All Posts from the Settling in Category
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Uh oh….
Well, it had to happen sometime. All the euphoria, the excitement, the shopping, the food, the nightlife (if the ferry chugging back and forth in the dark constitutes nightlife) and the doughnuts — it all came crashing down on me last week.
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Last week was a Bad Week.
These are the reasons why it was a Bad Week:
• The work flow slowed down, which is always slightly unsettling for a freelancer;
• I was in the latter stages of a book called We Have to Talk about Kevin, which though well-written and thought-provoking is unrelentingly bleak and frankly depressing;
• The dreaded after-school club activities started at Ruby’s high school, keeping her out until five every evening much to my indignance;
• Just as the weather was warming up nicely, Japan experienced a sudden and unexpected cold winter snap that somehow made everything appear cold and grey; and
• The Sushi on a Stick household very nearly ran out of money, due to a combination of over-zealous shopping and poor financial planning.
The experience of our very own micro-GFC in particular put a dampener on things; it’s kind of hard to get the most out of adventuring in Japan when you haven’t got the yen for it.
And when you have a Bad Week, there’s always those pernickety thoughts lurking in the back of your mind: Have we done the right thing? Should we have stayed at home? Was it all worth it?
Because this adventure was very much a matter of choice. It wasn’t an overseas posting for a multinational company or a forced relocation for work reasons. We arrived here entirely of our own free will, and therefore we could just as easily go back of our own free will if we felt like it.
Of course, the reality is somewhat different, and barring a major medical calamity or some sort of equivalent there’s no way we are going to turn around and go home having only just gotten ourselves settled in. There’s so much more to see and do, and besides, there’s the small matter of the two-year lease we have taken out on this house.
In any case, I’m pleased to report that this week has been a Much Better Week; the weather has improved, I get paid in a few days, and in other exciting news, Eleni has just been given her first English checking job, which should provide a few more yen for adventuring. At the moment we have one computer downstairs and one upstairs, which leads to moments of high farce when Eleni and I occasionally send emails to each other within the house. Once we even traded comments on Facebook when we both happened to be on at the same time. Isn’t technology great at bringing families together. We might try Skyping each other next. -
Soccer graduation
On Saturday Ruby officially graduated from the local soccer club.
Hang on, I hear you say, surely you don’t graduate from a soccer club?
Well if you’re in Japan, where they love nothing more than a good ceremony, then yes you do. The end of primary school graduation is a truly major event (hear what Ruby has to say about rehearsals for her upcoming graduation here) and the soccer club likes to follow suit. And because few of the kids will be sticking with soccer, given all the club activities they are expected to undertake at high school, the soccer graduation really does represent the end of an era.
Thus it was that Saturday’s normal training session was followed by a little ceremony in which the director and president gave speeches, each of the coaches gave speeches, the graduating kids gave speeches… there were lots of speeches. And then there were presentations. They even made each kid give their parent a flower to say “thanks for taking me to training week in week out for the past six years.” I do believe that’s the first time I’ve ever been given a flower by anyone, let alone my daughter. (Not that she thought of it herself; and as we all know it’s the thought that counts.)
I should at this point give some background about the club. It’s called Mihara UFC and it’s a small club with probably not more than 100 kids, as befits a town of about 100,000. They train on Wednesdays and Saturdays, with additional futsal training/matches on Monday and Thursday nights for the super-keen. (We’re not quite at that stage yet.) There isn’t a defined season with matches every week and league ladders and an eventual champion; instead, they train all year round and once or twice per month they organise all-day round-robin competitions with nearby teams, usually called the Something-or-other Cup. Ruby’s first match is coming up on 20-21 March (a two-day affair, although if you get knocked out on the Saturday you don’t both turning up on Sunday), and Felix has his first one on April 24.
Like any local soccer club, Mihara UFC is basically run by volunteers, including all the coaches. It’s obviously a more informal environment than the primary school, and this has provided Ruby and Felix with a vastly different challenge in terms of settling in: given that there was no formal introduction by the school principal, the other kids pretty much ignored them at first simply because they didn’t know what to do with them (or if they could speak Japanese). But this impasse didn’t last too long. Felix, as you might expect, zoomed right in without a care, but Ruby, as you might also expect, took a while to come to grips with the idea of playing in a team of boys. Then she warmed to the idea. Then we discovered that there was in fact another girl who must have been away. Then Ruby decided that she wanted to be the ONLY girl in the team, before finally deciding that she might be able to accommodate another girl after all. (Such a princess.)
In any case, it all changes again when the new school year kicks off in April. With so few of the Grade Sixes expected to return, those that do stay on are nominally lumped in together in what’s called the Youth team. So Ruby will be playing alongside boys from Year 7 (her compatriots) as well as years 8 (including the Other Girl, who is called Momo and is actually very nice), Year 9 and possibly Year 10. She’ll have to really run hard and learn to push them out of the way if she wants the ball.
In other exciting news, the Mihara UFC director has entered Ruby in an all-girl team that’s associated with Hiroshima Sanfrecce, the local J-League team. In other words it’s like playing for the U13 Girls division of Melbourne Victory. As you can imagine I’m very excited about this. Training is on Friday nights and involves a train ride to a nearby town. Momo is also in this team so the two of them can catch the train together and become firm friends and all that soppy parent stuff.
Stay tuned for a full report on this weekend’s Whatever-it-is Cup…
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One month anniversary
Friday 19th February marked the one month anniversary of our Japan adventure. Although we’ve only been here for a month (actually six weeks for me but let’s not split hairs), it feels like ages, so in that sense you could say we’ve settled in.
With the kids now firmly ensconced at school, the initial honeymoon period has worn off and it’s now life as normal. Not that getting up at six in the morning is normal; I don’t imagine I’ll ever get used to it. The end of the honeymoon period is defined by the simple fact that we hardly ever get to go to Mr. Donuts any more, what with school and soccer practice and the need for early nights. Just as well we managed to pick up a full set of mugs during the first couple of weeks, when we were in there just about every day.
I’ve been inundated with work over the past few weeks (the lead-up to the end of the Japanese financial year on March 31 is always a busy time, with government departments eager to use up their budgets on useless things like translation of obscure documents). Eleni isn’t working yet, on account of she has to go back to the Immigration Bureau in Hiroshima to fill in yet another form asking for permission to work. Happily this is (touch wood) a simple procedure and she plans to do it this very Thursday, possibly fitting in a spot of shopping in the big city while she’s at it.
The upshot of Eleni not working is that she has had heaps of time on her hands to scour her recipe books, trawl through the local supermarkets and cook up some excellent meals for the rest of us. We have been eating very well as a result, and I’m feeling the pressure of when Eleni finally finds a job and I have to start producing some food myself.
The other main change that marks the end of the honeymoon period is that the bills have started coming in. The first gas bill was a rude reminder of the high cost of utilities in Japan, although the electricity one wasn’t too bad. Soon there will be local taxes and National Health contributions to pay, and not long after that it’s Income Tax Return time! (Not that there’ll be much to contribute to the Japanese government this year, since I’ll have only been officially working for two months.)
The flipside of being legal is that we get child benefit support (a couple of hundred bucks a month, although the government is talking about raising that further) and we also get to enjoy very generous hospital and dental benefits courtesy of the local version of medicare (would you believe: I got a full crown for my tooth the other day for about $80 all up).
And in a broader sense it’s nice to be all legal and settled and just experiencing the minutiae of daily life like everyone else. After all, that’s what we’re here for.
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Wired
It’s official: finally, we’re on line, and what a wonderful feeling it is too.
Consider the contrast: on Thursday afternoon I had no internet and no phone (my pre-paid card having run expired dramatically in the middle of a high-tension phone call to the immigration office) and was feeling completely cut off from the world. In addition to having to take the laptop off to the internet cafe (15 mins by car) every day just to check my emails and finish off my work, I had to walk up the road to the local phone box (8 mins by foot) just to make a bleeding phone call. I was pretty grumpy on Thursday.
By last night, I was surfing the internet on a super-fast 100 Mbps optic fibre connection, with the choice of a home phone and the trusty mobile phone to fulfill all my communication needs. (We even have receivers for upstairs and downstairs, so that Eleni can ring me to say, “O honey, your hot cooked meal is ready on the table!”) After the cable guys left, we celebrated by Skyping some friends back in Melbourne and providing them a walking tour of the house via the laptop. I watched the soccer highlights. Ruby spent ages on Facebook. Felix checked out his favourite YouTube bloopers and Eleni shot off a few emails. We called the mobile phone from our shiny new home phone, just because you can. And the internet is unlimited usage in Japan — download limits simply don’t exist here — so over the next two years I plan to become a download junkie.
And next month, we’re going to get optic fibre telly with 22 channels!
Last but not least, the internet provider has the wonderful name Mega Egg (it’s true! If you don’t believe me click here).
Although funnily enough there were actually a couple of advantages of not having the internet on:
1. It stopped me wasting time checking out the soccer highlights and reading the newspapers
2. It got me out of the house at least once a day.It’s quite possible that with the kids away ten hours a day, Eleni off at work (if/when she gets a job) and unlimited internet and 22 channels at my fingertips, I could well turn into a techno-recluse and lose the ability to relate to people. I guess I’ll just have to schedule regular cakie runs to the nearest 7-11 to keep up my fitness and my social skills.
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Not so fast, sonny
Just when you thought it was safe to go to the Immigration Office and get your visa changed…
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On Wednesday I get the official bit of paper from the immigration lawyer giving me permission to stay for three years. Now it’s just a simple procedure to go to Immigration and get the stamp in the passport. But the guy says I should ring them just to be sure.
So on Thursday I ring the guy to ask what time they open on Friday morning. I want to be there nice and early to get this over and done with.
But guess what… now he wants ANOTHER bit of paper from ANOTHER translation company, despite having been supplied with no less than five different official contracts and letters of recommendation already. Cue frantic phone call to immigration lawyer in Tokyo. Just to add to the tension and excitement, my mobile phone credit runs out right in the middle of the protracted shenanigans, necessitating a trip up the road to the local phone box, only to find that it doesn’t work and I have to go to the one further away up by the post office.
Luckily the Tokyo lawyer manages to sort it all out by offering to write the Immigration Office yet another letter explaining how they’re too stupid to understand their own procedures (or words to that effect). This duly arrives by express post over the weekend and Eleni and I are off to Hiroshima on the bullet train tomorrow to Get Legal (him) and Find Some Really Big Department Stores (her).
But I guess I’d better not count my chickens quite yet. Who knows what might happen next. -
I’m legal!
It’s been a huge week for the Sushi on a Stick household.
First of all we got the exciting news that THE INTERNET IS COMING. After gearing myself up for another whole month of lugging my laptop to the internet café every day, the man rings up to say they’re coming around on Sunday. Thus we will be up and running less than four weeks since I put in the application. Incredible. (And it only serves to vindicate my theory that it’s always best to lower your expectations at the outset so that you can be pleasantly surprised later on.) Ruby in particular was over the moon when I told her, and I imagine she’ll be up all night on Sunday updating her Facebook page/blog/msn/twitter etc etc.
While I was still recovering from the shock of this announcement, the visa consultant guy from Tokyo rang me to say that the good folk at immigration down in Hiroshima City have deemed me worthy of residing in their fine country here for a whole three years. Eleni and I are going to catch the bullet train down tomorrow morning to get the relevant stamps in the passports and then we will finally be legal, which is a major relief because… well because you Just Never Know with immigration authorities do you. They love nothing more than a flimsy pretext to boot you out of the place. Come to think of it, I’d better not murder anyone or commit fraud within the next 24 hours just in case.
Having our proper visas means that;
• I can get a proper mobile phone contract in my own name at last
• Eleni can start looking for work in the school system
• We can join the health insurance system (equivalent of Medicare but includes dental cover–yay!)
• We can get child allowance benefits (bonus!)
• Plus a whole lot of other procedural thingies that I can’t quite recall right now.So it’s all come together in one glorious week and now the adventure begins in earnest. The kids are settled at school, we’ve discovered lots of great shops and supermarkets, we’ve tracked down a soccer club, we’ve been for some lovely walks in the mountains and we’re steadily checking out the local eateries.
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Meanwhile the first major local festival of the year, called Shinmei-ichi, is coming up on February 14th and I am also off to watch the sun rise from the top of a nearby mountain that morning with my new friend Mr Nishihara who I met in the yakitori bar that time (see story here). -
Japanese school facts
I plan to write heaps about the school experience over the next few years because it’s a subject that fascinates me. To start off with, here are some basic facts about the local primary school at Sunami.
• First of all, the official website is here (Japanese only obviously, but a nice picture of the cherry blossoms in bloom).
• The school day starts at 8:10 and finishes at 4:00, except on Wednesdays, when they finish at the outrageously early time of 3:30.
• Currently there are 131 students altogether in Years 1 through 6. Class sizes are 20-25, which is small by Japanese standards. There is also a kindergarten on the site with 20 tinies.
• The school has a huge yard covered in packed sand (Lilydale topping?) like on the Tan around the Botanical Gardens. (Grassed areas are rare at schools and in public parks in Japan.)
• There is an impressive indoor gymnasium with a stage down one end, and even an outdoor pool that will open up in about June.
• Every day after lunch the kids all have to help clean the school. Each class has allotted duties; I don’t know what Felix’s class does but Ruby’s class has to clean out the toilets!
• They get cooked school lunches every day.
• There is no such thing as playlunch, so in the morning we must feed them up properly so that they can last until the cooked lunch arrives at 12:40.
• There are six periods in the day, and between each period the kids get to run outside for ten minutes to stretch their legs.
• They don’t have to wear school uniform.
• During winter (ie now), they don’t turn on the heaters in the classrooms unless the outside temperature is below 10° C. Most of the kids wear massive fluffy coats with furry collars while studying at their desks.
• The kids have to take off their shoes at the entrance and put on special school slippers called uwabaki. At lunchtime and for outdoor sports, they put their outdoor shoes back on again.
• Felix was rapt to discover that there are enough boys of his age who like soccer to form two teams at lunchtime. There are even goals in the playground.
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First day at school
Just saw the kids off for their first full day of school this morning, following an extended initiation period.
Eleni and the kids arrived in Japan on Tuesday night. On Thursday morning, we went in to introduce ourselves to the principal and the kids were paraded in front of the whole school and did their little introductions (so brave! we were so proud!) before spending a couple of hours in their new classes.
Then on Sunday it was the annual school festival for New Year (read about it here) which finished nice and early at about 2:30. Monday was a holiday for our school (see, it’s “ours” already), to make up for the enforced attendance on Sunday (what a bonus! take part in a festival and get a day off). Tuesday was their first proper day at school, although we squibbed out a bit by driving them in and picking them up.
Today, however, they’re walking to school with the official walking group. And this is what I mean by the first full day, because it really is a loooooong day. The Japanese primary school day begins at 8:10 and finishes at around 4:00, so it’s already an eight-hour day, not six and a half like we’re used to in Australia. But because our section of Sunami is furthest away from the primary school—at least in terms of the route taken by the walking group—the kids have to be out the door at 7:00 and don’t get back until around 5:00. That’s a ten-hour day, every day.
The walking group, incidentally, is obligatory; it’s simply not the done thing to get driven to primary school. (Some parents apparently do drop their kids off on the odd occasion, but everyone has to pretend not to notice.) And it’s certainly a good way to build up fitness, hiking up and down the mountains twice every day.
But it does mean that we all have to get up at 6:15 (except Eleni who, shall we say, is not at her best in the morning). Felix is naturally an early riser so it’s not too bad for him, although 6:15 is pretty early even by his standards. Ruby is naturally unimpressed with this, the latest in a series of cross-cultural disappointments, having only recently come to terms with the fact that that we won’t have the internet on for another five weeks. (Although daily trips to Mr. Donuts have gone some way to alleviating the pain.) In any case Ruby will in a couple of months be moving up to high school, which is just 12 minutes up the road, plus there’s no walking group so she can leave when she likes. And Felix, being naturally much more active, should relish the exercise.
Nevertheless it will be interesting to see what time they collapse into bed tonight after such a long day.
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The adventure begins
The family has been here less than a week but already it’s official: Japan is fully sick.
On Day 1 we went to the local council and did all the applications, then repaired to Mr Donuts for a celebratory morning tea (strictly two doughnuts each). After that we did a quick spin around the shopping centres to pick up some new pants for Gigi—because tracksuit pants are a bad look in pubic, let alone in public in Japan. And we bought a bike for Gigi because one of the shopping centres was having a sale and flogging off brand new bikes for $100. Even though he won’t need a bike for several months at least, it was too hard to resist. Our first week here has been kind of like that.
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Since the kids aren’t at school yet, and since I haven’t got any work on at the moment, and since the house is still lacking in many things, and since Japan is just the best place ever for shopping, you can guess what we’ve been doing all day every day since we got here. The only other thing we’ve done apart from shop, and eat beautiful food, is go religiously to Mr Donuts every day. If you buy enough doughnuts and get enough points, you can trade them in for a very cute little coloured Mr Donuts coffee mug. We have three already, and are angling for a fourth to complete the set. Ruby worked out that each mug is the equivalent of about ¥5000 ($55) worth of doughnuts. I don’t think it would be quite that much, but you get the idea — we like them alot.
Other than shopping and doughnuts we’ve been catching up with our good friends Yusuke and Yoko and their two kids, and on Sunday we even hopped on the ferry and went to the next island and stumbled across a rather nice temple. Here’s the evidence:
Once we get into the school routine things will settle down, but for the moment it’s all about the excitement of discovery. And doughnuts. -
SCOOP! First pics
Hi all. I’m in a tearing hurry right now—the family arrive tonight and I’ve got to get the place super clean and everything—but here are some pics taken on my fancy new Japanese mobile phone.
Excuse the silly grimace, but it’s actually quite hard to take a photo at arm’s length while trying to get your head in the frame. Or at least it’s hard for me.
In no particular order:
I went skiing on Sunday (see story here).
Last night I cooked my first meal in our new kitchen, and there was so much left over that I was able to have a self-home-cooked Japanese breakfast the following morning. Packed full of crunchy goodness!
My preferred venue for breakfast on any other day.
The view from just down the road. That’s the local beach, with special thingies out in the water to protect the locals from the waves. It looks rather inviting, and I’m actually quite looking forward to summer (and it’s not often that you hear me say that).
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This blog is about the adventures of a family of Australian barbarians spending two years in the islands of southern Japan. Stay tuned for regular updates on the food, the culture, the earthquakes, the wacky festivals, the school system and more. 
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