Starbucks Tribes

Starbucks is definitely not the most original place to spend your time at. But then again it is a really good place to study at. Obviously Starbucks has recognized that exactly this is a major appeal and has placed an extra shared study table in its stores here in Japan. Even the regular tables are mainly occupied by people studying, having informal business meetings, reading, working on their laptops, having language lessons and so on. So basically Starbucks has turned into one big office/library/meeting room with the benefit of decent coffee.
I go to study in my favourite Starbucks in Akabane almost every day. It`s the ideal atmosphere to study: some noise but not too distracting, a cup of coffee, other people studying as well to make you feel you are not alone and the impression that you are still having a social time while working. I do like small private cafes, but unfortunately you quickly get the impression that you should buy a new cup of coffee every 30 minutes or so or else start moving on. I had developed a dislike of Starbucks in 2006 when doing my internship in Boston where you have a cafe every 5 meters or so. But now I`m in again, just too good of a study spot.
The other guests, and some of them are regulars too, are interesting to observe too. There is this English teacher who gives conversation lessons to a Japanese business man at Starbucks. He totally confirms my impressions that many English teachers are not cut out for improving Japanese people`s English skills. All he does is just sit there and chat with the other guy and being paid for it. I haven`t heard any serious inputs from him to improve the others grammar, vocab or anything. There is also a foreigner who gets Japanese classes with an elderly lady. She looks very stern, he looks very clueless... And there is this guy who comes to "study" at Starbucks frequently. Seems to be a student of city planning or something like that according to his books. The trouble is just, he reads like 3 lines, then he starts typing messages on his phone again or he re-arranges his hair or he looks at his too tanned face in a small mirror or he goes to the toilet or he falls asleep (see pic)... He could easily skip taking those props (aka textbooks) with him as he never seems to get anything done.
Coming there so often plus being a foreigner has made the staff of the Akabane Starbucks notice me. The boldest of the guys there asked me for my Facebook contact after a while and then gradually introduced me to his colleagues. It`s nice, I get special treatment now, little figures drawn on my cup and so on. Makes it even more fun to go there and I have the chance to practise my oral Japanese skills as well. Now every time I enter the store I get a big "Hello" from the staff and of course lots of encouragement for my Japanese studies.

Post no. 100!

This is my first blog ever, never considered writing a "dear diary" kind of thing and posting it on the internet anyway. When I decided to go to Japan however, I felt like writing something as a document for myself and for my friends, but also for anyone out there who`s be interested in it. Not too much of the "dear diary..." type of stuff, but still somewhat personal without being emotionally exhibitionist. So this intention then turned into this blog.
Well, I hope I have somehow achieved my goal to create something that is enjoyable to read and provides some insight into life in Japan or at least my view on it. I am still enjoying writing the blog in any case. Sometimes I draft posts and don`t seem to be able to finish them really (there are still some old ones in the draft bucket), sometimes I just write very spontaneously and fast. I think pictures are key to make the blog attractive, so I try to come up with some visual support as well. Sometimes I take pictures having a future blog post in mind, sometimes I write a post and then have to find a matching picture. To the people who keep pressing me for more posts: Thank you for your interest, I appreciate. But compared to other blogs I am reading I do post quite frequently. Also I do not always have time or something interesting to tell, so I`d rather not post than bore the hell out of everyone...
This is my 100th blog post, so I felt compelled to write something auto-reflective. I am very appreciative of the people who read the blog on a regular basis and write me e-mails with comments, corrections (name spelling like "Kappellbruecke" or how was that again ;-) and suggestions. Please feel free and welcome to continue to do so! And I`ll do my best to keep up writing...

Every policeman`s darling

Walking from my house to the nearest train station, I have to cross just one street. It`s a quiet area and there is hardly any traffic on there. Still, it seems that the traffic light for pedestrians is usually red. Not that I am in a particular hurry right now, but waiting for no obvious reason is annoying.
While I would just cross the street at red light when there was no car in sight, other pedestrians would just wait. I attributed it to people`s desire to always obey the rules, even if the rule makes little sense.
Well, lately I noticed that I may have been wrong...There is a police box RIGHT in front of the crossing. And those police boxes are ubiquitous and overstaffed and their "inhabitants" probably bored to death, so it may not be a smart idea to annoy them. And I have noticed since that I do get dirty looks from that corner when I cross the street at red light...
What shall I do? Comply and nicely wait? Or risk a confrontation and shout at them that they obviously prefer to harass pedestrians instead of going after the Yakuza (Japanese mafia)? Hm, ok, I don`t want to be expelled from this beautiful island, so let`s be patient...

A happy, happy birthday

Spending my birthday away from home and most notably from my sister who celebrates hers on the same day was a bit of a sad thought to me. And being sick the whole week before the date didn`t make me any more cheerful.
Well, on Saturday I finally found out where our post box was, nobody in the house had seemed to ever empty it. And it contained letters and packages that I happily put in my room, waiting to be opened on Sunday.
Saturday evening I went to dinner with a French friend and two Japanese. We spent a fun evening at a restaurant in Shin Okubo, that is Tokyo`s Korea town, having Yakiniku, which is a barbecue type of meat and went to karaoke after.
Since everybody is living a bit further away than me, we all slept at my place. The thing is just that I signed the contract with the agency that says that no guest is allowed to sleep at the place. Before going home we went to the nearby konbini and guess whom I met - two of my housemates. I was stuttering something like "...weeeell, I wanted to tell you that those guys are sleeping in our house tonight. I know it`s forbidden, but..." They were really cool and said "The contract just says that nobody can sleep at your place, bubt you`re allowed to have guests. You could always pretend that nobody was sleeping, but staying up all night". Japanese smart asses, I like that! :-) So we had a merry little party in the living room and the girls provided some extra sheets and stuff before everybody went to sleep.
I got some beautiful earrings for my birthday, thanks to my mum and sister! It was lovely to read cards from back home and later I got phone calls too. Hope it didn`t ruin you financially... My sister and I of course talked for a long time, it was both our birthday after all. Her Doraemon figure present that I had sent had arrived on time luckily.
In the afternoon we went to Ueno. I wanted to go to the zoo and see the giant panda that they have. We were unlucky, a sign said the panda was not there due to construction work and neither were the monkeys. We skipped the zoo, took a walk in Ueno park and played darts and billiard instead and went for sushi later. I was quite tired in the evening, still feeling the effect of the antibiotics, but happy, that was a fun birthday!

Attention to detail

One of the things I love about the Japanese is their attention to detail. In our world, we are usually too busy or too cool to pay attention to small things. Here it`s different, it`s not just efficiency and the big picture that counts. Customer service is attentive to the extreme and while this can be labelled as inefficient, it is very warming from a human point of view and I feel much better treated as a customer here, despite the language barrier.
An example for this attention to detail was my visit to the nearby post office today. I wanted to send 2 letters off and on one I had not put enough postage. In Switzerland you would just pay the difference and they`d put one of those neutral printed stamps on it. Herre, the guy at the counter showed me some cute manga stamps and asked me to choose the one that I liked best. It just put a big smile on my face!
That would never ever happen back home, even if the post office was completely empty and the employee not busy at all. We consider ourselves too adult, too reasonable to mind things like that. But truth is, it is very nice and sweet when somebody actually does care. I love it.

Sick in Japan

Being sick is never fun. Being sick abroad, in a country where doctor`s don`t speak your language is even less fun. And of course mum`s missing too, she couldn`t drop by and bring tea and moral support :-)
My throat started going sore on Monday evening. It got worse and worse and all I did was sleeping - all day pretty much - and taking the basic medicine that I had with me, Aspirine, Panadol-C and some candies that my colocator Tomoko sponsored. But my throat got worse and worse and I could guess what it was, tonsillitis, since I have regularly suffered from it since mychildhood. And I know that it does not disappear just like that.
Friday after a few days sleeping only and not eating a bite, I finally managed to crawl out of bed and go to a clinic in Shinjuku where supposedly there were English-speaking doctors. Since consultation is only from 8 to 11, I had to take a rush hour train (see post below...) and felt like vomiting in this crowd. Also I had pulled the wide rollneck of my dress over my head to keep my ears warm. It looked like a headscarf and with the long black coat I obviously was considered in the "terrorist bracket" which earned me suspicious look on the train...
At the clinic I first had to fill out a couple of forms in Japanese. The staff there didn`t speak English, but I somehow managed to provide the needed answers in Japanese and do the pre-work like taking temperature. My only 37.6 degree were considered fever and I was told that Asian people have a lower body temperature. Not sure whether that is true?
I had requested to see an English-speaking doctor, but she nevertheless started speaking Japanese. I pretended not to understand and she switched. Although I`m keen to practise my Japanese, not necessarily when I feel so sick... It was a tonsillitis as I had thought and I got antibiotics in the adjacent pharmacy after paying a hefty bill for the consultation.
The drugs kicked in quickly and my throat started to "unswell" immediately. I was absolutely starving after a few days without food and went to have a bowl of spaghetti. Ate them too quickly and felt sick after... The drugs made me very tired, but at least I was able to spend a few hours out of bed and could go out for my birthday.

Anti-hijack checkpoint

The Japanese airport authorities don`t beat around the bush talking about airport security controls... Anti-hijack screening checkpoint, great description!

English with Obama

In Japan there is a huge market for English training. Most want to learn English, most have tried it for years already - with very little success. I had a good laugh recently when I saw one of the social ads on Facebook advertising an English learning method with the label "developed in Japan". C`mon guys, "Made in Japan" is a quality label for many goods. But English training isn`t cars or electronics or healthy food or fashion, it`s something that Japan has hardly any competency in. Everyone learns English for 8-10 years and the only people who speak decent English worthy the name, are those who spent time abroad. I reasonably judge Japanese English teaching methods to be some of the most inefficient on the planet. Yes, English is difficult to learn for Japanese, but so is Japanese for me and I`d be ashamed if after 8-10 years of Japanese classes I wasn`t pretty, pretty fluent in it.
Now the latest craze in the English training market is "Learning English with Obama". The booksstores` foreign language section heavily advertise books and CD ROMs that teach you English through Obama speeches. So what they did was pretty much burning Barack Obama`s campaign speeches and of course the inauguration speech on CD, print fancy looking booklets with the text in written, an English-Japanese vocab section and a pretty Obama picture on the cover and sell it in countless educationally valuable volumes. My favourite is probably the "inauguration speeches over time". It brings the office freshman`s thoughts of Obama and another couple of former US presidents closer to the Japanese learners` community, back to the Gettysburg Address. I am SO looking forward to seeing what kind of English skills this new method will result in... But at least the Japanese are as always fashionable with the Obama mania.

Bye bye Switzerland

This post is kind of late and I date it back, so it doesn`t appear in a totally strange place... Nevertheless, I just had a look at the cool pictures from the party and felt compelled to write a post about it.
Despite having had a big Japan party last June already, I felt there`s nothing wrong with organizing another one when I`m home for holidays in Switzerland. I booked the famous "Pfadiheim" (scouts` house) in Oberbipp in October already and sent an invite over Facebook (what else these days ;-).
I came home from my New Year`s holidays in Poland and Dresden only a couple of days before the party, so all of a sudden I was confronted with all the remaining logistical stuff. Let`s say I`m a bit carefree about the details usually, I tend to think that things will somehow work out anyway, no matter how poorly organized I have been... So coming back from　Dresden I started thinking that I was missing a driver to get things there, I was missing a beamer to show the J-Pop videos I wanted to show, I didn`t have those either yet and I didn`t know how to play the music in such a big room, I didn`t even have a simple radio anymore.
Well, one of my friends volunteered to drive things there and I downloaded video clips from YouTube. The beamer was more of a problem, but last minute my cousin offered to borrow me the one from his office. And then there was the music problem. I had been to Solothurn to see whether I`d find cheap boxes to click on to my laptop. Nothing cheap at all and the iPod boxes were too weak for the big room. The quote from the local electronics store in Wiedlisbach for boxes was outrageously expensive. On Friday evening, so the night before the party, I went to ask my mother`s tenant in despair and he gave me the phone number of a start-up music equipment business that rent out the stuff for a reasonable price. Ufff....
Saturday, the road up to Pfadiheim which is in the forrest and on a hill, was still so frozen that it was impossible to drive up there. We had to carry everything up there. Luckily the guy with the big boxes had a 4x4. After arriving I made a fire immediately, it was freezing cold. This is a skill I`ve learned during my volunteer stay in Graubuenden, with a mountain farmer... Some decoration and setting up of the technical stuff and ready I was for the guests.
I had asked everyone to come in a Japan themed outfit. Well, not too many actually showed up in such (still very pleased to see them). One of my friends had priorly asked me whether he had to show up with a Japanese style oufit and complained about it being so difficult. I had said yes, he had to and he came up with a simple solution - a white shirt with a red circle stuck on the front. It can be so simple... My sister`s boyfriend made probably the best job out of everyone. His Japanese male fashionista style was really well done! I felt like back in Shibuya... My sister and my friend Corinne showed up in the same "Hallo Kitty" nightgown which was funny too. Especially Corinne is usually not much the "Hello Kitty" type...
The party was fun, about 30 people came and I was busy talking to everyone. My sister hid in the kitchen, doing secret stuff. The J-Pop videos were well received. I showed some favourites that I had posted in this blog before and some other, more quality stuff too. YamaPi was not only there on video, but I had brought his poster from a Harajuku store. Someone begged me for the poster and later got it for her birthday... I also showed pictures from my stay in Japan. Thanks to my cousin the visual part of the party worked too.
It was fun to see everyone. Some of the guests I had not seen for quite a while, especially those from the Youth Parliament. There were two couples busy with exchanging wedding plans among them too. Luckily nobody had tried to drive up the frozen road, I had blocked it to prevent that. I know the adventuresome nature of some guests who would also try to drive on the army truck circuit a few years ago...
After almost everybody left, the three of us staying got down the mattresses from the upper floor (it was just too cold up there) and slept in the parfty room. It soon got very cold too though when the fire went out and my sleeping bag was just made of cotton. Well, we eventually survived the night.
P.S.: Oh yes, I was wearing an original maid outfit from Harajuku. And the secret stuff my sister was doing in the kitchen was letting everybody write in an album for me, as a goodbye present. Thank you again!!!　

Serious business

Episode from this morning...
Lucille and me sat in the Starbucks near school this morning before class to have breakfast and do some pre-lesson studying. We often do that, it's a good way to start your day, although it's unfortunately benefitting the evil empire of Starbucks :)
This morning there was a special attraction. Next to school there is a beauty and spa salon where hip young guys with colored hair work. To match the hip look of the place and the employees, they held their morning team meeting at Starbucks. So imagine, entering Starbucks you saw this table with about 10 young guys in very colorful Hawaiian shirts, hair dyed in all shades from blonde to reddish brown and cut in one of these fashionable J-Pop styles, white trousers, tanned and a latte in front of them. You would somehow imagine the atmosphere to be quite relaxed and informal, maybe even a slightly chaotic touch that often comes with young, hip companies (I've used to work for one of these...).
But NO! The whole group looked like they were attending a funeral - and that is really an achievement if you are dressed and styled like that. But they sat completely upright and very stiff, with the most serious faces possible and were listening to their boss in complete silence. That guy explained to them how they should greet customers and make them feel comfortable and things like that. There was no discussion, no questions, no reaction whatsoever, just complete concentration on what the big boss said... They surely don't realize, but for us this was highly entertaining...

The cat café

We discovered a funny place here in Fukuoka. It's the "Neko Café" = Cat café. It's a place where you can go and play with cats. You pay an entrance fee and then play with the cats they have. We wanted to go there, but thought that 1600 Yen is a bit pricey just to play with cats. The guys we asked for directions looked at us as if we were a bit strange, but showed us the way. Maybe this is even a bit eccentric here. But nevertheless cute, don't you think? You don't have your own cat for whatever reason (small apartment, no time, etc.) but still like them a lot. So you just get your appointment at neko café and have your opportunity to cuddle and play with them.

"Fairlyland" and "Virgin Grave"

Japanese products often feature English labels. Well, let's say somewhat English labels. It seems that English sells well, but the marketing gurus are not very proficient in the language and often unaware of the message that the product description gives. Here are two really funny examples:

• Text on Cake from am/pm: "Darling sweets might take you to a fairlyland" - What is a fairlyland?! I guess it is meant to say fairyland. So this cake is really cool... Are they meaning to say it's some space cake?! I thought use of marihuana is quite severely punished in Japan, so I'm surprised they sell it at the konbini ;-)
  
• Underwear and stockings label: "Virgin grave". Hmmm, does that mean that you will die as a virgin if you wear this underwear? Not sure whether that is clever promotion :-)

Another funny one are the cleaning staff at GenkiJACS. They wear t-shirts that read: "Clean Staff". That's a bit too much personal information, isn't it? After all it's more relevant is "to clean" than "to be clean".