Cherry Blossom Adventures

While mine won`t be as entertaining as Steph`s…I have decided to write about my garbage distress…unlike her`s mine doesn`t end with hot garbage men or me in little shorts and a see through top!

In Japan, well at least where I live, the garbage system is way to complicated for a simple foreigner to understand. I have instructions on my walls in English and Japanese ( I used to have only English but then the bf moved in and he kept making mistakes so I had to get a Japanese copy from the building manager…He was putting clean paper and plastic together…WHICH IS JUST NOT DONE!)

Firstly there are three coloured bags. Oh and garbage is taken out everyday Monday through Friday.

Monday is burnable rubbish. Green bags.

Tuesday is non-burnable rubbish. Also green bags.

Wednesday is plastic, separated into two bags. Clear bags. (One has clean, washed plastic, the other has plastic pet bottles with labels and lids removed…the labels and lids go in the other plastic bag.

Thursday is burnable rubbish again. Green bags.

Friday is paper (clean only), glass (bottles etc must have caps and labels removed), cans (washed) and dangerous garbage (meaning batteries and aerosol cans). All in clear bags except the dangerous garbage which goes into red bag.. The paper must be bundled with red string if it is magazines or boxes. Tape must be removed from boxes…

I live in an apartment that is 25m sq (read: TINY) and half of it is taken up with fricken garbage bins. I have five in total…inside my apartment plus the plastic bottles and non-burnable garbage ( I never have much…) goes onto the floor. Because I don`t have any space for other bins.

Oh by the way all bags have to bought and are pretty damn expensive! The garbage has to go downstairs into the entrance sometime between 9 at night and 9 the next morning. I am quite lucky now, my oya-san (means owner, although she is actually the manager I guess of the building) is not that pedantic about it and I think if people make mistakes she just fixes it (BUT EWWWW…..OTHER PEOPLES GARBAGE) although if it is not in the right bags she usually returns it to the person if she knows who it is or leaves it downstairs with a note on it.

But before, when I lived at the international house when I was university student all hell broke loose when the garbage system for our area changed to the above (By the way the above system is not a japan wide system or even a Tokyo wide system…I can not believe they have different ways of separating garbage in different suburbs but they do!)…before that it was just burnable and non burnable and cans, glass and dangerous garbage was separate. And it was all in the same colour clear bags. Oh and burnable was paper and food and non-burnable was plastic (Now for some strange reason plastic (dirty) is burnable…clean of course must go out with the other plastic on Wednesday!). We had lectures on garbage separation, were given English instructions (the Chinese girl was given Chinese instructions) and I believe there was a couple of powerpoint slide shows. But basically none of us could be bothered. And our oya-san was hellish…SHE WOULD GO THROUGH OUR GARBAGE AND THEN PUT IT BACK IN OUR KITCHENS OR OUTSIDE OUR DOORS IF SHE FOUND SOMETHING WITH OUT NAME ON IT OR SOMETHING TYING IT BACK TO ME or SOMEBODY ELSE.

This is where it got complicated. One guy hated her (the oya-san). And would cut everything up with his name on it tying back to him or leave it and put it into other people`s bins cos he was a lazy fucker who couldn`t be bothered to separate his garbage. HE PUT EVERYTHING TOGETHER. It was a nightmare. She knew it was him but couldn`t prove it. There were letters flying back and forth…Once she even pulled certain things out of the garbage and put them outside his door. It was just gross.

Plus there was 3 or 4 people sharing a kitchen. We were all responsible for our own bedroom rubbish but the kitchen rubbish there was a roster. And none of us ever remembered to do it until it was overflowing and the oya-san would relent and take it out for us. Then leave notes. My biggest pet hate was washing out juice containers then having to cut them up…THAT`S RIGHT….CUT THEM UP.

I believe in recycling. I do. But this is just too much….Especially when you only have such a small space to keep rubbish in your apartment and no big bins in the basement of anything to put it all. If you forget one week your stuck with it…In your apartment…til the next time. (Note: Not all apartments are like this…most big places have basements with big garbage bins)

So next time you think `Oh I don`t want to take out my ONE bag of garbage` or ` God, I don`t want to take out the bin.` think of me…and the fact I have to wake up 15 minutes before I have to just to separate and prepare my garbage for collection!

Ps: Read this for some other interesting points. This is not my area but I too have to do most of the things listed.

pps: I left out the instructions for clothing and shoes and handbags…they don`t all go together but there are different rules for them. Oh and there are special days if you want to throw out fridges, freezes, microwaves etc too.

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Had a hard day…dot points it is.,,

• Turns out when you have an asthma attack while you have a cold and can`t breath through your nose it is very very scary. I haven`t had a full on asthma attack in at least two years and while I was stupid enough to avoid seeing a doctor for the last ten days I have had this CRAPPY cough, I didn`t think it would get this bad. But a trip to the hospital, an hour on the nebulizer machine and two hours with a drip left me feeling like I had been hit by a truck as good as new almost.
• Oh and now I have five different assorted drugs to occupy myself with for the next couple of weeks. Very cool looking asthma inhaler…but unfortunately also have the very crappy powder type drugs that Japanese doctors are always handing out. Your supposed to be on of the most technically advanced nations in the world…CAN`t YOU PUT IT IN TABLET OR CAPSULE FORM (so that I am not forced to choke down vile powder that sticks in your throat as you imagine powder would. But at least you got the inhaler to taste like nothing, and three tablets, so at least it is not ALL in disgusting powder form.
• Is it sad that when I couldn`t open a jar of sauce tonight that I googled `how to open hard to open jars` because after 20 minutes of trying I was exhausted and needed to nap. In case your wondering you should knock it with a blunt object, of hold it with a sponge that has a hard side….NEITHER OF THESE WORKED THOUGH! Eventually (after nap) I tried again and it popped open.
• Got home early (after hospital visit….I kind of had to leave work in the middle of the day and walk to the hospital cos I thought I was dying…since I couldn`t breath and all that) and watched `The holiday`. Great movie! Light weight but a nice watch (Can you say a nice watch…You can say a nice read so I am guessing it is ok)
• Speaking of books, the books I ordered from amazon arrived today. I love books.
• How did i miss what a cool band Eskimo Joe was when they were popular like 10 years ago or whenever it was.
• Loving Google reader. In case anyone is wondering, Alaska had a lot of earthquakes today.
• Is cous cous like one of the best foods ever? My favourite part…It doesn`t come in a stupid hard to open jar.
• Is it bad that I have favourite kids that I work with? It worries me because what if I have kids and I like one of them better than the other. I would feel so bad if that happened. I have two favourites at school. I love them all, of course, but these two are my favourite (In fact the one that say`s I`m toilet when she needs to use the bathroom and the one that wants to grow up to be a robot (can`t be assed linking…see post below) are my favourites! Other teachers out there have favourites? I am guessing it is normal, but doesn`t stop me from worrying I will favour one of my own kids over the other.
• On the 24th of this month I will be hosting a hanami party! There is going to be a surprise party joining us too, but more details on that later. So excited that cherry blossom season is starting again. Best time of the year without a doubt!
• I think I have my blogging mojo back. I went though a phase were I stopped checking blogs, and stopped writing my own, but am definitely getting back into it and tuning out a couple posts a week again. Do not be surprised if from here on in though they are all meme`s!! hehe. Nah, just kidding…I might through in some photos too!
• Shun is still not home from work at it is after 10…I hate it when he actually has to work hard. Is that bad of me? hehe.
• Why are the word mojo and googled not in the spell check dictionary. They are SOOOOOOO words!

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Last weekend on Sunday I had the worst hangover I have had in over a year. The one before that been the night after my 21st birthday. Although my worst hangover ever …happened at a campsite (and unfortunately in a car ride down a windy mountain) in Saitama prefecture, Japan aged 19. James would agree that he also had the worst hangover ever that day also….It is really bad when you don`t have a proper toilet to throw up in…and worse still when the bathrooms have spiders! Actually out of the 20 of us camping together that weekend I think more than a few of us walked away feeling a bit worse for wear. It is never good to start drinking at 2pm and continue to till 5am then have to wake up at 8am to head back to Tokyo.

Anyway, no matter how sick I wake up the next day the next weekend I am always jumping back on the horse (so to speak) and having something delicious to drink. I am not saying I wake up every weekend with a hangover, with age I have actually gotten more of a handle on the `moderation is key` motto that my mother was always going on about. But sometimes I slip, or sometimes I go to bed feeling fine and still wake up feeling like I am dying. What`s with that?

AM I STUPID?

Is it just me, or is this a lesson people never seem to learn. I am sipping a glass of Aussie sparkling wine (good old Jacob`s Creek) as I write this thinking `What am I doing`….I don`t have a big night planned. Just dinner with some friends so the chances of me having a hangover tomorrow are near impossible but that said, who knows what the night will bring.

Despite the hangovers I have never given up on my favourites. Wine and Vodka. No matter how sick I am the next day the next weekend I will be back drinking one of the two….;Yet I hear all these stories of people that can`t stand the smell of certain booze due to a bad experience. Why hasn`t this happened to me? One friend suggested it was because I haven`t gotten sick enough off them, but I beg to differ.

Ok everyone, share your hangover cures. Is there really such a thing? There are a lot of theories but do any of them work?? I hate hangovers, and I doubt anyone out there is going to say they love them, but I mean I REALLY hate them. But not enough to give up drinking. I guess I am stupid.

People that do not get hangovers should not comment, because it will just piss me off!

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• I saw a dog the other day wearing earmuffs…It was wrong.
• I just chipped my front tooth, it is tiny, and Shun swears he can`t see it but I can. Now I have two chipped teeth…I don`t know how you fix things like that. Does the dentist file them?
• Mothers that think their children are perfect annoy me. For example if your child bullies another child and you tell both sets of parents about the problem you do not expect the mother of the bully to ring the owner of the school and complain about why we spoke to her daughter about bullying. Well, silly mummy, when your child says ` NO (followed by other child`s name)` repeatedly and `Your drawing is bad` for no apparent reason then we have to do something.Sure they are five, but it is still bullying, and we did not use that word by the way, but we felt we should explain to the girl in question why she shouldn`t say things like that and why we are all friends at school. When we explained to the mother she said she understood and that was ok, but then she rang the owner to complain saying that her daughter had said she hadn`t done the things we said. Yet all three of us teachers saw it. (By the way I am in no way in trouble over this, our native japanese speaker teacher did. I am just complaining that it is unfair and that parents need to realize that sometimes their children are going to do wrong!)
• Getting staples out of your head doesn`t hurt nearly as much as getting them put in.
• My birthday is coming up and I am really looking forward to it. Usually I am not a huge fan of b`days but I am organizing to have all my friends meet up for dinner and drinks and I can tell it will be a good night out!!
• I have finally lose some weight, only a couple of kilo`s but at least it is starting to come off now. YAY!
• There is a fish restaurant called kaikaya by the sea in Shibuya…If you are in Tokyo, and like seafood then you must go there. Fantastic!!!
• I had more observations but I forgot them…I should really keep a journal.

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I have posted consecutively over the last couple of days and have decided I don’t want to let the streak end just yet. Problem is was home all day so nothing but study and a bit of internet to keep me busy and trust me nobody wants to hear about that.

Yesterday on the other hand…apart from enjoying Ray Charles in Starbucks, I managed to do all my Christmas shopping for Shun and go to a cooking class and make Christmas cake with Suzy. I am unsure as to whether Shumpei ever reads my blog so I can not tell you what I got him…I shopped so early because yesterday I also bought Christmas lights on sale and a very small Christmas tree (as in 1 foot big) and wrapped his presents before he got home from work and put them under the little tree (which lights up)…I am teaching him about Christmas gradually. It is a little hard though because he has not grown up with it…

Christmas here is a time for couples and friends while New Years is a time for family where as in Australia and I think in most Western countries, it is the opposite. We will be going back to his parents place probably on the 31st for two nights but we will be at the apartment for Christmas.

In the two weeks leading up to Christmas we are going to do christmassy type things like go listen to carols or go see the lights at Tokyo station…maybe even some ice-skating (OK that is not Australian Christmas but I always imagined in Europe at Christmas time they go ice-skating) maybe even go see Santa. I am not sure really what goes on in Tokyo at Christmas time though so will have to do some research.

I will post a photo of our tiny Christmas tree another time. Oh and the little decorated cake I made with Suzy…It is nice to go out for lunch or coffee with friends but it was also really great yesterday to do something different like a cooking class…Plus it was free!! So thanks to Suzy for inviting me!!

PS: I was going to write a post about how I cut open my finger while making dinner and maybe take a photo and post it but to tell you the truth all the blood freaks me out even so I decided against it. But yeah I sliced through the top of my thumb while making dinner and couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. It has stopped now and is covered in three band-aids…It bloody hurts too!

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Is there no better way to start a post than with a photo of a giant cupie doll? There are cupie dolls everywhere in Japan…well that isn’t entirely true but they are gaining popularity which would explain this giant one I saw in a shop window in Shimokitazawa a couple of weeks ago when I was spending the day with Cat & Mai. Isn’t it huge??? It kind of freaks me out…Especially because it is without clothes…

Tomorrow is a public holiday in Japan so Shumpei will be home but he is going to soccer. I am thinking I might go watch but there is probably a lot of other stuff I could be doing at home instead. For example studying, looking for a job and updating my resume as well as writing Christmas cards and re-installing the programs on my computer I haven’t gotten around to yet…Maybe I should flip a coin.

I got to go to Karaoke after I said I wished i wanted to go a couple of weeks back and then I found cadbury chocolate at the international food shop when I went to buy pesto! All my wishes came true!!! Well not all of them but those couple I wrote down did…So I am going to try it again and see what happens. I really want to pass my exam which is in less than two weeks and I want to lose lots of weight and I also want to find a job that starts before January or if it has to start in January then I hope it pays me lots of money! There, now I have gotten them out in blog world, then they should definitely come true!

Am slightly pissed off at the moment because I have put on weight…I am the heaviest I have EVER been in my life…and it just sort of crept up on me. And today when I got up and went to the gym (yes the one only 50m from my apartment) I was angry when I arrived because it was closed….I went yesterday and I thought this morning ” Yep, I’ll get up, go the gym then come home and study” but nope the gym had to be closed today. I will try to be enthusiastic tomorrow when I wake up and go then instead…

I need some dinner ideas that do not involve an oven but are actually healthy…Tonight we had beef and vegetable stir-fry with rice…But I need other ideas. There is only so much stir fry you can eat…and curry is not healthy so I have to stop making that all the time.

What does everyone do to have to motivate themselves to do the stuff they must do? For example losing weight and studying… Please tell me all your hints!!!

And here is some photos of the last couple of weeks while I was internetless…I finally got around to uploading them today to flickr…I am out of 365 days…When I lost the computer and had no way to upload I continued to take photos for about 5 days and then I just gave up…I might start up again another time but for now I have stopped…I was getting sick of looking at myself!! Click on the photos for bigger pictures and try to forget about the fact that I had nothing interesting to write about above!!

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No not chicken…chikan…

Well yesterday I apoligised for having nothing interesting to write about and then this morning I was touched up on the train (To tell you the truth I would of rathered have a boring day instead of this). I have met with a few weirdos while in Japan, especially on trains, or late at night you might come across a couple of drunk salary men making comments about you but never anything as bold as today. And I have never felt physically worried or scared over anything like this before…

Yamanote-sen is one of the busiest train lines in Tokyo especially early in the morning. Any Aussies out there remember the TV ad where John Eels (I think?) the footballer was seen pushing all those Japanese people onto the train. Well that job actually exists and while you don’t see it every day the train was like that this morning, and when I hopped on at Shinjuku we were all smushed in like sardines. To tell you the truth I am kind of used to that part…

Well a middle aged man, standing quite close to me, kept looking at his watch, and each time would graze my breast. At first I thought it was kind of an accident until he put his hand under my sweater. I looked at him, kind of giving him a death stare but it was impossible to move and I didn’t want to say anything in case it really had just been an accident. Next stop, I try to move away but instead get pushed up against a wall and the guy kind of follows me and then in between that stop and the next one he did it again. I looked at him again and said STOP IT (in japanese) and then by this stage had a little more room so tried to move away a little so that my shoulder was near his chest instead of us facing straight on. Well I honestly thought that would be the end of it but nope…then he groped my bum. By this stage I was so shocked that he had been so bold, especially after I had asked him to stop (One other guy touch my breast once and I grabbed his hand and told him to stop and he ran away and got off the next stop). When this sort of thing happens I have always been told to say “CHIKAN” which mean groper, grab them and pull them off the next stop, because usually there are station hands at almost each train door exit. But I was so shocked I didn’t do any of those things, and then my stop came and he actually had the nerve to grin at me. I felt disgusted. I have heard a lot about this, and I was surprised that I did not act in a different way. I had always thought that if saying stop did not work that I would be the first to yell chikan and cause a scene. But instead I got off my stop and was actually worried that he might of gotten off and followed me…I kind of felt sick….

The girl next to me, saw what was going on, and turned away. I do not know if anybody else noticed.

They are common on busy trains…especially the chou-sen, yamanote-sen and the one that goes to Saitama (saikyo sen?)…usually they are business man in their 50’s dressed in suits and run away or get off as soon as you say something or try to alert somebody else (This is what I have heard, and also talked about with my teachers today) and in recent years there has been an increase in this sort of thing…especially with men touching junior high school and highschool girls who are less likely to say anything.

I hope tomorrow is a normal day in which nothing interesting happens …even if it means my blog is dull!

Any other foreign women living here in Japan have any tips if I am in this situation again?

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The last couple of days have not been that great.

So sorry for lack of blogging.

A typhoon hit Tokyo Thursday night and continued through Friday. On Friday I took an umbrella from phone and it turned inside out and almost poked my eye out due to the spokes…I proceeded to have two other umbrellas break during the day. Three umbrellas in one day…how is that even possible? (I did see broked umbrellas littered aroudn the streets yesterday though!)

I walked home soaked because I was determined I was not going to buy another umbrella. I have not been able to go for walks/jogs because of the weather. ALthough I did cycle yesterday.

I think Friday put me in a bad mood for yesterday and I was just grumpy all day. Now I am back at Shumpei`s parents house and his brothers wedding is tomorrow and well I am nervous because it is not normal for GIRLFRIENDS to go to this sort of thing and I know his mum would prefer if we pretended we were engaged but I won`t do it. I am sure by the end of day my brain will have exploded due to an overload of Japanese….

It is almost midday so I should probably wake Shun up….

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I took the below from some kind of law thing in English. I can not beleive the guy that killed those two children will probably only get 5 years in jail…

Shouldn’t it be manslaughter?

Professional Negligence: Under Japanese law, every licensed motor vehicle operator is a

professional driver. Therefore, drivers must exercise an extremely high degree of care. Drivers

must, in effect prove that there was no way they could have avoided the accident or injury. If you

are found guilty of professional negligence, the maximum punishment is five years in prison or a

fine of not more than ¥500,000.

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Well, after such a great weekend i guess something had to go wrong.

Last week i finally received Japanese health insurance. Because of my visa, and various other things i couldn’t get it until then (couldn’t get private because they won’t cover existing conditions, ie asthma). So my visa got extended, i picked it up, took off work the next day and went to get health insurance.

No problem, filled in the forms, told me it was all fine, gave me the stuff (including the card to take to the doctors when you go) and thought YAY. I was so happy…..it was the start of a great weekend. That was Friday. As you can see from my previous post the rest of my weekend was fab…

Tuesday morning, a phonecall came about 10am, woke us both up (bit of a problem first up since Shumpei actually starts work at 10 and we hadnt’t even woken up yet) and it was the town hall saying they had made a mistake and they shouldn’t have given me health insurance.

dude on phone: Hello, this is so and so from the town hall. I am very sorry but we made a mistake and you can not receive Japanese health insurance.

me (groggily): what?

dude on phone: repeated his lines

me: What? You can’t take away my health insurance, you approved it last week, gave me all the stuff and now your saying i am no longer covered? I asked you on the day if that was all, and you said no problems

dude on phone: again i am very sorry, but your visa is not the right one to get health insurance

me: yeah, so that is why i extended it for you?

dude on phone: well yes but i am sorry

I handed the phone to shumpei and said “some crazy dude saying they are taking away my health insurance”

shumpei: hello, yes….yes…yes….ok….yes….i understand

And then he hung up.

I was like “why the hell didn’t you say anything? They can’t take away my health insurance”

and shumpei tried to explain that they had taken it away because of my visa etc…he didn’t exactly understand why either.

I was so pissed off, just because well, i can’t beleive they gave it to me and then decided i couldn’t have it anymore. I didn’t know you could just take away something like that? So i was a mess, cos well i am always getting sick or hurt and basically i need health insurance. I spent most of the day just been pissed off with the whole thing…..poor shumpei was 3 hours late for work and didn’t get home til after midnight that night. Apparently unless i get a new visa, or a letter from a company stating i will be working for them for at least a year then i can’t get health insurance……wish they had told me this before. I know other people have gotten it too by extending their visas…..Such a mess!

Follow on to Wednesday. Actually yesterday was a good day, i had work, got a lot done, had lunch with work mates (even if one of the waitresses was a zombie the food was still good) and then last night was the monthly Girls Night Out in Roppongi for Being A Broad which is where i work. We had organized for a guy to come and read palms and do numerology readings, which was a lot of fun. The night ended late and i was last there, and i was worried about catching my last train (which was going to be in 15 minutes) and i said good bye to the palm reader, everyone else had left earlier and i had helped him pack up. I walked outside Paddy Foleys Bar (where the event is) turned right towards my station. In Roppongi, especially late at night there are a lot of guys, mainly black men, trying to get you to come into their bars and clubs and if your a foreign woman by your self they tend to come up to you and ask all these questions, try to get you to come into their bar and i try my best to ignore them. Cos it is really the only time i feel kind of unsafe walking around in Japan is at night, alone in Roppongi. But i was trying to walk fast, to catch my last train, while taking this guys card so he’d leave me alone and i walked onto a side street.

And BANG a TAXI HIT ME It was my own fault for not paying attention and rushing, but i was so shocked. He clipped the left side of my body, so my left knee and left hand are a bit banged up, but thankfully nothing broken (well i don’t think so……can’t go to the stupid doctor without health insurance cos it would be too expensive). I was in shock, the black guy wanted me to still come in his club so he could “help me” and i just wanted to get out of there. So i walked away and said i was fine. 20 metres down the road i was ringing shumpei in a panic, and i couldn’t tell him what was wrong cos i was in shock and didn’t know how to say i was hit by a car.

I got home safely, (just made my train) today my leg is quite sore, and my muscles ache but i am actually ok. It could of been a lot worse….so im lucky really.

So so far this week hasn’t gotten off to a great start…thankfully tomorrow is Friday and then it is the weekend…

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