Floating Papers on the Sea of Japan by Keith Fenske June and July 2001 Copyright (c) 2001 by Keith Fenske.  All rights reserved.

June 2001: The Land of Individually-Wrapped-Cookies

unaju (broiled eel on rice)

Saturday, June 2nd.  It's a free working lunch today at Ban Ban Ya bento restaurant.  Makoto wanted pictures of some bento dishes for an advertising poster that he's making on his computer, and he wanted to do this with his own camera.  I took along my camera just in case -- that's a pun on my new camera bag -- but didn't need a thing since Makoto's camera is a Canon EOS 1000, the same model as my first SLR, which was known as the EOS Rebel in America.  He said that he didn't know how to do the pictures.  Yet before I arrived, he had already made a quick backdrop in the open shade behind the store using cardboard and white paper.  Perfect.  I added a few rocks from the parking lot to hold down the paper, we put his camera on my tripod, set the exposure, and together blew away a roll of film.  Some of the pictures will be good, some will be out-of-focus, and a few will be plain weird.  A job well done.  No, we didn't eat the sample food for lunch because it was prepared much in advance purely for appearance, not for eating.  I'm not usually hungry for unagi (eel) anyway....

Tuesday, June 5th.  We need the air conditioner in the school office for the first time this summer.  Scanning and posting pictures of bento made me hungry and I ate unaju (broiled eel on rice) for supper.  The secret is in the sauce.

Wednesday, June 6th.  The rain has started.  There is the smell of wood smoke in the air.  The bento gods must be angry.  I hate the rainy season.  Five weeks of 100% humidity.  I joke; it's not that bad, but it feels that way.

Shopping in Japan, you are constantly reminded that this is the Land of Individually-Wrapped-Cookies.  The amount of over-packaging is sometimes absurd.  Buy a bag of garbage bags, and the store puts it in another bag for you to take home.  The first thing that goes into the garbage is the bag that the garbage bags were in!  Some items of a personal nature (including household products like toilet pucks) get bagged twice to hide what's in the first bag.  Before the store starts wrapping and packing, just say no: "ii desu" meaning "that's good".  (I'll take it the way it is.)

Oh, for non-Canadians, I should explain.  A "toilet puck" is a toilet bowl cleaning and deodorizing block that you drop into the toilet's water tank.  It looks like a blue hockey puck, hence the nickname "toilet puck".  The manufacturer first wraps the toilet puck in a water-soluble mesh so that you can safely pick it up with your fingers and drop it into the water tank.  Then the manufacturer puts this wrapped puck into a plastic and cardboard package.  There is no way that you can get yourself dirty touching the package, unless you soak it in water for several minutes -- something that is very unlikely to happen while inside a store.  Using the toilet is of a personal nature, so the store puts the toilet puck package into a small bag, before putting the small bag into a bigger bag with your other purchases.  By the time you get home, the puck has four layers of wrapping, three of which go into the garbage.  Nobody in their right mind removes the fourth layer because the chemicals and dyes in the puck are quite strong.

My "three-month" pucks (as claimed by the package) last about three weeks.  One brand self-destructed and blocked most of the flushing jets with crumbs.  The worst was a green puck that I bought on sale.  When the "pea green" dye got diluted, it looked "pee green".  No wonder it was on sale!  Since then, I've only bought blue pucks.

This has been the Wednesday bathroom report from Japan.

Thursday, June 7th.  The Daiei department store finally moved the household products from the fourth floor to the food floor in the basement -- exactly where everyone has been looking for them for years!  When people shop for groceries, they expect to find kitchen supplies like dishwashing soap somewhere nearby.  Not in Daiei.  Previously, they were four floors up with the housewares (dishes and small appliances), and I suspect that sales were not good.

Saturday, June 9th.  Where there once were cartons of 100% fruit juice, there are now cheaper cartons of fruit "drink".  Half the price and 10% of the content: artificially flavored water with ten percent real juice.  There is a fruit beverage with a peach flavor that has only one percent real juice.  No, thank you.  My eating habits are bad enough already.

Cartons of juice are marked "store under 10 degrees Celsius", as are cartons of milk.  In many stores, most cartons are not in the coolers but stacked up next to the coolers, resulting in a higher storage temperature.  Milk really needs a colder temperature to slow the growth of bacteria.  Citrus juice is fine at warmer temperatures, except for some loss of flavor.  In a typically Japanese fashion, all drink cartons are marked the same, and the markings are widely ignored.

This is a country where the most common vending machines in public places are cigarette machines.  To stop children, there are stickers reminding everyone that the legal age in Japan is 20 years old, and the machines shut themselves off from 11 PM to 5 AM.  The pretense is that this will prevent children from buying cigarettes.  It's as ineffective as the law against using a hand phone while driving a car.  The reality was demonstrated this evening by a boy of about ten years.  The Japanese government has little incentive to curb cigarette sales because of the large amounts of tax revenue generated by the distribution and sale of tobacco.  They do, however, want to avoid the appearance of selling cigarettes to minors; hence, the warning stickers and self-timing machines.

For the curious, the second most common vending machines are coffee, tea, soft drinks, and vitamin drinks.  Vitamin drinks are basically caffeine supplements in the guise of medicine (more caffeine than a can of Coca-Cola).  Third would be beer machines.  Yes, you can buy cigarettes and beer without ever talking to a real person!  I am told (but have never seen) that there are magazine vending machines in the larger cities.  What kind of magazine is easier to buy from a machine than from the local 24-hour convenience store where you can stand and read the magazine before you buy it?  Here is a hint: Japan is the pornography capital of the world.  That hint comes from a guy who likes pictures of pretty girls, but doesn't like what he sees in these magazines.

Absent from the vending landscape are candy and snack machines.  Maybe people really do go to the convenience store for those.

Sunday, June 10th.  One of my high school students' band clubs had their annual concert today.  I'm not a great fan of classical music, but I am happy to attend these events ... when someone is kind enough to tell me about them.  Mr. Kaneko and the Yamagata Kenritsu Yamagata Higashi Kotogakko Suisogakubu (roughly: East Yamagata Prefectural High School Band Class) played well inside Yamagata Kenmin Kaikan (Yamagata Citizens Hall).  I took the usual pictures and will give him a small photo album next week.

(English punctuation note: the apostrophe on "students" above is so awkward that it should have been avoided by writing, "The band club of one of my high school students had their annual concert today."  In a sense of perversity, I enjoyed putting the apostrophe on "students" because it looks wrong even though it is correct.  The word "students" may be plural, but the construction "one of my high school students" is singular, and the apostrophe applies to the construction not to the individual word "students".)

School club activities expand to fill the time after regular classes.  Mr. Kaneko practices trombone for four hours on Monday to Friday, from 4 PM to 8 PM, and then goes home.  On the weekends, he practices for eight hours each day.  I keep wishing that he would go to a party or anywhere interesting so that we could talk about something new in class!  What did you do on the weekend?  I practiced trombone.  On Saturday?  Yes.  And on Sunday?  Yes.  What will you do next weekend?  I will practice trombone....

What Americans call a "club" is described as a "circle" here: a special interest group organized for fun.  Participation in a club is mandatory; one explanation being that if students are busy at school all day, they won't have time to get into trouble after school.  Personally, I think that the schools push too hard and that they are creating a lot of very tired children with experience only in narrow fields chosen by the school.

Tuesday, June 12th.  I promised one of my students that we would go for lunch at McDonald's ("ma-ku-do-na-ru-do" in Japanese) on his birthday ... forgetting that his birthday is in December.  I would get hungry if I waited that long!  By cleverly reversing the month and day of his real birthday (12/6), we got today's date (6/12), Kalbi Macs ("ka-ru-bi mak-ku" in Japanese), french fries ("po-te-to"), Chicken McNuggets ("chi-kin mak-ku-na-get-to"), and drinks.  Kalbi (kalbee) is a Korean barbecue style of cooking meat from beef ribs (sokalbi) or pork ribs (dwaeji kalbi), and is becoming popular in Japan.  Kalbi Macs are this month's special.  This is the second time that McDonald's has featured Kalbi Macs in the last year, a sign that they may soon replace one of the older menu items such as the "Chicken Tatsuta" burger, which is nothing at all like an American McChicken sandwich.  The Chicken Tatsuta is McDonald's attempt to introduce a burger unique to Japan; however, people don't go to McDonald's to eat Japanese food, so the Tatsuta goes largely unordered.

Friday, June 15th.  Once a month, I teach a class of 19 elementary school children.  When I first started, a few children thought that they could ignore the foreign teacher and do whatever they wanted in class.  Those spent time in the hallway attempting to amuse the walls with their antics.  Other students thought that they could sit quietly and not do the exercises.  Those I did nothing about.  The children who participated got rewarded: one sugar-free cough candy in assorted fruit flavors.  The bribe was sometimes for participation (with a degree of enthusiasm) and sometimes for performance (completing an exercise correctly).  Now even the slowest students refuse to leave the room until they finish their assignment and receive their candy.  I tried changing the candy to something that I thought would be more popular.  That was a mistake.  They insisted on the cough candy.  I guess it is something that they don't normally get.  A package of 18 candies sells for Y185, so each bribe is worth only Y10 (ten cents).  Unfortunately, with 19 students, I have to buy two packages to make sure that I have enough for all of them.

Nineteen children from grades two to four are too many to make much forward progress.  The manager for this location thinks in terms of "cost recovery", so the more students in one room, the better the class is.  The same manager regularly schedules a conversation class of 24 adults in a room with 15 chairs and is surprised at the large dropout rate.  Since each student's direct interaction with the teacher is limited to a couple minutes, there is not much "conversation" benefit.  Classes tend to be repeating after the teacher, and practicing in small groups with some supervision.  We have no control over the management of these classes because they are taught under contract: we either do the contract, or we don't.

At night, the bar girls were out in the street again.  One called to me, "Hey, American boy."  How insulting.  There's nothing a Canadian hates more than being called an American.  English-speaking travellers around here tend to be Australian, British, Canadian, or from New Zealand.  The bar girl will be wrong more often than not.

Sunday, June 17th.  The first train to Funagata is at 6:09.  There is sunlight at that early hour.  (I'm not a morning person.)  Funagata has a working horse competition where big farm horses pull a weighted sled up a hill, the biggest and heaviest being 260 "kan" -- a traditional unit of measurement, here a total of 975 kg or 2149 pounds.  In Funagata, I met Mr. Suzuki from my prefecture class.  Together we watched the horses and talked about farming.  He disappeared for a while and came back with a bag of official VIP souvenirs: event hat, towel, program book, locally-brewed sake, etc.  Mr. Suzuki's job makes him the VIP, not me.  The weather was good being partly cloudy with no rain, and becoming hot by mid afternoon.  Mr. Suzuki gave me a ride back to Yamagata, although I joked that I could use my original train ticket to go home because Funagata is such a small town that there is no one at the train station to collect your ticket when you get off!  Tickets are actually marked for point of origin and hence direction, along with the date.

Monday, June 18th.  This school needs broken toe insurance.  Two of our teachers broke their little toes recently, and today a student cancelled her class because she's at the hospital for ... a broken toe.  Your feet go numb kneeling on the floor for too long, so if you stand up quickly and try to walk....  I don't kneel; I sit.

Wednesday, June 20th.  A minor achievement: one Wednesday class in Tendo is scheduled to end at 8:15 PM.  The classroom is three minutes from the train station.  The train leaves at 8:20.  The bus leaves at 8:30.  I've never taken the train because the class never finishes on time.  There are always questions or good-byes.  Today, the lesson finished on time.  I looked at the clock, casually walked to the elevators, rode down to the main floor, and ran to the train station.  I bought a ticket, hurried to the station platform, and got there with about one minute to spare.  It's a pointless accomplishment, arriving home Y210 cheaper and 20 minutes earlier, but I wanted to know if it could be done.

Saturday, June 23rd.  The Yamagata airport isn't in Yamagata; it's in Higashine, about 20 km (12 miles) or nine train stops to the north.  The closest train station is Jin-machi, a minor stop separated from the east side of the airfield by a long row of abandoned industrial buildings.  The airport terminal is on the west side.  There is no access from the east side.  This gives taxis ("ta-ku-shii" in Japanese) a regular shuttle business to Sakuranbo-Higashine, the major train station to the northeast, at a cost of Y1330 (US$10.69 or Cdn$16.30) for the 4 km ride.  There is a bus with a route map and cheaper posted rates, but no posted schedule.  Maybe it runs on a "we'll come when there are enough people" basis.

Major airplane flights from Yamagata are to Osaka (three times per day), Tokyo (once per day), Nagoya, and Sapporo.  Tokyo is the commercial and political center of Japan.  There used to be more flights to Tokyo, but the bullet train is cheaper, easier to get to, and runs every hour -- and it stops at Sakuranbo-Higashine station.  The airport is the only direct connection to Osaka, which has Japan's second largest international airport (Kansai), so those flights are busy.

Monday, June 25th.  Steady rain.  Previously, heavy rain.  The rainy season isn't all rain.  It isn't even always cloudy.  There are many sunny days.  However, the amount of rain and the frequency of that rain make it feel like one long period of wet shoes, soggy pants, and umbrellas drying in the classrooms.

PS: only six more shopping months until Christmas.

In February and March, I gave packages of pencil crayons to my Monday kindergarten kids as a prize for learning the alphabet and numbers up to 100.  I bought the pencil crayons at a discount store where everything is Y100 (about one dollar).  I thought I was careful.  I tried two different stores, and selected the brand that worked the best.  They didn't work well enough.  One of my kids is still valiantly trying to use the crayons even though they constantly break and are difficult to sharpen.  They were a lousy prize and a poor gift.  Today I will replace them with high-quality sets from Mitsubishi which include an eraser and a sharpener.  The cost is Y756 (US$6.08 or Cdn$9.26) per set.  My boss and one of the other teachers said that this is too much to spend, but I think it is more important to keep my promise.  I wonder how the kids will react when I tell them to throw their old pencil crayons into the garbage....

I keep thinking of these kids as being in kindergarten, because that is where they were when I first met them.  They are actually in grade two now.

Friday, June 29th.  Yesterday's weather: rain.  Today's weather: rain.  My forecast for tomorrow: hot and sunny with clear blue skies all the way to midnight.  I base my weather forecast on wishful thinking.  I am now an expert at repairing umbrellas with a paper clip, wire cutters, and needle-nosed pliers.  On Sunday, I am going to ...  Oops, I can't tell you that.  Sunday is in July.  I can't talk about July while it's still June.  If I did, you might think that there was some sort of plan.

July 2001: "Open carefully: no scissors, no knives. Remove tape to open."

I won't be returning to Canada for quite some time, but must already deal with things that I have accumulated.  Most are gifts from well-meaning people, even though I told everyone not to send stuff to Japan.  My choices are as follows.  (1) Take it with me.  I will be going home with the same two travel bags that I came here with.  There was precious little empty space then, and there will be even less when I go back.  (2) Send it home by surface mail (that is, by ship) at a cost of about Y1250 (US$10 or Cdn$15) per kilogram.  This wastes money sending something to where it originally came from.  There is no need to pay twice the price for airmail for items that are not fragile and will arrive months before I do.  (3) Give it to someone else.  This is the best solution for clothes that are ugly, the wrong size, or made of a material that I can't wear.  The fact that I am doing this will be an open secret and will be difficult to hide.  (4) Abandon it.  Nobody wants my old stuff, so that really means throwing it away.

Monday, July 2nd.  News reaches me of a tragic car accident on Wednesday, June 27th.  My mind goes null and void.  Today I send condolences to the children of Norbert and Sheila, and to their families.  Distance does not diminish the loss.

Tuesday, July 3rd.  Out of respect, and in keeping with tradition, this web page will be suspended for one week.

Tuesday, July 10th.  I found my job advertised on the internet.  There was no word from my bosses before they placed the ad.  I guess that means I'm being replaced and that I'm going home.

Wednesday, July 11th (Konbini Day in Japan).  There was some discussion today at the office about when I should be leaving.  The result?  We don't know.  My second one-year contract expires in October; however, my work visa will be good for another two years.  This story should have a better ending.  Asking me to stay a while longer would have looked better for the both of us, because it would have demonstrated mutual approval of the work that we were doing.  Not asking can be read as rejection, even if there was an error in the circumstances leading up to the decision.

The train station at Sagae is being rebuilt.  The Aterazawa line is now reduced to the section between Yamagata and Uzen-Nagasaki (two stops south of Sagae), where passengers switch to a shuttle bus.  The shuttle bus is free, paid for by the train ticket, and is operated by JR (Japan Rail) to continue service to the stations blocked by the construction at Sagae.

best internet cure for insomnia

Thursday, July 12th.  I am so honored!  For the second year in a row, my web page has been voted "the best internet cure for insomnia".  The judges said they would have told me sooner, but they fell asleep during the award presentations.

Friday, July 13th.  Wise Raccoon came up with another good saying.  You will have to read his web page, because he won't let me put it on my web page.  He says it's about me.

Saturday, July 14th.  With temperatures crawling over 30 degrees Celsius, the rainy season is coming to a close.  On a hot day, I would love to walk to the corner store and buy a slurpee.  A slurpee is a slushy mixture of your favorite carbonated beverage, also known as a "squishee" to fans of "The Simpsons" TV series.  The word "Slurpee" (with a capital "S") is a registered trademark of 7-Eleven, Inc.  Knowing that slurpees are the single most popular item at convenience stores in North America during the summer, and that 7-Eleven has over 5,700 locations in United States and Canada serving approximately 6 million customers a day, and that 7-Eleven is a mostly Japanese-owned company, one wonders why there are no slurpees at the more than 8,300 locations of 7-Eleven in Japan, or in any of the competing Japanese convenience stores.  I want my slurpee!

(The figures quoted above were obtained directly from 7-Eleven's "about us" web page.  Note that the 8,300 Japanese locations include Hawaii due to a licensing agreement.  The 6 million customers in the US and Canada aren't all buying slurpees; 7-Eleven does sell other products, too.  I just can't think of what they are at the moment because ... I want my slurpee!)

Sunday, July 15th.  I haven't had a cold, fever, or sore throat for months.  I attribute this to my length of stay in Japan.  When you first move to another place or country, there seem to be many new variations of the common illnesses.  These make you partially sick until your body adapts and you become immune.  No doubt this was the cause of my frequent low-grade fevers: not enough to make me truly sick, but enough to make me feel lousy.

I spent Sunday stuffing envelopes: change-of-address notices for people who aren't likely to write to me anyway.  This is mostly a chance to promote my Japan web page before I go home.  Each envelope includes a one-page sample in English and in Japanese.  The Japanese is a souvenir for those of us who can't read it.

This may help avoid some of the stupid questions when I get home.  You know, people who have access to the internet but don't bother reading my page.  "Hey, Keith, so tell me about Japan."  I promise I will try not hitting anyone who says that.  The effort in writing this web page is about equal to making a small book.  There is no way I'm going through that again just because someone wants a personalized edition.

Anybody who has talked to me regularly will have to wait for their "change of address" notice until I know when I'm really coming home.  Hum.  I said "coming home" instead of "going home".  There has been a change of attitude.

It was getting dark outside and, once again, I thought I had spent too much time at the office on a Sunday afternoon doing my personal paperwork.  Then I looked at the clock.  Only a few minutes past 5:30 on a summer's day.  Dark storm clouds quickly built up into intense lightning and thunder.  Rain so heavy that you would need an oilskin jacket and pants with big rubber boots to stay dry.  My light hiking jacket is no match for this weather, especially since I left it at home.  That's right: today I am in t-shirt casual clothing.  I will wait out the storm for a while at the office.  This will be boring since I should unplug the computers to protect them from power surges.  The Macintosh has already rebooted three times.

Looking outside, I see that the intersection near the school has flooded.  There is so much water running down the street that it spills over onto the sidewalks.  The cars are making waves; the water is halfway up their wheels.

An hour later, the skies start to clear.  Feels like back home with our sudden and violent summer thunderstorms.  There is a reason.  Yamagata has the same "frying pan" topography as the Canadian prairies, only on a smaller scale.  Sure makes for a pretty sunset.  Wish I had a camera.  Of course, that's back in the apartment with my jacket!

Tuesday, July 17th.  The awards keep rolling in!  The mere mention that this web page will end makes people happy.  I don't know if it's relief from a long-suffering pain, or if they are remembering the good times we shared together.  The new award is "Best Snacks in Grandma's Kitchen" signed by Maggie somebody or other.  Oh, wait a minute.  That's not a real award.  Maggie is my sister's dog.  Okay, Maggie, I'll tell Grandma to give you an extra Milk-Bone dog treat the next time she's in the kitchen.

Thursday, July 19th.  I find that I don't care about any of my classes now that the decision has been made.  Some classes require a great deal of effort; why should I continue to do that much work when I won't be around to see the result?  Time to put on a cloak of professionalism and pretend that I really care.  To paraphrase the movie "Broadcast News" (1987), "Once you can fake sincerity, you can fake anything."  (This is based on a two-line joke by George Burns about success.)  I've taught classes with a fever, after mornings of vomiting and diarrhea, so how hard can it be to teach with an empty heart?

Friday, July 20th (Marine Day).  If this is a holiday, then why am I working?  Because the community center promises their students four Friday classes per month.  The choice was having a class today, or having an extra class next month during O-Bon, the biggest summer holiday in Japan.  Japanese holidays mean nothing to me, so it matters little if I am working.  At least the train won't be as crowded....

Saturday, July 21st.  I was looking forward to sleeping in this morning.  A noise truck cruised my neighborhood at 8:50 AM.  Those are cars and vans with loudspeakers on top to deliver recorded messages.  Their purpose lately is to get votes in next week's election.  They can shout "O-hayo gozaimasu!" (Good morning!) as often as they want -- I'm not going to vote for them.

Monday, July 23rd.  It looks more and more like I'm going home at the end of September or in early October.  This is not when I wanted to go.  I wanted to stay until February or March 2002 because: (1) the dates 1999-2002 would look better on my resume; (2) being out of the country for two complete calendar years would allow me to avoid paying Canadian income tax; and (3) my passport expires in April 2002 and I didn't want to travel home on an expired passport.  I was willing to give my bosses as much time as they needed to find a new teacher that they liked starting on a date that was the most convenient for them.  From previous conversations, I had thought that April was preferred because the Japanese school year starts in April.  However, my opinion was not requested until after the advertisements had been placed and the hiring process had begun.  My boss later apologized (because not talking to me about renewal was a violation of our contract), but the fact is that I must consent to a decision that was made without my consent.  That is the nature of contract employment.

An irony is revealed in that while I donated part of my May "Golden Week" holidays to edit the computer files for two of the school's textbooks, my bosses were at the same time deciding to hire a new teacher.  I guess I got my reward....  Oh, and those five days of vacation that I never took last year because no one could replace me when I was sick or if I went away?  Gone.  Benefits earned in one year are not carried over to the next contract.  Same for the free airplane ticket home.  After 365 days of employment, the school would have paid for my flight.  After one year and a day, I had to finish a second year before the ticket became available again.  Employees who renew their contracts have proven their worth to the company and should not be penalized by losing benefits that they have already earned.

Tuesday, July 24th.  I was early for my train and stood in the shade away from the hot sun at the edge of the station platform.  The high school students formed a line behind me, and stayed in line when the train came into the station.  There is a first time for everything!

Wednesday, July 25th.  My glasses are breaking ... again.  One of the first things that I will have to do when I get home is to visit my optometrist for a new prescription and a better set of frames.

Friday, July 27th.  If anybody wants anything from Japan, you had better say so soon.  This offer is limited by my increasing distance from a Japanese post office.  Once in Canada, my ears will be deaf to words such as, "You know, Keith, it would have been nice if you had sent me [nanika] from Japan."

Monday, July 30th.  My life in Yamagata has become somewhat meaningless.  With no family or friends here, there was only the job.  Now the job is in the past tense.  I sit at my desk and stare out the window, waiting for the contract to end.  This may be the summer festival season in Japan, but that is something to do ... together.  Last year, I went alone.  This year, I won't go at all.

Tuesday, July 31st.  Some of my clothes are falling apart.  All the better to reduce the weight of my baggage, I say.  This week saw the demise of a shirt and a pair of pants.  The red shirt had its second accident in the washing machine, the only piece of clothing to suffer damage from the washer.  The pants were just worn out.  For no particular reason, I cut off the buttons and saved them in a jar which I will leave for the next teacher along with miscellaneous small items like screws, curtain hooks, and my glow-in-the-dark spider hanging from the bedroom light.

Copyright (c) 2001 by Keith Fenske.  All rights reserved.
 

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