I noticed that an every day life is starting for me, and I became lazy to write. There’s still a lot happening, but I don’t have the stamina to keep reporting about all of it in detail.
I went to a Japanese cinema for the first time. Beside the obvious fact, that it’s up to 5 times more expensive, there are a few differences to what I am used to: Firstly, nobody makes a sound! Not even during the trailers, before the movie starts. Once you enter the actual theater room, you are not supposed to talk. And Japanese, as I have observed so many times, embrace such rules willingfully. They seem to enjoy the awkward silence that occurs during the time you wait for the film to start.
Secondly, Japanese don’t leave the cinema when the movie is over. They stay for the credits. And that’s actually a custom I like. Westerners are such thankless consumers, they think of their time as too valuable to appreciate those people who put work and effort in the movie. But to be honest, probably that’s not what the avarage Japanese thinks - They are just complying with yet another rule :)
On the next day, we were visiting Nagaoka’s biggest event besides the summer fireworks. It is called 米百表 (kome hyappyo) - “100 sacks of rice”. The origin of this event is a story related to Nagaoka itself. You can read it on the wiki article, here’s my summary: Nagaoka wasn’t doing so great, and was given 100 sacks of rice as a present. One really smart guy came up with the idea of not eating all of it, and instead selling it to build a school.
This is the biggest street of Nagaoka, I think.
It's not really 100 bags being brought here.
Anyways, this is greatness enough for Nagaoka to have a yearly festival with a great Samurai parade, which re-enacts the events of this truly legendary tale.. Truth to be told, the main purpose was to buy various dishes and drinks en masse - just like on any other public event in Japan. For us, the highlight of the day developed after getting drunk at an all-you-can-drink offer for Japanese Sake. We met a Japanese teacher who studied in Chicago, and spontaneously invited us to his home.
Sitting at a Japanese style dinner table, with his whole family, friends, 2 dogs, and 7 gaijin was truly an evening worth remembering.
I can’t remember the exact order of things, but at some point we also went to the ocean. I was only told that it’s not such a great place for bathing, but it is actually not that bad. I hope to go back there next summer - such a long time to go..
The tilted horizon crowns this amateurish piece of crap of a picture. Sorry :)
This weekend was also quite filled. Firstly, there was an 運動会 (undoukai). It is some kind of sports festival held all over Japan. Two teams compete for points in various kinds of (light-hearted) games. The bitter news is: Japanese love preparation.
After sorting people by their team, gender, height, seperating them into subgroups, mixing them up again, rearranging them and moving them around from one spot to another, there is few time left for the actual game. I think during that day, I did about 5 minutes of actual exercise. That means that more than 90% of the time that day was spend in preparation. As for the participants: Waiting. Japanese seems to have a different concept about using (or more subjectively: wasting) their time. Nevertheless, it was a nice experience - and I was even in the winning team :D.
On the same weekend, there also was yet another 大学祭 (daigakusai). This time, it was the “Nagaoka University of Design” which displayed their talents. This was a little different than our daigakusai, but also much fun. On the inside they had lots of artsy stuff, mostly pictures - some for sale. On the outside the usual tents selling food and beverages, as well as a stage playing some nice music.
There fireworks was also a little more creative than the one at my University :) My camera sucks for pictures in the dark, so none of that one.. But fret not! If there are two things that are plenty in Nagaoka, it’s rain and fireworks :P
This weekend I went to a Japanese rice reaping event called 稲刈り (inekari). Although we did actual reaping, it was more of a social event than actual work. The rice had to be chopped and tied into bundles which were hung up on a wall for drying.
As always, lots of foreigners
Following to the rice reaping we were making some rice cake called 餅 (mochi). The traditional ceremony tied to that is called 餅つき (mochitsuki) and consists of pounding the rice with a wooden hammer.
We’ve then eaten the Omochi in a soup, as well as in form of sweet rice cake: 丸餅 (maruimochi). The latter tasted quite good.. no comment about the first though.
Wikipedia told me that the hammer is called 'kine' and the mortar 'usu'
I have no idea what this sweet paste was, but I liked it.
I also liked this sign:
My theory is, that the beans we’ve been eating are called マメマメ (mamemame). The sign therefore says: 食らえ！オラのマメマメ波一つ！ - I think it’s a pun, as 食らえ can mean both “take this” (a punch) as well as “eat this!”. The rest is something along the lines “My first Mamemame wave!”. More accurate translations are always welcome :)
The greatest event of this university (and probably Nagaoka) was taking place this weekend. Our 大学祭 (daigakusai) or 技大祭 (gidaisai) at NUT.
[Its] an annual event held by most schools in Japan, from Nursery schools to universities at which their students display their everyday achievements. People who want to enter the school themselves or who are interested in the school may come to see what the schoolwork and atmosphere are like.
Every nation being present at NUT (save us Germans) had a tent selling famous food from their country. I’ve tasted soup from Myanmar, a lot of Chinese Gyoza, even more Tacos from the Mexicans, drank some great Korean Sake, and a whole lot more which I can’t even remember. I also played some Go agaist an ederly Japanese guy - didn’t win though ;)
I like to think they are masters of Go. They probably aren't.
This is about one third of the festival
These guys were playing for 2 hours straight!
This ..person seems very skilled. A shame (s)he lost
There were lots of shows/presentations like Gospel singing, traditional dances, or 太鼓 (taiko). Here’s a compilation of some slow motion shots from the Karate, Kendo and synchronous swimming guys:
This is our University’s interpretation of Haruhi Suzumiya:
I don’t mean to spoil it, but as there are very few girls at this university, the dancers and musicians are guys. They were taken right off the Mr. & Mrs. contest (The latter being a drag contest due to the previously stated lack of female contestants).
Nevertheless, the festival was a huge success. The best tent even won some cake.
I’m still shocked by all the prices in Japan, I even thought twice about buying a laundry cord. But this is Japan, I’ll manage.. There’s old electronics lying around everywhere. So I’ve just been using ethernet cable for hanging my laundry :D
Today was great. We went hiking on 弥彦山 (Mt. Yahiko), with a group of Germans, Indians and some Japanese pensioners. Reaching the top was quite exhausting for all of us, but these old Japanese men basically ran up there. Masao-san was leading us to the summit. We had a hard time keeping up with his pace.. and he’s 68 - Pretty amazing! This is him singing a Japanese song for us. I’m not understanding much of it yet, but I’m sure some time I will :)
After our mountain trip - which felt more like a Jungle expedition - we went relaxing in an Onsen. Even if one of us attemped to do this, there are no pictures from the inside :D
The Onsen - a classical Japanese bath
It was an awesome day - and we’ll end it by drinking some cheap Sake now.
Using the internet here at this university is one of the main issues that’s bothering me - and I’ve been asked about it quite a lot - so let me sum up what’s going on here. Most people however won’t be interested in this, so just skip this entry :D
First of all, there are heavy restrictions on the whole campus network. The usual disallowance of file-sharing software is acceptable. But here, it goes much further than that. Firstly, it is forbidden to use P2P software of any kind. This, for instance, includes Skype. Students who live in the dormitory are therefore not even allowed to call home in their free time, in their own apartments!
It also isn’t allowed to use anything other than HTTP traffic. This excludes IM, Email-Clients, and any other Non-browser based software you can think of. Technically this is enforced by making any connection outside of the campus IP-range go through an HTTP proxy.
This proxy is responsible for further restrictions. It does, for instance, have an entirely arbitrary list of blacklisted websites. (e.g. it blocks ebay.com). I am not entirely sure how it works, but at this point I believe it does deep packet inspection to look for certain keywords. This proxy seems to be a major bottleneck and might be one of the reasons the internet is as slow as a 56k-Modem. Even “internet radio” is consired a large volume of traffic, and therefore forbidden.
Dormitory access also has time restrictions*. The proxy only gets turned on between 4pm and 1am. The reasons for this are beyond my understanding. The university is more like an authority to the students, and they seem to comply. In Germany, a University is rather seen as an institution providing a service (which imo is far more accurate). When a student isn’t happy with the service provided, they complain. I don’t think Japanese students would ever do that.
The situation in my labatory is essentially the same. People don’t question their working conditions. The internet has been unstable throughout the whole time I’ve been there. Yesterday it crashed entirely, so my lab’s professor ordered an emergency meeting. The people who work here are all computer scientists, so it is stunnig how ignorant they actually are about this stuff:
They drew a nice little chart in which they showed the physical connection of a couple of switches. In the future version, the ordering was changed to a more centralized scheme. The physical connection of hubs and switches does not really impact the logical infrastructure of the network - but even if anyone besides me was aware of this, nobody dared to complain. The ‘future version’ chart looking more compelling to the sensei who nodded insightfully (Actually, he did not even know what a router is).
But the most shocking fact is how ignorant these people are about freedom and privacy on the internet. One point on the meetings agenda was ‘The lack of proper censoring and logging on our LAN’. Everyone willingfully agreed that our lab was in need of a gateway server, that would log everyone’s activity and enforce further restrictions. In Germany, we’re almost at the point that encrypted connections became a human right - here nobody seems to care about their privacy!
If they ban me from using my VPN tunnel this way.. well, I think I’ll tell them to piss off. This is not about me wanting to visit forbidden sites, it’s a matter of ideology. Technology-wise, these people live in the 90s. But their understanding of freedom is still stuck in the middle-ages!
* I now circumvented these time restrictions by dns-tunneling. After 1am my connection speed is down to 1KB/s
As I don’t know what else to write, I compiled a Top 5 of things I don’t like about my stay here. (No, I don’t cry myself to sleep yet :P)
5. I am poor
The Yen is on it’s most expensive exchange rate in the last 30 years. Food costs twice as much as in Germany. Japanese cellphones are just overpriced trash. They make you sign up for 2-year plans that cost about 10 times more than at home. I can’t really afford it.
4. All technology in this university is taken from the 90s.
I can’t even use a keyboard, as they all still have PS2 plugs. The Internet connection must be routed by smoke signals: Downstream of 18 KB/s.
3. We’re in the middle of rice fields
Even getting into Nagaoka - which is by far no big city - is impossible by foot. Transportation is expensive. Maybe I should get a horse, it would fit the setting.
2. It’s dirty
After one week of cleaning my room the smell still won’t come off. If I would remove the paper-thin wooden walls, I might find the corpse that must be hidden beneath it.
1. Japanese people don’t talk to gaijin.
Sounds quite negative, but behold: Here are my Top 5 why I am still staying:
5. It’s Japan after all
..and I love it’s weirdness. Where else can you buy Ultraman-Cola.
4. I get a decent amount of money.
3. I’m just here for 2 weeks
I’m not prejudiced, and I’m still waiting for daily life to start. Even if it seems I won’t hang around with Japanese a lot, there’s a bunch of interesting people here.
2. I will stay in this univesity as few as possible.
There’s actually four months of holidays, starting on christmas.
1. I will travel *a lot* :)
Closely related to 2. - but yeah: I’m planning to see a lot of Japan. Academic tourism™ ftw!
It’s nearly 10 days since my arrival at Narita Airport, and haven’t gotten a chance to write anything yet. So let me start from the beginning:
Tokyo
Seeing Tokyo for 3 days was nice, although I didn’t expect such tropical weather. When I got there it’s been 37°C. I’ve been searching for my hotel for more than 3 hours, while carrying 30kg of luggage through Shinjuku. The lack of Street names and proper house numbers really is as bad as everyone describes it.
Asking for the way was easy from a language point of view - but one bad habit of Japanese is that nobody knows the way - but everybody pretends to do.
From Tokyo itself, I got the usual impressions. Tall buildings, small people, thousands of traffic wardens at every corner who pointlessly wave people along the walkway.
I did some shopping in Akiba, checked out Shibuya at night, ate my first authentic Ramen and got really used to the Tokyo Metro.
I have no idea what kind of festival I bumped in there, but there have been a lot of people.
It’s a fascinating city, and me and the other exchange students really hope to see it more often while we are here. Which leads to my new home.
Nagaoka
We’re living on a campus area that is about 15km away from the actual city. The campus itself is small but nice. As there are only 2000 students, everyone is treated rather familial. You keep seeing the same faces. Especially among us foreigners who live here, everybody knows everybody. Unfortunately though, Japanese are really very distant. So far, there were only a handful of opportunities to talk to actual Japanese. Instead, us ‘gaijin’ stick together. My guess is that there are about 100 on this campus, with half of them being from other Asian countries. The Chinese and Vietnamese often stay among themselves. I don’t really mind that (see accomodation).
So us 5 Germans usually hung up with Mexicans (maybe 10, all of them really cool guys) und some folks from Venezuela.
Downside: I won’t learn any Japanese this way.
The campus area as seen from my workplace.
My Lab
In hope that nobody from my lab will read this: Maybe I wasn’t so lucky with my workplace. Japanese are actually a minority in this office. There’s plenty of people from Myanmar, China, Vietnam and other Asian countries. So we speak English most of the time, interspersing only a few words of Japanese here in there.
My sensei is one of the most strict ones, so we have to do 3 meetings a week.
The absence of people is kinda rare
I haven’t entirely checked out people’s working habits, but I suppose at least those are Japanese: Be there, but do what you want. There’s people sitting in here even on Sunday evenings. I doubt they are actually working.
Right now, I don’t mind living in this office, as the alternative is really disgusting..
Accomodation
Myy accomodation is the greatest disappointment since I came here. I wouldn’t have minded a small room. I could even get used to all the huge insects. (My arachnophobia is almost gone by now, as I see like 10 spiders before breakfast).
But the way I have to live is really disgusting. My walls are stained and molded. I have been trying to clean my room for almost two days, but I won’t get rid of the mold and the stench. Every time I enter my room, I get a slight feeling of throwing up. So far, I haven’t even placed dishes in the drawers, even the thought of that is disgusting.
My lovely kitchen
Taking this picture was part of my arachnophobia therapy
Chinese and Vietnamese folks don’t seem to mind. As seperating 9 kinds of garbage (something really Japanese) is probably too complicated for them, they just pile their garbage inside their rooms. It seems to be no issue to be cooking while the ground is covered with trash and leftovers. If the room gets filled up, people just put their trash on the hallways or in the lobby.
Also, sharing 9m² room with 4 people is fine for them. Yesterday, an Indian family moved in. A whole village of people wearing headscarfs and prayer caps was sitting in our lobby - including grandparents, children and babies. I wouldn’t have been suprised if they brought goats and chickens. Now that I wrote that, I’m hungry :(
Food
I have known and liked Japanese food long before I came here. What I didn’t expect were the high prices. Foremost, the Yen is as strong as never before in the last few decades. But still, food is about 2 to 3 times more expensive than in Germany.
Eating a bowl of rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner would be fine - paying ¥120 for each of them is not!
The dining room itself is intentionally equipped with uncomfortable tables and stools.
Our 食堂 (shokudou)
This dining hall also has televisions, which most Japanese face while eating; only very few communicate with each other. I won’t even try to talk to them..
You are much better off to get to know Japanese if you are going out. Which in Japan means ‘Karaoke’.
Going out
Yesterday, the Mexican guys introduced us to the way Japanese have fun. You pay about ¥3000 for a whole night of Karaoke - which includes an ‘all you can drink’ offer. However, they hadn’n reckoned with European guys. Back home, I’m not much of a drinker (as in: i can’t drink *that* much). But to them, we are all like drinking machines :)
Right now, I am still sobering up a little. It was quite fun: Even though you get a private room, a few Japanese came to visit us, sang a few songs, drank a few beers, before they ended up in the toilet being entirely wasted :D
This guy called himself 'Mike'. He was fun while he could stand.
I have been in Nagaoka for only one week, and I decided not to be too quick to judge. There have been quite a few disappointments: We are far away from an actual city, and won’t experince Japanese city live. Neither in my workplace, nor in my free time I will have many opportunities to talk to many Japanese, and I might not even be allowed to join the “Intensive Language Course”.
I am living like in a third-world country, and yet the costs of living are horrendous.
A night of Karaoke costs about 40€ including transportation, so it’s something I can’t do very often.
Despite all this, I will see what this place has to offer - and make the best of it.One way or the other, this year will be a life experience!
I am sitting in the middle of a pile of boxes here. Everything in my apartment is ready for moving out tomorrow, and I’m slowly feeling the excitement.
Having seen my friends for the last time for quite a while, I realized that its getting serious. Leaving for Japan for a whole year is really like leaving behind the world you know, and moving to a new one.
I have no idea what awaits me on the other side of the world. The words that enforced my decision to do it no matter what happens were written to me on irc.
<Grey> It’s a leap of faith. But if you won’t do it, you’ll regret it for a _very_ long time.
I am really exhausted right now. In Akagi fashion, we just witnessed a legendary night of Mahjong that didn’t seem to end.
One of us, the green guy in the bottom chart, was struck by bad luck for the last 20 games. Tonight however, he managed to win one hand after the other. The two Han-Chans we played lasted almost 6 hours, with him remaining dealer for 13 rounds just before bringing this highly dramatic game to an end.
In the very last round, red managed to get in Tenpai for a Double Yakuman. This hand, being worth 64k points could have changed the final outcome of all our games. He made a crutial mistake though, and uncovered his wait - which has cost him the lead. Tonight, the gods of Mahjong were in favor of green :)
As you can see in our all-time points, this was the perfect preliminary round, setting up the points for a great finale. I’m blue in here, and I will have a hard time fighting for the first place. Green and yellow will have a showoff competing on third place.
And it will, after all, be a final. As I am leaving for Japan in a few weeks, we won’t be able to play Mahjong for a long time. I’m kinda saddish to leave this behind, we had great fun playing Mahjong.
I’ll be back before i set off to Japan. See you, whoever is reading this ;)
