There’s going to be a lot of “firsts” here in Japan.
It’s no wonder how other countries around the world are able to consume far less energy than the United States. Already in 7 days now I have noticed several things that save on energy costs. My hot water heater in my house doesn’t turn on until I turn the hot water faucet. Sliding doors are button operated instead of motion operated so that only people needing to go in and out will cause the door to move. The escalators stop moving when nobody is standing on them. My washing machine weighs my clothes to determine how much water it will use. And after that, dryers are rare – most everyone hang dries their clothing out on the veranda. Air conditioning is scarcely used – people walk around with towels drying off the sweat. And people actually do that – walk places. Bikes and covered bike corrals are everywhere. The trains are also highly efficient and widely used. My supervisor drives a bigger car than most people here. He had to park in a separate lot a few blocks away from the Kencho (prefecture office) because it was too tall to fit into the garage. Even his car gets 24 miles to the gallon of city driving. (It took me a bit to do the math – you can check it for me – he said he gets about 10 km to the liter.) But he said most other cars get about 30 miles to the gallon city. I see now that the United States uses much more energy than it needs to, and I believe this is in the name of convenience and progress.
Another quick point, and I may have mentioned this before, but trashcans are few and far between. I had purchased a bottle of Calpis soda (sounds like “cow piss”) at a grocery store before we went to watch the street festival in Shimizu and I literally walked for over 10 blocks before seeing a place to throw it away. Or recycle, I should say, recycling is a big deal here because they burn their regular trash. I haven’t done trash yet at my apartment because I don’t know what needs to go where, but I think by law I’m supposed to write my name on the bag so if something is put in the wrong place they can come talk with me about it. I realized now that if I need a trash can I should look for vending machines – there’s almost always a recycling center next to a vending machine because most Japanese people purchase an item and stand by the machine until they’ve finished the item and THEN throw away the packaging. It’s considered rude I guess to walk and eat.
Before I talk about the street festival and the Hippy Shake Bar, I want to tell a little anecdote about my Saturday afternoon. I had been at my apartment cleaning the kitchen and doing piles of dishes that had been left me when my supervisor, Masuda sensei, showed up at my door with my new washing machine. It is very small and easily lifted and moved by one person. After we got it hooked up he asked me if I wanted to go out to lunch with him and another teacher at the school Narusawa sensei (I believe that is his name). I hadn’t eaten lunch yet and thought it would be fun so I quickly put on some presentable clothing, grabbed my wallet and jumped in the car. We had a nice lunch; Narusawa sensei doesn’t speak much English so we struggled through some conversation. At one point he had asked my hobbies and I mentioned “gi-ta wa hikimasu” which means playing the guitar and told them that I was looking to buy a cheap one here. After some discussion they offered to take me to Shizuoka City which is about a 40 min. drive. I didn’t really know what to say because often Japanese people will make an offer fully expecting that it will be turned down. (I have heard that the rule of thumb is to refuse them twice, and, if they offer a third time then they probably do really want to help you out.) So, hopefully I refused strongly enough – I really didn’t want to inconvenience them, but I guess Norusawa sensei lives in Shizuoka city and Masuda sensei’s apartment is on the way so it wasn’t too much of a burden. The plan was going to be for me to take the train back anyway, so it was a one way trip car ride for them. So here I go, I pay for my 980 yen meal and hop into the car for a 40 min. drive not having expected to purchase a guitar for some time still. As we get a few kilos down the road I realize that I didn’t bring my money belt! I hoped that I had enough money so that I wouldn’t have to come back a second time to make my purchase, especially since Masuda sensei was driving me there.
So, anyway, we get to Shizuoka City and park and walk to a music store located on the main shopping strip of a 1,000,000 population city. It’s quite busy and the street is narrow, but that doesn’t keep cars from driving right down the middle anyway. The music shop reminded me of a music go round or guitar center. It was a couple of stories high and sold lots of CDs and DVDs as well. I wanted to spend a good amount of time making a solid decision, so Masuda sensei and Narusawa sensei left me to shop and get back home on my own. I tried several guitars and finally decided on the intro package deal (it came with a soft carrying case – that was the big sell point) and it sounded acceptable for a $100 dollar guitar. I checked the price of 12,800 yen against my wallet to discover that I had 12,000 in bills…a bit short. Reaching into my change pocket I discovered a little over 1000 in change; so, 800 to the guitar and (hopefully!) enough money to buy a one way ticket home… I was banking on the fact that most prices listed in Japan include the tax already calculated in. Finding this to be true, I laid my 12,800 down in the little tray, received my packaged guitar and skipped gleefully out of the shop wondering how much a ticket to Kambara was going to cost…
Getting to the train station I checked the price list and found that a one way ticket cost 480. I had 510. I had just enough money to get home. If meal had cost 40 yen more, I would have been walking from the previous stop all the way back to my apartment. Arriving at Kambara station I approached the public telephone and used my remaining 30 yen to call Sarah asking her where to meet for the Shimizu street festival.
It’s no wonder how other countries around the world are able to consume far less energy than the United States. Already in 7 days now I have noticed several things that save on energy costs. My hot water heater in my house doesn’t turn on until I turn the hot water faucet. Sliding doors are button operated instead of motion operated so that only people needing to go in and out will cause the door to move. The escalators stop moving when nobody is standing on them. My washing machine weighs my clothes to determine how much water it will use. And after that, dryers are rare – most everyone hang dries their clothing out on the veranda. Air conditioning is scarcely used – people walk around with towels drying off the sweat. And people actually do that – walk places. Bikes and covered bike corrals are everywhere. The trains are also highly efficient and widely used. My supervisor drives a bigger car than most people here. He had to park in a separate lot a few blocks away from the Kencho (prefecture office) because it was too tall to fit into the garage. Even his car gets 24 miles to the gallon of city driving. (It took me a bit to do the math – you can check it for me – he said he gets about 10 km to the liter.) But he said most other cars get about 30 miles to the gallon city. I see now that the United States uses much more energy than it needs to, and I believe this is in the name of convenience and progress.
Another quick point, and I may have mentioned this before, but trashcans are few and far between. I had purchased a bottle of Calpis soda (sounds like “cow piss”) at a grocery store before we went to watch the street festival in Shimizu and I literally walked for over 10 blocks before seeing a place to throw it away. Or recycle, I should say, recycling is a big deal here because they burn their regular trash. I haven’t done trash yet at my apartment because I don’t know what needs to go where, but I think by law I’m supposed to write my name on the bag so if something is put in the wrong place they can come talk with me about it. I realized now that if I need a trash can I should look for vending machines – there’s almost always a recycling center next to a vending machine because most Japanese people purchase an item and stand by the machine until they’ve finished the item and THEN throw away the packaging. It’s considered rude I guess to walk and eat.
Before I talk about the street festival and the Hippy Shake Bar, I want to tell a little anecdote about my Saturday afternoon. I had been at my apartment cleaning the kitchen and doing piles of dishes that had been left me when my supervisor, Masuda sensei, showed up at my door with my new washing machine. It is very small and easily lifted and moved by one person. After we got it hooked up he asked me if I wanted to go out to lunch with him and another teacher at the school Narusawa sensei (I believe that is his name). I hadn’t eaten lunch yet and thought it would be fun so I quickly put on some presentable clothing, grabbed my wallet and jumped in the car. We had a nice lunch; Narusawa sensei doesn’t speak much English so we struggled through some conversation. At one point he had asked my hobbies and I mentioned “gi-ta wa hikimasu” which means playing the guitar and told them that I was looking to buy a cheap one here. After some discussion they offered to take me to Shizuoka City which is about a 40 min. drive. I didn’t really know what to say because often Japanese people will make an offer fully expecting that it will be turned down. (I have heard that the rule of thumb is to refuse them twice, and, if they offer a third time then they probably do really want to help you out.) So, hopefully I refused strongly enough – I really didn’t want to inconvenience them, but I guess Norusawa sensei lives in Shizuoka city and Masuda sensei’s apartment is on the way so it wasn’t too much of a burden. The plan was going to be for me to take the train back anyway, so it was a one way trip car ride for them. So here I go, I pay for my 980 yen meal and hop into the car for a 40 min. drive not having expected to purchase a guitar for some time still. As we get a few kilos down the road I realize that I didn’t bring my money belt! I hoped that I had enough money so that I wouldn’t have to come back a second time to make my purchase, especially since Masuda sensei was driving me there.
So, anyway, we get to Shizuoka City and park and walk to a music store located on the main shopping strip of a 1,000,000 population city. It’s quite busy and the street is narrow, but that doesn’t keep cars from driving right down the middle anyway. The music shop reminded me of a music go round or guitar center. It was a couple of stories high and sold lots of CDs and DVDs as well. I wanted to spend a good amount of time making a solid decision, so Masuda sensei and Narusawa sensei left me to shop and get back home on my own. I tried several guitars and finally decided on the intro package deal (it came with a soft carrying case – that was the big sell point) and it sounded acceptable for a $100 dollar guitar. I checked the price of 12,800 yen against my wallet to discover that I had 12,000 in bills…a bit short. Reaching into my change pocket I discovered a little over 1000 in change; so, 800 to the guitar and (hopefully!) enough money to buy a one way ticket home… I was banking on the fact that most prices listed in Japan include the tax already calculated in. Finding this to be true, I laid my 12,800 down in the little tray, received my packaged guitar and skipped gleefully out of the shop wondering how much a ticket to Kambara was going to cost…
Getting to the train station I checked the price list and found that a one way ticket cost 480. I had 510. I had just enough money to get home. If meal had cost 40 yen more, I would have been walking from the previous stop all the way back to my apartment. Arriving at Kambara station I approached the public telephone and used my remaining 30 yen to call Sarah asking her where to meet for the Shimizu street festival.
The festival itself was crazy. There were blocks upon endless blocks of groups of Japanese people all doing the same dance moves at the same time. I guess neighborhoods or friends or clubs or schools (or something) would get together and make costumes and then practice the dance moves. I think there were only about 5 or 6 songs because we kept hearing the same ones over and over for about 2 hours. It ended about 9:30, so we headed for the Hippy Shake...
1 comment:
Hi Luther! I followed the blog link from Facebook - great to read your adventures! That's fantastic that you had *just* enough money to get what you needed and make it back ok. Hope your guitar is working out well for you!
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