’s definitely a medium-sized city. The bus passed through smaller Imabari to drop me at the tiny tourist-driven whistle-stop where I rented the bike. Then I turned off that main road and ended up at the ferry dock that was supposed to take me to Ohkunoshima. I didn’t even see anything that I’d call a town- it was just a dozen buildings lining the waterfront across the street from the dock. I presume the town’s handful of employees all live in one of the rice farms and small orchards I passed along the road.

    On the upside, the bike path that parallels that highway is absolutely gorgeous. That’s one thing I’ll say for Japanese civil engineers- they build a killer bike path. A few hundred yards away from the coast, I realized the highway was heading into the foothills, and didn’t seem likely to turn back and follow the coast. I stopped and asked a road construction worker where we were. As I feared, he pointed to the highway I was hoping he wouldn’t say we were on. I checked my watch and turned around, careful to choose the driveway I’d previously avoided.

    As soon as I got back outside, the ferry started loading passengers. I was surprised to see that it was a full size ferry with space for cars on the lower deck and a couple hundred seats on the upper level. The trip to the actual island was basically an uneventful ferry ride, which gave me time to enjoy the Engrish on display. I got a little concerned when I started thinking about the fact that I didn’t have a reservation at the only hotel on the island. I figured the worst case scenario would be me spending a night on the beach leaned up against my backpack.

    But hey, I brought a towel (thank you, Douglas Adams), so I was prepared for just about anything.

    ***

    To be continued