Hospitality must be the most underrated cultural shock in existence. From looking people in the eyes when talking to them, to not staring at people when talking to them (i.e. direct opposites) (and for the record, the former is Sweden, the latter is Japan), to taking your shoes off by the entrance, to the subtle intricacies of properly inviting somebody to — or disinviting somebody from — your house, or a specific event.

New Years I was originally supposed to spend by myself — or with friends, supposedly — because my girlfriends’ family said I could absolutely not attend the new years events they were planning because I wasn’t “family.” I went from “well, sucks, I would’ve liked to hang with my girlfriend on New Years,” to “ah well, I’m sure it’s an important event to the Japanese,” and then to “what the hell…!”, in chronological order.

The reason I went from “ah well” to “what the hell” was that my neighbor Kim, who has gotten a girlfriend fairly recently, was invited to her family’s New Years celebration — so with me and my girlfriend closing in on two years (or one year, if you don’t count the time before I came to Japan), what is so horribly bad about me attending? My girlfriend informed me it was a matter of to what degree the family values Japanese traditions, and I suppose that makes sense. And besides, she eventually compromised things so that she can stay here overnight on the 31st so we will be together on New Years in the end — fairy-tale ending all around.

Merry Christmas everyone, by the way. It’s actually snowing in Kyoto. Not the stick-to-the-ground kind of snow, but more the wimpy “it’s sorta white but it could just as well be rain” kind you’d expect in a place this far south. On New Years Eve (the 24th, that is), I and my girlfriend went to Kim’s apartment and hung out with 5 other people, ate Swedish christmas food (hurray for IKEA), and watched Kalle Ankas julafton (hurray for BitTorrents) on my neighbor’s computer (hurray for … Windows?), and drank glögg (hurray for IKEA).

The 25th, me and my girlfriend took it slow and went around a shopping mall, and then in the evening we went to an awesome Yakiniku restaraunt (basically a BBQ-style restaurant) near where she lives. I came home just earlier now, and woke Kim up to hear the horrific news…

Originally he was meant to go to his girlfriend’s place and stay there several nights over into the new year, with the one compromise that he sleep “with the men” in some separate place. Yesterday evening, around 11 pm, they changed their mind about this arrangement. They decided that nah, he can’t sleep there after all, because “the brother will be out and about a lot, and Kim won’t know how to operate the gas/electricity system.”

Translation: “bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit, bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit/bullshit bullshit.” So Kim’s to go there today and return back home today. Gee, that is absolutely horrendous. And so inconceivably incorrect, courtesy-wise. The reason, we think, is actually that his girlfriend has been coming to Kyoto a little too often and been staying a little too late lately, so her mother has gotten grumpy. Mothers, I tell you, scary people.

I can’t speak for others living in Japan with Japanese girl- or boyfriends, but I know that for me, the biggest shock coming here has been and most likely will continue to be, the codes of conduct regarding hospitality. The abysmal differences in how to behave properly, and how to be hospitable.

I whined about mentioned the yen and its happy little adventure up in the clouds in an earlier post roughly a month ago (Oct 28th) and figured I’d post an update. Or rather, today was “a first” — and not a happy first, either — so I wanted to whine about mention it again. If you remember the graph, it described the yen per swedish crown (“Yen/SEK”) and the curve slowly but surely fell downwards. This means that, when I posted that, I was paying 40% more than I was when the yen/SEK was at its peak (17.8), back in ~July. The following graph shows how things have gone since the day of that post and until today:

Now, the hilarious part about this…

“As soon as it jumps above 13.0, I’m going to withdraw money.” — I decided on this back after posting the previous post. If you look at the graph, it more or less rubs its genitals against the 13.0 line but it just never takes the stride. So frustrating. My thinking here is in any case that I am going to gradually withdraw money even at “low” exchange rates, as soon as the yen is increasing. My thinking is that if I do this, I will not end up having to withdraw money when it’s at a super-low rate, like now. Unfortunately for me it just never went above 13.0, so I now have 2,000 yen in total, and rent payment day is this Monday — and the rent is nearly 40,000 yen.

As for “the first” mentioned above, the yen per crown is now for the first time below 11.0, down at 10.93 yen/crown.

At this point, I’m no longer paying 40% more than I used to. I’m paying 64% more than I used to. So if your rent is, say, $400 a month and this happened to you, you’d suddenly look at the bill and read “$656″ and wonder whatever happened to your vacation plans. Or, to your savings, for that matter. Your electricity bill? Let’s say $50 normally; now? $82. And so on and so forth. Can you see the reason for my whining about mentioning the yen now?

I wish I hadn’t picked the one country in the world which would “miraculously” stay afloat while the rest of the economies in the world started tumbling.

Now that the yen is like the eagle and the swedish currency is like the mole, I’m trying everything I can to not spend money unnecessarily. Today, my school had been gracious enough to arrange for a free medical exam for the new students at the school — something that they normally require you to deal with yourself, with money out of your own pocket. It’s not a lot of money in the end, but it’s money I could use elsewhere.

I had circled today’s date on the calendar.

I had written 9.05 on today’s date on the calendar.

I had circled 9.05.

Every indication that I should be at school at 9.05 am, instead of 1.15 pm as usual.

And I woke up at 9.00am, realizing that there was no way for me to get there on time, and the teachers had explicitly said that we must be there before 9.10am as that is when the group will be leaving school and head for the medical exam place. To get to school would have taken me at least 40-45 minutes, so I was, as they say, shit out of luck.

So now I have to go pay for this exam after all. Aurgh…

Update: turns out the exam is actually not the one they wanted me to take, but another exam. And the good news is that they told me they will reimburse me for the exam as long as I grab a receipt. *happy* And when I asked about that other exam, they said “Oh that… aw, screw it, just forget about that one.” *snicker*

It’s my girlfriend’s birthday today. She’s finally of legal age. (Just kidding. )

In any case, be wild and crazy and tell ‘happy birthday’ to ‘a friend’s girlfriend whom you have no idea who she actually is’. Once in a lifetime opportunity. She does read this blog. If I get 5 comments or more I’ll eat lots of ice cream even though it’s cold outside.

(This entry was brought to you by Caffeinated Hungover Swede in Japan Who Will Wake Up Tomorrow Wondering Why He Wrote Such An Odd Post Incorporated.)

So… I knew this would happen. I totally knew this would happen. But I kept thinking, you know, “it’ll happen, I’ll twitch, I’ll panic, it’ll be lots of running in circles, then it’ll just return to normal and I’ll figure out a way to keep things on level ground.” Hah.. yeah.

What’s going on? The yen is speeding ahead of the other currencies in the world at a pace I didn’t know was possible. What does this mean? The USD, the euro, and, more importantly (for me), the swedish crown, are all steadily losing their value against the yen.

(Yen/SEK is not “yen per second”, but “yen per swedish crown)

The above is a *very inofficial* diagram based on my own plotting of the yen versus the swedish crown as I’ve lived here — I’ve kept good track of it since all my cash is in Sweden, which means that whenever I withdraw money from an ATM, the amount of money I actually “lose” from my account varies depending on the above chart. As you see, there’s a nice downward curve there at the end, starting at the end of this summer, and, well, so far not ending at all.

I thought this was something “local” at first — as in, local to Sweden, and/or to Japan, but it seems everyone around me is talking about this now, and even the folks back home are saying that the market is looking hairy. I’m sure you guys have felt it too one way or another (stockholders, in particular).

It’s no trifling matter, though. I now pay about 44% more for everything that I buy here, compared to this summer. Imagine if your rent, your gas bill (if you have one), your electricity, your groceries, your bus tickets, the alcohol at your bars, cigarettes, gasoline for your car… imagine if all of that, in one single sweep, got 44% more expensive.

What usually cost $1 suddenly costs $1.44. What usually costs $20 now costs $29. What usually costs $50 suddenly costs $72. And the big bad one — rent. My rent here went from something like $210/month to $320/month. A $110 increase. In about 2-3 months’ time. It hurts, lemme tell you.

There are varying theories on why this is happening, some more disheartening than others. We swedes have speculated that this is a temporary deal, because Japan is so extremely dependent on import/export. The yen simply cannot stay stronger than the rest of the world, because the rest of the world will refuse to buy from Japan (the Japanese will want payment in yen, and the rest of the world will not wanna buy at 44% the higher price), especially with companies like Sony and Nintendo who don’t want to fall behind Microsoft in the console competition. If Sony and Nintendo are forced to cut prices by 44% just to keep up, it won’t look pretty on their financial reports.

Then there is the theory which stretches back 7 years or so. One of the women I teach English to told me today that when her daughter went to Sweden (yep, her daughter has lived in Sweden) back in 2001, the swedish crown cost 12 yen. That’s close to where it’s at now, if you take a look at the chart above. According to her, things have simply fallen back from being out of proportion for the last 7 or so years. Since 2001, she claims, the yen has gradually dropped in value against the other currencies and kept dropping steadily until it was what you see if you look at the chart around summertime — 17.88 yen per swedish crown. If I had only known. Well, in hindsight, I’m not sure I’d have done any differently from what I did, but I think I might have at least saved up 1/3rd of my buffer in Japanese currency if I’d realized the yen was so outrageously weak compared to 7 years earlier. Live and learn.

Update: The real reason appears to be panicky international investors;

“The yen’s recent jump, so lethal for Japanese exporters like Sony, was set off by panicky international investors rushing to unwind yen “carry” trades, which had taken advantage of Japan’s low interest rates to borrow yen to invest elsewhere. Reversing those trades means buying back the yen, lifting its value.”
– http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081029/as_japan_earns_sony.html

In any case, now I’m twitchily trying to not spend money on anything if I don’t have to, and I’m also trying to find a(nother) job while studying. It’s quite a pain for me, because I’m a spoiled Swede who’s never ever worked and studied at the same time in the past (student aid and such), but now is not the time to go all “but my studies must not suffer — I cannot allow myself to take time away from them” on myself (they call it “iiwake” over here) and just get to it because I’ll ruin myself otherwise.

Wish me luck. (The next post will probably be about how I lost that job teaching those kids that I wrote about earlier…)

The 4th of October, as I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone while walking across the room I managed to get the far-too-short ethernet cable across my foot which resulted in me literally bashing the modem into the ground. It didn’t survive the trip.

Now, 21 days later, I have a new modem. My landlord didn’t break any new speed records on that one, that’s for sure, but at least he gave it to me for free (initially he said I had to pay money to get a replacement).

Ah well. I’m back. I’ve had a hundred different things I’ve wanted to blog about, but sitting down and writing the entries in a text file just sounded too ambitious for me. In any case, I’m back.

“The characteristics of foreigner criminals visiting Japan.” (“来日外国人犯罪の特徴”)
A handbook “sponsored by the Shizuoka-Ken Head Police Station, the Shizuoka-Ken Association for the Prevention of Crime”

Link to Zone81 blog where this masterpiece is printed in its entirety (though without Japanese you won’t get much out of it — the pictures are fun to look at though).

I’ve been looking around a lot for some form of confirmation on this one, but my Japanese sort of fails me. What I did find was almost as bad though. Practically every prefecture in Japan has a [prefecturename].go.jp (government dot japan) page which lists “visiting foreigner criminals/crime in Japan”, divided into racial heritage with cute little diagrams and such.

Before I came to Japan, I knew it would be one of the few places on earth that I could go to and be “mistreated” for being a white male. Not a lot of places where you can get that these days. I knew, and I came here anyway, because I am fascinated by the Japanese language, the people who speak it, their culture, and how they came to be as isolated and “we vs them” as they appear from the outside (and from the inside as well, to a great extent). If I had wanted good treatment and smiley faces and chirpy birds, Japan would not have been on my list of places to go.

Some days pass and all I am greeted with is friendliness, openness, a willingness to accept each other as brothers across the world, and such floweriness. Today, as I came home from my test-ride to my potentially new school (was timing it to see when I had to get up in the morning) an old lady walked across the street as I was buying a coke from a … uh … jidouhanbaiki (the fuck is that in English?). I looked at her and she looked at me for a sec, and then she nodded and smiled and I nodded and smiled back. I realized that the Japanese are big on greetings. Even if you don’t know a person, you might nod to them if you end up inadvertently trampling into their bubble — such as looking at them while they happen to be looking at you. I tend to turn my head away and do my thing in those cases, but I think a Japanese might have nodded or something to acknowledge the other’s presence.

Then other days I am baffled by the blatant racism and ignorance that permeates this place. Such as the above “handbook”. I think part of the problem is that 20% of Japan’s population are all above 65 years of age. Old people tend to forget about equality and understanding cultural differences and such things. Sadly.

So, my very first earthquake today. They claim it was stronger than the usual ones. I was sort of looking forward to it, for two reasons.

1. I hadn’t experienced one ever.

2. I wanted the experience once, so I didn’t panic if a “bad one” happened.

The bad news? I slept right through it. That just sums my life story up, right there. Blah! Better luck next time, me.

It’s summer vacation! Which means I’m going to spend the next few weeks catching up on everything in school. Lots and lots of studying. Yay!

My friend up in Hokkaido suggested I flee up there for a few days over the summer but I don’t even have cash for that, though it was very tempting.

I did go to Lake Biwa before with the school for a barbecue/swimming party thing. I paid 1500 yen to tag along for “food and drinks” and ended up getting four-five tiny pieces of probably-not-thoroughly-grilled meat and two beers. With 40 people going and 2 fires (tiny, weak fires — Japanese don’t seem to know how to make fires), and one retarded little man who brought his own meat and taking up one fifth of one of those two, it was more or less just a matter of standing around like a retard or giving up, and I don’t like looking like a retard.

Hope everyone else is having a good summer (too).

In case you haven’t seen it, I moved back to my mom’s place at the end of January, where I will be living for the last two months before I move to Japan. Back in April 2007, I switched ISP and went with some offer they had. The offer unfortunately bound me to use their service for 12 months. That is, until the end of April. With my move to my mom’s place, I was more or less forced to take the ISP with me (or pay for February, March, and April without actually using the service).

So my mom canceled her internet and I requested that mine was moved to her apartment. This was to take place at February 1st (i.e. her expired “end of January” and the move was to take place “the first of February”). In theory, that was supposed to happen, but around noon, January 31st, the net connection went down. And didn’t get back up again until yesterday, roughly 2 weeks later.

During these 2 weeks I couldn’t do anything at all. So I played offline games, like Starcraft (good game), Diablo 2 (um. Obsolete version of WoW, at this point), and Neverwinter Nights (um. Deranged and buggy version of WoW, especially since I couldn’t grab any of the updates online, so I played the release-version). Let me tell you… my appreciation for World of Warcraft has taken on new levels after this experience. There are so many things in WoW that improve upon the things that exist in the older games. Despite that, once I got back into WoW, I kept trying to hit ‘r’ to rest, when I was wounded in WoW. I also tried clicking on spots on the ground to “go there”.

Starcraft was good fun though. I enjoyed the story line almost as much as I did when I played it for the first time. I played through the whole first game, and  got to the Terrans in Broodwar, but at that point I sort of lost interest. The repetitiveness of “take out the whole map which is filled with enemy bases” missions just got boring after 3-4 times in a row.

Once I got back online, I was struck, as always, by the “so what now?” daze. While offline there were so many things I wanted to do online, but when it came down to it, I only really checked email, talked to friends, played some WoW, and that’s about it. I was a bit worried about the visa application for my Japan trip (the school will receive the visa at the end of February, and will notify me shortly after, they say) and I was kind of concerned about the various projects I have going that need finishing before I leave Sweden.

I mostly slept. With all that time on my hands, I kind of lost the motivation to do anything useful. I did get most of my things packed away (the things I won’t bring with me to Japan) and I did some hiragana practice and so, but not as much as I could have. Nothing I’ll beat myself with a stick over, but still. I am ever reminded of the necessity to be busy, for me to be productive. If I end up not being overly busy, I seem to shut down or something.

Anyway, I’m back in case you wondered (but with the infrequency at which I blog, I highly doubt you did).