After a few months I got a phone call from E.ON. where they basically offered me a better than the default deal, which I accepted, and then today the contract arrived. Now… not a lot of people read these, right? I tend to give them a skim at least, to see if something insane appears and sometimes I hit the jackpot.

“The personal details of you that we have obtained are necessary to accomplish our part of this agreement and to accomodate your needs as a customer. Your name and address may also be used for marketing by E.ON. as well as by companies with which E.ON. is cooperating. Your personal information may also be used in educational purposes.” (bold emphasis mine)

So uh… not thinking there was much hope, I still decided to just email them,

“Hi,

According to the contract you sent to my home, “(the above quote)”

I do NOT want you to use my personal information for marketing, and I most definitely don’t want you to give it out to other companies.

Sincerely,

-Kalle Alm (my personal id number).”

Within an hour I got a response which to my surprise went:

“Hi,

Thanks for your email.

We have registered that you do not want us to use your personal information for marketing purposes.

Please contact us again [blabla].”

I didn’t think it’d be that easy, but there you have it. Summary: read through your contracts! You might end up with a company like E.ON. who thinks people are too lazy to read through this “boring” stuff!

Entryway to apartment. Big bedroom seen on right side.

Kitchen.

Uh.. that’s actually the only two places I took pictures of. I made a video too. Comment if you want link since I don’t want to post it in public.

A number of thoughts went through my head. I ultimately decided to turn around and walk back behind the corner and either call the cops or tell an employee to do so. One was actually standing right there so I walked up to her and calmly informed her that a robbery is in progress and to call the cops.

Her: “You’re joking, right?”
Me: “Nope, not joking. Please call the cops immediately.”
Her: “Are you sure?”
Me: “Yes, I’m sure.”

After that cozy conversation she went off and called the cops. Meanwhile, I decided to see what in that store could possibly be better than a big knife. I found a pair of scissors, and figured that was probably not going to work very well. A big rock or, hell, a baseball bat would have been ideal, but alas.

Ultimately the guy ran off and I paid for my beer. The cops arrived and there were others who’d gotten a better description of the guy than I, so I just went home.

Meanwhile, my sister’s in Turkey near where the suicide bombing occurred. She’s apparently fine, according to her husband, but we’re all sort of waiting for her to get back home in one piece. (Edit: sis landed at airport in Sweden earlier)

I’m not sure I like the direction the world is heading in…

Whenever I go to vote, something inside of me is always different. The emphasis, or focus, is tilted toward something new each time. This time, unsurprisingly, it was Japan. I saw everyone around me who came to make their voices heard, however small, and I thought about the vote rate for Japan — something like 40-45% usually (it was higher last time, thanks to Obama, I suspect). I saw a mix of Swedes and foreigners around me all with their voting envelopes in their hands, and I felt a sort of wonder at how they cared when so many people who’d been born and raised here did not. Perhaps my time in Japan as a foreigner put more presumptions into my head than it discarded…

Whenever I go to vote — and I have, since I was allowed to, which puts me at #3 today — I go through this range of emotions which is different each time.

I feel intrigued, looking at those around me, wondering who’s with me and who’s against me, wondering what would happen if everyone suddenly started yelling out their choices.

I feel good, for actually giving a damn. Even if I don’t put a lot of faith into these politicians, I at least make a statement as to which one I think sucks the least.

I feel bad, for not knowing enough about the available parties. For not looking into, asking, scrutinizing agendas and watching debates they had going on TV*. I made my choice but it wasn’t a firm, absolute one, it was of the wavering kind. Perhaps it’s the times…

I feel guilty, because even though I do vote, I do so whilst in the aforementioned predicament, and I’m afraid that if those around me vote as “lightly” as myself, our democracy is pretty much a castle on a mountain of sand — a single tremor could send it sliding.

I feel moody, because of the times changing. My own views have changed radically, as have those of the world around me. The Social Democrats, my obvious candidate in the past, are struck from my list, possibly forever, at the very least until Thomas Bodström is removed. The Pirate Party is a joke, or I’d go “the responsibility-less route”**.

I feel uneasy. I mean, some fairly nutty parties have gotten a lot of support lately. I’d probably give up and move out of this country if SD got into the government***.

Regardless, I’ve at least performed my duty, if half-assed, as a believer in democracy.

—

(* from what it sounds though, the TV debates were fairly useless — a truckload of shitflinging, mostly)

(** they have “no views” on anything other than letting people download shit (and, they try to claim, “on privacy/integrity”).)

(*** SD = Sverigedemokraterna, a bunch of racist pigs who had something like 7% of people’s votes in a poll a couple of months ago. In Sweden, you need 4% or more to get into government, and in rare cases where the two major alliances (left and right) are very close, those 4% can give you a lot of control, because in essence, if left goes ‘yes’ and right goes ‘no’, you decide if the answer is yes or no (if you say yes, yes gets “48+4=52%”! If you say no, no gets “48+4=52%!”, presuming left and right had 48% each and you the remaining 4).)

I only really wanted to buy sill and maybe bread while there, but we both wanted to look at furniture, since IKEA is in Sweden too (considering it’s Swedish, that’s not surprising) and the furniture is the same regardless of the country you’re in.

I don’t go to IKEA very often, personally, but when I do go I like it a lot. I love the way they market their stuff, setting up little pretend-rooms throughout the store, and letting people sit down and check things out at their own pace. It definitely gives you a good idea just how well this and that would fit together, and testing beds is *always* fun. Bouncebounce.

The store was pretty damn big on the outside, but on the inside it was smaller than I expected. It was two floors big, and it took us just under an hour to go through the whole thing. We had sort of expected to be there for quite some time, but in the end, at 2.30 pm, we had seen everything we wanted to see, and I’d bought my food that I wanted.

Speaking of food, the “market” they have there is quite nice, but small. I found lots of Swedish food that I really wanted, among them Swedish bread (tears of joy… Japanese bread sucks…) , sill (fish in glas jars, sort of like marinated, I guess?), Swedish beer, glögg, smoked salmon, etc. And the prices were actually comparable to the Japanese stores, amazingly enough.

Anyway, since it was so early we decided to not eat dinner there, but instead decided that we should make a Swedish dinner at my girlfriend’s parents’ place to let them taste “Sweden” once and for all. So we bought more sill, more salmon, and meatballs, lingon jam, and Swedish beer. No glögg though.

It turned into sort of a christmas dinner thing, in the end. The salmon and potatoes are kind of one dish by their own, as are the meatballs and potatoes, so people sort of just picked and tried stuff from the table. Surprisingly everyone liked it a lot — even my girlfriend’s mother, who usually hates potatoes (I made mashed potatoes, which might have done the trick — the cream sauce might have done the trick too).

In any case, that was my IKEA day. It’s always great fun to cook dinner for lots of people, even though it’s not usual for guys to make food in this country. The girl’s dad always seems a little unsure how to take this all — his daughter’s boyfriend swings by and whips up food for one and all. Must not be a very common sight in Japanese households, but noone is discouraging in the slightest, so I’m gonna continue making weird dishes from my northern origin in the future. (Next up is this chicken + curry + rice thing that I love. I already have the recipe, but I’ve never actually prepared the dish myself. We’ll see how that goes…)

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.

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…)