EPTAbout one month ago, I got off the smallest plane I have ever taken and walked into the smallest airport I have ever been to: I began my exchange in Tottori. The Tottori airport has only one terminal, one luggage conveyor belt and two carts. Later, I learned that the airport also serves as an international exchange centre for this area. The airport has a ping-pong table, and a mini library where books and magazines from other countries can be borrowed (and they have my two favourite Chinese magazines). As well, this is where many language classes are held. The airport is a literally a five-minute walk away from where the international exchange house is, the cars made two turns, and we arrived at my home for the next three months.
The very same night, we were taken to a supermarket called Jusco (and we later realized that it is one of the largest chain stores in Japan) and purchased some instant noodles for next morning, and so, my life in Japan officially started.
The City
Tottori is the capital city of the Tottori Prefecture; and Tottori Prefecture is the smallest prefecture in Japan by population. Tottori is a place of many precipitations, and April has proven to be much more precipitous month than May. Since my arrival until almost the end of the month, it would rain once every other day, and the degree would vary from a drizzle to a downpour. Weather in April can be best described by one word: wet (or awful). May is a much better season because it is always sunny; it has rained only once this month. It is a nice break before the rainy season’s arrival in June. The university I am currently attending is Tottori University, and it is located in Old Koyama (which is now a part of Tottori City) and it is quite a distance away from the centre of the city. Koyama is a very quite and agricultural place, where you can often sight patches of farmland, and as a result, the air is often foul and pungent depending on the direction of the wind.
The University
Tottori University, being in the smallest prefecture, is the smallest national university in Japan. The university is very technologically behind and is very different from what one would expect from Japan. There is an interesting concept of “labs” in Toridai (short for Tottori University), where graduating students and graduate students are assigned to a laboratory where they can study. A lab has slightly less than twenty people and people are very friendly with each other. There are a few “cliques” in every lab, and those in the same clique are usually best friends, and they take road trips or go drinking together on occasions. All laboratories have a desk and a chair for each student and an internet jack where students can connect their PCs to the network. All laboratories are equipped with public desktops and printers where students are free to use; as well, every lab has a tap, a stove, a microwave, a mini fridge, and usually some form of drink for the students to use. As well, each lab has one or two lab instructors who run the lab. Every student in the lab must pay a fee every month to sustain themselves from all the aforementioned conveniences. Each exchange student is put into one of these labs and is exempted from paying the fee – a perk for the newcomers. There are usually a few lab people in every lab who are more extroverted than the others, and who also speak some English; and they will be your best Japanese friends during your stay.
The Residence
The residence for all Toridai’s exchange students is called the International Exchange House. The housing is heavily subsidized (like all Residences run by the University) and costs only $47 a month, but does not include utilities and internet. The condition of the residence is “fair” at best by residence standards, and “poor” by North American living standards. There are three types of dorms in the residence: single, researcher and family. Single rooms are the most basic room; there is a shoebox (near the entrance, where you store shoes), a bed, a small closet, some sort of storage furniture, a desk and a chair. The room is a narrow strip and has barely enough room for walking around with all the furniture in place. There is smaller room inside each “suite” where there is a toilet. The room is so small, it is actually very difficult to close the door, but luckily, there is almost never a need to do that. The toilet is a very typical Japanese design, where the water is not directly fed into the tank after every flush; instead, it runs through a pipe outside of the tank. The top portion of the tank is a very narrow sink (about an inch deep at the middle) and the water leaves the pipe directly on top of this sink so that hands can be washed with the water going into the tank. The floor is tiled and gets dirty very easily, and the walls are covered with patches of unidentifiable substances of various colour and size. There is a public shower room and kitchen on every floor for up to twelve residences. The public shower room contains two shower units, two sinks (with hot and cold water) and two pairs of washers and dryers. The kitchen has two gas stoves, two sinks, and a refrigerator (another one is just outside of the kitchen). The exchange house does not hire anyone to clean up the residence, and as a result, every week, one person is put on duty (moves down by room number). The person on duty has to clean up both the bath room and the kitchen for an entire week. As a result, the kitchen and the shower room are never clean. The kitchen is always greasy smell foul due to the aged garbage. The shower units are often clogged with fallen hair and the sinks are often covered with dried toothpaste. Using either of those shared facilities is always a big pain. The residences of the building consist mainly of people from China and South Korea. Knowing either language will immediately bring you closer to one of the big groups. There is a public telephone on the first floor, most of the Chinese residences use this phone to call back to China with some sort of special phone card that is negligibly cheap. The washer and the dryer cost 100 JPY each. The dryers are so “efficient”, to the point that they cannot be classified as functional; it usually requires three to four cycles to dry something completely. Perhaps this is the reason or the result of, but perhaps this is unrelated, air-drying is the way Japanese people dry. Air-drying means to hang the wet clothes outside and let the sun and wind do their business. I tried to maintain my North American ways for the first three weeks or so, but eventually, as the weather picked up, I decided to “in Rome, do what the Romans do”. The researcher room is a larger version of the single room, with more space, but costs about double. The family room has their own bathroom (not just a toilet), or B.U. (bath unit) and kitchen, and they are for people with families in Tottori. In addition to all the single suites, there is a common room on the first floor, where the only public TV is found. The TV is rarely watched; however, the common room is often booked by people to host parties or gatherings. The worst part of the residence is that there is no internet in the individual rooms. Internet can only be obtained by contacting private ISPs personally. Setting up such an installation appointment can take up to one month. Even though the service is slow, internet is extremely fast in Japan due to its fibre optics backbones. A 100 MBit connection in Japan is considered to be average and costs about thirty to forty a month.
<Insert, as I was writing this in the common room, I found a fucking LONG-ASS centipede, and I was forced to retrieve to my own room to finish this. After I have evaded its fearful stare, I obtained a camera and snapped a photo of the centipede in motion. Unfortunately I don't have the picture with me... I'll attach it in the second part of this entry, which is coming... some time in the near future...>
Groceries
There are two supermarkets near the University (about fifteen minutes from the exchange house) and they are called Koyama store and S-Mart. Koyama store is a very dimly lit store with cheap goods. I have only been there a handful of times even though it is the closer of the two. S-Mart on the other hand, is much more elegant, and as a result, more expensive. Food in Japan is about the same as Canada but obviously with exceptions. For instance, as expected, sushi is much cheaper and of better quality. A piece of sushi in a supermarket usually goes for 100 JPY, and they are packaged in boxes of four to eight (or much more in part trays). A variety of sushi can be found, but nigiri-sushi is by far the most popular form. Tuna and salmon are most common, but there are also very many other types of fish that I still cannot identify. Beef, on the other hand, is unbelievably expensive. There are two types of beef: imported, and Japanese. Imported beef is much cheaper than Japanese beef, and those are the types offered in buffets, restaurants and processed foods. They go for about five to fifteen dollars a pound, depending on the cut. Japanese beef is special because they are somewhat similar to Kobe beef. It is very easy to identify which is which because Japanese beef has fat in them. The fatty tissues run along the meat forming snowflake-like patterns. As a result, Japanese beef is much tenderer than North American beef. A pound of Japanese beef starts from ten dollars. A Japanese beef steak costs about thirty per pound. A good substitute for beef is chicken in Japan because they are the cheapest source of protein. A pound of chicken is around three dollars – not exactly cheap by NA standards, but it is as cheap as meat goes in Japan. As a result, if you are on a tight budget (like me during my first month) and a big meat eater (like me), Japan may not be the best place to be. In addition to sushi, bento boxes are extremely common in Japan. A bento box is a Japanese lunch box containing rice and various dishes to accompany the rice. The dishes usually include some sort of fish and cold dishes. Bento boxes are usually cold and are not filling at all. As well, “dons” are very popular in Japan. There are various forms of dons such as chicken-n-egg (literally translates to “mother-and-son”), beef, pork and shrimp. These are also packaged in boxes, and it contains rice topped with some form of meat and sauce. These dons are to be eaten hot (heated by microwave) and are slightly more filling, two per meal is usually enough. The bento boxes and the dons are about three to five dollars depending on the ingredients and size. Japanese people eat an unhealthy amount of fried food (but otherwise, their diet has almost no grease), and almost every supermarket has a “tempura corner” where fried goods are sold. Japanese people literally fry everything, both tempura style and western style. My favourite is fried quail eggs.
All supermarkets in Koyama have a card system (different card for each store, obviously) that offers their customers some sort of incentive. All cards work in similar fashions: they collect points. Every 100 JPY earns 1 point, and 1 point is equivalent to 1 Yen. In addition, most of the supermarkets offer some sort of system for customers to earn extra points. For example, at S-Mart, Thursdays and Saturdays, five times the original points are awarded. As well, supermarkets also offer weekday specific sale items. For example, at Koyama Store, eggs are cheaper on Tuesdays (about 1/3 off). Finally, at around six to seven P.M., all supermarkets perform a final markdown on products such as in-house goods (bento boxes and the dons, along with fried items), meats and fish. Larger supermarkets such as Jusco also mark down daily essentials such as milk and bread. Supermarkets begin to mark down their goods probably in the late afternoon, and by six or seven, all unsold products are half off. Sushi and the dons are generally my top picks, and the fish and meat sections are also worthwhile because you never know what you may find. Just a few days ago, I found a piece of Japanese beef steak and a salmon steak that were half off. Around this time, there is usually a mob of people circling around the dons and sushi sections like vultures waiting for their prey to perish. As soon as the employee puts on the sticker, people rush over and frantically put the items that they have been eyeing for the past half-hour into their carts. The trick is to never hesitate when things are marked off! I have also observed people putting things in their carts in advance (before the markdown) and then bring the goods back for the employee to apply the half-off sticker.
Part 2 coming soon...
