It's still too hot...

We are supposedly coming to the end of summer here in Tokyo - actually according to the traditional Japanese calendar it's already been autumn for a few weeks - and it's still climbing up to 35˚C or so most days. And it's not the pleasant 35˚C heat you get in Spain and from which you can take refuge in the shade, but the pervasive humid kind from which even a breeze provides precious little relief. Most of my experiences of Japanese summers have been much the same, though they are saying that this has been one of the hottest summers on record. I'll be glad to see the back of this summer and a return to more bearable temperatures.

I've been working with the Irish Chamber now for about three months and it's been very enjoyable so far. I've been involved in organising three events so far - one for Minister Ryan, a leaving do for the Ambassador and we had a talk from Patrick Honohan, the Central Bank governor a couple of weeks ago. All of them have gone very smoothly so far. The next big event will be our golf tournament in October, but since I don't play golf myself I'm not feeling overly confident about it. Anyway, the job is part-time so I've still had plenty of time on my hands and not enough cash in my pockets! But I've been getting a nice bit of translation work recently so things are looking up there. And as much as I wanted to avoid teaching, I got offered a handy job in a local little college and could hardly refuse it. I'll be teaching English to classes of mainly Chinese students. I taught Japanese to a few Chinese students in DCU, and they certainly seemed like enthusiastic students so hopefully these ones will have an equal desire to learn.

We didn't get a chance to get away this summer - apart from a weekend in Nikko in July - but we have already booked our flights back home for Christmas. I cannot wait!

New job

I finally had some success in my job hunting a few weeks ago. I had been looking for work as a translator, but then this job as secretariat of the Ireland Japan Chamber of Commerce came up. I went into the interview completely relaxed because I didn't think I had much hope of getting the job -given a complete lack of business experience- and therefore had nothing to lose. But the vibes were good during the interview and, sure enough, I was offered the job the next day.
The job itself consists of managing the day to day affairs of the chamber and organising events, etc. It's all very varied and, although it's early days, I imagine it will be more enjoyable than translating full-time. I'm working alone which is daunting in some ways, but liberating too. It's only a part-time role though, so I'll still need to find other work on the side, and so won't be abandoning translation by any means.
One of the coolest things about the job is the connections I'll be able to make. I've already met the Irish ambassador to Japan a couple of times, as well as plenty of influential Irish and Japanese business people. We had an event with Minister Eamon Ryan a couple of nights ago, but alas I didn't get a chance to speak to the man himself. I did briefly meet the guy who was responsible for the PG Tips chimpanzee ad campaign though!
Another nice thing about the job is that I'm based in Ireland House, along with the IDA, Enterprise Ireland, as well as the embassy, which means that I'll be meeting with other Irish people all the time, and not forgetting from whence I hail!

Springtime in Tokyo

So we're well into spring in Tokyo now, and some days it can be lovely and sunny with temperatures into the low 20s, but other times it's damp, cold and miserable. It actually snowed in Tokyo over the weekend. I don't think many people were aware of the snow because it fell in the middle of the night and was washed away by the rain which followed by the time morning came around, but snow it did. That's pretty much unheard of for Tokyo in April.


Spring in Japan means cherry blossom season and hanami, or getting boozed up under cherry trees, is a quintessential part of this. The missus and myself also did a bit of hanami in the local park a couple of weekends ago, but in our case we just had a few rice balls and pretzels from the local German bakery (they really do have everything in Kichijoji!) with some green tea. It was a bit chilly though so we soon left our picnic spot and went for a walk around the park. This brought us into contact with the downside of the public consumption of alcohol. We saw a middle aged guy throwing a young boy, about 10 I suppose, around the ground threatening to beat seven shades of shite out of him. No father of the year prizes there I thought, but then we soon realized that he didn't even know this kid! The kid's father came along then and tried to calm the situation down, but the drunken ogre started squaring up to him then! We moved quickly on before he decided to take exception to the foreigner!


Tokyo can throw up unexpected surprises sometimes. On Saturday, for example, we went to Shinjuku Gyoen, a big park in central Tokyo, for a wander around. While we were walking in the French garden we saw three ladies dressed as French maids posing for pictures. Nothing too strange about this actually, as you can see this sort of thing in the Harajuku district of Tokyo every weekend. But as we approached them we realised that these ladies were in fact fellas. Fair enough - certainly did remind me of Emily Howard though.


Another surprising thing this weekend was the discovery of a field of hens about an hour's walk along an old canal near here. I mean ok the odd vegetable patch here and there in suburban Tokyo is nothing exceptional, but seeing a field full of hens was most definitely a bit out of the ordinary. At the roadside there was a vending machine selling eggs from the aforementioned hens, and even though they were more than double the price of the factory farmed eggs in the supermarket, I couldn't resist and bought half a dozen. I made a scrumptious blue cheese and spinach omelet out of them!

Meiji University

For the last couple of months I've been working in Meiji University in the centre of Tokyo. It's been a great experience, but unfortunately it's just a temp job so I'll be finishing up there in a few days.
My main duties there have been to check outsourced translation work to see that it was up to scratch (it very often wasn't...) and to translate news and events and so on happening at the university. You can see some of my work here Naturally anything that's rubbish isn't mine though!







Anyway, as well as the translation experience it's been good to get used to working in a Japanese office environment. I was expecting everyone to be over polite and jumpy as hell, but they're fairly relaxed and enjoy a laugh at work. One Japanese stereotype that does ring true though is the amount of overtime people do. February and March tend to be very busy anyway as it's the end of the fiscal and academic year, so I suppose it's not always like this, but it hasn't been unusual to receive an email from a colleague with a 10pm time stamp. Luckily for me, since I've just been temping, there's been no need or expectation of me to do overtime, so the latest I've ever needed to stay was until 6pm.


Anyway, Meiji University is pretty damn big, compared to any of the universities in Ireland anyway. It has about 30,000 students spread over three campuses. The campus where I've been based couldn't be more urban, and because of that it lacks that college vibe. Although the students have been on holidays during the duration of my stay there so that's a big factor!

The campus is based in Ochanomizu, an area of Tokyo I've always liked. There's loads of colleges and universities located there so it's a fairly lively place with a plethora of music shops, a profusion of book shops and piles of great little restaurants. There's some great Thai and Indian places, as well as Japanese, so I've really enjoyed my lunch hours. Also, when the weather has been nice, I've enjoyed going for a walk around the area and taking some photos after my usual curry. The camera on the iPhone isn't up to much so they're not great.



Not that I'm a petrol head but one thing I've noticed about the area is some of the fancy cars you can see. No, not that boxy looking thing in the above picture! I've seen an Aston Martin, an Audi R8 and, almost every morning there's been this little Lambo parked outside the university.
One day instead of the silver Lamborghini (Gallardo?) there was an orange one instead. I wonder if the owner has a collection, or if Lamborghini will loan you one of theirs while you're having the oil changed in yours!

Paddy's Parade, Tokyo

So myself and Saori met up with an Irish friend and his son today at the Tokyo St. Patrick’s Day parade. You’ll note Paddy’s Day comes early to Tokyo! It was my third time at the parade, the last time being back in 2001. Surprisingly, it’s not the only Paddy’s Day parade in Japan. There’s loads of them after springing up all over the country, in places you’ll probably never have heard of like Tsukuba and Ise. And yet when people ask me where I’m from, they’re more likely to confuse it with Iceland or Scotland, than know the capital is Dublin. So despite all these Paddy’s Day parades, it’s still a very minor thing and most people would have very little knowledge of Ireland.

Anyway, as you can see from the pictures most of the people in the parade are in fact Japanese, not Irish. There’s only about a thousand Irish people in Japan and the vast majority of us couldn’t be bothered getting involved! So there’s some people connected with Enterprise Ireland, the embassy, some universities, as well as U2 fans, Irish pubs, etc. Actually in the photo below there’s a group of students from DCU, several of them my students from last year on their year abroad in Japanese universities. If I were sound I would have joined them under the DCU banner! Would’ve been nice to catch up with them actually but didn’t see them after the parade.

Another major presence at the parade were people with Irish dogs! There were a couple of groups with Irish setters and Irish wolfhounds. You’re probably more likely to see a leprechaun than a wolfhound in Ireland though!

After the parade we headed to Yoyogi Park where my friend’s son did his best to drive us to distraction by throwing leaves at us and hitting us with sticks! He’s a cute little fella though so we’ll forgive him. Anyway, while we were at the park we saw the Tokyo Rockabilly Club strut their stuff. These guys are hilarious! They’ve been coming to the park every Sunday for at least 20 years to prance around to all the choons from the 50s. And here you can see them in a Peter, Bjorn and John (of whistley song fame) video.

Kichijoji

Finally I’ve got around to making another post! Only my second post in the three months I’ve been in Japan. Apologies to my avid readership…or well apologies to anyone who was waiting for some news from me anyway. We had to wait ages for our internet connection to get sorted after we moved.

As most people know, I wasn’t exactly overly enthusiastic at the prospect of moving back to Japan, and especially Tokyo. I was looking forward to starting my married life with Saori in earnest of course, but I just had this image of Tokyo in my mind which consisted of endless ugly grey buildings sprawling as far as the eye could see. And after living back in Ireland for a couple of years, I wasn’t really looking forward to getting back into the formality of Japanese society either. But now that I’ve been back here a few months I’m glad to report that Tokyo isn’t such a bad place at all, and while the Japanese are no doubt a formal bunch, they’re also very kind I’ve been made to feel very welcome.

As I said in my last post the place we were living in was Kawasaki. It’s not a particularly nice city, but it was convenient for a while. With all its homelessness, industry and drabness it probably wasn’t the best place to get reacquainted with Japanese life though! The place we moved to, Kichijoji, is in west Tokyo, about 15-20 mins from the main centres of Shinjuku and Shibuya and much nicer than Kawasaki!

We found our apartment with surprising ease. We just went to the estate agents, spent a couple of hours looking at plans and photos of places, picked out five we wanted to see, and then one of the estate agents drove us round to all five. We liked a couple of them and decided which one we wanted most. Japanese landlords can be very fussy about who they rent to and are notorious in turning away foreigners so we weren’t overly hopeful, but the next day we a got a call from the estate agents to say the place was all ours. It went incredibly smoothly. So next we had to part with five months’ rent in deposits and various other charges. An expensive and painful business!

Apartments in Japan come completely unfurnished without even so much as a light fitting so we had a couple of very intensive days of shopping in Ikea. So now we probably have most of the same furniture as you in Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, etc!

We had decided on Kichijoji because it was convenient for Saori’s job in Shinjuku and because it’s well known as one of the most desirable places in Tokyo with a bit of a Camden vibe. There’s loads of cool little shops selling all sorts of stuff, a couple of excellent parks (quite a rarity in Tokyo), cafes and bars and ….

Ireland House! No not a pub, but a place selling Irish stuff. I’ve absolutely no idea why, or how they would ever have enough customers to keep going but there it is. Unfortunately the only Irish food they sell is Butler’s chocolates and Bewley’s tea.

I started working as a translator at Meiji University at the end of January. It’s been very enjoyable, but it’s only short-term so I’ll be finishing there in a couple of weeks. Anyway, this post is dragging on a bit so I’ll write about that in a separate post. Oh and while I’ve been writing this we had a wee earthquake! They’re never much fun…

Here's a few pics of the local park and the night it snowed: