Category Archives: Living Abroad

Earthquake Drills for the Tall

Posted on September 23, 2012 | 4 comments

I realized something the other day for the first time. My height, in this country at least, puts me in a greater amount of danger than some other people. I don’t mean the usual, ‘mind your head’ warnings as I go through doorways (though they have certainly nearly knocked me on my arse a couple of times) it’s actually related to earthquakes.

I recently began working for a very large school and so just the other day, conveniently as the thermometer was climbing to a crisp, thirty-five degrees, my school decided it was about time we had that earthquake and fire drill we’d initially planned to hold last term that unfortunately had to be cancelled; due to a typhoon.

My kanji still being a work in progress the other English teachers explained to me that there would be an announcement fifteen minutes into the lesson and at that point I’d have to make sure that all the kids dived under their desks in readiness for an imaginary earthquake. Also, that in order to set a good example I too should clamber under my desk.

Here’s where my problem occurred. I have a standing desk. Said standing desk has a small shelf beneath it, designed presumably for storing a binder or something and as such there are certain height restrictions.

The manufacturer will no doubt be happy to know that said binder will no doubt be safe in the event of an earthquake. It may be a touch blood splattered but it’ll in good nick nonetheless.

However, as I’ll be in no condition to apologise for the Jackson Pollack effect due to my untimely demise  I really ought to do so now.

Sorry.

P.S. I’ve signed the folder, so it should at least triple in value after I’m gone, right?

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Travel by Tweet: How to Throw Away Your Guidebook in Japan

Posted on August 23, 2012 | 2 comments

I was in Shizuoka City looking to find a nice little bar I’d read about for a celebratory pint (I’d just got a new job), when once again I was reminded how little people know their own cities and towns.

Everyone I asked had little idea about where I was talking about. In fact, at one point I was stood almost beneath the sign of the bar in question, as usual unable to spot anything that isn’t directly under my nose.

Eventually I asked two gentlemen where I could find the bar; not a clue, never heard of it. We were ten feet away.

On my second lap around the block I did eventually spot it and rather embarrassedly walked up the stairs to find ‘Beer No Yokota.’ Fortunately it was more than worth getting a little lost for.

It’s understandable I suppose that people don’t always know their own towns so well. When it’s the place you call home it’s easy to get into a routine, to only dine and drink at the usual familiar places, to discover new places through the recommendations of friends, family and co-workers. In Japan, with the tendency for restaurants to be tucked away on the fourth floor of a non-descript tower block it’s easy to never know a place even exists.

Now this can be a problem for those of us who live in Japan and speak a little/a lot of Japanese. So how much more difficult must it be if you’re in Japan on holiday, what do you do if you’re trying to escape Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka or any other tourist friendly location for a slice of real Japan?

Go with your guidebook?

Hardly.

With the Lonely Planet Japan guidebook devoting around one hundred pages each to the big three of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka it’s easy to understand why other areas get fewer pages assigned to them.

Even then it’s inevitable that otherwise great travel writers are going to miss some local gems when they haven’t got the time to search out every hidden corner of a town.

Indeed even if you’re local it can be pretty tough to get recommendations from Japanese people. Particularly if you’re a teacher out here, as many long-term foreign residents are, then your students will often be reticent to offer recommendations for fear that you won’t like the places they enjoy.

However, there’s another reason why it’s so hard to stray off the well-worn guidebook paths and in likelihood it’s the one you’re worrying about.

The language.

Leaving Tokyo and it’s English menus behind can be daunting for many travelers but even if you haven’t had time to master some few thousand Japanese kanji there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try to enjoy a bit of real Japan. Armed with a couple simple phrases and a little local knowledge there’s no end of places to discover outside of the big three.

So how to go about finding them?

Go local. Get specific.

Not literally.

Digitally.

I discovered Beer no Yokota via the gastronomic musing of one Shizuoka Gourmet

If you’re a craft beer fan like me then you won’t go wrong with the Japan Beer Times a bilingual go-to-guide for all you Hop Heads out there.

Fancy catching some footy while you’re out here? Then take a look at the fan blogs for a quality English resource. My local team, Shimizu S-Pulse is followed by the UK Ultras who offer the complete lowdown on everything you need to know to get to the games and sing along with the fans.

For those of you who’d prefer to spend your holidays in a more healthy fashion taking in all Japan’s beautiful outdoors has to offer then head on to Outdoor Japan.

However, if you want to track down somewhere with a limited web presence, a pretty common thing in Japan, then look no further than Twitter. Once you’ve found one person or company who shares some of your interests then Twitter handily starts recommending more of them to you. On top of that it’s one of the few forms of publicly accessible social media that Japan has truly embraced.

It’s also an easy way to discover real life connections between places as most independent places know the other people running shops and restaurants in their town and follow them on Twitter.

So there it is. A little prep, a little wi-fi and possibly a lot of google translating later you can be sat in a little antique café, eating local ice-cream or supping the local brew.

And when you do, don’t forget to blog or tweet about it so the rest of us can enjoy it too.

 

 

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How to Survive the Japanese Summer

Posted on August 11, 2012 | 3 comments

The Japanese are particularly proud of their four seasons. Blissfully unaware that many a nation also enjoys four varieties of weather, they nonetheless do have a great deal to be pleased with when it comes to the climate.

On one end of the scale I’ve been fortunate enough to live in Nagano Prefecture in freezing cold December when though my toes were either freezing off or close to melting under my kotatsu, I was able to enjoy the beauty of an endless range of snow capped mountains in every direction I cared to look.

Similarly my luck in landing just at the top of the Izu Peninsula, in sight of Mt. Fuji, a short train ride from the beautiful coastline and wonderful sunshine through most of the year is something… I’m not currently enjoying all that much.

You see there’s one problem with being an Englishman in Japan. We are by our very nature, atsugari or sensitive to the heat.

Now we’ve been having beautiful thirty one degree days around here of late, which would be fine if it weren’t for the horribly, stifling humidity. The sad reality of this is that I am too hairy, too painfully, awkwardly, sweatily British for such climes. I feel my brow gush salty water down my face from the second I step out the door in the morning and doubly so when I finally enter a beautifully air conditioned building for work.

It ought to be a relief yet the reality is that such a sharp change in temperature, while initially refreshing merely leads all the humidity you’ve somehow gathered up and dragged with your heavy-laden legs through the door to condense in seconds thus drowning you from within your own clothes.

So how do the Japanese survive this?

Well there’s cool biz which is essentially the sale of clothes that happen to cope far better with humidity and heat and the absence of long sleeves and ties for men.

There’s the air conditioners turned up to full blast despite last year’s and this year’s efforts at power saving or setsuden.

I personally make use of a frozen pillow while others opt for a strip of cool, blue fabric stuck to the back of their neck or to their forehead.

However, if you really want to understand how the Japanese get through such muggy, draining heat waves you’ve just got to look at how people spend their evenings in the summer months.

Summer festivals, fireworks, cold beer, BBQ meat on a stick and shaved ice in a cup topped with bright, fruity, sugary, sauce aka kakigori.

Much like I couldn’t make it through the misery of England’s winter months without Christmas and New year’s to brighten my horizon I couldn’t imagine getting through a long summer here in Shizuoka without the relief these festivals bring.

There really is nothing like seeing a previously sleepy town erupt into life as every family from miles around comes to eat, drink, carry Mikoshi (portable shrine), bash away at the Taiko drums and dance in the street.

So if like me you’re melting in this summer heat, do yourself a favour, slip into a yukata don some geta and crack open a cold one while gazing at a sky filled with more fireworks than Guy Fawkes has ever seen.

And be thankful, that while Christmas comes but once a year, matsuri (summer festivals) are every weekend.

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The Japanese and English Cuisine

Posted on July 18, 2012 | 4 comments

All this nonsense talk of micro-aggressions and flyjins that hovers about the Internet is nothing but a shallow distraction, a bit of rubbish that shifts attention from the truly awful, the god honest hatred for one thing that runs through Japanese society.

I encounter the disdain, the condescending smile, the knowing looks and pitying glances often in my working life. The respect I’m usually afforded as a teacher despite my few years is replaced by a little chuckle and my immediate relegation from senior or equal figure to foolish foreigner, ignorant visitor to these lands.

I try to laugh it off. I dismiss it as ignorance and not to be taken seriously. In my line of work you really ought to believe that you can educate individuals away from such unworldly views.

Yet, it’s no use. This is a nation reared on a televisual journey through the hinterlands of travel and haute cuisine. Every evening, nay every moment of the day that the TV illuminates the corner of the apartment it acts like some neon kami (Japanese for god), a tiny bacchanalian Buddha and pretentious prophet all rolled into one as it dispenses its unquestionable wisdom to the masses.

And what does it teach this culinary cult, these devotees of sofa-based exploration?

That not only is Japan the home of the world’s greatest cuisine but that it finds its perfect antithesis in where I call home; England.

Perhaps the humble fish and chips, or fishuandochipusu as it’s known here, is an exception to this rule such is its place on so many bar menus but the rest of my home nations culinary output might as well be poured down the drain the moment we’ve finished over cooking it.

My tongue now having thoroughly bore its way through my cheek I really ought to discuss where this seemingly globally accepted view actually comes from.

While the TV may be the purveyor of the accepted wisdom, it undoubtedly is entrenched enough now that very little could change Japanese minds.  It’s out there, as true to the Japanese as the strike happy, surrender quickly nature of the French is to the English. We don’t always believe it is true, but we certainly enjoy acting like it is.

However, in my opinion, away from Japanese TV there is a simpler geographical reason for this perspective.

Train stations.

Train stations in Japan are the epicenter. They are at the heart of the city. Everything emanates from that point and the better a thing is, the more likely it is to be on the doorstep of the station.

In Kyoto station there is an entire floor devoted to the art of Ramen. Beneath almost every major city station in Japan there seems to be a food court. Walk out of any train station in Japan (except for seriously countryside places) and you will almost certainly discover a decent number of rather good restaurants right in front of you.

Compare that to the train station in London I used to live nearby, Paddington and the contrasts are pretty stark. Directly opposite the main entrance at the crossroads by the Hilton Hotel sits the following; a Burger King, a KFC, a McDonalds, a Garfunkel’s and an Aberdeen Steak House.

Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with fast food, it does exactly what it says on the tin, if you can’t hold back from the desire to stuff your face with it well that’s your issue, but fine dining it is not. Two minutes past this cavalcade of calorific confidence men sit yet another crappy steak restaurant and two ‘traditional’ English pubs. These pubs however are no fair reflection of British or English cuisine anymore than Kappa Sushi ought to be considered Kaiseki Ryori in Japan (as goodandbadjapan recently noted on his blog – always a wonderful read).

Yet, if you venture a further two minutes down that very same street you’ll come across The Victoria Pub. It’s a beautiful place, has genuinely good food and an ambiance that Hub Pub’s across Tokyo would kill to replicate. Around the corner from that is the Mitre, yet another fine example of a good English Pub. That both happened to be my locals for a short time in my life is something I will always be grateful for.

In reality if anything in England might find its antithesis in Japan it certainly isn’t food, it’s urban planning.

Unfortunately the simple hint, walk five minutes more, isn’t in any guidobuku I’ve ever seen. However, I’ve been correcting this one globetrotting student at a time and bit by bit I think it’s starting to work.

All this is really just my way of saying, if you work in either of the lovely pubs I just mentioned and have been very politely, if quite forcefully cajoled into posing for photographs with some very nice Japanese ladies thoroughly enjoying their holidays, then thank you. You have by plate and by pint managed what I never could; you got them to disagree with the TV.

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Supermarket Pac-Man

Posted on July 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

She shot off like a flash, a whirring of stiffly lurching arms, frog marching, goose steppingly absurd helpfulness. A gust of misdirected efficiency whipping through the aisles of the store, drawn round bends by a microclimate of hurrying and scurrying staff members. Each one weaving around customers and obstacles alike at a pace that can best be described as akin to the one achieved when crossing the road as the green man begins to flash.

Welcome to the world of Japanese shopping. Not the crazy, department store sale shopping. I stay well clear of that. No this is the day to day garden variety where a simple request like, ‘Do you sell light bulbs?’ Can result in the transformation of an overly starched store clerk into a passable imitation of Road Runner. Off she shoots like a bolt of lightening, mostly because I’m never quite sure where they might strike.

There’s an element of Greek tragedy to it I suppose. If Zeus almighty, or in this case, a store manager, is directing said lightening bolt (or if they actually know where something is) then my misadventures as Wiley Coyote will draw to an all too early finish. But if not, then I enter the world of supermarket Pac-Man.

Well Pac-Man when he’s swallowed that pill thing and the whole screen starts to flash and the ghosts turn on the tail end of their sheets and scarper.

The magic pill in this case being, ‘I have a question.’

The first time I asked for help in a small town department store I was just looking for a light bulb. You see, upon entering my first apartment in Japan and flicking on the light switches two bulbs decided that the unexpected shock to their systems was clearly beyond the pale and subsequently blinked out of existence with a whimper. As signs go it perhaps didn’t auger too well for me.

Eventually after growing tired of living in the gloom, by which I mean my dimly lit apartment not England in general, I ventured out into a department store armed with a scrap of Japanese and attempted to track down a light bulb. Not finding it in plain sight I asked a store clerk where it was. A brief exchange of haphazard cross-cultural pointing and signing over and she was off, a blur into the distance.

It was at this point that I realized just how many things we never even consider in our day-to-day lives. For example, when the shop attendant helping you with your inquiry darts off like a greyhound in heat what exactly is the appropriate distance to maintain in your pursuit?

Are you supposed to jog along with her?

Is nonchalantly strolling behind going to result in you losing her?

Are you supposed to stay put until she eventual returns with the item you were after and drops it straight into your basket like a loyal labradoodle?

Will losing her result in this kind woman, in a fit of helpfully nervous panic, sending out an all channels bulletin across the store intercom imploring everyone in the store that if they see a lost and confused looking strange young foreign man to please escort him to the electrical appliances aisle?

It turns out that I needn’t have worried. Just like in Pac-Man when the magic, trippy pill thing wears off they inevitably track you down. Sometimes you win and they drop you exactly next to the item you need, other times you lose and they, ‘eto, ano…chotto’ (ahhh, ummm…well) and send you packing back to the Game Over screen.

One thing though; I’ve been here for over two years now. The mishaps, the confusion have all but disappeared so why has this image stuck with me?

Well, because… I can’t help but wonder… if I ask the store clerks one after another, asking the next just as the previous one zips off into the distance, could I complete the Supermarket-Deluxe-Department-Store-Challenge-JAPAN edition of Pac-Man? Or will I just crash the damn machine?

One day…

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Eastern Dragons and Yorkshire Terriers

Posted on June 16, 2012 | 6 comments

The number of Japanese students studying abroad has been in decline for many years now. I’m sure there are a variety of economic drivers at play here however, there is one thing in particular that I believe has had a significantly more profound effect on the desire of Japanese to leave the safety of home.

The Internet.

Japanese no longer need to leave the comforts of home in order to consume foreign culture. It’s already being packaged and sold to them at astonishing rate and now there’s the option of same-second delivery. Generally made via YouTube; a website my students on average believe to have existed for around fifteen to twenty years. And if not from there, well the rest of the social networking world is picking up the slack.

Twitter is booming, Facebook is gaining a foothold and Mixi has already been a firm part of the youth culture in Japan for sometime now having skillfully tapped into the long kept and stunningly well maintained school day’s, nostalgia coated friendships.

On top of this plethora of gateways to the wider world stands sport, particularly football and The Premier league.

It’s inescapable.

One boy in my class who has never been to England, as far as I know, idolizes Steven Gerrard and even portrayed him in our speaking project this term. Somehow, from thousands of miles away this fifteen-year-old boy has made a connection with this club, even slipping in, “You’ll never walk alone” into his project script.

There may have only been the one Steven Gerrard in my class but there were more than a few Atsuto Uchidas, Nagatomos and Shinji Kagawas. I also expect that cohort to include Ryo Miyaichi by the end of the year thus precipitating an unusual Man Utd/Arsenal rivalry to break out within the fans in my town, especially amongst the football fanatic kids in my classes.

This fascination is driven by a Japanese media that never hesitates to follow its sporting stars around the world. Shinji Kagawa alone had a dozen Japanese reporters at every Borussia Dortmund game to cover his every move. Now that he’s at Manchester Utd it’s fair to say that interest in his career is only going to multiply.

And if Ryo Miyaichi were to become a stand out player at Arsenal to boot, resulting in some real competition between the two giants of the nineties? I’d never escape their faces plastered across newspapers and TV screens. Endless inquiries from my students would make my ears bleed through sheer repetition and Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City would all be swiftly forgotten by this generation of teenage fans.

With this kind of devotion to fandom, especially in Japan, it is of course no surprise to see clubs outside of the top flight of English football trying to get a slice of the pie.

The most famous and dramatic example of this has to be Cardiff City and their now confirmed rebranding.

In exchange for a total investment of around one hundred million pounds, with money being detailed for use in expanding the only recently completed stadium, a new training ground as well as a substantial transfer kitty for the manager Cardiff City will now be playing in red and their club crest has been redesigned to feature the figure of the Welsh Dragon far more prominently, with a tiny bluebird below as a small touch to placate the fans.

However, with the reasoning behind fandom in Asia apparently quite firmly established; historical success, TV exposure, academy presence in the countries and of course the presence of a national icon at your club such as South Korean golden boy Park Ji-Sung and Japan’s young hopes Kagawa and Miyaichi at Utd and Arsenal respectively, I was left to wonder how effective Malaysian billionaire Vincent Tan’s efforts would actually be in rebranding Cardiff City’s Bluebirds by donning them in lucky red and emphasizing the dragon.

Certainly the fans seemed to be pretty adamant about their feelings on the matter initially, though football being a money game seems to have swayed some opinions. This kind of thing after all, is simply a part of the modern game and when one man is willing to put a hundred million of his own cash up, then he can do what he likes by and large.

However, I couldn’t help feeling that my own team, Huddersfield Town, currently on the up thanks to our very own generous owner Dean Hoyle, might be missing a trick here.

Now I’m not for a second here suggesting that Town change anything at all. The trick being missed is that Huddersfield Town already connect to the Japanese market in an important way.

Sheer, unadulterated cuteness.

You see, the Japanese have for some reason in recent years, decided that they prefer to have pets rather than children. A tired economy, limited living space and a generation seemingly uninterested in sex has seen the number of pets overtake children. So while a young couple may not be able to afford kids and all the costs that go with it, a pampered poodle is well within their reach. (Evidently not quite so true…see below comments)

So will Huddersfield Town and Terry the Terrier one day tap into the Japanese market and begin to exploit the benefits of the Japanese adoration of all things kawaii (cute)?

It’d only take a single summer tour of a couple J-league teams and the gift of about half a million Terry the Terrier based omiyage (souvenirs) to sway this nation to the blue and white.

Maybe one day, when one of my students, stunned to discover that Yorkshire is a place and not just half the name of a fluffy ball of cuteness asks me once again,

“Is my dog English?”

I might be able to reply,

“More than that, he’s a Town fan.”

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