July 2003.

With a little hindsight and a lot more experience, I have endeavoured a little rewrite of this page. My evolving relationship with this amazing country has recently undergone a major overhaul and I really must give this paltry, early attempt at describing this place the big once-over

7 months in and I have fallen in even deeper love with Japan. The past few months have been hard - I've had to contend with a weather system that involves an enormous amount of cold, wet gray, and I've never been one to sit quietly in the countryside for too long. Yet here I am, up high in little Fujiyoshida, with no live music venues, no cinemas, little nightlife and maybe a dozen or so native-english speakers. It's been really hard. I spend a lot of time alone, but that's OK. It's a great place to get things done. Things you have meaning to do for ages... I have spent most of my ample spare time working on this site, exploring the weird and wonderful world of broadband internet, and attempting to become something of a photographer. I do yoga most mornings for an hour. I eat well. I sleep well. I don't watch any TV, although I do get the occasional DVD out (yay - Tsutaya recently arrived in this little town - a very excellent video chain with heaps of cool, arthouse, indie, etc etc etc films). I confess I have slowly lost a lot of the japanese I learned in my initial enthusiastic learning efforts although i am quite able to get around and communicate my needs and listen to responses and work out what is being said. This is actually of point of embarrassment for me, and I do intend to return to the world of language study some time. But it'll have to wait till I have totally wearied myself of photography and internet and website predilections.

There is so much to see in this wonderful country, and in particular, in the fucking magnificent megalopolis of Tokyo. Over the past month or so, to escape cabin fever, I've been going into Tokyo every weekend to explore. It has been an excellent thing to do because the more I go there, the more I peel off the onion skin. It is home to some incredibly exciting subcultures and fashions, art and images, galleries and museums, and at the moment I just can't get enough of it. And the best part is that I can come home after a long frenetic day or weekend in the big smoke, get off the highway bus at shimoyoshida, and not see a soul as I walk home through the ricefields. Breathe the fresh air, listen to the water running through the huge irrigation drains, look at the forests on the close mountains.

So what I think I'll do from here is review the former speil and add new comments...

April 13, 2003.

Being a seasoned veteran of , oh, some 110 days now, I thought I'd write down some of my observations of what living in Japan is like and the most obvious points of interest while they are still fresh! I love my life here. One thing is for sure, Japan will leave an indelible impression on you. It is kinda like India, it will just get under your skin, aggravate you, excite you, soothe you, inspire you and then aggravate you all over again.

Japan.*. I guess the first thing that hit me is that for the most part, the housing and light industrial areas all look very dated, it's seems that they had a big housing boom back in the seventies/eighties. Everything is built with fibro and aluminium and cement and ALL the power and phone lines are above ground. It makes for a bleak, cluttered aesthetic at first. Then you start to notice the little things. The beautiful panels and sliding doors with wax paper. The flower pots with bright coloured pansies and other little pretty bursts of colour. The little shrines and temples tucked away in little side streets. The devotional, carved boulders just plonked down in a little patch of grass by a train line. The landscaped gardens with stone lanterns or lions or buddhas. The red paper lanterns hanging outside the street stalls. The magnificent calligraphy signs. And the mountains. Fujiyoshida is surrounded by mountains, and forests with monkeys. Japan is very mountainous, I think something like 70% of the land here is virtually uninhabitable beacuse of the mountains and earthquakes. I am yet to experience an earthquake, apparantly Yamanashi Ken is overdue for a big one, the last one was back in the 20's. And Fuji-san has been dormant since the 1700's so that is also overdue for some activity.

My god this is a huge topic. OK, nitty gritty stuff. Living. Expect to live in a shoebox. In a country of this size with a population the size of some 125 million people, space is always at a premium, although as you head out north and south from Tokyo, the population thins out considerably. I am really lucky, I scored a big three room apartment and my company subsidises my rent so that I only pay 43 000 yen. If you wanna live in Tokyo expect to pay around 80 000 yen.

All hot water is powered by small gas heating systems, and in public toilets there is NO hot water tap. Great in subzero mid winter conditions. These gas hot water systems are all different, some fire up straight away, others you have to wait 15 - 20 minutes before you get hot water. I got lucky, both my kitchen and shower systems heat up instantly. The bathtubs are small, square-shaped oddities. You sit in them with your knees tucked up to your chin. All shower nozzles are handheld. Most kitchen sinks are massive. You have to buy a small plastic tub to wash your dishes otherwise you have to wait 10 minutes for the sink to fill...

You can live well (in the country, if you don't smoke and drink much) on 80 000 yen a month, spending 20 000 a week. On top of that, you pay for phones(s), internet, water, electicity, gas and kero (for heaters). My monthly electricity bill is usually around 4500 yen, gas about the same. I am expecting that as it gets warmer both of those will go down quite considerably. I put away around 15 - 20 000 yen a month to cover these boring bills.

Mobile phones are great fun here and are very much the reason why the internet and home computers and computer based email has been so slow to take off here. You can use your phone to email here, as well as take photos and email them to friends. You can attach your friends photos to their contact details so that whenever they call you and email you their photo pops up on screen. They are called keitei, and absolutely every man, woman and child has one of their own. Unfortunately you have to wait to get your Gaijin (foreigner) Card before you can sign up for one, which usually means a wait of around 6 or so weeks. I inherited my friend Mia's phone (and her job, apartment, points cards, video shop membership card, tv, old socks and a half dozen nearly empty shampoo bottles) which was a cheap one, no camera or fancy bits besides basic email. But that's cool coz you get so sucked in to using your phone constantly when you have the fun of photos to email your friends to describe situations... It's also very cool if you're into moblogging - posting images direct from your phone to your website weblog. this phenomenon is HUGE here, amongst locals and foreigners alike.

Yahoo have this cool deal going at the moment called yahoo BB (broadband), where you sign up and they give you a broadband modem and set up disc for free, log you into their local network and hey presto, you're on cable, and they are offering ridiculous phone call charges for international calls. I pay 23 yen a minute to call australia, and to canada it's only13 yen a minute. It's more expensive to call a mobile here in Fujiyoshida that it is to call home. Highly recommended! Of course, you have to sign up for a phone line from NTT first - monthly hire is about 5000 yen. Off the top of my head I can't quite remember what the Yahoo charge is but it was reasonable and affordable.

Money. I came here to save up to buy investment property and save some travel money but Japan is in a serious recession and is an expensive place to live. I will not be saving anywhere near the kind of money I was hoping for, so I am investigating the JET program which pays around 350 000 yen a month and gives you proper holidays, unlike my current job. I can put away around 80 000 yen a month, from a 250 000 yen paycheque. The breakdown goes something like this: 80 000 living; 20 000 utility bills; 43 000 rent, tax of about 10 000 yen, and the rest goes onto my visa card to pay off debts, bills in Australia, Amazon purchases, etc.

The average teachers starting wage is adequate (especially when you consider the fact that the Japanese teachers you work alongside get way less than native english speakers) for living and covering your basic expenses with plenty left over for fun and games but If you want to save serious money, you need to have some quality experience or find a job teaching company english that offers plenty of potential for over time classes, and be prepared to work your butt off. Or join the JET program. Of course, there are plenty of bar jobs and hostess bars if you wanna moonlight in a different field. Anything is possible, especially if you are based in Tokyo. And of course, there is always the potential for private students.

Anyways, I digress.

Slippers. Bring with you shoes that are easy to slide out of because you will have to discard your shoes at virtually every home or school or restaurant or onsen you set foot in. Many places offer pigeon-hole wall shelves or small lockers to store your shoes in, and you exchange shoes for a pair of provided generic slippers, otherwise you just go sock-shod. Which brings me to the next recommendation. Bring lots of nice socks. They will be seen a lot. Of course, you can buy socks anywhere in Japan including the hundred yen shop.

Supplies from home. The following things are very difficult to find here. Good anti-perspirant deoderant, tampons, blutack, vegemite, decent coffee. Am yet to sample to the delights of local condoms. The rumour is that they are smaller than western dimensions so guys, you may need to do some research here if you plan to shag and you have a...aherm...generous package. most local guys are uncircumcised, according to staff room chatter.

I had earlier believed it was difficult to buy clothes, but I haven't had much trouble buying anything that I needed, including underwear. Japan is home to some of the coolest thrift stores in the world. The Club Quattro building in Shibuya is great, as is Chicago in Harajuku on Omote-sando, and there is a great one in Nishikatsura, between Fujiyoshida and Tsuru. I'm sure there are heaps more. It's really easy to find cool, cheap clothes, accessories and house stuff. The hundred yen stores are invaluable for this.

Believe it or not, rice is waaayyyyy expensive - and you can only buy it in huge amounts. 5 KG's is the smallest, and it varies in price depending on the quality. Expect to pay at least 1200 yen. Pasta is available everywhere and is cheaper.

Language learning. Learn katakana before you learn hiragana. then start on kanji slowly. I learned Hirigana first and it was such an intense project that I just haven't had the energy for katakana yet. It seems that if you do not jump in and start learning straight away, and remain committed so that within a year you have a fairly good vocab and grammer, then chances are that you will never really learn the language. You get lazy, you learn the basics and get fluent/native friends to do the rest for you. I have been quite lazy lately but I really believe that if you plan to live in a country for a couple of years, you must learn as much of the language as possible. You miss out on so many subtleties and amusing aspects of the culture and people, not to mention the fact that it's just the polite and respectful thing to do. Plus it's very cool to be self sufficient in a country that does not speak your native language. And of course, job prospects are always improved if you are multilingual.

I always smile and nod and greet the oldies in the street, especially the really unsmiling ones. most of the time they break out a gorgeous, surprised and delighted smile and nod back "konnichiwa". don't believe the hype that they all hate foreigners. all around my area now they smile at me as I approach, and some of them even try to chat if they see me in the local shop. Just little stuff, like, this stuff is delicious - you should try it (pointing to some god awful octopus legs or something). I love it.

If you are into DVD's, you should know that Japan is in Zone 2, which, i just found out recently is Europes zone also. so i jumped onto amazon.com in the UK and ordered a yogo DVD seeing I couldn't find any local classes or english speaking DVD's here. Very cool.