Author Archives: DELively

Great International Customer Service Sight Unseen

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As I’ve written before, I’m a fountain pen fanatic. I’m also the kind of guy who clings to things long past their “best used by” date.

However, this past year I began replacing my old pens–one of which creaks when I write and one of which is corroding–with new ones that I hope will last as long as my old ones. This has sent me to Kickstarter for a pen from Scotland and one from Arizona based Karas Kustoms, which is one part machine shop, one part pen maker. I also ordered one from Edison Pen Co., an Ohio pen maker I first saw on Etsy several years ago before they became much bigger and better.

My problem is, if I buy things from outside of Japan, customer service becomes an issue. Anything that goes wrong becomes an arduous and expensive process of mailing and remailing and postage and filling out customs forms. This has been an issue the past few days, but I got excellent results that are worth writing about.

I recently got a 2014 Glenmont from Edison Pens as part of a special group purchase the company arranges every year (and as my birthday present). Once I got it, I sat down to put ink in it and start using it.

I filled the converter with ink and attached it to the housing and started to push some ink into the nib. A few minutes later I had a lot of ink on my hands and none in the nib. I tried dunking the nib in the ink and drawing it into the pen. I ended up doing a lot of twisting but got no ink in the converter.

The converter didn’t seem to be sealing to the nib housing and whatever I did I ended up with ink on my fingers.

I contacted Brian Gray at Edison Pens and he responded quickly. He then had the unfortunate job of diagnosing a pen problem in Japan sight unseen. I followed his suggestions and then discovered a hole where no hole should have been and sent a picture of it. He realized they’d attached the housing for a different kind of pen and immediately shipped me the correct version.

The best part is, except for a short wait, it’s the same service I’d get if I still lived in the USA. Unfortunately, it’s got me thinking about what the 2015 limited edition will be…that said, I actually haven’t had a chance to write with my new pen yet, so maybe I’d better wait before thinking about 2015 too much.

Side Note: if you like classic fountain pens, I recommend you check out Edison Pen Co. If you like a more machined look and steam-punkish pens, check out the Karas Kustoms INK and the Namisu Nexus.

The Ugliest and Most Expensive is Always the Fit

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Every now and then I think Cody Lundin has the right idea and that I should just walk around barefoot. But I only think that when I try to buy shoes here in Japan.

Oddly, despite my height (and on occasion my weight) I can buy most of my clothes here in Japan. I have to watch out for sleeve and trouser leg length, but otherwise, except for jackets and coats, clothes shopping isn’t that much trouble.

There is, however, apparently a law in a room somewhere in Japan that declares that no Japanese foot shall be longer than a size 11 US. Unfortunately, I wear a size 12 1/2, which basically means I have to buy a size 13. (Yes, I pretty much resemble a tall person wearing short skis once I have my shoes on.)

For many years I still held out hope that I could find shoes my size in a regular shoe store but my hopes were dashed around 98% of the time. I took this to mean I have a 0% chance of finding reasonably priced shoes that fit. (2% totally equals 0%. Look it up.)

In most cases, the only shoes I could find that fit were either 1) ugly 2) expensive or 3) ugly and expensive. I remember looking around one store and then asking the clerk for certain shoes and being rejected every time. I finally asked if he had anything in a size 30 (my size in Japan) and he frowned a bit and then led me to a pair of silver and purple quilted Nike high-tops. They were so bright I’m pretty sure they could be seen from space. Since then I’ve learned that, in every shoe store, the ugliest and most expensive shoes will always fit me.

There are, however, a few stores that cater to large feet, but this creates a series of dilemmas:

1) The main store I use, Big-b, (link is Japanese) has an odd selection and can be expensive, especially for formal shoes. I not only have to pay a lot, I have to travel to Tokyo.

2) Buy the ugly shoes and a can of spray paint.

3) Order from the USA, but run the risk of buying shoes that don’t fit. This means I’m limited to brands I know have consistent sizes–Rockport, for example–which means I have to pay a lot for the same-old boring look. I also have to do some math.

4) Keep wearing a pair shoes until they are falling apart and held together with duct tape and super glue and buy shoes the next time I visit the USA. Unfortunately I’ve been told this doesn’t look very professional and can be rather stinky.

Every time I visit the USA, I come back to Japan with several pairs of shoes. Someday the customs guy is going to accuse me of being a shoe salesman.

Perfect Pitch and Sickly Sweet Songs that Sound the Same

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Today, in high school English club, my job was to watch the club members listen to music. I also had to survive flashes of horror and flashbacks.

The reason I endured flashbacks is that, for reasons I’m not sure I want to know, the song chosen was “I Need to Be In Love” by the Carpenters. Now, although this was bad enough, what really shocked me was the reaction some of the students had when the very first note of each song was played. One student kept saying “Yes, I like that.” when the first note of “Top of the World” (I dare you to click the link and listen), “Sing” and “We’ve Only Just Begun” were played. It was like a nightmarish version of Name That Tune with teenagers. “Tom, I can freak the teacher out with just one note.”

Keep in mind, I wasn’t a big fan of the Carpenters, especially in high school, but at least I’d heard them almost every day from age three to age 15 (and then every hour for a year after Karen Carpenter’s death) so the notion that a Japanese high school boy born in 1999 could be a big enough fan to recognize each tune with only one note shocks me .

That said, a lot of bands find an odd second life here in Japan. One hit wonder Mr. Big has enjoyed a long career in Japan, including reuniting for a tour in 2009. Cindy Lauper remains popular and often appears on TV acting like, well, like Cindy Lauper. Jon Bon Jovi is also popular, especially thanks to a female comedian who used to sing a bad, yet oddly compelling chorus of “You Give Love a Bad Name” (You don’t need a link; it’s already in your head. Shot through the heart, indeed.)

Avril Lavigne also remains disturbingly popular.

As for me, I’m still stuck in the 70’s trying to songs out of my head.

And The Pain Was Brought

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Two days ago I wrote something so crappy it almost made me kill a project.

As I’ve written before, because I don’t have enough to do and am a total moron, I decided to try National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) on top of this blog and my job. The results have been mixed.

First, it’s clear that in it’s current state, the “novel” may not make it to 50,000 words which means it doesn’t count as a novel. This is partly because the nature of NaNoWriMo seems to make you either over-write or under-write in order to meet the quota.

Second, in order to meet the word quota, I’ve been tolerating stuff that I know will eventually have to be cut. I’ve gone back and rewritten a few scenes to flesh them out but that’s caused other passages to be out of place and, in the case of a couple scenes, irrelevant. However, if I cut them out, I have to do that much more work to replace them.

Third, I am, on occasion, capable of producing scenes that are nothing but crap. I wrote three pages of one scene before stopping myself and going “really, DL, really?” I had to stop writing and think a lot more about the project. The next day, though, I rewrote the scene before the crap and wrote a scene after the crap that, mercifully, made the crap scene unnecessary. In fact, the scene has the unique pleasure of being both unfinished and useless. However, I’ve left it in at this point to keep the word count buffed up.

Thus far, for me, the most useful parts of NaNoWriMo have been 1) the discipline of making a regular time to write; 2) using free time to write instead of waste time; and 3) as a source of at least two blog posts, with at least one more to come.

I’ve missed the quota three times, including today and am now a couple hundred words behind “par”. Luckily the weekend in approaching and I can catch up.

However, the novel’s still on track to be too short, which means I need to sit down and re-rethink it. Which, unfortunately, doesn’t count toward the word quota.

Don’t Wanna Come Around Here No More

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One of the odd twists of teaching English in Japan is that sometimes your worst students have the best English. The worst of those are the “returnees”, the students who’ve lived overseas.

Several years ago, I had a student who’d spent a good portion of his life in the USA. He hated being back in Japan so much he actually made his parents send him to a different school. One class he was there, the next class he was not and his friends said he’d gone to a rival school with a better building.

About that same time, I had a returnee who would finish his work quickly and then proceed to keep his friends from finishing theirs. If I assigned pair work, he’d make his partner do all the work while he slept. After several loud altercations involving me telling him to work or get out my class, he failed the term. This resulted in some attention from the Powers What Are at the school as they inquired how a returnee could fail English. I said he did it by being a “an obnoxious little shit” or “by lacking focus” or something like that.

Eventually he and I reached an agreement: as long as he finished his work and didn’t disturb anyone else, he could sit off to the side and sleep. Which he did happily.

In defense of returnees, they do tend to attract a lot of “why don’t you do this for me?” attention and they get tired of it. They also live in a culture where it’s not okay to stand out too much. I can tell, in almost any class of any age, who the returnee is because as soon as I give instructions, everyone in the room turns and looks at the returnee for a translation. That gets bad enough that I’ve actually told returnees that unless I ask them to translate, they don’t speak English.

The worst class, though, was my first year at the school. I made the mistake of calling my third year high school elective “Introductory English”. Every student but one was a returnee looking for an easy grade. I’d give them an assignment and 20 minutes later they’d all be finished and I’d still have 80 minutes to fill. They were pretty much like “Here we are now. Entertain us.”

It was good teacher improvisation practice, but it wasn’t a lot of fun.

Talking Across Cultures and Internet Glitches

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Today, anything that could go wrong didn’t, but something did. Kind of.

At the school where I work I am in charge, sort of, of the foreign teacher part of High School English Club (there’s a Japanese teacher in charge of the entire club). In the past the club has alternated between “good” and “why the hell are you in English club?” (Answer: because I need the points for graduation–said in Japanese of course.)

This year, we’ve got an excellent group and we also have a new school full of fancy equipment, including laptops and computer projectors in each classroom and two Computer Assisted Learning Labs (CALL). Unfortunately, we also have an old school background and teachers are only slowly figuring out ways to use the equipment as more than distraction.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, a volunteer with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA aka the Japanese Peace Corps) in Tanzania got in touch with the  school and set up an international internet chat between our English club and Tanzanian students. Although this seems simple, it immediately became a big deal with everyone at school being invited as well as a representative from JICA in Japan.

This meant our boys had to be on their game; which meant they’d have to step up their game.

To get ready, a couple of my colleagues used their turns in club to help prepare the boys to ask questions and follow-up questions and to answer questions. Unfortunately, the first problem was the boys in the English club didn’t rise to the occasion and come up with clever questions. “Are you a food like?” is not an appropriate question. (Note: this was not an actual question. It is just an example of things to be avoided.)

Extra meetings were required.

Today at 4:00 p.m. japan time (10 a.m. Tanzania time?)  it was show time. Or, it would have been if there hadn’t been some Skype issues involving not being able to make a video connection. Luckily this only lasted 10 minutes or so and the connection was made. Every student got five minutes to chat with a counterpart in another part of the world. Our boys did a great job and one even proved he could break dance (on carpet no less). The Tanzanian students were a mix of boys and girls whose questions ranged from “What subject do you like?” to “How does Japan elect its Prime Minister?”

Everybody seemed to have a good enough time I suspect they will want to do it again. Well, at least everyone who’s not a boy in the club, Although they had a good time, they were really nervous.

The Unbearable Crowdedness of Lights

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‘Tis the season to be wary, at least if you’re shopping in downtown Tokyo, are in a hurry and value all of your toes/both feet.

The reason you have to be afraid is now that Halloween is over and done (and we are waiting for the inevitable sales on Halloween candy) the season of Christmas lights has begun.

Although Japan is a nominally Buddhist and/or Shinto country, no one is particularly religious. They also have a Labor Thanksgiving Day, but it’s not that important of a holiday. However, the Japanese love an excuse to go out and do something that seems as if it’s important and counts as actually doing something. The result is impressive displays of Christmas lights (called “illuminations” here) that attract droves of young couples and photographers and families.

Omotesando's Illuminations and a bunch of cars.

Omotesando’s Illuminations and a bunch of cars, circa 2011. Taken from bicycle parking near a “no standing” sign.

Some of the illuminations occupy entire streets and are made up of a series of arches that require the viewers to look up to enjoy them. The problem is, that when everyone is looking up, no one is actually watching where they are going and this, kids, is when people get bumped, toes get crushed, feet get mangled and tempers get short. (Happy Holidays Indeed!)

The other problem is that, especially in the areas where you have to pay to see the illuminations, the operators close the streets and pack in as many people as they can which means all you can really do is walk through the illumination without stopping. This means you can see the illuminations; you just can’t enjoy them.

Random lights and decorations.

Random lights and decorations on Ometesando, circa 2011.

Our neighborhood is often decked out with lights, too.

The other interesting thing is how superficial it all is. It’s mostly an excuse to sell LEDs and draw people downtown during cold weather.

The day after Christmas, it all goes away and Japan gears up for the New Year’s holiday, which is one of it’s most important times of year (and the season in which Groupon committed business suicide, but more on that in another post).

Bah humbug.

The building is almost more impressive than the trees.

The building is almost more impressive than the trees. Circa 2011

 

 

Old Money and New Money and Confusion

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Yesterday I talked about how living overseas can turn you into a minor currency speculator. Today I’ll talk about how, when I was in Albania, the Albanians clung to their old money but accepted new money.

When we got to Albania, one of the things we were warned about was the difference between Old Lek and New Lek. Basically, in 1965 or so, the then dictator Enver Hoxha (“xh” is pronounced “J” as “jump”) revalued the Lek and introduced new notes and coins. The new value was 1 New Lek for 10 Old Lek. If you had 10,000 Lek in the bank it suddenly had a value of 1,000 Lek.

The problem is the Albanians, being stubborn and prone to keeping their history close and alive, continued to price things in Old Lek and refer to them in Old Lek but would accept the New Lek value. For example, if the street vendor said “30 lek” he would take 3 lek. If the shopkeeper said “100 lek” she would accept 10 lek.

Adding to the confusion, the price tag on something you’d asked about would say 20 Lek, but the vendor would say “That’ll be 200 lek” as he handed it to you.

Note: When I was there $1 US = about 105 Lek.

It got confusing but most vendors, to their credit, were honest with us. With a couple exceptions.

For example, when we first got to Albania, one of my fellow volunteers payed 250 lek for rice (or some other kind of food). Our language trainers’ faces turned very sour and they made him take them to the vendor so they could help him get his money back. The price was actually 25 New Lek, but had been quoted in Old Lek.

In my case, I remember being confused about if the Chinese-made fountain pens I was buying were 150 lek each or 15 lek each and the vendor seemed to be encouraging the confusion. I gave the vendor 30 Lek and he seemed satisfied.

Of course, part of the problem was that we were seeing the prices as cheap, even when quoted in Old Lek. Despite that, we were instructed not to drive up the prices of goods by paying Old Lek for them.

 

International Financial Speculation on a Small Scale

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Note to family and friends: With a weak yen, it’s a great time to visit Japan.

Every country, for the most part, is trying to ruin their currency. Unfortunately Japan has momentarily succeeded.

First you have to understand that when you move to a foreign country you are given a handful of funny looking bits of paper they call “local currency”. The problem is, you have no frame of reference for it and your brain immediately defaults to your home currency. I remember during our orientation in Tokyo that speakers would describe something as 20,000 yen and we newbies would be like “whaaasat?” and they’d say that’s about 180 dollars and then the people from the British Isles and/or Australia would be like “whaaasat?”

Once you learn the money, it becomes second nature and then you give a talk to newbies and they go “whaaasat?” when you mention a computer costs 90,000 yen. However, except for that case, you don’t even think much about the dollar or pound value. You just live and use the local currency.

However, if your goal is to send money back to your home country, you immediately become a minor currency speculator. You analyze whether or not you should send your 200,000 yen home now when it’s worth 1,800 dollars or wait and risk the yen weakening and your 200,000 being worth only 1,700 dollars. But if the yen strengthens, your 200,000 yen is worth 1,900 dollars.

This is important because your salary never changes but its value in your home currency can change a lot, as can your bragging rights. When I first came to Japan I had a 300,000 yen per month or 3,600,000 yen per year salary that didn’t change for three years. This is how the value in dollars changed each year. (I’m including the value when I finished that job in 1999.)

1996: $34,286 per year
1997: $30,000 per year
1998: $27,692 per year
1999: $35,643 per year

Just three years ago that same salary would have been $47,368.

The other thing you become aware of is why countries are trying to ruin their currencies: Stuff. By weakening your currency you increase exports (albeit by driving up inflation and making your country a crappy place to do business but at least someone’s getting rich).

As an expatriate, though, you get really good at price comparisons and adding in tax and shipping to decide if buying local is better or if importing is worth the money, the effort and the wait. For example, three years ago if you wanted to buy a laptop and the price was $1,000 in the USA and 100,000 yen in Japan, it would be worth the time, effort and wait to import to Japan because $1,000=75,000 yen, a savings of 25,000 yen or $328.

Now, however, that same $1,000 laptop would be 115,000 yen to import but only 100,000 yen to buy in Japan.

A couple years ago, I purchased a couple bags from an online retailer here in Japan. Soon after I made the order the yen started to get weak and the retailer cancelled most of my order. I suspect they were importing products from the USA and taking advantage of the margin they got by selling in yen. Then, suddenly the margin disappeared along with my order.

Confused? Welcome to my world.

Edited on 11/8-2014 for clarity.

A Spy in the House of Learning

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There were not one, but two spies at the school where I work.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t work for the school where I work. Instead I’m assigned there by a different company, let’s call it The Evil Empire (not its real name),  that grows rich and fat whilst I grow, um, older and heavier.

For a while we had almost the perfect existence. The Evil Empire left us alone and we repaid the favor by neither asking for attention nor causing a need for attention. We didn’t miss school (I’ve personally only missed two days of actual teaching in the 14 years I’ve worked at the school) and, for the most part, we only went to the main office to sign our contracts for the next year and listen to the glorious range of excuses for why a raise was neither necessary nor forthcoming.

Unfortunately, someone moved the cheese which caused the mice to become cannibals and destroy all other mice in a seven state region, or something like that (although I may have misunderstood that book). In our case, the Evil Empire has slowly begun creeping into our lives.

The most visible example of this is “observations” which happened one per decade in the first 10 years of the 21st century but which are now occurring twice per year, once as an ambush.

Today’s observation was not an ambush, but it was still very odd. The first observer was our new sales rep, who is one part of one tier of actual decision makers in the company. He was there mostly as a meet-and-greet as he’s only been with the company for two months, but he did jump between three classes then left. He was followed by the second observer, our immediate powerless supervisor/handler who stayed all day.

The problem with observations are many, especially if you’re not new at the job. The best that can come out of them is a chance to talk the immediate supervisor, but you’re in a case where your words can be held against you (as well as the research you’re doing, hypothetically, for your football pool during your breaks) and the observers, to justify their existence, have to find fault. I don’t mind feedback and suggestions but I’m not a big fan of “my job is to say bad things” (which, technically, is my job during exam time now that I think about it).

That said, this was a pretty painless observation. I don’t change what I do, although the students do behave a little better when the observer’s around. Especially after I told them the Japanese Sales Rep was a cop observing the lesson.