The Amazing Power of Rock, Scissors, Paper

From http://www.clker.com

The only video game we had for most of my childhood was Alex Kid. In the game you battled end-bosses with rock, scissors paper (I was really good at that bit) and the ultimate end boss was called Lord Junken. I didn’t know that junken was Japanese for rock, scissors, paper at the time. Did you know that there is a world rock,scissors, paper championship? Or that rock, scissors, paper was one used in a US court case?

You may think you know junken, but the variations are endless. Some popular versions around my schools are:

あっち向いてホイ

and my personal favourite, 

ULTIMATE JANKEN

also seen here in Gintama with a rubber mallet, which I think is much less fun:

Janken has an amazing power in Japan. It can be used to settle any dispute, make any choice or divine the truth in a difficult situation. I’ve seen kids trying to chose between two things jaken with themselves to make the decision (easier than you might think, try it). The greatest example however came during a class on superlatives. For some reasonall the best things happen when I teach comparatives and superlatives. It’s better than any other topic. Get it?!  Sorry… anyway. Moving along.

I asked the kids “who is the tallest in your class?” and half said one name and half said the other. So the kids called on the two boys to junken to settle the question. “Ummm,” interjected the JTE, “why don’t you two just stand back to back?” “No way!” The rest of the class complained, “janken is better…” So the boys juankened, and true to the awesome power of junken, the boy who was actually taller won. “See,” the kids said, “junken is always right.”
Of course, you won't need janken to tell you that joining up with other J-Bloggers for a carnival is a great idea!

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My Time Has No Monetary Value

Work-Life Balance: A Foreign Term for a Foreign Concept. Work is life...

One of the many unfortunate side effects of Japan’s culture of over-time work is that the concept of an employee’s time having monetary value just doesn’t seem to exist. Because people have to stay at work until late at night regardless, they work inefficiently. Otherwise they get bored. As it is, teachers nap, read the newspaper, spend hours watching youtube videos and gossiping in the tea room. I guess it is similar in other industries, although perhaps not as blatant. I was confronted with the consequences of this way of thinking the other day. We have electric pots (urns?) that heat water and keep it at the right temperature for tea. I finished off the water so I refilled the pot from the kitchen tap. The pot takes about as long as an electric kettle to heat the water. The vice principal asked me to instead boil the water in a copper kettle on the gas stove, then pour it into the electric pot because gas is cheaper than electricity. Can you imagine how little difference it would make to use gas for two minutes versus electricity for two minutes to heat two litres of water? On the other hand, it would take me three or four minutes to do rather than the 30 seconds it took me to put cold water into the pot. My hourly pay rate is considerably more than the electricity bill for the entire day. But that is a fundamentally un-Japanese way of thinking. Here, my time is worthless because it is taken for granted. I'm not being personally upset about it or anything, it was just a reminder of how different cultural values are after a period of time in which I had been feeling pretty settled and "integrated". It isn't just my time that has no monetary value! I asked a teacher once what he did on Saturdays and he said he was a volunteer. I asked where he volunteered, and it turned out that he did the gardening… at school. Teachers also refer to coaching the school sports teams as volunteer work, even though it is compulsory for them. I tried to explain that unpaid overtime and volunteer work aren’t the same thing, but I couldn’t get the point across.  

Read more on working life in Japanese schools at

Teachers Don’t Spend a Lot of Time Teaching

Feudal Employment Systems

And

Definitely Not Paperless

Want to spend your time on something worthwhile? Want to balance your work-life... balance? Why not join my J-Bloggers' carnival? XD

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Genkan 玄関

Fancy Kyoto genkan

According to Wikipedia,

“Genkan are traditional Japanese entryway areas for a house, apartment, or building—something of a combination of a porch and a doormat. The primary function of genkan is for the removal of shoes before entering the main part of the house or building. Genkan are often recessed into the floor, to contain any dirt that is tracked in from the outside (as in a mud room). The tiled or concrete genkan floor is called tataki (三和土). Upon entry, shoes are usually turned to face the door so they can be slipped on easily when leaving or placed into a getabako. After removing shoes, one must avoid stepping in the genkan in socks or with bare feet, to avoid bringing dirt into the house. Once inside, generally one will change into slippers, or shoes intended for indoor wear (Uwabaki). Genkan are also occasionally found in other buildings in Japan, especially in old-fashioned businesses. In schools and sentō (public baths), genkan are equipped with shoe lockers or cubby holes. The custom of removing one's shoes before entering the house is believed to go back over one thousand years to the pre-historical era of elevated-floor structures.”

On an unrelated note, because of the genkan doors in Japan open outwards, while in Australia they always open inward. On the other hand, Australia toilet cubicles open outwards while in Japan they (usually but not always) open inwards, so if you’re in a squat you have to stand between the squatter and the wall, lean over the bog and pull the door in before holding it open and jumping out over the squatter while trying not to get your shoes wet. Anyway.

The stairs on this genkan double as shoe cupboards

In smaller apartments the genkan usually opens right into the kitchen, with only the change in elevation to distinguish it. In very small apartments the genkan is just a square of different flooring material. I hadn’t thought much of genkans until we moved into a house. It’s quite a different beast. I’m a little in love with it. While in our apartments (I’ve rented three of various sizes and styles over the years), the “step” was just the slightest elevation, between five and ten centimetres. In the house it is a real step, about mid-shin hight. In a traditional house, the reason for the height is that when receiving guests one should be able to kneel in the formal seiza position to greet them, and still have your eyes on the same level.

My old boss demonstrates, but it looks slightly scary when photographed from below!

Our place is not quite that traditional, but it’s still a big step. Our genkan opens into a hall, with the stairs and a few doors off it and the toilet over to the side. If all the doors are shut, you can’t see into the house itself from the genkan.

Our genkan has pebbles!

I’d heard a lot about genkan culture in the past but it didn’t really make sense to me given my experiences with apartment lifestyle. For example, I was told that unless I kept my front door locked, sales people and neighbours would just open it and come into the genkan. This would have been a horrible invasion of privacy in our most recent apartment, from the front door of which one could see the kitchen, lounge and, if the door was open (as it always was), directly into the bedroom. It never happened, even though I sometimes left the door unlocked. In contrast, within a week of moving into the house it had happened. I couldn’t find my keys and I was running late, so I went to work with the door unlocked. I came back to find that a delivery driver had opened the door to deposit a parcel in the genkan. S/he subsequently failed to replace the dog gate as I had left it, which is how Hayate escaped and went on his big adventure. When I told a friend about it, he said that when he was a child the front door was never locked, they just shut the interior doors, and the genkan was treated more as an extension of public space. If it began raining suddenly, he said, the neighbours would bring his family’s laundry in from their garden and place it in the genkan for them.

Tasmanian "genkan"

It’s common for older houses in Tasmania to have a similar space, what we used to call the “porch” before the American usage became more common, although it is outside the front door not inside. I like the culture of having a transitional space between public and private.

Older version

 (The Tasmanian pictures are from A Green Renovation, a blog about renovating a 1950′s weatherboard and tin roofed house in the village of Westbury, Tasmania, Australia.)

Another way to intersect public and private is to share your blog in my J-Bloggers' Carnival...

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This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Suitcases full of kids books, completely unattended in a playground, and no one is "liberating" them.

I got an email from my mum this morning saying that my plant holder had been stolen. She had decided to use it, and put it on the front porch in preparation to buy some plants for it. The next morning it was gone. That kind of thing happens a lot in Australia. We have a sort of cultural belief that anything we can take is pretty much free game. Consequently, although there is really no need for anyone to own a traffic cone, you will find that (at least in Tasmania), pretty much every house-hold has one. I mean, they just leave them lying around at road-works unattended! What are we supposed to do, NOT take them? I remember a friend of mine debriefing one day after a lengthy argument in which she had to dissuade her mother from stealing a port-a-potty. It was in a field without a gate on it, and her mother had a hard time driving away without it, despite having no where to put it and no use for it. The thing is, it was RIGHT THERE and steal-able. It just seemed like a waste not to take it. Marshmallow-sensei wrote a great post a while back about 飲み放題、all-you-can-drink. You can get very cheap all-you-can-drink at restaurants, bars, karaoke… pretty much anywhere in Japan. People drink about as much as they would if they were paying for each drink. We English-speaking foreigners on the whole treat it as more of a challenge. We tend not to stop drinking until we are physically incapable of lifting glass to mouth… which is one of the reasons we could never have all-you-can-drink in Australia. I love the little freebies the nicer cafes offer in toilets here. Face blotting papers, mouth-wash, cue tips, sanitary pads and even sometimes disposable toothbrushes, all free for the taking. My first instinct (and I am sure I am not the only Australian with this reaction) is to stuff my pockets full of this stuff. I mean, it’s FREE! Sure, I have no use for twenty disposable toothbrushes, but IT’S ALL FREE! …which is why cafes in Australia would never have stuff like that available.

Taken from The Good Girl. When I was in uni, everyone I know had this sort of thing in their lounge-room.

 The funny thing is, I had never noticed this about Australians or thought of it as a national characteristic until I moved to Japan. But looking back on it… if you are an Australian, or specifically Tasmanian, think about it. Did you ever have a milk crate? Furniture made entirely of milk crates? A flog-me-light (one of those portable flashing lights they leave near road works)? A pot-plant taken from a mall? Toilet paper pinched from the public loo? Anything taken from dumpster diving or big garbage day? A dozen sets of free toiletries from the last hotel you stayed at or aeroplane you flew on?

Yeah. I thought so. And that is why we can’t have nice things.

One nice thing you can have is the opportunity to participate in a blog carnival however ;)

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There Were Four in the Bed and the Humans Said “No More”

Plenty of room...

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is give Hayate a cuddle. He has not historically been the most affectionate of creatures, but first thing in the morning he is warm, calm and snugly. He rolls over yawning, presenting his tummy for a scratch, and nestles his head into me. Those morning moments are what make me forgive him for being a little monster during the day. Kuri is next, because she jumps off the bed the second the alarm goes off. She waits for me on the rug, and immediately rolls onto her back to lure me into scratching her tummy, upon which she takes my hand in her paws like kittens to and mouths my fingers very gently while making what I am sure she thinks are very fearsome noises. Occasionally I even say good morning to the husband, but he tends to be less cute before 6 am than the dogs are. He is also very resistant to presenting his tummy to me. So, with this picture of doggy bliss well established, why am I writing about kicking the dogs out of the bed?

What do you mean "no eating in the bed?"

They are horrible, horrible bed buddies. 

They shed. A lot.

Kuri has slept in the bed pretty consistently but Hayate only started joining her this past winter, and the addition has pushed us over the edge. Kuri is extremely aggressive in defending her spot on the bed, but she also likes to sleep under the covers.

Not a morning puppy

This means Hayate can’t really tell where she is, and has come too close a few times and sent her into a violent frenzy that is bad enough any time, but at 2 am when the frenzied dog is under your quilt, it’s horrible.

Wise he is, and your future he sees

Kuri likes to sleep on my legs (and occasionally licks my legs enthusiastically in the early hours of the morning) with her chin balanced on my feet and her nose poking out from the end of the quilt for fresh air. In other words, she puts a permanent draft up under the blankets.

I'm not talking to you

Hayate sleeps crosswise, with front and back legs stretched out for maximum bed usurpation. Hayate and Kuri have to be kept with a human between them to prevent fighting. The humans have become pretzel-shaped bits of doggy bedding.

Could I take up any more room? Why no, I don't think so...

There’s also Hayate’s habit of doing this when he is over exited just before bedtime.

Worst, though, is that if we kick them in our sleep, which is unavoidable, they tend to react badly (which is understandable but unpleasant). We haven’t had any skin piercing bites, but it is certainly scary to be woken by growls and teeth snapping near your feet. They are also sometimes too excited to see us when we wake up and leap onto our chests, which is terrifying when you are half asleep and, depending on the velocity of the dog and the time since the last nail trim, can result in a scratched face. When we have kids, they need to be able to come into our bed in the night if they want to without being scared of or scarred by the dogs. And for the sake of our sanity, we humans need to get a better quality of sleep.

But we like the bed :'(

So how do we do it? Any advice will be gratefully received. We’re buying some baby fencing and in the worst-case scenario we will just fence off the bed and put up with however long it takes before they stop crying to be let in, but that’s a traumatic way to go about it for them and us. I’d like to take a more positive approach, but I’m short on ideas. Please help!

Also, if you are interested in linking up for the J-Blogger's carnival (Eat, Drink, Cook) don't hesitate to get in touch.

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