From the 6th to the 10th of December I made a flying visit to Bonn, Germany as
part of Kyoto University’s G30 student recruitment drive. G30 is an initiative
by the Japanese government to attract more foreign students to Japan, with the
aim of having 300,000 foreign students by 2020. The first stages of the
initiative involved recruiting more non-Japanese professors, converting
certificates and documentation to English and changing course content itself
into English. A number of departments within Kyoto University have completed
these first three stages and are now trying to attract more foreign students to
their new English-language courses.
While G30 tries to address the language barrier associated with studying in
Japan, it is often criticised for not addressing the other issue with studying
in Japan — the cost. G30 does not offer scholarships, but it does offer
partial and full exemption from tuition fees. Living costs in Japan are high
but without tuition fees on top, the cost is bearable.
Anyway, back to the trip.
Japan Fair
All day Wednesday I took part in Study Japan!, a fair put together but 10
or so Japanese universities aimed at pulling in more German students for the
G30 initiative I described above. Most of the big universities were there:
Waseda University, Kyoto University, Tokyo Metropolitan University etc. We
each had a stand, and a bunch of documents to give out to prospective students.
I was there to tell them about what student life was like at Kyoto University
and in Kyoto in general. Some of the questions that I tried to answer in my
notes for G30 post did come up, but most of the time I just answered
general questions. Surprisingly only one person asked about the nuclear
situation in Japan, that and the fact that most of the students who came were
in their first year, makes me think that they were not yet serious about
studying in Japan.
Most of the students that came were from the humanities department. They were
taking Japanese or Asian Studies as their major, with a few people from the
management or economics department. We were there to represent the Informatics
Department of Kyoto University so it was unfortunate that we didn’t have the
right booklets to support them. I think that science and technology majors
probably did not come because they assume that Japanese would be required to
study in Japan. Clearly Japan needs to work a little more on letting people
know that Japanese is not a requirement.
After learning more about G30 I’m a lot less skeptical about it. In the foreign
community in Japan, it’s generally seen as a “cash grab” by the Japanese
government to attract more fees-paying students without thinking about the
practicalities of studying in Japan. However the tuition exemption offer makes
it a much more tempting prospect.
Food
I’ve had little experience of German food, beyond the snacks I had at
Oktoberfest in Tokyo a few years ago. The food I had in Germany was generally
delicious. On the first night we had the German equivalent of mulled wine,
called glühwein and German sausages. The only thing I couldn’t quite get used to was the amount of salt in everything. It was a bit too much after a while.
Language
While there, everyone thought I was German. Being friendly, people would
casually say things to me, but I would have to stop them half-way through or at
the end of their long sentence and apologise that I couldn’t speak German.
I really felt that I was apologising every time I said this. Being in Germany
it seemed so rude that I was not able to understand the simplest things. I’ve
tried studying German before but all I could remember was danke and
and auf wiedersehen. People were very nice about it and never seemed to get
annoyed in the way I’ve heard Parisians do with non-French speakers. And of
course everybody spoke English extremely well.
If it was French, I think I would be able to guess what the other person was
asking me from the cognates that exist in English. But with German I found it
impossible to guess what they were saying. I’ve heard that German is supposed
to be close to English but it seems so much further than French.
The irony is that in Japan, people mostly assume that I cannot speak Japanese
when I can. But in Germany they assume I can speak the language, but I can’t.
Oh cruel irony.
People & Schadenfreude
It’s been many years since I’ve travelled travelled outside of Asia, but I was
struck by how much I felt I was ‘on the same wavelength’ as German people
I met. When something amusing or odd happened, I often met eyes with other
people around, and we exchanged knowing looks that said “You’re seeing this
too, and thinking the same, right?”
One perfect example of this happened on the last day as we tried to take the
express ICE train to Frankfurt airport. There had been a suicide on the line
at around 10am and all the trains on the line were still not moving by the time
we tried to get our 11am train. Jumping in front of trains in Germany is a rare
enough occurrence that they do not have a quick response to it. In Japan people
jumping in front of trains is probably the most popular method of suicide and
happens literally every day, and so Japanese train companies are extremely
efficient at cleaning up the mess and getting trains running again. Anyway, we
were sitting on the train and waiting for it to start moving. Every so often,
a rather stressed-sounding German train official spoke through the train’s
PA system giving us updates. Every time he gave a new update, he seemed to
get more and more stressed, with his voice rising in volume and pitch. The
PA system would start to crackle and cut out as he got louder and louder.
Everyone on the train found this hilarious. Nobody could do anything so it
seemed everyone was resigned to waiting and laughing at the ridiculousness of
our situation. The train staff had tried to connect another set of cars to
ours, but there had been a software malfunction, and other complications that
were making this poor young train conductor more and more stressed. Later on he
began asking people to get off the train as it was exceeding the legal limit
for passengers it could carry. He was almost screaming “Please get off the
train, there is another coming in 3 minutes, please get that one. We cannot
leave until you do. Please.” Passengers were laughing at this poor guy.
It was pretty funny. I guess it’s somewhat like schadenfreude.
Overall I really enjoyed my trip. But the guilt I felt at not being able to
speak the language has really brought home how important it is to learn the
language of the country you’re planning on visiting. And how it would be
completely impossible for me to live somewhere without knowing the language.
July 19, 2011 at 7:23pm
Advice on the Applying MEXT Scholarship While Living In Japan
I’m going to keep this short.
It’s Possible
It is possible to be accepted the MEXT scholarship even if you are currently living in Japan. Some people say it is impossible, they are wrong. It might be harder, but I don’t know. On your application make it clear why having experience living in Japan is an advantage, and why it puts you ahead of other candidates.
It’s Expensive
You will almost certainly have to fly back to your home country for the scholarship interview, and usually at very short notice. This will cost you a lot of money.
Leave the Country, Then Come Back
If you receive the scholarship, and you are working, you should leave the country before coming back to study. You will save yourself a huge amount of money. Both your residence tax and health insurance are back-dated so you pay based on how much you earned last year. However, if you leave the country, and come back in even using the same passport, you are treated as a new person and the rates are reset.
If you stay in the country, expect to be paying at least ¥30,000 a month for health insurance instead of ¥5,000. You will almost certainly have to pay last year’s residence tax that is back-dated, which can cost ¥100,000 or more.
You can debate the legality and morality of this, but the alternative is the situation I am in, where I’m expected to pay ¥60,000 rent, ¥50,000 health insurance, and ¥70,000 per month back-dated residence tax, all from a ¥120,000 scholarship. And that’s not even including living expenses like food, gas, water, etc.
I don’t know if it’s the same at every university, but at Kyoto University students currently living in Japan are not eligible to move into student dormitories. So if you leave you can reduce your rent from ¥60,000 to ¥10,000 or so a month.
MEXT also pays for flights from your country to Japan so you don’t have to worry about that.
It’s Worth It
When I received the MEXT scholarship, I did it “wrong” and stayed in the country. I’m being hit by huge bills from when I was working because I didn’t know about the loophole in the system that most other people seem to be aware of.
Despite this, I still think it’s worth it. MEXT gives you an opportunity to study something you really enjoy. Take it.
April 22, 2011 at 11:26am
Moving House in Japan
I’m writing this for anyone who’s moving house in Japan. Hopefully some of the information will be useful to someone. The names of the guilty companies involved have been changed to protect myself from lawsuits.
Summary
Moving in Japan is expensive.
Estimates that moving companies give you are 90% BS. They can cut their prices by 25% with no hassle.
Play companies off against each other, be liberal with the truth. If one company offers to move you for ¥100k, tell another company they said ¥90, and ask for ¥80.
If you want to move cheaply, especially long-distance, rent a truck and do it with friends.
If you’re moving long-distance and can live without your stuff for 2 weeks, you can move slightly cheaper than normal overnight prices.
Don’t be afraid to say “no”. In the best case, which happened to me, the company will ring you back and tell you that they “talked to their manager” and it’s ok. In the worst case, you can always come back and say you changed your mind, or use one of the other hundred-plus companies out there.
If you only have small items, Kuroneko Yamato is pretty cheap even long-distance. However they charge 10k-15k yen per item over ~170cm long. So beds, large desks, bookshelves etc.
Some companies let you cancel without charge, even after they’ve sent you boxes, which means you can get free boxes if you’re sneaky.
Long story
I moved from Tokyo to Kyoto in mid-March. My old place was a 1K, so I didn’t have a huge amount of stuff, but I had a few big items - bed, desk, wardrobe and bookcase. I looked online and found some of the bigger companies.
First offer I got from “321 Co.” was for ¥158,000. This shocked me as I had been estimating under ¥100,000 for the moving company. I said I’d “think about it”
I told the second company, “S Removals” that “321 Co.” had offered to do it for ¥145,000. I pulled that number out of nowhere while on the phone. If I had known what I do now, I’d have picked something lower like ¥130,000 and written it down so I didn’t sound like I was making stuff up. The lady on the phone “talked to her manager” and within 2 minutes their initial offer of ¥158,000 dropped to ¥140,000.
I then got a bunch of other offers which were all around ¥150,000 and they refused to go down to ¥135,000. Fine by me.
Then got a phonecall from “S Removals”, they thought I was moving tomorrow and was I ready? They had got the date wrong by an entire month. They said they’d call me back.
When they called me back they informed me that “because March is peak season, we can’t do it for ¥140,000, and we won’t be able to go under ¥200,000” citing that “hotels do the same” as some sort of justification. I cancelled there and then, and got to keep the boxes they had already sent me.
An hour later, they rang back and said that “in this special case, we can do it for the original price of ¥140,000.” No mention of why they can lose out on ¥60,000. I said OK then and the booking was back on.
Out of interest I booked another estimate from “Mr Ant” company. They came, checked out my place and said they could do it for ¥300,000, over double all other estimates I had had so far. I told them “S Removals” would do it for ¥140,000 and he “talked to his manager” while typing random numbers on his calculator. Suddenly they could do it for ¥150,000 but no less. The guy said that “other companies just throw your boxes in the van, but we don’t”. Uh huh. I said goodbye.
The actual move itself went amazingly well. I can’t fault the removal guys for their speed, politeness and care. They even helped me think about how to arrange my room in Kyoto!
March 18, 2011 at 8:17pm
After The Quake
I wrote this yesterday as I was killing time in a café, so prepare for a long rambling mess of thoughts as I remember them, and some information might be a day out of date.
On Friday night there were a lot of aftershocks. Strong enough to wake me up a few times despite being completely shattered after 6 hours of walking. I had packed a bag with hat, scarf, water, food and put it by the door along with my jacket. I slept in my clothes. I heard later that in Tokyo they were around 3 or 4 which is enough to shake stuff around but not really knock anything over.
Some of my friends in Tokyo stayed together that night and didn’t go to bed. They were too tense and kept being woken up by the aftershocks. One group had a small party and tried to do shots every time there was an aftershock but there were way too many to keep drinking at that pace.
The next day I stayed inside and watched the news. The previous day on the way home I had seen brief footage in shop-window TVs of explosions (the Chiba chemical plant) and some early aerial shots of Fukushima. I won’t go into the details, the news has been full of it for a week now.
Instead I’ll talk about what it’s been like in Tokyo. After the quake people were a bit shell-shocked and didn’t really know what to do.
Then classic Tokyo/Japanese mentality set in and people started spreading rumours and panic-buying stuff. As always it’s a self-fulfilling prophesy partly fuelled by the media. They say “people are afraid that stocks of ___, and might start buying in bulk” which people who watch the report invariably do. The first things to disappear were nappies and toilet paper. I saw people walking out of the shop with literally 20 rolls of toilet paper.
Most of the worry in Tokyo is not from a lack of stock, or from the threat of rolling blackouts - which so far haven’t been put into effect in central Tokyo - but from the nuclear situation in Fukushima.
Obviously the area around the plant itself is extremely dangerous, but I’ve been more focussed on the dangers in Tokyo.
Each source of information I’ve seen has had varying levels of detail and accuracy. Also each source has its own bias and motivation so it’s hard to take any of them at their word.
The Japanese government obviously wants to downplay any threats, especially to Tokyo, as it doesn’t want people panicking. Most of their reports are calm, lack any sort of statistics, and are generally “keep calm and carry on”.
Western governments are a complete wreck, and change their advice on a day-to-day basis. So far I’ve heard:
France - Get the hell out of Japan right now.
Australia - They moved their embassy staff from Tokyo to Osaka.
UK - At first they said they think the 30km radius warning that Japan has put into effect was sufficient, but this morning (Thursday 17th) they changed that advice to “get out of Tokyo if you can”, which is pretty ambiguous.
US - I’ve not heard much from the US government yet.
The Japanese media have a weird mix of useful information, probing the vague government spokespeople, and speculation bordering on scaremongering. They’ve been dealing in more concrete numbers, but they want to present the most “interesting” (read scary) numbers so they choose the radiation at the plant itself rather than the radiation in surrounding areas. They’re also responsible for some of the panic-buying rumours as far as I can see.
The western media, like their governments, are a mixed bag. The BBC seems to swing between “Tokyo’s not that bad” and “Japan is disaster zone”. The main problem with foreign reporting is they frequently assume that the whole of Japan is affected by the disaster, which freaks out friends and family at home.
I’ve seen classic scare tactics including infographics that show the “possible fallout” reaching the west coast of the US. Which is utter BS.
Unsurprisingly Fox News don’t even have a basic grasp of reality.
Facebook, Twitter and word-of-mouth have been simultaneously useful and useless. Most of the useful resources I’ve been using have been told to me through Twitter and Facebook.
However Facebook has been dangerous for freaking people out with little or no fact behind it. I’ll talk about it in a bit but people have whipped each other into a “we’re doomed” kind of mentality by referencing only the more extreme reports. It’s better to be safe than
I guess I’ll go into the mindset of some people now. So far, almost a week after the quake, I know of 5+ of my friends who have temporarily left the country. Some were worried about aftershocks, but most were worried about the nuclear situation in Fukushima. At the time it wasn’t terrible, but the government didn’t seem to have it under control and it wasn’t clear how bad it could get. I have to admit I was shocked how quickly people got the hell out of dodge but if I had the same opportunity for a quick holiday in East-Asia with a friend then I’d probably take it. I already had plans to move to Kyoto on Thursday this week so I was just counting down the days until that.
The conflicting reports between various media sources has only added to the worry. One minute it seems that the radiation is extremely small and has no effect on human health, the next minute the quoted statistics say something a lot more terrifying.
Via word-of-mouth, Facebook, Twitter and various media sources, there were a lot of rumours flying around:
“There’s huge amounts of radiation coming to Tokyo. Buy face masks to stop the radioactive particles from entering your lungs.”
“Eating a certain kind of seaweed is a good prevention of radiation sickness,” so everyone bought that type of seaweed.
“Iodine tablets are good way to prevent harmful radiation building up in your thyroid glands.” So people were panic buying that. I’ve even heard of a Canadian friend’s home town suddenly running out of these tablets
“Tokyo public water supply is now irradiated and not safe to drink.” So people bought all the bottled water available in their local stores. I bet they still take regular baths every night though.
Most of these rumours were started based on a small fact that was then twisted and blown out of all proportion.
For example the latest information I’ve heard is that radioactive particles have been found in Tokyo, and that the radioactivity is higher than normal. However the change is so minute that it has no effect on human health whatsoever. It’s the equivalent of taking a bath in some natural mineral springs, or less than taking a flight to the US and back.
That’s about it for now. Incidentally over half of my foreign friends have left the country temporarily, and I have a few friends coming to stay with me in Kyoto as they have no idea what could happen in Tokyo. Some people say they’re overreacting, and while it’s true there’s no current danger, it doesn’t seem like TEPCO or the government have the situation under control. If anything big happens there’ll be panic and nobody will be able to get out of Tokyo.
Stay safe.
March 15, 2011 at 1:07pm
Japanese Earthquake
I’m OK. I said that on the day, on my Twitter account but I guess people don’t follow that so much.
On Saturday I decided to take a long 3-hour walk to Kichijoji from my house. After lunch I got on the train to come back home. Just before we left the station there was an earthquake and the train was rocking quite a lot. People were a bit tense but the shaking stopped and we set off. After going for a minute or two there was a much stronger quake and we made a controlled but emergency stop.
By this point the train was shaking left and right quite violently. It didn’t really feel like it was about to go over but it was pretty disconcerting. It went on for what felt like a minute or two. Once it stopped people were checking the TV on their phones (yay Japanese technology) and found out that there had been a huge quake off the coast of Fukushima. As it was an overground train we could see outside. The trees and telephone wires were swaying but nothing else seemed to be affected
The train driver announced that all trains on all lines had stopped and we were in for a wait. After 45 minutes we were told we could get off or stay on, but they didn’t know when trains would be running again. I decided to get off, planning to walk roughly along the train route and get back on the trains if they started up again. So we were let off the back end of the train and had to walk the hundred metres or so back to the nearest station.
Outside the station people were milling around, not quite sure what to do. A lot of people clearly lived a lot further away and were pretty stuck without the trains running. I was a bit luckier and would just have to do the same 3-hour walk I had done that morning. By this point the mobile phone networks were completely jammed - no telephone calls, SMSes or mobile emails were getting through. Interestingly the data networks themselves were not so bad, I managed to send a few emails via my iPhone’s GMail account. People were using one of the few remaining public telephones outside the station to call their families to see if everyone was OK.
There was no damage to any of the buildings or convenience stores that I could see at that time, and the train made it hard to tell how serious an earthquake it was. It didn’t seem that bad at the time, at least in Tokyo.
So I started walking home at around 4pm (I think). On the way as I cut through the suburbs I saw a lot of mothers coming back from school with their kids in tow. They had gone to pick them up after the earthquake and take them home. Interestingly the kids were wearing these weird foam triangular hats. It didn’t look like it’d protect them from anything substantial but I guess it’s better than nothing.
As I hit the bigger roads, I saw a solid procession of office workers and adults walking west out of central Tokyo. I didn’t really know at the time but all the train lines both overground and underground had stopped and there was no word on when they’d restart. The sheer volume of people made it seem like a scene from a disaster movie, a mass exodus of people away from a disaster. Everyone was clearly tense but nobody was panicking. I was walking in the opposite direction back towards Tokyo, reminding me of film scenes where the hero is going back into the disaster area to rescue someone. I did get some weird looks.
To cut a long story short, I got home at around 7ish, taking 3 hours to get back on a totally different route to the one I had taken in the morning. My the map function on my iPhone saved me a bunch of times, letting me get my bearings and take quicker routes.
My apartment was completely untouched. No cracks outside and not a single thing had fallen off any shelves. A lot of my friends were less lucky - they came home to broken plates and books all over the floor.
For the moment I’m safe, but there’s a lot of worry at the moment about the nuclear reactor situation. The moving company is coming tomorrow to pick up my stuff, and then I’m getting a night bus that night to Kyoto.
I’ll write more about that soon I think.
January 3, 2011 at 6:37pm
I can’t remember where I found this but it’s an amateur anime short that’s doing the rounds.
Watch in HD for full awesomeness.
Since coming to Japan I’ve stopped watching anime. There’s so much junk it’s hard to find the decent original stuff. Watching this makes me want to start looking again.
A lot of the guys ones are hilariously childish when written down.
6 Stare into the distance
12= Pay by credit card all in one installment
14= Walk with a click-clack sound from my shoe
24= Wave my finger when saying “Indeed!”
My favourite one that I have to try at work on Monday is:
22= Hit the Enter key with a flourish
December 13, 2009 at 4:44am
The Adventure
Tears streaming down my face as I sit bathed in the weak light of a 8 inch LCD screen was not the way I had imagined a moment of revelation to occur.
On an 11-hour flight from Tokyo to London I did what was becoming my usual routine for not getting embarrassingly airsick. Eat before getting on the plane, skip the airline food, watch 4 films, get off. The most challenging part of this trip was deciding the lesser of two evils - McDonalds or airplane food. I went with the “Fillet-o-fish”.
But back to the moment of clarity. I am not one to cry when watching films, and when I do it’s almost never at the moments in which girlfriends or female family members have started becoming teary-eyed. For example, I got a lump in my throat and had a lot of dust in my eyes when Maximus died at the end of Gladiator, but not much else has got me emotional since then.
I cried like a baby, on a plane, about 3 or 4 times during Up. Thank god the lights were out and there were hardly any other passengers, or my manlihood could have flown away like a house with many balloons attached (oh yeah, great metaphor, not forced at all).
It’s hard to sum up without sounding corny, or reiterating what thousands of other reviewers have said. After all I’m not used to water dripping from holes near my eyeballs, and it’s still very disconcerting.
The point of all this is, I think I got an appreciation of what it is to spend your life with someone. There are so many love stories about burning passion, about being perfect for each other, a whirlwind romance that ends in bliss or fiery disaster. But Up is about the deep warm love between two people that are simply content to spend every day together.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been other films about growing old together, but what affected me more and made the film resonate with me so much was the ideas of adventure and exploration.
Beyond the hot girls, infinite games and bright lights of Japan, I think the fundamental the reason I moved to Tokyo was because I wanted to have an adventure. Rather than being pulled to Japan in particular, I think I was pushed from a life in the UK. Another country would have done, as long as it was exotic and different. I dreaded the idea of spending my entire life in the same country, visiting the same areas, seeing similar sights, speaking the same language. I imagined myself as an old man, having never done anything adventurous, been anywhere unusual, or really pushed myself beyond that which I knew.
I don’t hate England, or even dislike it, indeed as I write this now I’m flying back there for the first time in over a year. I’m really looking forward to it - a real Christmas with family, hearing proper British English, and a much Sunday Roast as I can handle. But to use a culinary metaphor, if the choice was between sunday roast every day for the rest of my life, or going for sushi for a while, I’d pick the change of scenery. Or menu. You get the point.
Man I’m getting hungry now.
Back to the sprit of adventure. The sceptical or possibly more experienced would say that not every day can be an adventure, and that living in a foreign country can become normal after a while. Having lived in Japan, which most people consider as being incredibly exotic and one of the farthest places you can be both geographically and culturally from Britain, a lot of things have become normal and the idea of “the adventure” has faded over the past year.
While Japan and Tokyo in particular still fascinate me, I think now that “the adventure” is less the places you go, and more the friends and companions you make and keep along the way. Without another soul to enjoy it with, I think Tokyo would quickly become dull for me, no matter how many new places I visit or people I talk to. It’s in sharing the memories of the adventure with others that they become much more real.
