The X-Pat Files
September 2008
(Brought to you by H&R
Consultants)
The
X-Pat Files Community E-Newsletter provides a forum for the spread of
information useful for English speakers living in Aichi. You can use the
newsletter as an informational resource, and of course you can send in
information you would like to share.
This
newsletter is a community service from The Japan Real Estate and Relocation
company, H&R Consultants (www.japanhomesearch.com), and is edited by Sue Conolly (http://web.mac.com/conolly).
Contents for This Edition
1. Welcome
to Autumn
2. Alpine
Inn Mizushiro
3. Medical
Information Website
4. Googley Eye
5. Biingual Counselor
6. Food,
Glorious Food!
7. Meet
and Greet Luncheon
8. Getting
in the know about Japan
9. ACCJ
Events this month
10.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
**************************************************
1. Welcome
to Autumn
Those
of you who’ve been here over the summer are breathing a sigh of relief as the
last summer heat is washed away by these dramatic storms we’ve been
having. Those who are joining us
from abroad are just acclimatizing from wherever they have come. I’ve just come from Australia where it
is winter, it is dry, and groceries cost so much that you wonder how any family
survives. Coming back to Japan for
me is a matter of getting used to the left-over humidity, (in my kids case)
starting a new school, and the day to day routine of grocery shopping (and
hallelujah for those low, low prices!).
Wherever
you’re from, it’s pretty impossible not to love the Japanese autumn. The leaves on the trees in the
mountains and the crisp, cold air on your face after the humidity of summer
makes it worth a bit of instability in the typhoon season. Mostly the weather is glorious, the
parks are filled with happy families now that it’s finally cool enough to play,
and the newly harvested food tastes so good you think you’ve died and gone to
culinary heaven! (please see “Food, Glorious Food!” below for more about this!
There
is no better time to travel Japan than in autumn. The food you will eat at any traditional Japanese inn will
be the most delicious, and the weather most stable. You won’t be trying to plan your trip around the notoriously
fickle cherry blossoms, and you will be neither too hot nor too cold (pack warm
if you are going to the mountains, though!). Michi Travel Japan’s
most recent newsletter
shows a picture that is quintessentially Japanese in nature and says it all
about why you should travel in this season. A tree full to bursting with ripe persimmon overhangs rice fields
with the bundles of rice lined up after the harvest. There is simply nothing to compare with the feeling of
driving through this kind of countryside, and I believe that autumn is the
hidden but exquisitely beautiful cousin of cherry blossom season when it comes
to seeing Japan.
Finally,
to express the great love that Japanese show for this season in particular,
there are various phrases that the Japanese use for autumn. Here they are along
with suggestions as to how you might incorporate the Japanese spirit of autumn
into your life.
Shokuyoku no aki (Appetizing
Autumn) – for all the
delicious seasonal foods available to eat. Try to eat only fresh, locally available and seasonal food
and cut all frozen rubbish and evil fast food out of your diet. Autumn is also called Minori no aki (Autumn
of the Fruitful Harvest) for the same reason.
Supohtsu no aki (Autumn for
Sports) – it is
invigorating to get exercise in this season as the weather cools off. You will notice that many school sports
events or community sport days are held in autumn. Make autumn your season for taking up a new sport, or just
dusting off your old bike and taking to the streets.
Dokusho no aki (Autumn for
Reading) – as the long
days get shorter, the evenings are a perfect time to get caught up on the
reading you could never do because you were too busy attending summer festivals.
Now might be the time to revisit your bookshelves, look into new areas of
personal study, or browse through Amazon or
BookMooch to see what new books might long
to be yours.
Geijutsu no aki (Autumn for the
Arts) – you may notice
that at this time of year schools will have concerts or cultural days, and
there will always be something on at the art gallery or performing arts centre. Autumn is considered one of the more
artistic seasons of the year, perhaps just because the scenery is so beautiful
that we all want to rush out and paint it. Certainly with your digital camera, the beauty of the
Japanese autumn will never escape you and will be a permanent reminder of your
stay in Japan.
Tentakaku uma koyuru aki (Autumn of the
high sky and fattened horse)
– This one is the most metaphorical expressions of this glorious season.
Unlike the constant cloud-cover of the rainy season and the oppressive heat of
summer, it seems that the sky goes on forever with the changing of the
season. It’s a time when beasts
have been fattened in the pasture
It’s a season of easy living, and the message here is just to kick back,
and enjoy the many treats that autumn has to offer. There are so many
expressions for autumn in the Japanese language and yet there are no
equivalents for the other seasons. This should tell you that autumn is indeed
held very special in the hearts of the Japanese.
Do
not miss this, arguably most divine of all Japanese seasons.
**************************************************
2. Alpine Inn Mizushiro
Thank
you to Melissa Senga for this submission
If
you are looking for a mountain get away I can thoroughly recommend Norikura Kogen. I recently
had the good luck to stay at a pension called Alpine Inn Mizushiro which is
tucked away a bit behind the more touristy areas of Norikura
but is still close enough to be able to walk to the onsens
in the village. Cool in summer, popular with hikers and bird-watchers, a ski
area in winter and covered in red leaves in the autumn, Norikura
is a place for all seasons.
Alpine Inn Mizushiro is run by a
Japanese couple who spent many years in New York and so speak English and know
how to cater to foreign guests. The rooms are comfortable and spotlessly clean.
In the garden there are 2 adult size swings, a teepee where you can have a
campfire or sleep out for the more adventurous and enough room for a game of
catch-ball. There is also free wireless internet access and mountain bikes available
for very reasonable rental. Osamu, the owner, is a wealth of information on
hiking and other activities in the area and will suggest walks and activities
according to the time of year, your interests, fitness level and time
available.
They
are happy to cater to any food allergies or dislikes if you notify them of such
at the time of booking. For our breakfast I had the best poppy-seed and orange
scones I have eaten and Suea, Osamu's wife who does
the cooking, is more than happy to share her recipes with you.
For
us it was a great family get-away, made even more special due to the fact that
this stay was a "prize" that was donated to the Hope Charity
Auction which I was fortunate enough to win the bidding on earlier this year.
Norikura Kogen is about 3
hours drive from Nagoya using the Chuo expressway and turning off at Matsumoto.
Matsumoto is also a city well worth a stop over in itself to see the
castle and eat horse sashimi, but more about that another time.
**************************************************
3. Finding an English Speaking
Doctor
Thank
you to Geri White for this submission.
Our
acupuncturist gave us this
website which can be
used to locate English speaking doctors in the Nagoya area.
http://www.qq.pref.aichi.jp/qq/qq23tpmn_lt.asp
The
list is quite comprehensive. You
can see from it what fields of medicine the clinics practice, and whether it’s
just the doctor who can speak English or also the nurses/receptionists. You should always be aware though that
you’re not guaranteed to get the English speaking doctor at all times, so you
should have a Japanese speaking friend call ahead for you the first time before
you go to make sure.
There
are maps in English for most of the listings. As an added benefit, I discovered that you can copy and
paste the Kanji address into Google maps (even just copy and paste the kanji
address into regular Google!) and it will take you right to the location of the
doctor's office.
**************************************************
4. Googley
Eye
As Geri White quite rightly
points out in the submission above, you can use Google
in a most creative way when you copy and paste the address (in kanji) of a
doctors office (or any place off the internet, for that matter) into Google, to bring up an exact location on Google Maps (hint: you can set your
default location to “Japan” for this tool). The printable versons of these
maps (just click the printer icon when you’ve got the map) are also zoomable, and movable so that you can get the best possible
view before you actually print.
While the names are all in Japanese (and station names unfortunately in
Kanji) if you know the general area then the map will get you there, with
landmarks such as convenience stores marked clearly with their company
icon. Also, with a Japanese map in
hand, you are more likely to get accurate directions from a Japanese person in
the street.
Here are some funky ways you
can play with Google to make the most out
of your life in Japan:
Oh, who are the people in your neighbourhood,
the people who you meet each day?
Do you remember this song from
Sesame Street with the cute little puppets dressed as construction workers,
dentists and shop keepers? When
you move to any neighbourhood in Japan, when you get
a phone number the first part of your phone number will indicate the general neighbourhood in which you live. Did you know, that if you feed the first part of your own
phone number into Google, you may bring up goods and services in your neighbourhood you never knew were there? Let’s see how it works.
Japanese phone numbers are
written with dashes like this: 052-771-0000. If you live in a satellite city of Nagoya, your phone number
might look more like this: 0568-52-0000.
Whatever your phone number, if you feed the area code and the first part
of the phone number into Google, your
search will hit every website that has this same area code and phone number
portion.
When I fed 052-771-0000 into Google I came up with nothing – no-one
it seems has that exact phone number.
But when I fed in 052-771 I came up with a Curves gym, a travel agent, a
church, a breast surgeon, and a clinic that had previously been highlighted in
the X-Pat Files… and that’s just the hits that I got on English pages, before I
started actually scrolling through the 55,000 hits (Google tells me it took
0.03 seconds to come up with this information).
Zippity Doo-Dah – Postal Codes
Postal Codes are a little
trickier since there are phone numbers in the world that match the way codes
are written in Japanese. Let’s say
that you want to go to a place on someone’s business card, but all you have is
the phone number and the post code that you can recognize. You’ve tried the phone number search
but for some reason came out more confused than when you began – you just
cannot work out WHERE this place will be.
Google “Postal Code 465-0025” and you should
access the Japan National Postal Code List as well as a zoomable
Google Map so that you can see where the area is. As an added benefit you’ll also bring up businesses in the
area with the postal code 465-0025 (I came up with Aichi International School
when I did this).
Once you have the map of the
general address, you might be able to get to where you are going by printing
out the map AND taking the business card with the exact address with you. Even if you don’t have a navigation
system, once you’ve got the tools of the trade you are more easily able to ask
for help at a police box, post office, taxi rank or convenience store. By the way, it is ALWAYS better to ask
for directions at a police box or a post office, since these two establishments
have access to the best and most detailed maps of the area. Taxi drivers are hit and miss as to how
much they can (or will) help you, and in a convenience store there is always
the possibility that you will be asking an 18 year old university student from
Kyushu who’s just working part-time in the area.
Hunting and Gathering in an Electronic World
This does not always work, but
by feeding in the product / model numbers of things you want to buy, you might
be able to get a cheaper price in Japan by comparing on consumer websites like
kakaku.com. Once you find the
price you like you may need assistance from a Japanese speaker to contact the
individual retailer to make the purchase, but finding the item in the first
place is just a matter of Googling the
product code! In certain cases,
you may even be able to access the English instruction manuals of certain items
like digital cameras this way as well.
Kanji Literacy for the Kanjarily
Challenged
If you want to find the kanji
for any station name or address in Japan, simply feed it into Google Images. A selection of images may come up, but choose the one which
most looks like it will have the kanji you are looking for. Many maps for local businesses will
come up this way, and in Nagoya, the transportation system (kotsu.city.nagoya)
page will come up with the English and kanji station name together in a
convenient graphic.
On the other hand, if you ever
want to check for yourself what the station name is on a Japanese online map
that you have, or check the pronunciation of someone’s name, it’s often easiest
to feed the kanji into Google to see if certain other websites will include the
name of the kanji right in the URL of the page. For example, if you feed the kanji for “Hongo”
into Google the first hit you get is for a Hongo
junior high school, URL www.hongo.ed.jp/ which immediately confirms your
suspicion that this station you were looking at was indeed Hongo
Station. It works this way for
surnames too, the kanji for “Nakamura” brings up Nakamura Junior High School at
www.nakamura.ed.jp. It’s not a failsafe system since some kanji have more than
one reading, but when you’re floundering in the dark it can give you a start to
seeing the light at the end of the kanji tunnel.
Finally, I haven’t yet sat
down long enough to play with this function, but I notice that you can search
in a much more focused way using Advanced
Search techniques. Just click on “Advanced Search Preferences” to the right
of the search button and you can choose from several categories. Remember though in some cases you’ll be
limiting the field too much to search for “English only”, sometimes it is worth
wading through the Japanese to see what websites will potentially hold the
information that you need.
**************************************************
5. Bilingual Counselor
Thank
you to Geri White for this submission.
Eileen
Nielsen, who has lived in Japan for the last eighteen years, has recently
finished her masters in counseling from an American university. She has done
teaching and counseling at her local church with her husband, Jim. She has had
experience with cross culture relationships and has a certain level of Japanese
proficiency. Eileen has also done a practicum on small groups, as well as
marriage and family. She is beginning a private practice. If you are
interested, contact her at eileennielsen@hotmail.com.
**************************************************
6. Food, Glorious Food!
I have always said that "Good
cooking gives energy to people". It may be a given, since eating in the
first place is the origin to power of survival. We instinctively desire to eat
food that contains seasonal ingredients because our bodies know that those
ingredients are made up mostly of nutrients and proteins that are most needed.
When one is placed a Japanese environment, he will intuitively get perceptive
to the deliciousness of Japanese seasonal tastes. Our taste and olfactory
senses are our deciding factor in what we eat and sense what is the most
luscious. – Doi Yoshiharu, Japanese
Chef
What
we put in our bodies is arguably the most important decision we will make on a
day-to-day basis. It is more
important than the colour of the tie that we wear (or
indeed whether we wear a tie or not) and it is certainly more important than a
Rolex or a Omega. Yet, we will
spend much more time choosing the necktie that we buy, and a considerable
amount of time and emotional energy into purchasing a watch. To make up for lost time while we
choose our clothes, accessories, cars, and household appliances, often we will
slide into a fast food chain for lunch just to put something into our stomachs
so we don’t starve to death.
But
is this really the way to live? Do
we want to be so complacent about the food that we eat that we then need to
sign up for a gym membership in order to burn off the calories we accidentally
ingested when we were doing “more important” things?
I
know (better than anyone!) that it is easy to give in to advertising that tells
you, “Food shouldn’t take time.
Food should be easy. Food can taste good even if it’s fast and
convenient, because we can make it taste that way with our modern technology”.
It is very easy to “settle” for second best (or third best or down-right worst)
when we’re in a hurry every day.
I’ve
just come home from Australia where food has become most inexplicably a luxury
item. You can’t eat out for less
than about $30 per adult person.
You can’t go to the supermarket with less than $50 unless you are truly
just there for bread and milk. It
wasn’t always this way. I would
come home from Japan and be amazed at the low prices at which Australian people
purchased their every day food.
Now to me it seems that Japan is the lucky country.
Japan
is not just the lucky country from the point of view of food prices. It’s also
a great place to eat well. The
supermarkets are lined with green groceries that are clearly marked with the
prefecture they hailed from. The
fruit and vegetables are of top quality, and as long as you avoid the “designer
fruit” (such as melon and certain types of perfectly formed apple!) it’s not
that expensive.
Eating
out is easier in Japan too. As with other countries you can eat badly a lot
cheaper than you can eat well (a “beef bowl” at a Gyudon
shop is only 380 yen, but that’s not to say it’s a balanced meal!), but even a
nice, well balanced meal will not break your bank. For 1500 yen in a good restaurant you can often get a lunch
platter with tiny servings of numerous types of food that will add up to one
large, well-balanced and healthy meal (which usually even includes a dessert).
Living
in Japan (particularly in autumn when it is said the food tastes even better)
is a wonderful opportunity for you to change the way you live forever.
To
become a more informed consumer and live better, check out the following books
and websites about Japanese food, how to prepare it and what it can do for you.
I’ve also written about Japanese food before, so check out past editions of the
X-Pat Files for the low-down on
Japanese food.
Japanese Women Never Get Old or
Fat by Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle
Japanese
Foods that Heal by Jan Belleme
Healthy
Living – The Secret Ingredients by J.L. Rollinson
(ed)
Article about
Slow-food movement in Japan
**************************************************
7. Meet and Greet Luncheon
Thank you to Joey Tan for this
submission
For
those of you who are new to Nagoya, please come and join us for lunch.
Meet and Greet lunch is the ideal place to make new friends, have a chat, and
find out what is going on in Nagoya.
Date
and Time: Tuesday, September 9th, starting at 11:30 a.m.
Place:
Shooters Sports Bar and Grill ,
Fushimi
Price:
1500 yen for buffet lunch and a drink.
RSVP:
Joey Tan is the Meet and Greet Coordinator. Please RSVP to Joey by e-mail
at joeywltan@gmail.com as soon as
possible, but at the latest by the 7th. When you are RSVPing
for another person, please give the name of the other person to avoid double
bookings.
Note:
For those coming by car there is a relatively cheap option, Toyo Parking for
110 yen per half hour, down the street from Kinkos
which is walkable from Shooters. For those with
car navigation, the phone number of the parking lot is (052) 231-3550.
**************************************************
8. Japan – Get in the Know!
Thank
you to Matthew Fitzgerald for this submission
If
you're looking for news about Japan in English there's a wealth of sources you
can turn to on the net. All of the major newspapers
maintain websites –
The
Japan Times (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/),
The Asahi
(http://www.asahi.com/english/english.html)
The
Daily Yomiuri (http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/).
There's
also a couple of good internet news sites, namely Japan Today (http://www.japantoday.com/) and Japan
Probe (http://www.japanprobe.com/).
The latter site contains video clips from Japanese TV stations as well
as articles on some of the more unusual aspects of Japan (warning:
some of these can be kind of random and zany).
Two
other really good English news sites are Japan Economy News (http://www.japaneconomynews.com/)
and Observing Japan (http://www.observingjapan.com/).
Observing Japan is really good for political news and Japan Economy News
is excellent for economic news (this site is run by Ken Worsley whose is knowledge and
understanding of the Japanese economy is second to none).
**************************************************
9. ACCJ Upcoming Events
Here
are two events from the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan Chubu chapter:
BREAKFAST WITH INVEST IN AMERICA
DIRECTOR AARON BRICKMAN
DATE:
Friday, September 12th, 7:30-8:30 A.m.
VENUE:
Marriott Hotel, 15th Coffee Shop Pergora
COST:
Members 3,500 yen, Guests 5,000 yen DEADLINE: September 1st
CONTACT:
<nkato@accj.or.jp>
This
is a rare opportunity to meet with an official from the U.S. Department of
Commerce based in Washington, D.C. In addition to moving into autumn events
after the long heat of summer and networking with current and new ACCJ members,
this breakfast event will introduce you to a leading expert on the status of Japanese
investment in the U.S. and all of the business opportunities it creates.
INDEPENDENT BUSINESS COMMITTEE
MEETING
DATE:
Wednesday, September 17th, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
VENUE:
Nagoya Kokusai Center
Speaker:
Mr.
Jeremy Cowx, Vice President, Global Accounts, Ellison
Technologies
Mr.
Julian Bashore, Representative Director - Japan,
Bodycote Japan K.K.
TBA
COST:
Members: 3,000 yen, guests: 4,000 yen DEADLINE: noon, September 17th
CONTACT:
<nkato@accj.or.jp>
SPONSOR:
Independent Business Committee Chubu
NOTE:
This meeting is OFF THE RECORD
**************************************************
10. Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
Sue
Conolly
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't want to be a richer
man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna
have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time (David Bowie, January 1972)
I
was born in the month when the above lyrics were released as a top-selling
single. It could very well be the
theme song of my life. I have lived my life episode by episode, each person I
meet and each experience I have changing me (hopefully for the better!).
The
ancient greek philosopher Heraclitus told us that
“Nothing endures but change” and those words hold true a couple of thousand
years later after the world has reinvented itself several times over. Since he uttered those words everything
has changed – from the things we eat, to the ways we amuse ourselves,
where we live and the ease with which we travel all over the world. However,
change itself has remained constant.
There has always been change, there always will. So why can change be so
scary? Why do we fight it?
The
strange thing about our reaction to change is that the very things we fight to
hold onto, the things we would like not
to change, are themselves the result of change in our lives. The best job we
ever had was the result of a decision to change. Babies that are born change
our lives forever. Anything we have that is worth anything is there because we
changed something, and yet change feels strange because we are, for however
short a period of time, thrown into the chaos of the unknown.
William
Bridges, the author of Transitions
– Making Sense of Life’s Changes wrote another very personal account
of his own personal struggle with change in the book The Way of Transition – Embracing Life’s Most Difficult Moments.
Even the author of a book about change and transition was flung into the pits
of chaos with the death of his wife, making him doubt anything that he had
previously written. In the second book, he tells how he rediscovered the
meaning of transition and why it is so important in our lives.
In
it’s most basic function, Bridges writes, transition helps you come to terms
with change. And so it does.
That’s why when we move to a different country we say goodbye to loved
ones. We make sure we have enough memorabilia with us to make us feel like we
still belong somewhere, and we buy nice new foreign things to furnish our new
homes to our liking. We have goodbye parties and then welcome parties and
housewarming parties. We attend new schools or work at new offices and go
through the games and rituals that are the rites of passage.
When
the individuals that make up families go through transitions and changes
(together, like moving internationally as a family, or individually, like the
mother of a family starting a new course of study at university) there is a
transitional period for all family members to accommodate the change. It’s an
intricate dance we dance because we love each other, we want to go through the
various transitions equally and in parallel with each other so that we are all
basically on the same page.
I
feel like I am constantly in a state of flux, but in that fact I am one and the
same with every member of the human race who ever drew breath. That I (and each
member of my family) will continue to change until death do us part is the only
one thing that I will be able to say with absolute certainty and conviction. And somehow, this assertion of constant
and unrelenting change is the one thing that will keep me grounded when I am feeling
the discomforts of my pedestrian chaos.
**************************************************
That`s it for this edition of the newsletter. We hope you found it
informative - please let us know what you would like to see in future editions,
and we will attempt to address your issues.
If
you need to find some information from a previous edition, please try the
search function on http://www.xpat-files.com. Carrying out a text search with key
words will take you directly to previous editions of the newsletter in which
information appeared.
A
disclaimer - While we do try to check submissions when they come to me, we do
not take responsibility for the accuracy of any donated information. Nor
do we take responsibility if your experience of places and services you find
through this newsletter are not as rewarding as they were for the person who
originally sent in the information. Obviously everyone`s
experience is different.
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