Category Archives: Japan

Cashing Change and Begging Someone Else to Do It

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I carried a lot of money around today. Woe to anyone who tried to steal it, though. It probably would have given them a hernia.

Today was the day I decided to drain the piggy bank (more on that here) and deposit the contents in a real bank. There were, of course, some complications.

When I first started doing this, my habit was to wait until the jars were full and then take them to the bank, hand them over to one of the nice clerks and then enjoy a book whilst waiting for them to count the change and give me bills, or deposit the money directly to my account and I could extract it at my leisure.

Unfortunately, one day 15 years ago, I handed the change over and the nice clerk suddenly sucked on her teeth and became apologetic (translation: you in trouble, foreign guy). Instead she sent me to the ATM where I was expected to enter the change by hand and let the ATM do the counting (note: Japanese ATMs can take coin deposits). I even tried to stack the coins on the counter and she just kept apologizing.

Unfortunately, the ATM could only take a few dozen coins at a time requiring me to make a few dozen deposits. A half hour and a few dozen swear words later, my account was full of cash and my bank book was full of a several dozen small deposits.

After that, I found a different bank. The only problem there was they charged a few dollars for handling all the coins.

Today actually had a few jobs: Deposit the change in my account; convince a nice clerk to do it rather than me; and take money out as today was also pay day. The problem is, as of Monday, I don’t have a bank card. This meant I needed a nice clerk’s  help.

The other problem was the coins were surprisingly heavy and I forgot there isn’t a branch of my bank in my town. This sent me the wrong way at first and then I got to carry the coins to the bank where I’d worked with Miss Patience about my name, address and bank card.

Luckily, after a little explaining, begging and playing dumb, a nice clerk took the change and deposited it for me and I was able to withdraw money for rent and food and taxes. I also have a little for more important things like pens and knives.

Watching And Praying And Wishing and Hoping

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Even the non-believers at the school where I work are praying tonight. Well, at least those of us on the native speaker staff are.

If tomorrow is sunny and beautiful, the students will head to a nearby lake where they will run a 10 kilometer (6.3ish mile) “marathon”. While they are doing this, we, the native speakers, will be doing such useful, scholarly things as “going to the bank”, “playing World of Tanks” and “recovering from hangover”.

This is because there is nothing for us to do on marathon day. I’ll be working on my final exam/playing World of Tanks whilst my students run in the wind and the cold.

If, however, it is rainy and/or snowy, the marathon will be cancelled and classes will be reinstated and we’ll have to rush to school to teach.

The latter has happened quite a few times. My first year at the school where I work, it was a beautiful sunny day everywhere but the actual marathon site. As I went about wasting time and conspicuously consuming, I got a call telling me marathon had been cancelled and I had to go to work. Unfortunately, by the time I got to the school, my classes would have been finished.

I ended up getting the day off, but I felt bad about it all day.

A few years ago we got two major snow storms a week apart and that left the marathon site messy and dangerous  and we ended up having class.

Although we can guess, based on the weather predictions, if the marathon will be a go or not, we still have to be up early to monitor the school website to learn if there’s a change of schedule. If there is, we start working the phones and rush to school.

I’ll be up early waiting for the official notice. If nothing changes, I might go back to bed.

 

Miss Patience and the Long Journey to a New Card

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All I wanted was a bank card issued in this millennium. After a while I was afraid it might take a millennium to get it.

On Monday I went to the bank to get a new bank card. My card had been issued in 1999 after I moved to Tokyo. It had held up reasonably well over 16-and-a-half years but it had a couple problems. 1) the magnetic strip, which had been hidden, had been exposed and begun to wear out. 2) Although the ATMs still recognized it, the bank that had issued it no longer existed.

I arrived at the bank before closing, explained what I wanted, and then was sent upstairs where I filled out a form, was given a number and waited until my number was called.

Once my number was called, a very nice clerk, lets call her Miss Patience, started to process my application. The first problem was with my address. I’d said that I didn’t want to change my address but Miss Patience pointed out that the address I’d written on the form didn’t match the address on my card. After she told me part of the address, I thought she was talking about the company I work for but she assured me the address was listed as my home address.

The problem was the address listed on my account no longer existed. In fact, it hadn’t existed for several years because the building had been torn down and new buildings put in its place.

I do not know if this means I’ve been breaking the law for several years–and it might explain why I was rejected for a credit card last week–but Miss Patience managed to get the address changed. That, however, led to the next problem: my signature didn’t match the signature on the account and since the card was older than my marriage I couldn’t remember how I’d signed it.

Every time I wrote my signature Miss Patience sighed, told me that was wrong and dropped a few hints.

Clearly I was pathetic enough that she didn’t believe I could be a con artist.

Eventually I figured out how I’d signed it (long story involving miscommunication) and everything was changed. I also managed to get my first and last names on the card rather than both my given names (another long story).

Along the way Miss Patience kept disappearing and reappearing with different forms and we both made mistakes requiring new forms. After an hour together, I was finally informed that my card would be mailed to me exactly “some time next week” and that if I needed money I should go to the counter.

Because the lower level of the bank had closed, I had to take an elevator to the ATM room in order to escape the bank.

As banking encounters in Japan go, it was surprisingly painless given how long it took. Now I’m just waiting to see if the card arrives to see if things actually worked out.

 

Dangerously Expensive Free Times in Tokyo

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After I moved to Tokyo, the company I work for used to send me around town to teach various classes at various companies and schools. Because of the nature of the scheduling, I often found myself with a couple hours to waste before my next job.

This is a dangerous thing for a pen addict.

One of the dangerous things about giving a pen addict lots of free time in Tokyo is the store Ito-Ya. It is several stories of pen, ink, paper and paraphernalia that in its prime (before it became the Apple Store for stationery) was a great place to explore. Like a good bookstore, every time I went there I found something I couldn’t live without and had to take home. The fountain pen store (located in the alley behind the main store) is still worth a visit.

Near Ito-Ya is a large LOFT, a large MUJI and Tokyo station. Near Tokyo station are two other dangerous places: Maruzen Books (link in Japanese) and the Yaesu Book Center. I spent lots of time perusing the English sections of both of those bookstores. Yaesu is nice because it meets my standard for creepiness. The English section is on the eighth floor and you can only take the elevator halfway. Once you get there it’s kind of cramped.

For book lovers, the most dangerous place in Tokyo is the Jimbocho area. It has dozens of tiny bookstores selling a variety of used books in a variety of languages. In one store I could have bought an entire James Joyce research library with scholarly books and journals in English and Japanese. You can easily waste several hours here just looking at old Japanese books.

Last, of the most dangerous areas is Shinjuku. It’s got two Kinokuniya bookstores (one older, one relatively new), a modern, but very nice Tokyu Hands, an entire block of camera and electronics shops and Kabukicho, Tokyo’s red light district.

Kabukicho isn’t that interesting during the day, but it’s worth a quick walk through. But also hidden away in Shinjuku is Kingdom Note, a fairly posh pen shop with lots of original goods, including pens and ink, and lots of used pens.

Near all of this, on the other side of the station is the SeKaiDo main store, which has several floors of art supplies.

I’m glad I didn’t learn about it when I had all that time to kill. I might have tried to become a painter.

Ginza Blade Show 2016–Accessorize

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I nodded at them; she gave a polite smile back; he latched on to her and held her close to let me know she was with him. They went strait to a table to look at knives made from agate. That was the start of the Ginza Blade Show today, and it was actually a promising start.

In the past, there haven’t been many women at the shows and it’s especially rare to see young women take an interest in knives, even it was the ones made from stone.

The display of stone knives made by Takeji Kitabayashi. I like the display more than the knives.

The back lit display of stone knives made by Takeji Kitabayashi. I like the display; the knives are pretty good, too.

Oddly, today’s show seemed deliberately targeted towards women and people who usually don’t show an interest in knives. It featured the most knife-related accessories of any show, including lots of stuff made from leather and paracord, and several accessories that were just stylish, not knife-related. There were also hand-forged Damascus steel pizza cutters.

Pizza cutters made from Damascus steel hand-forged by Shoichi Hashimoto. They were 1350.

Pizza cutters made from Damascus steel hand-forged by Shoichi Hashimoto. They were $1,350 each.

Because of this, it was a larger show than usual. There were enough makers present that some of them got sent to the “little kids room” on the other side of the lobby.

Steam punk designer Lotus_Maple_Walnut, had a display featuring a glowing box, steam punk key chains, and $50 steam punk covers for your $1 box of mints.

Lotus_Maple_Walnut's key chains and accessories.

Lotus_Maple_Walnut’s key chains and accessories.

Pen and knife maker Hidetoshi Nakayama had a table with only four items: a knife with a unique deployment method (that I couldn’t get a good picture of), an ugly knife, a key chain knife shaped like peanuts, and an ivory bolt action pen.

I wonder if this is airport security compliant.

I wonder if this is airport security compliant.

I didn't bother asking the price of this pen, but he did let me play with it.

I didn’t bother asking the price of this pen–it’s only a ballpoint pen after all–but the maker did let me play with it.

As for knives, there was a good mix of different styles. In the past the shows have been overwhelmed by variations of Bob Loveless drop point hunters or expensive slip joint pocket knives or fantastic art knives that belong in a museum and out in the field. This time, there were folders of various shapes and sizes and a lot of the items seemed to priced to move, especially to up and coming knife people. If you want new people in your hobby, you can’t scare them off with $600 knives (that comes later).

One of my favorite knife makers had dropped his prices around 20% and other makers had a good range of prices. I ended up buying a $26 dollar knife I can practice sharping on.  I didn’t catch what steel it is, but it came with a cord wrapped handle. After I bought it, the maker, Hideo Yamazaki (who lives in my town) threw in an extra small knife for free.

Later, I saw a small slip joint folder and mentioned to my Canadian friend that I liked it but it was just out my price range. Suddenly, the maker made it cheaper and I couldn’t resist. Three knives for the price of two. Not bad.

I hope this trend toward the different, the cheaper and the accessory continues in future shows. The Tokyo Folding Knife Show is next month. I guess I’ll see then.

Note: Here are a few photos from the day:

The crowd begins to arrive right as the doors open.

The crowd begins to arrive right as the doors open. The cool couple are in the top right corner. 

Mamoru Fujita's incredible detail work.

Mamoru Fujita’s incredible detail work.

Mamoru Fujita's Mount Fuji blade.

Mamoru Fujita’s handcarved Mount Fuji blade.

Still available from the last show I attended: Kiku Knives first flipper.

Still available from the last show I attended: Kiku Matsuda’s first flipper.

 

 

 

Walking the Walking Dead Walk

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We all showed up, today, but none of us were really there.

One of the quirks of the school where I work is we have lots of odd days with little to do because of entrance exams. Because of this, when we finally have something to do, it’s often been so long since we had to do it that we forget how it was done.

Throw in illness and a migraine hangover, and you’ve got recipe for zombies.

One of us had a toothache and was popping pain killers which left him less than 100%. Others were losing energy as they encountered students who either had too much energy or, more likely, too little. As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but no matter how many times you it with a stun gun, you can make it drink (something like that).

In my case I was nursing a migraine hangover. (I got the migraine aura right before supper last night. The spot was in my left eye which usually means a brutal one is coming.) I thought I was fine until I got to class and could feel the leftover hint of nausea and the leftover hint of migraine at the side of my head. The effect of this was to make me cranky in a “shut the f@#k up” kind of way.

It didn’t help that in my second class, seven of nine speeches had to go again, including five people who were already going again. Then, despite it having been translated for them, they pretended they didn’t understand that they had to go again in the same class. This led to more crankiness in a “What are you people? On dope?” kind of way.

At the end of the day, even though today was the only full day of the week, we were all like the walking dead. We were walking slowly; we were hungry; and we all needed a brain.

Oh, and in a follow up from yesterday’s post: I didn’t get approved for the credit card. 

 

You Really Gotta Want It

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My first ever argument She Who Must Be Obeyed involved a credit card. Today we managed to collaborate over one, but I’m afraid we’ll have to do it again and things will get bad.

Soon after I started dating She Who Must Be Obeyed we went shopping for something or other and I used my credit card. The problem was, I was apparently the first person in history to attempt to use a credit card at this large shopping center. The clerk studied the card, sighed in an “are you f@#king serious” way, and then put the card, at least to my eyes, through the machine upside down.

The machine beeped and the clerk shrugged. I said to try it again. At this point, She Who Must Be Obeyed jumped in and told them I was using a debit card (which we had talked about before in the community English class she’d joined; long story). The clerk seemed relieved and I started to hand the card back and I insisted she try again.

She Who Must Be Obeyed tried to intervene again and at that point I said “Don’t help” and she complied by storming away. Eventually, the clerk called someone and the card cleared. However, the clerk never stopped looking at me with suspicion. She Who Must Be Obeyed eventually spoke to me again.

I bring this up because today, at long last, I decided to apply for a Japanese credit card. The problem is, the Japanese are still, to my mind, behind in designing and using browser based forms. As such, each form has lots of extra steps and different lines have to be done in different sized Japanese letters. Even with good Japanese, there’s so much technical jargon it’s even hard for Japanese to do.

Therefore, She Who Must Be Obeyed stayed nearby as I attempted to fill out the form. After almost 45 minutes, and several backtracks to figure out what was wrong–luckily this form was modern enough to save previous work–I finally got the form submitted.

Now, I have to wait and hope I get approval. However, the odds are not necessarily ever in my favor. (I know one person who was rejected several times and ended up having to get a kind of debit card.)

If it doesn’t clear, we may have to go through all this again and that could be problematic.

Leaving the House Eventually

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I’m not agoraphobic, but I find that the more time I spend in the house doing things, the less interested I am in leaving it. This is a reverse cabin fever that I don’t fully understand.

This week, because of entrance exams, we’ve been on a strange schedule at the school where I work. I, of course, totally worked on several things for the company I work for, but well, yeah.

After a few days of totally working on these projects–which I have to do in the morning— today I decided I needed to get out of the house and do things like “see the sun” and “breathe fresh air” and “put on trousers” (not necessarily in that order).

The trouble is, my brain began running through excuses for why I didn’t actually want to leave the house. (It did this the last couple days as well.) The excuses included: no reason to go out; what you need to do you can put off: what you can’t put off you can order off the internet; breathing stale air makes you stronger, fresh air will make you weak; you’ll just spend money.

In that end that’s what made me leave. I need to price some computer parts and then decide if I want the adventure of replacing them myself. (I’m not afraid to do it especially as the adventure will provide lots of fodder for this daily bit of blather it’s just a pain in the behind to find all the stuff and pick a day to do it.) I also need to see if it’s cheaper to just buy a new computer.

I gathered up all my stuff, made a list of the specs for the components I needed and set out on my daily adventure. After I went to the ATM to get some cash, I realized I’d forgot the list of parts specs. I went to the shop and looked over a few things but only got a couple prices. Then I went to a couple pen shops and managed to not buy anything. (No, really.)

I then finally got to enjoy the chicken chicken I was denied a couple months ago. (I probably won’t need to eat for days now.)

However, after a couple hours, I just came home. I bought some healthy snacks and then waited to have beans thrown at. (I’ve written about that before.)

It wasn’t a productive day, but it was relaxing.

Cleaning and Eating the Old Stuff

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Because nothing bad has happened I have small problems in both my office and in our house. I solve some of the problems by eating them.

After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and the countless aftershocks, we became very diligent about our escape plans and assembled a couple bugout bags, including one at school. A couple years ago I updated them and we’ve now reached the time of year when I have to update them again.

At home that involves dusting things off, checking dates and deciding what to do with the stuff inside. Some of it will be replaced and the rest thrown away or, if it seems in reasonable shape, left for another year.

The problem happens when I check the food as my first instinct is just to eat it, even it’s well past its BEST BY date. This also She Who Must Be Obeyed’s natural instinct. In the past we’ve eaten five year old canned bread and biscuits (cookie-like things) and rice (and fed them to our girls as well). The only things we don’t eat are things in dented or damaged cans or things in rusting cans.

In my case, after I started cleaning out my Get Home bag at work, I decided to eat the old “cup noodle” soups. One was very tasty, the other wasn’t that good. Neither of them appeared to be bad, but I did get a headache the day I ate the second one.

Tomorrow I will attack our big bag and decide what needs to be updated and replaced. I also want to spread stuff around to a couple other bags now that the girls are old enough to carry some stuff. (In fact, I want them to help assemble the bags.)

As for the food, well, some of it might end up being my lunch tomorrow. This means I can’t promise tomorrow’s post will be especially appetizing.

 

 

For Want of a Door the Schedule

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It wasn’t an “Oh sh#t” moment, it was more of an “Oh crap” moment.

When I arrived at the train station on my way to work today the first thing I noticed was the time schedule had destinations listed but no times. My first reaction was “Oh crap” because it meant that something had gone wrong and there were train delays. It also meant that the trains were going to be crowded.

Note: The “Oh sh#t” moment, when it happens, takes place on the way to the station. It occurs at the precise moment I can see the circle in front of the the station. If it’s full of people and one or two police officers, my reaction is “Oh sh#t” because it means the trains have stopped and no one is being allowed into the station. This can be good (if I’m on the way to work) or bad (if I’m going shopping).

Today, though, the first train arrived on time and although there were a few more people than usual, it wasn’t that crowded.

This, of course, was a trap.

The train that arrived on time wasn’t the train that was supposed to be arriving and the people who were late for work kept pressing in until even the air itself said “to hell with this, I’m leaving” and we were left with no air. Luckily, I had a wide place for my feet and a bar I could hand on to with my left hand whilst my right hand wielded my book bag at knee level to keep people from pressing farther in.

The trip was slower than usual, but not that bad. After I arrived I work I discovered that 1) classes were delayed a half hour and 2) the reason the trains were slow was because of a “door problem” that had occurred at at nearby station a few hours before.

A website that monitors trains was full of tweets from Japanese mocking the idea that a door could cause that much delay. A few hours later, the trains were still messed up. It must have been a hell of a door.