I'm a lucky gaijin!

This is my second stint as a gaijin (foreigner) living in Japan. The first time was 1995~2000. We were lured back to the states by the illusory promise of a booming economy and an optimistic mood, only to have that evaporate into the disaster that is Bushism. But we stuck it out in the states for 5 1/2 years, and decided last year for a number of reasons, that we would return permanently to Japan. We have kids to think of and want them to have the best future possible, so Japan was it.

Since we had some time to prepare this time, I had time to think about all the things that I missed or lacked here before, and number one on my list was - AN OVEN. Anyone who has ever lived here can relate to the shock of moving into an apartment, then you go over to the range, open the door under it, and instead of an oven, there is just a cabinet. You look all around the kitchen, and there is NO OVEN.




There's basically what amounts to a glorified camping stove. The one in the pic has a little drawer for cooking fish, but NO OVEN!

Unfortunately, as wonderful as Japanese cuisine is, there is no tradition of baking or broiling here, so I was S.O.L. The last time, I finally bought a microwave that had an "oven" feature on it, so you could bake like 10 cookies (slowly - lights dimming from the power drain) or a leg of chicken, but big casseroles, turkeys (they are hard to find and expensive here, but they have a few) are out of the question. Made the holidays a bit of a bummer.

So since we were bringing a bunch of crap, what difference would an oven make? I went to Sears and bought a nice new gas oven. We've been here a month and a half and they just hooked it up today, and I made a great tuna casserole and a massive batch of toll house cookies. I am in baking heaven. Saturday is number 2 son's birthday, so tomorrow, I'll bake him a cake! I'm sure to be the envy of all the gaijin. (at least the ones who are not just here whoring themselves to English conversation schools to make money so they can party for 6 months)

Another thing I thought of was the nightmare of washing dishes. It's not a fun task in the US, but here, the damn sink is an extra 9 inches LOWER than US sinks, and at 6'2", it becomes a backbreaking chore. So we brought along the portable dishwasher. YES! It is a lifesaver. Other things I brought to make life better: Coffeemaker, a bunch of coffee beans - they are pricey here. Quite a bit of food, etc. So it's a lot more like home. I still need to find a way to smash out the tops of the doors so I don't hit my head on them, and I would like to get a damn disposall in the sink, but for now, I'm just thrilled to have a full, functioning kitchen.

Now if only the stores here sold Chef boy-ar-dee ravioli... :P

I wonder why baking/broiling never caught on. Didn't they start out cooking over campfires way back when? Is it because they didn't bake bread, maybe due to lack of wheat?

Then again, I guess there's no logical progression from campfires to an enclosed oven. More logical to progress to an open flame. So I'm going with the rice-instead-of-wheat theory. (much easier than doing actual research, LOL)

This is fascinatin'! Thanks!

I really miss the trains that could get you anywhere easily, the friendly, helpful people, and the early-morning calisthenics done by the office workers! You really have to see it - 12-story office building with 12 floors of synchronized exercising in the windows!

mikey_the_rat

and my husband is Japanese. I lived in Kyoto. Where are you? You bought a gas oven and shipped it to Japan? My, serious bucks, if so. I made due with a toaster oven! It's not the same, of course. I miss my kotatsu.

All the best!

It would have been very pricey to ship it on its own, that's for sure. It cost about $400 from Sears in the states. There are a few specialty places that sell US ovens here in Japan, but they are over $1000, PLUS the cost of installation is over $100.

I live in Fukuoka. The cost of living here is considerably less than Kyoto, but it's not as interesting, either. I never really got into the whole kotatsu thing. I use a heated carpet, though. I'm much more attached to my air conditioner than any heating gadgets - the summers here are hellishly hot and humid.

I lived in Japan for a few years so I know EXACTLY what you're talking about. Stupid me never even considered bringing a stove over. How much did that set you back on shipping? Completely worth ever cent, er, yen I bet.

The funniest part of your post was the Chef boyardee ravioli comment. While in Japan, I was pregnant and the only craving I ever had was for Chef boyardee ravioli. Pregnancy cravings are awful by the way and I pestered all my friends and family in the States to ship it to me. I actually got into a heated argument with my parents over the fact that they refused to FedEx it to me. :rofl: Pregnancy made me a bit insane obviously.

When you're in the states, things like Kraft Mac & cheese seem like total crap, but when you're here. they become comfort food. It's a bit of a shock to go into the supermarket and not have any idea what to do with 60% of the products on the shelves, and being unable to find any of the stuff you're used to buying on a regular basis. Bread is another one. There is no sandwich bread in the supermarket here. There are enourmous pieces of Texas Toast, which are good, but way too big for sandwiches, and then there are these sad little packages of so-called sandwich bread that are basically like wonder bread, BUT WITH THE CRUSTS ALREADY CUT OFF! :puke:.

I have to go to the bakery and have them cut it for me if I want normal sandwich bread...


Oh, and most of the "mustard" they sell here is ultra spicy, with a kind of a wasabi-like flavor.

Out in the city, the only familiar places to eat are KFC and McDonald's, and they get old REAL QUICK.

Don't get me wrong, I love Japanese food, but people who have never lived here can't imagine what it's like living in a place where everything is NOT designed to appeal to YOU or YOUR values or culture, and the everyday comforts you grew up with might as well be from mars as far as the locals are concerned. All Japanese seem to think that all Americans drink tons of coffee, and eat nothing but bread, steak, and that we have a big "chicken" on Christmas.

Luckily, I was more psychologically ready for it this time. My kids are too young to really care, and the wife is right at home...

expensive but yum yum yum yum. I loved Japanese coffee shops... going in with my newspaper, and drinking coffee....

...you want to re-think that claim?







I suppose it's okay in the shops, but the canned stuff is swill. I'm not too crazy about "blend coffee" either. I brought a sizable stockpile of Colombian Supremo beans from Landmark Coffee in San Francisco. I'll have to get refills from my dad. The beans are so much cheaper in the US...

By the way, here is landmark's website. Their beans are quite good and very inexpensive.

http://www.landmarkcoffee.com/

You can order from anywhere in the US. (but not in Japan :cry:)

as you know Japanese are very into their coffee, and coffee shops carry coffees from around the world. My favorite was called "sumiyake", if I remember correctly. Each cup is prepared individually... I am big on coffee- i drink italian expresso myself, I like it STRONG. Not everyone's taste, I know.... my mother won't touch it!

Well, it's a matter of individual taste. I miss the coffee, and the delicious gyoza I used to get at the oshos. My husband and I make them every now and then, but they're not as good.

I know what you mean about missing American food. I used to eat at KFC, Arby's and McDonald's way more often there than here- I actually never eat there here (except KFC- tee hee). I also missed real cream, amd didn't like the fake crap used everywhere for coffee creamer.

i remember there was an "American Breakfast" type place that was very popular with foreigners in north Kyoto-- it was far, but I'd go sometimes. Do you have anyplace like that near you? Where you can get food that tastes close to "home"?

I was there from '89 - '91, pre-internet days. I think having the internet would have made a world of difference. The isolation was part of the immersion experience for me, but I missed the NYT, etc. It must be great to be there now.

I used to spend so much time browsing mags at Kinokuniya, occcasionally buying them at inflated prices. Now we have the net, as well as a few US channels on satellite TV, so it is much better.

I don't really know of any restaurants like that here, but I like to cook, so I can whip up a lot of nice things myself. There is a Mexican place here by the beach. The seasonings are very different from the real thing, but the quality of the meat, etc, is goo enough that it almost makes up for it, as well as the fact that the owner is a really nice guy, so when I get a chance I like to go over there.

You had Arby's? Lucky! There is no such thing here. They had Subway, but all the ones in Kyushu shut down in the late 90s. I do occasionally enjoy a burger and chili at Wendy's. They offer various baked potatoes, which is a rarity.


Coming back to the states can be a shock, too, after a long stay here. When we finally moved back to the US in 2000, I was pretty taken aback upon arrival at the airport. Everybody seemed so pink, puffy, ungainly, bulgy, fat and weird-looking. It blows my mind that Japanese think Americans are so attractive. Then when I went to the Wendy's, I was surprised at how different it was from the Japanese version. The counter people were rude, the food thrown together, and the condiment counter was a disgusting mess - and that's generally the case in fast food joints around the US. I wasn't sure if they'd gotten worse during my absence, or if I had just forgotten, or never noticed before. At fast food joints in Japan, the staff have impeccable manners, and the store is spotless. And most of them taste quite a bit better than their US counterparts. Especially McDonald's.

I come back to the US and have the shitty service that I had gotten used to, and realize, like you do, just how shitty it is, how inefficient it is, how surly and rude and obnoxious it is, and it pisses me off.

If you want good service in the US, you have to pay out the nose for it, and then you'll be expected to tip.

Christ, in Japan, even the guy staffing the bike parking lot will treat you like fucking royalty.

whenever I go there, I always feel as if I have to go back too soon. :-(

The typical process the foreign resident goes through is the honeymoon - about a year of wonderment and joy at the warmth of the people and fascination with the culture, then there is the critical phase, a year or two where you bitch about everything and actually think you might be able to change things a bit (LOL), and then there is resignation - at which point you either decide to go back home, or to live here and enjoy the benefits while putting up with the crap. I decided on the latter. Going back to the states taught me that there is just as much crap to put up with there. The nightmarishly Orwellian years 2002 and 2003 are ones I'd rather not live through again. I will never again brag to Japanese about how open-minded and individualistic Americans are again. I was raised with the slogan "question authority", but it's pretty obvious now that most Americans are indeed - SHEEPLE.

Japanese may all look similar on the outside, but they are a lot more individual on the inside when you get to know them. And most of them are pretty well-read.


The things that once drove me batty now seem much smaller. I used to hate going to the immigration office, but now that I've gone through the Green Card process with my wife in the states, I realize that the process here is MUCH easier and MUCH cheaper. The only thing that really really bugs me anymore is the doors are too low and I hit my head. I have noticed that many long-term gaijis develop poor posture from constantly ducking. I have to take care that I don't develop a permanently ducked posture.

Do you know that they just passed a law that essentially considers all gaijin (with a few exceptions) who come into Japan (regardless of their resident status, relatives in Japan, etc.) to be potential terrorists? So every time you come back from a visit outside the country, you'll have to go through the same fingerprinting and photographing crap at immigration, and you won't be able to use the same line as Japanese citizens any more (because you're such a threat, don't you know?). Book 'em, Danno!

All gaijin are now potential terrorists. Never mind that the only terrorists here in the last 35 years have all been home-grown.

:banghead:

...is planted so firmly up Mr. Bush's rectum.

Japan is the place where I first learned to like gourmet coffee. I remember those wonderfully individualistic little coffee bars with china cups and individual decor with a specific genre of music (classical, jazz, pop, whatever) in the background, where the baristas would brew an individual cup using any bean you chose.

Alas, the bad drives out the good. Such places are harder to find these days as Starbucks and its imitators buy up the choice real estate.

However, Yollam, you can still go to the food department in your friendly neighborhood department store (even in Fukuoka, I should think) and get fresh-roasted beans and apparatus such as Melitta filters and French presses.

As far as American-style breakfasts are concerned, you can get a pretty good imitation thereof at the chain of restaurants known as (yes) Jonathan's. There's also a chain called (love it!) Skylark Gusto.

I still refuse to go there. Haven't seen Johnathan's, but there is a Skylark Gusto (I remember when they were 2 different chains) nearby. There is also a "Big Boy" - they have a decent salad bar there...

There used to be a Tony Roma's and a Sizzler here. I have a feeling they are no more.

@ the end of a "nam tour. cd see mt. fuji from the window in the hospital ward. got around tokyo a bit, not the typical GI nonsense; i got to wander some of the market areas and visited a girls' academy so they cd practice speaking english @ me.

japan is a lovely & strange country. wd love to go back some day.

yes, you are 1 lucky "barbarian"!

I've never been, but I understand that on-base, it's like a little microcosm of America, with US restaurants and products in the PX, etc. Japan must have been different back then, though....

much less westernized, i imagine. markets were jammed next to each other, sharing back ^ side walls w/ other shops. the store fronts were open, no wall at all, just a gate dropped @ closing.

you had to be very careful where you wandered, too. some areas were very yakuza, & they didn't like americans. the people i met were very friendly & open.

military bases, yes. a taste of home, but the ability to see other cultures. most squandered it though, looking for the seemy side.

of homemade cookies for Christmas, far more than I could ever eat, so I brought them to campus to share.

I had to stifle laughter when both the Japanese and other Asian students were incredibly impressed that my grandmother knew how to bake such lovely decorated cookies. They gasped when I told them that I, too, knew how to bake cookies and that it was something most girls and many boys learned in childhood.

But then I remembered that I had never seen an oven in a Japanese house.

Now on the other hand, I was in awe of the elegant homemade bento that both the Japanese and Chinese students brought. One day, a group of Taiwanese students invited me to their apartment, and I was astounded at the delicious meal they cooked up from what looked like "nothing" in the refrigerator.

She served me shumai dumplings and miso soup. At the time, they seemed like the most exotic delicacies to me, and I was extremely impressed. Later, I learned that miso soup is about as hard to make as Campbell's, and that the shumai she had given me was frozen that she had microwaved. LOL.

She is a decent cook when she puts her mind to it, but her bento are usually just leftovers. She's really not a typical Japanese, though. When I see the bento that other kids' moms have made, I'm amazed at the trouble they go to. Like they cut the nori atop the rice into the shape of Anpanman and arrange everything just so. My wife went to college in the states at age 18, lived there a total of over 10 years after that, and she's an artist to boot, so there are definitely times when her behavior doesn't quite fit in with the rigid conformity that's expected here. I feel bad for her, because even though she learned to think and act differently in the states, she never learned to not give a fuck, so it stresses her out when other people here give her a hard time for not always knowing the right Japanese thing to do in a given situation.

There was a time when my kids were up on the seat of the train to look out the window, and their shoes touched the seat - a big no-no. My wife was too preoccupied to notice, and an obasan on the train chastised her about it. She told the kids to put their feet down, but the woman insisted on bitching at her more, telling her that she needed to give the kids a proper scolding, and that it was just common sense. The woman didn't know when to quit and it really pissed off my wife.

Some people who have no life list live to pick apart other people so that they can feel superior. That seems to be a trait that exists all over the world, in a certain segment of the population.

as well as other stuff you'd find normally here, would be more expensive in Japan.

Jiganda radjio taiso!

Bananas are dirt cheap here, and commonly used vegetables like cabbage, carrots, daikon are reasonable. But damn, you pay about a dollar for ONE STALK of celery! It's apparently a rather "exotic" food here. :eyes:

Turkey for thanksgiving is a big expense, too, but I intend to buy one, anyway.


My wife's mom (RIP) used to play radio taiso in the mornings VERY EARLY. It would wake me up from the other room. The militaristic wartime accompaniment music seemed just horrible to me, and it amazed me that anyone would want to do their stretching to something so martial. To each his own, I guess.

I had to do it for Japanese 2 class. I don't want to do that in public again... unless I'm in Japan.

the chairs that are an inch or two lower than in America...

I really, truly do love Japan, but there are some things are not convenient: esp. the constant ducking and/or banging of my head into cabinets, doorways, ceiling beams, etc., PLUS the "everything is lower so I have to fuck up my back to use a counter or a sink" thing, too.

Oh, and the banging of the knees into the bottoms of folding tables: I did that constantly at churches, because the tables are a few inches lower than here, and even though they put me in a lower chair, I still banged myself constantly. Argh!!

:grr:

:argh:

Oh, and the slippers that force me to mince because temples and hotels never have any that are my size.


Good for you on taking your own stove and portable dishwasher! Bravo!!

The most annoying part of it is that the locals find it so hilarious because they think I'm so 'huge", and that a 180 cm doorway is perfectly normal. If I can ever afford to build a house here, I will insist that all doorways are at 2 meters, and the counters and sink will be at least 10 cm higher than the standard Japanese size.

my knees are in the dashboard, and my ass touches the door and the gear shift.

And my ass, while it ain't teeny, don't touch the door and gear shift on even small cars in America.

...so I can't really complain about cars here, as I have yet to ride in one smaller than that. I see the tiny "kei" size cars on the road a lot here, and I wonder what they'd be like to ride in, but have only ridden in FIL's sedan and friends' cars that have all been fairly standard-size. Fukuoka is a mid-size city nowhere near Tokyo, so that may be why the cars are not usually as tiny. I've only been to Tokyo once, and it was a bit much for me. I could not live there.

Most of the cars I see are fairly standard size. But then, Tokyo has a lot of wide streets. I've driven kei cars before, and would prefer to have one because they are so much more economical and environmentally friendly, but they can be hard on the legs if you're over, say, 5'9" or so.

nt

So many did not.

Is it electric or gas? And if it's gas, how could you be sure it was the right type of gas (since they use both propane and natural gas here), and how did you hook it up to the gas outlet? And if it's electric, how did you adapt it to the local current, which is a little weaker than US current (100V/60 amps vs US 110-120V/60 amps)?

And I'm not an expert on coffee, but what would be considered expensive for coffee beans? At the local import shop, they're going for around 398 yen for what appears to be a 13 oz. bag. They might be cheaper at the Ameyoko outdoor market area.

It runs on natural gas, which is what they use in Fukuoka city. The hookup had to be specially adapted so I left that to the gas company. It would be possible to bring an electric oven and use it with a voltage converter (I have one for some of my smaller appliances), but I don't like electric ranges, and the oven part would use a LOT of electricity, and we get enough breakers falling as it is.



http://www.landmarkcoffee.com/BS_01.htm

I buy the 2 lb bag of Colombian Supremo for $11.00 US. If you are getting coffee that cheap, it sounds like a bargain. I saw bags of beans that looked like 8~10 oz. at Starbucks for 2000 yen or so. Way too high for my blood.

Also a lot of things that are available in Tokyo are not so readily available in Fukuoka. We have nothing like Azabu market here - Sony Plaza and the import sections of dept. store basements are as good as it gets. I guess they do have some stuiff out at Costco, but that's in the boonies and I have no car...

Have you considered upgrading your electric capacity? I'm not sure what they call that procedure here, but I was always experiencing breaker trouble until I called the electric company. They sent someone to upgrade my breaker box from 15 to 20 (amps?). There is a slightly higher charge, but it's worth it to keep the breakers from falling all the time.

This is high by Japanese standards, but if we have a hot carpet and a heater going in one area of the house and then boil some rice in the rice cooker, the breaker for that area will fall. we have to be careful to equally distribute the higher wattage appliances evenly through the house.

I admire Japanese for their conservation of resources, but this is annoying. American homes and apartments must have MUCH higher amperage capacities, because I've hardly ever had a breaker fall there.

But it's just one of those things one has to put up with.