08-08-0308-08-03
Hello everyone,
Well things here in Japan certainly have settled down into a nice little pattern. For the most part, I‘m working a set schedule with the same days off
each week. The way it works is that I’ve signed a contract with Berlitz that is very specific about what lesson blocks I am available to teach (the 40-minute lesson blocks start at 8:30 a.m. and the last ends at 9:10 p.m.).
Mondays are considered my “big contact day” and I am available to teach ALL of them. Last week, I had 13 lessons on my Monday schedule and I picked up an
additional one due to a clerical error. But on Thursdays, I’m only available to work for the six lessons between 4:45 and 9:10 p.m. Since I am a contract teacher, I must make myself available for at least
40 lesson-blocks each week and must teach 35 of those blocks in order to fulfill my contract (the extra 5 are just there to give them flexibility in
scheduling). In return, I am guaranteed to get paid for a minimum of 35 lessons…even if they don’t have enough lessons to fill my contract (however,
teachers are generally sent to teach at other Berlitz locations in order to fulfill their contracts). Minimum contract salary is 250,000 yen per month.
But after I’ve taught my required 35 lessons, I start getting paid per lesson at the rate of around 1950 yen per lesson. If I teach lessons on Sunday (and
Sunday is not a contract day for anyone) the rate goes up to 2350 per lesson. Berlitz also buys my train/subway pass between home and work. So the
only transportation costs I have are bus fare from the apartment to the train station (and if it’s cool enough I can walk). After that it gets complicated
in terms of getting paid overtime and for time you spend travelling to give lessons at other schools or businesses Berlitz has contracted with. I
haven’t really bothered to learn all of that yet. What I do know is that last week, I taught 52 lessons!! (Alec the Australian – my Berlitz boss -
slipped and fell on some wet tile and broke his leg…he’s out for 3 weeks and
now there are even more lessons to cover). That’s a boatload of lessons and includes quite a few days where I arrive at 8:30 a.m., leave at 9:15 p.m. and
get just one or two 40-minute breaks. I bet it sounds like I’d be rolling in the money, but not really.
While some things are surprisingly cheap in Japan, most are either the same or a
lot more. The most expensive thing in terms of food is produce. It’s just crazy expensive to get fresh fruits and vegetables. A package of two fairly
large peaches is 460 yen. Tomatoes run about 100 yen each. I bought a small bag of satsumas for around 500 yen. An eighth of a pretty small watermelon is
about 350 yen. A bag with two fairly large carrots is about 150 yen. A head of broccoli is one half to one quarter the size of a head you’d buy in the
US, and the price ranges (depending on sales) from 99 yen to 200 yen per head. Cucumbers here are very different than the ones we have in that they
are longer, much skinnier (maybe a third or fourth the size around) and you can get a bag of 5 or 6 for about 200 yen. Cantaloupes are some sort of
delicacy and start at around 900 yen and go all the way up to 30,000 yen! It sounds like the solution would be to buy canned or frozen, but really, that’s
not a great option. There are almost no canned veggies in Japanese grocery stores…the best I could do was a can of peaches in heavy syrup that I found
at the 100 yen store. They have some frozen vegetables, but the selection is limited.
Really, food in general is more expensive, but not always. A 4-pack of little yogurts that are smaller than Yoplait containers will run you between
150 and 200 yen. A box of cereal less than half the size of what you’d buy in the States is around 350 yen. A 5-kilo bag of rice is 1200 yen. A chicken
breast about half the size of those really big ones you buy in the US is only 150 yen, and sliced pork for stir-fry is extremely reasonable as well. I’m
not a big cooker of fish, and don’t like the smell in my home, so I can’t
really tell you about fish prices. I will say that they sell the damn stinky things with heads and all (as well as fileted, sliced, grated, chopped, etc.).
As one would expect, fish and seafood are a huge part of the Japanese
diet. There’s fish in almost everything. Chris and I went to a Chinese restaurant last week and we ordered the spring rolls (which I thought were,
by definition, vegetable only) and “braised pork with green vegetable over rice.” Now where in that description does it say “chock full o’ tentacle?”
Yeah, umm, no where. Yet there it was, purple and covered in its little suction cup craziness, waving up from in between the slices of pork. The
spring rolls were also just fried crepes full of chunks of some kind of seafood. That’s pretty much how food goes around here. You have to be really
careful. I once bought a beautiful bun from a bakery in a train station. It looked like a white bread roll with cheese on top. So imagine my surprise
when I bit into it and it was full of tuna fish. Chris and I went to a pizza buffet and found pizza featuring squid, mayo, and corn as the toppings (my
God, how they love their mayo here…it’s lurking in everything).
Even safe places like McDonald’s aren’t so safe. I ordered the Teriyaki McBurger only to discover that it wasn’t beef at all. The best I can guess was that it was an extra large, extra flat breakfast sausage covered in brown sauce and as much mayo as the bun could hold. At McDonalds, they don’t have the grilled chicken sandwich or any of the salads except for a tiny garden salad. The set meals (we call them combo meals) don’t come with fries…you have to pay an extra 30 yen if you want fries. And I’ve never been brave enough to get whatever it is that comes with the default set meal, so I can’t tell you what it would be. The largest drink size is also roughly the equivalent of a medium in the US though probably a little smaller.
Tokyo is full of wonderful little bakeries and most of them are quite
similar. The quality of their baked goods is actually quite surprising…very, very good stuff. I’ve never read that the Japanese are known for their
baking, but their bakeries are certainly good at it. However, when you consider that most traditional Japanese homes do not have ovens that you can
bake in, it explains the need for so many bakeries. Anyway, upon entering a bakery, you generally get a tray and a pair of tongs. Then you walk around
the store putting the items you want on the tray. Everything is clearly marked with a price and a label describing it (usually Japanese only). At the
register, they wrap each thing up in its own paper and tape it closed. Usually each item then gets its own little bag that is then put into a bigger
bag. They protect the baked goods as if they were protecting ancient cultural artifacts. Yesterday I went to a bakery in the station for lunch and had two
mini-pizzas (each was probably the equivalent of a slice of medium pizza). The crusts were wonderful and they were covered in fresh veggies – onion,
tomato and zucchini. A pretty filling and healthy lunch for 360 yen total. But again, you must be careful at bakeries. The other day I bought a ham and
cheese roll at a bakery in Kitasenju and bit into a river of mayo running right through the center. A short time after we arrived in Japan, I bought
a “chocolate croissant” that turned out to be filled with sweet red bean paste. Now THAT will wake you up in the morning.
The Japanese – or at least the good people of Tokyo – love coffee. No no, I don’t mean they love us, although they certainly should. Of course I mean they love the java. There are Starbucks every few feet in the major city areas. And everywhere else are little coffee shops of all shapes and sizes. Once of the most ubiquitous is called Doutor…one in just about every station and on every corner. Believe it or not, they also have quite a few Mister Donut shops as well. Of course Mister Donut in Japan also sells more traditional Japanese breakfast foods like soups, huge bowls of noodles and spaghetti. At any rate, there’s coffee everywhere in Japan. My rapidly expanding backside does not thank me for discovering that Starbucks makes one heck of a mocha frappiccino.
We recently discovered that we like the Japanese Plant Hollywood (we did
not care for the one at Downtown Disney in Orlando, which explains why it took us so long to eat at this one). The fajitas are excellent, and FREE
REFILLS on the drinks. Of course, it’s pretty expensive, but when you’re starting to feel that Gaijin in Japan frustration, a good dose of over-priced
American food does you good. Both times we’ve been, there’s been a loud Japanese wedding reception in the back. They were a lot of fun to watch, and
I wish I could understand Japanese so I knew what all of the toasts were (they made everyone else laugh hysterically). When we were there last week, I
ordered the chicken fajitas. When they arrived at the table, they were half is gooood (sayeth Joey Tribianni). Well just as I was spreading the sour
cream on the first tortilla, the waitress walked by and almost had a stroke that I didn’t have the right order. I assured her in my limited Japanese that
it was OK (Daijobu! –it’s OK. OK desu. – It’s OK.). She seemed not to understand, which was confusing to me, because I am certain that I was
speaking Japanese and that I’d used the proper words. Again, “daijobu”
followed by a big smile and a thumbs up that I hoped would satisfy her enough to make her go away and let me commence stuffing my face. She left. And came
back with a manager who spoke some English. The manager said “Very sorry but cannot let you have this food.” “DAIJOBU, OK DESU,” said I with another big
smile but growing irritation that the meat had stopped sizzling and my tummy was growling. “No, no, you cannot have this food, give me 5 minutes,” said
the manager in what sounded a little like panic. “I’m happy with this food. I
like chicken. I like beef. This food is fine,” I explained. At that point he gave me a look I couldn’t interpret and he left. So I’m sitting there with my
knife in my hand and a half sour creamed tortilla in the plate and I’m not sure whether to start eating or wait. Chris and I went into consultation and
although he felt that it was probably safe to start eating, I didn’t want to risk that the waiter would come back with a new platter to discover me
halfway through the first plate. So I waited. And four minutes and 58 seconds later, the manager burst through the doors with a new fajita platter just for
me. They whisked away the old one and presented me with the new one, confident that they hadn’t deviated at all from what was expected. I tell you
this story because a) it’s funny, but more seriously b) it is a perfect example of the Japanese inability to deal with any deviations from the norm
or to make exceptions. It’s becoming my chief cultural frustration.
Well, I’ve exceeded the two-page limit that I’ve set for my letters to you folks, so I shall stop here. I hope all of you are having a good summer.
-MG
PS – So many of you have been fantastic and offered to send stuff to us in Japan. Well I finally have a request…PopTarts. Somehow, Chris has decided
that PopTarts are his lifeline back to the homeland. We brought a few boxes with us, and when they started to run out, he casually mentioned to someone
how much he was going to miss them. Well that someone told someone in the barbershopping community and next thing I know, there are 5 big boxes of
PopTarts in his mail box. He rationed them carefully, and to his delight, when his fraternity brothers visited in June, they each brought some to
replenish the supply. But those will not last forever. So should you be in
the mood to put some PopTarts in the mail, I can promise you that you’ll make a tall American in Japan very, very happy (and his wife by association).
Funny fact: pre-Japan there were fewer than a dozen boxes of PopTarts in our home in all the years we’ve been sharing one.
PPS – The new score is MG-1, Squatty Potty – 1!