Hey, where did April go?

Gah! I hate technology. I spent ages writing a witty, insightful blog entry (well, something like that) only for the computer to eat it. Grr. So, one more time with feeling.
Iain's dad came out for a couple of weeks, and I got to meet the man himself. I met Iain and his dad, Michael, for a couple of beers at Coffee Pub Mango, an oddly named jazz cave near my house. I think we were all nervous and on our best behaviour. Not having had dinner and drinking quickly to compensate for nerves, I ended up getting quite drunk on four beers. Then I went home and made noodles and burnt my tongue and wanted to die at work the following day. I love meeting the parents.
Jen had a huge leaving party that week, so we met up with a crowd of drunken Nova teachers at a bar and it quickly descended into insanity and bad karaoke, with added toxic hangovers for some the following morning.
I had kids training a couple of weeks ago and that was mostly uneventful. Having taught kids for a year, I didn't feel like I learnt much. I met Jo and Thom for a couple of lethal cocktails at Misfits and we staggered onto the last subway at half past eleven. I was ok at Chibiko training (for teaching toddlers) the next day, but judging by their "I hate myself and I want to die" expressions as they sang the Hello Song, I would say that some of the other teachers there hadn't been so careful. They didn't even do the actions. Tsk. The school I work at, Takabata, has lots of kids, so sure enough a couple of days later I had my first kids classes. So far no-one has cried or puked on me, but maybe they're saving it for next week. I did have one kid sneeze on the ball we were playing catch with then wipe his nose on it. Eew. The two other teachers at my school seem nice, Dan and Caroline. I hardly ever see Caroline because we have completely different days off and she works in Kanayama on Saturday.
I've been trying to get to meet more people here (despite Iain's protestation that a boyfriend is all the company a girl needs) but it's difficult. I think last year it was much easier because I was working for such a small company, all the teachers knew each other, lived close together and congregated at the same local. Here there are hundreds of Nova teachers in the city and it's weirdly difficult to meet people outside your flat and your branch school. There was a 'new teachers get together', but that was an odd toe-curling evening and I didn't make any progress. I've replied to a couple of adverts I saw that were looking for people to do language exchanges, so it would be nice to make a Japanese friend or two.
Iain came to Nagoya last Tuesday after he'd dropped his dad off at the airport and we wandered around Kanayama and Asunal (the local shopping centre) until Iain homed in on a huge shop selling an odd mix of cheap CDs. He frequently leafs through my CD collection shaking his head in disbelief at some of my choices, so he began the long process of re-education by giving me a Camera Obscura EP. It's really good. Don't tell him I said that.
I finally managed to buy a bike (I swear the guy who runs the bike shop was shutting up every time he saw me come down the street) and suddenly the city makes sense. I'm actually really close to everything. I can cycle to Nagoya station in about half an hour, Sakae in about 15 minutes, and Osu Cannon (where all the cool kids hang out) in about 5 minutes. I can now stand on a main street and vaguely know where I am without having to get out a map (more or less - I am still pretty rubbish with that kind of thing). I want to see if I can cycle to work, but as my collegue Dan pointed out, that's maybe best kept for a day off. Everyone cycles on the pavement here (very weird), but since the pavements are at least 3 metres wide there's usually enough space for pedestrians and cyclists. They still hate each other, but that was never going to change. I wouldn't like to chance cycling on the roads here, the traffic moves very quickly. It's funny to see business men in suits riding tiny fold-up bikes with mini wheels.
On Monday night a big crowd of us went to Red Rock for Francis' birthday, a rowdy affair that would have involved drinking games had Mitchell been able to count to three. I was knackered, so Iain and I came away at half twelve. It sounds like we got off lightly. Francis woke up the next morning unable to move his leg, and with no idea of what had happened.
Its now Thursday and I'm really tired from sitting out in the sun in the park this afternoon, listening to the wind blowing through the grass and the homeless people snoring and a helicopter overhead. It was the first time I'd been able to laze in the sunshine since last November, so naturally I'm a bit pink now but it was worth it. And then I went to the internet place and wrote a witty and insightful blog entry which the computer ate, and that's us more or less up to date.

Pretty Pictures From Inuyama Festival

Hey, look at this. Isn`t it cool? My very own tiny pixie man, and pretty floats. I really hope this works out. Its difficult trying to work out what to press when blogger page is all in Japanese. Does this button publish or delete everything? Hmm...

Watashi Wa Kososenzai Arerugi Des

Allergies. Gah. Since I came to Japan, I've had the worst excema I've had since I was a kid. My arms are covered in little itchy red bumps, and I'm secretly quite glad that, since Iain's dad is visiting, I'm not seeing Iain much for the next week. It would be pretty nasty, sitting scratching away in class, but everyone else here seems to have excema too. I reckon it must be my old enemy, biological washing powder, so I nip down to the supermarket to get some soft non-bio that won't leave me looking like an extra from a horror film. I wander up and down the supermarket aisles until I realise there are no cleaning products anywhere. How am I going to ask where to find non-bio washing powder? Luckily there is one bag of washing powder beside the counter. I pick it up and say, kososenzai ne? Biological washing powder, right? The girl at the counter nods, and I make a show of putting it back. She natters at me for a bit and I nod, hoping we're still on washing powder and she isn't commenting on how much I smell. The only thing I manage to pick out is 5. Fifth floor? I didn't realise there was a fifth floor. Why put the supermarket in the basement and the cleaning stuff at the other end of the building? I'm sure I must have heard her wrong, but wander up there just in case. A whole floor of cleaning stuff, fantastic. Unfortunately nothing's in English and there no helpful pictures of babies or white packaging to help me tell the soft stuff from the hard stuff like I had with my Babimild in Thailand. I feel quite the moron wandering around the supermarket with a dictionary in one hand and a phrasebook in the other. The best I can do is 'I want to buy washing powder. I'm allergic to biological washing powder' and hope that they will figure out I need them to actually put the stuff in my hand, though the phrasebook might be a pretty good clue.
Eventually a nice lady natters at me in length about a range of products in white bottles, and there's even one that says 'no additives' in English. Hooray, I have managed to get my point across and it only took me half an hour to get what I want. I should just about be able to have a conversation by Christmas.

Time flies when you can`t get a wireless connection in your flat. So, where was I up to? Right. Last Thursday I came into Nagoya to apply for my alien registration card and to get a mobile phone. The alien card took an hour, and the mobile phone also took ages. The guy who sold it to me had spent some time in England and kept dropping in bits of British slang like, "it`s just a couple of quid" which amused me quite a lot. I still find Nagoya incredibly confusing and I can`t find anything, but luckily if you stand and look bewildered someone will eventually take pity on you and help you out.
I got on the train to go back to Inuyama in the evening, but got the completely wrong one. It took another 2 trains and an hour and a half to get to Inuyama and I needed a drink after that. Luckily Iain and Darius were already in the pub having the pants bored off them by a dull American called Ray.
On Friday... what on earth did I do on Friday? I can`t remember. I think it involved loafing around and improving my MarioKart skills.
Saturday was the Inuyama festival. I assume there`s some tradition behind it (unless people did sit around a table and say, "ok... let`s build some enormous 3 storey wooden floats, and put intricate mechanical puppets at the top... and parade them around the street for 2 days. There should be, how many? Thirteen, say? That`s a suitably mysterious number, lets go for that. And everyone pushing the floats should wear the same outfits. All those in favour? Motion passed. Now, on to the coffee morning..."), but I have no idea what the story is behind the whole thing. The streets were lined with food stalls, and it made me oddly homesick for Thailand. We walked around for a while, eating mysterious fried things on sticks and drinking beer. There were lots of small shows going on around the town and we caught live music and dancing and nearly got crushed by huge floats. Photos will go up tomorrow if I can figure out how to do it.
On Sunday it rained horribly so we stayed in, read, and ate comfort food. I went back to Nagoya in the afternoon to meet my flatmate and finally unpack my stuff. My flatmate`s called Lucy and she`s Canadian. Her mum is visiting at the moment so it feels like quite a ful

I made it here in one piece

I`ve been in Japan for 6 days now, and I still can't quite believe I live here. The flight was long and boring, with the traditional delay of the first flight to ensure I could participate in my connecting flight sprint. If I had a quid for every time that happened, I would have a fiver. The man sitting next to me had horrible breath and a nasty cold. He coughed on me a lot. I thought bad things towards him and toyed with slipping a toothbrush into his bag.
Iain met me at the airport, it was so good to see him. I did briefly panic when I was on the plane - what if I don`t like him anymore? Luckily this wasn`t a problem. Mmm, still cute. We went back to Inuyama to dump all　my stuff, collected Jon (Iain`s friend who I haven`t seen for years) and went back to Nagoya. Nova had been quite insistent that I collect my keys as soon as I arrive because it wouldn`t do to be staying in a boy`s flat. Goodness me, no. I phoned the personnel office to confirm when I would be coming in, and they hadn`t sent my keys to Nagoya.
"When can I get my keys?"
"They should be there tomorrow. Sorry about that. Have you got anywhere to stay?"
"I`m staying with a friend."
"Oh right, that`s fine."
Ok then.
We wandered about for a bit and met Thom and had a few beers in Red Rock (I think I`ll be spending a lot of time in there) and headed home early.

On Wednesday I woke up tired from fighting over half a single futon. I`d been wide awake most of the night because it still felt like the afternoon. I hate time differences. We ambled back into Nagoya and dropped off Jon at the station, and I got my keys and information. Still no offical word on where I work, but the guy I spoke to at Lejac thought I was at Takabata. We wandered off to Kanayama and looked around for my flat. The map wasn`t very helpful but we got there in the end. No flatmates were in, so I had a good nose around. Three bedrooms, big kitchen and cozy livingroom. I was delighted to find a cafetiere in the kitchen. Japanese instant coffee tastes like acorns.
We met up with some more of Iain`s friends, Francis, Thom and Jen, and went to the port and the weird fake Italian bit where they do good pizza. They also have gondolas but we resisted. Everyone else got delicious icecream, but Francis mangaged to get the one that tasted of salt. We all tried it and made faces.
In the evening me and Iain went back to Inuyama. I went to the pub with Darius, Iain`s Kiwi flatmate, so not to scare Iain`s timid student who refuses to talk in front of other people. Came back a couple of hours later and discovered the joys of playing MarioKart on the inherited Nintendo. Iain kicked my arse.

Isn't it Tuesday Yet?

It's finally getting closer and I'm getting a real sense of being on my way. My room looks more than ever like a tornado hit it, but I'm fairly confident that come Sunday most of that dreadful mess will squish into my rucksack to someday adorn the floor of my Japanese bedroom. I went to visit my grandparents yesterday who made me promise not to come home for the funeral if they died while I was away. Old people are so cheerful. Apart from making clear their funeral wishes, they were in good spirits. I got some great stories from Granda about the dangers of being a merchant seaman shipping goods to China in the 'fifties (no problem if you don't mind the police boarding your ship and pointing machine guns at you), the best way to outwit Liberian customs officials when you're in your underwear, and why it's a bad idea to hire zombies.
At the moment I'm loading all my CDs onto my new shiny iPod (so pretty) and wondering how I'd forgotten The It Girl by Sleeper was such a good album. I'm trying not to worry about the fact my passport hasn't turned up yet. If it isn't here tomorrow I'm in trouble.
I've got a mad day tomorrow - I'll be pacing the floor waiting for the post in the morning, then I'm going to Aberdeen to return Andy's DVDs and try to sell my old uni books (I swear they've been breeding) and see if anyone will take my shoddy old laptop off my hands. Then I'm going to go out with Lucy in the evening, which is always great fun.
On Saturday I'm going to spend the day running around like a headless hungover chicken trying to pack, then on Sunday I'm spending all day on the train (because I know how to have fun) and I'm staying with Kate (who I used to live with in Bangkok) on Sunday night. She has promised food and wine. I reckon Monday is going to suck: 5 a.m. start with a hangover, flight at 10. It'll all be worth it in the end - after Monday comes Tuesday.

Strategic Leadership

My longsuffering brother has been trying to teach me how to play poker.
"I have... a pair of flushes."
"No you don't."
"Ok. And remind me, which is higher: flush or straight?"
"Flush."
"Right."
We are playing for pasta shells and this is the most I've handled raw pasta since primary 2. I'm fighting the urge to drown it in PVC glue and stick it to a smeary finger painting.
It might also be worth noting that this is now the fifth time my brother has tried to teach me poker. I think it's going the way of cryptic crosswords and bridge, joining my personal Room 101 list of Things I've Spent Hours Trying to Understand But Leave Me With The Feeling I Will Never Get Back The Wasted Time.
My luck improves when we switch to Texas Hold 'Em. I win the hand with 2 pairs and an ace. I rattle the pasta shells across the table. This isn't a bad way to unwind after a day of chronic beaurocracy.

It has been decreed from On High that our department is no longer City Development. We are now Strategic Leadership. This means at the top people can be promoted without having to demote anyone else (because that looks untidy and we want everyone to play nicely). When in doubt, call in the consultants and create a new department. This looks fine on paper but we quickly realise when we start answering the phones that this is a title no-one's bothered to say aloud up to this point.
"Good morning, stateege- strategiclip - city development." We can't answer the phone without laughing, and we can't say 'strategic leadership' without sounding like we've had several tequilas.
Of course, this begs the question of what strategic leadership actually means or does. Leads strategically? How? With a chessboard, sat nav or a piece of string? And if we only have strategic leadership now, this implies that earlier leadership was perhaps lacking strategy (like the Scotland football team). Did we have crap leadership, or barely adequate leadership? Wandering around in circles leadership or watching the clouds leadership?
Questions, questions. Thankfully I don't have to deal with them because I only have two more days of work and I think I can avoid answering the phone until then.

You Will Make a Fine Pair of Mittens, Cat

Dot, our next-door neighbour, dropped in to return a DVD. "Your cat's been in that tree for a while," she commented.
Me, Mum and Malcolm looked at the cat.
"She's fine," I said. The cat sat in a fork in the tree, looking stupid. It does that a lot. To be fair, she does also fall off things a lot and so probably isn't the best cat to sit in thin, whippy branches at the top of a tall flowering cherry tree.
"She's stuck," Mum groaned, watching as a bird landed on the next branch and snickered at the cat. "Go do something."
I went outside and started climbing the tree. The cat eyed me smugly as if to say, you look absurd. I realise this is revenge for the mice.

Biscuit is on a one-cat mission to rid the world of mice. I don't have a problem with cats eating mice (it's what they're there for), but Biscuit doesn't eat the whole mouse. No-one likes finding a mouse head under the table first thing in the morning. It came through the catflap with a mouse the other night, undetered by me yelling, "No! Eat it outside!" and let it run around the kitchen for a while before it escaped into the lobby. Cat chased the mouse under the edge of the front door, and I shut the cat in the livingroom so I could get rid of the mouse. Easy, I thought. I opened the front door and the mouse weaved unsteadily down the pavement, fur sticking out at strange angles and soaked in cat dribble.
I was reading the next morning and heard a faint scrabbling noise. No, more like a mousey nibbling noise, and very nearby. At first I thought it was under the floorboards, but then I realised it was in the room. I picked up Mum's handbag, took it to the back door, and very carefully peered inside. In the front pocket there was a small (entirely different) mouse nibbling a tampon. It had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed. The cat came to see what all the fuss was about, saw the mouse - ah, that's where it went - and leapt at the bag. Tampons spilled all over the step and the mouse tried to escape again. I grabbed the cat in one hand and the mouse in the other, struggling to keep them in my grip. I threw the cat into the kitchen and slammed the door, clapped my hands together to stop the mouse escaping too close to the house and, still in my pajamas, briskly took the mouse to the bottom of the garden. It hid behind a terracotta pot and didn't ask for the rest of its tampon back, which is just as well. The cat had sulked all day and seemed to be planning revenge.

"You're a bloody stupid cat," I told it, wedging my foot against a sturdy branch. The cat hissed at me and wobbled.
"Be careful!" Mum squealed. I think she was talking to the cat.
I tried to pick up the cat. It growled and tried to get its footing in a knot of honeysuckle which bent under the weight. Time for the big guns. I took the secateurs from my back pocket and started pruning the honeysuckle around the cat, who watched me with utter disdain. With enough of the honeysuckle out of the way, I lunged for the yowling cat, scooped her around the belly and dropped her down to Mum.
"Ow! Look at that. Little besom," Mum wiped the scratches on her arm. I half-climbed, half-fell out of the tree. The cat fluffed her voluminous tail at me as if to say, now we are even. She stalked off in the direction of the field, her favourite hunting ground for mice.

Bucking Faltic

Snow wraps horizontally past the window, but it's been doing that a lot recently so I barely pay it any attention. I've had two days off work this week and been sent home early twice. There are some advantages to living in the sticks after all.
I went outside on Friday afternoon and made an experimental snowball. It packed perfectly. Hmm. I rolled the snowball a little. As it got heavier, it sank deeper and grew more quickly. Aha... In five minutes I had a ball of snow three foot high and it seemed a shame to waste it. I called for reinforcements.
"Come in the garden and help me."
"You're making a snowman."
"Of course."
"You're twenty-four."
"So?"
"You're making a snowman!"
"It's a perfectly sensible thing to do. It'll be fun."
"You're only asking because you won't be able to lift the head onto the body."
Damn. "If you help me with the snowman, I'll help you build an igloo."
My brother paused for a moment. "Deal."
The snowman turned into something of a six-foot snow hunk, but the igloo was beset with structural difficulties (I blame flimsy materials) and it sagged in a manner not unlike the Scottish parliament. It lasted a day and collapsed beautifully.
Mum has been away this weekend, so naturally me and my brother have trashed the house. Or rather, I've trashed the house. I managed to drop a glass of red wine in such a way that it bounced and sprayed wine everywhere, including my eyes, the carpet, the wall, the chair, and the ceiling.
"How the hell did you manage that?"
"Shut up. Ow. It stings."
The wine marks won't come off the wall - scrubbing removed the paint but left the wine. Mum will be convinced this is the product of some wild orgy. The worst part is I was only reading a book at the time. I lead a wild life, I do.

The Wedding Stapler

I'm grinding my teeth. I sit with three other support assistants (as us admin flunkies are euphemistically known), Laura, Louise and Lynsey. This is every bit as bad as it sounds. My name doesn't start with L so it was never going to work out. Lynsey is getting married in May and if that were all I'd heard about the greatest day in human history I would say hooray and well done, what a marvellous meringue.
Unfortunately I hear about this wedding every. Single. Day. She's sitting on my right, just out of arm's reach (more's the pity) and nattering in her peculiar nasal Aberdonian whine about how she got the bridesmaid's shoes in Next and they go really well with their pink dresses, and they've got these really cool favours but she can't face wrapping them because it's such a chore and speaking of chores she's got to go to the church and talk to the God-bothering minister about hymns even though she hates hymns and her Mum wants to invite these third cousins but she hardly knows them but once you've got that many guests a couple more won't matter, and by this point it's all I can do not to grab the stapler, pin her down on the keyboard and staple her mouth shut.
I hate weddings. The waste of a year's salary on a one day theatrical spectacular that you must enjoy on pain of death; the overeating; the queasy mixture of friends and relatives that should never have been forced to meet; the ridiculous dress that can never be worn again - and the simpering justification for this pointless waste is because it's the bride's special day. Bollocks. Every day is my day and I don't have to prove it to anyone.

30 Days and Counting

I finally have a date to go out to Japan, an event that provoked much Tigger-like bouncing. I fly out on the 27th of March and start work about a week later. With the Inuyama festival and, well, not seeing BF for 4 months, I'm sure I'll find things to do with the time. I'll spend the weekend before I leave in London with Kate, my flatmate from last year in Bangkok, fearing for my sanity and my braincells. Kate parties hard. With any luck I should make it to the plane.
BF helpfully pointed out that if Nova had stuck to their original schedule, I would've been arriving in Japan tomorrow - a factoid that made me want to repeatedly smack my head off a hard surface. Time goes so slowly when you want to be five thousand miles away.

Feeling Peaky

I work as a temp for a council planning department. Mostly I file, update mail, and process planning applications. At the moment I want to bury myself in finnicky tasks to make time go and money come faster. I want to get to Japan, start my new job, see my boyfriend and do exciting things instead of counting the minutes until lunchtime. Everything is filed and I stand with my forehead against the window and watch people walking nine stories below. A plane bisects the glass and sky and, for the first time since I came back from Thailand in November, I want to be on it. January blues settle like a toad below my ribs.
I sustain three irritating injuries before noon: a splinter, a bleeding gouge from a file refusing to be filed, and an interesting barcode effect in one elbow after the stack of folders I was carrying slipped and sliced me as they fell. This is the point when I decide today is January Blues Day. Pass me my harmonica.
Melancholy is like crying. It does you good to indulge now and again. I wallow in self-pity and count the awful things that stack against me. My boyfriend is in Japan, so I curse the gods for our not getting together when we were at the same university. I suspect the gods had little to do with our choices of boy/girlfriends and the lucky timing that meant we were never both single, but that would be missing the point of January Blues Day. Mostly I just miss BF and wish I could talk to him now instead of doing crappy non-work.
I have no money. I loved the holidays when I had them and would have fought scrappily with anyone who tried to take away one day of my Christmas holiday, but in the cold light of January all I can see is skinny paychecks and the staggering cost of going to Japan. Eek. And that's before we even get into the duvet-clutching nightmare of student debt that will haunt me until I am a hundred and twenty-four. It's January Blues Day, so I allow myself a long-suffering sigh. Aaaah. God, that's good.
It's nine-thirty now, January Blues Day is nearly over. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow. That's something to smile about.

Karma and Suicidal Spiders

Lisa sat down and said, "There was a letter for you on the table."
"A good letter?" I said.
"From Nova."
"Did it look good?" The interview was three weeks ago. How could it be good?
"A4," she said like this confirms everything, but I am stubborn.
"Maybe they ran out of rejection letter-sized envelopes."
"A4 and fat."
"Maybe they wrote 'fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off' over and over on ten sheets of paper to fill me with hope then crush me when I finally opened it."
"Maybe you got the job."
"It's possible."
I am wildly superstitious about interviews and pathologically afraid of them. I start being generous to beggars and avoiding cracks in pavements. I wash spiders down the drain accidentally on purpose all the time, but after interviews I hope being nice to them will swing the karmic scales in my favour. One turned up in the shower a week after the interview, and I took great care not to drown him. Unfortunately Stephano the Suicidal Spider chose to hang out by my shampoo bottle for a week before vanishing in mysterious circumstances and I feared I had failed some cosmic test, dashed away my teaching post in Japan and instead earned ten pages of fuck off.
I open the letter. "We are pleased to offer you a teaching position..."
Now I can resume my spider-drowning ways.