Tag Archives: Japan

Okinawa!

Posted on by
Reply

Emily and I are on holiday in Okinawa!  We flew here on Monday via Tokyo and were picked up by Emily’s sister at the airport.  We have spent 3 nights in Naha, the main city, and had a chance to do a bit of sight seeing and spend some time with Seika (the sister in question) who is living and studying here.

Okinawa - Naha pics

Okinawa - Naha pictures

Tomorrow we get on a ferry and go to a small island (Zamami Island) for almost a week to relax and enjoy the quiet!Here are some pictures from our trip so far, who knows if there will be any from Zamami, or what the internet situation will be where we are staying!

Continue reading →

Television commercials and the Tohoku earthquake

Posted on by
Reply

The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami have not had a significant affect on life in Hokkaido. To me, in some ways watching the TV footage and hearing from others who are going to help feels like it is happening in another country. There have been stories of gasoline shortages, food not arriving, people panic buying goods and worrying about radiation levels, water being cut off, electricity rolling blackouts and all kinds of other things going on in Japan, but in Hokkaido, at least in Ebetsu City, there has been nothing like this. One supermarket had a sign telling us we could only buy 20kg of rice per person and one pack of toilet paper, but we don’t need that much at one time! For most people, life has returned, even continued, as normal here in Hokkaido.

We ourselves are, of course, praying for the people in Tohoku, giving money where we can and helping out others directly involved in helping where we are able. But our church position has meant not being able to go with the team of OMFers who just got back from Iwate prefecture to help clean up and provide food for people in the area. The church pastor of 33 years has just finished and a new pastor is coming today, we are the “link” between the two in terms of filling in and helping the new pastor get up and running.

One affect it did have was on entertainment and media, for about a week after the earthquake, regular TV shows were put on hold and every channel was showing 24 hour news coverage of what was going on.   In itself this was a noble effort in keeping people up to date of the dangers that could be coming their way, of government messages regarding safety and “life-lines” (electricity, water etc).  But after a few days Hokkaido it meant brisk business for local video rental shops.  For some people it has meant feelings of anxiety and concern did not subside and even people relatively unaffected by the earthquake have been considerably disturbed by the continue flow of media.

I hope this post doesn’t seem too flippant, I don’t mean to take anything away from the disaster that has occurred in Tohoku and Kanto, many people are suffering greatly, mourning family members, neighbours, friends who have been swept away. Many people have lost their livelihoods and homes, wondering how to build for the future.

Really the truth is I want to blog about a TV commercial… Since the earthquake, understandably, companies don’t want to be associated with the images of suffering and destruction that have been on TV, and so have pulled their commercials. The result is the Advertising Council of Japan have been given a LOT of airtime for their commercials, including this particularly irritating one about why you should use everyday greetings to make friends (the message isn’t irritating, the constant playing over and over of the same tune grates a bit though).  The ads are beginning to return, but aside from news reports in the regular slots, the ever present AC ads are one of the few every day things that reminds me of the disaster that happened just a few short weeks ago.

But it also means the run of a particular favourite of mine was cut short.  It’s a commercial for a product to keep pollen out of your nose called Ion Block.  Last year it featured a few pollen grains dancing along singing “At last!  We’ve arrived at the Nose!!” only to be taken out by Ion Block at the last minute and told not to come back again.  This year it is back with “This year too, we’ve arrived at the Nose!” and another devastating tackle, and Ion Block is joined by his mentholated “cool” friend.

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

Posted on by
1

There is a TV show here in Japan dedicated to answering just that question.  Well sort of…

The show “世界で誰も見たことない対決ショー　ほこxたて” (“The Showdowns that no one in the world has ever seen before Show! Spear x Shield”) is based on a Japanese word 矛盾 which literally means “spear” and “shield”, but together means contradiction.  There is a proverbial example of the law of non-contradiction (see the title) in Japanese about a spear that can penetrate anything meeting a shield that can’t be penetrated.

But this TV show takes things purported to be un-somethingable and sees if they really are.  Last night was an unbreakable chain for securing expensive motor-bikes vs a cut anything industrial set of pneumatic shears (attached to a massive digger).  Of course the unbreakable chain snapped like a twig.  But to it’s credit it was it’s second appearance having survived a pile driver, “cut-anything saw” and even mining explosives in a previous show.

Other competitors have been a man who can move so slowly and un-human-like that a motion sensor system that can detect any human movement can’t detect him.  It did.  His nose twitched, and you can see it at the bottom of this post.  Another was a type of metal so hard no drill can drill a hole in it against a drill that can drill a hole in anything, a second outing for the metal block.  It remained hole-free and the drill company had a bit of a repair bill for a rather expensive, burned out drill.

Last week was an international outing with Blendtec of willitblend.com fame being pitted against an “unblendable” dried fish fillet (鰹節).  The blender had one minute to blend the fish to powder, but didn’t make it, so that is one you won’t see on their website!

As if it couldn’t get any better they have a panel of comedians and entertainers who vote each week on who they think will win, then in true Japanese TV style you can watch their faces for reaction while you watch the rest of the show, just in case you can’t tell which bits are funny or interesting by yourself.  Then there are the pundits, two “experts” who make calls based on their scientific backgrounds.  One of these is a professor who’s scientific understanding has lead him to get every one wrong so far this series (that’s 7 in a row as of yesterday’s show).

The whole thing makes for a great bit of TV and for an interesting cultural experience, which you too can enjoy with this clip!  The slow moving guy is actually pretty incredible!

Conference, Norn Irish and rememberance

Posted on by
1

This past month has been pretty busy with language school, wedding preparations and so on all taking up time. We also had the OMF All Japan Conference in Jozankei, Hokkaido, last week. I was part of the tech team for the conference and it took a bit of preparation and work while we were there, but everything seemed to go well, except for Tre’s laptop! It was great fun roping Oliver and JP into helping out too! (Thanks guys!) So you’ll forgive me for not updating in a little while!

Japan Field Conference is a time that all of the OMF missionaries in Japan come together and spend four or five days listening to teaching (Patrick Fung, OMF’s General Director), have fun (in the pool and onsen!) and fellowship (over delicious food)!

The field conference actually only happens every 3 years, the years in between have regional conferences instead and we are divided into Hokkaido and East Japan regions.
But this field conference had something special. A team of short ter missionaries came out from Norn Iron to run a kids programme for all the missionary kids! 
The team was mostly made up of people from Helen Lyttle’s church, Bloomfield Presbyterian, but also had 3 other guys, Mark, Roger and Jonny.  Jonny of course being known by aliases such as Silly McSilly, Marvin the Minstrel and now also Buzz McLightyear!

Now that conference is over I have the priviledge of hosting Roger and Jonny in my flat for a few nights before they head back to Tokyo and on home to NI.  Today I took Jonny to Oasa to see the church and meet some of the people.  Then we went to the local university’s festival to sample some local delights and see the Yosakoi Dancers performing.
Tomorrow we will be taking the team to a nearby lake and volcanic area, I am looking forward as I haven’t been to that area before either!

The service today at church is the last part of my post title.  Here in Japan remembering those who have passed away is a major part of culture, and also of Japanese Buddhism.  As in the west such dedicated official rememberance is not part of our culture (we prefer more personal rememberance of Granny and Grandad), and because Christianity doesn’t revere ancestors as Japanese Buddhism and Shinto do, it seems as though we Christians don’t care about our ancestors to many Japanese.  Which is a reflection of culture rather than faith.
So to enable Japanese Christians to faithfully remember their parents and grandparents without compromising their Christian faith, churches often buy an area in a graveyard for interning ashes of members.  Then once a year they have a special service to remember those who have been called to heaven before them.  This service is a very serious affair and is very moving.  Pastor Horita gave a short description of each member who had passed away since the church began (it is a bit over 30 years old) during his message and after the normal service there is a short one at the grave site.

This tradition fills many gaps that a plain western Christianity would leave in many people’s expectations and hopes.  A Japanese Christian’s non-Christian family might expect to have religious ceremonies of rememberance at the temple and this could result in the deceased Christian being worshipped as a god or spirit.  It also shows non-Christian family members that Christians do care about those who have been before.  And finally it is just a touching way to remember grandparents and parents who have passed away and honour their memory!  But it is a bit unusual to be in the service without knowing what is going on!

Back in Japan…

Posted on by
Reply

The title might be a surprise to those who thought I had never left Japan, and rightly so because I haven’t really!

But this week I am on a “centre visit” to the Kanto area.  The purpose is to see what OMF is doing in Kanto, meet missioanries and learn some stuff!  So far I have had the opportunity to see some different ministries, meeting with missionaries who are church planting in an urban area, which the Japanese pastor’s wife ironically called the country-side as they are from an even more urban area! But I didn’t see anything green until yesterday when we went out to see an almost sub-sub-urban area church plant.  I have got to see some house church work, some international work, tonight I am going to tag along to a businessmen’s group…  So it is pretty busy, but very interesting and a lot of food for thought…

However, everytime I leave Sapporo and come down to Honshu I feel like I am going back to Japan.  Perhaps it is that my first impression of Japan was Kanto, landing at Narita Airport and staying at the Ichikawa guesthome (the lounge still smells the same as I sit here typing).  Perhaps it is Sapporo’s relative newness, wide streets, squared out planning and block addressing that feels less “Japanese”…  But regardless, when I go back to Aomori, or come down to Ichikawa, or visit Emily’s family in Ibaraki, I feel like I am in Japan.  Narrow streets, houses right out to the edges, people even act more “Japanese” down here.  In the city there are the big lights and extremely busy places, in the country there are square rice paddies to distant hills and mist topped mountains…  Just as you would imagine Japan to look.  So it always feels like I am in Japan here, but up in Hokkaido it feels a bit less Japanese…

Garbage, rubbish, ごみ

Posted on by
1

In Japan pretty much everything has a method.  A right way to do it.  This is obviously true if you go to the bank, or the city hall and don’t have the right forms or ask for quite the right thing, you will be there for much longer than you might be otherwise.  But it extends into almost all areas of life, from packing away the percussion instruments after band practice (specific instruments go into specific cars, and their own slots in the garage), into Church life as there are routines and rules stuck to rigidly, into school where we learn we have to write characters and letters with the strokes in the right order so that other people can read them…

gomi under netBut a surprising place that rules and methods also extends into is rubbish.  In the UK we have a couple of big old bins that we throw stuff in, maybe separating recyclables under duress, and then putting them out once a week or so and it all gets taken away with few questions being asked…
Here in Japan I have 5 bins in my apartment.  One for “burnable” rubbish, one for paper rubbish, one for plastic rubbish, one for recyclables such as drinks bottles, glass and cans, and one for things that don’t fit into those categories, called “non-burnable” rubbish.  I have a chart from the local city office to tell me what I should put into each bin, how to throw awkward things away etc.
I have to use yellow bags, which cost extra, for burnable and non-burnable rubbish and transparent/translucent bin-bags for the others so that the garbage men can check that there isn’t unsuitable rubbish in a bag it shouldn’t be in.
Once I have all my rubbish in my separate bins and bags I take it out to be taken away on it’s respective day.  Mondays and Thursdays are for burnable rubbish, Tuesdays – recyclables, Wednesdays alternates between non-burnable and paper and Friday is the day to put out plastic rubbish.  When spring comes for real garden rubbish will be added to the Wednesday mix.
When you put it out you have to put it out before 8:45am.  You can’t put it out the night before as crows might eat it and make a mess or it will be lost under the nights snowfall.  You also have to put it under the blue net to keep the crows out.

The bizarre thing to me is that this all works.  People sort their rubbish with utmost care, they don’t put it out the night before even if it isn’t snowing, isn’t edible and there are nets to put over it to keep animals out.  Hardly anyone puts it out after 8:45, even though the collection men are consistently late in coming to pick it up.  But more than all of this, if someone makes a mistake and puts their rubbish out on the wrong day, or puts the wrong rubbish in a bag, or something else that means it isn’t right, the garbage men will stick a big red X sticker on it.  Later the owner comes back, checks and sees if their garbage is there (there are no names on bags to identify people) and takes it home, re-sorts it and puts it out again when it is right.

There is a right way to sort your rubbish, a right way to put it out and a right way to correct your mistakes when you get the first two wrong.

But if that isn’t complicated enough, every area has a different set of rules, so it’s all different at church in Oasa.  Even within the same area the rules can be different, JLC is on a different system because it isn’t a residential building.

But!  If you learn the way to do it, life becomes a lot easier!!

Google.cn

Posted on by
Reply

I am sure you have seen about Google’s row with China in the news recently.  Basically “someone” in China was attacking Google’s services (primarily gmail) in an apparent attempt to get information about civil rights protesters.  Google’s response was a bit disconnected in my view… 

Back in 2006 Google made a For-China version of it’s site called Google.cn (.cn being the TLD for China),  Now it had a chinese language version of it’s service for sometime, but it was being blocked by the Great Firewall to avoid people finding things on the internet that might not agree with the governments official take on national and world events, or even worse, might make them look bad.  So, in order for Google to have a workable presence in China, they have to censor their results in a fashion that pleases the Chinese authorities, and so they decided to do that through google.cn.  This move brought a lot of flack their way from free-speech activists and other people who don’t like how China works.

So basically, as I understand it google.cn is the site that gived the filtered results and the rest of google doesn’t.  Google doesn’t seem to offer its other services through google.cn and presumably they aren’t part of the agreement with the Chinese government like search is.  But by using proxies and routing connections through other countries, clever folk can access Gmail and it offers pretty secure (SSL) and pretty anonymous (no name etc required) email based outside China, a good thing for folk who might be trying not to get noticed or found protesting against their government.

But the disjointedness to me is between Google’s findings (that “someone” was attacking their services from China) and their response  (to remove filtering from their in-China search).  Why does removing the filtering balance out the attacks?  And surely Google must be aware that China will just ask them to leave or just block google.cn…  Perhaps Google is planning to remove themselves from the Chinese market and simply wants to make a big noise about doing so, while squarely pointing out the attacks made by ”someone”…  And I think good for Google.  They are a corporation, not a government agency, and they can withdraw from China if the fancy takes them.  If other corporations followed suit, China might think twice about it’s policies on censorship which in turn would mean it would have to think twice about abusing people’s civil rights as there wouldn’t be anywhere to hide.

But the truth is that out here in East Asia Google isn’t the same big deal it is in the ‘western world’.  Here in Japan no-one talks about Googling things, not many people use gmail, harldy anyone is on picasaweb, Blogger isn’t the blogging site of choice, Android has still to make any real appearance, YouTube is used a bit, but isn’t as clear a winner…  The big internet mogul in Japan, and in most of East Asia, is Yahoo!  In Japan Yahoo! provides search, online auctions and shopping, maps, news and weather, online TV, financial information, entertainment news, games and more.  On top of that it is one of the largest internet service providers in the country, it is in cahoots with my mobile phone company, Softbank, and my future parent’s in law even use Yahoo! as their telephone provider for their home.  the most common email address out here is @yahoo.co.jp.  Google is even advertising on TV to try and up it’s market share here, I never saw a Google advert in the UK, they didn’t need them.  If this is anything to go by China won’t worry about google leaving, there will be some other company that everyone uses.  If Google left Japan, most people probably wouln’t notice anything other than improved efficiency at the office because there is no YouTube.

So yeah, that’s my take on the whole thing…   Perhaps a well intentioned, if frustrated, move by Google, but will it have any of the effects people are talking about?

But!  Be aware I am no expert on China or Chinese politics, quite the opposite, but my mission agency’s background is in China, originally being the China Inland Mission before being kicked out and deciding to serve the rest of East Asia (including Japan! :-) ) and so there is still a lot of interest in and prayer for China within the organisation…  So the story is of a little bit of interest to me, but this rant is the extent of my reporting ability on the subject!

Bloooooddd…… I'll get it!!

Posted on by
3

Emily and I went to give blood today! Emily had never given blood before and I hadn’t in Japan either. It was pretty daunting to go through all of the questions on the computer screen checking if I was ok to give. There were lists of diseases that, had I had them in the past 6 months, would have meant I couldn’t give. Then lists that if I had at all would mean I couldn’t. These were pretty hard to understand, but made easier by the fact I haven’t had any diseases in a long time… Maybe since chicken pox as a kid!
Then came some lifestyle questions, questions about going to the dentists (which I did on Saturday, but the lady said it was fine as he just poked about and said everything was fine), questions about tatoos and piercings, and then the clincher…
It wanted to know if I had ever lived overseas. Of course I have, so I clicked 「はい」 (yes) and chose Europe from the list that followed.
The next question took me a little by surprise, althought I had been forewarned that I probably wouldn’t be able to give blood.
Had I stayed for more than one night in the UK between 1980 and 1996?
Well yes, of course I have. 「はい」 again.
Then the system asked me a bunch more questions and the lady printed out a sheet, before pointing to a massive poster on the wall saying that people who had stayed for more than one night in the UK between 1980 and 1996 you can’t give blood… I hadn’t noticed the poster, it really was massive, but in my defence there were loads of massive posters and it takes ages for me to try and read them! The reason given is the old favourite BSE, I hadn’t even thought about that whole episode since the foot and mouth outbreak made us remember it. But just in case I am a mad cow (ok, it’s really CJD in people…) they don’t want my blood.

So Emily gave blood on her own, and went all woozy in the middle of it. I think she has a bit of a blood phobia, she broke out into a sweat at the sight of it and took a little while to recover. We had planned she wouldn’t look at them doing it and maybe that would be ok, but the distraction she found was the next bed over which, of course, had someone lying in it giving blood! So that didn’t help so much! But all credit to Emily, she continued and gave her quotia!

Afterwards the lady at the desk kindly informed me that soon they will be revising the limit on people who have been to the UK so that those who have been for upto 30 days will be able to give blood, I explained that I had spent 14 of the 16 forbidden years living there.  Interestingly it is specifically the UK, if I had been born and raised 75 miles south on the same island, i.e. in the Republic of Ireland, I’d be certified BSE-free for giving blood in Japan!
I guess I will just have to keep my blood all to myself!

P.S.  Extra bonus points to anyone who can tell me where the post title comes from! :-)

Irritation… cultural irritation?

Posted on by
Reply

I have noticed myself being irritated at a few things recently.  Some of them are possible justified, others are long standing dislikes of mine, but some are new!  And some really aren’t consistent, swinging with my moods, energy levels and so on, which is pretty normal, to be honest.  But as I thought I realised some are culture stress, as things don’t work out the way I want or expect, sometimes because of new culture, sometimes because of misunderstandings, and sometimes simply because I have relatively recently moved from one culture to another.

Let’s start with something unique (for me) to Japan, and relatively inconsistent!  I have been getting annoyed when school kids, specifically middle school or high school kids, shout “Harrowww!!” at me in the street.  Some days I don’t mind at all and will even reply with a friendly “Hello!” of my own.  But on other days I see a group of kids and deliberatly cross the street and speed up my pedalling to avoid it, and when it comes stare ernestly forward as thought I had no idea that a kid I have never met is trying to engage me in a conversation that won’t progress further than bauldering a common salutation across the street…
Don’t get me wrong, I am usually fine with having a chat with someone who is interested in finding out where I am from that extends beyond an interjection, and I am ware that my failure to interact might inadvertently discourage these kids from trying to engage a foreigner in such a conversation in the future…  But being treated this way was fun for a little while, but it’s worn a bit thin and I’d kind of like to be treated a bit more like I was a permanent feature in the locality than a temporary exhibit…  But still I am a foreigner and not the normal face!

A long standing irritant for me is taxes and finances.  Recently I’ve been doing a bit of all that.  But now I am a bit more settled things might become more regular and once I have learned how to do stuff it might remain a bit more consistent!

A smaller one is a result of moving to Japan from UK.  Movies in Japan take a while longer to come out, bigger movies take shorter time, smaller movies take a bit longer.  Recently I have rented a few movies that looked pretty good and recently released just to get home and find it is a movie I saw last year, or even in one case a few years ago!  It’s particularly irritating when the movie wasn’t that great anyways!

One irritation that swings big time for me is racism in Japan and reactions to it.  On one aspect I am surrounded by people who really are quite at home with foreigners most of the time and so maybe I don’t experience so much of it.Sometimes the racism is ignorance, and harmless, easy to ignore and when people make a fuss it irritates me .  Sometimes it is pretty serious, like when kids are being bullied at school or by peers for being different.
But occasionally I will hear of something or even see something first hand that is downright racist and would be stamped down on big time in the UK.  When this happens I find myself swinging between feelings of annoyance that it has happened, is happening or even can happen and feelings of irritation that someone is making a big deal out of something that really isn’t that directly damaging to anyone.  One such example of this is a recent blog post about a McDonalds campaign here in Japan.

Anyways maybe the summer ending, winter looming on the horizon is making me more irritable?

Change of power

Posted on by
Reply

Today saw the Japanese equivalent of a general election take place.  So in the run up, with the loud-speaker cars driving around disturbing my extra hard study time (definitely not nap time, no no, definitely not), the news going nuts over politics and everyone (ok, some people) talking about it, I spent my time with Mr Yagita, my “language helper” talking about politics and learning how it all works in Japan!  Here is some of what I found out (memory problems and later verification by Wikipedia mean accuracy is not guaranteed!)

The Japanese government system is very similar to, having been based on the British parliamentary system and a Prussian system of constitutional monarchy. The National Diet (国会 – Parliament, not fish and rice…) are two houses, the lower “House of representatives” equivalent to the Commons in Britain, and the upper “House of Councillors” which is sort of the equivalent to the Lords, initially Councillors were not elected, but high ranking nobles. After WWII things were shaken up a bit, everything became a bit more democratic, the Councillors became elected individuals rather than hereditary noblemen.

So today Japan voted for it’s House of Representatives.  A bit like the UK there are two main parties and then a bunch of smaller ones.  The two big players are the DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan – 民主党) and the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party – 自由民主党).  There is a whole bunch of history about these two parties that Mr Yagita sort of skipped through at pace, one interesting point thought, is that 50-odd years ago, Mr Aso’s grandfather, Shigeru Yoshida, (Until today, Taro Aso has been Leader of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan, but that might change) was put out of power by, current leader of DPJ and apparently becoming Prime Minister of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama’s grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama.  The reason wasn’t an election, but a merging of two parties and Yoshida (Aso’s grandad) being ousted as leader by Hatoyama, but the story doesn’t end there, in the midst of US/Soviet hostilities, CIA papers reveal a plot to assassinate Pro-US Yoshida and put Hatoyama in place as a more militaristic leadership, but Hatoyama’s government didn’t rearm Japan after all…

Another interesting point is that the house of representatives has had a LDP majority for all but a short time (11 months according to BBC article, two and a half years according to Wikipedia).

But today this has all changed, the vote counting widget on the front page of the Japan Times says that, come September, Japan will have a new Prime Minister and, potentially, a vastly different government.  Though it seems that really noone knows what kind of changes might result, if any at all.  As in any electoral campaign, I guess, promises have probably been made, but with no experience of living under a DPJ government, who knows whether they will be viable or manageable.  What’s more, no one really seems to be interested in the party’s policies, rather just keen for a change of leadership as the LDP has offered problem after problem and Prime Minister after Prime Minister.  Although a fast PM turnover rate is not new in Japan!  Japanese PMs tend to retire easily when trouble arises.

One of the more interesting aspects of the race for us Christians in Japan is that while Aso followed his grandfather’s footsteps into Roman Catholicism (Norn Irish voters unsure of what to make of that…) Hatoyama doesn’t share the Christian faith of his grandfather.  I have even heard that Hatoyama verges on the anti-Christian side, possibly resenting his mother’s faith.  Personally I am not sure that it will really make much of a difference.  Aso didn’t really make anything out of his faith that I am aware of while in office, and I can’t imagine Hatoyama going to any lengths to disrupt Christianity in Japan.  But if changes come, there will undoubtedly be some that help Christianity, and other’s that hinder or oppose, but it seems most likely that both of these scenarios will be unintentional, with other matters being the focus of any decisions at hand.

We are living in interesting times here in Japan!