A little extra

This is just a letter I wrote to one of the new gappers recently, I thought it was quite an interesting insight into life here so I've posted it here.

Well my first piece of advice would be to learn as much Japanese as you can possibly manage between now and the short seven weeks or so before you arrive. I, like you arrived being able to speak almost nothing and this was most certainly a mistake. Very few of your colleagues speak conversational English, there’s usually at least one person in every section where you work who can but not always, there are only around two or three fluent English speakers too. Of course if you’re anything like me, I read the warnings about not having enough Japanese being a bad thing before I came too, but just never found the time to work on it. Please learn from my mistake here. Of course you can get by for the whole six months just fine without ever speaking any Japanese at all, gestures body language and expression are all part of communication too… But although you’ll be ok, you won’t nearly have as good a time as if you really try and smash that language barrier. It’s really awesome being able to talk to your colleagues in Japanese and make Japanese friends. You meet many awesome people this way. That being said the gaijin (foreigner) community here is pretty tight knit. There are people from all over the place, ALT’s, JET’s, Language trainers, other GAPpers, students, Expats, of all nationalities all over the place. Out here in Nishio it’s rare to see foreigners, (foreigners being non Japanese) so the small English community has a number of very interesting people in it. You know you’ve been in Japan too long if you stare at other Foreigners as much as the Japanese do. You’ll know what I mean when you get here. If you get to know the people at the international centre you will also make some good friends who speak English. I would really encourage you to step out from the immediate gaijin community from time to time though, I met some really great people who are really good friends to me and have offered me homestay and all sorts. Also, the girls love it when you speak Japanese, no matter how poorly ;)
If you were under the impression that Nishio City would be a pretty bustling place because it has “City” in the name, then you might be disappointed, as I was when you first arrive. Nishio is more like what we would call a town in the UK. It’s of reasonable size, with two shopping centres, plenty of pachinko, a couple of arcades, at least four major Kareoke spots, A million convienience stores, a gym, a few playing fields, quite a lot of weird and obscure shops, and a good railway network. Japanese nightlife and drinking especially out here is not really anything like at home and this surprised me greatly when I first arrived. Make the most of the humble British pub while you still can. There are a few “bars” but they’re not really like at home. The most common way to get sozzled is to buy a few cans from the convienence store and take them with you into karaoke, which is the normal way of doing things here, and has no connotations of scabbiness like it does at home when you bring your own beer into a pub. Another time people drink a lot is at late night “restaurants” these are restaurants, there’s often a sitting charge, and you’re expected to buy snacky type food along with the drinks, but they’re open really late and many people coming tearing out at the early hours this way. There are no nightclubs or anything like that in Nishio, there are a couple in Nagoya so you can have a pretty awesome time out there if that’s your thing, but it is expensive as hell and the trains stop at midnight (but they start again at 5am). And from what I’ve heard, not all that awesome, as it’s just like being in a UK nightclub, and that’s not really why I came here. Also of course the drinking age is 20, so if they card you, you’re buggered unless you have a very fast tongue. Or are over 20. Strangely though apart from nightclubs no where seems to do compulsory ID checking at all. Not once the whole time I’ve been here have I been asked to prove my age, buying alcohol from convenience stores, or in bars, this seems to be universal, so unless you are unlucky enough to look about 12 you’ll be fine. There’s also a couple of very seedy hostess bars in Nishio, but these places are dodgy as hell and really not cool unless you are an aging businessman with nothing better to do than to waste £30 hour having some vaguely attractive girl stroke your ego. To be honest, despite how awful this might seem if you are a real party person (like myself) it’s not really all that bad, Kareoke is really quite fun. The Beer here is quite cheap, maybe about a fiver for a sixpack, but the one thing with Japanese beer is it’s quite sweet by comparison to UK beers. It’s also difficult to find many of the drinks you are familier with, Coke, Fanta, Smirnoff and Guiness/Budweiser are fairly common, others do exist but are difficult to find. I did manage to get some Newcastle Brown Ale once, but it was expensive as all hell because it’s an import and considered quite exotic. Odd. But instead of finding the usual drinks you may find yourself regularly buying melon cream soda, café au lait, Mitsuya Cider (It’s not actually Cider, more like lemonade.) squid legs, dried fish and other such oddities and random packaged meals from 24 convienience stores when you get hungry. It’s quite hard not to get addicted to those places actually. Also Japan is the land of vending machines, you have not lived until you see some of these, It is also the land of the vending machine that sells the one litre Beer can. The more you can adapt to Japanese tastes the easier life will be for you. (easier reads cheaper)
Note, the above probably makes me sound like a complete drunkard, but I actually haven’t been quite as irresponsible as I make myself sound.
Food is interesting. It really really helps to have an open mind when it comes to this. Your diet will be completely changed, prepare for a lot of rice and fish. Certainly is healthy though. Some of the stuff they serve at the cafeteria will actually make you audibly mumble “what the hell?”. A lot of the stuff you may not actually know what it is. Some of it even now, I don’t know what it is. One of the things that surprised me at first was being served an entire fish, head, tail, guts and all, literally a boiled fish, and having the misfortune to eat the guts, to the amusement of my Japanese collegues who waited till I finished eating before telling me, that “you’re not supposed to eat that bit”. Other weird combinations I have eaten are Tofu and prawn “cake”, seaweed and vinegar, horse meat and fish reproductive organs. If it all gets a bit much there are 3 mcdonald’s in town and a KFC, but Burger King does not exist in Japan full stop on the plus side, every single McDonalds is open 24 hours. There’s also a brilliant chain of Japanese Curry Restaurants called CocoICHIBANYA, which I highly recommend you try, because they are cheap and delicious and Japanese curry is completely COMPLETELY different to the Indian curry we are used to in the UK. If you’re a fan of Fish and Chips like myself, get your fill before you leave the UK, as you will find plenty of fish in Japan but not Fish and Chips or Harry Ramsden’s anywhere.
If you need a taste of big City life Nagoya’s only 45 mins by train, and it’s the fourth biggest city in Japan, massive unending metropolis that seems to go on forever, it’s an interesting place. I’ve been there maybe 5 times or so, but as it’s a transit hub (great bus and shinkansen connections) sometimes I was just passing through. There’s a lot of familier brands and other such sights in a great district called Sakae, just look for “Sakae” on the Nagoya Subway map.
Anyway, you won’t need to bother buying a phone, one of the great things about this particular placement is that you will get a mobile phone, with effectively unlimited credit as part of one of your work benefits. Although it’s techinically “unlimited” it’s best not to abuse their generosity and piss them off. But then you didn’t need me to tell you that haha… Other benefits include a bicycle, as many meals as you want from the staff cafeteria (this is a godsend, trust me) all utilities paid for at your apartment, and 50000 yen per month. They also include free Japanese lessons at the International Centre, but these are somewhat problematic. They happen on Thursday and Sunday, A Thursday is a working day for you, and the Sunday lessons are centred towards the Japanese-Brazillian community and so are mostly in Portugues and Japanese. Thursday lessons are very good… IF you can get to them, it requires changing your day off from either Saturday or Sunday to Thursday, and this makes things very difficult, because it messes up weekend plans with everyone else, because you have to work Saturday. This is the one disadvantage this placement has over others, It’s better than many of the other placements in that you get so many benefits, and a flexible work timetable, but the disadvantage is it’s hard to learn Japanese. The good people in the Xray room will let you study Japanese in the office during your work hours when you are not busy, this is great but also kind of hard, as it can be difficult to concentrate with people rushing around you everywhere, X-ray machines beeping, alarms going off, patients screaming, cute nurses etc etc… Of course you are also free to study in your own time, but quite quickly your time gets eaten up by a lot of things, and often you can find yourself pretty exhausted after 9 hours or so work every day.
Another thing I did was take up teaching an English Lesson once a week to Roken staff, I didn’t get paid at all for it, but it’s a really good experience because you meet some really interesting people, and get a lot of free food, if you were ever thinking of teaching English here, but have no background, it’s a great way to get a foothold on the ladder as it were. The class will probably end when I leave, you guys are under no obligation to take it up at all, but if it interests you I would strongly recommend it, just mention it at one of the weekly meetings. Another advantage of this is that you will probably learn some Japanese from them too.
As far as bringing a laptop is concerned, I found it to be really important for me, others have said different. In the early days we were able to “borrow” someone elses wireless connection in this apartment, which was pretty sweet because we got free *private* internet, then around Christmas time they got wise to this and put a password on it, so now we are internetless. Laptops I found were useful for several key things 1. Messenger, the cheapest way to stay in touch is through messenger on your computer or through skype, it’s a really easy way to stay in touch and works great. You don’t even want to bother with the phonecard it’s horrendously expensive by comparison. And before you ask, the mobile phone they give you is made to not call international. 2. I made a blog as a way of staying in touch with family and friends and as a kind of memory for myself. I also make videos for youtube from time to time as a kind of living diary, (you can check them out at http://www.david-ryansan.blogspot.com and http://www.youtube.com/dryan5 ) laptops are great for this, as they give you privacy to work and aren’t charged by the hour. 3. Laptops make great entertainment centres! I’ve been dumping all the pictures I’ve been taking on my laptop, and it works great as a DVD player and music player, especially as the DVD player in my apartment is broken, so good for entertaining others when they come round. They’re also great for games, if that’s your thing. 4, I use my laptop to make a little powerpoint presentation every week for my English class, it really helps with the teaching. So in my opinion bringing a laptop is a very good idea.
But if you don’t, you can use the internet at Roken’s office in the evenings after work, but of course, you can’t do stuff like use skype or messenger on that, or plan powerpoints or whatever. There are plenty of private 24 hour net café’s around, maybe around £5 for two hours, and you can get as many drinks as you like from the drinks machine, and read any manga you want from the vast library of manga. (except of course, most of it, you won’t be able to read…but still pretty pictures oooooh) As far as a wireless place where you can bring your own laptop…. I’m looking for a place that does that now… I sometimes use a friends house, but it’s not very cool to be constantly dropping in like that.
I hope this gives you something of an idea of what it’s like to be here, I hope your preperations are going well, and I hope I get to meet you in a few weeks, if you get my apartment please treat it well. The door already had a crack in it and the sink had the crack in it when I arrived. The curtains will fall off at some point as they have done for every gapper since time immemorial. The burn marks are from my predecessors setting of fireworks on the balcony and Lee setting one off in my room. I don’t know why the air conditioner makes an explosion sound every 30 mins or so, but I’m pretty sure it’s harmless. Any food left behind is good to eat, The toaster looks like it does because I burnt my takoyaki one day, and I don’t use it enough to merit cleaning. Despite what the note in the book says, there are no mice as far as I can see. The heated toilet seat is awesome. The doorbell is also awesome but kinda rubbish and only really useful for scaring people passing by your apartment. The dreamcast never had any cables, The scratch marks on the floor were me moving the sofa one night for no reason, the remote doesn’t work because the previous gapper tripped on a beer can and sat on it.