A typical Thursday in Japan

Many of the four of you who consistently read this blog might be wondering: yes, Unperky, you go on holiday, yes, you miscommunicate with dentists, but what do you do on a regular day? So I've attempted to document one of my ordinary Thursdays (the first day of my weekend).

9.00 - I rouse myself like a drugged whale slowly adjusting to the light on the banks of the Thames.

9.20 - a shower. To the outside world, Japan is at cutting edge of technology; a tectonically violent techtopia. Friendly androids walk the streets of Tokyo and offer you green tea. Crime is low because all disputes are resolved in virtual reality battles. Toilets sing opera and recommend local restaurants in six different languages. But back in real Japan, my office asks me to send things by fax and my shower is operated by a crank handle. I hold down a switch and turn the handle; the disarmingly loud clicks can be heard in any other flat in the building. This triggers a small gas fire which can be seen through the window in the big grey unit. This fire heats my water. No friendly androids here.

10.00 -  I take the underground to my Japanese class, which is run by middle-aged women whose children have left home and who now require someone new to chastise for not speaking properly. Today two of them giggle behind their hands when I don't know the word for 'honey' and have to say 'bee dessert' instead. The other one points and laughs openly.

12.00 - I leave the class as soon as it finishes, so I can go to...another class. A bit overboard, perhaps, but my second class is a one-on-one lesson and this is the most convenient time to take it. The escalators in Japan don't start moving until you step in front of them, so until you reach them you cannot tell which goes up and goes down. I accidentally step in front of the wrong one and an extremely loud and accusing buzzer blares out for five seconds, which feels like a lifetime.

1.30 - I leave my second class, conjugating adjectives in my head to distract myself from the McDonalds next door. I've started using an app which tracks your diet and exercise habits and I don't want another angry red pie chart on my hands. Next I have to go to the city centre, for a bit of shopping and to fill in some tax forms at the local government office. Oh Ms. Unperky, with these anecdotes you are spoiling us.

3.00 - I've just finished lunch at Bagel & Bagel, where I have had a bagel. I found a branch in the labyrinthine basement of one of Nagoya's infinite department stores. Back home it would be an entirely unremarkable kind of sandwich shop, but good Western-style sandwichey places are a rare treat here. For some unknown reason bagels here usually only come in sweet flavours, and all sandwiches are soaked in mayonnaise, a condiment I only enjoy when used sparingly. My occidental indulgence over with, I look over my tax forms, which are exactly as good as tax forms in England except they are also all in kanji.

3.50 - I exit the ward office. The whole event has been shockingly mild. I went up to a man at the counter and showed him the Japanese letter my employers gave me to give to him, which says something to the effect of: "please help this stupid foreigner, tell them how much money they can claim, and just do whatever you think is best when they respond to your questions by nodding or shaking their heads apparently at random." Fifteen minutes later everything was seemingly finished, though I'm sure I will get an angry civil servant at my door in a few days demanding to know why I've filled in the National Insurance Adjustment Form instead of the Insurance National Adjustment Form.

4.15 - I am walking toward Fushimi, the business district towards the western end of the city centre. There's a nice cinema here which shows films in English, as well as a few cosy restaurants and bars. Right next to the cinema is a darkly atmospheric and very expensive cocktail bar. It's located on the second floor; when you leave the waiter guides you to the lift, waits until just after the doors have closed, then rushes down to meet you at the first floor and pretends like he hasn't done anything unusual. On the way to the cinema I pop into a convenience store, hand them my internet bills and pay for them in cash, because in Japan you pay for everything in convenience stores and in cash. Milk, bills, Amazon orders, plane tickets you ordered online, everything. The entire country works like a laundering operation.

5.00 - I'm a little early for the film, so I sit in the cinema's restaurant and drink jasmine tea, enjoying the fact that price-gouging is considerably rarer in Japan (except, for some reason, with fruit). Tokyo can certainly be expensive in certain ways but Nagoya seems cheaper than the major cities of Southern England. I ask a staff member if I can take my drink into the cinema, feeling a warm glow of pride at speaking effortless Japanese to him, followed immediately by the hot glow of stupidity because of course you can take drinks into a bloody cinema.

The film, by the way, is Frank, a British/Irish semi-fictional film about an eccentric avant-garde band led by a man wearing a big papier mâché head.

8.20 - I'm out of the cinema and have gone for dinner at the Italian restaurant just under my flat, which is good because it's always nice to have a familiar toilet within a 50-metre radius. (What? It's just nice, is all I'm saying.) I really enjoyed the film but my thoughts on it are pretty boring so I won't bother to review it, just to recommend it. After dinner I go home and potter about until bedtime...

...and that's a typical Thursday, more or less. I hope this gave some fascinating insight into what I do when no-one wants to invite me to an erotic party or pay me lots of money to appear on Japanese television.