A recent question posted as a comment has brought me to talk about a subject that has been on my mind for quite some time but I've been reluctant to approach it. The question was about whether I have any friends who are native English speakers or Japanese. The easy answer is "yes", but not as many of either as I used to have.
Since they are really two different topics, I'll do this in two parts starting with foreign friends. Making friends when you first get off the boat is a little like making friends when you're in elementary school. In most cases, you work some place where you are with a large number of people who are in the same circumstances as you. They are in a new environment which is intriguing and a little scary.
In many cases, you are all also in a new situation regarding work. You will commonly find yourself training with others and you journey through the rocky terrain of learning to work in a foreign country together. It's a wonderful bonding experience at first and you make a lot of good friends this way. It doesn't hurt that, since you're all new to Japan, you're interested in exploring a great deal of what the environment has to offer.
When you first arrive, most of you are all in the same place emotionally, financially, and curiosity-wise. If you're lucky, the people you meet early on will stick around for awhile. It really does start to seem like journeying from childhood to puberty with your friends as you all start to go through the stages of infatuation, disillusionment, depression, and acceptance based on a more realistic view of Japan as time goes by. Those who remain for a half decade or more with you will have a lot in common with you.
The problem starts to occur when you stay behind and your friends move on. If you remain as a teacher, the influx of new recruits will be out of sync with you in regards to interests and emotional reactions to the situation you're all in. If you move from being in a language school to working in an office (as not too few people do including myself), you find your circumstances taking on a different and more complex set of variables that make finding a new network of friends difficult.
As is the case with graduation from high school, those who remain in the home town and those who move out and do other things will grow apart. The people I originally became friends with moved back home a very long time ago. We kept in touch for awhile but it wasn't the same and correspondence either faded away or fell apart.
In my office, I found a wonderful kindred spirit in my Australian boss. We were the only two permanent foreign staff members and became good friends. As I mentioned in my answer to the questions I was asked, we're still friends but getting together has become very difficult logistically. He works from 9:00-7:00 on weekdays. I teach privately from Wednesday to Sunday (in accord with my husband's schedule). Since my private lessons finish in the late afternoon or early evening on Saturday and Sunday, we only can get together on national holidays that fall on a weekday.
Once you leave the environments which facilitate friendships the best, you find that it's very hard to maintain them. I think this is both a part of life everywhere and a part of getting older. As people grow older, they lose the energy to chase down a few hours here and there with friends. This is much more so the case when the involved parties have to rely on public transportation to get around and when they tend to work overtime a lot.
If your work involves a lot of talking, it' so much the harder because you're drained and overtimulated. You want to go home and relax. You don't want to go out to a crowded and noisy restaurant or bar, sit in the secondhand smoke, and be served crappy over-priced bar food just so you can grab a few hours of chat with your friends. I know what it's like because I used to do it a lot in my first five years here. My friends and I are both too old for that now.
For me, my main in-person friendship is with my husband. I know that sounds cliched but my husband is the perfect best friend in addition to his other "bonus" characteristics. Even if I weren't married to him, I'd want to spend time with him talking and sharing my feelings about life. I'll be the first to admit that my desire to go out and find other friends is probably reduced because I'm very happy with him. It's hard to seek a meal when you're not very hungry.
Besides my husband, I speak with one or two friends back home via Skype on an almost daily basis. Ironically, it's logistically easier to have a friendship with people back home than in Japan because the time zone difference allows their free time to coincide with mine much more easily and they work more "normal" jobs.
One thing you realize is that whether you move on or not, your friendships will never be the same. While she maintained a blog about her time in Japan, a blogger named Tokyo Rosa (who has since removed her blog) mentioned that, upon returning to the U.S. after her stay in Japan (which I believe was one year), her friends had moved on with their lives and she didn't immediately have the energy to reinsert herself into their lives. Whether you're gone for a year or 18 years, people move on and apart pretty rapidly and it happens whether you're in another country or just another city. It's just a part of life.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Getting It All Back
Every year, people feel annoyed at the prospect of having to deal with the tediousness of filing their income tax forms. There is one thing worse than filing your tax forms and that's having to do it twice. I already finished my U.S. taxes and sent the forms off a couple of weeks ago but this past weekend my husband had to head off to the local tax office and file my Japanese taxes.
This is something I didn't have to do for many years because my company somehow took care of it. It wasn't until I stopped working that I had to do it myself for my freelance work.
In the U.S., people get several months to file their taxes but you only get one month in Japan (from February 15 to March 15). I'm guessing that might be one of the reasons why the local ward office's (wards are like little cities inside of Tokyo) offer a lot of assistance for free relative to the U.S. In our ward, my husband went to a place with about 12 tables seating 12-16 people each. There were about 15 "helpers" there who assisted people with their forms. The whole trip took him about an hour but he said most of that time was spent waiting for a helper to become available.
In general, the bureaucratic approach in Japan is a lot less mercenary than the U.S. It seems like they expect you to make mistakes even though their forms have a less complicated set of rules than the I.R.S. applies to their forms. I'm not certain but I don't think they have the same system of penalties that the U.S. has should you screw up. I think they'd just make you pay any extra tax if a mistake was found and possibly make you write a letter of apology.
In Japan, there is this "custom" of writing a letter of explanation and/or apology when you screw up official forms. My husband and I once forgot to go to the local government office within two weeks of getting our visas renewed. When we remembered about a month and a half too late, they just made us write out why we forgot and nothing more came of it. This is very fitting with the Japanese character. They don't want people to make mistakes but they don't necessarily want to penalize you strongly for having made them.
This relative flexibility has both drawbacks and benefits. In one way, it's a reflection of compassion and tolerance of human fallibility. In another, it allows for a lot of "case by case" consideration where prejudice can be selectively applied when judging people's mistakes. Because of this, you can never be quite sure where you stand when such issues come up though there is generally a good chance that you will be treated in a lenient fashion in regards to issues which involve dotting "i's" and crossing "t's".
In my case, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I'd made little enough last year that I would be getting all my tax money back as I'd expected only to get 50% back. The thing that I'm really looking forward to though is my tax information setting my health insurance and city taxes to levels commensurate with my current income. Since both of these are always a year behind because you pay nothing at all the first year, I've been spending from 1/2 to 2/3 of my small income on these two expenses for the past year now and it's been disheartening. Supposedly, the recalculation will occur after they get my tax forms and I'm really looking forward to feeling like I'm making money for something more than paying last years insurance and tax debts.
This is something I didn't have to do for many years because my company somehow took care of it. It wasn't until I stopped working that I had to do it myself for my freelance work.
In the U.S., people get several months to file their taxes but you only get one month in Japan (from February 15 to March 15). I'm guessing that might be one of the reasons why the local ward office's (wards are like little cities inside of Tokyo) offer a lot of assistance for free relative to the U.S. In our ward, my husband went to a place with about 12 tables seating 12-16 people each. There were about 15 "helpers" there who assisted people with their forms. The whole trip took him about an hour but he said most of that time was spent waiting for a helper to become available.
In general, the bureaucratic approach in Japan is a lot less mercenary than the U.S. It seems like they expect you to make mistakes even though their forms have a less complicated set of rules than the I.R.S. applies to their forms. I'm not certain but I don't think they have the same system of penalties that the U.S. has should you screw up. I think they'd just make you pay any extra tax if a mistake was found and possibly make you write a letter of apology.
In Japan, there is this "custom" of writing a letter of explanation and/or apology when you screw up official forms. My husband and I once forgot to go to the local government office within two weeks of getting our visas renewed. When we remembered about a month and a half too late, they just made us write out why we forgot and nothing more came of it. This is very fitting with the Japanese character. They don't want people to make mistakes but they don't necessarily want to penalize you strongly for having made them.
This relative flexibility has both drawbacks and benefits. In one way, it's a reflection of compassion and tolerance of human fallibility. In another, it allows for a lot of "case by case" consideration where prejudice can be selectively applied when judging people's mistakes. Because of this, you can never be quite sure where you stand when such issues come up though there is generally a good chance that you will be treated in a lenient fashion in regards to issues which involve dotting "i's" and crossing "t's".
In my case, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I'd made little enough last year that I would be getting all my tax money back as I'd expected only to get 50% back. The thing that I'm really looking forward to though is my tax information setting my health insurance and city taxes to levels commensurate with my current income. Since both of these are always a year behind because you pay nothing at all the first year, I've been spending from 1/2 to 2/3 of my small income on these two expenses for the past year now and it's been disheartening. Supposedly, the recalculation will occur after they get my tax forms and I'm really looking forward to feeling like I'm making money for something more than paying last years insurance and tax debts.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
What I Learned From Teppanyaki
My husband had a life in Japan without me before he had a life in Japan with me. He worked for a year in Kita-senju while we both conducted our romance at a distance by exchanging what I'm sure were hundreds of cassette tapes of ourselves talking. During that time, he socialized on occasion with students and got to know a few of them fairly well.
When we both moved to Japan together (after about a year in California and our wedding), one of his students who worked for a major car company took us both out to an expensive teppanyaki restaurant in a major hotel in Ikebukuro. This particular place specialized in steak much to my husbands delight and my complete indifference. The steak was grilled in little cubes and served with individually cooked slices of garlic and onion. I remember their scraping down the grill between rounds of tiny servings and artfully pouring oil over it with what resembled a tiny, fine-spouted coffee pot.
The chefs cooked everything with great care and to perfection and it was reflected in the price. My husband recalls that his student paid 22,000 yen (about $190) the first time around. We went back a few times on our own dime and it cost between $100-$140 and I wasn't exactly tucking in.
These days, we'd never spend that sort of money on a meal but that was when we were still willing to pay a premium to have a variety of cultural experiences. I did take something more than a lighter wallet (and a dissatisfied stomach) away from these meals. The way in which they prepared the garlic in particular stuck with me and I do my best to follow a similar technique to this day when I make steak for my husband.
I know I talk a lot about eating cheaply but every meal isn't about cheap chicken and ground meat. My husband goes to Costco every 6 weeks or so and buys a few packages of their relatively (about an inch) thick steaks. While it costs about 600 yen ($5.15) for an 8-10 ounce steak and that's no "cheap" meal, it's still about half of what you'd pay for about half as much steak at a Japanese shop or restaurant. You can't really hope to do better when it comes to having steak in Tokyo.
These steaks keep well in the freezer when we wrap them individually first in plastic wrap and then in foil. After an overnight thaw, they're ready for a turn in the frying pan. The element I carry over from the teppanyaki is the garlic preparation.
As preparation, take about 5 fat garlic cloves and remove the tips and the paper then slice them as thinly to make garlic chips. I also clean an onion and slice off two medium-sized slices.
Heat a large (empty) frying pan over medium heat until it is thoroughly hot then add just enough olive oil to coat it. (Note that Japanese chefs do not use olive oil. I believe they use soybean oil.) You don't want to overdo the oil because it'll saturate the garlic and make it soggy and be absorbed by the onions. Heating the pan first ensures that the smallest amount of oil will coat the bottom since the oil flows more freely when warmed.
Place the onions on the hottest part of the pan and scatter the garlic such that each individual slice is separated from the other. Here is where you have to exercise great care. Keep an eye on the garlic chips and turn them over when they are delicately brown around the edges. You'll have to turn each chip over at a different time since they will likely be different thicknesses and be on hotter or cooler parts of the pan. Cook the onions until they are caramelized on one side and turn them over.
Be very careful when you cook the garlic slices so as not to burn them in the least. Garlic becomes bitter if it is burned so it's always better to err on the side of making it too pale than too dark. Since the garlic essentially makes the meal (the chips are eaten with each bite of steak), you don't want to spoil it.
When the garlic is just browned on both sides, you can either remove it from the pan or you can push it off to the side so that it stays warm but no longer cooks. My husband prefers it warm so I push it out of the way and position the pan on the burner such that there is no direct heat under the side with the garlic. You then add the steak to the hottest part of the pan and finish cooking the onions. The nice thing about this is that the garlic has already flavored the oil in the pan so the steak is cooking in naturally flavored oil.
When the steak is done, remove the chips and blot them with a paper towel if they're a bit too oily. My husband loves this particular meal with a can of Kirin happoshu.
When we both moved to Japan together (after about a year in California and our wedding), one of his students who worked for a major car company took us both out to an expensive teppanyaki restaurant in a major hotel in Ikebukuro. This particular place specialized in steak much to my husbands delight and my complete indifference. The steak was grilled in little cubes and served with individually cooked slices of garlic and onion. I remember their scraping down the grill between rounds of tiny servings and artfully pouring oil over it with what resembled a tiny, fine-spouted coffee pot.
The chefs cooked everything with great care and to perfection and it was reflected in the price. My husband recalls that his student paid 22,000 yen (about $190) the first time around. We went back a few times on our own dime and it cost between $100-$140 and I wasn't exactly tucking in.
These days, we'd never spend that sort of money on a meal but that was when we were still willing to pay a premium to have a variety of cultural experiences. I did take something more than a lighter wallet (and a dissatisfied stomach) away from these meals. The way in which they prepared the garlic in particular stuck with me and I do my best to follow a similar technique to this day when I make steak for my husband.
I know I talk a lot about eating cheaply but every meal isn't about cheap chicken and ground meat. My husband goes to Costco every 6 weeks or so and buys a few packages of their relatively (about an inch) thick steaks. While it costs about 600 yen ($5.15) for an 8-10 ounce steak and that's no "cheap" meal, it's still about half of what you'd pay for about half as much steak at a Japanese shop or restaurant. You can't really hope to do better when it comes to having steak in Tokyo.
These steaks keep well in the freezer when we wrap them individually first in plastic wrap and then in foil. After an overnight thaw, they're ready for a turn in the frying pan. The element I carry over from the teppanyaki is the garlic preparation.
As preparation, take about 5 fat garlic cloves and remove the tips and the paper then slice them as thinly to make garlic chips. I also clean an onion and slice off two medium-sized slices.
Heat a large (empty) frying pan over medium heat until it is thoroughly hot then add just enough olive oil to coat it. (Note that Japanese chefs do not use olive oil. I believe they use soybean oil.) You don't want to overdo the oil because it'll saturate the garlic and make it soggy and be absorbed by the onions. Heating the pan first ensures that the smallest amount of oil will coat the bottom since the oil flows more freely when warmed.
Place the onions on the hottest part of the pan and scatter the garlic such that each individual slice is separated from the other. Here is where you have to exercise great care. Keep an eye on the garlic chips and turn them over when they are delicately brown around the edges. You'll have to turn each chip over at a different time since they will likely be different thicknesses and be on hotter or cooler parts of the pan. Cook the onions until they are caramelized on one side and turn them over.
Be very careful when you cook the garlic slices so as not to burn them in the least. Garlic becomes bitter if it is burned so it's always better to err on the side of making it too pale than too dark. Since the garlic essentially makes the meal (the chips are eaten with each bite of steak), you don't want to spoil it.
When the garlic is just browned on both sides, you can either remove it from the pan or you can push it off to the side so that it stays warm but no longer cooks. My husband prefers it warm so I push it out of the way and position the pan on the burner such that there is no direct heat under the side with the garlic. You then add the steak to the hottest part of the pan and finish cooking the onions. The nice thing about this is that the garlic has already flavored the oil in the pan so the steak is cooking in naturally flavored oil.
When the steak is done, remove the chips and blot them with a paper towel if they're a bit too oily. My husband loves this particular meal with a can of Kirin happoshu.
Monday, March 05, 2007
You Get What You Pay For
Hanamasa coffee...when they say "pro", they don't mean it in a good way.There are some things in life where price matters little because the quality isn't sufficiently important to most people to be worth the added expense and there are other things where the quality can be unacceptably poor unless you're willing to pay more. Two things where the latter is almost always the case are bread and coffee.
If you're trying to be frugal in a city with a high cost of living, it's a good idea to cut costs where you can. To that end, my husband picked up the bag of coffee pictured above at Hanamasa. It was 500 yen ($4.29) for 500 grams (about 1 lb.). For those who don't know Hanamasa, it's a store that sells food in bulk and caters to restaurants but anyone can buy from them. You find the word "pro" on a lot of their items because they want you to think that professional cooks or chefs use these brands. For all I know, they might.
This bag of coffee says the beans are 100% arabica beans. Coffee aficionados know that arabica are supposed to be good beans. The other type, robusta, is cheaper to produce since the plants grow more quickly and in climates that arabica beans cannot grow in. Robusta is frequently used to make instant coffee.
I had never actually heard of a "full city" roast (as is specified on the bag) before but apparently this is a moderate roasting level which allows both the flavor of the coffee bean and the roasting effect to come through in the coffee. Perhaps the roast is the reason we don't care much for this coffee or perhaps the cheapest arabica beans are used. I'm not sure but the coffee tastes too acidic and somewhat sour for our tastes.
What this coffee reminded me most of was the sort of mundane stuff you tend to get in Japanese restaurants. I guess that's no surprise since this is intended for restaurant use. In Japanese, it says "Classic Mountain". I think it's meant to fool people into thinking it's "Blue Mountain Blend" (which is the most popular coffee in Japan).
My husband and I tend to go for Starbucks Espresso from Costco which costs more than Hanamasa's coffee (though less than Starbucks bags at the shops). It is far more to our tastes. I wonder if there really is nothing wrong with this cheap coffee but just that he and I are used to relatively dark roasts. Somehow, I doubt that. It's unrealistic to think that cheap coffee is going to be great.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
An Atypical Day
When I was working, I used to hustle on and off the subway or trains every day. I usually read, played games on a PDA, or just sat with my eyes closed and tried not to think about all the chaotic surroundings or loud noises.
These days, I don't tend to travel much by train or subway but an unusual and unfortunate situation had me headed back along a familiar route to Nishi-Shinjuku station. My former company's former office (they moved to Kudanshita 2 years before I quit) was located there for 10 of the years I worked there so it was a path well-traveled over a thousand times.
My husband had ridden a bike to work today with the intention of riding it home and stopping at a bulk food store that is halfway between our place and his office. While he was at work, his back tire went completely flat. This is relatively suspicious because he just had it fully inflated at a bicycle repair shop 4 days ago. He wonders if someone who didn't like where he parked it let the air out.
The plan was for me to meet him in Nishi-Shinuku with a bicycle pump so he could pump up the tire and follow his original plan. Anyone who lives in Tokyo knows that you can't just leave a bicycle anywhere without having it nabbed by the parking police so he had to get it home one way or another. Unfortunately, it turned out the tire was damaged and pumping it up didn't help. That meant an hour and a half walk home for him while I took the subway back.
Since I hadn't been subjected to the (over)stimulation of the subway for awhile, I noticed things I didn't usually notice when it all jelled together into a loud, annoying mass during my commuting days. For instance, I noticed that an ad for a digital camera hanging in the subway carriage had a model with freakishly big eyes and unnaturally smooth skin. Both could only be the result of digital manipulation.
I noticed that a woman who rushed to hand a forgotten item to another woman who was getting off the subway returned to her exact empty seat even though she was alone and squashed between two strangers. She passed by several other empty seats and pushed past people who were standing rather than just take an easier to grab seat near the door. Her allegiance to that seat was curious.
When I got off the train, I noticed the swastika next to the word "temple" on a chart identifying landmarks in the area of the exit. This made me remember that I had recently looked up the swastika symbol on Wikipedia for reasons I can't remember and that it meant "lucky or auspicious object" and the word is likely derived from sanskrit. When I saw the symbol on the subway wall, I thought about how things are easily perverted and possibly misinterpreted. If someone who didn't know what swastikas mean in Japan (they are often placed on maps to indicate temples), would they think there was a group of Nazis here?
On the way home, I stopped off at a 99 yen store and noticed that a young mother in a white fur coat (it was 19 degrees Celsius/66 degrees Fahrenheit today) was blocking the aisle completely with her baby carriage while spending an inordinate amount of time meditating on which of the canned cocktails she wanted to buy to go along with a tiny container of cherry tomatoes and a sweet potato she bought at the counter. I noted the incongruity of someone in a fur coat shopping in the equivalent of a dollar store.
Experiences this evening seemed to move in slow motion and linger in my mind in a way they didn't when I passed by these same areas in the past. It shows how routine can turn life into a blur because you begin to shut things out rather than take them in. I had more of a sense of perceiving Japan in a fashion similar to how I did when it was all fresh and new for the first time in a long time.
These days, I don't tend to travel much by train or subway but an unusual and unfortunate situation had me headed back along a familiar route to Nishi-Shinjuku station. My former company's former office (they moved to Kudanshita 2 years before I quit) was located there for 10 of the years I worked there so it was a path well-traveled over a thousand times.
My husband had ridden a bike to work today with the intention of riding it home and stopping at a bulk food store that is halfway between our place and his office. While he was at work, his back tire went completely flat. This is relatively suspicious because he just had it fully inflated at a bicycle repair shop 4 days ago. He wonders if someone who didn't like where he parked it let the air out.
The plan was for me to meet him in Nishi-Shinuku with a bicycle pump so he could pump up the tire and follow his original plan. Anyone who lives in Tokyo knows that you can't just leave a bicycle anywhere without having it nabbed by the parking police so he had to get it home one way or another. Unfortunately, it turned out the tire was damaged and pumping it up didn't help. That meant an hour and a half walk home for him while I took the subway back.
Since I hadn't been subjected to the (over)stimulation of the subway for awhile, I noticed things I didn't usually notice when it all jelled together into a loud, annoying mass during my commuting days. For instance, I noticed that an ad for a digital camera hanging in the subway carriage had a model with freakishly big eyes and unnaturally smooth skin. Both could only be the result of digital manipulation.
I noticed that a woman who rushed to hand a forgotten item to another woman who was getting off the subway returned to her exact empty seat even though she was alone and squashed between two strangers. She passed by several other empty seats and pushed past people who were standing rather than just take an easier to grab seat near the door. Her allegiance to that seat was curious.
When I got off the train, I noticed the swastika next to the word "temple" on a chart identifying landmarks in the area of the exit. This made me remember that I had recently looked up the swastika symbol on Wikipedia for reasons I can't remember and that it meant "lucky or auspicious object" and the word is likely derived from sanskrit. When I saw the symbol on the subway wall, I thought about how things are easily perverted and possibly misinterpreted. If someone who didn't know what swastikas mean in Japan (they are often placed on maps to indicate temples), would they think there was a group of Nazis here?
On the way home, I stopped off at a 99 yen store and noticed that a young mother in a white fur coat (it was 19 degrees Celsius/66 degrees Fahrenheit today) was blocking the aisle completely with her baby carriage while spending an inordinate amount of time meditating on which of the canned cocktails she wanted to buy to go along with a tiny container of cherry tomatoes and a sweet potato she bought at the counter. I noted the incongruity of someone in a fur coat shopping in the equivalent of a dollar store.
Experiences this evening seemed to move in slow motion and linger in my mind in a way they didn't when I passed by these same areas in the past. It shows how routine can turn life into a blur because you begin to shut things out rather than take them in. I had more of a sense of perceiving Japan in a fashion similar to how I did when it was all fresh and new for the first time in a long time.
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