Tuesday, October 30, 2007

How I've offended Japanese people

Let me start by saying that I've met a lot of Japanese people, and they're really fun. They always are quite nice, and I've often found myself drinking with people with whom I have no way to communicate with (they didn't speak very well English, and I speak very little Japanese).

One of my favorite events was drinking in a bar with my eigo-jin friends (English people friends), and hearing a lot of Japanese men singing a song in Japanese.

I'm not talking about the standard offensive stuff like blowing your nose, or sticking your chopsticks in the rice. I'll mention three incidents, of which the subway story isn't one of them.

The first, and lesser, incident involved eating in public. It's considered bad form to eat in public, but kind of acceptable, but definitely acceptable for foreigners. It is not acceptable to be walking and eating. I was just standing however, waiting for friends at a common waiting spot, the silver ball (a cool place, but that's a post for another time).

I was talking to a Japanese guy, and his English was pretty good. I was also eating McDonald's, and I had fries. I had two fries drop on the ground. He stopped talking to me, and stared at the fries on the ground for a few seconds, and wasn't talking. He looked at me and my friends as if a little hurt. I then picked it up, and threw it in the trash. He seemed relieved after that, but didn't say anything about it.

I've noticed that there's no trash anywhere, not even cigarette buds anywhere... Japan's really clean.

The second incident involved a few guys I met that same night. They spoke very little English. It was actually a funny incident, and we'd cheers to everything, scream words in Japanese and English, and then cheers again. I learned a lot of Japanese that night, but I forgot it all as I was drinking a bit... I mean a lot...

I was looking for a Halloween costume, and I had two choices, I could go with the one (which will be revealed soon), or GOJIRA!!! (known in English as Godzilla)

I asked my new friends where I could get a Gojira costume. The first guy I talked to was confused, then a second guy came, and I repeated that I was looking for a Gojira costume. The second guy looked shocked, said something in Japanese to the first guy, then they both started saying "no" again and again.

Here is an excerpt of Wikipedia's article about Godzilla: "Godzilla represented the fears of many Japanese of a repetition of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Oups... I'm in a culture where the mere mention of nuclear weapons is taboo.

Well I found a Gojira mask yesterday, but by that point I had already purchased my costume... Think Japanese... Think video games... think electric mouse/bunny...

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Korea bound

Hey everyone, in case you haven't heard, I accepted a position in Korea. I have one interview with a company in Japan tomorrow, but I doubt I'll get the job, and I doubt I'll accept if offered.

So the main advantage of Korea is that the cost of living will be cheap. I will be making the same amount of money, but because the company's paying for my flight there, my apartment and half my medical insurance, I'll make money. Basically I'll have enough to support a family of 4 comfortably in Korea.

I leave Japan on November 14th. I'm still staying in my apartment because I won't receive any other form of compensation from my current company. Today was the second date for the delayed wages to come in, and now it's all coming on the 29th... so to translate: never.

Now for my awesome subway story. To send out my resume and information for the new job, I went to the subway to get to my destination. I had just walked down the stairs and there was a subway, so I ran to the nearest door and got in just as the doors were closing.

There weren't many seats around, so I stood up. I looked around and saw a lot of people staring at me. Keep in mind that in Japan, staring at foreigners isn't uncommon. You go anywhere, there's at least one Japanese person that will stare at you. It's like they can't believe their eyes that there's a foreigner in their country. It's funny when I'm in a good mood, extremely annoying when I'm in a bad mood. What seemed strange this time however was the number of people staring at me.

An old Japanese man suddenly walks up to me, and stands beside me. He doesn't say anything, and I don't think much about it. He gets off at the first stop.

Between the first and second stop, I still notice people staring at me, including a group of school girls. One even had her mouth wide open in disbelief... like I said, it's not uncommon to be stared at, but this time it was different.

At the second stop, I realized why they were staring. I was standing right beside the door, and I looked down on the ground and saw a big pink square that said something in Japanese, then in English: "Women only car".

I stared in disbelief for a moment, and then started looking around the cart to see if this was true. All I saw were women. The old guy who stood next to me did so because he wanted to be beside another guy. The doors closed, and I noticed on the subway door a little sign that says "Women only", then started blushing. The school girls started laughing.

The next stop I exited the subway and went to the next car.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

A day in Nara

So I decided that exploring Japan was a good thing to do while I'm still around.

Today I went to Nara. It's just 40 minutes away by train and costs 540 yen. It's a nice tourist spot with a lot of temples and shrines, but best of all it has 1000 deer walking around the city.

The first place we went to was just a path with trees on both sides. We just kept on walking and there were lanterns on each side of us. I read that there are over 3000 lanterns, and they are lit in early February and mid August. There are tiny shrines along the way, and it's just interesting to see how everything's built. At the entrance, there are many deer, but they don't go further into the path.

The deer will come up to you and eat cookies that you can buy anywhere, and then they bow. Yes, that's right, the deer bow. A video will be put up as soon as I can get it to work. They're all over the place, and they're actually quite dirty, but it's still awesome to see deer bow.

There's nice Shinto shrines, but the big attraction is a temple that contains a giant Buddha statue. The statue may not appear to be big in the picture, but in reality it's 15 meters high.

At the end of the night, we climbed a mountain and watched the sun set. It was quite beautiful. After that however, we called it a day and returned home.

They're going to Kyoto tomorrow, but I have a job interview at 2 pm for teaching English in Korea. I will have to go to Kyoto after that or maybe on Tuesday.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Nova's finished

So it's October 19th, payday was the 15th, and I haven't see any money. The higher ups are saying that we'll get paid on the 26th, but I don't care.

I'm not going into work until I get paid, and because the job search isn't going well, it appears I'll be coming back home to Canada soon. 5000 foreign language instructors are effectively unemployed, about 3000 of which are English instructors. I am of the last 200 people to have arrived at the company (of all languages, the last 120 of English instructors).

I'm sorry this blog wasn't the fun blog that you and I expected. Shit happens.

My last hope is this one interview I had earlier this week, and maybe Korea. If you want a play by play of what happened, read these articles:

The rent situation
More rent fun
News about the pay
What started getting me worried
What pissed me off
More news about Nova

So, to summarize, there's a cash influx, but that's enough to pay 700 of their 5000 teachers. They had to delay the payment of the teachers, which was planned for the 19th. Then someone got arrested. He was a key figure in the cash influx. It turns out that has some shady contacts and embezzles money for organized crime. The president is nowhere to be found, and there's a couple million dollars in missing shares. The companies buying into Nova may be dummy corporations that are also shady. The president assures us (through a memo) that all is well, and we should be patient.

Once again, I apologize for the negative post, it sucks, but this whole situation is fucked.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Happy 1 month anniversary

Hey everyone, so I've been in Japan a month today. It's been filled with some ups and downs, and hopefully I'll get paid on Monday which will mean plenty of ups.

I've seen some really cool places and met some amazing people. Stay tuned to find out if I'll be home soon (when the company goes bankrupt) or if I'll be home less soon (when the company gets liquidated).

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Thanksgiving and a little more

I will begin by telling the tale of Thanksgiving.

Canadians make up a large part of the employees at Nova. There may be more Aussies, but I would contest that claim. So, because it was thanksgiving weekend last week, I decided with another Canadian that it would be awesome to have a thanksgiving. At first it was going to be dinner thing, but those are hard to pull in Japanese mini-apartments. There's also no turkey in the whole of Japan.

After much deliberation, we decided that a snack potluck would be a better idea, but we still had a problem with actually having people in one spot. The good bars are expensive, and the cheap bars wouldn't keep us together. Then it hit us: drinking in public is legal. Drinking in a park is legal!

Canadian thanksgiving was held in a park near my work. We met at a central location, and then went to the park. We invited everyone, Canadians, Americans, Kiwis, Australians, English and Scots. Most Brits didn't believe that there was actually a thing called Canadian thanksgiving. They thought we were joking. They were pretty surprised to see we were serious.

During the party, hung out, which then turned into a game of tag around a jungle gym, which then turned into huge circle where everyone talked, which turned into all the Canadians (and one Aussie oddly enough)singing the national anthem, then high-fiveing everyone thanking them for showing up.

Lessons learned: playing tag while drunk is dangerous... I ripped a pair of pants and was bleeding quite a bit. I'm a fun drunk. The Brits think I'm an alcoholic, but laugh about it anyways. Getting drunk in a park is very legitimate in Japan.

Speaking about legitimate and parks in Japan, a few friends and I saw a girl and a boy make themselves a makeshift bed, then put a cover over themselves. I will infer that they were having sex in a public park. So, another lesson, sex in public is fine.

Public urination in Japan: fine, people are so polite here, they pretend not to see you.

Public defecation in Japan: also fine. Once again, polite, to the extreme.

Blowing your nose in public: horrible. You're going to hell if you do that in front of someone. Blowing your nose in public, that's disgusting!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

The company's going to be alright

Good and bad news. Basically it means I'll get paid as long as there's a company. The bad is that the company will probably only exist for another 2 or 3 months.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Stuff you didn't want to know about Japan, and didn't ask

Hey everyone, so seeing that I'm still in Japan, I thought I'd write this up. So here's a list of questions that you all are dying to ask me, but haven't!

Q: How big is your apartment?
A: Not big, quite small. The stories of small Japanese apartments have been exaggerated however. The apartment is about what you'd get in Toronto, but ever so slightly smaller.

Q: What's the cost of living like?
A: Once again, not as bad as people make it out to be. I've spent 65000 yen in 1 month for food, drinking three or four times a week, and two out of town trips. I still have to pay rent for this apartment, which will be half of everything I pay, but this apartment is overpriced, hence why I'm looking at other apartments in town.

Q: What's Japanese TV like?
A: It's cool. I saw this one show where they do what's called human tetris. There's a wall that advances towards someone with a cut-out of a person, and the person has to make themselves a certain shape to avoid being pushed into a pool of water.

Other awesome shows include a woman dressed up a devil outfit teaching a girl Spanish. She was summoned by the girl of course. My housemate told me he once saw a show where they were teaching English for the abused wife. How to make excuses for bruises and such... yeah...

Q: What's the food like?
A: McDonald's isn't as greasy. There's a 100 yen menu, so it's the perfect place after for having food after the bar. My favorite 100 yen item so far is the McPork.

Q: Seriously, how's the food?
A: Awesome. I have been having mystery dishes. I eat something, don't how what it is, but have fun eating it anyways. So far, I've had Tocuyaki. It's balls with a creamy sauce with pieces of squid. It's disgusting. I don't like squid.

I do however like chicken cartillage. That's right everyone, they also eat the skin, the tail and the beak.

More to come later.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

A job offer!

I found an offer of employment in my mailbox today, so everything's alright. Here's exactly what was written on the hand written letter.

"We seeks Western Wowen For XXX Rated Video. Under 30. Must A Photo..."

The rest was contact info. I don't know what a Wowen is, but I'm sure I'm one! And I'm also not going to pass the contact info because I need this job, and I don't want you stealing it!