Living Abroad Round 3: Japan

The reason I named this blog JujuAire and not a name related specifically to Thailand was because part of me always knew we’d find ourselves in another country one day, living different adventures with different stories. One of my favorite things about blogging while we were in Thailand was combining the other worldliness of a completely different culture, language, and country with the sameness that comes with every day life. Yes, we got to go outside in 100+ (30+) degree weather, wearing skirts down to our ankles, hop on our motorbike to scoot to our Christian school comprised of 99% Buddhist students and teachers, passing by the occasional monk or Thai street food stall, but when that becomes your every day, it’s not as exotic—and it’s not supposed to be. That’s one thing I’ve learned coming up on my 4th country I will live in for at least 6 months (I’m counting the U.S. here) is that exoticism fades and routine sets in and the beauty of being in a country, language, and culture other than your own doesn’t come from the ooh’s and aah’s of adventure, but rather the comfort (and discomfort) of every day life, no matter where you are in the world; it’s just that those problems change (which leads me to want to talk about why the “First World problems” meme is not only highly inaccurate, but also “others” Third World countries even moreso, but that would need another entry. I promise you that even for children living in the slums of New Delhi, they are also upset about things beyond where their water comes from; we’re all humans.). In the U.S. it’s really easy to buy any food you’d like from a supermarket; foreign or local, but weirdly difficult to buy an iPhone that isn’t attached to a network. In Thailand it’s easy to buy cheap, delicious food on the street, but difficult to find an apartment with a kitchen (or any affordable appliance to go in that kitchen). In Japan it’s easy to buy anything you’d ever need, but wow is it difficult to get home wifi in this country. And in India…nothing is easy in India…unless you have money; in which case everything is easy because you can just hire someone else to do it.

So let’s talk about Japan.

I wake up and there’s a blue fuzzy attached to my eyelashes. After a couple blinks, I can see that they cover every inch of the sheetless bed. It’s the first day I get to sleep in since arriving in Japan and I’m too exhausted to care that the cheap blue blankets we bought to keep us warm have exploded into a frenzy of little blue fuzzballs; this is a minuscule problem compared to the fact that we don’t have sheets or curtains or really anything to make this place a house, let alone a home.

Problem 1: Japanese apartments come completely unfurnished. As in COMPLETELY. We were lucky enough to be provided with 4 things: a bed, a toilet, a stove, and A/C. I’m not complaining, I’m just surprised (Well, Julia wasn’t surprised. She already knew this thanks to her natural inclination to research everything ahead of time and be prepared as one possibly can be. But it’s different reading about it than living it). A little internet search shows that this is a well-known problem all expats have to deal with as they come and go in Japan.

The Plus Side: This means Craigslist is a jackpot for any newcomers, as people try to make their fridge, washer, vacuum, iron, TV, etc. look the most appealing with cheap prices and FREE delivery (but, you guessed it, this also means we already have an idea of what it will look like when WE’RE the ones trying to get rid of our stuff in a year or two).

How we solved it: Well first of all, IKEA. How do I even begin to convey how much of a savior this little Swedish shop is. It was a trek to get there (an hour on public transportation) and though we did our best to research ahead of time (read: Julia did her best to research) about delivery and the like, we weren’t sure if we’d be trying to carry way more than we could handle on our way home at the end of the day. We spent a LONG time in IKEA (9 hours), but it actually felt like a day at Disneyland; a lot of imagining of what the future could be like, a lot of waiting in lines, a lot of exhaustion, a lot of running trying to grab a hot dog before the next ride (er, before the restaurant closed at the end of the day), and of course at the end of the day it felt like our feet had been replaced by a bunch of little stabby needle stumps that we somehow had to walk on until we got home. I guess the only difference between IKEA and Disneyland was that there was no car to pile into at the end of the day where someone else could drive as you slumbered to the thoughts of all the magical things you did that day. I digress. It turned out we could have EVERYthing delivered. Not just the 3-seater couch and the beautiful rug and the dining set, but also the sets of hangers, the 24-pack of bowls and plates, even the tiny rice scooper didn’t have to be lugged home. Besides the fact that this was wildly convenient, I’ve been trying to take note of companies that have clearly been successful internationally and find out what it is they do differently, since that’s basically what our new job entails. And IKEA knows their audience. I learned from Julia that IKEA actually failed when it first launched in Japan, not catering to the fact that Japan likes much smaller furniture, and not being able to compete with Nitori (basically Japanese IKEA). But it came back with an overhaul in furniture (think, everything it normally has but smaller) and affordable delivery of all of your items (their selling point was that you could walk out with nothing in your hands and no worries). And it totally worked.

After that, we needed to find appliances, namely a fridge. This is difficult partly because of expense, partly because we needed to find the time and the free wifi to be able to research the best way to do this, and partly because we live on the 3rd floor of a Japanese apartment with no elevator and very skinny hallways (70cm across). On a day off, after about two and a half weeks of having to buy every single meal every day (not only expensive, but also tiresome, and near impossible to eat healthily), we got lucky and found a craigslist ad with free delivery that very day. 5 hours and some huffs and puffs later and we soon had a sizable fridge and washer, completing the search for furniture and appliances in our apartment. Yay!

Problem 2: I don’t know if I made it sound easy to get wifi in Japan, but this is definitely not a problem I expected to have in a country known for its forward moving hi-tech society. Without a doubt, it’s measurably a thousand times easier to get wifi in Thailand than in Japan, both at home and on a phone.

The Plus Side: There’s actually very little plus to this disadvantage, unless you’re looking at it from the perspective of wanting to “disconnect” and “live wirelessly” and all that crap.

How we solved it: Unfortunately, this issue remains unsolved as of yet. Getting a SIM wasn’t too bad, but it did take some time and some running around. To give the details, I’ll go back a little, to when we first landed in Japan. Since we were coming in on 5-year business visas, we were given a residency card upon landing. It’s like a combination of a passport and a driver’s license as far as importance. We can use this card to prove to anyone that we are legal expats, which makes it so we can get a bank account, a SIM card, health insurance, etc. etc. (unfortunately, this also means we don’t get to buy any of the tax free stuff for tourists). There’s a catch though. Within 14 days of finding a place to live, you have to go to your local government office and report your address, which then gets written on the back of your card and makes it official official. Add to that the office is only open weekdays 9-5 (of course we work every day 9-6) and that it’s hard to find. And, just as a little funny additional difficulty thrown in by life, we live about a 5 minute walk from our station in Shinjuku, but our actual address is in Shibuya, which means we have to travel 40 minutes by train to get to our “local” ward office, whereas we could have walked 20 minutes to go to the Shinjuku ward office. Somehow we ended up right on the outside of the dividing line between the two wards. So weeks in and we finally find a spare hour in the morning to rush to the office, then we go in the evening to get our SIM cards (which takes almost TWO hours of paperwork, waiting, and discussion).

There’s a couple things I want to point out in this misadventure though, the main one being that all of the difficulty so far that has come with moving to a new country is only due to lack of knowledge or ability to speak the language. Unlike in Thailand (or again, God forbid, India), once you know how to do something, it’s pretty easy to get it done. Every single Japanese person whom we have communicated with, be it asking for directions, getting a SIM, reporting our address, has, without fail, been the nicest, most patient, most incredible human to talk to. There is literally no other culture I’d rather be interacting with right now. Yes I still feel the guilt of being a foreigner that can’t speak the local language and is inherently rude because how could I possibly know all the subtle rules I’m supposed to follow, but it feels a thousand times more welcoming than it ever has in other countries, including ones I’ve had the opportunity to travel around. And while there are still a lot of paradoxical things in Japan that are ingrained in history and tradition, there are a lot more things that make sense and have an order to them that have clearly been thought out and developed over time.

Now if you’re still following me on the wifi story, I’m going to introduce you to the saga of home wifi. Let’s start with the good news: unlike the weirdly political, antiquated wifi of the U.S., Japan’s wifi can reach speeds up to 1,000mbps. ONE THOUSAND. You might be thinking, “That can’t be true because my premium Comcast service only gives me speeds up to 54mbps, and the average wifi in the U.S. still only goes to about 24mbps.” And once you think about those contrasting numbers and you realize there is not an extra zero on that statistic, it hits you. “Oh…OH.” WAKE UP AMERICA.

It’s easy to sign up too; just a few phone calls in fluent Japanese, about 3-4 weeks, and a few thousand dollars and you’re there! Okay it’s not THAT expensive, but with installation fees, a minimum 2 year contract, and the whole language barrier catch, we were starting to think it would be better to get pocket wifi. Don’t be fooled by the name, pocket wifi is not a cute little unlimited wifi that you can carry with you everywhere. That’s certainly what they want you to think, but read the fine print and you’ll find that “unlimited” means up to 10gbs, after which it gives you very slow (think 128kbps) internet until it resets again the next month. I had resigned to buying some pocket wifis and changing our internet habits until Julia pulled through once again with her super human abilities to research the crap out of everything. Are you ready for revelation part 2? It turns out that the AVERAGE internet user in the U.S.--someone who streams Netflix, watches Youtube, occasionally Skypes--uses about 300gb of internet a month. THREE. HUNDRED. Now once again I am baffled. Here I am thinking, it’s okay, we’ll just stream one movie a month and limit Skyping and only watch the funniest cat videos recommended by at least 3 people, but even THAT would deplete our “unlimited” 10 gigs within days. So now we’re at a loss, shell out the time, difficulty, and money for our precious truly unlimited high-speed internet? Or get what everyone else in Tokyo seems to be perfectly content with.

Days turn into weeks and we still haven’t made a decision. Luckily we finally have internet at work, and combined with the internet on our phones, our ambition to get home wifi is quickly fading.

One day, in one of the better corners of the internet, Julia found a site run by a man who is happily willing to research all of the wifi possibilities for your address, including things that might already be installed and available providers. Not only that, if you choose to go ahead with one of his recommendations, he helps to set it up for you, being the intermediary and making it so our only hassle is making sure we’re home on the day of the appointment. We went out on a limb and sent our info and a few days later, we were met with a neat little package of an email, detailing all wifi possibilities, prices, and recommendations. Crazy! We found out we already HAD a connection installed in our building, so all we had to do was find a provider and we could perhaps have wifi within weeks, for much cheaper, and in English!

Now it has been almost 2 weeks since I first began writing this entry and I'm posting this at 9:00pm Tokyo time becaaaause... *drumroll please* WE FINALLY HAVE HOME WIFI!

The website Julia found pulled through immensely. We made an appointment, got a modem delivered, and--though all the instructions for setup were in Japanese--we were able to figure out both modem AND router for some official high-speed Internet. Welcome to the 21st century my cyber companion.

Now it's time to put on some Netflix, catch up on all the latest Facebook news, and of course, download Adele's latest album (isn't it so perfect her albums are always released when I'm [almost] the age of the album title? Hello 25).