Previously, I posted about a temporary student who was preparing to work in a major international hotel. She had planned for four lessons with me then to sally forth into the exciting new world of information dispersal. It turns out that it was a bit more intimidating than she expected and she decided to come back for another round of lessons.
She told me that she hadn't actually had to offer any information to foreigners yet but she has had to field questions from Japanese guests. The types of questions that she's been asked will be a problem for her if they are in English so she wanted to learn how to deal with the same types of questions in English. I must say though that I felt pretty good when she said, "now I know why you were teaching me those things!" I grilled her pretty hard but now she knows the guests may turn up the heat even higher.
One of the things she asked me about was how to get across various greetings that she is expected to offer guests. People who don't reside in Japan may not know this but it is common for the staff at restaurants and shops to say "irrashaimase" (which is the equivalent of "welcome" in English but there is no direct translation). This is more of an acknowledgement of a customers' or guest's entry into the establishment than a true greeting. My student is required to say "welcome", welcome back", or "good morning/afternoon/evening" to foreign guests when they enter the hotel.
My student wanted to confirm that the translations that were used for these greetings were correct because she noticed that quite a few guests seemed rather embarrassed when such greetings were offered. I explained to her that part of the problem is that westerners aren't used to being addressed each time they enter or exit a place. Usually, people greet you as you approach them for an interaction (like signing into the hotel). If you greet them, they also feel obliged to respond. With multiple greetings from various staff on multiple floors (this is a huge hotel with various annexes), it requires the guest to respond again and again or feel rude in not replying.
The most interesting thing she told me about this greeting business was unrelated to dealing with foreigners and had to do with a Japanese guest. It seems that the hotel believes repeat guests deserve special recognition. For new guests, it's okay to simply say "welcome" and "welcome back". For repeat visitors, the staff are supposed to recognize their faces and say "good morning/afternoon/evening." Even new staff members have to do this and it is accomplished by having pictures of those guests' faces and making the staff memorize them.
In one instance, a new employee failed to recognize a middle-aged Japanese businessman who was a repeat guest and he was so incensed by the young woman's failure to offer a more familiar greeting (she just said "welcome") that he insisted the hotel fire her. The hotel moved her out of a position where she would greet guests but it is amazing how childish this man was. When an employee failed to coddle him in the fashion he expected, he tried to get her fired for a very inconsequential "slight".
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Monday, December 11, 2006
Shari's Swedish Meatballs
The point of making Swedish meatballs originally was to use up all the little bits and pieces that are left around the kitchen. Of course, these days, people tend to make them because they taste good rather than because they want to be frugal and use up whatever is lying around. I make them because they're cheap and tasty and pretty much the only way I will eat any sort of beef. I have a rather intense dislike of beef because, to me, it just smells like blood. Since we eat chicken 4-5 nights a week, it gets tedious eating the same thing, so this is a nice change of pace.
Using this recipe, the main portion of the meal (the meatballs) costs about 120 yen per serving if you can get ground beef as cheaply a I can (which is about 70 yen per 100 grams). This is also a dish which doesn't require any specialty (import) shopping. All of the ingredients can be purchased at an average Japanese supermarket and it is cooked on the stove top and requires no special equipment.
Shari's Swedish Meatballs:
- 500 grams (approx. 1 lb.) ground beef
- 1/2 small onion
- 1 medium green pepper or 2 small Japanese piman
- 2 tsp. garlic powder
- 3/4 tsp. nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1 cup bread crumbs (dried or fresh)
- 1 cup near-boiling water
- 2 beef bouillon cubes
- 1/3 cup cold milk
- 1-2 tbsp. corn starch
- 1 tbsp. sour cream (optional)
- ~1 tbsp. olive oil (for cooking)
Put the ground beef into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle the garlic, pepper, salt, and nutmeg over the beef. Process the onion in a small food processor (or dice very finely by hand). Add the green pepper and pulse to process into relatively small pieces or dice it by hand. Add 3/4 cup of milk and stir until thoroughly mixed. (Note: I've pureed the onion to mush before and that is fine - chopping too finely is better than too coarsely since the vegetables have to cook completely inside the meatballs. You can click on the picture above to see a larger one that should give you an idea of how finely I process them.).
Add the bread crumbs and stir until well-mixed and the meat mixture starts to clump up (as pictured above) but is not hard to stir (which would mean it's too dry). The mixture shouldn't be soupy. If it seems too wet, throw in more bread crumbs 1/4 cup at a time.
Form small (about 1"-1.25" in diameter) meatballs inside the same mixing bowl. This next step isn't absolutely necessary but it's a good idea to cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator for an hour or more (up to a day ahead of time). This will allow the spices to permeate and for the meatballs to firm up and be less likely to fall apart while cooking.
Heat a large skillet and spread just enough olive oil over the bottom to coat it (to keep the meatballs from sticking). Place the meatballs one at a time over the bottom of the pan. It's okay if they touch but they should not be crowded. Cover and cook over medium heat, turning over when they are half-cooked and brown on the bottom. If you don't keep it covered, you won't have enough liquid for making the sauce.
Remove the finished meatballs and keep warm in a covered plate (using the lid you covered the skillet with to cover the plate works well). Skim the fat from the edges of the juices (or leave it if you don't care). Dissolve the bouillon cubes in the near-boiling water and add to the juices in the pan. Stir to mix. Dissolve the corn starch (use 1 tbsp. for thinner sauce and 2 tbsp. for thicker sauce) in the 1/3 cup of cold milk and add to the juices and bouillon. Stir constantly over medium heat until thickened. Stir in sour cream if desired. Skim the fat from the edges again if necessary or use a soup skimmer to remove it.
Spoon the sauce over each serving of meatballs and serve as a main dish. Alternately, add the meatballs back into the sauce and serve over whole wheat pasta as a sauce. The sauce also makes a great gravy for potatoes.
In Japan, I use standard dried breadcrumbs used for tempura that you can pick up almost anywhere and Maggi-brand beef bouillon cubes (as pictured above). I recently picked up a bag with a ton of tiny piman for 99 yen which served me well (though I doubt I'll be able to use them all up before they go off). This recipe will make 4 generous servings or 5 smaller ones and can be frozen for future meals. You can also make sandwiches from the meatballs if you've kept the sauce separate (it gets too messy with the sauce).
In researching this recipe, I found a lot of variations and the common element is the nutmeg. It may seem strange to add a spice generally associated with cakes, pies and cookies to meat but it works extremely well and should not be omitted. My recipe mixes and matches components of various recipes but the main thing I do differently is add in green pepper and prepare the sauce with bouillon. Even if you don't like green pepper (my husband doesn't care for it), it adds in a distinctive and enjoyable flavor and I recommend giving it a try. This was the first time I added sour cream to the sauce and I found that it didn't add much to the flavor but it did give it a super smooth, silky texture.
One of the reasons I like this recipe is that it allows me to pre-prepare the more involved part (the meatballs) far ahead of time then cook later. My husband's work schedule has him coming home at 10:30 pm so we eat dinner at 11:00 and I'm generally pretty tired and not in the mood to do elaborate dinner preparation.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Taxes While Living in Japan
A recent post by Roy indirectly reminded me about something I learned about taxes in Japan. The tax situation in Japan is pretty complicated and I can't claim to understand it very well beyond personal experience but my students and former Japanese co-workers have taught me a few other things.
In terms of personal tax responsibility, Americans don't need to pay income taxes in the United States unless they make more than $75,000 a year. Needless to say, few of us are in any danger of losing our tax-exempt status. We have to file a tax form regardless of whether we owe money or not. This was a fact that my husband and I were unaware of for an extended period of time while living here and there was quite a bit of panic when we discovered we hadn't filed for well over a decade and it may result in some problems despite the fact that we owed nothing. Fortunately, we didn't get in trouble. In fact, the IRS seemed to take it all in stride and sent us 3 years of back tax forms which we filled out and sent in. Now, we're on a regular schedule but it was a bit of a worry for awhile.
We do have to pay Japanese income taxes though the rate is relatively low compared to what we'd pay in the U.S. unless we opt to pay for the same sort of benefits we get back home (unemployment insurance, social security, etc). I'm not even sure that foreign residents can collect social security if they pay into the system unless they stay for a minimum amount of time (last I heard was 10 years). I was told that we aren't required to fill out a Japanese income tax form unless we want to get a refund and, since foreign employees are usually not over-taxed, we hadn't had to do it up until last year when I started doing freelance work for my former company. For some reason, they have a set policy of over-taxing all freelance workers (10% is the set rate) so you have to file to get the excess back.
Most foreign employees don't end up paying anything beyond the bare minimum because they don't plan on staying long enough to collect social security nor do they really know their options in regards to unemployment benefits. No one explains it to you when you start your job because the companies view most foreign workers (especially teachers) as transitory. At my former company, even though it was an office job, the president used to use the excuse that my boss (an Aussie) and I weren't going to remain with the company for long so we weren't entitled to some of the perks the Japanese, who were supposedly more dedicated to the company, received. Ironically, my boss and I outlasted all but 3 of the original staff who were there when we started at the company including the president himself who sold us off to a bigger company 2 years before I quit. My former boss is still there.
The big bite that comes out of our salaries in terms of taxes is ward taxes (commonly called "ku taxes" by foreigners living in Japan). These vary from ward to ward but the more expensive ones (like ours) amount to 5% of our income. Paying only 6% or so in income tax seems a lot less impressive when you add in the ward taxes and then the cost of socialized health insurance. The insurance rate is based on income but mine was about 9% of my salary...and I didn't make that much relative to other foreigners and I made less than the average Japanese salaryman.
Most Japanese employees are cut a break on the health insurance which most foreigners don't get. A lot of companies will pay a portion of their health insurance (generally around 50%). This can be quite a healthy chunk of money. My former boss used to pay about 60,000 yen a month in health insurance and I believe he made a salary commensurate with being a Japanese manager of his age. He'd have been pretty happy to have half of that paid by someone else.
If you add all the little bits and pieces up, that's about 6% income tax + 9% health insurance +5% ward taxes for a total bite of 20% and that's without any benefits beyond the health insurance. Since most foreigners rarely use health benefits compared to their Japanese counterparts, this is a pretty sweet payday for the Japanese government, particularly since a lot of services that the tax money is used for that directly benefit the Japanese, such as community center activities (like cheap access to a swimming pool) and adult education, don't get utilitzed by foreigners either.
Anyway, one of the most peculiar things I've learned about avoiding taxes in Japan came from one of my students. I've heard from several Japanese people that inheritance taxes are incredibly high. The highest figure I'd heard was 75% of the value of the property but my student reckoned it may be closer to 60% (at least for property outside of Tokyo). That means the Japanese government gets a huge payday any time a property owner passes on. My student told me that her husband is supposed to inherit some property after his father passes away and the way that they can avoid the huge inheritance taxes is for her husband to become her father's brother. This is accomplished by having his grandfather adopt him. This allows the inheritance tax to skip a generation rather than apply to every generation. This is one of the strangest loopholes I've ever heard.
In terms of personal tax responsibility, Americans don't need to pay income taxes in the United States unless they make more than $75,000 a year. Needless to say, few of us are in any danger of losing our tax-exempt status. We have to file a tax form regardless of whether we owe money or not. This was a fact that my husband and I were unaware of for an extended period of time while living here and there was quite a bit of panic when we discovered we hadn't filed for well over a decade and it may result in some problems despite the fact that we owed nothing. Fortunately, we didn't get in trouble. In fact, the IRS seemed to take it all in stride and sent us 3 years of back tax forms which we filled out and sent in. Now, we're on a regular schedule but it was a bit of a worry for awhile.
We do have to pay Japanese income taxes though the rate is relatively low compared to what we'd pay in the U.S. unless we opt to pay for the same sort of benefits we get back home (unemployment insurance, social security, etc). I'm not even sure that foreign residents can collect social security if they pay into the system unless they stay for a minimum amount of time (last I heard was 10 years). I was told that we aren't required to fill out a Japanese income tax form unless we want to get a refund and, since foreign employees are usually not over-taxed, we hadn't had to do it up until last year when I started doing freelance work for my former company. For some reason, they have a set policy of over-taxing all freelance workers (10% is the set rate) so you have to file to get the excess back.
Most foreign employees don't end up paying anything beyond the bare minimum because they don't plan on staying long enough to collect social security nor do they really know their options in regards to unemployment benefits. No one explains it to you when you start your job because the companies view most foreign workers (especially teachers) as transitory. At my former company, even though it was an office job, the president used to use the excuse that my boss (an Aussie) and I weren't going to remain with the company for long so we weren't entitled to some of the perks the Japanese, who were supposedly more dedicated to the company, received. Ironically, my boss and I outlasted all but 3 of the original staff who were there when we started at the company including the president himself who sold us off to a bigger company 2 years before I quit. My former boss is still there.
The big bite that comes out of our salaries in terms of taxes is ward taxes (commonly called "ku taxes" by foreigners living in Japan). These vary from ward to ward but the more expensive ones (like ours) amount to 5% of our income. Paying only 6% or so in income tax seems a lot less impressive when you add in the ward taxes and then the cost of socialized health insurance. The insurance rate is based on income but mine was about 9% of my salary...and I didn't make that much relative to other foreigners and I made less than the average Japanese salaryman.
Most Japanese employees are cut a break on the health insurance which most foreigners don't get. A lot of companies will pay a portion of their health insurance (generally around 50%). This can be quite a healthy chunk of money. My former boss used to pay about 60,000 yen a month in health insurance and I believe he made a salary commensurate with being a Japanese manager of his age. He'd have been pretty happy to have half of that paid by someone else.
If you add all the little bits and pieces up, that's about 6% income tax + 9% health insurance +5% ward taxes for a total bite of 20% and that's without any benefits beyond the health insurance. Since most foreigners rarely use health benefits compared to their Japanese counterparts, this is a pretty sweet payday for the Japanese government, particularly since a lot of services that the tax money is used for that directly benefit the Japanese, such as community center activities (like cheap access to a swimming pool) and adult education, don't get utilitzed by foreigners either.
Anyway, one of the most peculiar things I've learned about avoiding taxes in Japan came from one of my students. I've heard from several Japanese people that inheritance taxes are incredibly high. The highest figure I'd heard was 75% of the value of the property but my student reckoned it may be closer to 60% (at least for property outside of Tokyo). That means the Japanese government gets a huge payday any time a property owner passes on. My student told me that her husband is supposed to inherit some property after his father passes away and the way that they can avoid the huge inheritance taxes is for her husband to become her father's brother. This is accomplished by having his grandfather adopt him. This allows the inheritance tax to skip a generation rather than apply to every generation. This is one of the strangest loopholes I've ever heard.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Colbert Battles for the Favor of the Gods
...and wins. As you can see from the partial screenshot (above) from the on-line roleplaying game Guild Wars, the Colbert Report is inching its way into geek culture and the team is battling for America (who else?). Who would have thought that a comedian who plays a pompous Republican would have game guilds named after him? Well, I would. but I know geeks. I found this particularly amusing since I've been watching the Colbert Report more as of late. (By the way, you can click on any of the pictures to see full screen shots which will allow the onscreen text to be read more easily.)
That inset is taken from the relatively boring screen shot above of my character digging around in her storage trunk of saved junk in the game. I usually don't pay much attention to the messages about who has the favor of the gods since it applies to a portion of the game my character isn't a high enough level to deal with yet. In Guild Wars, the favor of the gods allows you to access another area to play in. If you don't have it, you can't get there but I'm confident in America's ability to re-gain favor in time for me to get into the Underworld.
I'm liking Guild Wars more than expected but that's because it has some features I hadn't anticipated. For one thing, you can have your characters do some Sims' style movement such as dancing (see my friend in one of his heavy metal dance moves above as we engage in mature and witty banter in the above picture while my young warrior, Tankarific Carl, (with the blonde topknot) doing a John Travolta move).
You can also laugh, taunt, sit, get drunk, agree, stand at attention, beckon, beg, boo, look bored, bow, cheer, catch your breath, clap, congratulate someone, smack your head to signify "doh", do a double-take, play drums, act excited, shake your fist, flex your muscles, play the flute, cheer your team, play guitar, do a high five,
You can see a whole squadron of characters who transformed themselves into candy corn during Halloween and there's a disco ball in the center of town in the picture above. On many occasions when I was playing around the end of October, groups of animated candy corn did synchronized dancing under the disco ball. You could also turn yourself into someone with a pumpkin head and release ghosts from boxes. While you can do all the normal roleplaying things like going off on quests, killing things, getting skills and gaining experience, the expanded opportunities for goofing off are more important to me. Even some of the quests are goofy (like chasing lost hogs back into their pen, finding food for a giant pet scorpion named "Joe" or tracking down a wayfaring pig.)
The game also allows you to have a pet if you build your character in a particular way. Above, you can see the only kitty I'm allowed to have (since my landlord doesn't allow pets). If cats aren't your bag, you can keep a wolf, giant bird, or spider. If that weren't nifty enough, the game has yaks and warthogs running around in it. Unfortunately, neither of them are lethal but I'm still holding out hope that a future version might include throngs of murderous yaks and man-eating warthogs. That'd be incredibly cool.
I've been playing Guild Wars with my sister (and my old Battle.net friend, 0tarin) quite a bit for the past month and am still pretty incompetent at it. I'll regret it when I reach a point where I'll know what I'm doing sufficiently that I'll have grown bored with the distractions and start focussing on actually playing well. Of course, I'm sure my sister (Wandering Carl above), who has to tolerate the lunacy of my friend and I, will be relieved to not have to carry us all the time. ;-)
Friday, December 08, 2006
Why I Never Discuss WWII With Students
This evening, I did the final part of what ended up being a 3-part lesson on holidays with one of my students. The end of the lesson took an unexpected and somewhat unpleasant turn when the student misunderstood the meaning of the word "sentimental".
The lesson is one that I made myself and is meant to give students practice in explaining their own culture. We go through the entire year and the student tells me the holidays and what they're meant to celebrate and how they are celebrated. I also use this as an opportunity to discuss how "holiday" is used to mean "day-off" by the Japanese and those who use British English whereas it means a special day of celebration to most Americans. Additionally, I introduce what a "national holiday" is and have the students tell me which of their holidays are national ones.
At the end of the lesson, I asked my student which holiday she felt the most sentimental about. I figured that she'd choose New Year's Eve or day but she said August 15th because it was the "end of World War II." Since she wasn't even alive during the war (she's in her early 40's), I asked her why it affected her so deeply. She said that, for Japanese people, this was the most deeply affecting date in their history and went on to say the atomic bomb was the worst thing ever in the history of man.
She also said that there are still many people in Japan who suffer physical defects or problems because of the bomb. I expressed some doubt that, after 63 years, this could actually be the case but I can't say I know the long-term genetic effects from exposure to fall-out so long ago. However, I can say that I wouldn't trust Japanese scientists not to exaggerate such claims. Japanese doctors lie all the time and the Japanese government covers up, ignores and misinforms about illnesses as well (as is evidenced by Chisso corporation's feet-dragging on Minamata disease and the government taking 12 years to reach a conclusion about it).
I never raise the topic of World War II with students because the Japanese are taught only about the part which portrays them as victims. They aren't taught about allying themselves with Hitler, the occupation of China, or Pearl Harbor. Essentially, they are taught only to view it from the viewpoint of the harm they suffered and not Japan's instigation of the harm done to them. While my student gave a cursory acknowledgement of this, I could tell that she was only doing so in a pre-emptory attempt at waylaying any arguments she felt I might make.
I don't want to argue this with students because I'm pretty sure that few people from any culture are capable of objectively discussing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In general, you have the revisionists who factor in their current dislike of America when assessing the situation, the Japanese who only see their own suffering, and Americans who give a pat justification. Few people even attempt to put themselves inside the World War II era zeitgeist. This is essential when viewing any event in history and is responsible for some of the most short-sighted conclusions in the study of history. Few consider the political and economic context of the events. Even fewer consider the respective cultures that were involved.
In general, everyone is interested in asserting a personal agenda and a Japanese person and an American are absolutely the worst two people to be talking about World War II. That's the reason I never bring it up and I wished the student hadn't brought it up because, despite the fact that I refrained greatly from arguing, she was visibly upset by the end of the lesson. The only thing I did point out to her was that the Japanese education system didn't teach a complete history (which is true and she said so) and that I felt the main reason the Japanese focused on the bombs as the most integral part of the war was that it signalled their loss whereas the allied powers tend to focus on the events that sparked the war as the integral moments (because this is what dragged them into a horrible war that they didn't want to be a part of).
In the end, I learned that she thought "sentimental" meant something she felt deeply sad about and that was why she gave that answer. She also said she had a former American teacher who seemed to really like to talk about World War II. I assured her that I never discuss it with students because it's too likely to be upsetting. I didn't say that I also feel that one needs to discuss such a topic in one's native language because there is a lot of subtle talk if you want to really have an intelligent discussion and that I think no two people who are together because money is a part of their relationship should discuss such a volatile topic. But, I thought it.
The lesson is one that I made myself and is meant to give students practice in explaining their own culture. We go through the entire year and the student tells me the holidays and what they're meant to celebrate and how they are celebrated. I also use this as an opportunity to discuss how "holiday" is used to mean "day-off" by the Japanese and those who use British English whereas it means a special day of celebration to most Americans. Additionally, I introduce what a "national holiday" is and have the students tell me which of their holidays are national ones.
At the end of the lesson, I asked my student which holiday she felt the most sentimental about. I figured that she'd choose New Year's Eve or day but she said August 15th because it was the "end of World War II." Since she wasn't even alive during the war (she's in her early 40's), I asked her why it affected her so deeply. She said that, for Japanese people, this was the most deeply affecting date in their history and went on to say the atomic bomb was the worst thing ever in the history of man.
She also said that there are still many people in Japan who suffer physical defects or problems because of the bomb. I expressed some doubt that, after 63 years, this could actually be the case but I can't say I know the long-term genetic effects from exposure to fall-out so long ago. However, I can say that I wouldn't trust Japanese scientists not to exaggerate such claims. Japanese doctors lie all the time and the Japanese government covers up, ignores and misinforms about illnesses as well (as is evidenced by Chisso corporation's feet-dragging on Minamata disease and the government taking 12 years to reach a conclusion about it).
I never raise the topic of World War II with students because the Japanese are taught only about the part which portrays them as victims. They aren't taught about allying themselves with Hitler, the occupation of China, or Pearl Harbor. Essentially, they are taught only to view it from the viewpoint of the harm they suffered and not Japan's instigation of the harm done to them. While my student gave a cursory acknowledgement of this, I could tell that she was only doing so in a pre-emptory attempt at waylaying any arguments she felt I might make.
I don't want to argue this with students because I'm pretty sure that few people from any culture are capable of objectively discussing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In general, you have the revisionists who factor in their current dislike of America when assessing the situation, the Japanese who only see their own suffering, and Americans who give a pat justification. Few people even attempt to put themselves inside the World War II era zeitgeist. This is essential when viewing any event in history and is responsible for some of the most short-sighted conclusions in the study of history. Few consider the political and economic context of the events. Even fewer consider the respective cultures that were involved.
In general, everyone is interested in asserting a personal agenda and a Japanese person and an American are absolutely the worst two people to be talking about World War II. That's the reason I never bring it up and I wished the student hadn't brought it up because, despite the fact that I refrained greatly from arguing, she was visibly upset by the end of the lesson. The only thing I did point out to her was that the Japanese education system didn't teach a complete history (which is true and she said so) and that I felt the main reason the Japanese focused on the bombs as the most integral part of the war was that it signalled their loss whereas the allied powers tend to focus on the events that sparked the war as the integral moments (because this is what dragged them into a horrible war that they didn't want to be a part of).
In the end, I learned that she thought "sentimental" meant something she felt deeply sad about and that was why she gave that answer. She also said she had a former American teacher who seemed to really like to talk about World War II. I assured her that I never discuss it with students because it's too likely to be upsetting. I didn't say that I also feel that one needs to discuss such a topic in one's native language because there is a lot of subtle talk if you want to really have an intelligent discussion and that I think no two people who are together because money is a part of their relationship should discuss such a volatile topic. But, I thought it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)