So I’ve been in Japan for about a month now. I’ve eaten live fish, nearly made myself ill indulging in Japanese candies and junk food, slept through my first earthquake, and probably unknowingly committed some grievous public faux pas.

It’s taken a little bit to adjust to the fact that I’m actually in Japan and can start enjoying myself. The first week or so was a bit iffy. My cats were imprisoned, I was tired of living in hotel rooms, and it seemed like I might never see the sun. The traitorous voice that is afraid of new things tried to convince me everything was scary and things were not going to be alright.

It was so foggy, the airport was unusable for a week.

Of course, the traitorous voice was wrong. Things have since greatly improved. We found a house (a real full-sized house!) in a Japanese neighborhood instead of one of the American enclaves so it’s closer to everything. The kitties were successfully freed from Guantanameow and have adjusted well to their new home. The sun finally came out and the weather has been gorgeous. All this did a lot of good for my morale and I realized it is in fact pretty damn awesome here.

This is the view from my sewing room!

The only thing missing at this point is all of the rest of our stuff–like all our furniture, the rest of my kitchen, and all of my crafty supplies. I know that it has at least arrived in Japan, but it could be at least a week before it makes it to Misawa and then more to get to our house. That means no real crafty adventures until then and I’m really starting to get itchy fingers.

On the upside, I do have my fancy camera and I sort of know how to work it. We’ve already gotten out and started touring the region. Until the rest of my stuff shows up, I shall subject the masses to my travel adventures and photography.

Originally, I was going to write this blog post as a sort of instructional guide on how to navigate the Japanese animal importation process for your pet cats. Having recently done so, I thought it would be a good way to assuage your fears and anxieties.

It turns out the process is fairly well explained by the Japanese Animal Quarantine Service (AQS), albeit not in chronological order. So I’ll skip most of the details, except for the parts we feel could use some clarifying. But what I won’t do is assuage your fears and anxieties, because if you screw it up—like we pretty much did, despite enormous amounts of planning and fretting and duck-alignment—things can go wrong for you, and your fluffy little buddy could spend six whole months locked away in kitty quarantine. So, instead, I am writing this post as a cautionary tale on what can go wrong.

To add color to the narrative, let’s introduce the subjects. On the left is Little Man, aka smoker cat, aka Mr. Kitty, aka Buttface McGeezy. On the right is Cheesy Poof, aka the fat one, aka Booga Bear, aka Buttface McGeezy.

Pre-flight Preparation

I’ll assume that you’re starting this whole process at least seven months before you’re due to arrive in Japan, or else you’re completely screwed—your best hope is to find a foster home or release the cat into the wild. Get your cat microchipped, inoculated for rabies, and blood drawn and sent to Kansas State University as described by the regulations. The Japanese love themselves some regulations, and they are sticklers for the rules. The order of operations is very important. Our first mistake was doing each step of this process on different days for each of our cats, since our car couldn’t carry both of them at once. The dates on the documents differed for each cat, creating opportunity for error that the vet later stumbled into like a big dumb dinosaur into a tar pit.

When filing your advanced notification with AQS, your options are mail or fax. I strongly recommend hellofax.com as a web-based fax service. The first few faxes are free, it is easy to earn additional free faxes, and they transmit internationally. Figure out which AQS branch at Narita to send the notification to based on what terminal your airline uses. The notification process is actually quite good; they responded to us by email and we were able to clarify some of the confusing parts of the importation process.

A few days before your flight, you’ll have to have an APHIS Form 7001 filled out by your vet, as well as Forms A and C from the AQS. My advice: Double check all the information on these forms. You’ll then have to mail them off to APHIS for official government seals, and they won’t necessarily confirm that the information on the forms matches the source documents either.

Flying Day

You’ve got all your ducks in a row, your cat is locked safely in its prison cage, and you arrive at the check-in counter to check the cats as baggage. In our case, the incompetent desk staff spent an hour checking us in, then decided that we actually needed to take them to the cargo terminal. (This was a lie. Or, at best, a complete misunderstanding of their own system. If this happens to you, call the office you made the reservations with—United PetSafe for us—because even though you think that they were one of the twenty offices they called before deciding to fuck you over, they weren’t.)

So off you go to cargo, taking an airport taxi and paying even more money than the pet reservations should have. The cargo agent will be terse but efficient, and he’ll get the cats stowed away. Then you’ll be stranded at the cargo terminal, and will rely on the kindness of strangers to drop you off back at the passenger terminal.

Next you’ll enjoy your flight. I recommend getting hammered.

Arriving in Narita, your plans are now screwed. Your cats flew cargo instead of baggage, so you can’t pick them up in the baggage area like you’d hoped. No, once again you have to slough your way to the cargo terminal, this time with all your luggage. Your airline’s baggage assistance counter will hopefully have directions on a print-out, but your cab driver won’t speak any English. There is one saving grace: You are in Japan now, and the service will finally be fantastic.

An Introduction to Japanese Bureaucracy

At the cargo terminal, you’ll have to sign in at a security gate and receive visitor badges. The terminal is actually two levels, with United’s area on the lower level, which is a bit confusing. You’re now a good mile from the passenger terminal and the buses to Haneda, but the check-out process will take at least an hour, so it’s probably unwise to ask the cabbie to stick around. If you’re lucky, like us, the fantastic service will extend to the airline giving you a ride back to the terminal. Otherwise, you might have to call another cab, and hope that they can find you. Or walk.

At the customer service desk, your pets should be waiting for you. You’ll have to complete the quarantine and customs process next. The airline assigned a driver-cum-chaparone to guide us around the government complex. First stop is the AQS. Here they will scan your cat’s microchip and closely inspect your paperwork.

If you’re unlucky or careless like we were, this is where you will find out that the vet filled out the paperwork incorrectly. In our case, the vet put the wrong dates for a rabies vaccination and the blood test on Cheesy Poof’s forms. Even if you have the original vaccination certificates and the results from the blood test with the correct dates, if they aren’t sealed, AQS will disregard them: It’s the sealed forms that matter.

And do you know what incorrect forms gets you? Summary judgement for your cat: Six months in quarantine. Straight to Guantanameow. No credit for time served.

If you’re especially unlucky, you’re a regular schmoe planning on working in Japan. In this case, your cat will be kept by the AQS service right there at Narita. We were lucky enough to be moving to an air base, so AQS released our cats to be quarantined there. There was more light at the end of the tunnel: AQS said that if we could have new forms drawn up by the military vet with the correct dates, they could release Cheesy Poof from quarantine. This is very, very good news, since Cheesy Poof wouldn’t thrive in a prison environment.

Double check your paperwork.

The last step is a visit to the customs house across the street, where you probably won’t have to pay any additional duties so long as the cats are your pets (and not for sale). Then it’s back to the airline’s cargo service counter to pay any service fees, and off you go back to the terminal… with the cat, God willing.

Onward

Cats have been permitted on every bus we’ve taken so far (so long as they fit on your lap), and the regional train. They aren’t allowed on bullet trains unless they’re in a very small carrier. This came up when our flight to the airbase was cancelled, and we had to make alternate arrangements: either take the train, or fly to a nearby city and get to the airbase “somehow.” JAL does a very good job flying with pets domestically: The fee is a flat $50 per pet, they always fly baggage, and you don’t need reservations. I really like Japan.

We opted to fly, then took the bus to the train station, and a train to the airbase. Doing this with 120 lbs of luggage and two thoroughly unamused animals amounts to an extremely tiring adventure. The cats are a bit of a spectacle, and the Japanese riders tended to be amused by them instead of annoyed.

And that’s it. The cats are now safe and secure in the base kennel. The base vet is working with AQS in Tokyo to have Cheesy Poof’s quarantine lifted. We hope to bring him home with us next week. Total cost: Well over $2000, most of my sanity, and a dangerous brush with total calamity. To conclude, do not bring your cats Japan unless you absolutely can’t live without them. Like us.

Just a short update to prove I’m still around. The move preparations march inexorably forward. Packers show up tomorrow. The appliances and big stuff have already been put in storage. Our most valued possessions have been entrusted to our friends for safekeeping. It’s starting to feel like this is actually real.

I’m once again reminded how much I hate the details of moving. Not the part where I end up in a new place, I think that’s fun and exciting. I even enjoy getting to unpack and arrange all my stuff. No, I hate all the parts that come in between, especially packing. Being a packrat, I have to sort through all my accumulated “treasures”. In the beginning it’s cathartic. I start tackling all the rat piles and purge the junk. Over time though, the continual barrage saps my willpower. Why do I have a large collection of pens with no ink? Twenty empty ribbon spools? Balls of thread clippings? Or enough plastic bags to build an effigy of myself? Blaaaargh!

Now I’m just exhausted–even though I don’t have to pack all the things myself. I still have all the post-packing cleaning ahead of me too. And just in case I thought I might not be ready to leave this place, the upstairs apartment once again gifted us with a bathtub of water via the ceiling above our bed–a bathtub of water mixed with bleach…yup, I’m ready to go.

“u” is for “uisukii”

Running just a bit behind this week, aren’t I? I assure you there’s a good reason for it. Totally not because I’ve been spending too much time on my computer playing Banished, building virtual settlements. Certainly not. (Okay, maybe I’m a liar.)

Well, in the time I haven’t been engaged in mismanaging the ill-fated citizens of the village Snellstochito, I have been continuing to work on my Japanese. I got through katakana (the other syllabary) on my own and purchased Japanese for Everyone to continue my studies. So far the choice seems sound. In the first chapter, the words for beer, wine, and whiskey were introduced.

I often wonder whether or not my handwriting in Japanese is terrible.

It’s a little bit odd getting back into the swing of homework, now that I’m the one who both assigns and completes it. It’s a strange duality. An odd bonus to all this is a dramatic increase in the amount of handwriting I do on a daily basis. I’m sure I could save the trees and do it all on the computer, but what’s the fun in that? I enjoyed writing my notes and homework out by hand in college and I can’t imagine doing it any other way. The fine art of margin doodles would be lost. Besides, I spend enough time as it is staring at a computer screen.

After reading a recent article by my pen-aficionado friend Chris, I decided I needed a fancy writing pen for my homework. I certainly have no shortage of drawing pens (20 Microns and counting), but I don’t really have any nice writing pens. It hardly seemed justifiable to buy such a pen when I was only writing grocery lists, but now that I’m doing all this very important learning? Yeah, I can spend $30 on a pen. I’m no longer a broke college student and I can afford pens I didn’t get for free at a job fair.

From top to bottom: Pilot Petit3 Mini Fude Brush Pen (blue-black), Pilot Petit1 Mini Fountain Pen (apricot & clear blue), Lamy Safari Fountain Pen (extra fine)

So I went and splurged on some pens at JetPens.com (which is a dangerous place full of all manner of attractive writing and drawing implements). Somehow I managed to get away with only buying four pens. I ended up getting a reasonable “beginner” fountain pen (a Lamy Safari), a couple of a cute mini fountain pens, and a brush pen. Ostensibly I only needed one pen, but the Lamy bumped me over the $25 free shipping mark so I had to make sure and negate those savings by buying three more pens. I feel I exercised amazing self-restraint by not purchasing the whole rainbow of the little Pilot Petit1’s.

I’m going to pretend I bought this mini fude pen because I need it for kanji practice.

The internet has irreparably damaged my use of the English language.

Still, I feel it was money well spent. All of them are nice pens, and I am definitely happy with the Lamy. It writes so pleasantly. It’s easy to forget about these little things in life that are so inexplicably satisfying. As much as I love drawing, it is sometimes frustrating and difficult. Writing however has that same tactile appeal in a much more relaxing way. I suppose it’s a little odd, but I look forward to doing my homework because of this. It’s a bit disappointing I don’t have cause to write for anything else. Maybe I should take up snail-mail.

ne is for neko

I am going to apologize in advance. As I have mentioned, the Mister and I will be moving off to Japan for a year. I’m not going to lie, I think this is super freaking exciting. I’ve always wanted to live abroad for a while. There is probably going to be an abundance of OMG I’M MOVING TO JAPAN!!!! posts transitioning somewhere into OMG I’M IN JAPAN!!! (with a brief interlude when I’m too crazy and stressed because I’m actually moving.) So this is probably the first, but not last, Japanese themed posts. You’ve been warned.

In the four months or so left until the move, I’ve decided to start learning a bit of Japanese.

Having made this decision, I immediately floundered at where to start this quest. While I have no illusions about becoming anything close to fluent, I thought it would be nice to be armed with at least some basic speaking and reading skills. Herein lies the difficulty. The Japanese writing system is complex to say the least. It primarily uses a combination of two syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, both containing 48 characters, and thousands of adapted Chinese characters called kanji. Katakana would probably be the most useful as a gaijin because it is primarily used for foreign words such as chi-zuba-ga- and piza, but most sources suggest starting with hiragana. I’m not even going to think about touching kanji. Bleh….

Fortunately my dilemma was conveniently solved by a birthday gift from one of my friends. She got me a nice beginner Japanese book called Japanese From Zero. It teaches you hiragana and introduces the very basics of Japanese grammar. I just finished up the book so I am now able to write in hiragana and construct some rudimentary sentences. This is pretty exciting. My first time learning a non-latin script wasn’t nearly as difficult as I imagined. I loved penmanship in school so learning to write entirely new characters was pretty fun. I also pretended I was learning to decipher and use a secret code. It’s dorky, but I always feel that way when learning new languages.

So my thoughts on the book…overall it was pretty good. I felt like this book rather gently and non-threateningly introduces you to Japanese, which is nice because Japanese sentence structure diverges significantly from English. I really liked the progressive approach that phased out the rōmaji (romanized Japanese) for the hiragana as you learned them. The lessons are reasonably sized and include plenty of examples and exercises. It was pretty quick too. I spread it out over three to four weeks, but if you did a lesson a day it would only take two weeks. You come out of it knowing how to read and write hiragana, some basic vocabulary, a bit of grammar, and a few cultural tidbits.

Before my friend got me the book, I’d dug around on the internet to see what sort of options were out there and if any of them were free. I would have loved to have found something like Duolingo (which I think is awesome for casual language learning), but there aren’t really any great free options. You can find plenty of good free resources, but in general there isn’t much structure and they require much more effort and dedication on the part of the would-be learner. While it is certainly possible to learn Japanese on your own this way, I think it is nice (and quicker) to have somewhere structured to start like a book or program and Japanese From Zero is a fairly inexpensive option.

That being said I had a few issues with the book. One of the drawbacks of studying language from any printed book is the lack of audio. While most of the sounds in Japanese are pretty straight-forward, I had to go and look up some of the trickier pronunciations. Fortunately, YouTube is a pretty good supplementary resource for this. I discovered later that Japanese From Zero’s accompanying website (YesJapan.com), has the same lessons with audio. There is a subscription cost for more advanced material, but it is my understanding that all the material covered in the first book is available for free. And there are some cute little practice games.

My next problem with the book was one of quality control. Despite the fact that I’m not the most skillful writer, poor editing is one of my pet-peeves and I felt this book could have used a thorough going over. There were a handful of typos, a couple of missing explanations, and not all of the words used in the lessons appeared in the glossary. While these flaws weren’t serious enough to deter the learning process, I found them irritating all the same.

Lastly, if you are looking for a very technical approach, this book probably isn’t really for you. If you are looking for an inexpensive, friendly introduction to Japanese, I think it’s suitable. Now that I’ve finished it up I am still debating whether to purchase the next book (continuing on into katakana) or to learn katakana on my own and perhaps purchase a more advanced text book. Decisions, decisions. It will probably come down to a battle of ambition versus convenience.

As I ready myself to continue on in my quest, here are a couple of my personal suggestions for anyone tackling hiragana on their own:

• Hand-writing the characters is a simple way to facilitate memorization. For me it helped really stick them in my brain better than only using flashcards or reading them. There are lots of free, printable worksheets out there and Youtube has plenty of videos demonstrating how to write them. Try searching for things like “learn hiragana” or “writing hiragana”.
• Practice makes perfect! There are lots of free ways to practice hiragana available on the internet so find one that suits you. I opted for the digital method and used the super basic RealKana to practice, but you can also go old school and make flashcards. I’ve also heard good things about Anki which is a sort of spaced repetition flashcard program that tailors practice sessions based on your feedback.
• Set aside time every day (or as often as possible) to work on it. Even if it’s  just something silly like practicing writing characters while in the shower. (I totally did this)

And although cuddly, kitties are perhaps best left out of the learning process.