Floating Papers on the Sea of Japan by Keith Fenske March and April 2000 Copyright (c) 2000 by Keith Fenske.  All rights reserved.

March 2000: Socializing With Rules

Friday, March 3rd.  Sunny with warm, dry winds.  The snow is melting rapidly.  The roads and sidewalks reappeared.  I got the afternoon off and walked over to the Harley-Davidson motorcycle shop to buy a Harley badge for a White Day present.  Sato Motors is like a real Harley shop with real Harley products except it's much too clean.  Even the service area is neat and tidy.  If it smelled like oil and grease and had guys who could pick up bikes with one hand, then I would believe this was the real thing.  Harleys are bought for their bad boy American image without understanding that the image is real.  They have a nice brochure with American photos (of course) and Japanese text.  The brochure is free.  The smallest badge is Y750 and the big back-of-the-jacket size is Y2000.  For Japanese prices, those are cheap ... maybe because Harley-Davidson Japan knows that people who buy these badges are walking advertisements for its products!

Sunday, March 5th (Carnival in Uruguay).  With the suddenly warm temperatures, today was the first day in months when I could hang my laundry outside.  Hmm, tonight I will have freshly scented sheets.

Wednesday, March 8th (International Women's Day).  The main offices of NTT (the telephone company) have several demonstration computers for selling NTT's ISDN internet services.  Sign up now and receive a talking mouse toy that reads your e-mail messages to you!  These machines are free to use and the NTT people don't seem to mind that foreign teachers spend a lot of time sending e-mail.  They know exactly what we want when we walk in the door, and they just wave us over to the computers.  In some ways, we are like a part of the show to convince Japanese customers of the value of the internet.  Previously, I was paying Y500 (US$5) for 20 minutes of internet access at a place that teaches people how to use computers.  The price was too high, so I didn't go there very often, and I quit going when I found out that their computers were remembering my e-mail login name and password.  With two mouse clicks, anyone could get into my e-mail from the browser's history list ... and the store didn't seem to think that something was wrong!  (Their computers were set up with the default configuration suitable for home use, not for public rentals.  I doubt that anyone there understands the difference.  To protect myself, I had to erase the entire history list each time before I left.)  Today I spent two free (!) hours at NTT to catch up on my e-mail and clean up my webmail address book so that now I can actually reply.  I think I answered everyone who wrote to me in the past few months.  However, for new messages, don't expect a reply anytime soon since I will still only read my e-mail every few weeks.

Thursday, March 9th.  Snow and blowing snow: what didn't fall from the sky was picked up off the ground by the wind and blown into the air.  The toll highway to Tsuruoka was closed after Sagae.  My bus took the more scenic local highway.  This only made me ten minutes late for my pizza.  Bus and taxi drivers are quite professional and you always feel that you will arrive at the correct destination in complete safety.  In five months, I have never had a taxi driver go in the wrong direction.  Sometimes the route seems twisted, but if you do as I did one day in Yonezawa and walk the same path, then you will find that the driver is going on the shortest route and avoiding traffic lights or other intersections that may cause delays.  It's nice to close your eyes, sit quietly, and know that you will soon be where you should be.  For me on Thursdays, that's pizza day with a view of near blizzard-like conditions outside the restaurant window.

"The Wizard of Oz" by Kids-C class

Sunday, March 12th (Girl Scout Day in USA).  The children had their annual school presentations today at the Bunshokan assembly hall.  It was just a show for Mom and Dad, the teachers, and other kids so there wasn't much pressure and I think everyone enjoyed the show.  The best performance was by six little kids doing "The Wizard of Oz": good costumes (courtesy of the mothers) and backdrops (courtesy of Kaori, our secretary).  These kids are from kindergarten to grade three and they knew their lines and acted them out -- they didn't just stand and repeat memorized words.  There were twelve presentations and I took about 200 pictures.  I hope some of them are in focus.  (That's a joke: my camera is auto-focus and as long as I point it at something interesting, the picture will be in focus.)

Monday, March 13th.  My neighbors started playing loud video games at two o'clock this morning -- loud enough to give me a headache.  The noise continued well past 6:30 AM when I was tired of not sleeping, got up, and went to work.  That made me extremely early since my first class on Mondays is at 3:30 PM!  So much for the myth that Japanese people are considerate of others.  While it may be true that their interaction with other people is more ritualized, they can be just as self-centered as anyone else.  Another stereotype is that Japanese people are clean and tidy.  Whoever said that hasn't seen the mailboxes in my apartment entryway.  Some tenants (such as my video game neighbors) never empty their mailbox.  Others separate their real mail from the junk mail, and drop the junk mail on the ground.  Nobody else makes an effort to clean this, so I pick up the scraps of paper when I take out my garbage.  (Maybe that's why they keep a foreigner in the building: to do a job that is too low for a Japanese person.  Yeah, I'm being sarcastic.)

Small amounts of similar garbage accumulate in almost any public place.  Mostly it's food packages that have been carefully set aside by people who are too lazy to find a garbage can.  Older people like to blame this on disrespectful younger people.  That's not fair.  I've seen all kinds of people do the same thing, in particular, salarymen (businessmen).  They're strong enough to carry a drink, snack, or whole meal onto the train, but not strong enough to carry the garbage off.  They leave it on the floor or the window ledges.  Why?  Because it's someone else's job to clean up the train.  Okay, that's true, but the people who clean the trains do so at the end of the day.  Meanwhile, I have to push aside their garbage.  Every morning at our office building, the cleaning lady sweeps up cigarette butts and general trash dropped on the floor and stairs by customers of the bank machines.  It's her job, she's paid to do it, and I doubt that she minds; however, my question is about people who always assume that someone else will clean up after them.

My noisy neighbors are university-aged males who probably have little moral sense of their own because they are away from home and they don't have Mom and Dad to tell them what's right and what's wrong.  There's nobody to stop them from playing loud video games at two in the morning, so they might feel that this is acceptable behavior.  If I complained, they would understand that I was angry, but would fail to make the connection between their behavior and my anger.  Lacking fluent skills in the Japanese language, there is no way that I can gently push them towards more socially acceptable behavior.  This video game noise has been here since I arrived, so either my other neighbors are saying nothing, or else the noisemakers are so insensitive that they don't care.  This may be the case since I don't think they actually live in the apartment; I think they only go there to party ... so the idea of having a quiet time for sleep is something they would never think about.

My other boss, Aya, telephoned the building manager and explained the situation.  The manager quickly wrote up a notice and faxed us a copy.  The short translation is "no noise after 10 PM".  My mood improved just as quickly.  I feel better because other people recognize that this is a problem and are willing to do something to help.

Blaming young people is a way of avoiding a bigger problem in Japanese society.  Many young people do not want the same lives that their parents have.  For salarymen, that can be working from dawn to dusk, six or seven days a week.  For women, that means giving up their own life to take care of a family.  At first these negative thoughts were voiced by college and university students who almost have a holiday for two to four years between the time of regular school (where their opinions are decided by their parents and the school) and starting a job (where their opinions are decided by the company).  As those students got older, the dissatisfaction has widened into a group that ranges from teenagers to people who are now in their late thirties.  As with other big problems in Japan, this one is largely ignored in the hope that it will go away by itself.  It won't.  The unhappy will become a majority of the population.  Then the opinion of the older and currently more powerful will weigh less.  As for what changes should be made, I don't know, and I doubt that anyone else does either.

Tuesday, March 14th (White Day).  Boy, was I ever in a bad mood yesterday!  My notes certainly reflect that.  Today I will concentrate on happier thoughts such as my White Day presents and photos from the children's presentations.  I should also answer some unanswered questions.  No, I haven't bought a Japanese electric shaver; my old one keeps working except when I have to shake it to turn it on.  (I think there are pieces of hair in the on/off switch.)  My glasses were repaired in two weeks for about US$25 including postage both ways.  (Thank you, Perry W. and company!)  No, I didn't win a prize in the Yonezawa snow lantern photo contest.  Yes, teaching little kids still scares me, but for some reason, I seem to be good at it -- or at least that's what they tell me.  The new big question asks why Japanese toilet paper tears everywhere except at the perforations?  In the mornings, sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit....

Friday, March 17th (St. Patrick's Day).  I didn't wear green today.  I'm bad.  My Irish ancestors will never forgive me.

Saturday, March 18th.  My duties for this long weekend are very light.  Tonight my boss and I have a dinner party at a restaurant with her company students: eat, drink, talk, and generally have a good time.  My job is to act as a pleasant salesman for our school.  On Monday, my other boss and I will be judges at an English-speaking contest for another school.

Monday, March 20th (Vernal Equinox Day).  My noisy neighbors started to party at 2:30 AM.  The volume level was reduced.  Should I be thankful?  I don't know what they were doing but they repeatedly slammed their door (30 or 40 times) around 11 PM, strong enough to shake the walls in my apartment.  Perhaps this is some sort of bizarre revenge for me complaining about their previous noise....  Sleep came after four o'clock in the morning when they left the building -- again, to the sound of slamming doors.  My apartment has a door-closing mechanism that quietly pulls the door closed.  I suspect that the other apartments do too, if it hasn't been broken or deliberately disabled.

Stupid little incidents like this eventually determine your opinion of a place and its people.  Anybody can be polite and friendly when they want something from you.  The real measure of a person is what they do when there is no obvious or immediate benefit to "good" behavior.  Many Japanese children do not learn this until they go to university and begin to socialize without parental or strict school rules.  Unfortunately, their mistakes are also inflicted upon the surrounding community, not just other university students who are learning the same lesson.  University here is not really about academic education.

Meanwhile, at the English contest, one girl understood her story well and this showed in her presentation of the words: good intonation and interesting to listen to.  (We gave her first prize.)  The others were only repeating memorized dialogs.  I noted that of the four children who did the same alphabet animal story, three of them mispronounced the same words in the same way, while the fourth said them correctly.  Hum, I wonder where they learned (copied) their pronunciation mistakes from?  Children are good mimics of their teacher(s).

Tuesday, March 21st.  I'm beginning to doubt the value of this journal.  I'm writing about mundane subjects that can happen anywhere, and so are not specific to Japan.  There aren't enough happy stories.  It's as if the only reason for writing the journal is to avoid saying the same words in individual letters.  For the five remaining people who still read these notes on paper, you will see that I've reduced the font size to fit more words on each page while keeping them large enough to proofread.  For everyone else on the internet, you can choose your own font and size in your internet browser.  My personal favorites are Bitstream's Charter for printed text and Microsoft's Verdana for displayed text on a monitor.  Now if Microsoft would only fix Verdana so that the "J" has a serif on both sides of the top....  Another favorite is Microsoft's Comic Sans because it is the closest font I've found to match the way children actually print letters, and it also displays well on a monitor.  Both Microsoft font families are free downloads for Macintosh or Windows computers, and are included with many Microsoft products such as MS Word and MS Windows 98.

Wednesday, March 22nd.  My hair was falling out.  I blame this on a lack of good corn chips in my diet.  The rate of hair loss has slowed down.  I tell myself that it's stopped and that now I'm growing new hair.  As evidence, I point to the hair trap in the shower floor, which I haven't had to empty as often as I did in November.  I don't want to be the first bald man on either side of my family tree....  Oh, wait a minute.  If I am bald, then there won't be any hair at all in the hair trap, will there?  I feel this sudden urge to look at myself in a mirror.

Owen's baby picture

Friday, March 24th (Birthday of Other Boss).  The trip to Tsuruoka was sunny one day and rainy the next.  No falling snow.  Maybe spring really is starting.  There was a handkerchief that my other boss liked.  It was made by the millions and distributed by the same company that makes "Hello Kitty" (Sanrio).  Do you think I could find another one in the big city of Yamagata?  Nope.  I had to look in several stores in Tsuruoka.  When I did find it, there were dozens in Daiei.  This year's hot shopping paradise: Tsuruoka!  Don't tell that to anyone who lives there: the look of disbelief will be followed by insane laughter.  However, several times I have found better presents in Tsuruoka than in Yamagata.  For a country with so many people, there is strangely not much variety to choose from in the stores.

Saturday, March 25th.  According to my calendar, this is the Annual Reunion Day for Extinct Animals.  While the invitation list is huge, I doubt that many will attend....

Keith Fenske with his entry in the Yonezawa snow lantern photo contest

Sunday, March 26th.  There was a showing of all the entries in the snow lantern photo contest.  I walked around the Yonezawa Civil Gallery (on the fourth floor of the Popolo building) several times to make my own selections for good pictures that could be used in advertising next year's festival.  One of my choices was second place.  I didn't choose the winner.  Do I have a claim to fame?  My picture was on the same wall as the winners; however, it was a very big wall.  I was pleased to see that people spent more time at my picture than others nearby; however, they could have been trying to decipher my name since I was the only foreigner to enter the contest!  Any general comments?  Yes, of course.  It's a lantern festival, so daylight pictures are boring ... except for a humorous one of a photographer squished against a snow lantern to take a picture of a female model with shapely legs.  I can't tell if this was posed (for a second photographer) or candid, but it was funny.  Other pictures taken at night had harsh lighting and were monochromatic: only one color (shades of orange).  Some good pictures were ruined by too much unwanted detail in the backgrounds.  A few were taken at twilight and showed better balance between blue existing light and orange from the candles.  Twilight only lasts for a few minutes so you have to take a lot of pictures during that time.  My picture had more color than most (three tones: green, blue, and orange) due to some planning and more luck.

Monday, March 27th.  I finally got the Fujicolor lab to print a picture with matte finish.  Everywhere I go, they seem to have only glossy paper.  Why, I don't know, because Fuji sells two different kinds of coated matte paper overseas.  Today's picture is an enlargement for one of my adult students.  (The matte finish is necessary for framing.)  The day before our school presentations, her daughter had a violin recital in the same Bunshokan assembly hall.  It was a good excuse for me to see the inside of the hall.  My big discovery was that my normal shoes are too noisy on that floor and I needed to take slippers the next day.  I wasn't allowed to use a flash, but I got some good pictures from the second row with a 100mm lens, ISO 400 film, 1/60 second @ f/2 with the camera braced against a chair in the first row.  The shallow depth-of-field was perfect for pictures of one person, but for our groups of school kids, I realized that I would be using mostly flash.

My grade three boys managed to push over a heavy bench onto my foot today.  They were just roughhousing (playing roughly) so there was no reason to get angry.  I had enough self-control to avoid swearing.  It must have been comical to see Sensei ("Teacher") hopping around the room on one foot saying "OW, OW, OW, ow, OW, OW, ow, OW, ow" yet I'm pretty sure that none of them want to repeat the experience, especially not with their own feet!

Tuesday, March 28th.  Lots of overtime work for the next four weeks: we are teaching intensive English classes for two companies in addition to our regular schedule.

Wednesday, March 29th.  Six months.  I came to Japan on Wednesday the 29th of September.  Now it's Wednesday the 29th of March.  Exactly 26 weeks.

Heavy rain last night washed away what was left of the snow in Yamagata.  The skies cleared in the morning and I didn't need my jacket on the way to work.  Elsewhere may be different.  As you can tell from reading these notes, the weather is highly variable.  The city of Yamagata is on a flat plain between clusters of mountains up to 2000 meters (6500 feet) high.  The weather depends upon how the winds blow through the mountains.  The city can be sunny and warm, while less than 50 km away it is cold, dark, and snowing.  The train to Yonezawa passes through a tunnel that seems to be a dividing line: on one side the ground is bare; the other is still covered in snow.  Yesterday, it was like travelling from spring into winter.  (See also the following November 17th.)  On Sunday after the art gallery, I went straight back to the train station.  My plan had been to see more of Yonezawa, including a shopping mall called Saty, but I don't enjoy walking in a snowstorm that is quickly getting worse.

Friday, March 31st.  The violin photo has become a going-away present.  The family was suddenly transferred to Hiroshima after only one and a half years in Yamagata.  That's barely enough time for children to adjust to a new school and to start being accepted by the other students.  Finding a new violin teacher will not be easy -- the daughter is already very skilled -- and she also plays the piano.  I lose a student in my highest-level conversation class.  I bought a postcard of a teddy bear dressed up with a "Hello Kitty" purse and we will all sign.  My student hates Hello Kitty, but the card is so cute, and the real message is that we hate to say good-bye.

April 2000: Waiting For Cherry Blossoms

The secrets of the universe are in the next paragraph.

(Joke: April Fool's Day!)

Sunday, April 9th.  One of my neighbors moved and left behind a small stereo/TV stand, that is, a table with two lower shelves.  This allowed me to "retire" the old table to the garbage where it belonged.  It was so ugly and rusted that it would have won first prize in an ugly furniture contest -- even with a cover on the top!  After I cleaned the new table and re-assembled it, I began to wonder.  Could this be a gift from my video game neighbors?  It's possible: the new telephone books were delivered today and there wasn't one in front of their apartment door.  Maybe the new school year has brought me a pleasant surprise and the table is my souvenir.

Tuesday, April 11th.  An English version of the Windows 3.1 Write word processor works correctly on a Japanese Windows 98 PC computer.  Even the extended characters correctly map to the single-byte ANSI standard, which is surprising since Japanese computers use a double-byte shifting code.  This allows me to retrieve and print documents that I wrote in Canada, and to send new documents back to Canada without conversion.  There are only two minor quirks.  First, the ruler bar starts up in centimeters instead of inches, but can be switched to inches.  Second, documents previously formatted for 8.5" x 11" paper display incorrectly until they are repaginated for A4 or B5 paper.  Windows Write 3.1 may be an old standard (1993), but most other PC word processors can import a Write file.

Previously, some text for this Japan web page existed only in HTML (internet format) and some text was in both HTML and Microsoft Word format.  All of the text has now been merged into a single document.  I edit the text using Microsoft Word 6.0 on the office's Japanese Macintosh computer.  (I'm getting pretty good at finding things in the Japanese menus!)  Plain text for the web page is created on a PC from the Macintosh file by a Japanese Windows 98 version of MS Word.  This plain text is reformatted in HTML and later uploaded onto my internet home page using NTT's demonstration computers.  The same text gets mirrored into a Windows Write document for viewing on English Windows PC computers.  Yes, it would be easier if I bought my own computer, erased the hard drive, and installed an English-only version of Windows -- but not nearly as interesting or as educational.  It's a mistake to go to a new country and then re-create your past life as a protected little world.

Friday, April 14th.  I'm sitting in a bus station, in the early morning, and I'm drinking.  Either I'm a wino ... or I'm an English teacher waiting for my next bus and the Coca-Cola is my breakfast.  I'm on my way to a barber college.  This reminds me that I haven't had my hair cut in three months.  Maybe I should go to the college, let them see me with wild hair, and cut it later at the barbers near our school.  That would be ironic.

Saturday, April 15th.  Try buying Easter candy in a country that doesn't believe in Easter!  I'm planning Easter activities for my students.  Omitting the religious meaning, there are still Easter baskets, candy, and decorations.  The local flower shop had a big box of discontinued display merchandise, including small wicker baskets.  I bought twenty.  For grass to line the baskets, I bought giant sheets of colored paper at the stationery store ... and ran them through the paper shredder.  The candy was the last to be found until our secretary saw packages of small chocolate eggs in a Sunkus convenience store.  (The packages are not marked for Easter; this is just another way of selling chocolate to children.)  I bought them all ... and went to the next store too.  One nice thing about being an English teacher is that you can buy such strange quantities of anything and nobody really asks why, although I'm sure they wonder.  The children don't wonder.  Some days are candy days; most days are not.  There is no connection between the candy and the meaning of Christmas, Easter, Halloween, etc.

Sunday, April 16th.  Unexplained low-grade fevers seem to be part of this job.  No, I'm not sick from sampling too much Easter candy!

Monday, April 17th.  Today was the great Easter egg hunt, carefully organized so that all kids got the same amount of candy.

Tuesday, April 18th.  Several times I've said that it is more expensive to live in Japan; however, I haven't shown the exact costs.  To get a work visa in Japan, you must have a monthly income of at least 250,000 Yen.  (No, I'm not going to tell you how much money I earn.)  That is approximately 2500 US dollars per month.  The exchange rate is currently floating between 105 and 110 Yen per US dollar, and will be different by the time you read this.  Income tax and health insurance are deducted from your salary.  An apartment in my area is Y50,000 (US$500) per month.  In large cities such as Osaka and Tokyo, the apartments are smaller and the rents are higher.  Utilities cost Y25,000 (US$250) per month for electricity, gas, water, and basic telephone service.  Personal expenses are Y2000 (US$20) per day for groceries, lunches, household items, etc.  That leaves Y100,000 (US$1000) per month to spend on movies, entertainment, hobbies, travel, or your student loans.  Depending upon your residency status, you may also be subject to American or Canadian income tax.

Thursday, April 20th.  The cherry trees are blossoming in Tsuruoka.  They should be at their best this weekend.  Yamagata will follow in a few days.  For the Japanese people, hana-mi or cherry blossom viewing season is the beginning of spring, and I agree.  The chill is gone from the air at night and the days are warm.  The weather office forecasts the arrival of cherry blossoms (sakura) at various locations throughout Japan.  This year is later than most.  While the city of Yamagata had planned special lights in Kajo Park for night viewing from April 11th to 23rd, the sakura have their own schedule and started to bud on the 21st and 22nd.  I'm sure the city will adjust the lights to match!

The city of Tendo plays human shogi this weekend.  Shogi is Japanese chess and Tendo produces 95% of the chess pieces.  They celebrate by having a giant chess game every year with people dressed up as the chess pieces.  With luck, there will be sakura and shogi together.

Sunday, April 23rd.  Rain in the morning, clearing in the afternoon.  The skies closed into a uniform grey while I was on the train to Tendo.  I didn't think the rain would end.  I was wrong.  By the time I was riding the shuttle bus (as suggested by my student, Mr. Shioyama) up a long and winding road to Maizuru Park at the top of a very big hill, I was glad that I wasn't walking.  The playing field for human shogi was wet; the costumes were colorful; there was drama and pageantry surrounding the game because it is a competition between shogi chess masters.  It must be a great honor to be one of the two shogi masters for this annual game.

photographers taking pictures of a female model with cherry blossoms

Before the game, I took pictures of some photographers who were grouped around a female model posed with cherry blossoms.  They invited me to take pictures of the model but I declined: the real picture was in the cluster of cameras, not the pretty face.

Monday, April 24th.  I woke up early today, for no reason, so I invented a reason.  It was 5:30 AM, the weather outside was good, and my camera was waiting at the door like a little puppy.  Today might not be the best day for cherry blossoms at Kajo Park -- Wednesday will probably be better -- but delaying would be foolish.  The weather can not be predicted.  Tomorrow and the next might be days of rain with no pictures at all.  Hence, I wasted a roll of film starting at 7:00 AM and finishing around 8:30.  The word "wasted" is photographer's slang for taking many pictures without counting how much film you use.  I can afford to take extra pictures: film is cheap; regrets are not.

cherry petals floating on water

The city has a good hana-mi photo on their advertising posters.  It shows a view from the northeast of Kajo Park's reconstructed east gate.  I found out where the picture was taken from.  I'm not going there!  You'd have to be crazy to stand less than 2 meters (6 feet) from a main railroad track without any protection between you and the trains.

Tuesday, April 25th.  Too cloudy today to get any good sakura pictures.  I will go again at night.

Wednesday, April 26th.  Hazy sunshine is better than clouds.  So far, I have used two and a half rolls of film on the cherry blossoms including half a roll last night ... before they turned off the lights and closed the gate.  The staff at Miura Photo Studio is getting to know me really well!  My pile of rejected pictures is so big that I will give the extras to my students as prizes.

Thursday, April 27th.  Rain.  No pictures today.  I have been fortunate to walk by Kajo Park every morning on my way to work and to enjoy the view.  Tomorrow morning I am in Tsuruoka.  By Saturday, cherry petals will be fluttering in the wind.

Owen's Japanese girlfriend

This month began with April Fool's Day, so it's only appropriate to mention that Owen Raccoon has been showing off pictures of his Japanese girlfriend: short, fat, with long hair and skinny legs -- in other words, the prettiest little raccoon that you ever saw.  He also said something about not getting much sleep since the baby came....  I'll let you know if I hear anything further.

Copyright (c) 2000 by Keith Fenske.  All rights reserved.
 

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