It's funny (in hindsight)... I literally went nuts at my local supermarket when I saw that pistaccios are ridiculously cheap. Wow, I thought - a perk of one of those inscrutable workings of Japanese commerce - pistaccios are cheap! I bought 4 packets - one night I basically had them for dinner. I went to buy more when I took the time to compare the katakana and realised I'd been reading the price of peanuts. The pistaccios are expensive. "It's a tragedy for me to see the dream is over... and I never will forget the day we met {nuts} I'm gonna miss you..." (apologies for misquoting Milli Vanilli). Serves me right for not looking at my dockets more closely!
There are 3 Japanese scripts - kanji (Chinese characters), hiragana (phonetic alphabet) and katakana (same phonics as hiragana, but used for foreign words... like pistaccio). I've learned hiragana, a smattering of katakana and handful of kanji... hence my not knowing what I'm buying, or how much I'm paying for it... the definition of a sucker.
To answer your question Mike, (Why is rice so expensive?) I don't know! I guess because the rice they eat here is different to the jasmine rice in Southeast Asian food (I'm told Japanese people tend not to like it). It's shorter grain - the type you find in sushi. I'm guessing that most of it is grown here and so the cost is much higher than Chinese rice. But you'd think that they'd grow Japanese rice in China and export it. Rice is traditionally the "sheep's back" of Japan (i.e. what wool was to Australia, rice was to Japan), and people here are very nationalistic (some extremely so) so I guess they would buy Japanese rice, even though it's expensive (we're talking a 10 kg bag for AU$50). I've learned that things here are often deliberately inefficient (I'm sure many wouldn't like that description) and that there are layers of bureaucracy and middle-men between middle-men that all add to the cost of things. But with all that over-staffing, it means (nearly) everyone has a job, usually things are done to a tee and things are expensive. I've read that fish can go through 7 different layers of distribution before you get it in your gob. It's amazing to see how thoroughly some things are done here. I've seen road works where there was a little glowing orange cone about every foot to warn of the danger... and yet kids go unbelted in the back seat of a lot of cars! In Australia you might get a striped barrier thing every few metres or so. There is often a light saber fellow waving traffic in and out of the supermarket across the tracks from me. It's not a blind corner and he doesn't actually change the traffic at all. But he has a job. I dunno, I shouldn't make him sound so redundant (I mean no disrespect) ...I doubt there'd be any accidents with him there (unless he was to be hit by one of the cars).
There's a very different work ethic to that found back home. People work earnestly and silently whether the boss is there or not. My trainer at headquarters said that the Japanese staff often think that we aren't working when we sit around discussing classes or different materials - we are chatting, so we can't be working. Hence a lot of learning here is by wrote - someone speaks and you listen. Hence it can be hard to get an older kid who's used to the system to converse in your conversation school.
I'm intrigued by the concept of space here. Space is defined so much - everything seems to be like a bento box - divided, ordered, categorised and labelled. Things are kosher or unkosher (sorry, I'm not Jewish, don't know the correct term!), sacred or ...profane? I dunno, those terms are probably a bit too strong for everyday situations. Sorry I realise I'm putting myself up here as a backyard anthropologist - I once did an introductory course in it which proves my interest... and that's about it! Anyway, yeah it can be a bit confusing (to my Western mind, anyway)...
The ground is dirty. Well that's obvious, but the association with uncleanliness seems to extend beyond the issue of hygiene. Obviously there's the respect given/maintained when you observe the custom of removing your shoes before entering someone's home/sitting on someone's tatami mats. But I find it bizarre how we remove our shoes at my school and yet my immaculately presented manager doesn't seem to see all the bits of fluff, staples, bits of rubber, hair and other preschool/school debris on the floor. I'm sure I'm the only one that vacuums!
I was buying groceries and I noticed that the cashier put my toothpaste in a little bag of its own. Nothing else was bagged - you normally do that yourself. Is it some psychological thing? The toothpaste is to clean my mouth, therefore it should be kept separate from all the things that I will be dirtying my mouth with? Surely it's not a contamination issue - the paste is in a sealed plastic tube inside a sealed cardboard box. The proper way to eat is for the food not to touch your lips - at least I believe that's how my geisha friends eat. I guess the oustide must be kept clean. Kirei na - describes both beautiful and clean.
The plastic thing is slowly driving me insane. I've been here 6 weeks and I'm drowning in plastic. If you buy a drink which you are obviously about to down, the conbini guy will reach straight for the plastic bags. I try to catch him - "dai jo bu! dai jo bu!" It's ok, it's ok! There's a patisserie I go to where the bags sit on this stand with a little jet of air constantly blowing the top bag open, ready for an item to be shoved in with one hand. Ingenious, but depressing to see how many bags they can rapid-fire out the door. I noticed that when I offered a class cake, they all baulked when I produced a single cake cut into pieces. I'm sure now that if I'd offered them single-portion, individually wrapped cakes as I did for a later class then they would have snapped them up as the later class did. I thought, "for Pete's sake... you're kids! You're supposed to enjoy sticking your mittens in something grubby!".
I found it very amusing to be handed a purchase in a bag that stated "We keep the earth clean", accompanied by little pictures of creatures like whales. Japan is clean - the Philippines where some of this plastic ends up is not so clean. Anyway, I'm writing way too much and starting to preach about a country that nobody invited me to, so I should stop! I do love Japan and it's conveniences... just not the plastic!
There are 3 Japanese scripts - kanji (Chinese characters), hiragana (phonetic alphabet) and katakana (same phonics as hiragana, but used for foreign words... like pistaccio). I've learned hiragana, a smattering of katakana and handful of kanji... hence my not knowing what I'm buying, or how much I'm paying for it... the definition of a sucker.
To answer your question Mike, (Why is rice so expensive?) I don't know! I guess because the rice they eat here is different to the jasmine rice in Southeast Asian food (I'm told Japanese people tend not to like it). It's shorter grain - the type you find in sushi. I'm guessing that most of it is grown here and so the cost is much higher than Chinese rice. But you'd think that they'd grow Japanese rice in China and export it. Rice is traditionally the "sheep's back" of Japan (i.e. what wool was to Australia, rice was to Japan), and people here are very nationalistic (some extremely so) so I guess they would buy Japanese rice, even though it's expensive (we're talking a 10 kg bag for AU$50). I've learned that things here are often deliberately inefficient (I'm sure many wouldn't like that description) and that there are layers of bureaucracy and middle-men between middle-men that all add to the cost of things. But with all that over-staffing, it means (nearly) everyone has a job, usually things are done to a tee and things are expensive. I've read that fish can go through 7 different layers of distribution before you get it in your gob. It's amazing to see how thoroughly some things are done here. I've seen road works where there was a little glowing orange cone about every foot to warn of the danger... and yet kids go unbelted in the back seat of a lot of cars! In Australia you might get a striped barrier thing every few metres or so. There is often a light saber fellow waving traffic in and out of the supermarket across the tracks from me. It's not a blind corner and he doesn't actually change the traffic at all. But he has a job. I dunno, I shouldn't make him sound so redundant (I mean no disrespect) ...I doubt there'd be any accidents with him there (unless he was to be hit by one of the cars).
There's a very different work ethic to that found back home. People work earnestly and silently whether the boss is there or not. My trainer at headquarters said that the Japanese staff often think that we aren't working when we sit around discussing classes or different materials - we are chatting, so we can't be working. Hence a lot of learning here is by wrote - someone speaks and you listen. Hence it can be hard to get an older kid who's used to the system to converse in your conversation school.
I'm intrigued by the concept of space here. Space is defined so much - everything seems to be like a bento box - divided, ordered, categorised and labelled. Things are kosher or unkosher (sorry, I'm not Jewish, don't know the correct term!), sacred or ...profane? I dunno, those terms are probably a bit too strong for everyday situations. Sorry I realise I'm putting myself up here as a backyard anthropologist - I once did an introductory course in it which proves my interest... and that's about it! Anyway, yeah it can be a bit confusing (to my Western mind, anyway)...
The ground is dirty. Well that's obvious, but the association with uncleanliness seems to extend beyond the issue of hygiene. Obviously there's the respect given/maintained when you observe the custom of removing your shoes before entering someone's home/sitting on someone's tatami mats. But I find it bizarre how we remove our shoes at my school and yet my immaculately presented manager doesn't seem to see all the bits of fluff, staples, bits of rubber, hair and other preschool/school debris on the floor. I'm sure I'm the only one that vacuums!
I was buying groceries and I noticed that the cashier put my toothpaste in a little bag of its own. Nothing else was bagged - you normally do that yourself. Is it some psychological thing? The toothpaste is to clean my mouth, therefore it should be kept separate from all the things that I will be dirtying my mouth with? Surely it's not a contamination issue - the paste is in a sealed plastic tube inside a sealed cardboard box. The proper way to eat is for the food not to touch your lips - at least I believe that's how my geisha friends eat. I guess the oustide must be kept clean. Kirei na - describes both beautiful and clean.
The plastic thing is slowly driving me insane. I've been here 6 weeks and I'm drowning in plastic. If you buy a drink which you are obviously about to down, the conbini guy will reach straight for the plastic bags. I try to catch him - "dai jo bu! dai jo bu!" It's ok, it's ok! There's a patisserie I go to where the bags sit on this stand with a little jet of air constantly blowing the top bag open, ready for an item to be shoved in with one hand. Ingenious, but depressing to see how many bags they can rapid-fire out the door. I noticed that when I offered a class cake, they all baulked when I produced a single cake cut into pieces. I'm sure now that if I'd offered them single-portion, individually wrapped cakes as I did for a later class then they would have snapped them up as the later class did. I thought, "for Pete's sake... you're kids! You're supposed to enjoy sticking your mittens in something grubby!".
I found it very amusing to be handed a purchase in a bag that stated "We keep the earth clean", accompanied by little pictures of creatures like whales. Japan is clean - the Philippines where some of this plastic ends up is not so clean. Anyway, I'm writing way too much and starting to preach about a country that nobody invited me to, so I should stop! I do love Japan and it's conveniences... just not the plastic!
posted by Ian at 12:35 AM
1 Comments:
Hi Ian
I could not help but laughed at some of the events you have experience. They are part of your journey in life and as hard as they may seem at this moment, it will strengthen you. You are a great teacher, perhaps a bit soft, so setting up some boundaries would help if you are getting resistance. I pray that your presence there will build you up in your faith. May you find comfort in His word. God's grace is sufficient for you, rest in Him and ask for his wisdom and power. I pray that you will be able to rise up to the occasion and teach the kids. Remember the game fruit salad that you used to play in Sunday School. It will be a good game to teach kids about fruits in English. May you become a blessing to others where you are. May the Lord be with you every moment of the day. He is your refuge. Be strong and courageous. We miss you and will keep reading your blogg.
Betty and family
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