Won't Miss #347 - monthly pay

This is a MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group) building, which is very tentatively linked to this post. I'm using this picture because of the man and poster person staring in awe at the silver scrotum sculpture in front of the building, which is more interesting than a generic bank picture. 

In the U.S., I was paid every two weeks and some people are paid every week. I think the system is

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Will Miss #346 - teaching English (the good)

I've already written that I love my students, but that is because I currently mostly work freelance in a situation which allows me to work with people who are rather different from the general population of language learners in "eikaiwa" (English conversation schools). Because of my specialized circumstances, I have fewer of the passive people I mentioned in the previous post, and more active

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Won't Miss #346 - teaching English in Japan (the bad)

I've already written about the bad attitudes and misconceptions some people have about teaching in Japan, but there are negative aspects associated with it that have to do with the work itself. Foreigners who once taught but moved on to other jobs look down on those who remain in that work because they think it's a job that requires no skill. It requires a lot of skill to do well, but many

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Will Miss #345 - recycling pick-up trucks

If you want to throw out a large electronic item in Japan, you have several options, and most of them will cost you. One is to contact the local government and pay them to remove it. Another is to contact the manufacturer of your item and pay them even more to have it removed. Finally, if you're having the large item replaced, you can pay even more to have the store that is delivering the new

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Won't Miss #345 - Costco as a Herculean task

If the trip alone isn't enough to wear you out, being in a food court full of rude people, shrieking children, and people who hog the seating for as long as possible will. 
Living in central Tokyo can be awesome. Your commute is shorter, you're near a lot of interesting shops and restaurants, and the public transport is convenient. That being said, Costco can't afford to place its giant

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Will Miss #344 - new word inventions

"First food, fast food", "to-may-to, to-mah-to".
Because I spent over a decade doing work which required me to correct written English, I have a very good grasp of what Japanese people commonly mishear when they listen to my native language. They not only write these odd concoctions when they take dictation, but they use them in their own expressions without checking the dictionary to see that

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Won't Miss #344 - futon beating

In addition to being pretty uncomfortable, futon need to be aired out regularly in order to get all of the cooties out of them. Fortunately, I have a bed, but that doesn't stop me from experiencing the second-hand "joy" of futon beating. When my neighbors whack the hell out of their futons or order to chase out all of the creepy crawlies, they do it so loudly that I can't have a conversation

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Will Miss #343 - lunch sets/deals

A fairly typical lunch set including salad, pickles, dessert, an entree, rice, and soup. This one went for a mere 650 yen ($7.94).
Eating out in Tokyo is expensive if you order dinner, but it can be both economical and awesome if you eat out at lunch time. Back home, I know that there were occasional lunch specials, but it's an art form with restaurants in Japan. You pay between 500-800 yen, and

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Won't Miss #343 - the envelopes

A counter with forms and a glue dispenser at a post office. They know you're going to need it.
Back when I first came to Japan, I wrote to a lot of folks back home, and this was before home computers were cheap and accessible for all, let alone e-mail being the norm. At that time, I had ample experience with the frustration of Japanese envelopes and I was reminded of that recently when sending

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Will Miss #342 - Japanese gardens and parks

One of my friends recently took a tour through a Japanese garden in San Francisco. It had all of the stuff you expect to see in such a place, particularly if it is designed with tourism in mind. It's also not exactly the type of thing you tend to see in Japan since all of the elements of that garden don't tend to appear in one place here. For example, you don't tend to see cultivated trees,

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Won't Miss #342 - washing rice

Somewhere under that cloudy water is my rice. That color is telling me my work is far from done. And, no, I don't use a rice cooker for something as simple as making rice. 

One of my students lives and works in Tokyo, but her home town is in Miyazaki. I've never been there, but she tells me it is vast tracts of nothing, but she goes there because she's a wonderful person and a good daughter.

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Will Miss #341 - living far from family (the good)

Most people have complicated relationships with their families. In my case, that is even more so than many others. My relationship with my mother is especially bad, and the truth is that we haven't spoken in over 15 years, though we are each informed about each other through my sister who lives with my parents and who I am in almost daily contact with. This hasn't happened because of any sort

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Won't Miss #341 - living far from family (the bad)

I once had a discussion with a student in which I taught her the word "fallback". She was talking about how being married with a working spouse allows the other party to take career risks because there was one stable income to rely upon. Our talk was about how vulnerable single folks can be economically as compared to married ones. However, I reminded her that she had a fallback in case of

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Will Miss #340 - "food is fuel", as it is meant in Japan

Delicious, salted fuel.
It's very easy to misunderstand the statements made in other cultures, and one thing that I often hear American dieters who have spent a short period of time in Japan smugly assert is that the Japanese stay trim by viewing "food as fuel". When a Western person says this, they think this is about minimizing the pleasure of food such that it is diminished to being mere 

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Won't Miss #340 - process over outcome

 Click this version to see a larger version which is readable.
One of my students was corresponding with her company's head office in Italy and she wanted to tell them that an error had been made in the paperwork. The ultimate outcome would not be altered by this mistake, but she simply wanted to let them know someone had carelessly entered the wrong data at an initial stage of the process. The

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Will Miss #339 - old Japanese houses

I'm a fan of all old houses in general, though the truth is that I like those in a state of disrepair best. In Tokyo, where there is constant renewal, finding an interesting old house is like locating a prize in a Cracker Jack box. Such houses have a special appeal because of the relative infrequency of seeing them, but also because they are increasingly rare snapshots of Japanese society from a

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Won't Miss #339 - the idea that I represent all foreigners

One of the things that I get tired of is the notion that I must not only behave well in Japan, but that I must be a paragon of human virtue because the Japanese will judge all foreigners by the behavior of the worst of us. If one foreigner neglects to do something properly, the rest of the community clucks their respective tongues and wags their fingers while moaning about how one bad apple

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Will Miss #338 - Good Morning Bakery

There's a chain of bakeries called "Good Morning" and one branch is in my neighborhood. They also sell their baked goods on consignment at supermarkets (such as Ito Yokado) so you can get their offerings even if a cafe or bakery is not in your immediate area. While there are tons of excellent bakeries in Tokyo, this place has a koshian (red bean paste) bread which is sublime. It's soft, lightly

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Won't Miss #338 - low protein (and veggie) meals

An extremely delicious Sri Lankan meal that I ate in Shinjuku with a tiny salad, 3 bites of chicken (with skin), rice, potato salad, and bread. Three carbs in one meal - great if you're running a marathon, or want to expand the size of your ass. Despite the carb overload, I heartily recommend this place - Court Lodge. The staff is wonderful (attentive, friendly,  offering more gravy as needed)

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Will Miss #337 - alien nation

There was a movie made in the late 80's called Tokyo Pop which shows a scene with the main character, a young singer from America, walking through the crowds in Tokyo. Her blond head and blue eyes stand above a sea of dark heads going in the opposite direction. That comes as close to anything I can say or show about the sense I'm trying to describe. I've been in Japan for a long time, so I tend

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Won't Miss #337 - expensive digital cameras

Things tend to be fairly expensive in Tokyo (and Japan in general), but over the past 20 years the prices of electronics items between the U.S. and Japan have become roughly equivalent. One exception to this is digital cameras. Even low end cameras are more expensive here than they are in the U.S., and they are made by the same companies and very similar models. There's no qualitative difference

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