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 ...