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After being in Japan for a while and the novelty of being in the land of Hello Kitty and Pocky has worn off, I find many foreigners enter a “Every little thing about this place irritates the crap outta me” phase (The EL-TAT-PIT-COMP if you will). The nasally “Irashaimase” when entering a store, the constant declaration of “Atsui!” (hot) in summer and “Samui!” (cold) in winter, and of course, this question: “Japan has four seasons, does your country have four seasons too?” Blerg.
Now I’m quite guilty of complaining about these things, but there are a variety of little things I like about Japan as well. So here are 10 (little) things I like about Japanland.
1. No flinching when I hand the cashier a 10,oooyen note (about $100). In the States, breaking a $50 is a hassel, and when you have $100, it might as well be Monopoly money since no one will take it. But in Japan, you can get a bottle of water at any “combini”, put down a 10,000yen bill, and no one will even blink. I just did it today, in fact.
2. Janken: At first it would seems this is just Rock/Paper/Scissors, but soon you discover it doubles as a diplomatic solution to nearly every conflict your students have. No one wants to volunteer to go first in a game? Make them Janken. Kids fighting over an extra pudding dessert? Janken. Shouting match over who won the last card in a game of Slap-Jack? Janken! A kid may grip about losing, but he’ll never insist on a rematch or “best 2 outta 3″, the word of Janken is final!
3. Kotatsu: While it’s best not for me to get started on the heating system (read: lack there of) in Japan, I will say kotatsu is completely awesome and something I wish we had in the States. It’s a low table with a heater in it. Just put a quilt over it in the winter, put your legs under the quilt, and have everything you need within arm’s reach because you won’t leave until April.
4. Awesome greeting cards (that are cheap as well): Japan generally has it all over the US in terms of stationary matters, and even relatively small stores has pens that come in 17 different widths and an aisle devoted to stationary paper. I’ve bought a dozen stationary sets, and I haven’t wrote a freakin’ letter for years! But the thing I love the most are greeting cards. We’re talking cards that are pop-ups, foil embossed, die-cut, and almost always less than $5, heck, most of them are about $3. All $5 bucks will get me in the States is a card with a cheesy poem and a scallop-cut edge. And guess who makes half of these awesome Japanese greetings cards? Hallmark, yes, Hallmark.
5. Souvenir snacks (o-miyage, kashi, etc): We think “souveniers” means tacky little trinkets we give to friends who probably will put it in a box and never look upon it again. Japan has any amount of keychains, but the word for souvenier, “o-miyage”, also stands for little individually wrapped treats. You’ll find them on your desk when teachers come back from trips. Every little town has them in shapes and flavors that are well known in the region. They can be . . . interesting, like say a rice cracker with a slice of octopus baked in (yep, I actually ate it too), but it’s a perfect gift for co-workers.
6. 1oo Yen Shops: While dollar stores back home make me think of chintzy, off brand products, the 100yen shops here in Japan sell things of a surprisingly good quality. It’s also a teachers dream since they have things like rubber stamps and stickers with characters like Hello Kitty and Disney princesses.
7. Dessert Presentation: No, I don’t think Japan has better desserts, especially since the rarity of ovens makes things like pies and cookies hard to come by. Plus when dessert comes, it’s usually about half as big as it was in the picture. But even in some Village Inn/IHOP caliber family restaurant, the presentation is fantastic. Desserts are pristine with everything arranged just like the picture from the cut of the fruit to the perfectly spaced spiral of chocolate syrup. Even the corn flakes seem to be arranged perfectly. Yeah, corn flakes. I didn’t say they tasted better than American desserts, they just look like they do.
Last year I posted a guide for future ALTs in Japan on how to pack for a year (or more) in Japan with the constantly shrinking baggage allowance. Since then I’ve decided a few things on my original list were not so necessary, while some are much more necessary than I made it out to be. So I present the revised list of crap to bring to Japan:
Essential
Clothes: Japan has four seasons: Too damn Hot, Too Damn Cold, Too Damn Rainy, and Pretty Nice (note that the “Pretty Nice” season accounts for about 6 weeks in the year), so you have to bring a wide range of clothes. Japanese people are on the whole shorter and thinner than the average Westerners so it can be difficult to find your size, especially in fitted garments; pants, button-up shirts, bras, etc. Even if you know you won’t be buying many clothes here, it is easy to over-pack. Dress in layers; for example bring a sweater and a light to medium weight jacket rather than a massive down jacket. Bring rain gear as well.
Shoes: For Women, most stores carry sizes 22-25 (US size 6 to 9). Anything outside that range is really hard to find. I have searched far and wide in the Tokyo area and have found exactly three stores that carried women’s shoes in my size (Japan26, or US10). Even when I did find them, they were expensive and uncomfortable. I say bring as many shoes as you can manage (and, even if you aren’t in a snowy area, bring something waterproof) and bring a comfortable pair of easy-to-put-on shoes for your school.
Deodorant/Sunscreen: Can’t speak from experience with deodorant but I’ve heard pretty consistently that it sucks here. As for sunscreen: while there’s no limit to the wide brimmed hats, long sun gloves, and sun umbrellas you can buy, sunscreen is still relegated to 4 or 5 varieties of tiny little tubes filled with watery, greasy sunscreen.
Dental Products: While dental care is relatively cheap, dentists in Japan aren’t fans of giving enough Novocaine to numb you up during a procedure. Avoid cavities by bringing plenty of fluoride toothpaste (something else they’re not a fan of here) and dental floss.
Some of your favorite DVDs: Japanese TV can be entertaining, but really, how many variety shows with celebrities eating can you take? Internet can take weeks (and in some cases months) to get set up, DVDs are a good way to pass the hot summer nights and can fend off the culture shock/homesickness.
A big bottle of painkillers: Over-the-counter medicine here pretty much does jack, so bring a nice big bottle of your favorite brand. Just be careful, some meds that are over the counter back home contain substances not allowed in Japan.
Thermals: Aside from some of the southern most prefectures, it get chilly in Japan. Buildings are not insulated and heating at school consists of kerosene “stove” heaters that heats people sitting within 6 feet of it, and just gases everyone else. Keep yourself warm with some termal tights and undershirts.
Suggestions Continue reading Your Life in Two Suitcases or Less – Revised
I have been in Japan for nearly two years, taken 11 gigabytes worth of pictures, and have actually post about 20 of them on my website. Ah, the diary of a procrastinator. However, I’m a big believer in “Better Late than Never” so starting now I’ll be posting pictures chronicling my time here in Japan. No better place to start than at the beginning – when I first arrived in Japan and at my new home.
It was late August and the weather was hot hot hot. I think the first few days for any new ALT in Japan is a blur, and mines not much different. It didn’t help that I had barely heard from my predecessor and had no idea what my town or living conditions would be like. The two days in Tokyo flew by (with the help of karaoke and drinks with a group of rowdy Aussies) and suddenly I was being picked up at the prefectural offices by my supervisor (who speaks no English) and my ALT co-worker. We drove to my new town where I sign up for my Alien Registration Card (Gaijin Card), a bank account and other assorted things. Then we go to my new place . . . which was huge (for Japan) and half as much in rent as I thought it was going to be. Not a bad first few days in Japan.
Forwarding this site from Drawn. Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre: Hand cut silhouettes containing a variety of play on words, jokes, and witty observations. Some of my faves:
Check out their shop for prints and fun little “dollar dreadfuls”.
Slightly related is Hammerpress - cool old style ornate posters and cards.
I recently purchased and put up this poster of the Joyo Kanji, the 1945 Japanese characters for everyday reading, from White Rabbit Press (creators of the best kanji flash cards out there and great source of Japanese texts outside Japan).
I’m not sure if this poster is motivating or depressing. As you can see, it’s huge (the map of Japan is a standard 2ftx3ft just to give you an idea of how massive this poster is). I can read and write the green and blue kanji (required for Japanese Language Proficiency test 3+4) and at least recognized about half of the purple kanji (JLPT 2) but even then, that’s roughly half of the Joyo Kanji. Somedays I think Japanese is just too impossible, but I do my best to ganbare (endure).
Book wise, I think Da Vinci Code had a better story, while A&D was more interesting on the “research” side of things. Movie wise, the Da Vinci Code was such crap. There was no suspense and Tom Hanks and Audrey Tantou had sub-zero chemistry. There is a touch of suspense in A&D, and Ayelet Zurer manged to give her character at least the appearance of depth despite the script writers’ best efforts. Plus A&D has Ewan McGregor and he usually has the ability of making everything a little better. Still methinks something was lost in the adaption of both movies. Would have rather seen Wolverine or Star Trek (if either were out here in Japan!).
BTW, the American cardinal with his “aw shucks” accent was hilarious.
This was a Flash Movie Review.
No doubt there is a lot of bad English to be found in Japan. Even in Tokyo, where one would thing it would be easy to find a native English speaker, there are plenty of egregious “What the eff is that sign trying to say” signs and pamphlets. But even sneakier are the little weird English mistakes that creep into textbooks and entrance examinations. Some are obvious, like the frequent dropping of articles (a, an, the), but some look so close to correct that even I wonder if it’s a mistake or not. One of these cases happened today as I read the 9th grade textbook:
- There’re, a contraction of “there are”
I can understand how this ended up in the textbook; virtually every other pronoun + to be combination has a contraction (I’m, you’re, she’s). Still, I can say with reasonable confidence that I have never heard “there’re” uttered by anyone, native speaker or otherwise. Contractions are suppose to make something easier to say. How would I even say “there’re”? The closest I can figure is that it rhymes with “herre” of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” fame. In katakana-ized English “ar” sounds turn into a Boston-style “ah” sound, so “there are” would be pronounced “zeh-ah ah”. You know how my student’s pronounced “there’re” today? “Zeh-ah’ah”. Yep, about the same. So not only did the textbook introduce a fake contraction, they introduced a fake contraction that doesn’t actually “contract” anything! Fortunately, this is the only time I’ve ever seen “there’re” in Japan, verses the dozens of times I’ve seen “let’s” combined with “~ing” (Let’s playing soccer!). Thus, I declare a low threat level of ”there’re” corrupting English in Japan.
Continuing my kyuushoku (school lunch) series.
Monday, April 13
Some kind of fish
5-types salad with a bunch of stringy veggies
Soup with Tofu and cabbage (Dosanko)
Rice
Milk with a Kobaton having a picnic
Rice crackers from one of my teachers
This is one of those Japanese-style meal where I don’t know half of what I’m eating. I’m really not a fan of school lunch fish, but I remember this one being decent. I liked the soup. The rice crackers were a nice touch.
Tuesday, April 14
Egg omelet-y thing with veggies and tiny fish
Salad with beans, carrot and some potato-like substance
Seaweed and Tofu soup
Wakame Rice (rice with seaweed in it)
Milk (Kobaton Picnic)
Wow, seaweed-arific! No less than 3 of the four main parts of this meal had seaweed. I like seaweed rice, so that’s no big deal. I don’t mind it in the soup except that as you can see, they put a LOT in there. I was enjoying the omelety thing until I realized it had tiny fish in it (baby sardines). What the what? Salad was decent if oily.
Wednesday, April 15
Two fried shrimp and sauce
Salad with Thousand Island dressing
Kosome Soup (broth with bacon bits and lettuce in it)
Bread and Jam
Milk (Kobaton reading the paper!)
This is what is call a ‘western style’ lunch, even though it’s doubtful anyone in the west has had all of these foods at the same time. The shrimp were pretty awesome, salad and soup was kind of bland, and the big hunk of bread with jam was very random, but I still ate it all.
Thursday, April 16
Tofu burger patty
Salad with sesame dressing
Pork soup with the potato-y bits again and this weird squash-like substance
Rice
Milk
Honestly, before I came to Japan, the only time I ate just the patty of a burger like a steak was in a Lean Cuisine Salisbury Steak frozen dinner. But here, they have these burger patty all the time (usually called ‘hamburg steak’). Today was a tofu hamburg. and it was actually pretty tasty (the sauce is what makes it). Salad is basically the same as the day before except with sesame dressing/sauce, which is pretty good. Nothing too remarkable about the soup or rice.
Friday, April 17
Egg roll
Salad with seaweed, shrimp and squid
Ramen soup and noodles
Milk
Orange yogurt
As much as I want to like kyuu-shoku egg-rolls, they put me off a little bit. Why? Because they’re filled with some kind of unidentifiable mush. It tastes good, but the texture is kind of bleh. Salad is a bit nasty because of the presence of rubbery squid. The soup is fine. And it’s nice to be rewarded with some orange yogurt at the end of a long kyuushoku week.
And that’s the week in kyuushoku.
One thing that’s frustrating about being a new ALT is no one seems to tell you what you’re going to be doing once you reach Japan. I used to think this was a JET thing, but talking to ALTs in other companies, it seems to be and anywhere thing. It is ESID and all that, but at the very least it’s good to see what other ALTs are doing. So as a service to you new JETs and other ALTs, here is a day in the life of me, a typical junior high school ALT.
6:30am Alarm goes off, it’s not really an alarm clock, it’s my phone playing Closer by Ne-Yo. Shut-up!
7:00 Get out of bed, this is actually early for me.
7:30 Make my toast and coffee and Skype my mother. Yeah, I call her often in the morning, shut up again!
8:00 hang up and get ready for work
8:15 call mom again quickly to show her a ridiculous video from youtube.
8:20 okay, seriously gotta get ready for work now
8:25 Ah, crap it’s burnables day, I gotta get my trash! (it’s okay since I live literally around the corner from my school)
8:35 Walk up the stairs to school, only 5 minutes late, sweet. Scheduled for four lessons today
8:50 Go to first class, 9th graders who are just starting to learn passive form
9:15-9:40 the kids and I do a word-search puzzle. I win, bwa-ha-ha!
9:45 free period, jump on computer to check news, email
10:00-10:40 Do lesson in the JET language course book which I’m determined to finish this year, dammit!
10:50 another free period, hop on computer again and start writing this post
11:15 JTE hands me schedule. Since Golden week is coming up, there’s only 6 work days over the next two weeks, sweet
11:20 realize next Tuesday and Thursday I’ll have 4 lessons in a row, ugh, I hate that!
11:25 okay, gaijin, stop hogging the computer
11:50 4th period, 8th graders just learning past tense form, I spend most of the class period walking around correcting papers.
12:40 Oh God, it’s finally lunch time! Today’s lunch was an improvement over recent lunches, but came with drinkable yogurt instead of milk, WTF
1:45 5th period, 7th graders, who are best to teach because they still are in ‘English is Fun’ mode from elementary school. Don’ worry, it gets beaten out of them by the end of the year. We do a lesson that I planned; capital letters review and basic vocab like “picture”, “window” etc. I have them play a memory game.
2:45 6th period, another 8th grade class. Basically the same at the other 8th grade class except this time someone asks me how to spell ‘Parisian’. I had to look it up.
3:45 cleaning time, or for me, ‘Lauren gets back on the computer’ time. The cleaning soundtrack is this bizarre high speed mix of various classical and Souza songs
3:55 Ack, the music is still playing! It’s on a loop! Make it stop!
4:00 15 minutes, and I’m outta here!
4:15 successfully goofed around on the internet for 15 minutes, now time for me to say ‘O-saki ni shitsurei shimasu’ which is Japanese for ‘Later, bitches!’.
4:25 After a quick trip to the combini, I’m home.
5:00 Ugh, I really should get to the grocery store, the big one which is about a 15 minute bike ride away, bleh
6:30 Okay, bought a ton of stuff at the store, and now I’m finally home for the day!
So there it is, a day in the life of Lauren the ALT.
The new school year started last week, along with a new round of school lunches (kyuushoku). School lunch here in Japan is pretty nuts, you never seem to get the same lunch twice. and it’s full of veggies that you’ve never even heard of. For the most part I find them to be pretty delicious, though the occasional inedible dish is served up once in a while. It’s the start of my 2nd (and final) full school year in Japan, so I’m going to post pics of every lunch I have for my memories and your enjoyment. Here we go!
Thursday, April 9
Chicken Nuggets
‘Heathly Salad’
Pork Curry and rice
Coffee Milk
They pulled out all the stops for the first lunch of the year. Chicken Nuggets? Curry and Rice? Coffee milk? Awesome! The only ‘miss’ in this equation is the ‘healthy salad’ with limp cucumbers and slippery, rubbery bits of lettuce. Still, I could wash it down with my coffee milk so overall the school lunch gets a good rating.
Friday April 10
Tempura’d Squid
Bean Sprout and Spinach salad
Udon noodles and broth with mushrooms
Milk with Kobaton reading the paper
I knew a repeat of the awesomeness of Thursday’s kyuushoku was unlikely, but it’s an awfully big jump from curry AND chicken nuggets to a freakin’ tempura’d squid (which was rubbery and unnaturally square). The salad was pretty bitter. The meal was thankfully rescued by the udon, which I’m always a big fan of, even in cheap school-lunch form.
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