Bored as I was, I typed in “sex” in the search and got a bunch of random looking results. I downloaded one, looked at it, noted (with no surprise) that it was retarded and then the machine beeped and I thought nothing more of it.

Fastforward a bit. Here you see me plugging my iPhone into my computer. It syncs.

Fastforward some more. Here you see me finding that app later. I delete it from the phone, thinking “phew, good thing I didn’t leave that around in case someone found it. How embarrasing.”

Fastforward again. Here I’m plugging the iPad into the computer. It syncs.

Fastforward a final time. Here’s my 12 year old niece playing, as she always does whenever she’s visiting, with my iPad.

And then later that day, I look at the first app page and what do I see? Yeah. iTunes synced that app in from my iPhone and out to my iPad. It’s a setting that I have control over, but geez, where are the privacy features on these bloody things? Where can I “hide” stuff I don’t want my 12 year old niece to stumble on?

Sigh. And now you guys know I downloaded a smut app. But the fact my 12 year old niece might have seen it is by far worse. Much, much worse. Ugh.

Which at the top of it had in big colored text the words: HURRY, RENEW YOUR SUBSCRIPTION BY APRIL 15 2010.

Yes. Capital letters. And then, at the bottom of this OMG DO IT NOW OR PERISH LIKE THE NEANDERTHALS!!1111111111oneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneone email… there is the following: To continue to receive the NVIDIA UK Corporate Newsletter, you don’t need to take any action! On April 15 2010, your subscription will automatically be transferred to our UK database.

Which means “right, we just screamed at the top of our lungs to tell you that you actually don’t have to do anything“.

Asshats.

(Oh and yes, I comprehend that they have now divided their newsletter up by country, and that this is what they’re trying to say. They’re just saying it like asshats.)

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.

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.

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*

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.)

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…)

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.

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.