Home

The ceilings are so high here! I feel like I could grow wings and fly around the room.
I arrived in Auckland early yesterday morning. The first three people I saw as I came through the arrival gates were my mother and father and my Aunty Naomi. It wasn't hard to spot them as they were the only non-Asian people there. The flight was great. Thanks Air New Zealand! I got the usual cheery greeting as I stepped onto the plane: "Gidday!! Ready to go home?" and was looked after every step of the way by the strapping blokes they seem to like to employ as cabin attendants. Very reassuring in the case of an emergency, and handy with the overhead lockers too. Air NZ has the TVs where you can choose the movies yourself so I watched In My Father's Den (brilliant), Sione's Wedding (brilliant) and about 6 episodes of Brotown (brilliant). Watching NZ-made goodies the whole way home gave me a decent reprogramming and I stepped off the plane feeling sweet as, bro.
It's nice to be home. After my parents had taken me for a long-anticipated flat white coffee in Onehunga they left me at home while they went off to work. I lay in the bath for several hours reading Women's Weekly magazines. Luxury! Bliss!
There are a few things that have changed around the house since I was here on holiday a year and a half ago. The garden is filling up with my dad's brick sculptures, and there are some new paintings up. The Computer Room (it's called this because there is a computer in it) has some new shelving. Also, there is a new addition to the family! There is a lovely, naughty young cat called Sunday tearing around the house, who has already tried to eat my scarf. You know how cats like to come and lie on the newspaper while you are reading it? Well, Sunday likes to eat the newspaper too.

Bye-yonara

Last blog entry from Japan. Paid all my bills, cancelled my keitai, ordered vegetarian meals for the plane and almost finished my packing. Nearly gone mad trying to keep my baggage under the 20 kg weight limit (what do they expect me to wear when I get home, my suitcase?). There's about 10 kg in my hand luggage. To my parents: if you are worried you won't recognise me after 3 years when I get off the plane, I'll be the lopsided woman, but I'll have a big smile on my face. It's sayonara Japan, kia ora New Zealand!

More funny names

My latest hobby is collecting silly names of the apartment buildings around Nakajima Park. I've discovered that this is a neighbourhood packed full of buildings called ' ------- Heights'. Such as:
Sunny Heights
Tall Heights
Grande Heights
City Heights
Crab Heights
These buildings are all 2 to 3 storeys high. Although Tall Heights is in deep denial.

Other interesting names I've found:
Bliss Court
Settle
Eternity.7
Creation Central
Excellent 86
Chopin Chateau - Koinu (Small Doggy)
Tiger Mansion

I like Tiger Mansion for a name. It sounds like the name of one of the glam rock bands I used to listen to when I was 15 years old. I also like Chopin Chateau - Small Doggy. It's classy, yet cute, if a little odd. My favourite, though, might be Excellent 86. That's where I wanna live, dudes and dudesses!

I'm an alien visitor

Last week I changed my visa status. I'm now a Temporary Visitor. Getting the visa was not too confusing as I'd gone through the same process in my first year here getting a re-entry permit which allowed me to come in and out of the country. First you go to the 7th floor of some official building where you find the Department of Immigration. This is possibly the only place in Sapporo where nobody speaks any English. You fill out the form and provide all the required evidence including your Alien Registration Card (yes, I'm a registered alien -nanu nanu), evidence of funds (did I mention that my bankbook has pictures of Felix the Cat on it? All the banks put some kind of cute cartoon character on their bankbooks), and a detailed schedule of your intended activities while in Japan. I put camping, although the only camping I've actually done was at the Rising Sun Rock Festival last weekend. Then you get sent down to the basement of the building, where strangely enough there is a convenience store, full of people buying rice balls and chocolate bars. You have to buy a stamp which looks exactly like a postage stamp but costs about 100 times as much. "I'll have a Snickers bar and a visa extension, thanks" kind of thing. Once you've got your really expensive stamp you go back upstairs, they do some more stuff to your passport, and you are allowed to still be in Japan. Yippee! A friend of mine forgot to get his visa changed before his 3 year work visa had finished, so just one day after his visa had expired he got a phone call crisply telling him to leave the country immediately. Superb efficiency!

Walking Sapporo

I'm living in a new city! Actually that's not true, it just feels like that. Simply by moving from north to south, I'm literally coming at the city from another angle, and it feels completely different. Having the time to wander, and people-watch, and duck down interesting side-streets, is letting me be a tourist in the city I've lived in for 3 years. Yesterday I found all these cool shops I had never seen before, where I could leaf through old 1950s Japanese housewife filmstar mags, or buy bunches of old testtubes and beakers to do my own home science experiments. Afterwards, I wandered through the nightlife district of Susukino, our very own gaudy, glitzy fairground-for-adults. On the street corners are stalls selling candyfloss and baked squid on sticks, and all around you are the signs for the hostess clubs, with shiny signs showing the women who work inside, just their heads floating in cherry blossom-pink clouds, topped with bleached orange bouffy hairstyles and with pearls of mascara dripping from their eyelashes. Some of these places are called 'soaplands' although they have very little to do with getting clean and much more to do with getting dirty. There are signs for the host clubs, too, with photos of young lads with violet-lensed eyes and baby-soft skin. In among all these brightly lit and decidedly un-seedy feeling places, are sushi bars, noodle bars, drinking spots and fancy restaurants. Everything is all mixed in together. There's no particular red-light district, or restaurant district. It's all one and the same. Last night I saw three middle-aged women in kimonos standing outside the door of their very expensive restaurant waving goodbye to a cute little girl who was leaving with her family, in amongst the strip clubs. How does this work? I think it's because there is never any evidence of violence, drugs or crime, on the streets, anyway. It always feels incredibly safe. Japanese people are just so freaking well-behaved - when they're in public, that is. When it comes to sharing the soap, it might be a different story.
Which brings me to the last part of my walk home. I was walking through Nakajima Park, as I do every night, and it suddenly occurred to me how weird that was - here I was, walking through a park in the middle of a city, at about midnight, and almost everyone I passed was a woman by herself. I've been taking it for granted here in Japan, but it makes me angry that it is only here that I can do that. Why can't women walk through a city at night and feel safe, anywhere in the world?

Height(s) of luxury

I'm staying in a mansion. That's right, a mansion. But before you get all excited, no, I haven't been adopted by Daddy Warbucks. 'Mansion' is the word for a regular old apartment in Japan. It sounds a lot swankier than it really is. They are given super posh names too. The block of flats I'm staying is is called 'Royal Heights'. In Japanese script, 'ロイヤルハイツ' (Roi-ya-ru Hai-tsu). The nearby apartment building is called 'Calm Heights' and just down the road is my personal fave, 'Jaunty Heights'. How could a name like that fail to put a spring in your step as you left for work in the mornings?

It's a .... ?

Princess Kiko goes into hospital today to get ready for the delivery of her baby by Caesarean section in September. She's got a long wait in hospital, poor woman. All the dinosaurs in the Diet are praying the baby is a boy so they don't have to change their precious tradition of only letting males ascend the throne. I really hope it is a girl. This could be the perfect time to put a woman on the throne - Japan could do with a bit of an image makeover. Although Koizumi sucks the big fat kumara, he did do one thing right - not his dandyish Oscar Wilde haircut (although I like that too) - but his plan to change the law to allow women to become monarchs too, just before Princess Kiko announced she was pregnant. If the baby turns out to be a girl, they'll still have to go ahead with the plan. Fingers crossed...

'The customer is a god'

I expect you've all heard the stories about good Japanese service is? The stories are all true - I'll prove it to you. Last weekend, after we had paid our bill at an Italian restaurant, we took the elevator down from the third floor, where the restaurant was, to the first floor (ground floor in EnZed-speak). The maitre d' took our money and gave us our change, bowed and smiled us into the elevator, then as soon as the doors had closed on us, quickly ran down the 2 flights of stairs so he was there at the bottom when the elevator doors opened and we stepped out, breathing a little faster but still smiling serenely and bidding us a safe journey home and to please come again!
The service here is truly amazing. You might not believe this, but bus drivers give you a running commentary on their driving:
'Now I am stopping the bus...now I am going forward again...now I am turning left...we will stop at the next stop..now I am stopping the bus...sorry for the wait...now here we go again...' That kind of thing. They wear white gloves and have a headset with a microphone. They always say thank-you to you when you get off. Are the passengers as polite? Well, the schoolkids all chirp brightly, 'Thank-you very much!' as they get off, but no-one else much does.
People serving you are so very polite here, to the point of obsequious at times. 'The customer is a god' is the general rule. Shop assistants literally RUN to the back of the store to see if they have something in your size. After you make a purchase, they often not only escort you out of the store, but carry your package for you too, and bow as they hand it to you at the door. At petrol stations, you don't have to lift a finger. You sit on your arse in the car while the attendants see to all your requirements, as well as a complimentary windscreen wash, and then they run ahead of your car out onto the road, halt all the oncoming traffic so you can pull out, and bow deeply after you as you drive away, all the time shouting how much they appreciate your service. If you are in one of the department stores when it closes, you'll find that as you come down the escalators, the staff on each floor wait for you at the foot of the escalator. There's something a little bit eerie about it, descending the escalator ever so slowly, in the deserted store, with the muzak version of Auld Lang Syne playing (they always play that at closing time in shops, and at high-school graduation ceremonies - again, most people think it was originally composed by a Japanese) towards a row of women with expressionless faces and smooth, sculpted hair, all chiming in unison 'Thank-you for coming!' and bowing at perfect 45 degree angles.
Just like on the bus, customers don't usually say much back. It's not their role to do that. As with most aspects of Japanese society, there are clearly defined rules of behaviour within the roles people play. The shop assistant prostrates themself before the customer, who responds by acting like a god. It was only up until the end of the Second World War that the emperor and god were synonymous in the minds of the Japanese. Now it's only the customer who is allowed to act like a god. It's really handy if you don't feel like chatting.
It's going to be a shock going back to New Zealand. I will have to carry my own shopping, and fill up my own petrol tank! Waiters will treat me as if they are the gods and I should be prostrating myself before them for being allowed to dine in their restaurant...and how will I know when to get off the bus?

It's hot

It was 35 degrees today in Sapporo. I went out to the supermarket in the middle of the day and almost melted. The air was as thick and hot as miso soup. There was a family across the road who had created a little garden of brightly coloured plastic inflatable things on the concrete outside the apartment and were splashing water about. The kids and the dad were all in their togs in the paddling pool. People everywhere are eating ice-blocks. Red bean frozen ice. Green tea ice-cream. My ice-block of choice is pink grapefruit ice. I took the tram to Odori Park in the late afternoon and watched a man lying back on the grass playing a ukelele to himself. It was weird thinking that this park is where they have the huge snow festival every year. Right where that man was playing his ukelele might have been a Japanese castle made out of ice a few months ago.

Lady of leisure

I am now a lady of leisure! Meaning officially unemployed. I have 3 glorious weeks of idleness before I go home. Well actually I still have to finish the drawings I'm doing for the Canadian professor, but I don't have to leave home to do them, so it doesn't feel like work. Anyway, drawing pictures doesn't exactly feel like work...unless you've got 100 of them to do...but I only have 40 left - 頑張ります (I will fight on!)。
Yesterday I closed the door for one last time on my dear apartment with its straw matting floors and mouldy shower and poky kitchen. I loved living in that apartment. Opening the windows and lying in the sun on my futon on lazy Sundays, or cranking the kerosene heater in the middle of winter. I've sat at my table and watched the snow pile up so far it's covering my balcony, for three winters, and seen the cherry tree outside my window blossom white for three springs. Three years is the longest I've lived in any one place since I left home after high school.
Saying goodbye was kind of sad, but after I took the train to the part of town where I'm staying with Yuki for the next few weeks, I started to feel good again. Just walking around a new neighbourhood, I was looking at everything with fresh eyes - I felt like I was travelling again. New sights, new smells. I walked past a shop with huge hairy crabs in tanks, and through the thick fishy air coming onto the street. I used to hate that smell, now I quite like it. I met an old woman in the local grocery store who couldn't stop smiling at me, and patted my hand very worriedly when she gave me her change because there were some small cuts on it (from scrubbing the cooker and its cursed baked-on grease).
Also, after having three rooms plus a living room to spread out in, I'm now living in a tiny room, so I've spent the day arranging my stuff, making little piles aginst walls and slotting things into empty spaces. It's fun. I think I'm finally living the Japanese lifestyle!

Good Moaning

I've realised how easy it is to make mistakes with vowel sounds, or even whole words, when speaking another language. Remember 'Allo Allo'? Here's a conversation I had yesterday about insects with a Japanese teacher of English. I weel say zees only vunce:
M-sensei: 'I used to live in teacher housing in the countryside and it was awful. Insects everywhere! I once ran a bath, threw off all my clothes, and was about to jump in, when I looked down and screamed! There were all these little black bugs swimming in my bath! It looked like the whole surface was covered with watermelon pips...and then sometimes I have seen small brown bugs, which look like zori, the Japanese sandal, walking around on my tatami near my bed..what do you call them?'
Me: 'They're usually called woodlice but in New Zealand we call them slaters.'
M-sensei: 'Yes, them. So one day, I got home from work, was about to jump into bed, when I turned on the light and saw my mattress covered with sluts.'
Me: 'Slaters.'
M-sensei: 'Oh yes, machigatta. And then when I was walking through my house in the night, I stepped on a...snail without a shell.'
me: 'A slug.'
M-sensei: 'Yes. I have heard that you should drop a slug into soiled water to check if it is a slug or not.'
Me: ?
M-sensei: 'Ah no, no. salted water. Machigatta.'
I hate it when there are sluts all over your mattress.
Another friend of mine had an interesting exchange with his mechanic. The words for 'sound' and 'woman' are quite similar,so:
Mechanic: 'What seems to be the problem?'
K: 'There's a strange woman in my car.'
M: 'A what?'
K: 'A strange woman in my car.'
M: 'What do you mean?'
K: 'Like this.' (Does squeaking sound while bouncing up and down).
It's so easy to do. I always used to confuse the words for parents and mushrooms ('My mushrooms live in New Zealand') and for pimple and nipple ('I have nipples all over my face') and soy milk and kerosene ('One short latte with kerosene, thanks.') Thank goodness for understanding waitresses.