All Posts from the Settling in Category
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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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A Japanese weekend
On Friday night, having spent most of the day cleaning the house, I headed out for a bite to eat. I decided to try one of the smaller places near the station area and eventually stumbled on yakitori (grilled chicken) shop. When I went in though, it wasn’t like a normal Japanese restaurant, rather a pokey little place. I started to feel self-conscious and couldn’t interpret the menu. Eventually, having lost my confidence altogether, I asked the guy behind the counter to help me out on something to eat. Whereupon the gentleman next to me immediately pushed over a flask of hot sake saying, “If you want to eat here, son, you have to DRINK!”
It turns out that yakitori places are actually bars in disguise; going out for yakitori is code for going out for a night on the turps.
Though you may speak Japanese, grasshopper, you still have much to learn. (And when Yusuke heard about it, the first thing he said was “so why didn’t you invite me too?” A major cultural faux pas.)
Anyway I soon became Best Friends with the guy next to me, who turns out to be Mr Nishihara (we exchanged business cards—of course—and next month he’s going to take me hiking to watch the sunrise from a nearby mountain) as well as the guy next to him, a Sony consultant visiting from Tokyo. And here’s the proof:
On Saturday morning I introduced myself to the neighbours.
I remember from our time in Tokyo that when you move in to a new apartment, you’re supposed to introduce yourself to the people above (ie upstairs), to the left and to the right. In our case there’s nobody above (in terms of up the hill), only an embankment, so I figured I’d go with across the road (to the left), next door (on the right), and behind (or below, seeing as we’re on such a steep hill).
My first attempt on Thursday night had been an abject failure; nobody was home and I ended up accidentally handing over a gift to the lady two doors down on the right whose house isn’t even visible from here and therefore doesn’t rate. What a waste.
So off I went again on Saturday morning armed with my little pre-prepared bags of ancient traditional cultural tea gifts, and this time met with greater success.
First port of call was Mrs. Hara across the road, a kindly lady of about 60 who I’d bumped into on the street the day before. The goodie bag was duly handed over and there was much bowing and scraping and I think I made a good impression.
Next was Mrs. Masuda behind us, who immediately took me around to visit the leader of our the neighbourhood association, Mrs. Kanda. Neighbourhood associations are big in Japan; everyone is expected to join up and take part in exciting neighbourly activities such as cleaning up the local park, sweeping the streets and making sure that people are putting out their rubbish properly. No, really, I’m sure it’s a great way to foster local community spirit and a collective consciousness that we could all do with a bit more of.
However this created a dilemma in that I ended up giving Mrs. Kanda the gift that I had earmarked for Mrs. Masuda—seeing as you can’t introduce yourself empty-handed—so now I had run out of gifts despite having covered only one of my three key targets.
Mrs. Masuda said she didn’t need a gift but I’m not letting her get away with it that easily; it’s back to the tea shop for more supplies on Monday.
Meanwhile, the people on the right are away at the moment so that reduces the burden slightly.
Then on Saturday evening I went out drinking with Yusuke and young Mr. Kobayashi, who is also the real estate agent who arranged this wonderful house for us.
When you go out drinking in Japan, it appears you must go to at least two places as a bare minimum. On Saturday we managed three, and it would have been four or more had I not started feeling a bit pathetic (the combination of beer, sake, choshu and Japanese plum liqueur may have had something to do with it) and pulled the pin. And because you can still smoke in bars in Japan, my clothes all reeked of smoke when I got home. Just like the good old days!
Things got even better on Sunday: I went skiing in Japan for the first time in 15 years.
Mr. Kobayashi (first name unknown, despite the fact that we’ve been out drinking together) took me along to a ski field about two hours away, with his two kids aged 5 and 6. Unfortunately for Mr. K, he had to spend the day pulling them on the sled up and down the kids’ slope, but I had a wonderful time zooming up and down the daddy slopes unhindered. Once again, though, after just a few hours I was starting to feel my age (the combination of beer, sake etc the previous night may have had something to do with it) and was reduced to standing around minding the kids while Mr. K did a bit of zooming up and down of his own. And on the way back from the ski field, just to cement the Japaneseness of it all, we stopped in at a hot spring to have a communal bath while admiring the views of the snow-covered mountains.
What a great weekend.
After all, how many people can honestly say they’ve seen their real estate agent naked?
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How hard can it be?
Here we go again then.
Many of you will recall that eight years ago, when our family moved to the wilds of the Italian countryside, I had a great deal of trouble getting the phone connected—and that’s putting it mildly. (If you haven’t heard the story, may I refer you to this excellent book.) Whereas in Japan, land of technological progress and efficiency, there was to be no such carry-on. The plan was to arrive, take a week’s holiday, and then have a 21st-century super-fast broadband connection delivered to the door with a courteous bow shortly thereafter.
Once again, far too optimistic.
It turns out that in order to get optical fibre to my home, the local telephone company has to ask permission from the local power company to use their power poles. This procedure alone takes a month. Then they have to come along in their nice shiny truck and fit the nice shiny cables to the power poles and thread them all the way up to our house on the hillside and in through the walls of our house. This takes another month. So… two months. Two months without the internet! In this day and age! It’s like bloody Valfabbrica all over again (except this time there’s not even a grumpy landlord downstairs to lend me a phone line). I’ll have to pack my laptop up every day and drive over to the local internet café just to read my emails. Much less surf the internet or spend hours lovingly updating this site.
Now in the interests of journalistic integrity I should point out that I could, if I wanted to, get the phone connected within a week or so, if I were to apply to the national carrier NTT (the equivalent of Telstra in Australia or good old Telecom Italia in Italy). However this would be a vastly inferior ADSL connection, and I really really want optic fibre, mainly so I can boast about how fast it is. And, given my general dislike of national carriers, I can’t pass up the opportunity to thumb my nose at NTT. Also their charges are much more expensive. And last but not least, what really hooked me in was the name of the internet provider. They’re called… wait for it… MEGA EGG. How many people can honestly say that they’re connected to called Mega Egg?
I think it will be well worth the wait.
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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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