Starting our everyday life in Koriyama

The first day Henrik went to work, a bell rang. Not expecting that, I jumped up the sofa not really sure what to do. I figured it must have been the door-phone. I lifted off the rear and wondered...a guy started to talk in the other end ­- in Japanese of cause. I reply ‘IIe, Nihon-go’, which in no way is Japanese, just the words that means No! and Japanese language. The guy keeps talking and I reckon he wants to be let into the building.
I look at the thing attached to the phone rear: 22 different buttons all with a label in Japanese. Which one is the magic one that will open the door? I try them all from one end to another and when a sound starts as an alarm goes off, I figured it must have been the door that opened or that I had done something really wrong.
The mysterious call turned out to be a messenger. He gave me a package while he bowed several times to me, saying things I did not understand. I tried to follow him, by doing a lot of bows and said several times the only Japanese phrase I can speak so far: Arigatoo Gozaimasu, which means thank you very much. From the look on his face -­ it looked like I had managed to say stuff he did not understand as well.

The above story, is just one of many likewise encounters we have had so far. From the moment we landed on Japanese ground we have either felt lost, ignorant, unsure, misunderstood, confused or more than one of the mentioned feelings in all thinkable situations.

We spend hours in the supermarkets trying to find what we need and some things we have put on stand by, as we after 4 hours gave up finding that specific thing. Instead we have started to buy unidentified things. We have managed to have numerous conversations, were we understood absolutely nothing (though we have figured out that if we continue to smile, they eventually look happy, and stop talking to us) and we are surrounded by things and goods we have never seen nor used before, as the oven in shape of a drawer meant only for fish, the petroleum heaters with a Japanese instruction book and the really advanced rice cooker we at first glance thought was a vacuum cleaner.

The Japanese is not only 2 year-frontrunner on electronics, and have their different food and a difficult language, they also have an ancient culture, unique traditions and customs that we are being challenged to follow, whether it is the correct way to hold a cup, or to accept a gift, or even something as simple as to remember to take of the shoes before we enter a restaurant or even the work place. Luckily we find that part of our stay really fun and siege the challenge with pleasure.
It can be enormously fun to observe the local customs and hopefully, in the near future, it will pay off.

In the end, we find comfort in the universal law that says, whenever you have had an experience – you are that experience richer and feel more confident the next time. :o)

By the way ­ the package, covered with Japanese characters and just one name I could almost understand ‘Henrin Westerlin’ contained something as boring as three phone books.
But! Now that is efficiency. We had the phone connected just the day before!

A day's catch at the supermarket.