Tall man in a small town

I was trying to think of something clever to entitle this particular entry, but nothing came to mind, and since I'm not a big fish and I don't live in a small pond, I thought I'd change it to fit my circumstance. It's hard being famous, when there is actually no reasonable explanation for your popularity.

I've been meaning to make this entry for a while but being a foreigner, working at a Japanese fish market, I've apparently caused quite an uproar. And no, people aren't up in arms about the fact that I only get paid 800 yen an hour. They're just surprised when they look up and they don't see another Japanese person trying to sell them something.

The first time I realised my part-time job was turning me into a bit of a spectacle was when I heard from one of my friends that he knew where I was working before I told him. When I asked him why he told me that he'd seen me... on the internet.

The link is http://blog.livedoor.jp/darkm/archives/51305836.html . So if you follow that link and scroll down to number 21, there's a picture of me that a complete stranger took and captioned 'Big brother foreigner calling in customers LOLOLOLOL'

As if that wasn't enough to freak me out, I was interviewed by Asahi Newspaper the other day. So every now and then when I'm working at the fish markets, I get one of the few people who still read the newspaper telling me, I SAW YOUR ARTICLE!
YOU YOUNG WHIPPERSNAPPER! KEEP AT IT!

The title of the article is, It's delicious at Karato! Mr. Jackson the 'Japanese Nerd' Australian Exchange student.

If there is enough interest, I'll translate the article but for now I'll leave you with the hilarious thought that I'm actually a little scared by how many people in this town know me and I don't know them. But I guess it's just like my Dad says, life's tough when you're a legend :D Now if only I could speak Japanese -_-"

(But seriously, don't worry, it's not going to my head, my ego's big enough as it is. Besides it was on page 31 of the Shimonoseki section of the paper, so of the 9 people who actually read it, 5 of them were probably the people I showed it to)

Today's work 日本語実習h⑧ 16/11/2011

I'd like to give everyone an idea of what I'm studying so I'm going to type up the transcript of what we did in third period with Nakano先生. I'll attempt a translation afterwards, so everyone can get the gist of it.

日本人の平均寿命　（H19.12.17　放送）

一昨年の日本人の平均寿命がまとまりました。

もっとも長かったのは、男性が長野県の７９．８４歳、女性が沖縄県の８６．８８歳でした。

平均寿命は、地域の保険や福祉の酸い銃んを表す指標として、厚生労働省が五年ごとに都道府県別に調べています。一昨年の調査の結果、平均寿命がもっとも長かったのは、男性は長野県の７９．８４歳で、平成二年の調査から、４回連続で１位、女性は沖縄県の８６．８８歳で昭和５０年の調査から７回連続で１位です。もっとも短かったのは、男女とも青森県で男性が７６．２７歳、女性が８４．８０歳でした。青森の男性の平均寿命は昭和５０年から７回連続でもっとも短くなっています。厚生労働省は、青森県では脳卒中や心臓病で亡くなる人が多いなど、生活習慣の影響が大きいと考えられると話しています。

また、今回の調査で、平均寿命がもっとも長かった県と短かった県の差は、男性で３．５７、女性で２．０８歳となっています。

前回、平成１２年の調査と比べますと、平均寿命はすべての問う道府県でのび、もっとも大きく伸びたのは、男性では滋賀県と岡山県、女性では大分県と鳥取県でした。

Now as you can expect, everyone reacts to this in different ways.

First this.

And thankfully, finally this.

Then this.

 Now for my poor attempt at a translation!

The average Japanese lifespan (Broadcast 17.12.2007)


The year before last, (data on) the average Japanese life span was collected.

The longest lifespan was 79.84 years old for men in Nagano and 86.88 years old for women in Okinawa.

The average lifespan, as an indication of the regional standard for insurance and welfare, is being assessed every five years in Tokyo, Hokkaido and the other prefectures by the Ministry of Welfare and Labour. The result of the census from the year before last (2005) was that the longest average lifespan was 79.84y.o. in men from Nagano. Nagano has placed 1st four consecutive times since 1990's census. In women, the highest average lifespan was 86.88y.o. in Okinawa, which has been 1st seven times consecutively since 1975's census. The shortest average life span belonged to the men and women of Aomori, at 76.27y.o. and 84.80y.o., respectively. Over seven consecutive surveys, the average lifespan of Aomori's men has continued to shorten since 1975. The Ministry of Welfare and Labour are attributing this to the many deaths in Aomori due to stroke, heart disease, etc. as well as the considerable influence (one's) lifestyle is thought to have (on one's lifespan).

Still, in this census, the difference between the prefecture with the longest average life span and the prefecture with the shortest average life span was 3.57 years for men and 2.08 years for women.

Last time, compared to 2000's census, the average lifespan has grown across Tokyo, Hokkaido and all the other prefectures. The biggest increase was in the men of Shiga and Okayama and the women of Oita and Tottori.

Also, for anyone who has the time there is a video of me reading it out for pronunciation practice :D I'm not excellent with numbers so you'll notice I have a bit of trouble with that and when I watched it I realised I accidentally said 短った(mijikatta) instead of 短かった (mijikakatta). Also I attempted to say "日本語実習h" at the start but it just caught the end and sounds like ぐぅ〜(GU!) Otherwise it turned out alright :)

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT! And if any one noticed any mistakes or errors in my translation, pronunciation, English grammar, or perhaps you thought of a different way you would translate a particular section, let me know ;) I'm all ears and I'd love to hear from you!

The perils of cooking in a different country

As you can see my kitchen is top of the range

Allow me to preface that with 'when you have absolutely no culinary skills whatsoever', which means when I try to cook things it doesn't always go exactly to plan.


So I was making vegetable noodle soup for lunch today and being the genius that I am, I assume that the best way to go about this is to just put everything in boiling water until it's not raw anymore. Surprisingly it turned out alright. I don't know where the potatoes went though, just noticed the soup got a bit thicker. :D But hey, it was edible so that's what I'm aiming for.


Needless to say I've had quite a few adventures in my kitchen. For example when I try to cook things and it ends up turning into something completely different. The most embarrassing was when I thought it would be a great idea to toss an egg around like a tennis ball. Before I knew it, there was yolk all over my shower, it was hilarious. I know what you're going to say, "You shouldn't play with your food", but where would be if we listened to common sense? Life wouldn't be as fun, that's where we'd be.

Boil me or I'll eat your face

But I've yet to address the actual topic of this long-winded post. The perils of cooking overseas. Obviously, if you can't read what you're cooking that's a problem, but when you kind of understand it, it can be incredibly confusing. My case in point. The picture on my left is of some cheap noodles I bought at the supermarket and as I mentioned before my cooking ability is more than limited, but I still read the instructions. In the bottom left of this packet it says boil for 3 minutes. Not so hard right? WRONG!

There were some other instructions as well. I thought to myself why on earth does it say ゆでる前水洗い厳禁？ That's right, washing the noodles before boiling them is strictly prohibited. Why is that? Is there some kind of monster hiding in the noodles and if you don't throw it straight into boiling water, it'll pop out and drink all your beer? What if you really want to wash your noodles? Clearly I've bought a very strict brand. I was worried because I've bought this type of noodles before and washed them before but the previous brand gave me no such warning. I've yet to see any noodle monsters, or experience any explosions in my gastro-intestinal system.

Now obviously, the logical answer is there is a considerable gap in my knowledge of noodle based cuisine, so if anybody has any idea, I'd really appreciate an explanation. At least this isn't as awkward as the time I was in the supermarket and couldn't work out where the potatoes were. I was looking right at them, but it didn't have potatoes written on the sign, so I asked an old lady. "These look like potatoes, smell like potatoes, feel like potatoes, but I can't find the word potatoes! ARE THESE POTATOES!? WHAT KIND OF BUSINESS ARE YOU RUNNING HERE?" She looked at me like I was crazy and said rather frankly... yes, those are potatoes. On closer inspection, they were indeed potatoes. POTATOES

LET THE BLOGGING BEGIN!

This is just a small explanation of why I'm on blogger, what's going to happen from here and an introduction to my (new) blog.

So as a few of you may be aware, I was using tumblr before. It was all good but I wasn't that keen to blog on it, there was nothing wrong with the site, it just didn't offer what I was looking for. Blogger seems unbelievably straight forward and has an in-built comment system (which is what I wanted from the start). Now, you can communicate with me directly, mano-e-mano, or womano-e-meo, whatever, the point is it should be a lot easier for me to put my thoughts out there, keep in touch with all of you and let you know about my movements in Japan.

I'm going to try to blog regularly as opposed to facebooking regularly. So, whenever I think of something I want to say, from now on I'm going to go the blog first and just throw it out into cyber space.

I'm already popular, my Dad's looked at my website from Australia, there's my views from Japan and just 10 minutes after I finished making the blog a couple of people from Pakistan tried to make a comment about the finest Paki products on the market. Talk about international!

Anyway, the last thing is I'm going to (attempt to) use this as a study tool as well, so while I do regular updates in English, now and then I'll try my hand at posting in Japanese, or putting up a translation of my English in Japanese. Sadly I can't make as many jokes in Japanese, but for some people that's probably a good thing. 

That's right, my peace signs backwards, whatcha gonna do about it?

ARGH WALL DEMONS!

So tasty!

Also, I'll regularly update with photos. I can't take a serious photo like the one above without looking like a douche , so the majority will probably be along these lines. Nonetheless, thanks for reading this far and hopefully I'll keep you posted!

Hey everybody it's Steve the centipede!

'Sup

So, as you can see, he’s quite a charismatic chap. And before you start assuming things about me, I didn’t go out into the middle of nowhere with a plastic container until I found a centipede called Steve. Believe it or not, I’ve been living with Steve the past couple of days. However, I only decided to put an end to his shenanigans today.

I don’t like killing things as a general rule, plus the bigger they are the larger the mess they’ll leave, so I had to get rid of Steve the slippery squatter. So I sucked him up with my Soujiki (vacuum cleaner) [I wanted to keep going with the alliteration but realised it would only work with the Japanese word for vacuum cleaner]

But Steve had other plans. About an hour or so after I thought I’d ‘taken care’ of him, I hear a slithering amongst my souvenirs. Lo and behold, Steve is up to his old tricks again. Eventually, I managed to capture him in my giant plastic container and set him free in the shrubbery near the supermarket. It was only a few minutes walk from my apartment. I kinda miss him now, seeing as I named him and everything, but I’ll probably sleep easier without him slippin’ and slidin’ around the place. Nonetheless, Steve and I have gone our separate ways and we’re getting on with our lives.

What I’m wondering is how the hell he ended up in my room in the first place? It seems to attract bugs despite the fact that my room is relatively clean. Perhaps it’s the week old food scraps outside my door… I don’t know. Either way, I’m keeping my screen door firmly shut until garbage day this Thursday.

Lots of love, Jackson (and Steve)

That awkward when you try to make joke in another language...

Allow me to set the scene, I was walking home from the train station in the pouring rain because there weren’t any buses back to my house at midnight and the best thing to do in this situation is to go to Maccas. So that’s what I did.

Keep in mind there is only one McDonalds in Shimonoseki, and there’s only vending machines every 100m as opposed to every 25-50m, so most Japanese people think it’s ridiculously rural. IE I’m going to Shimonoseki! Normal reaction: Where the hell’s that? Yamaguchi-ken? There’s nothing there, is there?

Anyway, back to the story at hand. I rock up to the Maccas as one of only a handful of white people in the whole city and I’m the kind of guy who likes to make conversation no matter what language it’s in, no matter what country I’m in, no matter what time it is. 

So, I’m making small talk to the girl at the counter about how crazy the rain is and she’s looking a bit awkward. I order my large big mac meal for 650 yen and then I decide to make a joke.  ’You wouldn’t happen to sell umbrellas would you?’, I asked with a cheeky grin and hearty chuckle. Obviously I know full well that McDonalds does not stock umbrellas, but the nice people at the Shimonoseki McDonalds would not hear of it!

First, the crew trainer explains that there is a convenience store just 1 minute away if I run, then I tell him I was joking and that I’ve already walked more than a kilometre in the rain, I’ll be fine. He then disappears. I was slightly amused because he took what I said so seriously, but then suddenly he’s back again with lo and behold an umbrella in his hands. At this point I’m feeling a little confused but then he comes up to me and says, “Somebody left this here, so if you’d like please take it.” To which I respond, “Are you sure this is alright?” Eventually realising I have no choice but to accept the umbrella, I take it and thank him and his staff profusely. I then told them if they see me around town to make sure to say hello so I can buy them booze in return for their kindness.

To cut a long story short I go into McDonalds for a midnight snack, make a joke and leave with a free umbrella. They even told me I don’t have to return it and to take care. Now that’s what I call service.

Whoops, 2 weeks passed in the blink of an eye!

SO! I meant to post about the なぎなた競技場 - Naginata competition at National Sports Meet a week or so ago but my video wouldn’t upload so I’ll just give you a quick summary here. This year it was held in Yamaguchi at Shimonseki City University. If you want a better understanding of what a naginata is I’d look it up on wikipedia but it’s like a big wooden stick.

Apparently I read it’s traditionally practiced by women, which I can’t really explain or understand but basically it meant that I was watching the national women hitting each other with sticks competition. It was pretty fierce and probably would’ve been more interesting if I understood the rules.

Sorry about the quality of the picture but I was zooming over a long distance, so as you can see this is the end result. It was quite interesting but I don’t think I could’ve watched the 30+ hours of competition they had over 3 days, seeing as I didn’t understand the rules.

Anyway, onto the next random topic I just feel like talking about right now. I was entering a speech contest and it turns out that was today. Before I explain how it went I’ll show you what I got.

That’s my certificate and it says 国際交流会賞 which is kind of like International exchange friend’s prize. In other words second prize. First prize was 学長賞 (Chancellor’s prize). First prize went to another contestant who actually memorised their speech, is much better than me at Japanese and didn’t make gross generalisations about Japanese and Australian people as a whole. Still, I got a 5000 yen gift voucher so I’m happy.

The part with the simple characters that says ジャクソン殿  is my name. ジャクソン is Jackson. And the character that follows it 殿（どの）[DONO], is equivalent to Mr. However, a more concise interpretation I stole from a dictionary is “a form of address used for official letters and business letters, and in letters to inferiors; Mr”.

Yeah, so that’s probably the major events for me recently. Chicks hitting each other with sticks and me misinterpreting cultural differences to the point where it’s amusing enough for me to win 2nd place in a speech contest. Keeping in mind I wrote the speech the night before, didn’t practice it once and didn’t get anyone to check it. I feel bad for the people who made a real effort. Still, I’m stoked, I made a couple of people laugh and some crazy chick called Yoshie wanted to be friends with me because she likes making people laugh. To commemorate our new friendship we did the わかめ dance on stage. I didn’t know what it was but わかめ means seaweed and you kinda just wiggle your body like a lunatic, so that sums it up. On that note, it’s about time I stopped rambling.

Cheers :3

Wakame  (species of edible brown seaweed, Undaria pinnatifida) 

Any time, every time, it's omurice time!

OMURICE IN MY BELLY!!!!

That’s right, I’m living by myself so I have to fend for myself! This is what I cooked tonight, it took ages but turned out surprisingly delicious. I seriously thought it would mess up incredibly badly because eggs are my sworn enemy in the kitchen. However, as I mentioned before, to my surprise it tasted freakin’ amazing. I should follow recipes more often instead of putting a whole bunch of crap in a pan and seeing what happens.

Compared to eating out it is much cheaper and you get that magic feeling of accomplishment. I mean, I cooked something, I ate it, and I’m still breathing. The downside is that not only did it consume a ridiculous amount of time but I also have to clean up after myself. Shows what I’ve been taking for granted for ages.

But hey, I’m slowly becoming more and more independent. 
I won’t be mistaking cabbage for lettuce any time soon. Not again.
Not after what happened.

Seriously though, it tasted amazing. Like you wouldn’t believe. Mind you I’d only eaten an apple in the last 12 hours, but that’s not the point, it was freakin’ delectable.

What have you cooked recently? Anything out of the ordinary?  

Settling in the ol' fashioned way.

That’s right people, the pants are off, and I am RE-LAXED.

I’ve got my Japanese bank account organised, national health insurance and as of yesterday my very own Japanese mobile phone! Now, that would present a challenge, but my tutor decided it would probably be easier if it was all English. He’s right, I can read all the buttons but I feel even stupider since I don’t know how to use it. At least if it was in Japanese I’d have an excuse for texting slower than an octogenarian. But everyone knows the old people in Japan must be on some type of crack or something. However, I’m still waiting on my alien card though. For those of you who don’t know, foreigners staying in Japan longer than 90 days have to register as an alien and carry their card with them at all times in lieu of a passport, or face deportation and being hit on the ass with a giant paddle in a hilarious gameshow format. :)

Anyway, as I was thinking of entering this particular entry, I thought, apart from the language barrier, all the major stuff is the same. As for the language barrier luckily for me it isn’t horrendously bad, I still have no idea what people are saying sometimes but that’s just because I’m not listening, same as English.

I mean, wherever you go, there’ll be good people and bad people, rude people and nice people, people are people, it’s the culture that differs. Obviously the culture dictates the actions, habits, etc of the people, but that’s not the point. I mean, if I catch a bus I can go to McDonalds, if I go to the supermarket, I can buy groceries, if I forget to wear pants outside again I’ll get arrested, all the same stuff.

FOR ME, the interesting things are the little differences. I think it’s these little differences that make various cultures, places and people interesting. That’s why travelling is such a great experience, because after all the obvious things slap you in the face like a big, wet fish, it’s the little things you notice that make you chuckle.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY NEXT POINT! CAPITAL LETTERS ARE FUN!
Now, you probably won’t find this interesting, but I’m gonna talk about it anyway, because it’s my blog and I’ll whinge if I want to. In Australia, all the manhole covers are the same right? Of course, you say, why would you need a different manhole cover? Well, Japan’s found a reason. One thing I find quite amusing is that every city you go to has a different image on their manhole covers, usually something representing the town or place you’re currently in. As you can see in the picture below, in Shimonoseki, it’s a blowfish. Whereas when I was in Hirakata City, it was the city’s flower I think.

Look on the ground, is it a bird, is it a plane, NO! It's a puffer-fish manhole cover!

Most people would probably think, what’s the point? Other people would think, what a wonderful way to make the roads more interesting. My first thought was some crazy bastard managed to make a fortune out of designing custom manhole covers for every city in Japan.

Anyway, that’s all from me for now.

Looking out my backdoor~

 The blue sign reads SCU国際交流会館 
(Shimonoseki City University International Exchange House) 

So I'm finally in Japan... again...

And I'm finally writing this blog! As you probably already know, I've actually been in Japan for quite a while now, but I've only just gotten around to writing this up! Now, it's getting late, I already tried to post this once and failed, plus I've got a big day tomorrow, so I'll try to keep this short, as opposed to my usual tendency to write essays for no apparent reason.

Anyway, moving right along, as I get used to using tumblr, I assume I might be able to do more fancy stuff and give everyone an idea of what the life of an Australian exchange student in Japan (Shimonoseki in particular) is like. Whether or not it will be interesting remains to be seen. I'm going to try to post weekly, most likely on Saturday or Sunday, when I'm not slaving away at the fish markets, peddling my tasty, tasty fish.

So, if you can't think of any other way to procrastinate, you're wondering what I've been up to, or for my family, if you still haven't worked out why the house is 5 times quieter than usual, this blog is the answer. However, for the faint of heart, those who can't take a joke and the french, it's probably best to stop reading now.

From now until next year, I'll be writing about my various adventures on this side of the coast. Geographically that's probably incorrect, but it sounds cool so I don't give a crap.

And that summarises the general format for this blog, I'm going to write the way I talk, a lot of words but not much sense. Hopefully, if you can decode it, maybe it'll give you some insight into life in Japan, my experience, and if I'm lucky, it'll make you laugh.

では、よろしくお願いしま〜す！