Excessive packaging is excessive

If I bought a bottle of ketchup in Canada, I would expect just that: a bottle. It would have a little seal under the cap, but that's about all the extra packaging it would have.

Not so in Japan. Here, when you buy a bottle of ketchup, it comes in a bag.

The questionable art of nekoyoke

Nekoyoke (猫よけ) literally means "scare cat" where neko (猫 or ねこ) means "cat" and I suppose yoke (よけ) means "to scare" (at least in this context). You may wonder why anyone would want to scare cats as they are not only adorable, but they are also majestic and wonderful creatures.

Exhibit A: Look at that belly!

However, in Japan (or at least around Tokyo), there are a lot of stray cats and people consider this a problem. Well, I consider it a problem in the sense where all cats deserve loving homes, but there are other issues with stray cats in principle. As a result, people put up various nekoyoke to keep them away from their homes and gardens.

Worst egg cartons, ever.

While I generally like Japan and don't have too many complaints, there is one thing that is really terrible here: the design of the egg cartons.

Now, you may be asking "But Sarah, how can an egg carton be terrible?" this is perhaps because you're used to the egg cartons in North America¹ that are made out of fairly rigid, easily recycled or composted cardboard that maintain their shape. The kind of egg cartons that can be easily opened and closed again and again. The kind of egg cartons that are unlikely to spill all of your eggs out all over the place if you aren't careful. These are not those kinds of egg cartons.

Noise pollution

In Canada, the typical street noises usually involve traffic, neighbours doing something outside, the occasional siren, maybe a car alarm or some construction. In Japan, these sounds exist, but they are joined with another: voice announcements.

I can't be sure, but I think the only time I heard someone using a microphone just out on the street in Canada (not at a concert or some event) was one time back when I was living in Hamilton. Some guy was standing on top of an upturned milk crate preaching while his kid sold bibles next to him at the corner in front of Jackson Square.

Then it struck me as odd: microphones or megaphones really don't belong out on the streets unless you're at a parade (or some other event which has been cleared with the city). One lone guy with a megaphone selling his beliefs is just strange.

Here though, there are frequent voice announcements. Not only does our city have daily announcements at 3 in the afternoon and again at sunset to tell children to go home (or something), but there will be someone announcing something within earshot of our apartment a few times a week.

Usually, it's someone with a truck and a pre-recorded announcement driving by, but the other day, I heard one that was especially clear and seemed nearby. So I looked out the window and saw a woman with a megaphone in the parking lot for the neighbouring building. She finished her announcement and moved to the parking lot for our building to repeat the same announcement.  Then she moved to the next parking lot to repeat the same message.

If we go downtown, it's pretty common to see people with megaphones standing near tables outside train stations selling something (or trying to get votes, it's not clear) or for people to stand on boxes or ladders outside shops encouraging potential customers to come in.

It's not just the people advertising that do this either. The firetrucks include voice announcements asking people to move out of the way and thanking them for doing so. This is in addition to the sirens which should be pretty clear indications that one should get out of the way.  There are some trucks with turn signals that indicate their turning direction audibly as well, but not all of them. 

This is all still pretty strange to me. I'm used to cities that don't care to let children know when it's time to go home. I'm used to laws that tell people they can't use megaphones without a permit to just run around and advertise whatever.

Smoking in public

Not too long after I started going to bars in Ontario, smoking started to be prohibited. First, it was allowed in a place with a separate ventilation system for the smokers. This resulted in these interesting fishbowls full of smoke in places large enough to have them and an outright ban in smaller places that didn't have room for that. Then, those were prohibited, but smoking was allowed on patios. Eventually, some cities started banning smoking on patios as well (and some cities have banned smoking from public parks, sidewalks etc).

While the laws regarding smoking in bars were passed for the safety of the workers, it was awesome for me too. As someone who doesn't smoke and really doesn't like the smell of cigarettes, this was awesome. I could come home from going out with friends and smell like me instead of stale tobacco.

Japan, however, has no such restrictions on smoking in bars. Or rather, around here, there are no such restrictions. This means that when I go out somewhere that's reasonably busy and a lot of people are smoking, I come home smelling like an ashtray, which sucks. And yes, I'll admit that I've probably been spoiled by living in Ontario for so long where restrictions on smoking in public have been increasingly common. If not for those restrictions, I wouldn't know any other way of going out for a drink.

It is interesting to think about why Japan has not put in place restrictions on smoking in public as these are becoming increasingly common in many places. One could speculate that the lack of restrictions on smoking in public places in Japan are possibly related to the fact that the Japanese government has a large stake in Japan Tobacco Inc. and the courts are not convinced that tobacco use leads to cancer (I'm sure the former is also totally unrelated to the latter).

Another thing that I've found interesting is how different stores end up looking because of the near-lack of restrictions on tobacco displays. While Ontario prohibits large displays of cigarettes behind the counter (instead, the cigarettes are behind opaque doors), here there are sometimes large displays of cigarettes on the customer's side of the counter in addition to colourful displays behind the counter.

There are even vending machines that sell cigarettes, which is pretty wild. There's some sort of age-verifying card to make sure that people under the age of 20 don't buy them, but nobody is there to verify that the person using the card is the person to whom the card was issued so I'm not sure how effective it actually is. It's certainly something that wouldn't exist in Ontario though (if only because there aren't nearly as many vending machines per person).


Anyway, I'm not generally out to act like Canada is better than Japan. I think that all places have their advantages and disadvantages. Some things here are neat or fun or really interesting and I think it would be great if these were exported (especially kotatsu and this style of karaoke and the part where people are extra helpful sometimes). However, I think that this is one thing that is much better in Canada.

Five foods I miss from Canada

Today we're flying back to North America for the holidays. Even though I've been here a little less than two months, it's still the longest I've been to Japan and possibly the longest I've been outside of Canada all at once.

While the most difficult issues when it comes to getting around in Japan are language-related like how I can't talk to store clerks, understand bar conversations or read all the signs, this isn't what I miss most about being in Canada. It's possible that without daid to talk to, I might miss this a lot too, but luckily we get to hear lots of English from each other.

Instead, what I miss most are various foods. I like the food that I've been eating here and many of the foods I miss are things that I would have maybe once a month while living in Canada (sometimes less). However, I think that the absence of all these foods at once just makes me miss them all so much more. Thus, without further ado, I present my list of five foods I love which are not available in Japan (or are at least not widely available and affordable here):

Pizza

I'll start by pointing out that pizza exists in Japan. I've even had pizza since I've been here (last time was when we made some pizza in Tsukuba), but pizza is kind of expensive here. For instance, at Pizza-La (the largest pizza chain in Japan and the only one I know of in town), a medium plain cheese pizza (プレーンチーズピザ) is 1050 yen (just shy of $11 CDN). In comparison, a medium plain cheese pizza in Canada can be had for as little as $5 and it will be considerably larger.

Cheese

Like pizza, cheese is something that exists in Japan and it can be pretty tasty. However, the cheese that's available here is mostly processed and there's not much of a variety. The stuff that isn't processed is pretty expensive (even by Canadian standards) and I think the only kind of non-processed cheese I've seen is Camembert. Maybe there are specialty shops where a nice blue or some cheddar is available, but I haven't seen it.

There was some time in undergrad where I couldn't afford to buy cheese and I was pretty unhappy about that. This is similar, but worse because I'm not finding free pizza every week either.

As a result of my cheese deprivation, I recently had a dream where all I did was eat various cheeses. It can't be good when one is dreaming about nothing other than eating dairy products.

Burritos

Before I moved out of London, a Burrito Boyz opened up downtown near my apartment. As a result of this development, I rapidly developed an addiction to delicious, tasty burritos. When I moved out, getting someone else to make me burritos became more challenging, but at least I had easy access to all the proper ingredients to make my own.

In principle, the ingredients for burritos exist in Japan, but some (like the wrap) are specialty items and others (the refried beans, possibly the salsa too) have to be home made. Also, sour cream in Japan is not the same as sour cream in North America. It tastes about the same, but it's a lot thicker and really expensive (a 100 mL container can be had for about 400 yen). Finally, there's the "no real cheese" issue again.

Falafel

Long predating my addiction to burrito is my addiction to falafel. These wonderful balls of chickpeas and/or fava beans and spices with tahini and garlic sauces, pickled radishes and assorted deliciousness all wrapped in a warm pita do not seem to exist at all in Japan. We've found places that sell chicken shawarma, but they do not sell falafel sandwiches, which makes me very sad.

Salt and Vinegar Chips

Edamame chips. Possibly
delicious, but no substitute.

There are chips here and there are a variety of flavours some of which I've never seen in North America, such as pizza or edamame flavoured chips. I wouldn't want to eat all of the chips that are around either: I'll pass on the shrimp and octopus flavoured chips.

My favourite kind of chips is missing though. It's not clear why salt and vinegar chips don't seem to exist here, since salt and vinegar are two flavours that seem to be appreciated in Japanese cuisine, but apparently not in chip form.

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Soon, I will have access to these foods and I'm so excited about this prospect (which is probably kinda sad). Unfortunately, I won't be able to bring all of these with me when I come back (maybe I can bring some chips, but those aren't going to last long). However, since these foods are not necessarily good for me, I'm probably better off without them on a regular basis anyway.


On another note, I found the followers gadget (as the things off on the side are called) so if you would like to follow my blog, please do so. :)

Land of (in)convenience?

If you haven't been to Japan, you might associate it with being very modern and in many ways it is. However, Japan is a largely cash-based society, which can seem rather old fashioned, especially if one is coming from Canada, the country with the highest rate of debit use per transaction in the world where plastic money is accepted just about everywhere, even the dollar store. In Japan, if one want to buy groceries, clothes, a meal at a restaurant or even pay a hotel bill, one typically has to pay in cash.

There are also issues with ATMs here, such as after hours convenience charges---where "after hours" means "after 3:00"---and there are ATMs which close at times as early as 4:00 on weekdays and do not open at all on weekends. In addition, most ATMs do not accept international bank cards, so if you want to take out cash and do not have a Japanese bank account, you have to find a 7-11 (which is easy since Japan is home to 30% of all 7-11s in the world) and use their ATM or find a post office ATM (which are sometimes at train stations, but are not open all the time). Note that if you use an ATM at a 7-11, you should be aware that you are required to take out at least 10,000 ¥ ($102.89 CDN as of 2013/12/16), which is very unlucky if you happen to have a daily withdrawl limit on your bank card set at $100 CDN and forgot to change this before coming to Japan (oops).

So, on Saturday when I wanted to take out some money, it was a bit of an ordeal. First, we went to the post office near our apartment and found that it was closed. Then we went to the big post office in town which was open, but for some reason, the bank machines in the post office would not accept my PIN. I would input my PIN and the enter/confirm key would light up, but wouldn't do anything when I pressed it. At this step, the "cancel" button had disappeared so I had to wait for the machine to time out and return my card.

We thought that the first machine we tried might have been broken, so we tried another one only to get the same result. At this point, we had to run because daid had a meeting so we tried the 7-11 machine on our way (and found that it had a transaction limit that was too high for me to take out money). Eventually, I managed to get some money out by stopping at the post office ATM in the train station later, but it was still much more hassle than necessary.

The ATM by the cafeteria at daid's work.

I've had some issues getting cash in Canada before (if memory serves, finding an ATM downtown Calgary on a Sunday was lots of fun), but that was typically because I tried to use my own bank to avoid fees and even then, I could still buy things with my credit or debit cards. I've also never seen a closed ATM in Canada. I've seen buildings which contain ATMs that are locked, but in Japan there are times when the building is open and the ATM inside it is closed. For example, to the left is picture I took of the ATM outside the cafeteria at daid's work during dinner service. Across from this machine, you can put money on your meal card, but if you didn't get money earlier in the day, you're out of luck.

Although I have heard Japan referred to as the "land of convenience" due to the proliferation of convenience stores, which are indeed very convenient (in a previous post I briefly mentioned that it's possible to buy entire meals at convenience stores), in some ways things here are quite inconvenient. To a point, I can understand why some stores might not want to add credit card functions (it costs the store for each transaction) and I can understand why banks charge after hours convenience fees (everyone else does it, so why not make a bit extra off your customers). I do not understand why ATMs close when the buildings they're in are still open though. One can get inside the train station most hours of the day, but the ATM in the train station closes at 9 pm on weekdays and even earlier on weekends (hours before the last train comes in). So if you spent your last yen on beer out in Tokyo, you can't buy a snack when you get off the last train.

Another thing that seems like it should be easy to do and more convenient for customers is to leave packages at the closest post office to one's home after a failed delivery attempt. Last month, daid got a care package from his parents and we went to the post office near our apartment to pick it up. The package wasn't there and we had to walk to the main post office in town to pick it up. It's not that far of a walk from where we live, but it is the only post office where you can pick up packages in the entire city. This probably explains the giant line that seems to exist every time we've been to the post office (there's also only one window at which one can pick up packages).

Personally, I'm not sure what the purpose of having a local post office is if not to hold onto packages for you. I guess you can mail packages from there (in principle, we haven't tried), but if they can hold onto outgoing packages, it shouldn't be too difficult to hold onto incoming ones for the neighbourhood as well. If they don't hold onto outgoing packages either then there's not much point to having a post office; it would be easier to sell stamps at the grocery store or something and have a drop box for letters outside.

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Pouch can be used as underwear and PET bottle?

On an unrelated note, daid and I went out to buy some crafting supplies for a project that we're making at home. I'll post pictures of the finished result some time in the new year since we're unlikely to finish it before we take off to North America for holidays next week. However, while we were at the store, I discovered that yarn here is significantly cheaper than what I find in Canada. The selection wasn't so great, but since we shopped at a department store this isn't surprising.

We also spotted this pouch (pictured to the right). While it seems cute and somewhat practical, I feel like it cannot be used as underwear, contrary to the claim on the packaging.