X-Mas celebrations in Japan

With just 1% population of Christianity, Japanese seems really excited with the celebrations of Christmas Eve. My recent visit to Yokohoma has showed me how best Japanese to take up festivals for celebrations.

Promptly all the people here adopted western style food, culture, dressing and even the celebrations. I recalling the words by my mentor in the recent past meeting, he was stated that the Japanese are the people who accept all the religions so easily. We have religions for finding reasons to celebrate; otherwise religions are here for the funeral ceremony he said. Now I understand how much truth it is, as everyone is set their mood for festival time.

Shopping malls are filled with x-mas trees, some places looks like a forest with full of lighted x-mas trees. To make the customer happy, some shopping malls organized Santa like dressed people to give chocolates and small gifts to the kids visiting their complex. These people also do some performance to enlighten the people with joyful evenings.

Another reason for Christmas getting so popular in Japan and other nations are that this festival falls slightly before Georgian calendar New Year’s Day. That is again a universally adopted celebration, hence having Christmas almost on the same week makes it a grand success. But to consider the Japanese holiday calendar I wonder the Christmas is not mentioned as holiday.

Neither the people nor the Government is interested in taking or announcing leave on that day (In fact today is Christmas as I’m writing this blog from my office desk). I’m watching the television in the past very frequently as my new apartment’s DSL connection is having some trouble, I see almost all the programs are to show their festive mood towards Christmas. Every single person appeared on the TV programs seems to pronounce Merry Christmas!

Airlines that I flew from/to Japan

Sri Lankan Airlines:
My trip to India was in Sri Lankan Airlines carrier, it was 14hours air time with 8hours stop over in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Actually the flight I took flew to Male then to Colombo. The experience in Colombo is really pathetic as the immigration process to get transit visa took nearly an hour and half. Then waiting time to get the Airlines arranged taxi to the hotel eaten up another 45minutes. In spite of all the waiting I had to travel 45kms to the hotel from Airport crossing several Army check posts in Colombo. I had reached the hotel by 1:45AM in the early morning and took rest for only 3hours later rushed back to the airport again to catch my flight to Chennai, India.

Most of the airlines crew members were elderly and rude in behavior, after seeing the Japanese way of treating customers it were un-justified to see them in service sector. In addition due to the WAR bound situation in Sri Lanka my advice to all my readers not to engage in flying Sri Lankan Airlines. I feel cost wise the Thai Airlines can match Sri Lankan Airline fares.

Malaysian Airlines:
My visit back to Japan was in Malaysian Airlines. A young crew awaits in the plane to make you feel comfortable. They are kind and pleasing personalities. The Boing 777 aircraft with Malaysian Airlines has plenty of leg room and seats are really good to provide travel time comfort.

The trip had 6 hours stop over at Kualalumpur (Capital city, Malaysia) but the pathetic thing is that I had to reach KL around 4:20AM and till 11:00AM have to wait at the airport chairs, the Airlines has a waiting lounge only for business class travelers and not for Economy class people.

After a long wait in KL airport my flight to Narita had to swing its wings towards Japan. There was another thing happen during my flight to Japan that is an announcement from the captain of the flight saying a failure in aircraft made some electronics to non-working state. Following that announcement all the lights were switched off and also asked the passengers to shutdown all kind of electronic devices for emergency landing. We were really scared and finally landed safely at Narita Airport.

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Back in Japan

Day before yesterday I have made my second entry with Immigration Department of Japan.

After long holidays in India today I’m back, here is some information on my trip to India. Now I got my new apartment in Baraki-Nakayama. This extends my trip daily to Tennoz Airu with change of trains in 3 lines (Tozai Line, Asakusa Line and Tokyo Monorail)

I felt very cold compare to my previous stay in here; however I still have to bare lower temperature in the forthcoming days in Japan.

Days in India

There is no were in the world can match the place Home. I really enjoyed my whole holidays spending time with Aditya, Adhava (My kids), my wife and my parents. I couldn’t really go to the locations I planned as got up into really tight schedule organizing the pending works.
My 1946 Willys CJ2A gave me a real good time in off road events during my holidays; it is a sturdy piece of machine American ever produced. With its short chassis and low bonnet I could literally travel in any terrain in India.

There was some thing bad has also happen during my visit. We lost my cousin (Younger to me) as result of his depression due to failure in his studies.

My work visa got stamped in India to visit Japan in just 3 days time. I got a new tenant to my house behind Chennai Airport (MAA) who is working in a ship as chef.

Getting NRI account in India is gone much simpler with Nationalized banks rather the modern private banks. It was just 20 minutes process with State Bank of India to create a NRI account with 0 balance facility. All you have to do is to visit a SBI branch with your Passport with long duration Visa stamped, Employment order from foreign country, 2 passport sized photographs and a local resident proof (Ration card, Telephone bill, Bank passbook and Company certificate). The International debit card will be dispatched to your door step in India/Abroad based on your application option with in 15days time. However the Internet ID and Passbook for your account will be issued at the desk during the account creation process.

Many of the Indians visiting abroad first time in work permit may not know why they need a NRI account. Actually the NRI account provides you nothing other than the tax exemption from Indian government. Even without NRI account you can transfer fund from abroad to your local bank account but the money transferred to normal bank account attracts Income tax from Indian Government, if it is NRI account the tax is waived as it is a proof for your income outside India.

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Sayonara Japan ...

Ah, the time has come. I have to leave Japan this week Thursday. As I came to Japan for client meet and product demonstration purposes on a business visa, now to work here I’m undergoing the Work permit process.

Actually got the Certificate of Eligibility (COE) from the Japan government, but wanting to apply the work visa from India. I would have been applied the work visa from Japan itself, but this is a reason for me to visit India. I feel home sick now, anyway for another 15 to 20 days I will be out of Japan.

This is the primary reason for not been able to update the blog for couple of days. Lots of purchase and preparation for the visit back to home country made me really tired. Also in the work place I had to type lots of documentations made my fingers go red.

In fact I also had plans to visit Tokyo Sea Life Park last Saturday; unfortunately the baggage preparation took my whole week end. I’m pretty sure now I won’t be able to post anymore blog in this trip in Japan. Hence making this Bye Bye Bye to Japan as last blog in this trip.

I hope to spend my holidays in some places in Karnataka or Kerala states of India during my holiday out there with my family. I will try updating this blog at least once during my stay in India.

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Thou matha! (See you soon) Thou Arikathou gosaimasu (Thank you verymuch)

Essential application tools – Japan visitor

Japanese to English and English to Japanese translation tools – Initially I used Babelfish, Yahoo and Google translation tools to run my life with minimal communication to my colleagues in the work place. Later our company provided Atlas 2006 a translation tool from Fujitsu, a must have stuff it converts web pages and inbox content automatically in a single click. For those who cannot afford the tool can still use the online translation tools mentioned above, what you need to copy and paste regularly. However both the online and software based translation tools are not 100% good but its better know something. The online tools could be reached from the below URLs:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr
http://honyaku.yahoo.co.jp/
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en

World Clock – It’s again useful for a foreigner visiting Japan. It makes life easy and makes you aware of your home country time to enable you calling and chatting etc.

Meebo.com – A website that makes you to login to many chat application online without being the messenger software installed in the computer. Many companies here are not allowing people to install the messenger applications. This makes really a handicap feeling as our only communication is the messengers which enable us to chat with our friends when you can’t able to speak to a person next to you.

Weather indicator – You can obtain one of the many available weather tickers to your computer to know the outside weather. These tools can even help you deciding on your dress for the next day and to carry the umbrella etc.

Currency converter – You can probably depend on xe.com to know the current or conversion rates for the currencies of your nation and Japan vice versa

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Most heard Japanese words in Japan

arikato, arikato gosaimasu and Thou arikato gosaimasu are Thanks, Thank you and Thank you very respectively in English are Japanese words most pronounced among Japanese people.

Sumi masen means excuse me; you need to know this to get japanese attention during the busy hours train journey to get way for you. Not only that for many places like asking for a path or information from a station master you can use sumi masen as sorry or excuse me.
Thou chou means Sorry; you can use this instead sumi masen too. Based on location you can change between sumimasen and Thou chou.

‘Hai’ and ‘So’ in Japanese means yes in English. Some times when a person next to me says hi to somebody takes my attention as I used hi for different purpose don’t we?

‘iie’ in Japanese means no in English, the pronunciation of nei is similar to saying nai in Hindi language.

‘Ah So’ means Is it what sounds to me.

‘Mush mushi’ is another word used very commonly while attending a phone call, this means hello in English.

Adding ‘ne’ in the end of conversation soften the phrase, hence you can hear sentences ending with the sound ‘ne’ very frequently.

Rey, ichi, ni, san , shi, go are zero, one, two, three, four and five in English

Sore wa - this is

Kore wa - that is
(These were corrected spellings by anonymous person, the original comment could be found in the comments section.)

Sayonara is used to say Good bye in Japanese

Othskare Samidesu is widely used to say work has finished, leaving for the day etc. You can see people saying this while coming out of toilet, after smoke, after work leaving home and even after food or tea.

Ohaio Gosaimasu says Good morning, if you look at some of the phrases the Gosaimasu will be prefixed. It is nothing but a word for wish.

Konnichiwa means Good day

Kombawa or Konbawa means Good evening

Othachiwa means I am when you wanted to say I’m Siva(replace with your name), you need to say Othachiwa Siva desu. Looking at this you would have found desu is prefixed to make the proper form of saying I’m Siva in Japanese.

Yoi sumatsuwo ne; the sentence says that Happy weekend to you. Sumatsu means week and sumantsuwo means weekend. Yoi should be happy and ne to soften the phrase.

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Building your community in Japan (for Indians)

I like to get the attention of most lonely and depressed Indians who live in Japan. As mentioned in my blog many times the language stands as a barricade between us and the Japanese. It’s very rare Indians having good friend circle from Japanese crowd. However finding a right Indian friend also not that easy as everybody is programmed to run in the morning and return to the apartment after work hour. In free hours our guys are really busy in preparing food and cleaning stuffs. If life is made to just do some programmed manner, I don’t think it’s worth earning the money. So what is the alternate, I found a way of finding Indian friends over the Internet, many of our fellow Indian Citizens are tech saavy people who knows or rules the Internet. Hence my search and findings were through Internet.

There are lots of Yahoo groups hosted for Indian living in Japan. Some of these groups were active and really doing good progress while some are just name sake acting as group in the Yahoo servers. However looking at their past message history and statistics on the home page you can decide whether to join or not. After careful watch for few days I have choose to join japanindians group of Yahoo! Groups network. They could be found on this url: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/japanindians/

But the group is not very active buy the number of members attracted me. After posting a initial introduction message, I really got good response from various people. I made my intro clear on my interest etc, hence got similar interested people buzzing me on my mail. Not only have those who are already staying in Japan also those who plan to visit Japan in the near future. The only different is that with the person who is having planned to visit will get query you for some information and a person who is already living here will get queries from you :–)

Another option is to go and start read/post blog and answer in various forums and bloggers like what I’m doing now. You will get good response and friends. I think this is the second option to you next to making friends with your colleagues. While attempting to make a friendship with Japanese, I recommend you don’t expect them to start the conversation. Most of those guys/girls want your friendship but never open-up. Initially it may be very hard to live in here, but later you will mix and match with the life. After all we are Indian who takes everything easy.

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