Chess

When my husband was quite a bit younger, he competed in chess tournaments and was quite a good player. To this day, when he sees someone playing chess in a movie or T.V. program, he will scrutinize what is happening carefully and pronounce whether or not the moves are realistic. He also has nothing for disdain for the way in which "checkmate" is proclaimed in a completely dubious fashion in so many shows. At those times, he reminds me of my father, who can identify older cars' makes and years with a glance, and who similarly scoffed at various things related to cars in T.V. shows.

At some point in his teen years, my husband lost interest in taking part in tournaments but he's still a very good player. On occasion, he plays against a fairly good program on his computer. He even has a kid who is a student at his school who he played chess with in lessons a few times. Part of the problem for him in terms of finding partners is that few casual players are as good as he is. In fact, I can play chess in that I know how the game is played but it's just too much concentration for me to think as many moves ahead as a really good player is required to do. My husband, on the other hand, is excellent at thinking things through thoroughly and he possesses the sort of memory that helps him remember moves.

A very long time ago, when my husband and I were still buying each other Christmas gifts, I bought him a small marble chess set at Tokyu Hands. I bought the small one because of our limited space but he would have preferred a really good large one with heavy, tactilely-satisfying pieces. One of these days, we'll live some place where we can just set up a nice little table somewhere and he can leave a beautiful chess set all the time.

The set pictured above has been in the closet for quite some time but I decided I'd take it out and use it decoratively in the bookcase. I made the picture near it with a collection of stock photos, Photoshop, and my new printer. It's actually served as an inspiration for an art project that I hope to create and hang in the living room some time in the next few weeks in the big glaring empty space above the T.V.


I'm hoping to construct a layered bit of artwork from a huge piece of corrugated plastic we have, vector art, and a lot of careful measuring and painting. Yesterday, I drew the basic chess pieces based on my husband's favorite bitmapped representations from his chess-playing days. If all goes well, the big version will greatly resemble the picture above.

The Big Swap - Part 3

I decided not to sit on my re-vamped living room until it reached a state of "perfection" because it'll be awhile given my high standards and limited free time. So, here is the result of all my cleaning and hard work. Click on any picture to see a bigger version which has easier to see details.


The corner of the room which I revealed as a filthy mess with dust climbing up the walls in a previous post is now my desk area. The walls really do look fairly clean now though there are still "smog patterns" near the top which wouldn't come clean. I only lost the desktop real estate on the right which the PC now occupies. Two DVD burners and a video capture box are stacked on it. The black one is a new dual layer burner my husband brought back from the U.S. in May. The other is my old one which now mainly functions as a reader for the PC which has always had a wonky drive. My former desk set-up is pictured here.

The main change I had to make was the arms from my chair had to be removed so it could be pushed completely under the desk during my lessons. While the room has more space now than before (and feels bigger), the clear floor space doesn't work so well with two huge chairs and a table. Frankly, I don't miss the arms much except for when I pull the chair in and out. The back has never worked properly (the back always reclines and won't stick in place) so I tended to yank the chair around by the handles. Now, pulling it out by it's flexible back rest is more troublesome.

I plan on painting the framework my stuff is stacked on as soon as the humidity drops and I have the time. I figure I'll paint it ivory so it'll be lighter but not shockingly bright.


My favorite part of the change to my area is how the top looks with the Buddha and tea candle holders as well as a special spot for my Skull plushie. The Buddha is from the gardening section at the 100 yen shop and the candle holders from the "interior" section of the same shop. One thing I've realized is that you get better decorative objects from the gardening section in cheap shops than in the "interior" sections which seem to have a lot of cheesy-looking, hyper-colorful crap.

The orange speakers, incidentally, are a leftover from my tangerine iMac days. They now serve my Mini (which has horrible internal speakers). The nicer-looking but just as cheap black speakers are for the PC.


One casualty of the move was poor old Sammy the Hammy's ear. I knocked him over so many times while setting things up that I chipped his ear. I gave him his own iMac to make up for it and he seems just as happy as ever.


My attempts to control cord spaghetti were pretty unsuccessful as you can see. The yellow pillow is my foot rest. The orange iBook is for use in lessons so I don't have to print two copies of lessons and the black box has my digital camera and cables. The teal basket has printer paper.


While the set-up with two desks next to each other is the same as it was before, the main difference is my husband actually uses the desk now. That's his notebook PC on it in this picture though he often takes it to work with him. Since his desk is smaller than mine and I've taken all the shelves for my own purposes, I mounted a small rack that you can hang little baskets off of for him to put his things in at the end of the day. The set-up for this desk previously is shown here.

When we're both home and using our computers, his chair is right next to mine. We're somewhat close together, especially when he reclines, but we're both much happier being next to each other in this way and he's better off at a desk than lying on the bed all the time.


My new printer (with the already lauded front-loading cassette) and scanner take up the lower shelves. The scanner is quite old and I'm figuring it's the next piece of computer equipment that is going to croak on me (that or my aging PC).


The wall space above the T.V. is still tasking me. I have a plan to put something decorative there but it's going to take awhile to make. I also want to paint the stand the T.V. is on but I know that's going to take a long time to get to (if ever) so I covered it with woven fabric from India to add in some color and undermine the feeling of the right side of the room being a dark pit. The old T.V. set-up is pictured here. On the bottom shelf, I also put some gold tea candle holders I've had for almost two years but never found a good place to put them. They were part of a huge pack of wonderful-smelling Christmas candles my husband bought. They're the only thing I have left from it and add some nice sparkle to the lower shelf.

The clay figure on top of the DVD shelf, which sort of reminds me of something from South America, is another garden section find from the 100 yen shop.


I ditched the dark sofa cover and pink pillowcases and decided to change to a color scheme with light blue and gold because of the darker carpeting. Click here to see the old look of the sofa and carpet. I also swapped my kitty tile clock for the blue Apple one to add in more blue and a bigger decorative element. I went with blue and gold because they're the main colors in the Month Python and the Holy Grail poster above my husband's desk and it's the biggest decorative element in the room.


This bookshelf was transplanted from another corner of the room and I cleared out some of the shelves and re-arranged them. The old shelf set-up is pictured here. The Easter Island type figure on the top is yet another garden object. You can't see it but the trash can is a planting pot. I wanted a clay one and a bigger one but couldn't find one on the cheap.

When I see the pictures of the room, I think it actually looks better in person than the shots indicate. Part of the reason for this is that I can't get just any camera angle I'd like because of the size of the apartment and the difficulty of shooting back as far as necessary to get a good angle.

Another reason is that, unlike all the glamor shots of homes you see in magazines, I don't remove all the everyday stuff from the shots to make them look nicer or shoot in such a way that only select areas show. It's amazing how every time you see a picture in some magazine of someone's gorgeous home that these people never have things like trash cans, phones, televisions, or any sort of wiring. Apparently, all their gorgeous lamps are wired directly through holes in the floor or end tables they sit on. On rare occasions, you'll see some impeccable home that hides the T.V. behind a screen or concealing cabinet but, for the most part, they seem to lack a lot of the types of things we can't avoid (like cables from a PC to a monitor or a power supply cable).

When I finish up the bedroom, I'll post a tour of it.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how things turned out except for the things I've mentioned. :-)

Getting a Japanese Credit Card

The doorbell rang today (Sunday) and a postman was standing in his rain suit with a registered letter. The last time I got a registered letter in Japan, it was from the local ward office demanding I cough up my delinquent health insurance payment or they'd go to my company and tell on me. This wasn't much of a threat because I'd quit my job about a year ago at that time but I paid anyway and now they love me again.

I wasn't exactly pleased to see another registered letter and wondered who was going to threaten to run off and tell my mommy on me this time, especially since I'm not behind in any payments now. Fortunately, it was just the bank sending me a new credit card to replace the one which is at this very moment approaching complete obsolescence. I believe this is my third renewal since getting a Japanese card and all I remember is that the first one was really nice-looking with a grey and black representation of Botticelli's Birth of Venus on it. The re-issued one looked pretty much like the one above, blue and boring.

If you read forums or blogs, you find a lot of hostility when it comes to foreigners (not) getting cards issued by Japanese banks. A lot of this is justified because it is difficult to get a card if you're not Japanese. The banks are afraid you'll spend to your maximum credit limit and blow the country so they don't want to issue cards to people who have been here a short time or haven't shown job stability. In my case, I was able to get a card after working at my company for about 5 years. My company asked me if I wanted a card (I didn't request one) and did all the paperwork for me. It surprised me that it was so simple given all I'd heard.

If you read forums frequented by foreigners, you get a lot of misinformation about what you have to do to qualify for a card. I've heard people say you have to be able to read the fine print, which is written in Japanese, and therefore you can only get a card if you are fluent. This is simply not true. I never read the agreement nor even had it translated for me by someone else. It's also sometimes said that you must have an official hanko (personal ink stamp seal) to get one and this is also not true.

These days, it's probably easier to use a shop which really wants to issue cards to help you get a card. Costco in Japan, for example, is more than happy to sign you up and they're very gaijin-friendly. It's also easier to get the sort of cards that charge an annual fee (like Master Card) than the free ones. The truth is that Japanese financial institutions aren't stuffing credit cards into people's hands like candy into a child's Halloween bag like they are in the U.S. They're a bit more wary, particularly with people who are potentially a bad risk because they have no incentive to be responsible for their debts, and frankly, a lot of short-term visitors lack such an incentive. It's not too much to ask that people show some sort of commitment to their life here (staying more than a year) and the ability to pay off their debts (by having a steady job) before handing them a card.

If you really want a card, I suggest having your visa sponsor apply on your behalf just after they renew your second contract. Most accountants in companies are willing to lend a hand though you may be out of luck if you work for a monolithic fast food school that doesn't offer any sort of support to its employees (such as Nova).

Some people might wonder why someone who resides in Japan must have a Japanese card when a card from any country is just as usable at shops or for on-line purchases. The main reason they're good to have is that it saves you charges for (two) currency exchanges. If my husband and I use our U.S. card, we have to transfer yen to dollars to put money in our U.S. bank account to cover the charge. This is a time-consuming and expensive process which we prefer to do with great infrequency. Additionally, we lose money on the exchange since the true rate is not charged when doing a currency exchange (if it's ¥123 to the dollar, we'll probably pay ¥125 to the dollar). If the purchases are made in Japan, the disadvantageous exchange rate is applied twice. Essentially, we buy in yen, it's converted to U.S. dollars when charged to a U.S. card and it's paid in dollars which were converted from yen. In the long run, having a Japanese card can save you a tidy bit of change.

Typhoon-wear

A typhoon has bled over into Tokyo bringing cooler air and constant rain. It's not a really bad typhoon, mind you. The worst one I've ever experienced was the sort that inverted umbrellas and dangerously blows around signs. This is far from one of those.

When I worked in Nishi-Shinjuku, I worked near some of the more well-known skyscrapers including the Nomura Building and it was there that witnessed one of the scariest typhoon-related things I ever saw. The Nomura Building has a metal sculpture near it which is hard to explain the appearance of and impossible to find a picture of on-line (and I don't happen to have one of my own). The best I can say is that it is a couple of huge, thick metal bars (about 2 stories high) which are joined together at one point and rotate when the wind blows.

Under normal circumstances, they may gently roll around. When there's a big typhoon, the bars whip around with sufficient speed and force to make you think there's a serious danger of one twisting off and crushing cars, people, and structures. It's like an ill-placed, artistically-designed windmill. We walked past it to take a co-worker to a restaurant on her last day of work which happened to be a day with a strong typhoon and I was very nervous being anywhere in the vicinity of that thing.

Early on in my employment, I used to ride a bike to work most days. This was before Nishi-Shinjuku Marunouchi line station was built and I was having severe back problems such that I couldn't make the walk from Shinjuku station to my office (about 15 minutes). Riding a bicycle took between 30-40 minutes (one way) which was only slightly longer than taking the train. This offered me both the benefit of sparing my back and of allowing me to keep my monthly train allowance in my pocket rather than spending it on a train pass. For those who don't know, almost all Japanese employers reimburse their employees for public transportation costs to and from their offices. This was also an efficient way of getting some exercise everyday since it used time normally spent standing on the train to good advantage.

There were, of course, disadvantages. For one, there is an absolutely epic pair of hills culminating in a deep valley just before entering Nishi-Shinjuku so you get to go up one coming and going. If you want to bike up it, you have to have extremely strong muscles (and knees) or you have to work up a head of steam coming down the first one to give you momentum to get up the other. This being Tokyo, that is not something one can do safely or well. The sidewalks are crammed with people who will do anything to avoid walking in a straight line or look where they are going. It is essential if one is a pedestrian in Tokyo that one take all necessary precautions to avoid awareness of one's surroundings at all times.

Given the sidewalk conditions, you can't really go barreling down one huge hill to get momentum to go up the next unless you don't mind crippling or maiming meandering pedestrians along the way. Also, ultimately, if you get up a good head of steam and are making great progress up the hill, someone will dreamily zig-zag in front of you forcing you to stop dead so there's no point in even getting your hopes up. Usually, I'd pedal 1/3-2/3 of the way up and walk the bike the rest of the way.

Beyond the shooting gallery experience of biking to work, the main downfall was the weather. During my first summer of riding in, the summer was excessively long and brutally hot with temperatures reading 100 degrees or more. Inevitably, there were also rainy days and typhoons. To cope with this, I shopped around for rain gear. Most Japanese people wear a suit with pants and a jacket. In fact, my company had such a suit which the office girls donned to ride the company bicycle to the post office on rainy days. It was a hideous thing that they all hated because it was ancient, over-sized (it was clearly designed for men) and dirty yellow.

My boss used to ride a scooter to work on Saturdays back then and he also wore one of these. He told me that such suits were hot and time-consuming to put on so I didn't want to go that route. I found the Moschino rain poncho pictured above at Odakyu department store many years ago. It served me very well because it is long enough to cover my legs but the fact that it's open at the bottom means you don't get really hot in it. One can also put it on very quickly. The only problem is that it has an inane smiley face on the back. I guess that it might send the message that it may be raining but I can still smile.

Eventually, I had to give up riding my bike to work because my knees started to trouble me. Also, a station opened up within 4 minutes of my office after several years so I could handle the shorter walk. My old poncho still sees some use though on those rare days when there's a typhoon and I have to go out somewhere on the bike (like today). My husband even wears it on occasion when he's in a situation where struggling to ride and carry an umbrella at the same time is out of the question. Given the choice of looking goofy or staying dry, we'll both opt for being dry.

Breath

This evening I had a lesson with "little old man" (LOM) in my 4.5 tatami mat living room (incidentally, the Wikipedia link shows the exact layout of my room in its first sample diagram which shows a square). In the past, I've had lessons with the door between the bedroom and living room open because the bedroom was the only one with an air conditioner and I'd have to leave it open in the summer heat. Since the living room now has its own air conditioner, it's most efficient to close up the living room and cool only one small room.

This definitely makes for less wasteful energy consumption but it also puts me in a smallish room without much air movement because I use the A/C on a low power, "weak" mode to keep from freezing my students to death since most of them are more sensitive to cold than heat. Unfortunately, it also pens me up in a little room with all the attendant odors of the other party. Most Japanese people are pretty clean though sometimes the women go overboard on the perfume and that can be an issue. The bigger problem though, is halitosis.

Two of my students, including LOM, frequently have halitosis and even though I sit at least 4 feet away from my students when they speak, I am constantly bombarded by this unpleasant odor. This evening, after LOM left, I returned to the living room and found that the entire room now smelled of his bad breath. I had to open it up to the other rooms and crank up the air conditioner power to dissipate the smell. I guess that such a small room will really fill up with a smell when one person is doing a lot of talking.

I'm not the first person who lives in Japan who has remarked on the bad breath of Japanese people (which does appear to be a more frequent issue than it is back home). People often speculate that they aren't engaging in adequate oral hygiene but I honestly don't believe that is the case. In fact, despite the plethora of people running around with intricate metal dental work in Tokyo, I think Japanese people are pretty meticulous about brushing their teeth and many of them brush more often than Americans.

One of my dentists told me that one of the reasons Japanese people have more teeth problems which results in more fillings and bridgework is that the water isn't fluoridated nor is much of the toothpaste. Among older people, I think there may be a greater tendency toward bad teeth because dairy products weren't consumed with great regularity in the past and people didn't get enough calcium. This is the same reason you see older ladies who are bent over from osteoporosis. Incidentally, the reason you sometimes see more metal dental work in their mouths compared to westerners is related to the type of dental work national health insurance covers. I believe porcelain crowns aren't covered under the insurance plan so you don't see many transparent fillings or bridges.

So, I don't think that Japanese people aren't brushing. I can't say exactly why there are people who seem to have fowl breath in greater abundance here but it may have something to do with a diet rich in certain types of protein (fish, tofu, soy-based foods). Protein trapped on the tongue is a common cause of bad breath and toothbrushing doesn't necessarily cleanse the tongue. It could also have something to do with the types of toothpaste sold in Japan though I can't speak from personal experience since I've never used Japanese toothpaste (we always get imports). And though I'm sure this is a somewhat controversial bit of speculation from a medical viewpoint, it could be that they just eat less often and eat less food and people with empty stomachs seem more likely to have bad breath. One of my skinny (and favorite) college professors sometimes asked me if she had bad breath because she didn't eat much and knew it could be a problem.

None of this understanding really makes my life any easier though. It's still a bit of a struggle to get through an hour with someone who is exhaling foul air in my direction, even though I know he can't help it. I find myself trying to move back further and suppressing a cringe every time LOM leans forward bringing him a good foot and a half closer to me. I guess this is just one more reason to be glad when summer is over and I can open up all the rooms and windows again. It'll be "a breath of fresh air" in more ways than one.