Martha Stewart, Eat Your Heart Out.

Hello from Oregon...or is it Kyoto? It’s hard to tell today because it’s overcast with the occasional drizzle. The best part is watching the mist roll down the mountains surrounding Kyoto! I’ll admit to being a bit of a lump lately, with most of my time outside of work spent watching online television or working on my craft projects. In honor of my relative non-activity I dedicate today’s blog post to Crafts, Japanese Television, and the decorating of my apartment.

I promised to share pictures of my 1000 paper crane project once I got close to finishing, so here it is! 

 (Assembly!)

 (All done!)

Between the paper and the shiny thread I got the project cost around 1200 yen, or about $14 US dollars, give or take. Folding the cranes took about a minute each, and a string of cranes (50 per string) took about an hour to select the colors and then thread them together. If anyone out there feels like a good craft project, I highly recommend it. Folding cranes is a great way to keep your hands busy while watching TV...which brings me to my next topic-

Japanese Television!


It’s true that the Japanese have strange television. The discerning viewer can watch games of human tetris or enjoy watching a komodo dragon chase after pretty girls with steaks adhered to their heads. If you doubt the existence of the latter, I recommend you look it up on youtube.


Instead of throwing myself to the whims of the broadcasting networks, I’ve instead been using an online streaming site to watch Japanese dramas (“mysoju”). It’s a good way to practice listening to native Japanese speakers (which is a skill we don’t practice enough in schools) and pick up snippets of Japanese culture. I recommend this website, as it has a great library of dramas and most have English subtitles. If a video doesn’t load, you can always look up the next segment on google, sometimes with a faster stream.

Anyway- what are Japanese Dramas like? Most are between 8-12 1-hour episodes long, and (in my opinion) emphasize interpersonal relationships both inside and outside of the workplace. I’ve intentionally focused on comedy and romantic comedy, because the Japanese are less avoidant of unhappy endings as we Americans tend to be. In Japan even comedies tend to be very bittersweet in places. Here are some quick reviews of dramas I’ve seen and recommend:

Haken no Hinkaku (Temp. Worker’s Pride)

This drama follows a new department in a large food-stuffs company composed of an green-horn department head, a young untried salary employee, an elderly computer-illiterate employee, and a temporary employee who was considered nigh unhireable. The department would seem doomed to fail, except for the hire of a new “Super Temp” worker who is curt, mysterious, and above all competent at everything. It’s a little like Mary Poppins meets The Office, except it spends more time focusing on the issues that divide salary employees and temp workers in Japanese businesses. I give it a 9/10.

Dekichatta Kekkon (Shotgun Wedding, more literally “we made a baby wedding”)

This drama is about a young woman who finds herself pregnant after a one-night tryst. She decides to keep the baby, and proposes to broach the subject to her parents by staging a fake wedding engagement with the imminent baby’s father. Gradually the two begin to fall in love, with plenty of bumps in the road. I found the female protagonist cute at first, but as her behavior became more and more predictable I found the side characters to be more endearing. My favorite was the mother-in-law and the sister’s good-for-nothing boyfriend. I give the show a 6/10.

GiraGira (literally the sound of something dazzling)

In this drama a 35 year old professional finds himself laid off to cover up his boss’s mistakes. Thwarted at every turn to find a starting position job at a new company (he’s too old), he turns back to the job he had before he got married- as a host-bar host. While keeping the secret from his wife he saves the host-bar, stands up against the yakuza, and offers a more compassionate side to an entertainment profession often seen as scamming women of their money with compliments and alcohol. The men were a little too pretty for my taste, but the main character’s 5-year old daughter is super adorable and the female bar-owner is a fun tough-woman character. I give this show an 8/10.
 

As I mentioned before, I watch my Japanese television through sites that stream subtitled versions, but if I owned a television I would also be receiving the Japanese public broadcasting network called “NHK”. NHK stands for “Nippon Hoso Kyokai”, and while it is the PBS equivalent here in Japan it conducts its business a little differently. Instead of relying on memberships and donations, NHK collects a bimonthly fee of 2600 yen from anyone who uses their services. And thus the following conversation came to pass when the NHK man came to my door to collect money:

(The following conversation has been translated from Japanese to make Andrew appear better at the language than he actually is.)

NHK Man: Hello! I am from NHK, do you have a television?

Andrew: I do not. (Literally, "There is no television.")

NHK Man: Do you have a personal computer?

Andrew: Yes, but it is not hooked up to receive television.

NHK Man: Do you have a cell phone? What cell phone company do you use?

Andrew: (perplexed) Uh, yeah. I don’t know which company, I’ll show it to you.

The fellow from NHK fiddled around with my cell phone for about a minute and then gave it back to me. On the screen was a tiny box displaying a television program with poor sound quality and the tendency to become jerky from moment to moment.

NHK Man: (Triumphant) You can watch television on your phone, so that will be 2600 yen! (approx. $30).

Andrew: Bwah? (The meaning of this word is universal, so I have not translated it.)


Keep in mind that I use the free cellphone that came with my incredibly basic plan and hadn’t even been aware that my cell phone had a television. I felt tricked, but lacked the Japanese to articulate this, so I figured I would pay the money to get the man out of my apartment and then show the official documentation to my boss.


Upon further research it turns out that anyone who owns a device capable of receiving NHK’s services –must- pay the fees, according to a law drafted in the 1950's. But, as many other foreigners and Japanese have realized, the law was put into affect with the assumption that everyone would follow it, and lacks any stipulations for enforcement. NHK cannot force a citizen to pay, and after some corruption scandals within the network became public, many Japanese began to refuse to do so.

My advice to future JETs/ALTs is not to let anyone bully you into paying for a service that you aren’t using. At the very least refuse to pay until they’ve brought an English representative to your door, so you know exactly what they’re asking for and why. While I do think that you should pay if you are using a television/watching their networks, people shouldn’t have to pay a television bill for their cell phone. Next time I’ll have Alistair drive the NHK man from my apartment.

Finally, in brief, I have been decorating my apartment after the realization about a month ago that it didn't feel quite like home yet. Here's what I've done with the place:

New curtains! The old ones were off-white, and there was also a pink and purple butterfly sheet put over the smaller window. I think the new plant motif is much better.

I also got some houseplants and on a whim, a little ceramic hedgehog to keep them company.

Finally, I bought a large area carpet and a “floor chair” to sit on. Have you noticed it all matches?

That's all for now. I'll be writing again soon, to make up for my blog-silence last week.

-Andrew