Five things I like to do in Japanese winter

1) Put off morning showers

Being in the shower is okay. Being not in the shower is okay. But it's getting to the point in our increasingly chilly flat when the in-between stages - the wasteland between in-shower and having-had-a-shower - are unquestionably the worst part of any day. Piles of thermal vests, jumpers, blankets and furry pyjamas are strategically placed at the bathroom door, piles that I can dive straight into at the end of the shower in order to minimise wet-and-cold-time. Speaking of:

2) Blankets

Wandering around the flat huddled in a blanket-cape and moaning softly like a lost ghost is one of my favourite winter staples. One blanket for each of us is the usual. Two blankets is a selfish luxury reserved for when only one person is in the flat. The first person to gift us two more blankets will get a lot of hugs.

3) Cafés

Why pay for heating when there are buildings that let you be warm for free?

I think you can measure exactly how cold it is by the pinched-skull expression on my face.

A cool thing about the region I live in is the local tradition of "morning service", which is neither a religious thing nor a sexual thing but instead a special deal offered by cafés where you get free toast and a boiled egg if you buy coffee around breakfast-time. Unfortunately winter mornings do not entice me to go out, or indeed do anything much at the moment (see #1 and #2), so I haven't gone for morning service in a while. Instead I like to loiter in cafés in the evenings reading Discworld novels and trying out odd teas whilst secretly regretting not getting hot chocolate instead.

I also like to get cinnamon toast with honey, like the one pictured above. Bread in Japan comes in ridiculously thick slices which are impractical for anything savoury, but work perfectly to balance out sweet foods. Winter is a bastard for making me a reluctant convert to Massive Bread.

4) Leaving half-empty teacups around the house

Drink half a cup of tea in the morning before rushing out the door, leave it on the side. Drink some tea in the bedroom to try and warm up before the uncomfortable move to the living room, leave it on the side. Drink some tea, forget about it, discover it again when it's gone cold, leave it in the sink. Cups cups cups, a traditional winter decoration. Teabag still in to make it look extra-homemade.

5) Fucking everything off

Chores? Nah. Exercise? Nah. Day-trips? Nah.

Nah.

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.

Kids make me sick.

Teaching kids exposes you to a lot of germs.

Teaching kids in a foreign country exposes you to a lot of germs you've never been exposed to before, which in my head basically equates to double germs.

Two months ago a four-year-old coughed directly up my nose and a week later I was swaddled in blankets curled up like a snail-shell on my bathroom floor. This week the SAME child spluttered blithely and without remorse into the blameless air of my classroom, over and over again like an automated snot machine, so now I'm sick again. This week's national holiday was ruined because I needed to stay home with my nausea, and I can't get into a deep sleep so I keep having weird dreams about the mundane things on my bedside table. Wonderful.

Here endeth the lesson: buy your children biohazard suits until they learn to cover their mouths like proper humans.

On appearing stupid on a regular basis.

"No no no", my dentist tells me. It's nine in the morning and I am barely aware of my fingers and toes. I haven't had coffee or breakfast. My head feels like an untuned radio.

He begins to explain in halted English. "This filling" - he points to the diagram he printed out for me at my visit two weeks ago - "is a filling you have. Already."

"Ah. So...I'm not getting a filling today?"

"No filling. No treatment. All is okay. Not problem. Please come back in a half-month."

But that's what you said last time. Here is a diagram of a mouth, with one tooth highlighted saying "filling". Come back in a half-month. Here I am, a half-month later, apparently making myself look like an idiot.

He says something to the receptionist in Japanese. I catch the word "hantoshi" - half a year. I realise he must have made a mistake with his English at the last appointment and told me to come back in two weeks, when he meant six months. I repeat: "Ahhhh, hantoshi! So desu ne! Okay! Arigato, gomen, arigato gozaimaaaaaasu" and hurry out of the clinic backwards, half-bowing as I go, flailing as I change from slippers to outdoor shoes. I just want to get out as soon as possible, rushing out so quickly that the receptionist has to chase me down to give me back my health insurance card. 

I'm too polite to set the dentist straight on his error. And I'm still not sure why he gave me a picture of a filling I already have. It doesn't really matter. As the foreigner, you always look like the stupid one.

***

"Ima", my hairdresser tells me, "なになになになになになに".  His face indicates that he's expecting something from me but I've no idea what. Not a clue what's supposed to happen next. He seems to be indicating that I should stand up - maybe to go over to the sinks? But he's already done the shampoo - or at least expecting me to say or do something. I'm wary of randomly choosing to say yes or no, in case it results in him giving me a massive weave like they do on America's Next Top Model. So I stand up. He looks confused, then seems to make sense of my bizarre decision.

"Ah!". His face clears. "You want bathroom." He points. I don't need to go but obviously I have to go now anyway. I'm at least grateful he gave me a way out of the situation, making me look like I'm just shy to ask about anything toilet-related rather than just clueless about how to operate as a human.

***

These two things happened in the space of two days, yesterday and the day before. It might seem like I'm sharing these stories to make fun of myself, but the truth is I'm sort of proud of them. If I were being melodramatic I'd say they're my battle scars. If there's one thing I can put on my CV after I come back from Japan, it's not language skills or teaching abilities - it's simply the ability to get used to looking stupid. It's a very underrated skill. 

See, I'm a petty person, and I don't like to appear as though I don't know what I'm doing. One of my parents' stories of my early childhood involves me furiously shouting "BY MYSELF!" as they try to help me solve a three-by-three puzzle, batting them away as I try to shove incompatible pieces together over and over again; I'm a bit better at puzzles now but emotionally I'm not sure I've moved on that much. But continually being placed in situations where you can't understand people, don't know the rules and have very little skill in communicating your problems really is one of the best things that can happen to you, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone. Your skin thickens. You brush off embarrassing moments more quickly. You start to be more open about your fallibilities. See, just now I had to Google how to spell "fallibilities" and I was perfectly comfortable telling you that. Maybe I'm just trying to put a positive spin on things, but whenever I feel my gut twist sideways during an awkward miscommunication, I like to think of it not as an embarrassment to be forgotten, but a moment of personal growth.

Tomorrow I have to go to the local government offices to fill out my tax forms. I expect I'll grow a lot.

On tiny plastic bags.

Dear Japan,

It's fine. Really.

I don't need you to put a plastic bag around my fruit. When I picked it up and put it in my basket, I chose not to bag it for a reason. When I get home I'm going to peel it/wash it/eat the dirt off it like an urchin anyway. It's fine. I promise.

I don't need you to put TWO layers of plastic round my meat and cheese, before you put it in a separate plastic bag. I understand. The juices of animal products are best kept separate from vegetable products, for reasons of safety and out of respect for the four vegans still alive and well in your country. Nonetheless, you're being a smidge excessive. I think the four vegans might agree, before they make the forty-minute trek across town to the one restaurant they know that doesn't put beef chunks in the vegetable soup.

I don't need you to wrap pharmaceutical products in a miniscule plastic bag, and then put the miniscule plastic bag in a paper bag. I don't need you to put feminine hygiene products in a separate bag from all the other pharmaceutical products in case they get tainted with Witch Disease. (N.B.: I also don't need you to get a matronly female clerk to push the young male clerk aside and take over when the feminine hygiene products need to be scanned. It's okay. Really. He will learn.)

I don't need to open a bag of sweets and find every sweet in there individually wrapped. It's okay if I offer someone a sweet and they put their hand in there. If their hand is gross, or they are of an age where their hand is very likely to be gross, I'll shake the bag over their hand until it comes out. We do it all the time back home. I swear it works.

***

I have six different waste disposal bins in my flat. Paper and card, plastic, tins, PET bottles, burnable refuse and non-burnable refuse. "Does this burn?" is the mantra of our household. I have thought more about which materials could be defined as burnable than most chemists and a good deal of serial killers. I do this because obaasan yell at you if you fail to separate burnable and non-burnable refuse properly. Putting recyclable material in non-recycling bins is punishable by staring and pointing, and littering is punishable by catapult. In short, you seem to put a lot of effort into the environment in this area. And the Kyoto Protocol was invented in Kyoto (I guess), so the environment definitely on the agenda. I'm here to tell you, you don't even need to deal with electric cars or whatever. You can fix the environment right now. Just stop putting plastic bags over everything.

It'll be fine. I promise. They're just cluttering up your house and mine; I've got a whole shelf of them in my kitchen. And I can only draw faces on them so many times before I get bored of pretending they're my ghost friends.

Typhoons

A typhoon has come, the second in a week. There was another a couple of months back too. The previous two both spun out into mere gusts that wouldn't bother a moth, but this one seems more serious, and we had a proper man coming round with a loudhailer telling us to stay inside and everything. My phone went off with a special ringtone I didn't know it had, which basically declares a state of emergency and tells you to get your shit together. I am in my flat with the doors and windows shut. I have an emergency bag ready, containing energy bars and flashlights and my external hard drive because what on earth would I do without my Elder Scrolls saves from eight years ago. I took the washing in. I steeled myself.

And it turns out typhoons are really, really boring.

I have to wait here until tomorrow morning. The internet is slow because everyone is in watching students prank cats on Youtube. We forgot to stock up on food, so I can't snack out of boredom and then wonder why my teeth hurt all the time. I poked my boyfriend with a stick and he didn't do anything worth observing. Nothing else to report.

Bored.

Music and castles

I always start posts short and then they grow like tapeworms. So I thought I'd keep this one to a mere threadworm for a change. A couple of weeks back I had a couple of nice, low-key days I thought I might tell you about. I have action-packed posts on Tokyo, Mt. Fuji, sumo, tissues, foot peels, tiny plastic bags and much more waiting in the wings, but we cannot do everything at once.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Inuyama for work. Inuyama is known as the home of the oldest original castle in Japan. 'Original' is a key word here. Despite being stalwart-bordering-on-stubborn when it comes to tradition, Japan has an odd habit of...moving its prized historical buildings about. Castles, temples and shrines get rebuilt and shifted about every now and then, perhaps to evenly distribute the magic all over the country, perhaps just for a laugh. I'm not sure. Whatever it is, any time you pick up a tourist pamphlet for a beautiful piece of architectural wonder, seemingly frozen in time and quietly proud in its longstanding majesty, there'll be something in there about it being moved from some other place on wheels in the 1920s. Like Springfield in that one episode of the Simpsons (the one from the season where you finally stopped watching). 

So Inuyama's quite special. I went there for a festival back in April, which involved blokes in trad clothing heaving giant wooden carts full of children in between sips of Asahi. (You can read about it here, on my gentleman companion's blog.) That time I didn't get to explore much, what with trying not to get crushed by floats, but this month I ended up spending the day there for work reasons, so I took the opportunity to enjoy a little after-school excursion.

Wasn't quite the same without the doom-floats this time, but still perfectly nice.

The old town streets feel calming, and since they lead towards the castle and several shrines, they seem to build a sense of anticipation and purpose within you as you walk along them, like the path towards the final boss in a videogame. At one point I walked past a building with a couple of dozen people hanging round it, looking inside. The door was open and inside were a bunch of people watching a guy with a clipboard telling jokes to a few other people on stage. Haven't got a clue. My bafflement punctured the final-boss effect a bit. A few blocks down, I came across a couple with a giant dog which I was too afraid to take pictures of. Inuyama means "dog mountain", so I can only presume he was the city mascot/security guard. Fortunately the house a couple of doors down had a front yard full of small cats, so the balance of the universe was restored. Great trip so far.

The castle itself was closed, but I didn't mind. I just like looking at them and picturing myself in a big crown. I enjoyed taking time to walk around with no real goal in mind. I also found this rather attractive series of gates, at the end of which was a bunch of love notes written by visitors on wooden pink hearts:

I was too chicken to put my dead-spider handwriting all over one.

Inuyama, there.

Then I just returned to the station, down quiet streets featuring the occasional unexplained steampunk statue:

and went back home. The next day was even nicer - I went to a gig featuring some all-girl pop-punk bands - but I can't think of much to say about that apart from that it was brilliant and fun. (This lot. Also this lot. Recommended.) This was all after a few weeks of being ill and doing nothing with my life so it was good to get back into general being-aliveness again.

That's it really. Coming up, my trip to Tokyo last week, then maybe I might have to face going into my backlog of stupid shit I didn't write about but meant to.