A typical Life

While surfing the web this week I came across a number of stories and photos that I thought were interesting and worth sharing. I hope you enjoy them too.

Some great posts from the Tokyo Times:
Moving Japanese Masks as seen at festivals - click the link for more fabulous photos.

A beautiful and moving photo from a Japaneses playground reflecting on the shrinking Japanese population. You have to check this one out, it’s very touching.

Also on the shrinking Japaneses population, Japan Today reported that Daiwa (A large Japanese Securities company) will pay their employees for having a third child. The payment would be just under $20,000 US Dollars.

Under the “good news for us” category:

Tokyo was named the Gourmet Capital of world by Michelin. From the Japan Times
Tokyo has slipped from the top 10 most expensive places to live for expatriates. From News on Japan.

This article about work-life balance is very indicative of the Japanese and their attitude towards work. From the Daily Yomiuri

Secrets of a Happy Japanese Marriage from What Japan Thinks. This must be a universal list. Barring the poor use of English I would agree with most of the items - wouldn’t you?

Eating out in Japan is a neat experience. There are stand alone restaurants and also food courts on the top floor of most department stores with a variety of different restaurants to choose from. Most have plastic models of the food they serve in the front window or menus with photos. Believe it or not the photo on the right is a plastic replica of ramen (click on the photo for more examples). Amazingly realistic, isn’t it?

So if you can’t decipher the menu, and no English menu is offered, you can always take your water or waitress outside and point!

Japan is not for the picky eating crowd unless your Japanese is extremely good. Mine wasn’t and my step-son was very picky when he was younger. He hated lettuce and cheese, to name a couple of things. When he and his sister came to visit us we had to change our eating habits a little bit to accommodate them. When we went out to eat we would go to one of many American chains rather than some of the local restaurants that we came to enjoy. It made things easier – for the kids!

McDonald’s here we come….

My step-son loved the Big-Mac and asked me to order him one with no cheese and no lettuce. My first thought was that there was no way that I would be able to explain that so I suggested that he order a double burger instead. That was a no-go – it had to be a Big-Mac because he liked the special sauce! The menu consisted of mostly pictures so I stepped up and pointed at the Big-Mac and tried to explain what I wanted. It went something like this…. “Sumimasen, rettuce nashi, cheezu nashi, onegai-shimasu.” (Translated: “Excuse me, without lettuce, without cheese, please”). All the while, as I say “nashi”, I am crossing my arms like an X in front of my chest for visual impact. It appeared that I was understood – what a relief! We received the burger, found a table, sat down and my step-son opened up his burger only to find cheese. The conversation went like this:

Please take this back and get them to make me another one.

Why don’t you just scrape off the cheese?

Eeeeeewwwww! I can’t scrape it all off – there will still be bits of cheese on it! (Like it was going to kill him!)

OK, if you are serious, you go over there and explain it – I’m sure you’ll do much better than I did.

Needless to say he scraped the cheese off and ate the burger, complaining the whole time. Thankfully, the kids are adults now and they can hardly wait to come to Japan and eat the food. Their picky days are mostly over – I hope?

About a week in to our stay, I thought that it was time to get out and do some exploring. My first trip on the Japanese train system was very intimidating. Just to give you an idea of the systems complexity here is a map from Japan Corner. (If you zoom in you to the bottom right corner you will see a silhouette of Cinderella’s castle which is near where we lived.)

First I had to figure out where I wanted to go and how to get there. My lifesaver was a bilingual train guide that you can purchase in most major bookstores in Japan. I would map my route by saying to myself “take the red line to the yellow line, transfer to the blue line….” Just like a first grader!

Then I had to buy a ticket. The first time I attempted to do this it took quite some time as I needed to analyze a complex grid to determine the correct fare. In smaller stations there is often no English on the grid and you need to match the Kanji of where you are to where you are going which can be very time consuming. It’s sort of like the game of memory where a whole bunch of cards are face down on a table and you have to match two in order to get an extra turn! Japan-Guide.com has a great overview of the train system.

Now I put my Yen in the machine, pushed the button with the right fare, and crossed my fingers that the ticket that I purchased would get me through the gates of the station where I was and out of the station at my destination. If the fare was wrong a machine would stop me from exiting and I would need to go to another machine to fix it!

Next I needed to go to the platform to wait for the train. I had to make sure I was on the right platform otherwise I would catch a train going the wrong way! In order to prevent this from happening to me I would make sure that I knew the name of the last station on each line and go to the platform that indicated that station on the signs (maybe English, most likely Kanji).

Somehow I managed to get where I was going and back again but I was exhausted by the time I got home!

I didn’t go to Japan thinking that grocery shopping would be easy – in fact I didn’t give it much thought at all!

On my first trip to a Japanese grocery store I found that I could identify the general sections of the store but from there it went downhill. My initial discovery was that very little of the product packaging was labeled in English. This made what would have been a quick and easy task at home quite challenging. My goal was simple; I needed to get something for dinner and to start stocking the empty cupboards in our new home. That shouldn’t take too long right? Well, after about a half hour of wandering up and down the aisles and analyzing the various packages to determine if I could glean their contents I gave up and headed for the fresh produce and meat. I had a lot more success there and actually put some items in my basket.

So what was the end result? (more…)

It’s been almost a month since we found out that we will be spending the better part of the next two years in Japan. This isn’t our first time being part-time residents of Japan. Back in 1994 we had the privilege of starting a four year adventure in Japan. We enjoyed daily life in Japan, living there was a very satisfying and enriching experience overall. We have a lot of great memories from our time in Japan and are very excited about going back. This is not to say that we didn’t experience some culture shock during our stay! I have decided to share some of my more vivid memories of those first few days and weeks back in 1994 in a series of posts which I will call “Memories of Japan”. The experiences that I will describe are not that uncommon for foreigners coming to Japan for the first time and they made me realize, and appreciate, all of the things that I took for granted at home. These things take a lot of effort to accomplish when you first get to Japan but the good news is that over time, and with practice, everyday life in Japan becomes easier, more routine, but never dull!

Here is this first installment of “Memories of Japan”:

The Trip & Our Arrival

The trip from Phoenix, Arizona to Tokyo, Japan was the longest trip I have even taken in my life both by the clock and emotionally. In reality it was about 16 hours from the time that we left Phoenix until we landed at Narita Airport. I can’t sleep on planes and have been told that I am over-analytical at the best of times. Given my nature, I spent the whole flight thinking about what I was getting into, all of the challenges that I would face and how I would handle the whole experience. The excitement of living in Japan was temporarily overshadowed by these thoughts. (more…)

I’m excited and a little bit intimidated by the idea of this weblog but have decided to jump in anyway! For those of you that know me well that won’t be a surpise. Here are some questions that you might be asking:

Why a weblog?

I value my friends and family more and more each day and wanted to keep everyone up to date on my adventures.

Why now?

For those of you that don’t know yet I am embarking on the adventure of a lifetime. I will be spending the better part of the next two years in Japan and will have a lot of time on my hands….

How did I get the name of this weblog?

I searched and searched for something both clever and meaningful. I love the play on words of “A typical Life” because it describes my life. It is very typical in a lot of ways and pretty atypical in a some pretty big ways!

What will I post about?

As most of you know, I am very inquisitive and love to ponder the Five W’s (and one H) as memorialized by Rudyard Kipling in his “Just So Stories” (1902).

Who? What? When? Where? Why? and, How?

I hope to share the answers that I find on this weblog. This site will be combination of travelogue and commentary about my adventures and the various things that I learn wandering along the path that is my life.

I hope that you enjoy it!

You can read more about me here.

Life is just one adventure after another isn’t it? I know that in my life I have had adventures that make me laugh; make me cry and quite a few where I’ve thought “How the heck did I get myself into this?”. Some are typical and some atypical but they all have one thing in common – they shape who you are; what you believe and how you approach life.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary gives the follow definition:

ad·ven·ture

an exciting or remarkable experience

What is my philosophy on life? I hadn’t given it much thought until a friend came to me very troubled. She was scared and intimidated by an upcoming change in her life and didn’t know how she would handle it. I really wanted to help her so I gave her some advice. Here it is:

Change can be scary, and may not seem good at the time, but you can always gain something from any experience in your life – they are all remarkable in their own way. If you look hard there is usually something to be gained or learned, even from the bad ones!

Just take a moment to think about the memories you have that, in retrospect, give you the most laughs or the ones where you look back with pride on an accomplishment. Most of those memories were created as a result of some kind of adversity.

Up until that point I didn’t even realize that I had a philosophy for life but it became clear to me that the advice that I gave her was my philosophy. This advice/philosophy has served me well.

Life is a series of adventures and it’s hard to be negative when you are open to the possibilities of each adventure as it enfolds in front of you. You just need to take the right attitude with you everyday and enjoy the ride!

What’s your philosophy for life?