There’s No Place Like Home

I love Montreal.
Before coming to Japan, I had lived there for most of the previous ten years. As such, the city holds a dear place in my heart. I just know that it is where I’ll spend the rest of my life once If I’m ever done living abroad.

And so today, I want to introduce the travel blog of a young Canadian couple. Especially the following page: http://www.sethetlise.com/article-voyage-dans-le-temps-108122023.html

The blog is in French only, but this particular page can be enjoyed even if you don’t understand. And honestly, French-English automatic translation has made leaps and bounds in the last few years, so reading the page through Google translate is not that bad anymore 😉

This page displays pictures of Montreal through history in a neat before/after format. You can slide the handle found in the middle of the pictures back and forth to compare eras. It’s quite amazing to see how little architecture has changed since then. That is probably why visitors find the city so charming. Kudos to photograph Benoit Brouillette for reproducing the angles! It makes me miss home a little, though.

And call me young, but I didn’t know Montreal used to look like a 50s movie. Hahaha!

And let’s finish on a picture of the first thing I craved as soon as I started to remember home. Ah, poutine! How I miss you!

Accident Resulting in Injury or Death

I went to Tokyo tonight and had a lovely night, but there was a surprise waiting for me on my way back: an accident caused by a physical injury…

Remember when I said announcements were vague when referring to accidents on train lines? Tonight, as I got to the station, I was greeted with the very frequent 人身事故 (jinshin jiko) or “accident resulting in injury or death” as they put it. By the way, just to make it clear, it usually means someone jumped on the tracks while a train was coming. A suicide.

So I went the long way in a very crowded train; everyone using the same alternative route. I’m grateful that public transportation is so well developed in Japan, that there is almost always a different way to get home in case your usual route is unavailable. If worse comes to worst, there are always taxis (albeit very expensive) or if everything else fails, sleeping on a bench waiting for morning.

However, I can’t believe Japan’s lack of night buses! Tokyo has some, but not for all destinations. Ok, so night buses wouldn’t help me since I live two towns over, but the argument still stands.

And I wonder what someone who doesn’t understand Japanese explanations does in these situations. I just followed the station master’s announcement that said to get a certain line and then asked a nearby employee where was the entrance to said line. I then tranferred where needed and voilà. But I’m almost 100% sure they couldn’t have answered if I didn’t speak Japanese. Hopefully, there would have been a good Samaritan to help me, but they should really think of putting all this information in English as well. Not because everyone speaks English, but because at least, it would show a little bit of concern for people who don’t understand the local language.

Then again, this comes from someone who comes from Montreal, a city that considers itself ‘international’ but has no concerns for non-French speaking tourists!!! Maps are French-only, as are announcements on the train. And don’t get me started with the bus system where they shun you if you can’t speak French. I guess ignorance is bliss.

But enough complaints. My next post is gonna be all positive ^^

Statistics of Japanese Expats in Canada

As Canadian, even if I don’t pay attention to information about Canada, it just finds its way to me. Much like the phenomenon where, no matter how far you are or how crazy busy you are with other things, you turn around at the slightest mention of your own name: when you live abroad, the name of your country just taunts you with as many useless pieces of information. So, as I was browsing the notices packaged for circulation around my office, I came upon statistics of Japanese nationals living abroad. And of course, there were stats about Canada.

***
Oh, yeah! I don’t think I’ve talked about this yet, but I work in a Japanese office. And as far as I can tell, there’s an unwritten rule somewhere – maybe a memo I didn’t get – that say “use as much paper as you can, even for the most trivial reason.” You end up surrounded by paper all the time and it piles up on your desk. Then you basically spend your time moving in ways so as not to create the slightest flow of air, lest it topples in an irreparable mess. I’m barely exaggerating.

You know those emails that end with a little notice for ‘thinking green’ like “do you really need to print this email?” Well, Japanese offices will print the shit out of it without giving it another thought!

Don’t worry, I mostly have good things to say about Japan. But I had to get this one out, because I was very surprised when I arrived.

***

Anyways, back to the story.

According to the Statistic Bureau of Japan, the ratio of Japanese expatriates living in North America is 38.46%. Of those, 12.51% can be found in Canada. And as you can probably predict if you know anything about the west coast of Canada, close to half of that resides in or around Vancouver (49.51%).

Montreal has a little Japanese community making up 5.77%. Remember, that’s 5.77% of 12.51% of 38.46%… For all practical purposes, that’s not a lot of people. What? How many, you ask? Well, I do have the answer for you 😉

There are 564 men and 1222 women for a grand total of 1786 people. Among them, 1022 people have permanent residence. Since I read this document last week, I think those should be the stats for 2013, but it might have been for 2012. I must admit I don’t remember. As for the exact number of Japanese expats in Canada or North America, go ahead and do the math if you want ^^;