MOVING TIMES

Was waiting until things were pretty nigh final until updating my living situation report. Good news - I have a new apartment!

The middle of September, I realized I probably would NOT want to stay in my current university-sponsored apartment all 4 years (potentially) of my contract. It's a center basement apartment with no outside view on three sides. It's spacious enough to open a small bowling alley in, but still dark, and the ceiling weighs down on you. Time to move before I got too settled in where I was.

PLAN A

Easiest thing would have been to move within the Canaan House apartment complex to a third-floor apartment that had been vacant for some months. But several weeks of petitioning brought a resounding NO from the university general (housing) affairs - for no reason. ("No" is the stock response to any request, so I'm told by the other gaijin teachers.) Apparently, once checked in, a Canaan House resident can never leave. Except off campus. (And then I can never come back to Canaan House. So there!)

PLAN B

I then took the other option of finding my own accommodations in the area. I looked at apartments from Nishinomiya to Kobe with various real estate agents and found several places I liked. The first one, closer to campus, had been immediately glommed onto by the next day, when I returned to put in an offer.

The second one was in a lovely wooded area in a crook of a hillside with a stream running past and a gateway (torii) a few meters away to a Shinto shrine up the hill. A two-unit, two-story apartment. When I told a Japanese friend at my Kobe church about it the next day, he was amazed. "I've stayed with the neighbors upstairs! Airi and Koji! They attend our church!" (What are the odds of that happening in all the apartments in all the towns between Nishinomiya and Kobe?) A return visit during the day with the Japanese friend to review what I had liked the first visit and meet Airi and her son upstairs convinced me that I wanted to rent it.

But, ever unhelpful, the university now refused to serve as "guarantor" for my off-campus lease (i.e. to cosign to pay for any debts/unpaid rental payments the expatriate leaves behind if he skips the country). The Japanese faculty in my Language Center department also refused to help. "Nothing personal, but I wouldn't serve as guarantor for even my brother," our associate director told me. Fine, you bring me all the way out to Japan then make it impossible for new faculty to rent anywhere decent! Living on the streets of Kobe are always an option ...

I then spent a week hunting for another guarantor. Even Koji and Airi upstairs volunteered at one point, but then found that one tenant guaranteeing another was not kosher by landlord standards. It looked like I'd have to give up on the apartment I wanted and take something cheaper. And I'd already signed a university document saying I'd be out of their apartment by October 31, so no turning back.

PLAN C

All I had left was to find a situation that DIDN'T require a guarantor - few and far between in Japan. So, I revisited some lesser apartments I'd visited first near Nishinomiya and picked the best of the lot - a bit small, but on the third floor with a bit of view.

Then last Thursday, the day I had committed to taking the "best of the lot," my Japanese friend emailed to say he'd found a guarantor for the woodsy apartment - a Japanese man and his wife from church. (Total strangers! Amazing that church people will come through when the university department that had picked my CV out of 55 others to hire didn't have enough trust in me to act as guarantor!) But leery of getting my hopes up too much at this point - "roller coaster" is the operative word here - I said, "Fine. Let's see if this one gets approval or not."

Down to the wire (another party had expressed interest in the same apartment), the Japanese wife of the potential guarantor met me at church, hurriedly handed me the documents with their information, I ran down to the Century 21 realtor with around $750 as a deposit - and the process was underway!

This Tuesday evening, I sat in the Kobe office of Century 21 with my agent Maeda-san and my Japanese friend/translator as the two of them went through the all-Japanese lease documents. (The only words on the page I could read were "Century 21" in English at top!) My friend nodded, asked questions, nodded some more, then asked, "OK. You can just sign here!" (So where's the translation, translator?) "Umm ... can I ask you about some details first?" I replied.

Then it was back to church, where the Japanese wife met us with the family's seal. (Signatures in Japan are legal only with a hand-made seal dipped in red ink. They make an exception for odd foreigners who actually WRITE their signatures.) She dipped and pressed. I signed. And the docs were done. Then it was back to Century 21 by the 8 pm deadline with the cash (no checks or credit cards) for about $4000! I nearly emptied my bank account out to do it (then my wallet later, when I treated my translator-friend to dinner after 9 pm). But the deed was done!

Move-in is tentatively scheduled for October 31, the last day for me to get out of the old apartment -- and the first day the owner will let me move IN the new apartment. It's located 10-minutes walk from a train station (essential here in Japan) halfway between Nishinomiya and Kobe. I estimate my daily commute will take about 40-45 minutes.

KOBE FALL

Last Sunday, I was in Kobe (the main city to our west)for the day. There's a foreigner-friendly Japanese congregation that meets at a former Norwegian Sailor's Mission at 10:30 (Kobe is a big port city), then a mainly English international church service at 4:30 in a Reformed Church (actual church bulding) in a neighborhood of small bars, a clinic and a Yakuza mafia branch headquarters (so the pastor informs me). Well rounded!

It was a beautiful fall day - low 70s, sunny, dry. In between services I was catching up on lots of grading (four classes worth), and what better place to do that than sitting on a park bench near city hall on a perfect Sunday afternoon.

Down the row of seats from me was some kind of amateur guitar afficionado group (the Japanese congregate in interest groups). The playing was often quite good. The singing quality, however ... Well, let's just say that Bob Dylan was sounding an awful lot like Pavarotti in comparison! One young man played the mandolin and did a surprisingly good job of "Oh Susanna!" Another couple had come with their perky dog in a bandana (the dog was wearing the bandana), and another couple brought badminton rackets and was batting a shuttlecock back and forth. A beaming toddler in red-red tennis shoes was enjoying himself immensely walking up and down stairs, doing leg stretches till his little butt touched the ground. The simple joys of movement. Amateur baseball players were at it on the lot next door. A couple was sitting across the field, his head in her lap. That kind of day.

For lunch I had the turipuru beri wafuru (triple berry waffle) at a European style cafe. They see it as desert, with whipped cream and jam. Yum!

THEY ALL LOOK ALIKE?

I have a hard time relating to the old WWII GI maxim about "all Japanese look alike." I haven't found that at all. What's amazing is the sheer variety of features, complexions (olive Mediterranean skin to pale white, to dark tan), hairstyles (you oughta see some of them!), dress. I liken it all to marsupials in Australia. Where you have just one species, it proliferates in the most varied forms: wombat, kangaroo, Tasmanian Devil. Almost every "type" you see in the West can be seen in Japan - and then a few extra: the bookish nerd with the bad hardcut, the fashion plate (male or female), the middle-class housewife with sensible shoes, the wild teenager with dyed hair, the society woman with impeccable understated taste in grays and charcoals, the toughened laborer, the passsing-through-puberty teenaged boy with the squeeky voice. Then there are the more exclusively Japanese types: the older woman in a kimono (probably for some ceremonial occasion), the "salary man" in a dark suit (and his younger counterpart in the same suit with elongated, over-the-top pointy black fashionista shoes).

I expected to find a nation of conformity and emotionless automatons and find instead ... San Francisco! Wild variety - Berkeley on steroids. Perhaps everyone is conforming, yes, to their in-group, but this is a nation of 1000 niche markets. A nation of a tall downtown buildings filled to the brim with 100 small businesses, bars, restaurants inside - each with its own clientele. (An Irish pub here in Osaka is on the inside of the 6th floor of an office building and has no outside windows.) And the denizens of the 1000 niche markets all happen to sit next to each other on the trains (everyone except maybe the CEO of Honda is condemned to take the train) so it's a great people-watching opportunity. Not that there's much action to watch. Everyone immediately becomes engrossed in (a) sleep, (b) checking their cell phone, (c) reading a novel, (d) listening to their i-Pod. Half of them are doing (a). "Sleep Deprivation Nation" is my next (and first) novel. Catching 40 winks or running up stairs to make some deadline - those are the two poles of life for Japanese (at least in public).

TYPHOON AHOY!

Last Thursday (October 8), Typoon/Hurricane Melor charged into town. Or into Japan's main island of Honshu. It looked for a day or so that it was headed right for our Kansai region, but it veered a bit east in the end and made landfall well outside Osaka Bay and charged northward towards Hokkaido.

We were all gossiping at the office Wednesday wondering what the university would do if the storm hit during classes Thursday. How will we know if they cancel? "It'll be on the college website." "No, they'll call each faculty home telephone." "No, you should call into the college Thursday morning." Obviously, a well-organized emergency disaster plan is in effect and well known to all. (Not.)

Since I had my once a week grad class in Osaka Thursday, I decided to take no chances and headed for Osaka by train Wednesday night before the eye hit to stay at a hotel near the downtown campus. It was blowy and rainy, a foreshadow of what was to come around dawn, but there still were a few brave souls out on the train platform waiting to get home - and me. (Did we have any choice?) My Osaka hotel room was tiny (basically room for a bed and a walking space between it and the desk) and the one window looked out at another apartment building, so that I couldn't really see much of the outside weather that night. But in the morning, the rain had almost ended (just sputters) and it was oddly normal outside. Maybe a bit more yard waste blowing around than usual, that's all. I checked the TV, and it was clear that the eye had completely missed our Osaka-Kobe area and was safely north of us.

So, I went into the Osaka office (14th floor of the Hankyu Hotel) and prepped in the middle of the day for my 6 pm class. Back at the Umeda campus in Nishinomiya, my fellow teachers were disappointed that it had turned out so blandly. No cancellations. No dramatic weather. (We're a dedicated lot in our teaching, I hasten to point out, but it still hurts to have a perfect 'act of God' excuse frittered away to nothing! What a let-down!)

APARTMENT HUNTING

Meanwhile, I have been apartment hunting - last Tuesday in a little end-of-the-railway line town near campus (Koyoen) and this Sunday around the main Nishinomiya train station (Kitaguchi). The Koyoen apartments were a bit of a let-down. Reasonable rents, but kind of run-down buildings that looked 30 years old and well worn by residents. And the views and neighborhood were underwhelming, as well. The agent had been recommended by an American pastor in Nishinomiya as friendly to expats and someone who doesn't ask for all the up-front fees that normal Japanese realtors do, just first-and-last month's rent. But for all that, the apartment still has to be something I'd consider living in.

Today's tour of apartments closer to the main railway hub (15 minute walk away most of them) with another realtor showed me three spacious and light-filled apartments I could see myself living in. Make no mistake. It's quite pricy to come up with the first month move-in fee here, but once you're there, the monthly rents were all between $800 and $1000. (Of which the university will help with about $250 a month.) All the apartments have at least one 'wa-shitsu' or Japanese-style bedroom with tatami mats on the floor to put bedding on and big box-shaped cupboard space with sliding doors to put the bedding away in. I kind of like it. My own personal ryokan (Japanese inn)!

One of the main issues is access to transportation. No matter where I live, I still have my job to get to on a daily basis. Proximity to shopping also helps. I don't want to have to call a cab to buy groceries! The goal right now is to find something by the end of this week. I'll look in one more location, then decide.

LEGAL ALIEN

I'm now a legal alien in Japan. October 1st, the other new teacher and I walked down to a local branch of city hall (located next to the train station) and picked up our Certificate of Alien Registration - an alien card. It comes with its own plastic wrapper, like everything else in Japan. I'm surprised each of the four main islands doesn't come pre-plastic wrapped as well!

I've now been in Japan a month and getting around is definitely second nature now. I hop on trains to Kobe, Osaka, even Kyoto without much thought. Just mainly check whether I have the correct change. My first tentative trip out getting on a train my first week, I had to ask the station attendant monitoring the passengers how to get a ticket two stops down to Nishinomiya Kitaguchi main station. Coming back, I stopped in bewilderment in front of the ticket machines for a good 5-10 minutes trying to figure out which booth to use, how much to pay, HOW to to pay.

Found an international church in Kobe I like - half Japanese, half international. They put the words up for songs in Japanese script, Roma-ji (Japanese transcribed into latin letters) and English. Met an EFL teacher from Jamaica whose parents were visiting him in Japan! Two Iranians attend, including one named Paul! Paul is married to a Brazilian doing a linguistics PhD in Japanese. The pastor is a missionary kid born and raised in Japan by Reformed Church parents - Rob Flaherty, or Pastor Robu, as some call him. He can preach in Japanese as easily as in English.

Have just finished week 2 of teaching now. Have three classes of Pre-Advanced English, one of Intermediate English (a required course for Kangaku students), and one graduate course in Osaka with only one student. Poor Jun Ono! Several of us with grad offerings were fighting over him because without a student, our course would fold and we'd be given heaven knows what to take its place. But I got him for sure because the course is a requirement! This past Thursday, we talked about English dialects and accents, and I brought in a DVD of 'My Fair Lady' to showcase the Cockney dialect.

Hope to move to a new apartment in October. My current central basement one is not a place I'd want to live for four years - dark and messily damp in the hot season. I've submitted a request to General Affairs at KGU to move to a higher-up apartment, but people tell me once situated in Canaan House you're pretty much stuck in the apartment they put you in, unless you choose to find your own place.

More adventures to come in October, I'm sure ...