Shuukatsu

At the moment, most of my friends are active in 就活 (Shuukatsu), a short form of 就職活動 (Shuushoku Katsudou), which basically means job hunting. I always had a hunch that finding employment here in Japan, and especially in Tokyo, would be somewhat of a tedious, formality loaded process. But judging from what my friends tell me, it sounds nearly impossible to show employers what one’s got. If it’s a major company like Sony or Mizuho we’re talking about, employment tests are held with maybe a couple hundred or thousand people at a time. I’m not sure if that involves interviews, but even if it did, there would be no time to positively distinguish oneself from others with formalities taking up all of the time and everyone dressed exactly the same. Here’s a picture of such a meeting a friend took:

Job application in.. Tokyo?

Japanese Communication Realizations

Before I came to Japan, I was aware of conversation procedures in a Japanese conversation. They’re not much different from what I’m used to, except for something called 相づち (Aizuchi). Performing Aizuchi basically means while someone else talks, you make gestures, say certain phrases or even just make sounds to make sure that the speaker knows you’re listening and appreciating what he’s saying. While this sort of behaviour can be found even in Germany or the USA, it’s by far not as strong and annoying as here in Japan.

I’m not saying that loudly agreeing with me while I speak or constant nodding is annoying, it’s just the fact that 80% of the time people do it because it’s the norm, and not because they mean it. If I feel close enough to a person to talk about things in Japanese, that feeling is destroyed by impersonal Aizuchi.

A second thing I realized about Japanese is intonation. Before this one fateful language class, I was 100% sure that with Japanese, intonation was not as important as it was in, say, China. However, in class we learned about the history of Kanji and how if it weren’t for them, written communication would be a mess. Japanese possesses many words that are spelled exactly the same, but are written in different Kanji to differentiate. However, this is obviously not possible to do in conversations, as Kanji are written and not spoken. Thus, these words with same spelling are pronounced the same. Up until recently, I thought it meant that I would have to understand the meaning of those words by context, but our teacher explained that words with same spelling have different intonations. However, there are also plenty words that don’t. Hrm. So this leaves me wondering if it’s worth learning the intonations along with vocabulary, or if learning it comes natural?

Example: These words are all pronounced ようじ (youji)

Time

Not enough of it! So I will just try to catch up with a few things that have happened recently.

We met up with our friend Koichi for his birthday celebration. We went to Shakey’s pizza place, which isn’t highest quality, but the reason we chose it was an insider joke about something Koichi said one day. Anyway, all you can eat for.. sorry can’t remember the price but it was cheap.

Intersting pizza combos, among them banana chocolate.

A couple of days later Kat and I went to Tatsu’s house for Nabe (鍋). He picked us up and we were surprised to see Hiroshi was in the car, too! Hiroshi lives in Yokohama and, while it’s not too far out, we rarely see him. On the way we picked up Saki, who we met at the halloween party,  from the train station. The Nabe was delicious and I really enjoyed the evening with everyone.

Hiroshi, Saki, Tatsu, Kat, NABEEEE(, TV)

I am currently on the second day of my week off. We have no classes because during that time, the 外語際 (Gaigosai) takes place. 外語際 is this university’s festival where there’s loads of little to big stalls where foreign food and drinks are sold. On top of that, there’s a centre stage with performances ranging from Hawaiian dance to.. pop/hiphop dance. Basically, the cultural サークル (Saakuru), or in other words activity clubs, each do a performance. At least so it seems, I haven’t gotten hold of any sort of event calendar. The weather was bad today, so it wouldn’t have made this great festival justice to take pictures. I hope tomorrow or the weekend turn out better.

I had to leave the festival at 2pm because I met up with a group of students to go to a middle school in 立川 (Tachikawa). There we introduced ourselves to about 30 children, talked to them and played games together. It’s an international oriented school, so I’m guessing the aim for this whole project was to get the kids familiar with international culture and people in general.

Other than these things, lots of other.. stuff happened such as paying bills, making dinners, having drinks with friends. But that sort of thing is usually a waste of reading time, so I’ll spare you of them.

Matsuri in Fuchu

Last Tuesday was Body Cultivation Day in Japan and so we had a day off of uni. Kat and I decided to go see the Matsuri (祭り) in Fuchu. The festival occured in at least one other place (Asakusa), but we went to Fuchu because our friend Tatsu is active in the community there. It was the first Matsuri for me, so I was very excited.

Once we arrived by train (too cold to bike) it was easy finding the festival location, as it’s right in the centre of town. There were 20 something wagons being pulled by festival ‘teams’ by rope. Each area/community of Fuchu has their own wagon and even districts of town that don’t exist anymore have a wagon. On top of the wagon are usually two to three children wearing masks and dancing, while behind them several people play the drums and the flute. It’s really fun to watch, as the masks depicted either ridiculously funny faces or some sort of Chinese dragon.

While watching the parade through town, we went to meet Tatsu at the shrine. Along the entrance walk to the shrine, there were food stands to the left and right selling delicious food like Takoyaki (たこ焼き) and Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) at very reasonable prices. Note to self: Matsuris are worth going to if not just for cheap and delicious food.

So we met up with Tatsu and he took us back to his district’s wagon (新宿山谷 – しんしゅくさんや – Shinshuku Sanya). There, he introduced us to his friends pulling the wagon. It’s really nice to see every generation taking part in this happening and everyone seemed so happy I wished we had that sort of thing back in Germany. Kat and I were invited to join in pulling the wagon for a bit, that was a bit awkward as we weren’t dressed up in festival clothing like the others (see picture).

The Matsuri started much earlier than our arrival, but the whole wagon parade ceremony lasted about 2 hours. Kat and I headed back home via Uniqlo to buy some winter clothing. It was a great afternoon/evening and we owe Tatsu for showing us around and introducing us to everyone.

LOTSA PEOPLEZ

Couple of wagons

Two goofballs holding the wagon rope (at standstill).

Kat taking picture of 新宿山谷 wagon. Tatsu's dad on far left.

A wagon by night

新宿山谷's entertainment group, including Tatsu on the flute!

Halloween

We celebrated Halloween 2 days early in Kichijouji (吉祥寺) at a party our friend Rie organised. It took place in a rented restaurant/bar sort of place and the whole night cost 3,000 for all you can eat and drink. We were afraid we were the only ones turning up in a costume, but pretty much everyone was dressed up. We had a great time, here are some pictures.

The Grim Reaper brought a friend

Dan, Hiroshi, Me

Kat wearing her awesome mushroom costume

Dan got a mask on the way to the party

Jacko (Tom) and the Girls

Karaoke Gang