Monthly Archive for September, 2007

Lost in Translation

Published on September 29, 2007 in Japan and Uncategorized. 6 Comments

I’m getting a lot more settled down in Nagoya now, although despite having a 5-day working week I’m hardly in any kind of routine. This week me and Rhys have been invited out for meals on three seperate occasions with people from work. I also had a bit of an adventure on Monday night when I went to Toyota to go for a meal with Mayu but got stuck at the wrong station for 20 minutes – I got off at Kami Toyota, not Toyotashi.

When I eventually got there, I was considerably late which is a HUGE no-no in Japan. She didn’t seem to mind too much though, I guess you’re more likely to get away with things like that when you’re a foreigner and find it easy to get lost. We went to a Korean restaurant, and it was delicious. No cat or dog this time though, I’m afraid.

The next day we went for dinner with some of the people from work who were responsible for us, like Tojo san and Ito san, and also some important people from the hospital. Ishikawa sensei, the hospital director couldn’t come because of a personal matter, but it was still very enjoyable – and because we were at a work function, our nurses were fine with us missing some work for it. We were there for longer than we realised – we missed an entire hour of work (not including our lunch-break). It was fun though, and nice to mingle with some of the people from work and practice our Japanese.

On Wednesday after work, me and Rhys went back to the hospital in the evening to meet with some nurses from his ward at the moment, Urology. Whilst we were waiting in the staff room for everyone to get ready, one of the nurses was telling us about the chicken hands we were going to eat in Sakae, whilst she was brushing her teeth. It’s quite interesting that here pretty much everyone brushes their teeth after every meal. Given that, it’s surprising how few people here seem to have straight teeth compared with England.

We got the chikatetsu (underground) to Sakae and talked to a doctor called Kitmuraken while we walked to the chicken place. He was wearing a Radiohead shirt so we got talking to him about music – his english was very good which was helpful! When we got to the restuarant, there were about 30 people there sat down – like most Japanese restaurants we had to take our shoes off first – then we put them in a box on a shelf which was then locked. Locking them was a bit pointless, not just because they were only shoes, but since I’ve come to Japan I’ve seen people leaving their wallet and phone on the table in a bar whilst they go to another part of the bar to play pool. I’m not sure why it is so safe here, but it’s very refreshing compared to England where you have to check your wallet’s still in your pocket every few minutes.

We got the chicken hand we’d heard so much about, a Nagoya speciality – it was just chicken wings! Some of the nurses from Rhys’ ward had moved over to sit with us and they were shocked to find out we had them back home in England, and that they were pretty common. Then the beer started to flow and we had some half-Japanese, half-English conversations. I already knew Hasagawa, a nurse I was talking to about music a couple of weeks ago, and there were some other cool nurses with her – one of them a girl called Naomi whose limited english consisted of “I LOVE YOU!” and “heartbroken”. They asked us if we had girlfriends in England. I said no, but I was seeing a Japanese girl. From then on I was a ”~~playboy~~ prayboy”.

We went on to get some ramen and talked some more with the girls from Rhys’ ward. There was a girl called Natsuki who was a friend of Megumi from my ward, who was flirting with Rhys, calling him “kakkoii”. We were talking about music and films – to my surprise she knew who Scarlett Johannsen was from Lost in Translation. She taught us a new word for ’sorry’, which is “sma”, but after using it for a couple of days I found out it was a word used solely by old Japanese men!

On Friday night we were invited out again, this time with the people from my ward, Gastroenterology. We got a bus to the restuarant where we had traditional Japanese food. Along with the obligatory fish, there was a lot of beef, sort of like a fondue. There was also a grill for pork, beef and chicken. It was some of the ta stiest food I’ve had since coming to Japan, and since it was all very communal it was also pretty fun. We were sitting near Megumi and Dr. Takuya from my ward, so we talked to them for a while. I am often complimented on my chopstick ability when we eat out with people from work. Rhys may have a far better command of the Japanese language, but in a chopstick competition I would win every time.

After the eating was finished there were a few speeches in incomprehendably quick Japanese, as one of the doctors was leaving the hospital and a new one was starting. The night got a lot more fun however, after the drinks had settled in and we moved on to a bar called Popcorn, on the way joking about being “tokidoki hatachi” – sometimes 20 years old! The people at work really don’t mind us being ‘adults’ here despite the age being two years older than in England, which is a relief. It’s a bit frustrating to go from being an adult back to childhood; I always find it a bit patronising when the auxiliarry nurse who gives me my orders, Iinuma-san, calls me “Tommy-kun”. ‘Kun’, like ’san’ or ’sensei’, is a suffix for names, but ‘kun’ is reserved for children.

It was a bit more upmarket looking than our local, Soda Pop, or the places we’ve so far found in Sakae. In the end that didn’t matter though, because to our surprise we didn’t have to pay for anything! Wednesday night was fairly expensive – so it sort of evened out – but it was a very pleasent surprise. The drinks we had alone would have come to about 10 quid, never mind the food. We sat around there for a few hours with several doctors from my ward, Drs Takuya, Hijikata and Yamakawa. It was great fun talking with them as their English was quite impressive – so we learnt some Japanese from them, had them recommend us things to drink and talked about being a doctor. Hijikata sensei was telling me that he dreamed about being a baseball player but had to settle with being a doctor.

We also got our Gaijin (foreigner) cards on Friday, which was a weight off of our minds as before this we had to take our passports with us everywhere. We were standing behind a guy from Manchester who was studying Japanese here – he’d just arrived so he was applying for his card like we had to two weeks ago. Since he could tell we were English, we got talking which made waiting in line not so bad. I’ve seen quite a few foreign students around, as we live very close to Nagoya Daigaku, a large university. Hearing some of them speak on the chikatetsu on the way to Toyota earlier in the week, I realised how lucky me and Rhys were. There was a guy talking about how he was boarding at a Japanese family’s house, and they gave him a curfew of 10pm every night – even weekends. On the other hand, me and Rhys have our own apartments and can stay out as long as we like. The hospital covers the rent also, so we live very comfortably.

Monkey Magic

Published on September 24, 2007 in Culture, Japan and Sightseeing. 2 Comments

This September we have a 3 day weekend every week to enjoy, although next month we go to having proper 5-day working weeks. This one was pretty special. At 12 noon on Saturday, me and Rhys headed to the hospital to meet with Yamashita-san – who we now know by his first name, Kichi. He was driving us to Inuyama for a trip out with about 35 people from the hospital.

The roads, traffic and driving is a big surprise to a westerner. Before I came to Japan, I was expecting that safety would be emphasised even more than in the UK, due to earthquakes, typhoons and tsunami. I wasn’t wrong on that point, as many of the buildings I’ve been in have signs with the “evacuation route”. However safety regulations on the roads seem really lax in Japan. Walking around the streets, everyday you’ll see people performing illegal U-turns at crossings, which is seemingly very acceptable. The pedestrian crossings are quite different over here – the green man just means that traffic should give way to pedestrians, otherwise they just drive across. I’ve learnt to wait and make sure the cars can see me before crossing! Also, as the roads are so congested, driving is very stop-start here, which is probably why all of the cars are automatic. People are pretty shocked to hear that almost all the cars in England are manual.

Maybe being automatic means that people have to give the car less attention, because during the journey Kichi pointed things out on the streets, changed the cd, even let go of the wheel at times! It didn’t feel as dangerous as perhaps it should have done, but again very differently from the UK, only the driver and the person in the passenger are required by law to wear their seatbelt. People in the back usually don’t; I get the impression that the driver sometimes takes it as an insult! I asked Yamashita if there were many road accidents in Japan. It doesn’t take a genius to guess what he said.

Whilst being a more exciting car journey than most due to that, it was a very fun and comfortable ride. Not only do you not wear seatbelts in the back, but in Yamashita’s car the seats were reclined too! I think I’ve mentioned before, but Kichi’s favourite type of music is American rap, but he put some of his favourite Japanese music on for us in the car. One of them was a band called monkeymajik, which is a canadian guy who taught english here, then made a band. It was pretty cool.

When we got to Inuyama and dumped our stuff in the hotel – including a coolbox stuffed with beer – we walked to the train station to get the monorail to a zoo called Monkey Park. It wasn’t too expensive to get in, 1000 yen or so. We walked around trying to find out where all the monkeys were until we came across Monkey Valley, which was an area where you could throw food (it cost 100 yen, or 50p, for a few pellets) at the monkeys to eat. Rhys, Kichi and his friend paid me 600 yen to eat one of them! For three quid I couldn’t really say no.

After failing to hit the monkeys with the food a few too many times, we walked around a bit more until we found the main monkey cages. We saw gorillas, ugly monkeys and depressed monkeys, so a real variety. Some of the cages really stunk though – there was a Japanese sign explaining that they were marking their teritory. It worked pretty well, we didn’t spend too long in there!

We checked out some more monkeys, then rushed back to the monorail as it only went every 15 minutes, which by Japanese standards is very infrequently. We were just in time for one of the trains, but it was still about ten past four by the time we got back to the hotel. Because everyone in Japan is unbelievably punctual, that means we were ten minutes late; and ten minutes later than everybody else! It didn’t matter too much though, as Kichi was one of the organisers of the trip, so I guess he would be let off. We went pretty much straight to dinner, which was washoku (Japanese cuisine) on a traditional tatami floor. So, we had to take off our shoes and sit cross legged or kneeling on a cushion. After an hour or so it hurt!

Compared to a normal meal back home, there was a huge amount of food given to us. We also had big bottles of Asahi, which as soon as you’d drank most of what was in your glass, would be used to top them up. It’s customary to pour the drink for the people next to you, rather than your own. Pouring your own can be seen as you being an alcoholic I heard – although as Kichi was doing it he assured me it was okay! The food ranged from sashimi (raw fish) to tempura, aubergine, and cooked fish. Some of it was pretty interesting, most of it was delicious. I ate everything at least – including the things that you aren’t really expected to eat like the leaves. I didn’t know at the time.

After dinner, we went to the hotel room for more beer before the boat ride. We met lots of Kichi’s friends from the hospital, one being Matsu, who would be taking us around Inuyama the day after. In two weeks me and Rhys are going to Karaoke with him and his wife, Miwa! I’m going to learn the words to Linda Linda in advance.

We managed to get the cool box outside and onto the boat for the ukai fishing. The ukai is a kind of bird. Ukai fishing is a traditional japanese way of fishing, which involves tying the neck of the birds so that they catch the fish, so they can’t swallow them. They’re then reeled in and the fish are gathered. It could be seen as pretty cruel – but I just see it as a cultural difference. Watching it, it looked like nothing I had expected. The fisherman was in a seperate longboat with a huge fire hanging from the front to see, or to lure the fish – I’m not sure which. The birds were all tied to the boat by ropes and were leading the boat. It was an incredible spectacle, extremely dramatic.

We retired to the hotel room afterwards, which was shared between 6 of us. We still had plenty of beer left, so we drank more before the onsen and tried to speak Japanese – which gets harder with more beer! I did get lots of recommendations for japanese music though, so I’m going to buy a couple of CDs this afternoon. Onsen is the Japanese word for hot spring. It’s naked and communal, but it wasn’t as weird as I’d expected, maybe because everyone else is doing it and they think of it as completely normal. First you take your kit off, then sit down to shower and wash your hair, then get in the hot spring – which this time was an artificial, indoor deal with a jacuzzi also.

Afterwards we changed back into our yukata – japanese dressing gown – and went back to the hotel room. For more beer. Needless to say, on Sunday morning I had my first bad Japanese hangover! Fortunately, breakfast was delicious and plentiful and made me feel much better. I learnt a very useful japanese word too, when a room mate asked me: “futsukayoi?” ‘Futsukayoi’ means hangover.

We said bye to Kichi and went with Matsu, his wife Miwa and her friend whose name escapes me, to a very tacky but quite fun amusement park called Little World. Apparently there’s one in Germany too. There are lots of buildings from other parts of the world, like a little Korea, a little China, a little Germany and so on. Some of it was quite interesting, and although there was no little England, there was a ‘London Bus’ driving people too lazy to walk around the park. After looking at it closely we saw it said LIVERPOOL on the destination – oops!

The most interesting thing we saw there was a Chinese style circus, with some very flexible girls performing extremely uncomfortable looking balancing acts. The strangest one involving balancing entirely from their mouths holding something! There was also some umbrella juggling (with feet) and people swinging from the ceiling, the girl’s head coming scarily close to the hard floor.

We got food after a bit of a drive, at a kaiten zushi place – which is conveyor belt sushi and sashimi. It was delicious – I had salmon, octopus and other raw fish. Matsu very kindly covered the bill for all of us, so we were very grateful. He invited us to come and watch him play baseball at night with the hospital team – after his generosity we could hardly say no. It was well worth going however, and a fantastic way to end the night.

I don’t think our team won, but it was still fun to watch and I got a video of Matsu hitting the ball and going for a run, which was pretty cool. There were a few Japanese kids also who were giving us lots of attention, and we could semi-communicate. Since baseball is very long (this was a short game and lasted 2 hours), whilst it was going on Miwa taught me how to make an origami swan, so I spent a while perfecting it. It’s become a bit of an obsession though, I think I’ve made about 15 now.

Japan is a really amazing place – in England I always had something I was looking forward to in the future, but here in Japan I always enjoy the present. I don’t even want to think about going back in 8 months or so. Here’s hoping it stays this interesting. There’s certainly no lack of things to do – I’m going for dinner tonight in Toyota (it’s a place name in Nagoya) with Mayu, tomorrow we’re having a dinner with the top people from work, and on wednesday we’re going for ramen with the nurses from Rhys’ ward.

Mata ne!

また　ね！

Oishii desu ne.

Published on September 19, 2007 in Japan and Uncategorized. 5 Comments

The Japanese word for delicious is おいしい (or oishii). It’s one of the few words used by the people here to describe food. Sitting down to eat, first you say “itadakimase” which is ‘thank you for this meal’, and end it by saying “gochisousama(deshita)” which pretty much means the same thing. During eating you might say “oishii desu ne”, which translates as “delicious, isn’t it”? Asking somebody about their meal, you could say “hirugohan (lunch) wa oishikatta desuka” – “was lunch delicious?”

Most of the time it is delicious – Restaurant Maron at the hospital is where I eat pretty much every workday, and one of the set meals costs 500￥ or £2.50. For that much today I got some tuna cutlet with miso soup, tea, a huuge bowl of rice and some orengi juusu. The food there varies day to day but it’s always pretty decent. It’s where a lot of the staff eat too, so it’s a good spot to meet friends from work to chat a bit.

Work itself is getting a lot more demanding already – most of the things I’m doing are solo, like making the tea, folding towels, taking the tea to patients and talking to them, folding more towels (seriously I must have folded over a thousand already) and sorting out the washing. Changing beds and transporting patients around is always done with two people though. Sometimes, mostly due to the language barrier and mundanity of some of the work, things can be a bit hard going. It’s a very rewarding feeling to be a part of the hospital machine though, and I’m getting an appreciation for a hard days work after being very work-shy back at home!

Straight after work today we had something a bit unusual – we had to introduce ourselves to all of the directors at the hospital. In Japanese. We had a microphone and everything, and had to stand at the front of a big auditorium. It was going well, until I unintentionally got a lot of laughter from the room. I looked puzzled at Tojo-san, I’d said I was “hassai”, 8 years old, rather than “juuhassai”! Oops!

Tonight I cooked for me and Rhys in my apartment, something I knew how to cook from home, honey and lemon chicken. However, with no recipe and only vague recollection of the amounts of different ingredients we went to Jusco, our local big supermarket, and bought what I could think of at the time. It actually worked pretty well with my educated guesses for number of lemons, and we both agreed it was oishii! That said, the rice cooker is still a bit beyond us.

Speaking about the apartments, mine has some pretty cool stuff in it now. I got a new album at the weekend by a band called Sambomaster, and it’s pretty cool. It’s a lot more modern – released last year – than The Blue Hearts, so it’s a good conversation starter with the younger nurses at work! I also have the new Zelda game for the DS, which I got in the hopes of learning more Japanese. It’s not reached its full potential yet but it could be useful in a month or so when I’ve got the basics nailed. We found a guitar in one of the apartments too, with an amp! Very kindly left behind by one of the previous volunteers.

I’ve got an electronic dictionary with a touchscreen, so you can draw the kanji to see how to say something! It’s been both very handy to translate things, and it’s good to impress the girls at work with my japanese writing – they’re easily impressed I think. Next week I’m going to get a mobile phone, since pretty much everybody has one here and I spend little time in my own apartment, so my apartment phone isn’t much use.

Mata ne!

また　ね！

Playing the Gaijin Card

Published on September 17, 2007 in Japan, Japanese Language and Nagoya. 0 Comments

We had a three day weekend, because Monday 17th (today) is a holiday, repect for the aged day I think. I think the aged are given more respect in Japan, although I can’t really think of any specific occurences to show it right now. I’ve got to be at work for about 8:20am tomorrow so I’m having a pretty easy night learning some Japanese. This weekend has been awesome though.

Every day at work we had a Japanese lesson last week, but from now on it’s just going to be a Tuesday thing. After we finished it on friday, we binged on some Japanese learning and then went to Soda Pop, our home away from home – a 15 minute walk away western-style bar. Bars in general here are a lot nicer than in England for me. The music is still there, but it’s much quieter so you can sit around and enjoy chatting with people. You can still enjoy the music just as much, and it’s much easier to meet people. Plus you’re a bit less likely to end up with tinnitus, which is a good bonus. The food is good too, and not too expensive.

Speaking of meeting people, we made a Japanese friend at Soda Pop. Her name was Misako, I think, but I might be wrong. She won’t read this but I should still try and remember for next time! It’s quite hard to remember the names of japanese girls because most of them end in “ko”, “to” or sometimes “mi”. She could tell we were english, and she just edged over shyly and slowly until we got her to sit down. She studied english so we had a lot of fun trying to translate each other, and writing down kanji on some paper. She told us she was a big fan of Guinness which was a bit surprising (good taste), she didn’t know it was Irish though!

The people here really seem to appreciate it when foreigners use a bit of Japanese. It’s possible to get around without much at all as signs are often written with an english translation too, but knowing a bit of japanese makes talking to other people so much more fun and interesting. It’s not as complicated to learn as lots of people make out, either. I spent the majority of Saturday day-time learning Japanese, I learnt about 60 kanji. Kanji are the japanese characters like 日、本、語. It’s pretty satisfying walking down the streets and being able to tell which buildings are which from the Japanese signs outside.

The Japanese word for foreigner is gaikokujin, often heard shorted to “gaijin”, and as a foreigner it’s a word you’ll hear a lot. In the hospital, I often hear patients say it after I’ve left the room so I know when they’re talking about me! Sadly due to my substandard Japanese I’m not sure what about. Being a gaijin seems to bring with it many great opportunities however. The Japanese population is very homogenous, as I think I’ve said before. After living here for two weeks I can certainly confirm it. I’ve seen quite a few westerners in the bars I’ve been to, but otherwise very few. Because you’re a bit of a rarity however, Japanese people are very eager to talk to you, particularly Japanese girls!

To get into Sakae we have to take the subway for about 20 minutes. It’d take a few hours to walk it and we haven’t worked out the cycle route so the tube is the way to go for now. The problem is, it stops at midnight, and doesn’t start again. We asked a taxi driver in Sakae how much it cost to get to Yagoto Nisseki, the area we’re staying in, and he said 3000￥. Not good – that’s fifteen quid or so. Faced with that option, on saturday night we did the only thing a reasonable person could. We found a late bar and got the first train home many hours later!

First we went to a place called Heaven’s Door. It’s a pretty small place but they music is good, they place loads of old vinyl, whilst there heard some familiar stuff including The Clash. Just as we were about to leave without really meeting anyone, I noticed some Canadian girls sitting down at the bar so I decided to stick around. Turned out they’d been in Japan for about a year already. They were English teachers, like 99.9% of the Gaijin I’ve encountered. The one exception so far being a German guy who was an engineer. Anyway, since these Canadian girls had been around for a while we asked them where the best bars were. We also joked around with them about the whole “eh” thing and the way it sounds almost exactly like “ne”, the Japanese equivalent, ne.

We got pointed towards a place called Hub, which was open all night. We wandered around for about half an hour with no luck, even asked some people on the streets but we didn’t get anywhere. We were contemplating getting the last train and calling it a no show, but I quickly stopped back in Heaven’s Door and got some much better directions from some American guys – yep, English teachers – and we were at Hub 5 minutes later.

It was an ‘English Style Pub’ but it was crammed with Japanese people. After getting a couple of drinks at the bar, we navigated through the crowd, which included a very creepy gay duo with as girly a laugh as I’ve ever heard, and made it to a table with a Canadian guy we got talking to. Another English teacher, he was there with some friends from work as well as a few Japanese people he’d met there earlier. With the gaijin appeal working for us, we’d got comfortable talking to some cool Japanese people within a few minutes.

I spent a few hours talking to a very nice girl called Mayu, who worked at Toyota! That’s how I found out the Japanese name for my car, the Yaris. Here it’s called the Vitz (but they say Bitz of course). Her English was fantastic, as she lived in America for two years, Seattle I think. We talked about why we were in Japan, music, films and that kinda stuff and then, after giving me her number, she left us to spend the rest of the early morning in Hub. After meeting a midwife and a nurse, whose limited english consisted of “white blood cell count”, a Brazilian and his Japanese friends, and a girl alled Sayaka-san, we headed back home for a few hours rest.

Sunday wasn’t too eventful, we went to Sakae again so Rhys could get a Japanese workbook thing, I got some stuff to write kanji in, and I spent the rest of the day just cycling about exploring and learning some Japanese. Today on the other hand has been pretty interesting!

Rhys just wanted to stay in, so I went off to Sakae to see what was happening by myself, also to check out how much a mobile would cost and to get some more japanese music. Even I tire of hearing ‘Rinda Rinda’ non-stop. I was expecting things to be going on in Sakae because it was a holiday, and I was spot on. Armed with my stereotypical tourist camera I walked around the city following my ears. I stopped in Central Park, drawn there by some loud music, and saw a japanese band called セカンドスロー (or ‘Second Throw’). I thought they were fairly decent and I got some video footage of them I’ll stick up as soon as I can get a youtube account sorted out. I also got there LP to listen to back at the apartment.

After they finished playing, another guy came on by himself. It was acoustic guitar and it sounded good – the singing especially. He had a shirt on that said “HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR STROKER LATELY”, make of it what you will. The sound cut out on him while he was playing, but he cooly just unplugged his guitar and told everyone to move closer so they could hear! The location was awesome, with Nagoya TV Tower shooting up in the background.

I found out how to get a mobile phone with the help of an assistant at a shop called Softbank who spoke perfect English, albeit with very strong American accent! Pretty much all of the english spoken by Japanese is in an American accent. I think that’s why being British has a bit of an extra appeal as it’s different. We’ve met a few Americans and Canadians but only a couple of Brits. Unfortunately they couldn’t take my card so I trawled around the city trying to find a machine that’d take my card. No luck. Hopefully Tojo-san can point me towards one tomorrow because I’m down to less than 2000￥ - ten quid or so.

Enjoy the pics!

You should expect an interesting post in a week or so – we’re going bird fishing with Yamashita-san at Inuyama, and also going to the Hot Springs. Communal Baths, ne. It’s quintessential Japanese though, so how can you not?!

Mata ne!

また　ね！

Linda Linda (and work)

Published on September 13, 2007 in Japan and Uncategorized. 2 Comments

I was sat in a western style bar called Soda Pop last night, english music and food but Japanese people working there, talking to a guy called Yohei who was shocked to find out I was only 20 years old (the drinking age here). He said he loved english music and was a big fan of Peter from babyshambles. I told him and the other people working at the bar that I liked Japanese music, and it set them off – the people here laugh all the time.

I don’t know much Japanese music, but every morning I stick The Blue Hearts – Super Best on my CD player and listen to Linda Linda （リンダ　リンダ）, possibly the best morning song ever. I’ll post it up later, it’s cheesy as hell but a real earworm. After rushing around to get ready this morning, I went along to my first day of work. This month I’ve been put in the gastroenterology department, working with the nurses. Kojima san took me around for the day showing me the ropes, and she’s a great lady. Apparently she was at Soda Pop too last night (earlier than me), so she and another of the nurses have invited me down there sometime!

My day was never really mundane, even when I was taking Japanese tea to patients, my mangled Japanese made it quite interesting. What was meant to sound like “ocha o ikaga desuka” came out like “occcha o kikiha desuka” so I just got a blank look. By the last few patients, I was saying it semi-coherently though. It was fun talking to Kojima-san, because she was as keen to improve her English as I was my Japanese! She was a lot better than I was.

I got to do some slightly more exciting things also, like transporting a couple of patients around the hospital to different wards with the very kawaii to kakkoii (cute and good looking) Megumi-san. She was also very friendly, like all the other Japanese people I’ve come across so far. I’ve got the rest of the month working alongside Kojima-san and Megumi-san along with others, so the conversation should keep it interesting if nothing else! My other tasks involved making a bed and cleaning up around the place. It was never too dull though, because you do most things with another person.

Then I crammed some Japanese, now I’m sat in my good old internet cafe. I’m expecting the workload to be a fair bit bigger tomorrow, but I’m looking forward to the opportunity.

Till next time!

また　ね！

Touring Nagoya with Tojo-san と　Yamashita-san

Published on September 12, 2007 in Culture, Japan, Nagoya and Sightseeing. 3 Comments

Today has been one of the best so far. We visited Nagoya Castle, ate eel (unagi) and met the very cool Yamashita-san, who was one of our tour guides around Nagoya. Like Tojo Nami-san, he works at the hospital too. After meeting in the usual place at the hospital, myself, Rhys, Tojo-san and Yamashita-san set off on the road towards Nagoya Castle. The hospital car is a Toyota like my car at home, and it has some pretty awesome gadgets. The doors are all automatic, there is a parking camera on the back, and a very, very detailed GPS. From what I can tell from peeking into other cars, these are standard features on a modern japanese car (車 ‘kuruma’).

Nagoya Castle is something I’ve been keen to visit since I looked up Nagoya several months ago. When I told Tojo-san this, she was more than happy for us to go there today. The building itself is majestic and beautiful. Sadly, one of the reasons it looks so well-kept is that the main building is new. The original was destroyed by bombing in WW2, so it was reconstructed. There were some pictures in the castle of the fire, it’s a real tragedy it happened at all.

However the renovation of the castle comes with some advantages – the people who did it took the opportunity to install a lift, and the Japanese seem to love them. The underground station closest to our apartment, Yagoto Nisseki, has a lift going a distance of one floor, and me and Rhys seem to be the only ones who use the stairs. Anyway, we took the lift up to the top of the Castle and had a look around. Since the Castle is smack bang in the middle of Nagoya, you can see all the way to the surrounding mountains (including Nagano – famous wintersports area, past host of winter olympics) on a clear day, as it was today. You can also see most of the Nagoya landmarks, such as the TV Tower, the Toyota building and the twin towers.

After looking around the castle, we went into a traditional tea house for some green tea. We had all the typical formalities such as taking off shoes, and were treated to a very Japanese experience. Although being quite careful there were some mishaps! Firstly I was told off for not sitting on the red carpet, which is no big deal really. Then a woman in a kimono sat in front of us and served us some traditional Japanese sweets – they tasted a bit like hazelnut. We each had one, it was quite big and we had a cocktail-stick like thing to cut it into pieces and pick them up. Clumsily I dropped mine on the very clean floor leaving lots of crumbs, much to Yamashita-san’s amusement! Tojo-san laughed and said “I saw nothing!” and we managed to get away before they noticed.

We drove a short distance to the Unagi (eel) restaurant but were told we’d have to wait 20 minutes, so we walked around a bit. We found a children’s sweet shop where Tojo-san and Yamashita-san reminisced about their childhood. I asked them what their favourites were as children. Tojo-san suggested a very tasty thing that was like pancakes on a kebab stick, Yamashita-san had me getting something that tasted like curry bread. I think it was, actually. Why was that in a sweet shop?! The Unagi itself was delicious, or oishii! Tasted a lot nicer than I expected, I even managed to get the unagi liver soup down me, which was interesting (omoshiroi)…

Next stop was a shrine in Nagoya – the name isn’t coming to me right now so I’ll update later. The place was eerily similar to Meiji shrine in Tokyo, although quite a bit smaller. Like the last shrine, we had to wash our hands from the well and then face the shrine, throw a coin into the box, clap our hands and so on. Going around the shrine we also saw another pond, with some turtles. My new touchscreen japanese dictionary tells me they’re called ‘kame’ over here, by the by.

We got back in the car and went to Osu, which is Nagoya’s version of Akihabara. It’s a smaller and older equivalent, but it’s still full of arcades, cheap electronics, anime/manga and yes, Tojo-san was even able to point out a maid cafe. I’m tempted to check it out to see what it’s really like but it does seem strange. I ate unagi today though, and it doesn’t get much weirder than that!

I also settled on an electronic dictionary after seeing Tojo-san playing around with hers throughout the day. It set me back a bit, but very kindly the shop gave me a discount of about 1000 yen (5 quid). I was expecting them to overcharge if anything! We were making a lot of noise joking around with the different dictionaries finding weird words and spent about 2 hours there! Trust me, it was more fun than it probably sounds.

After that we came back, I beat Ossu Tatakae Ouendan 2 (Japanese DS game I bought on Saturday) on hard mode, and cycled down to the internet cafe. Good day! Work starts properly tomorrow. Yesterday we learnt how to make beds the Japanese way (it’s needlessly complicated, but when in Nagoya…) and carry patients around. From tomorrow I’ll be working the Gastro ward, putting my new, very technical skills, into use. Should be fun, and hopefully won’t break any patients on the way!

また　ね！

PS. I drank 2 cans of Ku- today. It’s chilled apple juice from a vending machine, if I didn’t say already. It’s damn addictive.

Nagoya by Night

Published on September 9, 2007 in Japan and Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Firstly, huge thanks to my brother Nigel and friend Norky for getting the blog working for uploading pictures. I’m a bit noobish with web stuff so it’s great that they’ve sorted it out. From now on I’ll be posting lots of pictures!

ナイジェルさんとノルキー、　どうも　ありがとう　ございます！

じゃ。

Just like Tokyo, the skyline of Nagoya seems to go on for ages, looking out from the top of Nagoya TV Tower. Here are a few pictures I took around the city centre, Sakae. There are lots of cool bars around here too, and arcades, but I’ll leave that for another post!

You can see the rest of my pics from tonight in the Gallery.

また　ね！

Did You Have a Good Fright?

Published on September 9, 2007 in Japan. 4 Comments

That’s how we were greeted after getting through the passport/visa control at Narita airport, Tokyo, by Tomoko Ide, the GAP representative. The fright was very good! It was my first time flying with Virgin, so I was very impressed with the tv screen inside the seat ahead so you could watch films, check the journey and play games. It made the almost twelve hour flight go by like a flash. I was extremely jet lagged after though. We were basically forced to take an all-nighter, since when we arrived in Tokyo at 9 AM, it was 1 AM back home in England. The adrenaline rush and thrill of being in the middle of Japan kept me wide awake for the rest of the day – as it did for the other 15 gappers who arrived in Tokyo with me.

From wednesday to friday, all 16 volunteers with GAP stayed at a hostel around Ichigaya, a business district of Tokyo. Being a business district the streets were full of salarymen at night losing their inhibitions in the bars or throwing their hard-earned yen away on Pachinko machines. Instead of sleeping sensibly, a few of us ventured out into a couple of the bars on wednesday and thursday night. The bars we’ve seen so far are very different to what you’d see in old blighty. Very friendly barstaff who are delighted to hear a bit of Japanese, even if it’s just “biiru o kudasai”. They’ve also been a bit on the expensive side, and quite quiet. When you go in, you’re given a cold wet towel to clean your hands and face, then it’s pretty typical. You get a menu, and due to your limited japanese accidently order two bloody marys. I did, at least! Paying is quite different. It isn’t ‘pay as you go’ like most english bars (apart from an expat bar in Nagoya), it’s more like a restaurant in that you pay for everything at the end.

There are so many things I could talk about regarding Tokyo, and we only saw a very small part of it. We met on thursday morning near the top of a huge glass building, and couldn’t see the end of the city – seemingly endless. One of the most memorable parts we visited was Akihabara. Getting there was a dream – with the train and subway system, the longest I can recall waiting for the next train has been about 7 minutes and it’s usually much less. You have to stand about half the time since the carriages are packed, but it’s still quite comfortable. I’m also yet to see a single piece of litter, though considering that, it’s surprising how few bins there are on the streets.

Akihabara itself is also known as ‘electric town’. It’s a well known hotspot for fans of anime/manga, electronics and arcades. I’m not that into the anime yet but the rest of it was right up my street. Akihabara is also known for having the busiest crossing in the world (as far as I know), although I don’t think I saw it myself. Whilst we travelled to the area together as a huge group, we split up almost immediately because some people wanted to shop, others like me were more interested in the flashing lights and stuff like that. Even more than in England, here you find lots of people on the streets trying to give you adverts. I thought it might help us find something interesting so I took some, and got some real gems. The best was a girl who gave me a flyer for a massage place, I think, with pictures of girls in maid outfits. There are a lot of places like that in Akihabara, I believe it’s known as マイドセルビス, or ‘maid service’. This can sometimes be a place where you can pay to be waited on by cute Japanese girls in maid outfits – who sit with you and give you tea, or it can be where you pay one of them to accompany you around the town, calling you ‘master’ apparently. We were a bit pushed for time in the city and wanted to explore, not to mention on gappers budgets, so we opted out this time!

We came across one of these maid places in Akihabara that was on about the 5th floor of a huge building. The bottom floor was a pachinko place where for some reason they’re funny about using cameras, so I’ll have to be sneaky in one next time. Upstairs was a strange mix of food shopping, electronics and arcades. I’ve got some pretty good pictures from the place which show just how packed it was – we must have spent about 3 hours in one building. The arcades were awesome, if you’ve seen Lost in Translation you’d recognise some of the machines. My favourite was a game where you drummed along to popular japanese songs. Most of them are multiplayer too, which is great fun. I enjoyed beating Lee, another of the GAP volunteers, at various games.

I could ramble on about Akihabara for hours, I’m already planning for a return trip. Me and the other two gappers with me; David (see Turning Japanese in the blogroll) and Thomas eventually made it back to the hostel after getting a bit lost in tokyo! The next day we visited Harajuku, which is both the young, trendy area of Tokyo and home to the Meiji Jingu, a shrine. It was a very beautiful place, extremely serene compared to the hustle and bustle of the crowds not far away outside. We walked through imposing Torii gates to get through, then there was a long winding walk towards the main shrine. We cleaned our hands in some water at a special well and proceeded to the main shrine where we had to bow twice, clap our hands a couple of times and bow again! Here’s a picture of my gap partner in Nagoya, Rhys. We’ve got seperate aparments in the same block, bigger than I expected.

Hours after being in Harajuku, Japan got hit by a big typhoon. I still braved the weather along with another gapper, Lee, because we wanted to get our arcade fix and have a few drinks. The streets were still pretty busy with many Japanese people, wrestling with their umbrellas in the wind. I said to one of them ”いやな天気ですね” which means “horrible weather, isn’t it?”, and talked a little bit before we walked different ways.

The next day we got the shinkansen, or bullet train, to Nagoya, and me and Rhys parted with the other volunteers. The shinkansen was an awesome experience, although the station was totally packed, I got a nice bento box (equivalent of sandwich box, but with rice and sushi like things) for the train and it was a very smooth two hour journey.

We’ve now settled in Nagoya over the last two days, work starts tomorrow with an introduction and tour. I’ll be posting again in the near future, if only because the internet cafe I’m sitting in right now is awesome. Free drinks, nice food and very friendly (and cute) staff!

また　ね！

Konnichiwa Nihon!

Published on September 5, 2007 in Japan and Uncategorized. 12 Comments

Made it into Japan, haven’t slept since 7 am Tuesday morning. It’s nearly 7 pm here in Tokyo and after a day hitting the arcades in Akihabara and experiencing Japanese toilets (more on this later), it’s just about time for biiru!

This is just a quick post to let people know I made it and the plane didn’t crash or anything. I was going to email home but no email yet so no-can do. If nigel’s reading this, can I have the cpanel url? Cheers.

Mata ne!

Goodbye, England

Published on September 3, 2007 in Japan and Preparation. 5 Comments

With a bit of help from Nigel I’ve ironed out the problems that I was having with the blog, so I should now be able to upload pictures in Japan! I’ve just finished packing and I’m leaving in an hour for London, staying overnight and getting a plane from Heathrow Tuesday morning. After waiting for this moment for ages, excitement has took over from nerves completely and I’m just twitching my fingers waiting for the hours to pass. There are plenty of them to go – the flight itself lasts twelve hours!

I feel a bit like I should’ve learnt a bit more japanese before now; should’ve, could’ve but didn’t really. That said I know more than some of the previous volunteers did when they set off and I’m getting some more lessons there, so it’s no big worry. Thanks to a stroke of luck I came across the guy who was staying at the same placement as me last September online yesterday, so in exchange for passing on a note to one of the nurses at the hospital he’s given me some good tips… well, where the best bars are!

The Japanese people love gifts apparently, so I’ve spent the last hour trying to wrap up some typically British things for them, like whisky, homemade honey and yorkshire tea bags. I’ll be giving them to my hosts during the welcome dinner, at which I’ve heard I have to give a bit of an introductory speech in front of most of the hospital staff. In Japanese. Gulp.

See you on the other side!

さよなら、　英国！

Monthly Archive for September, 2007

Lost in Translation

Monkey Magic

Oishii desu ne.

Playing the Gaijin Card

Linda Linda (and work)

Touring Nagoya with Tojo-san と　Yamashita-san

Nagoya by Night

Did You Have a Good Fright?

Konnichiwa Nihon!

Goodbye, England

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