Irritation… cultural irritation?

I have noticed myself being irritated at a few things recently.  Some of them are possible justified, others are long standing dislikes of mine, but some are new!  And some really aren’t consistent, swinging with my moods, energy levels and so on, which is pretty normal, to be honest.  But as I thought I realised some are culture stress, as things don’t work out the way I want or expect, sometimes because of new culture, sometimes because of misunderstandings, and sometimes simply because I have relatively recently moved from one culture to another.

Let’s start with something unique (for me) to Japan, and relatively inconsistent!  I have been getting annoyed when school kids, specifically middle school or high school kids, shout “Harrowww!!” at me in the street.  Some days I don’t mind at all and will even reply with a friendly “Hello!” of my own.  But on other days I see a group of kids and deliberatly cross the street and speed up my pedalling to avoid it, and when it comes stare ernestly forward as thought I had no idea that a kid I have never met is trying to engage me in a conversation that won’t progress further than bauldering a common salutation across the street…
Don’t get me wrong, I am usually fine with having a chat with someone who is interested in finding out where I am from that extends beyond an interjection, and I am ware that my failure to interact might inadvertently discourage these kids from trying to engage a foreigner in such a conversation in the future…  But being treated this way was fun for a little while, but it’s worn a bit thin and I’d kind of like to be treated a bit more like I was a permanent feature in the locality than a temporary exhibit…  But still I am a foreigner and not the normal face!

A long standing irritant for me is taxes and finances.  Recently I’ve been doing a bit of all that.  But now I am a bit more settled things might become more regular and once I have learned how to do stuff it might remain a bit more consistent!

A smaller one is a result of moving to Japan from UK.  Movies in Japan take a while longer to come out, bigger movies take shorter time, smaller movies take a bit longer.  Recently I have rented a few movies that looked pretty good and recently released just to get home and find it is a movie I saw last year, or even in one case a few years ago!  It’s particularly irritating when the movie wasn’t that great anyways!

One irritation that swings big time for me is racism in Japan and reactions to it.  On one aspect I am surrounded by people who really are quite at home with foreigners most of the time and so maybe I don’t experience so much of it.Sometimes the racism is ignorance, and harmless, easy to ignore and when people make a fuss it irritates me .  Sometimes it is pretty serious, like when kids are being bullied at school or by peers for being different.
But occasionally I will hear of something or even see something first hand that is downright racist and would be stamped down on big time in the UK.  When this happens I find myself swinging between feelings of annoyance that it has happened, is happening or even can happen and feelings of irritation that someone is making a big deal out of something that really isn’t that directly damaging to anyone.  One such example of this is a recent blog post about a McDonalds campaign here in Japan.

Anyways maybe the summer ending, winter looming on the horizon is making me more irritable?

Change of power

Today saw the Japanese equivalent of a general election take place.  So in the run up, with the loud-speaker cars driving around disturbing my extra hard study time (definitely not nap time, no no, definitely not), the news going nuts over politics and everyone (ok, some people) talking about it, I spent my time with Mr Yagita, my “language helper” talking about politics and learning how it all works in Japan!  Here is some of what I found out (memory problems and later verification by Wikipedia mean accuracy is not guaranteed!)

The Japanese government system is very similar to, having been based on the British parliamentary system and a Prussian system of constitutional monarchy. The National Diet (国会 – Parliament, not fish and rice…) are two houses, the lower “House of representatives” equivalent to the Commons in Britain, and the upper “House of Councillors” which is sort of the equivalent to the Lords, initially Councillors were not elected, but high ranking nobles. After WWII things were shaken up a bit, everything became a bit more democratic, the Councillors became elected individuals rather than hereditary noblemen.

So today Japan voted for it’s House of Representatives.  A bit like the UK there are two main parties and then a bunch of smaller ones.  The two big players are the DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan – 民主党) and the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party – 自由民主党).  There is a whole bunch of history about these two parties that Mr Yagita sort of skipped through at pace, one interesting point thought, is that 50-odd years ago, Mr Aso’s grandfather, Shigeru Yoshida, (Until today, Taro Aso has been Leader of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan, but that might change) was put out of power by, current leader of DPJ and apparently becoming Prime Minister of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama’s grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama.  The reason wasn’t an election, but a merging of two parties and Yoshida (Aso’s grandad) being ousted as leader by Hatoyama, but the story doesn’t end there, in the midst of US/Soviet hostilities, CIA papers reveal a plot to assassinate Pro-US Yoshida and put Hatoyama in place as a more militaristic leadership, but Hatoyama’s government didn’t rearm Japan after all…

Another interesting point is that the house of representatives has had a LDP majority for all but a short time (11 months according to BBC article, two and a half years according to Wikipedia).

But today this has all changed, the vote counting widget on the front page of the Japan Times says that, come September, Japan will have a new Prime Minister and, potentially, a vastly different government.  Though it seems that really noone knows what kind of changes might result, if any at all.  As in any electoral campaign, I guess, promises have probably been made, but with no experience of living under a DPJ government, who knows whether they will be viable or manageable.  What’s more, no one really seems to be interested in the party’s policies, rather just keen for a change of leadership as the LDP has offered problem after problem and Prime Minister after Prime Minister.  Although a fast PM turnover rate is not new in Japan!  Japanese PMs tend to retire easily when trouble arises.

One of the more interesting aspects of the race for us Christians in Japan is that while Aso followed his grandfather’s footsteps into Roman Catholicism (Norn Irish voters unsure of what to make of that…) Hatoyama doesn’t share the Christian faith of his grandfather.  I have even heard that Hatoyama verges on the anti-Christian side, possibly resenting his mother’s faith.  Personally I am not sure that it will really make much of a difference.  Aso didn’t really make anything out of his faith that I am aware of while in office, and I can’t imagine Hatoyama going to any lengths to disrupt Christianity in Japan.  But if changes come, there will undoubtedly be some that help Christianity, and other’s that hinder or oppose, but it seems most likely that both of these scenarios will be unintentional, with other matters being the focus of any decisions at hand.

We are living in interesting times here in Japan!

Surf envy…

On Saturday a bunch of us went to a beach near the Ferry Terminal Emiri and I went to Ibaraki from.  We were celebrating Stephanie’s birthday (A JLCer with Pioneers Mission from Canada).

The beach wasn’t the cleanest of beaches, quite a few of Japan’s beaches or coastal areas that haven’t been turned into cliffs have the misfortune of being dumping grounds for the Pacific’s garbage…  That combined with prolific fly-tipping in Japan and more relaxed views on garbage dumping in other east asian countries brings a lot of garbage to Japan’s coastlines…  This beach wasn’t so bad though, most of the drift was wood and natural stuff, but the odd piles of plastic bottles, a tv here and a sofa there, probbaly dumped and washed up in a storm.  This particular beach also had the privilege of being next to a ferry terminal and a port that is home to an oil processing plant!  But, all things considered, the water was pretty clean, and pretty nice temperature for swimming!

JP, a surfing and snowboarding missionary, was along with us, the waves were pretty small, but there were a lot of surfers out in the water.  I had a serious bit of surfing envy!  The beach was fun, and I did a bit of swimming and even brought the volleyball to the sea to have some fun, but the sea isn’t nearly as much fun when you aren’t catching waves…
So I’ve been searching for surf kayaks on yahoo auctions…  I need a kayak, a paddle, a car, wetsuit and all the gear….  I don’t think it’s going to happen!!

Here are some pics from our day at the beach!  It was still fun, and I got a bit of sun too!!

Saturday at the beach

Summer holidays! Week one – Ibaraki

Here are some pics from the first week of my holidays with Emiri, we went to Ibaraki and stayed with her parents there.  It was a good week and below is a link to some photos with lots of captions!

I just realised that although Emiri’s littlest (although final year in highschool) sister, Seika, was there too, but she was studying everyday (in summer holidays!) from early morning to late at night so she could do well in university entrance exams!  So there aren’t many pics of her, but I am not sure it will necessarily be a summer she wants to remember!!

Anyways, here are some pics:

Summer ’09 in Ibaraki

Massage Robbery!

Last week I read a blog from a guy travelling in China who had gone for a massage and while on the table his stuff had been stolen and was held to ransom…  Here is a Japanese version of that story!

On Saturday I went to the bank to withdraw some money…  I put my card into the machine, keyed in my PIN and waited as it spat my card back out.  After multiple attempts confirmed I hadn’t mistaken my PIN number, the ATM wasn’t closed (ATMs close in Japan!  No really, they do!!) and checking my balance with my passbook to be sure that my account had money in it and hadn’t been victim to some kind of fraud or something I went to another bank and tried again, then another…  But it wouldn’t work…  The machine briefly displayed a message before spitting my card out, so I tried a few more times to get some time to read it.  It simply said, “Please go to the bank counter when the bank is open.”

I resorted to using my British bank card to get some money from a Post Office machine, which worked ok, and got some shopping and went home.  On the way home I was running through all the possible things I could think of in my mind.  Why didn’t the card work?  My Japanese bank card is a little different from my British one, it uses an IC chip when it is put into the ATM, exactly like this one (Japanese).  My British one has a chip, but that is used for Chip and Pin verification when using it as a debit card…  ATMs still use it’s magnetic strip.  So my mind settled on the chip, had it had some kind of a problem?  As soon as the thought entered my head I remembered my two Sony Pocket Bit memory sticks (also Japanese).  I keep them in my wallet and on Thursday I had lent them to Tre (a short term missionary) to transfer a file, after the first one failed to work on his computer, we tried the other, both failed…  I tried recovering them on Friday, but they were beyond salvage…  I thought I must have sat on them badly or something, but they had survived for a long time and I had used both of them on Tuesday night…

I began to think perhaps the same thing had caused the IC in my card and the two memory sticks to fail…  What had happened between Tuesday and Thursday night that might do that?  On Tuesday I went to Oasa Church and helped with English Open House…  Did I stand in the wrong place on the train and a magnetic field from the electric motors damage the sensitive chips?  On Thursday I had classes in the morning, went home for some lunch and to do my homework before returning to JLC for “work day” and prayer meeting, during prayer meeting I was on creche duty…  Had I done something during work day, wet my wallet or something?  Or falled on it while looking after (…playing with…) the kids in the park?  On Wednesday I had had classes in the morning, met with Mr Yagita in the afternoon (and won a game of shogi (English this time)!  Mr Yagita was heavily handicapped though), Emiri, not having many classes on Wednesday, came during the time with Mr Yagita and met him and we went to a Cafe afterwards near my apartment.  When we sat down the table had an announcement saying there were sofas and comfortable chairs upstairs.  So we went upstairs and drank our coffee and ate our ice cream…  Then…  then….

Then… we noticed there was a massage chair.  As everyone knows, when you see a massage chair the only action that is possible is to sit in it and press all of the buttons to see what they do.  And that is exactly what I did.  As I sat in the chair, with my wallet in my back pocket, the electric motors with their heavy magnets and large electromagnetic fields massaged my back, my legs and with a push of the most surprising of the many buttons on the controller, my rear end…  along with my back pocketed wallet… 

As I thought I realised, this is where it all went wrong…  The magnets in the motors of the slightly aging massage chair must have destroyed the chip in my card and those in my memory sticks…

I don’t really like the bank in Japan, it is extremely cumbersome, time consuming and unneccessarily inconvenient…  But today I had to go in as the machine had instructed and filled in some forms and a new card will be arriving in my letter box sometime in the next two weeks (See?  Two weeks!)

Thankfully my British card relies on it’s magnetic strip and I can still use it.  I  can only hope it’s chip has more of a stiff upper lip and has survived the ordeal, although I expect if I phoned Abbey (or their Indian call centre) they would make me a new card and have it sent to Antrim and it could be forwarded on by my ever helpful mum and still arrive before the Japanese one gets here…  I am also a bit concerned about my spiffy new Japanese driver’s licence as it also has a chip in it and the last thing I want is to come down on the wrong side of the traffic police and then my licence to not be up to scratch!

So there you have it,the story of how I was robbed by a massage chair in Japan.  Not exactly robbery I guess, just a bit inconvenient…

Football, Flutes and Formalities

I realised I haven’t really been posting much about Japan recently…  I mean I’m living here, spending a lot of my time studying and learning Japanese, talking to Japanese people, learning about Japanese culture… And I haven’t written anything about it since my David Mitchell video link…  It was a great video though!

So today I am going to talk about something Japanese!  Japanese love hierarchy.  Well I don’t know if they love it, but they certainly stick to it!  Recently in my Japanese classes I have moved on from basic hierarchical language that surmounts to every day politeness when talking to people to specific language that is designed to illustrate to all around your deference of position to another person.  This is a well known feature of Japanese (I think) but it really is a point of great interest and insight to Japanese society…
The two types of polite language I have been studying in a bit more depth are honourific, the other is humble.  Honourific language is used when speaking to someone who is on a higher plane than yourself about them, what they are doing and so on.  Basically it is used to give honour to someone else.  Humble language on the other hand is used when talking to someone on a higher plane than you about yourself, basically humbing yourself and things about you.
In reality this kind of stuff isn’t used by everyday folks in everyday life at home and on the street.  It is used in places where obvious deference is deemed important, places like the work place where you use this kind of language when talking to your boss, or when talking to a customer, or someone from another company to show your respect and deference to them, thats not the only case, but an easy one to understand I think!

I think thats enough talking about language study really…  If you are learning Japanese you know what I mean and I am sure you feel my pain… If not you will probably lose interest should I go into any more detail!  So lets leave it there and move on to the other interesting observation re hierarchy.

Recently I joined a windband with Alaric, another OMFer from the UK here in Sapporo.  On my first day people were asking the normal questions: Who are you? What do you do?  How old are you?  Where are you from? and so on.  If you are, like me, a spritely young thing you won’t find anything overly wrong with that, but if you are a bit older you might wonder why people are asking how old you are all the time…  But that is one of the most common questions I have been asked since coming to Japan (And, might I add, the response is almost always surprise at how young I am!).

The reason?  Well it is quite simple, if you are older then you move up the hierarchy, if you are younger then you move down.  As a little 20-something I am a good bit down the hierarchy from the other tenor sax player in her 30s (36 to be precise, and she had no qualms in informing me).  Ultimately it probably doesn’t actually make that much difference to how I am treated or expected to act at something like windband, particularly with me being a foreigner and also apparently looking deceptively old to Japanese eyes (probably the beard).  But it lets everyone know where everyone stands and so everyone knows how to act when appropriate situations arise…

The football pitch is a different story however.  I have been going to Futsal (basically 5-a-side rebranded by Brazillians…) most Fridays with some guys.  We go to the hall, pull a number from a hat and all of the groups play in their teams on a rotation, each game is 5 minutes long, or first to two goals and the winner stays on to play the next team…  A draw means both teams go off and the next two are on.  All kinds of people show up to play, from junior high school kids (15 year olds) through high school, university, young workers through to a few 20 and 3o-something missionaries.  The quality of the football is very high (til we are up to play!) and everyone has a good time. 
You might already have guessed how this related to hierarchy…  While waiting for our turn to come around (we do a lot of that) and watching the games as they go past, it doesn’t take long to see that the players often play differently with the different teams, older players will happily be more boisterous and less considerate when playing against younger players and should a throw in or other set piece be disputed, deference is usually, and quickly, shown to the older player.

Now this isn’t really age discrimintation, it is pretty much just the way society works, it is how our society in the west used to work (another great David Mitchell video could go in here), and kind of, to a much, much lesser extent, still does…

East Meets West on David Mitchell’s soapbox…

I am a fan of David Mitchell.  He is an incredibly funny guy!  I have subscribed to his soapbox video podcast on itunes and every week or so he posts a little commentary on something (usually being a grumpy old man about it, but in a hilarious way).

This week he was talking about consensus and how it is becoming something that is more and more sought after, even when everyone doesn’t actually agree…

On Wednesday I was talking to my Japanese language partner about business in Japan.  He told me that in Japan a decision is not made until it is 100% agreed on.  A meeting won’t end until everyone has reached the same point and there is 100% consensus.  Quite the contrast to the west where often majority rule comes into play, or in some cases the higher strata just tell the lower what to do…  He told me of a recent political situation in which there was a problem, but no one could fully shirk responsibility as it was a 100% consensus to move forwards in that way.  However this is an understood position in Japan and often people will vote for something or put their name to something even though they don’t fully agree, or even may totally disagree, because a consensus must be reached.  Afterwards it isn’t uncommon to find people who agreed (eventually) later grumbling or saying “I told you so”.  It is also why often church meetings can go on for hours and hours!

So… I think David Mitchell may have stumbled upon this very same concept creeping into western culture and business…  A consequence of the east’s ever increasing influence on western business?  Or just westerners placing more value in “saving face” as folk here in the east?

Victories for all!

Ok, maybe not victory for all…  However victory for Ireland in their Six Nations Grandslam triumph!

Victory for Japan also.  The sumo has also been on TV here, but the big sport has with out question been baseball.  It is truely the national sport and that hasn’t come to the fore more than in the World Baseball Classic.  When I was last in Japan they beat Cuba in the finals to become the first proper world baseball champions, then today (though technically on Monday in LA) they pipped Korea to the post in an extremely tight match to claim victory for the second time running…  It has been such a big deal that people have been sneaking out of the office to go to the electronics store and watch the tvs, sneaking their tv-toting mobile phones under their desks and even watching it while driving along the highway on their GPS screens.  My teacher spent the class this morning explaining some of the Japanese baseball terms and being nervous to find out whether Japan managed to pull it off.

And so it has been a lot of fun for me on both counts, Ireland’s long awaited 6 nations victory and Japan’s oh-so-close world baseball classic defence.

Then last night I went to play some football myself and enjoyed a (rare) night without loss, the teams I was on drew time and time again, then pulled a win out later in the evening, so I left with that feeling of victory and success.

That is the feeling we long for as Christians, we have tasted it over and over as we have hit those “mountain top” experiences.  Feeling by proxy Christ’s glory as he stands in victory over sin and our fallenness.

Yet so often that feeling is taken away.  Talking about football with my Japanese teacher earlier we talked about how the taste of defeat and failure can be so very bitter, particularly when used to coming out on top, and today Korea are left licking their wounds after almost taking the baseball trophy home for themselves.  All of the other 6-Nations teams have gone home empty handed, not even the solace of a triple crown for their often outstanding performances.

Likewise as Christians we often feel overwhelmed by our own struggles with sin, or not seeing progress in our own walk or the work we are trying to do (a common problem for missionaries in Japan).  Feeling defeated or ready to give up.  Sometimes it is even worse as there is no often option to retreat and to back down.  The fight feels unending and unwinnable.

But there is hope for us who believe.  Christ won’t just bring us victory, but has already brought victory…

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” ….. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
(1 Cor 15:54 & 57, ESV)

 

We can feel like Japan did today, or Ireland on Saturday, or me when my squiffy shot rebounded off Sam and went in to secure victory last night…

BBC4 and Japan?

It seems BBC 4 are doing a series on Japanese stuff… As usual it isn’t the everyday regular Japan, but “hidden Japan” (ie more “interesting” and weird things from Japan that are of more entertainment value).
It seems like the “Hidden Japan” is the only Japan we ever see!
But these shows do give glimpses into things that are unique and fun about Japan, or things that have shaped its modern culture and society… So it’s worth a look if you like Japan!

They have what looks like an interesting section on some Japanese words and phrases too…

Snow festival and more…

This is a little bit late, the Sapporo Snow festival finished last Wednesday…  But here are some photos from it!

Sapporo Snow Festival 2009

You can see some pretty awesome snow sculptures at the festival!  I got to go twice, once during the daytime on Saturday, then again on Tuesday evening with Alex, but a mix up in meeting and communications meant I didn’t meet Alex in the end, but still got to see a few of the sculptures all lit up…  The ice ones look much better by night!

Last Wednesday, a Public Holiday here in Japan, a Singaporean student at the language centre (Wan Jee) arranged for us to go to a Singaporean buffet-banquet at a hotel in Otaru.  It was delicious and we all ate far too much!  I had to leave slightly earlier than the others to prepare to give a speech on Friday morning.  The others went to the Otaru candle light festival in the evening.  My speech went well on Friday, it was all about electrocuting myself when I was little.  We have to do speeches each time we finish a section of the course in front of all of the students and teachers at the centre!

Then just the other day my internet began working!  The NTT (Japanese equivalent of BT) came and put in the line a couple of weeks ago, but it took Biglobe (my provider) a little longer to get it up and running.  The line is an optic fibre link to the exchange which promises a maximum ability of 100Mbps, but in reality it is giving 12-15Mbps downstream and almost as much upstream at the moment…  Which isn’t the 100Mbps, but still isn’t bad for a consistent connection speed.

The final bit of news is I am on Twitter!  If you are on twitter you can follow me at flat3d, I’d love to follow you too…  I’m building up my links (it’s all about the links…)
For those who aren’t or don’t know what it is, it is a bit like facebook’s status updates, but made viable.  In reality it seems to be a bit more like one huge chatroom, with a whole lot of conversations going on at once, the nice thing is it sort of tunes in your friends and tunes out everyone else, so you can follow conversations.  It’s also possible to use it to simply let people know what you are upto, which might sound pretty dull or dim, but I like the idea that I can communicate daily life to folk and friends at home.

The big surprise for me is that it is actually pretty big in Japan.  It seems to be filling (bridging?) a gap between the all out geekiness of IRC (internet chat) and the more mainstream social users of Mixi (sort of Japan’s answer to myspace or facebook…)  At the moment I am much to illiterate to make much use of it in Japanese, but as I learn more hopefully it will be a valuable resource in learning about the tech world/culture in Japan and even help me with studying the language!

I will sometime link it into the site here, a twitter updates jobby or something, but I am not sure the best way to do it yet, or even if it is actually worthwhile…  Some more thought required I guess…