OK, so the last entry was probably pretty gross.  I'm surprised no one emailed or posted a message to tell me I was being inappropriate. Where is my censorship board??

But now I've started getting used to the little things about being here again, like looking for cars coming from the "wrong" way when I want to cross the street, and bowing on the telephone.  I'm starting to revel in the things I like most about Japan.  Things like...

Having your presence acknowledged when you walk into a store, with a bright "irrashaimase!"
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Being a regular customer, when that means shopkeepers treat you with chatty familiarity, coupled with a warm politeness
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The little gifts you get when you open a bank account, or change something about your bank account, or apply for a credit card, or walk by the bank, ...
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The bank machines (see my entry on September 13)
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Convenience factors.  For example, the elevators in my work building.  They chime like a little doorbell about 10 seconds before the elevator arrives, so you know which one it will be (there are 6 or 7, arranged opposite each other in a hallway).  When it comes, a pleasant little chime announces that the doors are about to open.  Also, the carpets between the two rows of elevators are colour coded, so you know which way you want to go (north is blue, south is red). There are even little strips of paint beside the elevators doors on the inside of the elevators, so you don't even have to wait to get to your floor do decide which way you want to turn.
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The smell of leaves burning in the fall
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The little white gloves that taxi drivers, train conductors, crossing guards, movers, etc. wear
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The way sidewalks and subways/trains are extremely blind-person-friendly (we'll ignore the wheelchair issue today)
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Trucks that sell freshly baked (on an open fire) sweet potatoes (haven't seen one yet this year - they are a winter treat - hoping they have them in Tokyo)
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Japanese pickles
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"Genki" drinks - must be experienced to be understood
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Silly ads on TV
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The gods on top of the mountains, and the reverence for same said gods (also temples and shrines)
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The freaky teenagers who hang out in Harajuku on Sundays (pictures to follow)
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Overnight buses that have blankets and tea, with chairs that go far enough back to let you get a good rest - and overnight trains that have actual beds
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Gardens that use space as well as plants and rocks
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Beer vending machines (vending machines in general), and drinking beer legally on the beach
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Scary train drivers - living on the edge (sometimes I feel like I'm a rail surfer on a tsunami)!
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Young bamboo and other various delicous wild vegetables from the mountains
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The smell of tatami on a warm day
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Japanese proverbs

Unbelievable!  October already!!!  I tore September off of my calendar at work today, and was greeted with a glorious fall mountain view, taken in Akita of all places!!  I'll enjoy looking at it this month, especially now that I can't look at Mr. September in my Firemen Calendar anymore (he was my favourite).

Only three more days of abject poverty and then I'll get paid!!!  None too soon, since my poor little Canadian purse has been all but ripped to shreds on the nasty and violently competitive Tokyo subway.  All the horror stories you've heard?  All true, and then some.  I didn't know you could achieve intimate knowledge of so many people all at the same time.  And polite Japanese people?  Don't seem so polite with their elbows thrust in my ribs.

Ah, but "today's topic" is worse - so much worse.

It is considered impolite in Japan (back to the politeness bit) to blow one's nose in public.  It was explained to me once, but I have long since forgotten why.  And so, those myriad of people who have a cold at any given time are left at a loss for something to do with their symptoms.

Back to the train.  Standing there shoved up against the 12 people standing next to me, with the man right behind me coughing directly into the back of my neck, while the man beside him (to my immediate SSW) snorts one of those deep-bodied sounding snorts - you know, the ones that go all the way to the back of their throat, and you know that the next logical step is a big gooey... you get the picture.

Walking through the women's lingerie department of OiOi (department store), watcing the saleslady with her finger up her nose - all the way to the knuckle.  Never been so glad that my foreign attributes don't fit into Japanese support products.  (And why do Japanese women have such a "lack of attributes", you ask?  Because there is no room for them on the trains!)

Hurrying down the street on the way to work, hearing some awful sound really close to me, and seeing the man beside me with a finger blocking one nostril, blowing unmentionable substances out of the other.

The name given in Japanese for the runny stuff is "hana-mizu" ('nose-water'), and for the more solid in nature, "hana-kuso" (excuse my crudeness, but 'nose-shit'... a literal translation, I swear!).

Not only is there an abundance of public display of said substance, but it also is the source of public entertainment!!

There was a TV show on not long ago, where two young men had to stand in boiling hot (no exaggeration - they filled the tank with kettles) water, to the point of injury, holding hands and also rods on either end of the tank - this was supposed to generate some kind of power (Japanese game shows border on the extreme - from the other side).  One of these poor young men was in so much pain that he was crying, and long gobs of hanamizu and hanakuso were hanging out of his nose.  This was considered the most entertaining part of the show, and garnered the most close-ups.

I love Japan, really, I do, but sometimes I just gotta disagree ...

I have been pretty busy lately catching up with emails and working really hard, so I haven't had much time to work on writing more journal entries this week (oh, I have so much planned!).

But I just wanted to express my sadness at Canada losing one of its great figures in history.

Pierre Trudeau has been one of my heroes for as long as I can remember.  Love him or hate him, he stuck to his guns and took no crap from anyone.  He was a great example, and I admired him.  (I, for one,  am in the "love him" crowd.)

I'm sure the country is in shock and mourning.  Me too.

Some of you may know that I used to "keep company" with a certain someone when I lived in Akita.  We were together for upwards of two years, although we never really became very serious.

One of the main reasons we never became serious was that he was an incurable workaholic.  He would aver loudly that he was going to retire when he was 40 (and split his time between California and Hawaii), and hire another pharmacist to run his stores for him. 

He figured it would take at least two years to properly train someone.  As his 39th birthday approached and there was still no apprentice on the horizon, I knew he would never leave his beloved businesses!  And I did not want to be serious about a man who would keep me stuck in Akita indefinitely (I love the place, but my career options would be limited to 'ESL teacher' or 'housewife' - and neither of these particularly interest me).

When I left the country, I left him a note.  Oh, the Kharmic punishment I have suffered since!!!!!!!!!!!  (You all know who you are!)

But BOY, was I wrong about him!!!  On my trip to Akita last week, my best friend there informed me that not long after I left, my boyfriend's shop in Honjo closed down (I'm not sure about the other two shops because they are (were?) in different towns), and he mysteriously disappeared off the face of the earth without a word to anyone. 

At roughly the same time, a friend of ours (in fact, the one who introduced us) who owned a local pub also disappeared.  The talk around town is that they took off to Hawaii, since their drunken bravado-speech was usually to that effect. 

So, it turns out that if I'd stayed with him, I'd be living in Hawaii now (and maybe California, too).  Instead, I left, and here I am living in Japan. 

Does it GET any WEIRDER than this??!!

 (it's my birthday!)

The weekend was pretty uneventful - except for the box of Shreddies that came in the mail - Thanks Jean!!!  You're the BEST!!!!!!!!!!

Some of my colleagues took me out to lunch today for my birthday - we went to a really nice Thai restaurant in another neighbourhood - most delicious, and nice to go somewhere not directly around the office (we usually go somewhere within a five-minute walk).  Hope everyone has a good time at the party at Gabby's!!  Have a couple for me!!


Story of the day: "THE END OF THE MUTINY"

You may remember the directive governing the dress of associates here, and the ensuing mutiny.

There is an expression in Japan:  "The nail that sticks out gets pounded down".  Hmmm...

The associates who followed the directive "to the letter" and wore polo shirts have been coming into work since then in the most formal of business attire.  I can only guess that they were quite seriously reprimanded.

The rest of the office has slowly slipped back to normal... the ties have slowly slipped off and the t-shirts are slowly coming back.  The mutineers, however, are being closely watched.

I suppose there's something to be said for quiet resistance.

The weekly firm lunch resumed today, after us having had a holdiay weekend last Friday.  I have discovered the way to avoid the "what have I eaten!!" crisis.  I showed up a couple of minutes late today, after the waiter had already come around to tell us what we would be eating.  When my plate of mystery meat (and a yummy medley of wild mushrooms) arrived in front of me, I merely neglected to ask what it was.  Problem solved.  (I think it may have been pigeon today, but I have no confirmation, so I'm blisfully ignorant.)

Story of the day: "FUSHIGI OJI-SAN"

A strange thing happened to me last night.  But there is a bit of background I need to explain first.  Akita (prefecture), where I used to live, is known in Japan for its beautiful women.  (They attribute this to pure water and the resulting rice.)  They are called "Akita Bijin" (pronounced BEE-jean - meaning 'beautiful person').  Similarly, Kyuushuu (island, in the far west of Japan) is known for its hearty, strong men, called "Kyuushuu Danji".  There are probably other areas with similar things, that I'm just not aware of.

Last night I went to a most excellent opera recital that was organized to raise funds for street children in Romania.  The star of the evening was a diva from Romania - absolutely amazing!!  (Former Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata was there & gave a little speech at the end, too.)  One of the partners (Hamada sensei, the Hamada in 'Hamada & Matsumoto') of my firm is a patron of the event, so he invited me to go, and assigned his secretary to get me there safely.  She is a lovely, kind individual, and I enjoyed this outing immensely.

As Sato-san and I walked out of the subway station where the recital was, there was an old man (oji-san) sitting on a bicycle across the sidewalk from us.  He reached his hand out towards Sato-san, and repeated "Kyuushuu Danji" 3 or 4 times.  Then he reached towards me and said "Akita Bijin!" and pedaled off.

I though it was really weird, since I do NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, look like I'm from Akita (even though all of my colleagues here refer to it as my 'hometown'), let alone like an Akita Bijin.  But somehow... he knew I was "from" there.  Oooooo...

And Sato-san, although NOT by any stretch of the imagination a Danji (burly guy), IS from Kyuushuu. 

Last night I stayed at work really late. (Yech)  I will tonight, too (maybe 11:30 again).

The neat thing about that is I had dinner with some of the associates here.  I usually have lunch with them, but dinner is a decidedly less formal affair (not that lunch is formal, just that dinner has more camraderie - because we're all here so late).

On Monday, a directive came down from the powers that be that there will be a new associate dress code.  It seems we have been disappointing the upper echelon with our ragtag appearance.  So the hammer fell, and the new code requires the men to wear shirts with collars all the time (no more T-shirts!).  The women, I'm sure, are subjected some kind of rules, too, but no-one ever really knows how to quantify business dress standards for women (as I sit here in my cotton pants and cotton cardigan).

This directive has been the talk of the firm this week, and yesterday, the mutiny started.  I found out about it at dinner.

A couple of the young male associates were wearing Polo shirts. 

After all, "they're shirts, and they have collars!!" (Ah, the subversives!)

Ah, social activism is alive and well in downtown Tokyo.

Ah, the fun never stops!

Akita was fun this weekend... three days of seeing old friends and reacquainting myself with an area of the world that I am truly in love with (notwithstanding that I have a love/hate relationship with this country)... there are some people that I know up there that are absolutely amazing, and will be wonderful friends for the rest of my life.

I found out that three of my girlfriends (two who live in Akita and one who lives in Tokyo) opened a bank account when I left Japan four years ago, and they have faithfully been putting in 1,000 yen (about $13) a month (each) since then, to save up for plane tickets to come and visit me in Canada someday.  They're about halfway there now... so I know I'll see them there in about four or five years.

I was also given an instruction video for a new martial art that combines five martial arts, four of which I have studied, and three of which I have black belts in.  I was pleasantly surprised to find my name in the credits as one of the six founding instructors.

NOW, for the COCKROACHES...

Woke up this morning to the sound of construction going on in the house beside me.  I've learned on the Internet since then that roaches are sensitive to vibration (they don't like it), so this particular roach I'm about to talk about probably was escaping the noise next door.

I went downstairs and had breakfast, then came back up to get dressed for work.  And what was there ON MY WALL, IN MY ROOM, but a GIANT roach, about 2-1/2 inches long (I'm not exaggerating, I swear!)... It probably came in through the (soon-to-be non-existent) hole in the wall that was put there to string an airconditioner hose through (but there's no airconditioner there).  Jacob had to kill it with a big stick, and it was awful, legs popping off, body still moving, parts and other squishy stuff stuck on the wall.  I'm glad Jacob & I share the house, because I really don't think I could have done that myself.  Actually, I know I couldn't.

Doubt I'll sleep tonight.

Ah, the holiday weekend is upon us (those of us here in Japan, that is)!  But we didn't get Labour Day weekend, so we're just catching up.  I'm going away tonight - catching the night bus up to Akita (where I used to live) - it leaves Shinjuku station (15 minute walk plus 5 minute train ride from my house) at 10:10 tonight, and gets into Akita at 6:20 tomorrow morning.  I'll be visiting some of my old Martial Arts friends.  This usually means we'll get drunk and then throw each other around - could be fun!

I just found out that the big orange contraption I can see a couple of blocks away from my office window is none other than the "world-famous" Tokyo Tower.  Basically, it's a copy of the Eiffel Tower that Japan decided to put up, to compete with France.  But it's ORANGE!!!

Today, I paid the rent for my house. 

Sound exciting?

No?

The cool thing was the way I did it.  Here, there are really funky machines that you can use to deposit money in other peoples' bank accounts (in my case, my landlord's).  The nice "greeting man" in the bank helped me do this, since I am illiterate.

The first thing you do is approach a big scary bank-machine-like monstrosity (actually, it comes up to about my hip).  The screen lights up, and asks you to pick one of two things to do.  I touched the second thing, because the nice guy assured me that that's what I wanted to do.

Then, the Japanese syllabary pops up, and you pick the first syllable of the name of the bank where the depositee has an account (you can pick any bank at all - not just the one you're in).   I picked 'fu'.  Then a list of all the banks that start with 'fu' appeared, and I picked "Fuji Bank" (this was not random, I tells ya, that's where my landlord has his account!)

Again, the syllabary pops up, and you pick the first syllable of the location of the branch you want... blah blah blah, you get the picture.  Then when numbers come up you punch in the account number (after telling the machine if the account is "regular" or "something else" (??)).  Then the syllabary comes up again, and you have to punch in your whole name!!

Incidentally, my name here is ra-ru-fu  a-ri-so-n.  Suddenly my last name is my first ('coz they do it backwards here), and it has three syllables instead of one.

The Japanese syllabary is set up in a predictable order, but it still takes me a long time to peck out my name on the keyboard. Mostly because I almost never have to deal with syllabaric order (if I have to look something up in the dictionary, I usually don't bother - although I did go to the trouble to look up Pizza Hut in the phone book).

Back to my story.  After the 20 minutes it took to punch in my name, I then had to punch in how much money I was going to put into my landlord's bank account (luckily, numerical order is, in general, the same all over the world).  Then I had to select whether I wanted it to go "today" or "some other time" (??).  The guy told me that it was the same price either way, so I figured "today" was just as good as "some other day".  Especially since the rent was actually due on August 28.

Then all the information popped up on the screen that I'd already given it, plus the fee they were going to suck out of me (630 yen) and the name of the account-holder (aka "my landord") of the account into which the money was going.  I picked the yellow box on the screen, which the nice guy assured me meant "OK" (good thing, 'coz I'd been doing that all along, after punching in stuff). 

Then, a trap door slid open and waited patiently till I slipped the bills into the little cubby it had been covering.  I asked the guy how I could pay the fee, and he pointed to another trap door that would take coins, as it was opening.  As it turned out, I didn't have enough coins on me to cover the fee, and the bills trap door had already closed.  But, it found me out, and opened again, waiting for the rest of the money.

So, I dropped in 1.000 yen, and a couple of seconds later, the coin trap door opened... and lying on the bottom of it was my change!  And then another opening spat out my receipt. 

This is one funky place!

The weekend was fairly uneventful... As much as it sucks to be anywhere without money, it sucks to be in Tokyo even more.  My first payday is October 5... until then, I'm stuck doing nothing fun.

So I will finally talk about why I like to call this the "Cockroach Chronicles" (just for you, Rebecca!!).

As many of you know, I have a pathological fear of roaches.  I'm not sure why - I guess that's why it's pathological.   I remember one time walking down the street in Venezuela (in sandals) and seeing something on the sidewalk beside my foot.  I jumped back in terror, thinking it was a cockroach, but when I looked again I was relieved to see it was only a scorpion.  Alas, this is the strength of my aversion to the little suckers.

I know that it's very hard to find a place to live without cockroaches in a city like Tokyo, so I figured I would have to live with them.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the house we rented was rather roach-free.  BUT, our real estate agent decided he wanted to lend us a cooking range (in Japan, this means a little 2-burner gas powered beast).  As with charity anywhere, the recipient often has no choice in the matter, and should be gosh-darned pleased to get what they're given.  This is (she says bitterly) pretty much the attitude a lot of Japanese people have towards foreigners.  So, Jacob (my roomie) and I were the "grateful" recipients of this ancient, filthy appliance, that came complete with its own little family of - you guessed it!  No more roach-free home for Allison!!

Eventually, we had enough of living in fear (me with my fear, and Jacob with my fear), so we bug-bombed the downstairs of the house.  Jacob then took the offending stove apart and cleaned it thoroughly, and I breathed a provisional sigh of relief (knowing full well that they may be hiding elsewhere, having had a couple of weeks to spread out).

And then, the incident happened!  Here, no one is really safe from the migration of just about anything, due to the close proximity of houses to one another (my back yard is exactly 1 foot across, but I have a tree!).  As I was leaving for work one morning last week, I picked up my umbrella that was leaning against the wall in my "genkan" (entranceway) so I could have some measly protection from the downpour that was happening at the time.  I stepped outside, opened the umbrella, and out fell a GIANT roach!!  It sat there for a couple of seconds, then trotted off across the street to terrorize the neighbours.  I prefer to think it came in from outside, rather than it coming out from inside the walls. 

It's been a week since then, and no further incidents.  I now keep my umbrella tightly closed and up on a shelf.  And I watch carefully where I step.

Every Friday, the firm I work for has a "Firm Lunch" at the French restaurant on the 33rd floor of our building.

There is a set lunch that we just get from the restaurant, through an arrangement with them.  The good news is that I get to eat for free every Friday, and meet some people that are really nice.

The bad news?  Well, today I ate rabbit.