Excitement in the Work Place

Last night was one of those nights I was glad to turn up for work.  Of late the job has been a little bit hard to take, mostly due to management issues, which are a little bit complex, but I shall try to give a concise yet comprehensive rundown of what we’re dealing with.

As I’ve mentioned numerous times, the bar is owned by my landlady, an 81 year old woman, who has been running it for the past 53 years (which is impressive in itself).  She still comes to the bar almost every night, and sits, smiles and talks to the customers, showing them a photo copy of a newspaper article on the bar from a few years ago.

Effectively, the bar is now actually run by a 50 year old Chinese woman (although she looks a lot younger and first time customers are unlikely to escape the "guess how old I am" game - guesses are usually around the 30 mark, but I always hope someone will say 55), who has been there for the past 6 years.  She makes out the customers bills, tells the old woman how much to pay staff, and prepares the vast majority of the drinks.

The pair of them come together to make a team that is quite adept at ripping customers off, the Chinese one usually adding a few drinks on to the tab.  Unless of course the customers are Chinese, in which case they only pay for one drink, even though they’ve been at the bar all night.

Employment of staff is an interesting process to say the least.  I might have told you that I got the work when I went to look at the old woman’s apartments for rent, where she nabbed me and told me I had a job in the bar, starting that evening.  The old woman is always on the lookout for foreigners or attractive Japanese girls to work in the bar, as they go down well with customers (a hot favourite is Russian girls).  She very regularly grabs them off the street and tries to get them to come up to the bar to sign up part time, adding their names and numbers to a thick notebook that stays behind the bar.  The result, very often more staff than customers, as the bar can really only fit about twenty people on the customer’s side, and it’s rare to get that many.  It’s a farce.

When there are no customers in the bar we have to go out on the street and try to get customers to come in to the bar.   Targets are usually groups of businessmen, although I’m told my mission is to find cute girls and/or foreigners.  I don’t really have a high success rate, particularly now, as I don’t really try very hard any more, as I’m not prepared to lie to people to get them into the bar in order to get ripped off.  I do say that it is an interesting place, which it is, and that we have Karaoke – on Laserdisc; a technology that had completely passed me by.

When I started out I was told that I’d be earning about 600yen per hour (just under 6€ and quite a bit below minimum wage).  I wouldn’t have minded too much if they’d told me it was because I was new, or because I didn’t speak Japanese, but what annoyed me was the fact that they tried telling me it was because there was a problem with my visa.  In other words – codswallop.  There are other words, but we’ll leave them to your imagination.   I stuck with it, though, as the work wasn’t exactly taxing, I wasn’t looking to get rich and I saw it as a good way to pick up some Japanese.

The other staff that work there regularly earn perhaps twice my wages, and the girls that she drags in off the road are offered a much better starting rate of about 1000yen per hour.  That is also irritating. 

The Chinese woman, however, pockets 10,000 yen at the end of the night, for about 4-5 hours work.  If we don’t get many customers, our wages get postponed or withheld.  In a way I am lucky that I earn so little, as I usually get paid what I’m owed, whereas the others might never get it.

Right.  Not exactly concise, but a picture has been painted nonetheless.  In short, they rip off both staff and customers on a regular basis.

So, last night, I came in from my rounds on the street to find an Aussie guy in his forties sitting at the bar looking through the photos from years back.  He was looking to see if he was in any, as he’d worked there for a year and a half when he first came to Japan, 16 years ago (another one to have come on a Working Holiday and ended up staying, I’ve been meeting a few).  It was while he was reminiscing that my next-door neighbour stormed up the stairs and had a big barney with the old woman.  Apparently she had used her spare key to his apartment when he was out to go in and take one of his gallon drums of heating paraffin, which presumably at that moment was keeping us nice and toasty in the bar.  The police were called, by my neighbour, I think, and so they all went downstairs and spent well over an hour outside. 

I assumed that the matter had been sorted when the old woman came back up to the bar at about midnight, just as we prepared to leave, but I was surprised to find the guards were still sitting outside the front door in their car.  So I took the opportunity to take a few cheeky pics (with the camera that I finally got repaired after four practically pictureless months).  I’m not sure, but they may have been waiting for everyone to leave before they took her away, or maybe the Chinese manager was going to drive her to the station.  Either way, it was a long time before I heard her arrive at her apartment upstairs.

Overall it was immensely satisfying to see the events unfold first hand.

Approaching Winter.

As I mentioned in the last lengthy post, the first snow fell in Niseko last week.  On the evening of the same day, it also fell here in the city, and so I got a little taste of what the place will be like during the winter.  Bloody cold, that’s what.

I also got an idea of how the snow effects city life.

First of all, on the main streets the snow is cleared away from the footpaths, but in the smaller areas, like where I live, it builds up.  Added to this, the snow ploughs heap snow from the road up against the pavements. 

This all has the effect of making cycling pretty dicey, especially when one has no intention of investing in snow tyres.

Obviously, I no longer cycled on the road, as this would have invited quite serious injury or death, and, to tell the truth, I’m fairly certain that I can injure myself quite sufficiently on the footpaths that haven’t been cleared.  The two outings that I made when the snow was prevalent, were both undertaken with plenty of time to spare, and were more for research on the effect of the snow on one’s ability to stay upright on the bicycle than to get to work in a huge hurry.  The intelligence gathered from these expeditions will hopefully have given me enough knowledge of the white menace to avoid any mishaps in the event of another fall.

So far this is what I’ve learned:

• Do not try cycling through snow while negotiating a turn
• Dismount in areas where the pavement slopes from left to right, or visa versa, i.e. in any other direction than the direction you are cycling.
• High speeds should be avoided, as should sudden changes in direction.  Ramming snowdrifts is also ill-advised, though it may seem fun.
• Do not attempt to pedal from a standstill when the back tire is in snow – especially at pedestrian crossings and ESPECIALLY when there is a man in a suit standing behind you – to avoid wheel spin and resulting back spray.
• Brake in plenty of time.
• Cycling slowly is still faster than walking.

As for the apartment, it has, unsurprisingly, become increasingly cold along with the weather.  The stove still heats the living room nicely, although I’m running low on paraffin for it now, and I don’t know where to get more yet.  The bedroom, however, is generally freezing.  It had been the case that with several layers of blankets heaped up on top of me I was quite cosy, and changing at bedtime and getting into bed were the only issues.  However when the snow fell even the bed was no haven of warmth against the chill.  Last night I completed my migration into the living room, and from now on I only make brief polar forays into the other part of the house for clothes and such.

It’s not so bad though, as I have less than a month to go before I move to the ski resort, where I’ll be on proper wages (with a meal or two per shift), living in a warm house (albeit shared) with an internet connection, and snowboarding to my heart’s content (that is if I ever get around to buying a board).

Also, decided to try the internet in park outside my house again, and it's back working!  My luck is still in!

What a week!

Last week was, without doubt, a tremendous one.

Things started going well on Tuesday morning when I received a message saying that I had been one of three winners in an online competition to predict the date and time of the first snow in Niseko, the ski resort I’m heading to in December.  I now have a free meal for two in a fancy restaurant (well…I presume it’s fancy…although it IS called The Barn) when I arrive.  Boom.  Now all I have to do is find someone to go with me.  Although I have been considering the possibility of going alone and getting two meals, but there’s a limit to even my sadness.

So that put me in a good mood for most of the morning, or indeed, the entire day (although most will tell you that I’m a generally cheery sort anyway), and gave me something to talk about in the conversation café.

In my abundance of free time, I also set about completing my Halloween costume, which I had been doing on and off for the best part of two weeks.  I was planning on going as ‘Kaonashi’ or ‘No-Face’, a character from a popular Japanese animated film, Spirited Away, that I really like.  The idea was to do it on the cheap, which I managed, the most expensive thing being the material from which I was going to make the costume.  I started papier maché-ing the mask a few weeks earlier, so all I needed to do was paint that and boom.  All of the measurements were more or less done through guess work and by eye, and I spent more than 15 hours sitting or kneeling on the floor beside the low Japanese-style table in my living room sewing the thing together.  To be honest, I think the fact that the end result looked vaguely similar to what I’d set out to make was largely a happy coincidence.  While I worked I alternated between listening to my Learning Japanese programme on the computer and a variety of music.

Eventually on Friday I got it finished with less than 30cm left to sew before I had to go to work at the bar.   It was THEN that one of the girls I work with asked if I needed to use her sewing machine.  She was very lucky she wasn’t standing at the top of the stairs at the time.

Anyway, the conversation café Halloween party was on Saturday evening, and seeing as I had to cycle there, I brought the costume with me and changed in the bathroom.  Everyone seemed impressed with it, and I chose to believe that they were, and not just trying to spare my feelings.  The main flaw that was evident to me was the fact that at certain angles I looked like the silhouette of an enormous penis.  But nobody seemed to notice that until I mentioned it.

Another downside was the heat, as to give myself a bit of extra height I had a folded pillow sitting on top of my head (with a bowl on top of that, because otherwise the resemblance to a phallus was even more striking), which you can imagine made my head and ears quite toasty.

The work party finished up at around ten, not very long after the prizes for best male and female costume were announced.  I hadn’t even considered myself a competitor, as I thought that staff were exempt, added to the fact that there were other impressive costumes floating around, so I was shocked and stunned to hear my name called out, and to receive a bottle of wine.

I had had plans of heading to a bar in the centre where they were going to be giving a 10,000Yen (100€ give or take) bar tab for best costume, and chancing my arm there, but a crowd from the work party were heading for karaoke, so I thought I’d go with them for a bit, because everyone was having a good time, I’d already won something, and plus we figured the regulars would be the most likely to win anyway.  So off we went for perhaps two hours, where I chose my songs poorly, and afterwards I went to the club to see if I could find some of the gang from my other job.

Outside the club, I wavered, wondering if I could really be bothered putting the costume back on again to head inside.  But, just as I decided to go home, out came two of the girls from work, dressed as a dead maid and an equally dead nurse, who caught me and convinced me to go in.

After a quick change I went in and hit the dance floor.  Now, you may be surprised to hear this, but usually when I walk into a club, people don’t actually stop and stare, which is what happened this time.  People in close proximity (who I could make out through my peep-hole) stepped back to take the whole thing in (it could have been the pillow on the head which gave me and extra foot and a half in height which necessitated that extra distance) and it was invariably followed by compliments.  People made their way over to me to shake hands, and perhaps most strangely, girls were coming up to dance with me.

There is a raised platform (I suppose you’d almost call it a rather narrow stage, complete with a pole) which I was ushered onto by my friends, and we grooved around on that for a while.  And girls were still coming over and dancing in front of the stage, waving at me, etc.  I gave out some 'gold' (balls of tinfoil painted yellow), like the character does in the film, but I stopped that pretty sharpish after one girl tried eating it. 

After a while, the pillow was getting a little bit hot again, so I made for the door to get some air.  I was stopped on the way by one of the staff, who wanted to make sure I wasn’t leaving, because I was after winning the prize for best costume!!!  I didn’t even know they were holding a competition.  And the prize?  10,000Yen bar tab, baby!!!

As I’ve already indicated, chicks here seem to dig cartoon characters, and this became all the more evident when after a few hours I decided to leave the suit in the cloakroom.  I went back to the dance floor, and tried dancing with ladies I’d been doing pretty ok with less than fifteen minutes earlier and was met with a ‘who the hell are you?’ look.  The natural order of things, it would seem, had come back into effect.

The following day, Sunday, I met with a woman for a language exchange for the first time, as she’d responded to a notice I’d put on the board in the International Plaza in town.  She’d spent two months studying in Galway last summer.  I went to meet her for coffee in the station, and was told that she’d be outside Mr. Donut carrying a Penney’s bag.   Of course I was looking for a brown paper one, and not fabric with the floral pattern that she had, but she spotted me, so it was alright. 

After coffee (or juice in my case), and discussion about Fr. Ted, pubs, music etc, I asked her if she’d come with me while I wore my Halloween costume on the subway. 

This strange request deserves an explanation.  In the animation from whence the character I modelled my costume on originated, there is a scene in which both they and the main character take a train to visit a witch (you should really just watch the film), which I wanted to replicate, and seeing that it was Halloween, I thought it was my best opportunity.  I know many people who would have politely declined an offer to embark on such a venture, particularly on the first meeting, but this legend simply said, ‘OK’.

So off we went, and perhaps because it’s not the kind of thing I’d usually do, I really enjoyed it.  We bought a ticket for one stop, and then went all the way to the end of the line before taking the train back agan and getting off at the stop we’d paid for.  Along the way, we got a lot of laughs out of a lot of people, and many asked for photos with me.  In fact I thought we’d never get away from the last station when the beginning of a crowd started forming.  But it dissipated after a while and I removed the costume for the last time, its purpose now fulfilled.

Overall it was the close to a fairly amazing week, having gone from never winning anything (apart from that three-legged race with my cousin in the Banner Rose festival, Kildysart, when we were 11 or so – the trophy for which still holds pride of place on the windowsill in my bedroom), to three wins over the space of five days.  Let’s hope it lasts.

Interviews

Didn’t say much about it at the time, but about a month ago I went to Niseko, the best known ski resort in Japan, to suss out jobs for the ski season.  The majority of the hotels and businesses in the area are Australian owned, and the place gets a lot of foreign custom, mainly Australians, Chinese and Singaporean, so my beginner’s Japanese was not likely to be a problem.

The hitchhiking out took about two hours and I got dropped right in the middle of the main area.  The first guy that picked me up was one of the few travelling with children that has stopped for me.  Not only that, but, because the front seat was covered in various bits and bobs, he told me to get into the back beside his six year old son.  Not only THAT, but after about ten minutes he pulled into a convenience store parking area, turned to me, said “Wait a minute”, and disappeared into the shop, leaving the keys in the ignition, and me and the kid sitting there looking at each other.  He came back with drinks for all and we resumed the journey.  A really nice guy, but unlikely to win any parenting awards for that move.

Once in Niseko I began hitting the businesses, starting at the very top of the hill in the hotels etc. nearest the main ski lifts and working my way down.  The ones at the top didn’t need anyone, or if they did they were looking for someone who spoke Japanese.  This was true for most places until about halfway down when I got invited into an inn (Japanese owned) and offered a job on the spot, cleaning rooms etc.  I decided to keep asking around to keep my options open, as the pay wasn’t great in this particular place and free time to enjoy the snow would also be limited.  I would also have to buy a ski pass out of my own pocket which I really was hoping to avoid.

The employers I met during my job search were very helpful and even if they didn’t have any job openings for me they were more than willing to give me pointers on places that might be hiring.  The ones who were looking for people often invited me in for an interview, as most of the applicants they get apply online from abroad and so they don’t get to meet them in the flesh until after they’ve been hired and show up for work.

I couldn’t afford to print out a rake of CVs so I had one original that I’d printed at a friend’s house, and of which I’d made one photocopy.  It was only as I was handing this copy out that I realised that I had my Irish number on it instead of my Japanese one so I had to correct it.  Eek.  I told the rest that I had handed all my CVs out (which was true) and they all said it would be fine for me to email it to them. I’d also decided that I wasn’t going to tell any porkies during the interviews; I’d just tell it how it is and see how it went.  An example from one particular interview went as follows:

Employer:        So, do you have any bar experience?

Damien:           Well, I did a bar and restaurant course about three or four years ago, but I’m not going to pretend that I remember any of it now.

Employer:        I see…

Damien:           I also work part time in my landlady’s bar at the moment, but my job is more focused on talking with customers than serving drinks, so I don’t know if I’d even class that as experience either.

Employer:        Well, some experience is still better than nothing, you know.

Damien:           Hmm…I suppose so.

Perhaps not what one might call “selling yourself”.   You can imagine my surprise when I got an email from that employer last week offering me a position running the bar in his hotel.  I’d hate to see what the online applications were like. 

I had to decline this offer, though, as I’d already accepted a position in another company with three outlets – a bar, restaurant and café.   They have a few ski passes which are shared among staff, a reasonable salary and plenty of hours if I want them, which I will.  They also arrange shared accommodation, which is a little bit expensive – twice what I’m paying at the moment – but then again it’s a pricey area.

All in all, a day well spent, although I did think I was going to get stranded out there as the shadows were growing longer while I stood at the side of the road trying to thumb my way back home.  Thankfully, just as I was about to give up and try the train (oh the horror), two girls on their way home via Sapporo picked me up and dropped me off in town.

Quick update

Back again, just in case people were interested in how things went yesterday evening.

At first I thought I was going to be stood up, as she was late arriving at the bar, but eventually she showed up and we went in and took a seat by the window.  We ordered drinks and got talking…

…And she was entirely normal, granted a bit of a flirt, but not the dangerous, evil degenerate that you might expect if you were to believe what people say.  Overall we had a good laugh, and I stayed for three drinks instead of only having the one as I’d originally planned.  And best of all she wouldn’t let me pay for anything!

In short, another stereotype exposed, and we’ll more than likely head out again.

In other news, got a knock on the door the other day.  The water people.  Wondering how long I’d been living here for.   Genuinely got my dates mixed up and said I arrived at the end of September instead of August, so I might have got a free month, but it looks like I’ll be getting a bill of some sort soon enough.  If only I can hold out with the ‘lectric for another month and a bit, we’ll be alright.

Started working on my Halloween costume properly today as well.  The Conversation Café I work in is throwing a party on the 30^th and I’m trying to piece an outfit together now.  Can’t tell you what I’m going as yet, but I will say that I was papier maché-ing today for the first time in at least ten years.  I’ll also say that potato flour is no substitute for the wheaty variety for this purpose.  Doesn’t stick together at all!

That’s all for now, only a quick one today.

An Unexpected Voyage into the Red Light District

“…didn’t you know this was a transsexual bar?”

To be honest, I didn’t know, or at least not until about twenty seconds earlier when our new friend had introduced herself.  The relief was tremendous.  At first I’d thought it was a strip club.  I really hate strip clubs.

It all started towards the end of the night in my landlady’s bar.  Got chatting to one of the regulars, a successful businessman, who bought me a drink and was telling me how to make money off the internet.   Some other customers had treated me to a few glasses of wine earlier as well, so I was in good form and even agreed to have a lash at a song on the karaoke machine.  People here like to hear foreigners singing in English, no matter how untalented they may be.  He chose the song, Karma Chameleon, which I kind of knew and so belted it out good-o.  No one left, so I guess it can be classed as a success.

When things started winding down at work, he suggested that I accompany him somewhere else.  He’s invited me several times to go looking for girls with him after work and I’ve always declined as, well, it’s not really how I operate (although ‘how’ exactly I operate is a question which, to answer, would possibly require careful analysis of a manual which was foolishly discarded with the box I came in).  Since girls had not been mentioned, I figured that it might be safe enough to go on an adventure with him, as he was happy to pay for expenses incurred during the night.  Another regular, a Chinese guy my age, was also invited and so at 00:30 we left the relative safety of my bar…

…and made a bee-line straight for the red light district a few blocks away.  As we were walking there I had flash backs of the time in Greece when a new friend I made in the gym suggested we go to “a really great club he always went to, where all the girls knew him”, after we’d met in the bar for a few drinks.  But, thankfully, our first stop was a sushi bar which he usually goes to before a night out and where he treated us to a few portions of sushi and a beer.  It was alright sushi, but it certainly wasn’t the best I’ve had, even though it was by far the most expensive.  The food and conversation did, however, distract me and quell the rising dread that we were going to go to hit a strip club.  Which was why, when we left the sushi bar and walked straight across the road into another building, I barely had time to panic.  Nor did I have much time to examine the sign for the bar in basement level two, where our guide and sponsor was taking us.

When the elevator door opened we were greeted by a tall girl who led us to our seats.  A furtive glance around the bar revealed a different layout to the time back in Athens - no centre stage with a big pole in the middle and no semi-naked girls going from table to table.   There were tables and comfy seats, more like a restaurant than anything.

We were joined at our table by a friendly girl in a blue dress, and it was only as she made her introductions that I began to cop the kind of place we were in.  The moment of realisation must have been betrayed by some facial expression I made as it was then that she asked if we’d known what kind of bar it was.   Unfortunately, my Chinese companion didn’t understand what she’d said until much later, and only after enjoying a kiss over the table.  He took the news well, though.

As for me, I was simply happy that this probably meant that the girls would most likely be keeping their kit on, and I wouldn’t have to have some topless halfwit - hobbies: “sleeping” - sitting on my knee shouting “I LIKE YOU” into my face.  I was almost entirely right.

Presently our hostess excused herself as she and the other girls were going to put on a dancing show.  I sat back not sure exactly what to expect.  What followed was a series of performances in quick succession, which must have required some impressively quick changes of attire as each one demanded a different outfit.  The show itself was entertaining, although I could have done without the topless number.  Some of the girls were less feminine than others, but there were two or three that were practically indistinguishable from the real thing, particularly the one that sang solo in a big white dress (which is not the name of the song, before you ask).

When the show was over we were joined by two more girls, as well as our original friend.  One of the new girls was a little bit too drunk and loutish, but the other was fine.  Got to ask the first girl a bit about herself.  She was originally from Venezuela, but had been living in Japan for a long time.  She asked if I was single, and suggested that we date, assuring me that she was post-op.  This she had done in Thailand, and it means that she can never go back home to Venezuela as, although it’s fine to get implants and work done on your face, it’s against the law to surgically remove your…well…manhood, I suppose.  Her family is supportive and visits her here, or they go to the States to meet.

After we left that bar (for which the drinks bill had come to about 250€ after only being there for an hour), we headed to the night club and bopped around in there until the wee hours weren’t so wee and then went our separate ways.  Overall an interesting night.

As for this evening, I think I’m meeting the girl from Venezuela for a drink in town.  I think I’ve made it clear that we’re only going to be meeting as friends, because, being frank, she’s not my type.  I’m sure the question running through nearly everyone’s mind at this point is “Why is Damien meeting the Venezuelan transsexual for a drink?”  An excellent query, but the answer is difficult to explain, but I mean, it’s all very well for people to make passing comments about ladyboys being depraved etc, when they’ve never actually sat and had a chat with one, isn’t it?  I’m sure it can’t be easy, and she must have gone through a lot to get here.

I just have to be careful not to get drunk and make a pass…

Park Life

Apart from the general problem of deteriorating weather conditions, I have to say that I quite enjoy my trips to the park to use the internet.  Granted that occasionally, as today, it proves difficult to connect, but even so sitting out in the open air on my bench is more refreshing than being stuck inside my dirty house (which I really need to clean).  It also gives me a chance to peer over the screen occasionally and see the weird and the wonderful people that frequent the area, things I’d likely miss if I didn’t come here so regularly.

Let’s begin with the folks that would show up on a regular basis in my old park, which was kind of out of the way and not right beside the main road as my new one is.  Its secluded nature seemed to make it more hospitable for weirdoes (I mean more weird than people who sit in the park with a laptop for ages, often bringing their own chair), like ‘America numba waaaan’ man, that I mentioned in a previous post.  There was also the odd homeless looking chap that came in the mornings and patted the tree for twenty minutes.  It was always the same tree, the one that doesn’t grow straight like the others, but at about waist-height bends about 90° for twenty centimetres or so, before resuming with its upward journey.  It was always this horizontal section that received his attention.  After carefully considering the situation, and conferring with others, it has been decided that there are a choice of two likely conclusions, the first being that he’s a little bit strange and after some searching found this tree with a flat bit that’s nice to pat or, a second, and perhaps more impressive inference, would be that this has been a long term project for many years, beginning with a normal tree, which, through careful and regular patting has developed this strange shape.  What the intended outcome of the second option could possibly be, I have yet to find out, but I wonder how he would react if he were to find me patting the underside of the tree one morning…

On one occasion when passing through I saw a girl with a white rabbit on a leash, taking it for a walk.  A new concept for me.  As all the rabbit does is hop a bit in one direction and stop and do that nose twitching thing that rabbits do so well, and then hop in another direction and stop again, I can’t imagine it being too stimulating for the person walking it…unless a loose dog spots it.  Then things might get a little bit interesting.

The new park on the other hand has so far proved to be free from crazies and drunks, at least during normal park hours (morning to about 21:00).  It does, however, give me the opportunity to see what the latest fashion is for dogs.  Small dogs are quite popular in Japan as they’re easier to keep in the small living environment that is the typical city apartment, and people like to dress them up and take them out for walkies.  To be honest most of the ones I’ve seen here have been in functional wear, harnesses that attach to the lead but also have some sort of cartoon character or motif on them.  Elsewhere, on the other hand, I have seen canines in rain jackets, pants and t-shirts.  Why, I ask you!

The other night, while chatting on Skype, I looked around to look for the source of a trundling sound coming across the park, and my eyes fell upon a dog that had evidently had its spine broken, as its back legs were suspended in a frame and rolled along on wheels behind him as his owner walked him through the park.  He was also wearing a nappy (the dog, not the owner as far as I could tell) to prevent making a mess, I suppose.  He didn’t look too put out by his condition, although I can’t imagine how they bed him down for the night.

Finally I’ve also seen several miniature varieties of bigger dogs in my travels, including a miniature grey hound, and a miniature collie, both about a foot and a half high, but proportionally the same as their larger counterparts.  It can be a bizarre country.

The Weekend - Cooking and Fishing

Divided today's entry up into two posts because it was really too big for one.

Saturday, saw off my last CSer at 5am as she left to make her journey home to Russia.  I then went back to bed for a few more hours sleep before waking up at 9:30 so I could try to get my house clean for my cooking lesson at 11:00.

The cooking lesson has probably been my most genius idea ever (with the possible exception of ‘The Apricot Run’ game that we played while volunteering in Kefalonia – What do you do with an abundance of rotting fruit?  Pelt volunteers with them! – although they aren’t quite comparable).  Basically, I put a post on the notice board in the International Plaza in town offering my English in exchange for some other skill – dancing, martial arts, etc – and was contacted by a lady who was willing to teach me how to cook some Japanese meals.

When she called out with her friend she gave me two possible recipes to choose from: one for salmon; one for beef.  Seeing as I had a salmon fishing trip planned for the evening we went with that, so I’d know what to do with it when I got it back.  Hit the supermarket, went splits on ingredients and came back home and I observed while she and her friend got to work in my kitchen.

The recipe was ‘Chan Chan Yaki’ – more or less Grilled Salmon in Chan Chan Sauce.  So amazingly good, in fact possibly the best food I’ve had since coming to Japan.  And that’s saying a lot.

Later on I drove up to the Northern tip of the country with Norio san, who stuck by his word and brought me fishing with him.  The weather looked like it was going to be pretty miserable when we went to sleep in the car for a few hours, and it was still a bit wild when we got up at four.  We changed into waders and waterproofs (which he lent me) and waited in his friends tent for it to start getting a bit lighter out.  His friends are retired and have set up a very comfortable camp where they are staying for the two months of salmon season.

When we finally went out to catch a few fish I got to see how the operation works.  Basically, the banks on either side of the narrow river mouth were lined with about 30-40 fishermen, and salmon were getting pulled out en masse.  I managed to bag two modest specimens myself before the sun came up fully and they stopped biting (they only really bite at dusk and dawn).  Norio san had a big one right in at the shore before it broke free, and it was looking like he was going to be going home without catching any, but then he caught a nice sized female, which was a relief, because I didn’t want to show him up.

When I got home last night I hacked up both of my catches and have many of the pieces marked down as gifts as I’ll never get through them all myself.  Tried the Chan Chan Yaki that I’d been taught the day before, but I think I could have doubled the quantities of sauce as the fillet was a lot bigger than the one we’d been working with.   But it was still good.  Cooking it again for some friends tonight, so will see how it goes this time!

Think that’s about all from me,  must be off

Budgets and General Household Life

 Hmm.  Totted up my income versus expenditure yesterday and discovered I was only about 600yen (about 5.50€) short of breaking even since I moved into the apartment on the 26^th of September, and began earning.  Now, if I had had a normal working week this week, I would have been able to reclaim the outstanding yen in the week before the month was up.  However, due to an unfortunate and sinister coincidence, not one, but two public holidays imposed themselves upon me, which meant that for some reason my landlady took taken into her head to close the bar until Friday, whereas usually I’d be working a few hours most evenings during the week.  Damn ‘Respect the Elderly Day’ they won’t earn much respect from me with this sort of carry on.

I had worked out at the start of the week that if I was economic (by not spending money on luxury items such as food etc) that two days working in the Café, another two nights in the bar at the end of the week, and my one private lesson would leave me slightly better off than when I arrived.  My stocks would be sufficient to see me through, if it wasn’t for the fact that one of my CouchSurfers seemed to be on a similar budget, only he was using my food.  The others were all fine, mind, this one just seemed to lack a degree of social protocol.  I was treated out to a meal midweek by two of my surfers, but the beers afterwards (they did offer to pay for those too, but I wouldn’t let them – or at least not for all of them) pushed the target even further out of reach, despite the fact that I got a third day at the Café on Friday.

I was also supposed to work on Saturday night, but got randomly invited to go salmon fishing by a guy at the bar on Friday night, and I figured it was too good an opportunity to miss, so I took it off to drive five hours to the Northern tip of Hokkaido to the fishing ground.  More on that later.

If I’ve given the impression that I’m struggling financially, I’ve been misleading and apologise.  Granted that I’m not exactly flush at the moment, but I paid next month’s rent yesterday and have plenty left in the coffers to feed me.   I don’t get out all that much, but it’s all part of living the dream, eh?  This month will be more profitable as I have more regular hours as well as an increased wage in the Café for my second month.  I thought that my boss in the bar/landlady was going to be upping my wages as well or at least that’s the impression I got from the conversation we had the other night, but I appear to have been mistaken.  I think I’m going to demand/request better pay this week though. 

On the upside, it means I’m spending lots of time at home studying the Japanese writing system (two alphabets down, the last one is a slow process, but I’m getting there) also am trying to make it to as many of the free Japanese lessons held around the city as I can (although I’m currently averaging at one a week).

My House

My home, although a far cry from being my castle, is sufficient for me to live in to a degree of comfort.  I would say that it’s nice to have my own bed, but since I’m unable to sleep in it, or even stand near it because the dust around it results in an uncontrollable fit of sneezing, watery eyes and itchy skin, I have to make do with a futon on the floor.  I’ve tried hoovering the mattress, beating it with a stick outside (which raised a few eyebrows, whatever about clouds of dust), and clearing out the dust around the bed with a damp cloth (actually one of my surfers performed that last task as it was a bit much for me).  Still no good.  But sleeping on the floor is much more in keeping with the Japanese style anyway.

The temperature here dropped from the high 20’s to 15C almost overnight, and the house has become fairly cold.  I do have a paraffin stove that heats the place up very fast so I’m still nowhere near as badly off as I was in my apartment in Greece which had no insulation to speak of, tiled floors, high ceilings and killer black mould.  At least, not yet anyway, the mercury still has a way to drop before we hit winter temperatures.

Went on the search for a more comfortable internet location with my mobile office (basically my computer held by bungee cords on a table I rigged up over my bicycle basket) and found a new park about a block away.  What this park lacks in convenience (three minutes cycle instead of a stroll across the road) it makes up for with a better connection (a choice of two, in fact).  It may not have the personality of my local park, with attractions like the strange homeless-looking man who comes along and pats one of the trees in the morning and the irritating drunk old man who comes along and goes on and on about “America numba waan, UK numba waaaan….France no, Germany – Hitra no, Japan no, Hiroshima sad,” (America and UK number one, France is no good, Germany and Hitler are no good, Japan is no good and got taught a lesson by the States and the UK with the Hiroshima bombing – the last part is coupled by him licking his finger and dabbing tears onto his cheeks), but it does provide more or less undisturbed internet use.

My CouchSurfing hosting got off to a good start, had two guys from Poland arrive on the 2^nd of September and had people staying constantly for over three weeks after that.  My total so far is ten, and my last one left on Saturday morning.   For the most past I enjoyed their company immensely, some great stories and ideas floating around in the travelling community and I’d definitely recommend hosting if you’ve got the space/time/desire.  However that one guy from Hong Kong was very hard work, but I think I probably got him as some sort of Karma for being a git when I was in school.  I hosted him at the start of September and agreed to take him back later on in the month when he came back from WWOOfing, before I realised what I was getting myself into.  He arrived back in town on the 19^th and stayed in hotel in town that night.  However, he did call me saying that he would like to meet up for dinner.  I said that was fine, so out he comes to my place with a bag of five apples (which I appreciated as apples are a bit pricey) and then starts examining the contents of my fridge and asking if I have any pasta.  I throw something together for the two of us, he eats an apple while he’s waiting.  We ate and he hung round for a bit more, while I tried to ignore him and study some Japanese.  Eventually he left taking another apple with him for the road, and leaving the dishes for me.  What a guy.

Looks like I spoke too soon about the internet.  My new park let me down today.  Damn.  Back on the bike, standing on the side of the road.  Had one or two pics that I was going to add as well but that seems to be giving me trouble too.  Typical!

Waste Collection and Employment

A hectic few weeks have passed since my big move to Sapporo, and I haven’t really had the opportunity to keep everyone updated quite as much as I planned.  The main things that have kept me busy have been: work (kind of); becoming a CouchSurfing host; study (ish); and trying to get my head around the waste collection in Japan.

I’ll begin with the last one first, as that may take a bit of explaining to people not familiar with the “efficiency” of the separation of household rubbish.

Basically, while most of us in Europe are content to divide our rubbish up into ‘recyclable’, ‘non-recyclable’ and possibly ‘compost’ for organic waste, the Japanese go a step further.  Or, rather, several steps further, by separation waste into nine different categories.  These are: Burnable Waste; Non-Burnable Waste; Plastic Containers and Packaging; Bottles, Cans and PET Bottles; Branches Leaves, Grass and Weed Cuttings; Miscellaneous Paper; Pressurised Spray Cans and Gas Cartridges; Dry Batteries; and Bulky Refuse.

This division not only makes life awkward in terms of fitting several bins into an already limited kitchen space, but also results in a lot of time staring at an object that you are planning to discard and trying to figure out what bin it should go into.   Inevitably the trusty “Garbage and Waste Sorting Guide” needs to be consulted before making the decision, which is quite often an option that you hadn’t even considered.

An example?  Alright then, picture this - You’re writing and your biro runs out (you manage to catch it, but discover that it’s also out of ink).  You examine at the choices in front of you and reckon that it’s probably between ‘Non-Burnables’ or possibly ‘Plastic Containers and Packaging’ but probably the first one, right?  WRONG!  Ballpoint pens are, apparently, quite combustible and thus appear on the ‘burnable waste’ list, along with lunchboxes, rulers, SD memory cards, rubber and vinyl goods, clothing, blankets, leather and kitchen waste (basically compost).  Charcoal also comes under this heading, but, although I fail to see why you’d send your barbeque fuel off to an incinerator, at least that kind of makes sense.

Even when you’re fairly certain of where an item is supposed to go, it turns out to be less simple than anticipated.  A PET bottle (you’re average soft drink bottle), which appears in a category of its own, must first be de-lidded and de-labelled before being disposed of, and these are then placed in the ‘plastic containers and packaging’ bin.

Waste is collected every day of the working week, ‘Burnables’ on Monday and Thursday, ‘Plastics’ on Tuesday, ‘Bottles, etc’ on Wednesday and Friday alternates between the remaining waste types, with the exception of ‘Bulky waste’ which you have to ring a special team for and pay for disposal.

I have narrowed my bins down to three, as I had to buy them myself and I was sick of walking around loose supermarket bags of rubbish on the floor.  I chose ‘Plastics’, ‘Bottles etc’ and ‘Misc. Paper’, as these are the ones that I use most.  For my burnables, I’ve taken to keeping a small plastic bag on the sink for them, which I then dispose of in the bins at the 7/11 shop around the corner.

In other news, I’m juggling a few part time jobs at the moment.  Most frequently, I've working in my landlady’s bar - basically paid to get people to come into the place, chat with them and maybe get bought a few drinks in the process.  The wages are pretty rubbish, but I was told last night that next month they’ll be going up by a few hundred yen, which is good news, at least, if that was what she was saying to me.  Didn’t really like the work at the start, but now it’s alright, and it is a good way to pick up Japanese.  I do prefer the nights that nobody buys me any alcohol, though.  I work there most nights from nine until midnight, if it’s quiet, or later if there are a few knocking around.  I can take nights off whenever I like, they usually just ask the night before if I can work the following night.

Job number two is in a Conversation Café, where I work for three hours at a time making conversation with Japanese people who are interested in practicing their English.  The pay is alright, and the people are interesting.  It works on a rotational basis, people pay for an hour and join the table, and if they are newbies that invariably leads to introductions, which we’ve quite possibly covered already, which is a rut that I feel that I have to figure a way out of, so that we aren’t just repeating ourselves, which isn’t too stimulating for the rest of the group.  There are notebooks that we can jot things like vocab down in, or draw pictures to help customers understand if there’s a breakdown in communication.  I have come across some pretty complicated words in there from past conversations, which have made me feel like I’m not really covering the same ground as the other ‘conversationists’ for want of a better title.  But I enjoy the work, and have now been given an extra day per week (making it two days), which is good.  My wages will increase there in month two as well.

Finally I have also taken on a private language lesson which I have once a week for one hour.  It’s just a conversation lesson, although now she wants to go over some grammar points as well, so that’s going to be fun.  The pay could be better, especially as I meet her in a café and so have to shell out for my own coffee (or orange juice), but it’s good experience, and she seemed happy enough with the first lesson, so we’ll try to keep that going.

My free internet in the park seems to have vanished, I think they got wise to my antics (me and three of my CouchSurfers lined up on benches and foldy chairs probably hastened the outcome, but it was good while it lasted).  I’m hoping that it’s just a temporary lapse though.  It means that I have to wander further down the road to the traffic lights, and use the internet from some company or other.  I think I can only do it outside of working hours, though, as one of the guys got chased away from there the other day.

I think that’s probably enough talk for now.   More to come.

Rice Farming - as promised

Right, once again nearly a month has passed since my last post, but I’ve moved into an apartment now and so hopefully there’ll be a lot more time to type up something quickly.

Of course I don’t have the internet I was promised when I moved in, so I’ll have to type everything at home and then stroll out to park across the road to scab off a neighbour’s unsecured wireless connection.

So before I tell you about what’s happening now, I should probably let you catch up on a few things, starting with the promised depiction of the work on the rice fields.

Rice fields

 Job one – Grass and Weed trimming

The first thing that needed to be done in the rice field was to trim the banks around the edges of the field (my host, a smiley man named Yuhei, did this with a strimmers with a big metal blade that had no guard around it, so I was a bit nervous if he was attacking the grass nearby).  I followed with a rake and flung the cuttings around the field, trying to spread them out as much as possible.  On one of my first days I raked up a snake, who wasn’t best pleased, but Yuhei deftly flicked him into the field with his rake.  He then told me that some of the snakes bite.  I don’t think they were supposed to poisonous though, but I was always wary of them after that, although I didn’t see many after that. 

Once the grass had been cut and distributed around the paddy, Yuhei opened the irrigation channel to the field, redirecting the flow of water and it would start to fill up.

Job two - Cultivating

After the cutting, spreading and flooding of the field Yuhei would go out and cultivate it.  This involved heading down with his tractor to drag a machine with big spinning blades around the paddy, breaking down the grass and weeds and sticking them in the mud under the water.  This was usually done a few days later after the first task, although I’m not sure if this was because of time management or because the weeds needed time to break down.

I never got to drive the tractor.

Job three - Planting

The next mission was to plant the rice.  This could be done with any number of machines, each farmer I saw planting seemed to have their own mad looking contraption, from big beasts of things that could plant twelve or more rows at a time, to more modest ‘drag-along-behind-the-tractor’ affairs which could plant six rows or so.  In our case we had a little push-along yoke that looked like someone had taken the handlebars of a scooter and an outboard motor and stuck them at either end of a device that looked like an instrument of torture, which allowed us to plant four rows at a time.

The procedure for rice planting is as follows:

·   - Load up the planting machine with trays of rice seedlings (perhaps 500 or so seedlings per tray).   One tray is fed into each of the four planting mechanisms at the back of the machine, while others are placed on shelves on the top, as replacements.

·      -   Find a stupid foreigner and give him a fistful of loose seedlings and tell him to follow after you as you push your planter along, sticking the seedlings in the ground wherever the machine has missed.

·      -    Make sure that the machine misses as many places as possible to keep your help bent double for hours, wading through the muck and trying to place the seedlings in line with the machine’s rows.

·       -   When you’re finished planting by machine, grab a tray of seedlings yourself and start filling in the gaps left by the machine as well.  It’s very important that you go two to three times faster than your stupid foreigner, while at the same time seeming to move more slowly.  They'll really feel stupid then.

We also planted rows of seedlings the traditional way (no machines) on two occasions - once to show a group of school kids how it was done and a second time as a day out for families from the city.  This requires several people, each brandishing bunches of seedlings, standing along a length of rope which is pulled taut across the width of the paddy.  This line is has markers (in this case red tape) evenly spaced along it, at about 30cm apart, the idea being that each person takes their seedlings and places one at the points indicated by the marks, thus ensuring that the rice plants are evenly spaced.   Each person might be planting anything between four to six rows or more, depending on how many people you have and the size of the field, etc.  When one row is completed the people on each end of the rope move it forwards (or backwards, it depends which way you are working, as we went forwards the first day and backwards the second day.  I preferred backwards for some reason) 30cm, again to space the seedlings evenly.  It’s quite a simple concept (although I’m not sure how well I’ve explained it), and it doesn’t really take a master mind to catch on – thankfully. 

 BUT...

Both times that I was working in the fields in this way the woman on my left (I don’t know if it was the same woman as they tend to wear big straw hats, sunglasses and towels or handkerchiefs or whatever over the lower part of their face, I think to avoid the heat of the sun or to avoid getting a tan) started planting between the bloody markers.  Now whatever about the lady who did it on the second day (who may or may not have been the same person or otherwise a townie) the woman on the first day was the paddy owner’s wife (not my host, different farmers).  Although the first day annoyed me a bit as it looked like I had made a bit of a mess of my work as well, it wasn’t so bad.

HOWEVER...

On the second day we did it, not only did the spa on my left start planting between the lines, but the guy on my right, who was planting on the marks started planting in my rows, which meant that I started edging towards the left.  Perhaps half way through the work I looked along the field and realised that gradually I’d been landed right in front of the dipshit’s work.  It was SO annoying, honestly I felt like hitting the guy beside me and pushing the stupid woman into the ground at one of the red markers so that she might see how to do it right.  But you can’t really do that kind of thing here.  Well, I suppose you wouldn’t really get away with it at home either.

Anyway, by the time we had reached the end of the field Yuhei had come along and stood between me and the offender on my left, although I’m not sure if it was to correct me in my work, or because he saw that she was in danger of being strangled.  In any case, I felt happier knowing that he could see I wasn’t the one making an absolute hames of the thing, because I was sure he’d thought it was me the last time.  The place was a mess though.  Now I know why traditionally women stayed home and cooked the dinner...

Job Four – Release the Ducks!

Yup, that’s right, ducks.  Not all farms are into this, but, being an organic farmer Yuhei subscribed the ‘Aigamo Method’ of rice farming.   This involves breeding Aigamo ducklings, which you release into the paddy after you have planted it and fenced it off (with nets repaired for hours on end by none other than my good self - a 50m roll of netting takes about three hours to stitch back together, on average and I reckon I did about five or six rolls or so).   The ducks then swim along contently between the plants all day eating all the nasty weeds and insects and fertilising the field a bit at the same time.

For more see http://web-japan.org/trends01/article/021022sci_r.html

And that’s about all I got to do in the world of rice farming, harvesting will take place at the end of the month but I won’t be at that at all.  Shame.

Coming soon...

Hiking in Diasetsuzan

Back to the Real World – Apartment-Hunting, Study and Work in the Sapporo