About "Non-smoking sections" in restaurants and cafes

I'm Canadian so this non-smoking issue is a big thing. More spexcifically, I'm from Ontario where it has been illegal to smoke in public places (restaurants, cafews, and even pubs) for more than 10 years now. I guess I've been spoiled. Here in Japan, if you're lucky enough to be at a place where they actually have a separate non-smoking section, then most times it's a "joke" of a separation. At this particular internet establishment, the smoking section is the entire floor below. I think that was bad planning on the management's part because smoke wafts up and through the floor boards and vents. I will actually go home smelling as if I've sucked back a few cigs in the outdoors. But comparatively speaking, this arrangement is actually better than most public places that I've frequented. At some establishments, the non-smoking section is right beside the smoking section and the only thing separating the two sections is a wall of air. Other places have a very thin dividing wall made with rice paper --- or if you're lucky, it will be made of thin bamboo. I've been at one restaurant where there was a piece of glass separating the non-smokwers from the smokers. And these guys were sitting at the same table in the misddle of the room!!! I guess that way, you could still dine with your smoke-inhaling junkie friends and be able to shout at them over the glass pane. When sitting the glass was taller than most people's heads. Needless to say, most of these places are only putting on airs in terms of trying to satisfy the non-smokwer clientele. Let's face it, when there's nothing but air between you and above you, because smoke rises and then comes back down again once it hits the ceiling, you will go home smelling like smoke. And most probably that smell will stick to your clothes like mildew on the bathtiles during the hot, humid Japan summers.

But it's not all horrid stories and establishments like those described above. Some places actually do have adquate separation for smoking and non-smoking patrons. I've visited quite a few of the downtown cafes where an entirely separate and glass-enxcased room full of smokers was visible. Actually, you could see the room, but usually the air within is so incredibly smoky that you couldn't actually see the patrons on the inside. In those situations, you might only be able to glimpse hints of patrons ... a dark suit, a pair of black shoes. So while, the complete separation was a big success, I actually think that maybe they overdid it on the lack of ventilation to the outside world. Basically, at those kinds of closed-off smoking room places, the only time the smoky air gets circulated is when the door opens and closes. Or if people have to get up to use the bathroom. Other than that, I feel really sorry for the smokers in those places. It's like inhaling 2 entire packets of smokes in the 45 minutes that you're having your break. I suppose one way to fix that problem is just to give up smoking altogether. I'm sure big tabacco is hating my blog right now and placing it on a DNP list.

As they say here in Japan, "shoganai ne?" or "it can't be helped". Until someone keels over and dies from actual smoke inhalation or lung cancer from smoke inhalation, it may not become the problem that it was in North America. Right now, I try to only frequent places that have adequate separation, but it's not always possible or fungible given time constraints.

For all you non-smokers out there, here's my personal list of where to go for the best protection from smokers (meaning that you also won't smell of smoke when you get home):
* Tulley's Cafe at Shibuya in front of the Bunkamura building
* Tulley's at Ebisu's East Exit, and down the steps in front of the Starbucks
* Tulley's north and west of the Shinjuku Central West exit on the main street
* Gran's Internet Cafe, Shibuya
* Dean and Deluca, Shinagawa station

About Beach Volleyball and Miwa Asao

Beach at Fujisawa, Surfers and Body Boards abound amid the waves

Today, I was in Fujisawa, near Enoshima, out past Yokohama and Ofuna to watch JBV's Mastercard Mermaid Beach Volleyball tournament. I'll skip the whole ordeal about showing up at the wrong beach in the wrong town in the completely wrong prefecture. I'll save that for another post(actually, it will be a rant, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here). In this post, I'm going to talk about the actual event, the beach, and the most popular player on the JBV tour.

So after about 3.5 hours of travelling (including the first 1.45 hours of going to the wrong place), I finally arrived at my original, intended destination in the town of Fujisawa. I met my friend, who happened to be on vacation for the day, on the JR Tokkaido line train in exactly the 2nd compartment (specifically his instructions). We were both excited and “pumped” about watching women's pro beach volleyball on the beach. We had no problems finding the change station and the Odakyu line is literally outside the gates of the JR line gates at Fujisawa station, so it seemed that things would go smoother after that quick phone call to the ticket office which righted all wrongs (at least until I write to the Metropolis magazine and complain about this massive oversight and misprint on their part). On the train heading to Kugenome Kaigan eki, we asked a group of Japanese girls if we were heading in the correct direction and as luck would have it, they too were getting off at that same train station. They did not attend the tournament though.

Map of Area found at the station exit. The green part is the public beach / park.

Outside the final end station, there was a "booth" set up with information for fans wishing to get to the beach and the tournament. I put "booth" in brackets because I am using the term really loosely. There was as single man sitting at a small desk about the size of those desks we had back in grade 2. He had a box of flat plastic bags containing maps of the city and some brochures for touristy things to do. He was also very helpful and described in detail how to get to the venue. Twice. It was truly a great idea to place him there since there was no obvious signage or visible beach from the station’s exit.

Enroute, I was somewhat distressed at the complete lack of signage to get there. I was expecting giant "This way to the Beach Volleyball Tournament" signs, but none existed. In fact, upon asking a stray passer-by who was also enroute to the beach, he wasn't sure either but he pointed to a tiny sign posted on the window of a barber shop which seemed to indicate that the public beach was "this" way and so we should turn right. When I took a closer look at the signage, I could read parts of the name of the beach. I had never seen it written in Kanji before but clearly could make out all the syllables making up the first 2 syllables and “beach” and “park”. We headed that way and the only other trick was going under the road in an underpass to get to the beach. Otherwise, it looked to be about a 50 metre walk to the right or 80 metres to the left to get to an overpass pedestrian bridge. However, we could clearly hear the distinct sound of whistles (from referees ending rallies at a volleyball game) coming from straight ahead. At the other side, there was a pedestrian pathway prettily lined with trees and flowers and a small wade pool. Then came the public restrooms, restaurants, and feet washing station.

The one-liner and arrow found in upper right are the only pointers to the beach.

On the other side of that building, there were stairs down to what looked to be a gorgeous beachfront and an island in the not too distant waters. So close in fact that it was connected by a 125 m bridge. There are actually caves and museum guides to tour the caves on the far side of the island, but that’s an exploration for another day. The big tent for the JBV tournament was straight ahead. And there are another 6 courts to the left of the tent which seem to have JBV players playing on them as well.

Plaza and wading pool outside the community centre plaza.

It cost 2500 yen to get into the main event tent and this gets you a seat in the grandstand area opposite all the cameras and photographers, so that you always get the backside view of one team and the front side of the other. After paying, you also automatically get a pair of “Crocs” balloons for clapping, a handful of Shiseido Anessa 50 SPF sunblock for your face and arms, a free sample of sunblock, a free sample of lotion, and a cold bottle of water. Not bad. The courtside seats running the length of the court were 4000 yen. The price of admission includes in/out privileges as food can only be bought outside the main tent.

The JBV Tournament Tents and grandstand area after end of day 1.

Before entering we bought hotdogs on a stick, fries, water and beer. We sat on the front bench and watched a pair of male JBV tour players finish their contest. I was a bit surprised since the event was billed as “Mermaid Tournament” and usually Mermaids are female. We watched the second match. After that, during the intermission, my friend was bored. And hot. The sun was almost directly overhead at that point. He wanted to go for a walk. We packed up our things and were about to leave but then the sight of women talking off their outerwear to display beach volleyball gear (read: bikinis) stopped him. He unilaterally decided for the both of us that there would be no more talk of walking out. The gals were starting to play and all of a sudden, the match got “interesting”. I think I laughed out loud and nearly choked on my water but I wanted to watch them play so I sat back down.

When the women first got on the court, they actually get some practise and warm up time. But after about 10 minutes or so, they started playing. In the time it took to get some practice hits, serves, digs and jumps, my friend already had a favourite team and a favourite player. About 15 points into the game, his girl and his girl’s team weren’t doing so hot, so he decided he was bored again and that we should take a walk.

Beach volleyball nets empty at 4:35 pm, after tournament headliner is finished. Enoshima Caves is found on the green island found in background.

We left the grand stand area and walked on the beach for a bit. He spotted a court that looked to be used by some kids (possibly 12-15 years) to play some volleyball and we walked over to ask if we could join in. I asked in my limited Japanese but they seemed to get the message and invited us to join them. We dropped our things and took a side each.

I’m pretty sure that my friend was disappointed in the playing. I know I was. I was expecting actually rallies abiding by beach volleyball rules and skilled play. However, these guys didn’t rotate and each player seemed to have a specific skill that they liked and that they wanted to use. My friend introduced rotation to them. One guy on his team complained about the use of English. He told us not to use it. And several times, he told us that it was “no good” or “dame desu”. I told him in Japanese that my friend didn’t speak any Japanese at all, but I think that only served to anger him further.

The whole concept of rotation and taking turns to set, hit, serve, block, and dig seemed to confuse them a bit. They seemed happier just to fool around and get as many balls over as possible using as many hits as were necessary. After about 20 minutes of playing in the hot, hot sand (I mean these guys still wore their socks on the beach!), one of the guys on my side said that his serve was “last”. I translated to “saigo” and they confirmed. Yup, this was going to be the last serve. It ended up being “in” but no one on the other side went for it, so I suggested, “Konkai wa, honto saigo deshou” or “okay how about this time is the last one?” They agreed and we actually had a pretty decent rally that time. But they were done. The English language hater, complained about the “no English” rule again and we all said our thank yous and good byes. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with his attitude.

I must admit that in all my time here in Japan, I had never met anyone so adamantly against trying to communicate in English. This wasn’t Tokyo anymore. We were in a small town. Maybe he felt that we were encroaching. My friend has been here for 2.5 years now and he’s never had a problem just speaking English. Sometimes it has to be for one word at a time, but usually they get it. And he understands some Japanese so he can get away with this kind of limited conversation. Usually if people don’t want to listen to you stammering your way through the backwards Japanese phrasing (backward in that the order of the sentence is mostly said back to front compared to the sentence order in English), they just tell you to speak in English. Here, it was just “Don’t speak English at all.”

After that my friend washed his feet at the feet washing station and headed back to Tokyo for another appointment. I headed back to the main event tent to watch the end of another female match and the last one.

It is here during the last match of the day that Miwa Asao, Japan’s most popular beach volleyball player, played. I had heard about her and about how she and her partner hadn’t qualified to make it to the Olympics in Beijing. Most people say she’s a better tv personality and celebrity than she is a volleyball player. She’s called the part-time beach volleyball player and part-time pin-up girl. She has a huge male fan base. Even the Japanese people I know that don’t really follow a lot of the volleyball news know about her. They have told me that she’s not that good a player.

Maybe that’s way I was so surprised. She was a much better player than I had expected given what I had read and what I had heard about her. Her partner, whose name escapes me at the moment, is about 6 feet tall and used to be part of the Japanese women’s national indoor volleyball team. I had expected her partner to be better. In fact, her first dozen hits were weak and her serve isn’t as good as Asao’s. She’s the blocker for the team while Asao is the defensive player in backcourt. I have to admit though, that while she can be good in the backcourt, usually, Asao is not quick enough to make the dig or save. She easily gets stuck in the sand and in beach you have to have good beach legs to dig in, take off and get to the right spots. I just didn’t see the drive there to make the saves when her partner didn’t make the block.

For all the pin-up girl talk, I thought she wasn’t as sexy as all that, but I have to admit that she was a lot more beautiful in person than the photos that I have seen of her lounging about in her beach volleyball attire. She really does have a radiant smile and she is charismatic on the court. I noticed that when she hit, or saved something or aced a serve, the crowd was just that little bit louder and livelier. One time, she disagreed with a the referee’s call about the opponent’s touch on her hit, which would have won her side the point since the attack landed on the outside of the beach line. That was different side of her on display. She was petulant and pouty and the referee was having none of it. He told her to go ahead and play the next rally. Her partner told her the same. The girl on the other team who might have touched that ball looked away - a sure sign of guilt. From my angle at the back of the potentially offending player’s back, I thought I saw a touch too. It didn’t matter. Ultimately Asao’s team won the match by winning both sets cleanly.

After the match was over, I seemed to miss the announcement that the tournament was finished for the day. Apparently, so did everyone else. When the officials starting taking down the net, people in the stands started to move and vacate the grandstands. I felt it was time to go then too.

I had been sitting there underneath my towel and layers of sunblock. I was sad to see the tournament end, but glad for the opportunity to get out of the sun. Coming back home, I was lucky enough to catch the JR Shonan-shinjuku line meaning that I didn’t not have to switch once I got to Shinagawa. However, the day in the 35 deg C sun seemed to have taken its toll on me. I feel asleep on the train ride home and woke up with one station to spare. My throat felt parched and I had drunk over a litre of water. I am now about 5 shades darker even with all that sunblock and sunburnt in only two small patches on my back.

About Keitai photos

Some photos for this blog were taken with my keitai (cellphone) camera. The camera has a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, with 2.5/5.6 AF, and 3.2 megapixel capability. I think the largest size photo it can take is 640x480, so the quality is equal to digital point and shoots from about 8 years ago. It also have video capability. The mobile phone itself is a Nokia model N73 with carrier Softbank (owned by T-Mobile, I believe). The reviews on this phone is that it is not a popular phone with Japanese people but the gaijins seem to like it a lot. It handles a lot like European and North American models and has an English menu that you can set once upon purchase and never have to deal with again.

All photos posted that are taken with this keitai camera will be described as such. All videos posted are taken with this keitai unless otherwise specifically labelled. All keitai photos and video are copyrighted. Please ask for permission before trying to download.

Editting an Essay written by a non-native English speaker

This past weekend, I was asked, to edit somebody's English composition. This document started off at around 900 words in length. The writer is not a native English speaker. After reading the entire document, it is obvious to me that the writer has a pretty decent grasp of the English language and is able to form complex sentences to some degree. However, another thing that is glaringly obvious, is that the writer does not know how to connect sub clauses in English. The writer is probably Japanese. I don’t know that for a fact, but based on some word order inconsistencies and incorrect word usages, and of course the fact that I’m currently in Japan where 130 million Japanese people live, I would be willing to place a wager on it.

This document should have taken me about 5 minutes to read. However, the grammar was so bad that it took me 15 minutes to read the first paragraph, which contained about four or five sentences crammed into two. The remaining eight paragraphs were no easier to read, understand, and edit. After reading the entire document, I felt for the writer and all his or her effort in attempting to put sentences together coherently in a language that is not his or her native language. They had some knowledge that they were trying to put into practical use, but it was so difficult to read, and in so many places, it was so difficult to comprehend what thoughts or concepts they were trying to convey.

I feel awful for thinking it. And now I feel worse for writing it. As a current student of the Japanese language, I know how frustrating it is to try to convey your actual thoughts and feelings in another language. However, I try to stick to the golden rule and use words and grammar that I have already learnt. If I can’t express it that way, then I start substituting English words or near Japanese words or parts of speech, even though I know it won’t make grammatical sense. I don’t think this person had a choice when they wrote the document; it had to be in English.

I am almost positive that this document took the writer of very long time to write. I am sure that the writer took a lot of pride in completing the document. I am sure that in his or her mind, this document was at least good enough for consideration because they have passed it on for proofreading. I'm also sure that the writer of this document has scored a very high mark in the English language TOEIC exam. Most Japanese people, who have to write English correspondence, must score above 80% in the TOEIC exam. So, presumably the author of this document, would have had to meet those requirements. However, as I am finding out while living here, a high mark does not guarantee total fluency. In fact, it does not even guarantee coherency. I have met a few people whose spoken English is actually quite good – good pace, correct grammar, correct choice of words, correct context – but it seems that the norm here is the people can read better in English than speak it.

Having said all this, I guess I was surprised that the English was really that bad. After all, the writer’s job is to write in the English language. Most of the document was understandable, but there’s no way that composition would get a passing mark in a high school back in Canada. I won’t post the original document or the topic of the composition or the source that asked me to proofread it as a favour. But, back in the day when I was in the final years of high school, a 1000 word essay proofread might take 20 minutes total. I use this as the benchmark because most Japanese people have to take English class until the end of high school. It took a total of 6 hours to proofread and re-write the entire essay. If it was just a quick proofread with marked up comments on how to write it better, it still would have taken at least an hour to do since there was just that much wrong with the essay.

I am blogging about this incident because I have freely proofread things for friends before. A lot of them actually trust me to do that sort of thing for them. I’ve also written quite a few letters of recommendation with successful outcomes. I’ve never averaged a 1.5 hour per page proofread before. But this time, after each iteration (and in total there were 8), I just kept finding sentences that did not read easily or were too repetitive or too long. Amid the pain of reading the first time, it was not immediately obvious to me that the surrounding sentences were redundant or not presented in a flowing manner. If I were to be completely honest, it wasn’t a proofreading exercise at all so much as a massive overhaul and re-write. It’s like taking second hand information and producing a magical, enticing script that someone will want to read. An interesting topic isn’t good enough, readability matters. If the audience is mainly English speaking foreigners, then it has to read easily for them. If the audience were Japanese people who like to keep up their English language skills and dabble in the odd interesting article now and again, then probably my 2^nd or 3^rd iteration would have sufficed.

The next time I get asked to proofread, I am going to make sure up front that it’s just a proofread. I’ll give them my thoughts and comments on how to improve the writing, but not make the corrections myself. Actually making the improvements to someone else’s ideas when you aren’t entirely sure you understood the meaning or the context is difficult to do. It makes for hard and painful reading of the entire document in search of hidden and not-so-hidden clues that may be included elsewhere in the essay.

So, further proofreading: willing to do with limitations.

Actual copy editing: not as willing.

The current exercise: useful experience and insight, but not all that enjoyable.

Why I wrote this blog: to share the pain, to let you know that sometimes the adventure is not all it's cracked up to be.

Having written all this, I, as a current learner of Nihongo, actually like to send text messages in Kana and Kanji. I also like to send emails in Japanese. My topics are easier to write about, but I stick to the golden rule: write about what you know and in the case of using another language, write using the vocabulary and grammar that you know, even if it is simpler than your requirements.

About Chronology

The timing of this blog is a little behind actual event timeline. In a perfect world, I would have started this blog last year. Somehow several months have managed to pass by before I finally followed through on all the steps it took to actually create a blog. Now, I'm here. The posts will come as time permits and current events jog my memory, or spark an emotion. Usually, I get inspired when I'm sorting through my photo collections. If you are confused about the timeline, you probably should be. I've usually put the date or month of the events. The most current events will be posted in a timely manner and the past events will be back logged. I find it serves as tool for reflection on my past activities and on my learning curve of the Japanese language.

To summary, current events will be posted as soon possible. Past events will be back posted.

The goal is to post at least 3 new posts a week. If I fall behind, don't be afraid to remind me.

About the Content

All content on this web blog is written by me. All facts were taken from other sources (websites, guidebooks, magazines, tv shows) or were suggestions made by native Japanese people or other gaijins. Where I am uncertain about the facts, you will see the following phrases: "I believe...", "it seems ...", "Origin unknown... ", and other such phrases indicating some level of uncertainty. All readers must take the content as-is. Please do your own investigation to verify any facts that you deem to be important for your own use. The opinions expressed here are my own. I welcome yours.

About the Photos

All photos were taken by me unless other specified. These photos are not the originals, they have been reduced in size for ease of uploading. Some photos were enhanced or cropped to correct for incorrect camera settings. All original photos were taken with a Nikon D80 DSLR. All of this website's photos can be used elsewhere with no restrictions. However, a curtesy reference link back to this website is always appreciated.