Just Blogging

• Please chew carefully in 2012 by Jen, J Style
  in Just Blogging
  3 Jan 2012  | 0 Comments

  So it's 2012, and I suppose you can guess I have resolved to take a bit better care of my blog. Not sure how long this resolution will last, but I'll give it a go.

  I've decided blogging about the business ALL the time is not as exciting to you readers as I may find it, so I'm going to throw in a few other random things along the way. Honestly, I think sometimes blogs can get a bit tedious if they're too personal too, but maybe a mix of both will help spice it up a bit.

  So, what do the J Stylers get up to at New Years? If you read our NEWS on the front page, you'll know we've given ourselves some time off for a start.

  Here in Australia, Christmas is the big Gift Giving Season, and being a supplier to gift stores, by about the 22nd of December we are pretty much over it. There's no time left to get stock to our customers before the big day, and we've been working harder than elves for about a month in the lead-up, so we really do need a long winter's nap (except it's summer).

  Sam's family are all in Japan, and they couldn't give two hoots about Christmas. My Mum thinks this is fantastic because there is no need to fight the in-laws over where our family will spend Christmas every year. Besides, my Mum lives about 2 minutes walk from the beautiful beaches of Jervis Bay, so choosing a week at Grandma's for Christmas is pretty much a no-brainer.
  
  There are few Christians in Japan, and most of the Christmas celebration focusses on Christmas Eve, a night for "lovers" (or "rubbers" if you pronounce it with a Japanese accent). There's usually a few good fireworks displays on, and smoochy couples wander from bar to bar until the wee hours. It's a bit commercialised (any excuse for gift giving) but surprisingly not so much as it is here.

  New Years is the big religious holiday. A lot of people try to visit a shrine at midnight. You usually don't get anywhere near the shrine gate until at least 3am, unless you've been camped out since the 30th. The traditional meal is soba noodles on New Year's Eve. Long noodles help you to live a long life. Then on New Year's Day (after you get home from the shrine) you eat a kind of sweet bean soup with mochi (rice cakes) floating in it called "Zouni".

  Here at home in Australia, "Noodle Master" Sam always makes us soba noodles for dinner on New Year's Eve, before we head to the local Australian-style fireworks. Today he made Zouni for lunch.

  The thing that really gets me about Zouni is that it's dangerous. The rice cakes are really chewy. Which is great. I love them. But after watching the Australian News broadcast in the evening where they tell us how many people were rescued (or drowned) at beaches on New Year's Day, we switch to Japanese News and the news reader is reading the statistics on how many people died from choking on the mochi rice cakes in their Zouni. It's mostly people over 80 years old who can't chew their extra chewy rice cakes well enough. A lady who was 101 was taken to hospital this year (she recovered thank goodness). On the last news report I watched 17 people had been hospitalised and 2 had died!

  New Years Advice from Australia experts: Swim between the flags, and slip, slop, slap.

  New Years Advice from Japanese experts: chop your rice cakes into smaller pieces and don't slurp them too quickly with your soup.
• Earthquake, Tsunami, Nuclear Catastrophe by Jen, J Style
  in Just Blogging
  4 Apr 2011  | 0 Comments

  As everyone knows by now, Japan has been hit with a triple whammy. First, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded, followed up by a massive tsunami, which then wrecked a nuclear power plant which is still not stabilised and could still go into meltdown.

  I have to thank everyone, customers, suppliers, friends and even competitors who rang or emailed just to check if our family and colleagues were all OK. We had a frantic few days when phone lines were down or overloaded and we couldn't get through to Japan to check on family, friends and suppliers, but eventually we managed to get through and thankfully everyone was OK.

  We were due to have a shipment leave Nagoya just a few days after the earthquake hit. We delayed the shipment over a week, but still some suppliers couldn't get their stock to the port in time. Roads were cracked, there was no petrol, and trains were not running due to power shortages across a huge area of Japan including Tokyo and surounds. So, now we are out of stock of quite a few things and not due to get them until July. It's inconvenient yes, and I know when you have a customer order you may lose a sale (and we do too), but I just don't feel I can complain about this minor inconvenience, and quite minor loss of business for us, when hundreds of thousands of people in the north of Japan have lost family, home and business and are now struggling to stay alive in freezing temperatures with little access to medical aid, food, electricty or heating.

  It's now just over 3 weeks since the earthquake hit. Every day we watch our satelite TV from Japan showing updates of how people are struggling to cope in this most awful situation. I can't imagine how things can improve for them soon. I cannot imagine what it's like to lose your home, your place of work, your friends and family. All swept away. How do you even begin to recover? How do you continue to pay your mortgage on a house that isn't there anymore when your place of work also isn't there? People have been evacuated from around the Fukushima Power Plant, and while their houses may still be standing, they may never be able to return to them. Thousands of dead bodies are being left around the plant because they have become contaminated by radioactivity. They cannot be cremated nor buried by their families because that will cause radioactive pollution.

  The whole situation is just unfathomable and all I can think is "there but for the grace of God go I". The people of Queensland, Victoria and Christchurch must well understand, and even those in Albion Park, barely 5kms from my own home, have just been flooded and had their homes destroyed. Any one of us could be in the same situation, without any warning. So what do you do? Hold your head up and keep going!

  So, that's what we do. We are supporting our suppliers as best we can. We're giving them our orders extra early so they have plenty of lead time to fill them, and also so they can be assured that there are orders coming through. With continuing power cuts and transport problems many factories are closing at least part of the week, and transportation for staff and goods is still difficult. We hope you will support us too and try and plan your orders ahead this year, especially if you plan to order bulk canisters or other items in larger quantities in the lead up to Christmas. It's a very small thing we can do, to support a small section of industry in Japan.

  We have also made a donation to Save the Children Australia, who have sent people to the worst hit areas of Japan to help. Save the Children is an excellent charity and after discussing it with our own children, we decided this was the best way to support direct help to the children and their families affected by the disaster. I urge anyone who is thinking of donating to help Japan, to think of Save the Children as one way to lend your support. In Australia you can donate at Target stores, NAB branches, or online at www.savethechildren.org.au.