My last Night in Kokura-Farewell!!!!

Weep weep...

The Best Of Japan...Me and Double C!

Best Of Japan...FOOD AND DRINK!!!

Food I am REALLY going to miss when I get back to the UK.....

1.) Raamen!!!

2.) Takoyaki!!!
3.) Sashimi (salmon, mackerel, red eye tuna, white tuna...aaahg!)

4.) 100 Yen Sushi

5.) Doriaki

6.) Steamed dumplings

7.) Gyoza!!!

8.) Azuki bean paste (anco?!)

9.) Okonomiyaki

10.) Japanese rice

11.) Interestingly flavoured rice crackers

12.) Brillian tofu dishes

13.) Custard-filled fish-shaped sweets from Hakata's street stalls.

14.) Green tea

15.) Umeshu

16.) Chu-Hi

17.) Octopus

18.) Dried, shredded squid.

19.) Cheap beer on any corner which you can drink in public and still look perfectly normal.

20.) Cooking your own food as you share and chat with friends (Shabu-shabu, yakki-nikku, hotplates at the table, etc...)

21.) Outdoor street stalls

22.) (Though I hate to admit it) Trandor cakes...especially curry donuts!

23.) BENTO!

Food I am NOT going to miss when I get back to the UK.....

1.) Rubbish bread

2.) Fruit and veg with hardly any shelf life

3.) Cakes which are far too small

4.) Tiny portions

5.) Yakitori (I just don't get the fuss)

6.) Rubbish crisps

7.) Green tea flavoured things

8.) Polished, waxed and fussily presented fruit

9.) Expensive fruit

10.) Having to look at packs of soft, soggy chicken skin, fish eggs and intestines in the supermarket.

11.) CRRRRRAPPY wine.

12.) Weiners

13.) EVERYTHING being covered in mayonnaise in a criss-cross pattern

14.) The annoying half-poured presentation of low-quality curry and rice.

15.) Stupid, plastic food models on display outside restaurants everywhere.

16.) The way even international dishes always somehow still taste and look Japanese (due to the above factors...)

17.) "Milk" with a two week shelf life which makes all tea taste, also, CRRRRRRRRRAPPY.

I am going to really miss Japan's food culture-sayonara! (weep, weep!)

Best Of Japan....random people I will probably never meet again.

Apartment Inspection....Passed!

My apartment was due to get it's second inspection on Thursday 2oth March, which was ALSO a National Holiday...no coincidences there-"if you must have a day off, we will do our best to scupper it! How dare you have fun?" Anyway, I got home on Wednesday night thinking a quick scrub and floor polish would do, but, I realised I had more on my hands than I thought.......

I finally finished glueing things, painting over wallpaper mould and marks and doing various patch-up jobs at 6AM! I was supposed to go to Hakata for farewell drinks that night, but there was no way I could have made it....I slept until 11am, an hour before they were due, and once it was over, I realised how over-worried I'd been about the whole thing....twenty minutes and everything was fine. My microwave plate was a problem, apparently, as it is stained with many many nights of dinners. So, I took it to my employers office, apparently to get it replaced free of charge.

I won't get personal about my company director, but her face was none too impressed when she learned that I'd been allowed to get a new plate at the cost of about a fiver....then she suggested that I simply swap it with another empty apartment's!!!! The phrase "Tight as a duck's &*#!" sprang to mind...Plus, I still have to live here for another week-how am I going to cook tea now my plate has been held hostage? Life is a minefield sometimes.......

"Grandpa, I'm home!" - The dynamic of the Japanese family.

One of the biggest cultural differences I see every day, being a Western English teacher in Japan, is the family dynamic.

A lot of my students live in houses or even apartments with their mothers, fathers, siblings and grandparents,-the same applies to my Japanese work collegagues and older students who, commonly, are well into their twenties, thirties, forties and even fifties.

This isn't unusual in Japan-it all ties in with the (very difficult it would seem to Brits) complex culture of family. There is no carting grandma off to a nursing home once she reaches retirment age. Instead, both she and grandpa will be sticking around to bunk in with the newborns, toddlers and teenagers.

It's an admirable concept, especially when you see the strong bond Japanese children have with their grandparents and the level of care families take of one another.

However, generally speaking, British culture is too throwaway, too used to its privelages and, above all, far too self-centred to keep every family member close to its bosom and still maintain the immense respect the Japanese seem to have for their relatives.

Although putting elderley parents in nursing homes is not a shootable offense by any means and is a very real necessity for a lot of families, the Japanese rarely blame a busy, stress-filled lifestyle on them not being able to put their parents up.

Japanese men and women work harder and with much more conviction invested in their employers than the British. Also, contrary to belief, mothers are increasingly (although slowly) breaking away from the tradition of staying at home, and therefore, are not there all day to care for elderly relatives once their children reach school age.

So, how do the Japanese manage it? This is where the vast difference between life expectancy in Britain and Japan tips the balance significantly.

Despite the heavy drinking, smoking and fast-food guzzling apparent on a daily basis, the Japanese elderley are still infinetely more healthy and far less ailment-dogged than their British counterparts. Though life expectancy between the UK and Japan is not so different (77 compared to 80.7), the disease rate is higher. Japan has one of the lowest heart disease rates in the world, whereas Britain has one of the highest.

Therefore, the fact that older Japanese people have fewer ailments or diseases than their British counterparts, they are at the advantage that, aged fifty or more, its still very viable for them to entertain and care for their grandchildren without too many physical barriers.

So, collectively, families still manage to juggle the massive amount of pressure involved in several generations living under one roof. Perhaps the largest pressure, in a country where lack of living space is a big issue, is privacy (hence the popularity of love hotels among teenagers and all-nighters and capsule hotels among over-worked salarymen).

Despite physical closeness, Japanese families, as in every country in the world, are not necessarily emotionally close. To offer an example, (excluding names of course), a friend of mine who lives with both parents, siblings and grandparents has failed to tell any of them about her serious three-year relationship. Additionally, upon hearing her father announce to his family that his bosses demand he move to a city three hours away, my friend did not seem excessively upset about the situation.

Having several generations under one roof is a tradition involving many complex aspects, that the Japanese have inherted and one that us British people may find unthinkable and vice versa. Interesting stuff.

My apartment:in pictures

It's time for my apartment to have it's second inspection (for new people to move into when I leave) it must be clean. It must be spotless. No dust allowed. No holes in the floor or walls. No marks on the bright white wallpaper. No mould on the curtains or in the corners. Two knives, two forks, two cups, two pairs of slippers-one for the balcony, one for the interior. No broken stuff. No cloudy bathroom mirrors. Three weeks and counting...tick tock......

Japanese Immigration

When I came to Japan, my company took care of all the "science bits", ie, sorting out my apartment, giving me a timetable and permanent work hours, and, most importantly, my VISA....Upon arrival, I was held at a desk at Fukuoka airport customs for about 20 minutes or so, maybe longer, as some chap had left my suitcase on a trolley for me to find-good, really, after a long flight. Then, once I moved to Kokura and was put up in a hotel while our predecessors finished the last ten days of their contracts, I had to go to Kokura Ward office (kind of like registering a Visa) and apply for my "Alien registration card" or "Gaijin card". Both names are equally horrible, but there it is. It contains all of the technical details of my year long stay condensed into one small credit card sized nugget, for ease of being checked by whoever feels like asking me for it. Anyway, people who come out and work for the company are issued with a year long Visa, BUT our contract ends nine days after the Visa expires.

Maybe this is all because it's unecessary and difficult to get a three year Visa for newcomers, but also because the school year ends on March 31st, so we have to work until then. However, this leaves employees with the task of getting an extension on their Visa for the sake of nine days-so, the company do all this for you, give you the forms and tell you to visit the Immigration office and apply for another year long Visa.
So, off I went to the Immigration office in Kokura, with all the forms filled in and my passport at the ready, etc... My friend had been the week before and walked in and out with no problems. However, when I went in they said "wrong form" and asked me to fill out another.

Then, they asked me to fill out another. However, this one had company details on which I couldn't possibly have known myself, such as annual earnings (Eek!) and number of employees in total!?!?! etc...

So, they said I'd have to get my company director to fill it in and come back. However, before they sent me away, the form I'd previously given them had most of the information on, but they had failed to even look twice at it. At one point, four men were gathered around, looking at my passport and my registration card (all having been photocopied several times, of course), and giggling to one another in a kind of superior way. Then, as I went to leave, one of them started to ask me questions which I knew by common sense he had no right to ask. I was frugal with my answers. I know my rights, mister!
"Why are you leaving your company?" Because my contract will expire.
"Did your company ened your contract?" No, I did.
"Why are you not staying with your job?" Because that's what I decided.
"Are you going back to England?" Eventually.

Then I walked out, because I knew there shouldn't have been all of those other men gathered around (slow day at the office) and question man was being intentionally awkward.

Well, my company director lady, Satch', got a call from them as they needed the information on the form, and the next morning, she decided to come with me in case anything else went wrong.
The minute we walked in, it was all poker-straight backs and bowing and "Sumi masen, sumi masen" politeness, as she signed my form and got nothing but ultra over-polite feedback at every turn (typical of Japanese service...usually).

Anyway, my friend applied at later using the same forms in a different city and said they didn't make a big issue of knowing the company details (but the immigration man was initially very moody). My other friend got his Visa fine. Four weeks on, I still have no Visa extension. I've had no letter, phonecall or photo tell me to pick it up. In 14 days, I will be illegally on Japanese soil, so I think they should really get a move on. Will I be arrested, questioned and deported?!?!? Tune in to the "Immigration and Away" soap opera for the next installment of this suspense-filled saga!

PS) I applied for a Chinese Visa (for my journey home-wahoo!) on Monday morning and it arrived in my apartment last night after work by special delivery. That's FIVE days, Japan. Sort it out...