Living in an orchard

Tinhorn Creek Vineyard (down the road from the orchard)

First Impressions of life in the Okanagan
I bought a laptop as soon as I found our home in Penticton, and I started writing down my impressions of Canada after spending the past 17 years in Japan. Here are some of my observations from June 2007:

• Facial contact is common, unlike Japan. People look at your face as you approach or if they see you from a distance. In Japan, everyone looks by you or at the ground but in Canada they look at your face to see if they recognize you.

• People make conversation as if they know you personally and in response the other person laughs to be polite and acts as if they know you. For example, two strangers have conversations like this:
  Person A: "...yah, that sounds just like my Aunt Emily."
  Person B: "ha,ha,ha, yeah, that's right!" (as if the other person knows Aunt Emily and understands the joke).

• Of course, retail clerks talk to you about your day and I try to answer them honestly (so different from Japan!). I was so busy trying to set everything up when I first arrived in the Okanagan and my conversations would be like this:
  Clerk: "How are you today?"
  Me: "Exhausted!"
  Clerk: "Yeah, I hear ya."

• Canadians apologize for everything, such as supposedly getting in your way (when they don't at all)..
  I constantly hear things like, "Sorry about that" or "Oh, excuse me"
  And they take very special care if their kids are in the way or appear to be bothering others and they constantly apologize on their kids behalf.

• I had trouble at understanding English at Starbucks:
  Clerk: "Rumfrcream?"
  Me: "What?"
  Clerk: "Rumfrcreem?"
  Me: "Sorry, what?"
  Clerk (speaking very slowly): "Room-For-Cream?" (which means, "shall I fill your cup of coffee not quite to the top so you have room to add cream?")

• I was fascinated by all the new junk food and the size of the junk food packages and containers. I would spend minutes walking around every convenience store and checking out all the new junk food. The frozen food section at Safeway was amazing. I must have seen 18 different kinds of frozen waffles, for example. Why frozen waffles and why 18 different kinds?? The food items were so big (cakes big enough to sink a ship, pizza boxes the size of stadiums) and there was so much of it (the food aisles at Safeway stretch on for eternity). I can now see why Canadians are so fat.

• In the Ikea furniture store in Coquitlam (near Vancouver) I saw so many inter-racial couples with their kids, especially Caucasian-East Indian and Caucasian-Asian. In Japan so-called international couples are a novelty but at Ikea they were in the majority it seemed. I guess in greater Vancouver the different races are integrating very fast.

• Canada is no longer cheap. Food, gas, clothing, electronic products, furniture, and housing are all expensive. I guess few Canadians have any real savings. However, people do love to spend their money! Everyday I see these gigantic motor homes go by which I am told go for $500,000 each, and sometimes the motor homes are towing cars and boats. Gas prices here are almost the same as Japan and I cannot imagine their gas bills.

• In Penticton, I noticed some of the seniors (not all of course) are pushy and spoiled. They cut in front of you and act oblivious to everything around them. They expect to be served before everyone else and to be the centre of attention. They hate to wait for anything. This really pushed my buttons at times. I guess they are the spoiled baby boomer generation getting old and acting even more spoiled. They also buy tons of lottery tickets - why is this?

• Tim Horton's is the equivalent of Starbucks in Japan. It has its own culture and it is always very busy. One guy I met called the customers "Tim-Slaves." Owning a Tim Horton's is like having a license to print your own money. The place is always packed and line-ups reach the door no matter when you go.

• There are tons of jobs available in the retail and service industries. I see job available signs in almost every store and restaurant. Someone told me the situation is the same in Fort McMurray, Alberta (Tar Sands Oil Patch) and even receptionists get $15 an hour there. They hire truck drivers from England and India because they cannot get enough people to work. Today a lady told me they just hired some workers from Nigeria and Ireland to work in the financial services divisions in the local banks here. The local farmers in the Okanagan are now bringing in Mexican workers to pick the crops and then fly them back at the end of the season.

• The Okanagan has really changed. It is no longer the quiet, sleepy backwater I remembered from high school in the late 1970s. The Okanagan now offers visitors and residents a lot to see and do. I have been particularly impressed with the wineries. Real estate development has exploded and money is pouring in from Alberta and other parts of Canada as well as from Europe.

• The culture shock is very big, as I expected. I cannot get over the wide, open spaces and all the greenery. It feels like I am watching a movie and nothing around me seems real at all. It is a very surreal experience. Everything is still exciting but I expect when things start to seem normal I will be less in awe of everything. I think it will take me several years before I start feel totally at home here. I cannot believe I have been away for 17 years and it is a shock to see everyone I know 17 years older. It is very Rip Van Winkle like. I understand the language and the culture but I do not know how anything works. I feel like a foreigner in a strange yet familiar land.

• Canadians like to spend their money and do not pinch their pennies. A lady at Blockbuster was giving me $10.51 change and asked me "do you need the penny?" I was stunned and replied, "Yes!??" and she gave me the full and proper change. The next time I pay for something that costs $10.51 I should ask, "do you need the penny?" and see what the clerk says. At Tim Horton's my bill came to $2.29. I gave the clerk $2.25 and then started to dig for pennies when she said, "that's okay, don't worry about it." Pennies have really lost their value!

• Tips now run at 15% and it is tough dealing with the bill at the end of the meal (unlike Japan). I am careful not to tip below 15% as serving tables is a tough job but it certainly makes going out for meals an expensive proposition.

• I still cannot get over how people ask strangers personal questions. Yesterday on the Penticton Channel my friend asked the next people floating by, "where did you get your floating cooler?" The people replied, "Oh, we picked it up at Canadian Tire." My friend said, "it looks great, we should get something like it." etc, etc. Canadians talk to strangers anywhere, even floating down a river channel!

Roses and cherries in the orchard