Silver Week 23 September 2009

Apparently Japan has decided that it still doesn’t have quite enough holidays and it’s gone and thrown in the new “Silver Week.” Of course, it is a play off of the long holiday “Golden Week” back in May. This now brings Japan up to four long holidays a year: o-bon in August, new years in January, GW in May and SW in September. And people are still miserable! The people in charge just keep throwing vacations and stimulus packages and child perks at people and can’t seem to figure out why none of it works.

On the other hand, things seem to be going quite well over here in Sweden. Of course, it is no holiday here. Yuki got back from research last week, I promptly got a head cold, and then it was back to school and business for us. Still no personnummer (the Swedish sort of social security number) though we did at last manage to get cell phones. And everywhere you look people are out on the streets, taking their babies out for a stroll, shopping and relaxing on the high street, stopping for coffee and sweets at their favorite fika spot, or just sitting by the river and enjoying life.

People seem so happy here that it is almost confusing, after living in a high-stress society like Japan. We’re thinking we could get used to this.

Now back to job applications.

Luck foils me again 2 September 2009

Jill here.

Now I can finally post, before everything goes to hell tomorrow. We have just got word that our thirty-three boxes that we sent from Japan via container will be arriving tomorrow. Unfortunately, we just also got word that the delivery service that we are paying for will only deliver to the apartment building’s front door. No further. Which means that I will be carrying thirty-three not-light boxes up four flights of stairs by myself. Yuki will be in class all day, of course.

The work doesn’t really faze me at all. If I could spend all day doing it at my own pace, it would be nothing but a good excuse to exercise. But I know I will feel rushed and harried, because if any of the occupants of the ten other apartments (it’s a small building) arrive home or go out, I will be mortally embarrassed to have blocked the entire teeny tiny foyer with my 1.5 cubic meters of possessions. I’m cursing the bloody delivery service because, if you ask me, that’s no service at all. I’m also afraid that they’re going to have to leave things standing out on the pavement, because I really don’t think there’s enough space in that little foyer, and one of the neighbors normally parks her baby stroller there as well. Then I’ll have to rush, be embarrassed, and worry about my things being stolen. So tomorrow is going to be nuts and then I’ll be unpacking boxes for days on end, so this is my last chance for a while to update things.

And why not?

Sweden continues to full of surprises, some good and some not so good (like the shoddy shipping company). It is always the best thing about living in different countries, though, I think: to explore all the funny little surprises of things that you never once thought anyone would make or do, which are completely normal to the people who use or do them. For example, these little ice cube bags. It took me a moment to figure out what they were for, but looking at the little pictures on the back of the box cleared it up immediately. They are plastic bags for making ice cubes. Each bag is a big flat rectangle, which has been stamped to make little individual squares. You pour water in the top and it runs through tiny holes between each of the squares to fill the whole bag. Then you freeze the whole lot and when you need your ice cubes, just pop open the bag and break them apart. Now to me, ice-cube trays have been around for a long time, so who would think of making little disposable bags to do the same work? I don’t know, but someone obviously has. And no, I did not buy these little curiosities — they were left by the previous tenant.

In fact, I’m not up to buying much of anything. Because we bought far too much at first. We were feeling fairly confident in our financial situation, as we went out and bought what seemed like just the necessary things at IKEA and at electronics store, but we soon after discovered that the exchange rate had changed and not in our favor. Now we are buying only the cheapest foods, but even those are tremendous. We got a big pack of six chicken breasts, trying to save in bulk, and they still cost 110 kroner, or about 16 dollars — and that was the cheapest chicken in the store. That’s quite dear for plain old chicken breasts. We’re going to be eating a lot less meat — we split one chicken breast or pork chop or whatever between the two of us for dinners — and are going to try supplementing with other protein sources. The eggs are a bit more affordable, but only a bit. Thought we might be able to eat tofu, but it’s 40 kroner (6-7 dollars) for one little block, which is not even a whole chou (the standard measurement for tofu). I’m looking into making our own tofu, but I need to price soy beans and soy milk at the store to see if it’s feasible. It couldn’t be worse than the hard, chewy stuffy that they are selling as tofu.

Now you see, eh?

So we’re going to be a bit more frugal than planned, from here on out, and bit more desperate for me to start finding some work. But it’ll wait until at least next week, as I have unpack all of our thirty-three boxes and organize everything first. Yuki is utterly swamped with school, so he’ll be no help. He has class from 10 to 5 most days and 8 to 5 a couple of days each week, and once he gets home he is stuck reading textbooks and articles. I can hardly ask him to go through boxes, when I’m the one with all the free time. So once that is over with, I’ll get back on the job hunt — and hopefully into some Swedish lessons.

Until then, keep your fingers crossed for me. Our streak of bad luck has been exhausting — injuries, illnesses, slights from friends, no bonus for Yuki (the withholding of which is technically illegal), having to pay his municipal taxes even though we don’t live in Japan any longer, our visa applications going missing at Migrationsverket, our last minute dash to get visas in LA two days before flying out of the country, flights being delayed, canceled, and full of poor service, missing important meetings with friends and family that may never come again, the exchange rate going south, being confounded at every turn… it’s too much to think about at times. We used to joke that we used up all of our good luck for Yuki to get into grad school, but it doesn’t really feel like a joke anymore. So please, please let our bad luck finally be exhausted and let us find a way to live and work in this country for the next two years.

How we spent our summer winter vacation. 5 January 2009

Jill here.

I thought I might post a little bit about how we opened up the new year this past week. Prior to New Year’s, I went back to Seattle for Christmas, as I tend to do, but only for a brief six days this time since I had trouble getting time off from work. Yet even six days was enough time to gain weight from all that holiday eating, as I unfortunately discovered. Perhaps a bit heavier than when I left, I arrived back in Japan on the 29th to head down to Kyushu with Yuki. For the first time (ever for me, in about six years for him), we spent o-shougatsu at his familial home in Sasebo, Kyushu.

It was the first time for me to visit his parents’ home, although I’d met them — once — before. They are very nice folks and I know I’m pretty lucky considering the number of horror stories I’ve heard about in-laws (or out-laws, as I often hear them dubbed). I know that they are shocked to be saddled with a foreign daughter-in-law — I know precisely because they’ve told me — but they try to keep the healthy attitude that it’s Yuki’s life and that it’s up to him to make his own decisions, whether they think they’re wise or not. Though that doesn’t mean they don’t give him an earful from time to time, especially about his educational choices.

At any rate, we arrived in Sasebo after something like eight hours on various trains. Hard to believe it takes nearly as long to get halfway across a country the size of California as it does to fly from Tokyo to Seattle, but there it is. The new year holiday was busy: full of lots of rushing around to different sights, shops, and eats. We visited the “99 Islands,” part of a national park in Sasebo that encompasses the bay filled with, in fact, not 99 but 205 islands. We drove past the American navy base a couple of times and saw a number of squids and their families around town, which was both amusing and slightly disorienting for me. We ate a lot, of course — not helping the Christmas gains at all — and rented movies to fill the time until midnight on the 31st when the hatsus began.

Mini Japanese lesson for you here: hatsu is how you read the character 初, which means ‘first.’ New Year’s in Japan is absolutely bursting with hatsus. Hatsu-moude (first visit to the shrine), hatsu-yume (first dream), hatsu-uri (first sales), hatsu-hi-no-de (first sunrise), and so on.

Last year, we did our hatsu-moude at our nearest shrine here in Omiya*, Hikawa Jinja. Hikawa Jinja happens to be in the top ten in the entire country for hatsu-moude visits, though, with just shy of 2 million people regularly visiting during the first three days of the year and the line is quite a thing to behold. Last year we cut in through the side, since we know the area, and only had to wait about an hour in the wee hours to move the 100 feet or so to the inside of the shrine.

This year, though, in the considerably less visited suburbs of Sasebo, Kyushu, we didn’t have to wait to long. We visited the small shrine near Yuki’s home at midnight and threw in our offerings, prayed to the gods for good luck in the coming year, and got free bowls of o-zouni, a weak soup with Napa cabbage and mochi rice cakes in it. The next day we hit up another, larger shrine for yet another hatsu-moude and to get new charms for the home for the new year. Then the night of the 1st, we once again headed out at midnight — only this time not for spiritual gains but commercial. It was time for hatsu-uri and the popular shops in Sasebo all opened at midnight to offer one of the biggest sales of the year, including the perennial favorites: fukubukuro. Literally “lucky bags,” these are sealed bags that the stores only sell at New Year’s for a set price. You gamble your luck that you might like the contents, though some shops have begun to display what is in the bags. They are usually (and unsurprisingly) filled with goods that haven’t sold well and need to be cleared out of the store, but the shops throw in at least one or two “hot items” as well, so you don’t go away feeling too sore after you pay and get to open your bag.

Yuki’s little sister and I bought bags from a store I rather like, called SM2. The bags cost 8,000 yen ($80) and contained approximately 30,000 yen worth of clothes, so it’s a rather good deal, even if you might not like everything in the bag you get. When we went home and compared, I thought Mai got much luckier than me, but those Nonakas are just lucky folk — maybe their luck will rub off on me in time?? Still, I got a couple of nice shirts and things that I’ll find occasions to wear, even if they weren’t anything I’d usually pick out myself. It’s rather fun to leave your fate up to chance and just see what you get stuck with. It helps you try things you might not otherwise, and that’s usually a good thing.

On a freezing cruise of the so-called "99 Islands." Click to see the rest of the photos from Sasebo on Flickr.

The next couple days, amid a shock of snow and cold weather, we hit up more stores, visited the family graves, the local European-styled theme park Huis Ten Bosch, and barely had a moment free, it seemed. Now we’re at last home and Yuki is back to work as of today. I go back to my full-time job at the school on Thursday but until then I’ve got a big ol’ translation job to work on, so I should hardly be wasting time blogging anyway, now should I?

*Omiya is in fact named for this shrine, as the name of the area simply means great (oo) shrine or temple (miya).