Registered for Ameba

A friend of mine from Japan, Tatsu, sent me an invitation to a Japanese social networking website called Ameba. I thought this might be a fun opportunity to practice my Japanese. So.. it turns out: it’s fun AND confusing! I guess social networking websites can be confusing at first glance, but throw in the Japaneseniness© and your only guide line are pictures. Well, I’m exaggerating here but imagine the shock I got when I saw this:

ameba user page

If you’re used to using social networking sites, the interface designs are usually quite similar so it’s possible to guess what each link on there says. So yeah so far I’ve entered some personal information a la favourite food, hobbies, etc. and skipped questions like “what is your fetish” and “are you S or M?” (pretty sure fetish in this case means passion, and S/M means strong/mild personality, but you know.. just in case..)

Once you’ve registered with ameba you can make your own little avatar that looks like you (if you desire so, see picture above), and make it run around in a world full of beaches and shit. Of course there are other avatars running around as well, so you get to interact in more ways than just sending messages on a website or blogging. Oh yeah, blogging. My first entry is about a line long and says something along the lines of “Japanese is hard, I won’t blog..”

Organizer

Roaming the intertubes for affordable, feature rich organizer that would do the trick for my stay in Japan, I settled on the $12.99 Moleskine City Notebook Tokyo:

Moleskine Front

Moleskine Map Sample

It features maps with indexes, blank pages, lined pages for “database” entries, and.. well other stuff. It’s purpose is mainly for taking notes while traveling, as there are no calendar pages. Attached to the back of the cover is a little pocket designed to store little loose notes, I guess, which I might use as new house for my iPod Touch. All day-to-day organizational matters will be managed through my iTouch: calendar entries, to do lists, contacts, drinking games.

While the Moleskine is sort of stylish on its own, I wanted to try myself at customizing something for the first time in my life. I’ve seen many friends upgrade their belongings to make it more personal and was always jealous that they.. well.. could be bothered to do it. Seeing as I have lots of spare time over here in the USA, I made a little project out of it this weekend. It was quite easy actually: make a collage of photos, print out samples a couple of times to get the size on the paper right, print the actual thing, put plastic sticker over it for protection, fold paper to make the cover, adjust back cover to allow usage of rubber band.. DONE! (ignore “sleazy” face)

Ignore face..

Only thing left to do is decide what to use lined pages for and make my own labels. \o/

Skype, Kanji and Misc

Being disappointed at mobile prices in Japan, it only occurred to me today to check out how much skyping mobiles costs. According to their website it’s only roughly 17 yen/min, while calling mobile to mobile in Japan will cost me 42 yen/min. This shows that, while technology is superior in Japan, companies try to extort those who want to use it on a daily basis. I’m not even going to go into how much “internet” on mobile phones costs a month.

While researching all this I also realised that there will be a significant time difference, making it an inconvenience to set up skype dates with family and friends. If my parents in Germany want to talk to me after they come home from work ~7pm their time, it will be 2am my time. If I want to talk to them while it’s their morning, it will be ~2pm my time so I have to hope I don’t have class. This basically means that skype calls will be limited to weekend afternoons. Skyping family in the USA is similar, I’m not going to go into anymore detail on that.

After writing my post on how I’m concerned about my kanji illiteracy, I have been doing a bit of studying at work. I’m surprised it’s going actually quite well. I still don’t remember what I did the day before, but it only takes a little bit of refreshing my mind to be able to use them again. Next week is my last week of work, and most likely the last stretch of studying kanji. I will be traveling the week after that, and the week after THAT it’s home time! I’m excited!

Update: Skype will double prices starting 6th of September, but it will still be 9 yen/min cheaper than using a mobile.

JET application

It’s a bit early to look into this, but I’m relatively low on workload so I did some research the JET Programme.  JET stands for Japan Exchange and Teaching and is a big programme that allows people to teach languages in Japan for a year. For me, it would be the perfect opportunity to refine my Japanese language skill after graduating from university, and equally important gain experience in teaching.

I’m pretty sure I will meet the qualifications with my BA degree, and applying for it seems easy enough. There is only one big hurdle: the interview process. I am a German American studying in England. The interviews are held at Japanese embassies and consulates, so shouldn’t be a problem for me to be interviewed, right? Wrong. JET demands an application as either one or the other nationality and furthermore requires me to attend the interview in either Germany or the USA. I am not allowed to go for an interview in London. In addition, interviews are held around mid February. I will be attending classes at that time and writing my bachelor’s thesis. So I can just wang by Germany and do an interview, right? Wrong. The German JET application standards require me to have a teaching degree of some sort, while the US JET standards don’t.

In other words: I will have to buy a return ticket to the USA in January 2010, which is when they let you know if you get an interview, and fly there for a day or two in February 2010, skipping classes – and having no guarantee that I will even succeed in my application. That’s a big ouch for my wallet. Bureaucracy for the win!

Reading concerns

Seeing as I only have around 3 weeks study time left, I thought it would be a good idea to actually start and open a book now. The problem is, though, that the only chances to study are at work, after work and during the week-end. I’m too tired after work, so that leaves me with during work time and the week-end. Week-ends, we sometimes have things planned, so it’s hard to be consistent and plan around my parents’ ..plans.  At work, I have to be careful not to be too obvious about not having any actual work and studying instead.

I am currently trying to get back into the Japanese language by reading Japanese Twitter updates, when I realised: I can’t read. If it wasn’t for a browser plug-in that translates hovered words, I wouldn’t be able to read anything in Japanese; there are just too many complicated kanji I don’t know. It makes me feel a bit stupid, not being able to read the simplest messages, and makes me wonder how pathetic I’ll feel walking down the streets of Tokyo trying to read signs, labels in konbinis or restaurant menus.

Until now my main concern has been grammar – I mean what good is it to have someone throw loads of vocabulary at you if you can’t make out what that person is trying to tell you? But now that I feel a bit more confident in smalltalk grammar, it’s time to shift study towards vocabulary and especially kanji. I’m not particularly fussed about learning new words, it’s the insanely difficult to memorise kanji that scare me most.

Decision on mobile phone contract

So it turns out after extensive research that it’s not so bad after all if I go with a service provider called Softbank (formerly known as Vodaphone KK). I’ll spare you of detailed calculations that resulted in an estimate of my monthly payment amounting to roughly £40 a month. With my quota I’m allowed to call and text other Softbank phones for free (between 1am and 9pm), text other providers’ phones around 10 times a day and call a total of 1 hour a month. In Japan, a ridiculous percentage of communication is done through text messaging, so I don’t need too many talking minutes anyway. The only question unanswered is whether the price plan I chose is a 1 or 2 year contract, or if I can cancel at any time with a month’s notice or whatever.

Next thing I looked into was which keitai (mobile phone) to pick, but there’s just too many to browse on the website and only very few pictures. So, I will handpick my phone in the shop, on the spot – exciting! There are already some features I don’t want to miss out on:

• At least 5 Megapixel Camera
• Digital TV (yes, I get to watch free TV on my phone)
• Osaifu (lit. ‘wallet’ – use the phone as swipe card for train fares, shops, etc.)
• enhanceable with SD card to store pictures

Everything else is just plain old boring phone anyway. If you’re in the land of the rising robotic sun, might as well make use of the technology.. sexy.. sexy technology.

How can mobile phone companies live with themselves?

First things first, though a bit off topic: I found out that by walking a few minutes further I can cut train costs and make it actually affordable riding to central Tokyo.

Now, the not so good financial news concerns mobile phone costs. Going through Softbank’s price plans made me giggle and quickly switch to Au KDDI’s website. That knocked the smile right off my face. DoCoMo’s price plans then finally gave me the finishing blow. Monthly price plans in Japan are HORRENDOUS!! I worked it out to cost me, and this is an average out of the three, around £55 if I refrain from too much usage. (read over 200 mins of talking and very few mails)

Disgruntled, I posted my findings on facebook where I was told to check out the prepaid plans. Indeed, I recovered from the heart attack only to suffer another one after finding out the prices listed there were per 6 seconds and not minute! For the same £55 I would only get 100 minutes of talking a month. The only perk would be free text messaging.

What’s left to find out is whether to give up talking to people and just text, or to pay for my freedom of speech by emptying my wallet for Japanese conglomerates. Either way I’m fucked.

To bike or not to bike

I’ve been researching train fares today. Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS), the university I will be attending, is situated quite a walk from central Tokyo. Getting from Tama Station to Shinjuku and back will be 920 Yen, which is a lot more than I expected. Adding the numbers up and expecting bi-/triweekly visits to the centre, it will cost me around $1200 for 10 months to get downtown, excluding the actual travel within. For some reason I remember it to be cheaper in 2007 when I visited Tokyo first, but a reasonable explanation for this fiscal illusion might be the fact that at that time I was a tourist.

Anyhow, this has brought up the question if purchasing a bicycle will help reduce my travel costs. Without going into elaborate calculations: ..maybe? Traveling to the centre by bike takes too long, therefore I will have to shed those 920 Yen if I like it or not. However, I could take my bike with me and save the fares within central Tokyo by biking everywhere. Plus, a good friend lives in Fuchu, the other direction, and biking there is feasible and would save about the amount I’d have to spend on a bike.

Googleing for cheap bikes leads me to believe that I’ll pay around 9,000-10,000 for a decent bike. Here’s one such facility (re)selling bikes for cheap:

http://www.sjc.ne.jp/suginami/NEWS/SGI1026_HTM.htm

Once I arrive, I will check the local authorities if there are some recycling projects going on in my area.