Drugged up

Yesterday I discovered a way of getting to see a doctor without having to wait. Be a stupid gaijin!

You see, what started out as a little cold on Sunday, has worsened day-by-day until I could take it no more yesterday. I told Wayne I would go and see a doctor. He knew I was really sick then, I never see doctors over here. I had too many bad experiences my first time living here that it has scared me off. I even had one medical professional tell me I had cancer (in his defence, he never thought I had cancer, but didn't know the English word for cyst but did know the word "cancer", so just told me I had something like cancer, that it grew like cancer, that they had to cut it out like cancer... - all I was hearing was cancer... cancer... cancer). Wayne and I have only really had to deal with doctors once since we've been here together and other than him being told that he was "diseased in the head" the doctors were great.

Wayne talked to his supervisor and got off work early to take me to a doctor. We first went to our local clinic which on a quick glance was closed until 5pm. Wayne then decided to take me to the hospital. Once we got there, I chickened out. Going to a local clinic was one thing, but having to fill in all the forms and work out where to go when I was feeling like death was another. I told Wayne we'd wait the two hours until the clinic opened.

Wayne wanted to get there just before 5 in the hope that the wait wouldn't be too long. Another think I hate about going to the doctor, is waiting rooms. The last thing I want to do when I'm sick is sit and wait in a room full of people with germs. I'm sick, I don't need more germs around me. I'm sick, I want to be lying down in my own comfortable bed, not sitting in an uncomfortable chair for hours. Of course we have waiting rooms back in Australia, but we also have appointments, so hopefully, the wait isn't too long. In Japan, there are no appointments for doctors, you just turn up during the opening hours and sit and wait.

Mmm.. yes... turn up during opening hours... that would help....

We got to the clinic just before 5 and surprisingly the clinic's car park was empty. I was a bit suspicious then, but too sick to really care. Then one guy (how by the way turned out to be a cleaner), who didn't look sick at all, walked in the surgery door. "OK" we thought, he's Japanese, he knows what he's doing, we'll just follow him (I operate on the Dirk Gently navigation technique in Japan). When we entered the foyer, the doctor came out of his office looking very surprised and asked me what was wrong. With my head heavy with all the germs I was confused as to why the doctor would be greeting his patients at the door and in a pathetic voice simply replied "I have a bad cold".

He quickly ushered Wayne and myself upstairs where the reception was dark and there was an obvious lack of nurses and patients. Kindly, he looked at my throat, listened to my chest, asked about allergies and then ran off to his pharmacy in the building next door. Following him, Wayne and I read the sign on the door and realised that he was in actual fact closed on Thursday afternoons. Closed, but still kind enough to see the lost and confused gaijin.

Another reason I usually resist seeing doctors in this country is the amount of medicines they prescribe - lots of them! I was given, all in little white paper bags with a cute cartoon character in the bottom corner; antibiotics, something for my stomach to stop the antibiotics from making me sick, an anti-inflamitary painkiller, some tablets for my throat, some gargle for my throat and some cough medicine. All little blister packs in paper bags with the number of times a day I am to take them. No side-effect information, nothing. Just cute little paper bags. But right now, I don't care - give me drugs and lots of them!

I did, but the way, get through the interview tests, but not easily, not comfortably. I interviewed 61 students for about 2 minutes each. My voice lasted for the first one and a half interviews. After that, it was a raspy yell to try to get anything out. To make things worse, over the noise of the old air conditioner and the construction happening outside, the students couldn't hear what I said, so I'd have to repeat it a number of times. With each syllable I uttered it felt like a cheese grater was being scraped across my throat. As the interviews wore on, salt and lime was following each cheese grating motion. With each interview, I averaged about 100 syllables... 100 syllables multiplied by 61 students makes a hell of a lot of cheese grating. Once I got home that night, I almost cried with each question Wayne asked me.

Luckily, the students now have tests, so I have a few days off from school. It's so frustrating though being sick on days off. I had been so excited about having a day off coincide with my favourite flea market, but instead, I had to spend the day in bed, my body would punish me with shooting pains in the head and I'd be bent over coughing if I tried to move. I'm now drugged up, taking a OTC cold medicine on top of all the other prescriptions, but that only lasts for about an hour at a time, I then have to wait a few hours until I can take the next one. Actually, the effect is wearing off now.. so I'm off to bed until it's time for the next dose.

Not on speaking terms

I'm not talking to my husband. That's kind of ok though, as I'm not talking to anyone. I'm voiceless. I'm without voice. Well without much of one anyway. I can get words out quietly, but it hurts and if I try to project my voice, it just comes out like bad feedback from an amateur rock concert.

A voice is something that really comes in handy when you work as an English teacher. At school, we are nearing the end of student interview tests. I have about 280 students that I teach each week and during interview test week, I well, interview them each for about 2 minutes at a time.

Sam, who I teach with, was kind enough today to help me out. He did all my roll calls, did all the pre-test explanations and taught half of a normal lesson that we had scheduled in. So I managed to make it through the day, only having to postpone the listening test recording that we had to do. I have 3 more classes to interview tomorrow and then I don't actually teach for a week. I'm hoping it will hold out.

I must say though, I hate being sick in summer. I hate being sick anytime, but at least in winter you can snuggle into bad and drink lots of hot tea and have lots of warm soup. Instead, I came home early from school today and fell asleep on my futon in a sweaty heap.

I don't really know why I'm blogging all this. Maybe because I love talking, haven't been able to do it all day so need to waffle on about something. Off to bed now and hoping I wake up with a voice.

How do you comment....?

Every now and then as a teacher, you come across some work that you're really not sure on how to comment.

This particular gem came from a student in response to the question of what they thought visitors to Japan would find surprising;

"I think a visitor to Japan might find lowness of
men's toilet. In America or Europe men's toilets are installed
higher. Japanese men's toilets are installed very low because Japanese men
are shorter than European and American.

On the contrary, if we use the toilet in America,
we have to turn our Johnsons upward."

I am curious guys (as opposed to girls...) is it true?

Pepsi Ice Cucumber - the verdict

When I first heard about Pepsi's new flavour - Ice Cucumber on An Englishman in Osaka, I believed it for a moment and then assumed it was a joke. I mean this is a country that has wasabi ice cream and pumpkin flavoured KitKats, so an cucumber flavoured soft drink didn't sound too far-fetched, it was the comment about Coca Cola Broccoli that turned me into a disbeliever.

It was on Mike's Blender and I realised that it was in fact, real. I had to try some. I love cucumber juice in hot weather, and so now in Japan is the time.

The search began. I went first to my local supermarket and they had already sold out. I had to go home and do some things, so Wayne offered to go out on a "hunt" for me. Ahhh.. we're a real hunting-gathering couple - he hunts for strange flavoured drinks while I work on gathering vintage kimono fabrics. Luckily, he didn't have to hunt for long. He found a bottle in the first of many convenience stores near out apartment. A single bottle only - it was the last one left!

I excitedly pounced on it when he arrived home. With almost the same anticipation as one would have uncorking a vintage wine, I unscrewed the plastic top. With the sound of the fizz, wafted out the scent of sickly sweet fruit. A hint of cucumber maybe, bit it was certainly only a hint.

On the first sip I had the impression of drinking an overly sweet apple juice drink after having brushed my tongue and the roof of my mouth with toothpaste. Mmmm.. not so good. I was hoping maybe the taste would mature. Well it did, but it matured from a five year old's birthday party drink to a sixteen-year old's my-parents-are-out-of-town-for-the-weekend-so-lets-raid-their-liquor-cabinet type drink. It was reminiscent of a cocktail mixed with Blue Vok, Midori and sprite, minus the alcohol, with added caffeine. Over the course of the evening, I went back to the drink every half hour or so hoping it would redeem itself. It didn't. It stayed with me though. Stayed with me, coating my tongue and my palate like the scum around a bathtub after you've used cheap bath oils. Brushing my teeth was a relief leaving only the after effect of the caffeine.

Mmmm... I won't be buying that one again. But hey - if anyone wants some pumpkin flavoured KitKats, I still have some in my freezer since last Halloween.

Confirmed

As I wrote recently, I finally paid for our tickets for our summer trip. I thought the confirmation email I got from my travel agent was worth sharing;

"Please let me send E-ticket. After it prints it out, it becomes a flow that does the check-in in the airport from the following. My best regards."

Free hugs

Tonight while I was YouTube surfing... ummm.. I mean working very hard, I came across this gorgeous video about a guy in Sydney giving out free hugs. It is so lovely and made me a little teary thinking about how much I miss hugs from my friends in Australia. The music is by a band called the Sick Puppies.



I then got to thinking... I wondered if this would work in Japan. Japan isn't a country known for its hugging. I searched further and found many responses to this first video from Tokyo and Kyoto. Here's one of them




So to everyone out there to whom I can't give a real hug to - cyber hugs to you (to everyone other than the sighing, eye rolling, ignoring bank teller that is).

Being Illiterate

After a panicked email to my travel agent, I was able to get an extra working day to pay for our tickets for our summer trip, so now they are all paid for, though it wasn't a painless process.

I hate going to my local bank branch. There is a woman there that decided she didn't like me from the first day I walked in their door. She doesn't even try to hide her dislike. She sighs loudly at me, rolls her eyes and sometimes even refuses to talk to me. Today, she did all three.

I had to do a domestic bank transfer, a furikomi, if you will. The problem today was while it was to a Japanese company, in Japan, the invoice and banking details were written in English. Good for me, but apparently not for the bank. The sighing woman, sighed heavily, rolled her eyes and thrust a furikomi form at me. All in Japanese off course. I looked at her, I looked at the form and then I looked back up at her with what I hoped was my best "please help the illiterate gaijin" face. She sighed heavily, rolled her eyes and walked off.

The younger teller who I'd been thrust in front of looked at the furikomi form and looked at my invoice. Repeatedly. For about fifteen minutes. At the form, at the invoice, back to the form.... It was like watching a flea tennis match happening on the counter. I wasn't much better. In time with her worried "mmm"s and "ohhh"s, I looked that the form, looked at the invoice and looked at her. My "please help the illiterate gaijin" face had more effect on her, she was trying but just had no idea what to do. She ran to the sighing woman and was only sighed at and then ignored. I'd like to say that at least it's not just me that she sighs at and ignores, but I think really she was sighing and ignoring the other teller as an extension of me. If she helped her, then really she was helping me, and she certainly wasn't going to do that.

After running around a little more with a "please help the young teller" face, she came back to me and told me, "Please fill in the form." I had kinda figured that much, it was the how-to I was having problems with. I would have to translate everything from English into Japanese. I asked if it was OK if I wrote in romaji. That question caused another ten minutes of "mmm"s, "ohhh"s and "please help the young teller" faces.

Finally, another teller came back from lunch and to the rescue. She explained that I would have to fill in the form in kanji. I explained that while I didn't really write kanji, I could copy it if it was written for me. This lovely rescuer teller then filled out the form in kanji for me to copy, as the form could not be in their handwriting. When I handed it back to her, she was even kind enough to compliment my badly completed form.

After another 30 minutes in the bank, it and another furikomi through the ATM were complete.

Since my last post, I've been told of a bank with a branch in Nagoya that offers Internet banking in English. I think it's time to sign up for that!

Grrrrr.....

Most of the time, Japanese service is superb. Most of the time. In fact, I just commented on someone's blog about it last night.

Paying bills however, can be a real pain. We have one utility bill that can be paid at a convenience store, so well, that one is convenient. We have another that needs to be paid at a bank - during banking hours. Every month, that one can be a problem as both Wayne and I work during bank hours so we have to try to work out who and when can go and pay it. It wouldn't be a problem if we had internet banking, but it's not a common service over here and is rarely offered in English. Another utility bill is paid, in cash to a person that turns up to our door once a month. She used to always come on a Thursday, so we were prepared, but now, she comes whenever she feels like it and can catch us unaware.

Japan is very much a cash society , but the ironic thing is that the ATMs have opening and closing times. Some close at about 9pm and won't open again until 8am. Some are also closed all day Sunday. An EFTPOS system doesn't exist and it's not that uncommon that places won't accept credit cards. I've never heard of people using cheques.

So cash it is.

The reason for my little whine today is that Wayne and I are booking our summer trip. I don't want to jinx myself by talking about it too much until everything is booked, but we are very excited about it.

We first went into a local travel agent, but they had real problems actually giving us a price, an answer about flight availability and any other questions that we had. Their price in the end was quite high.

So now, we've been trying to book our tickets on-line. I went to a Japanese site that offers a service in English and got two quotes for the flights we wanted. One took much longer to get back to me, but were a little cheaper. When I enquired about how I could book, I was told that I must come to their office in Nagoya during business hours to do so. What!!! Who ever heard of a travel agent that was closed on weekends!

The other agent got back to me very quickly but have made many errors with the booking time and time again. They seemed to be trying hard however and were always apologetic in their emails. So we decided to book with them, and they finally got all the details correct today. I have told them a number of times, right from the start, that I couldn't get into a bank until Monday because of work. They never said this was a problem, so I assumed it was all ok. Until today. They've told me that I must get into a bank to pay for it by Friday, or we may lose our tickets! There are times that I think that part of the reason many Japanese housewives don't work full-time is that they need to be able to deal with banking and bill paying during the day. How do people do it here otherwise?? If you work from nine to five and they don't offer a service outside of those hours, they don't accept credit card payments unless we physically go in during office hours, you can't pay over the net, the banks don't offer internet banking.... just how on earth do you deal with this stuff??

Mmmm.... can you tell I'm rather frustrated....?

The Wedding Revisited

It's over a year since the wedding and I still hadn't done anything with the photos. I had a play around with this slide show/ video last night.




The soundtrack is what I walked, or rather ran as I was so nervous, down the aisle to. It's Goreki by Lamb. We had a really special day and a week later came here to Japan.

Camera Club Clique

This year at school, I joined the Camera Club and these are some of my camera club girls.

Dreaming of space

The thing I probably miss most about Australia, after my dear friends and family, is space. I stumbled across a blog the other day and the person had a picture of their studio/workspace. It was airy. It was organised. There was space!

The catalyst for Wayne and I coming to Japan was losing my dream rental home. It was a sweet little early 1920s colonial with polished wood floors and high ceilings. I just loved my studio in that house. Along two walls were windows that faced the north and overlooked a garden. The light was magical and it was a place I wanted to spend a lot of time in. I really miss having an airy studio. My workspace now is a corner less than 1 metre squared. If I really want to make anything, the room has be pulled apart. The tatami floor is my workbench.

So recently, Wayne and I have been talking more and more about going back to Australia. We don't plan to do so for a few years yet, but we've started looking, just out of interest, at property in the village we'd like to live, Mapleton. It's a sweet little mountain village, about an hour out of Brisbane, our hometown, and about 20 - 30 minutes to gorgeous beaches. I found my dream house on my search, by my favourite Queensland architect, Gabrielle Poole. Ahh.... starting to dream of that studio already.... Anyone got a spare half a million they want to lend me.....?

Views from my dream house

Just look at the views from the kitchen! It makes even me want to cook!

A lovely sense of air and space


The outside of the house

This isn't from the same house, but another in the next town. I've always wanted a bath with a view.

Dogeza

I had a Japanese friend, Kazuyo, jokingly tell me that she got really good at the Dogeza, the Japanese formal apology in her first year of marriage. She said that apologising for not cooking or cleaning was far easier than actually cooking or cleaning. I had to laugh. So, if you, like Kazuyo and myself find it easier to apologise, here's a short lesson on how to apologies in Japanese.

Love Hotel Letdown

Wayne and I decided that on our recent trip to Osaka, rather than stay in a standard hotel, to stay in a Love Hotel. This was partly to try to save some money, partly because neither of us had ever done the Love Hotel thing and partly because I’d heard that Osaka had some of the wildest Love Hotels in Japan. I wanted to photograph one for the book.

A love hotel is not usually a romantic candle-lit room, but rather a place where you can hire a room by the hour to get a little “loving”. You do need to supply your own partner.

Before we went to Osaka I did some research on the Internet. Rooms with a Hello Kitty S&M doll, bumper cars, a rooftop Cadillac or a carousel caught my attention. Rooms modeled on a high school classroom, a prison cell or train carriage conjured disturbing yet intriguing images. I mapped out the area with the best selection of love hotels to choose from and couldn’t wait.

The love hotels offer a number of different options for usage, including a “rest” and a “stay”. The “rest” rate allows the user to have the room for anywhere between 90 minutes and 3 hours depending on the hotel. With the “stay” option check-in is from about 10pm on a Friday or Saturday night and check out around 11am the next day. It was this that we wanted.

After a full day of playing tourist in Osaka we made our way to our chosen love hotel area. I had two particular hotels in mind, The Adonis and Gang Snowman. We wandered the streets for a while looking for them, dragging our sore feet, a little excited at the same time. In the small grid, we found Hotel Broccoli, Be Loose, Hotel HP, Green Gables, Aphrodite and Myth to name a few, but neither of the ones I wanted. By this time we were both footsore, tired and grumpy.

Two hotels had smiling attendants out the front dressed in white uniforms gesturing for us to enter their hotel. This was not what I had expected. From what I had read and heard, I was expecting discretion, privacy, not people trying to usher me in like seedy strip club touts. To me it was like someone saying “Come in, come in, because we know what you’re going to do in there… wink, wink, nudge, nudge..”

By now I had to resolve myself to choosing somewhere else. My normally sweet, patient husband was now snappy, crabby and walking five paces ahead of me. I agreed to choose one of the hotels in the area we’d seen, on the condition that it had an interesting room.

“I liked the one with the cartoon characters all over the building” Wayne said.

“I don’t care what you like, I want a funky room to photograph” I barked at him in reply.

In the foyer of the first hotel pictures of the rooms were on a board with the available ones lit up from behind. No such luck there. All the rooms looked normal, but with awful interior decorating.

“Hotel HP looked nice” Wayne said in a hopeful voice.

“Not the point” I snapped back.

With Wayne too scared to speak and me silently daring him to do so, we systematically entered and quickly left the foyer of hotel after hotel. I rejected each of them. Finally in one, we found a “Concept Room” board. No pictures of actual rooms, just of their “concept”. Upon a quick glance I saw outer space, Egypt, Africa, other exotic locations and some science fiction themes. Jackpot! We’d found our hotel and not a moment too soon. My bubble of elation was burst suddenly. A large neon sign told me to “WAIT”, as all of the rooms were booked out. Behind me were three other couples waiting. Without a word I walked out, tears of disappointment, tears of frustration, tears of exhaustion already rolling down my cheeks.

From that hotel’s front door I walked. Too tired to make a decision now, I walked with Wayne beside me telling me it was alright, that we would find a good place. In the distance, I spied two bright neon lights. These became my beacons in the night. “Last Chance” I told myself. As long as they had a room available, no matter how boring, we would stay in one of those hotels, as otherwise, I was ready to sleep on the damp concrete pavement.

As we got closer, before I could even read the brightly lit sign, I grew excited. Two white circles, a smaller one on top of a larger – a snowman! We’d found it! Gang Snowman! The oasis in a desert. I crossed my fingers. Dodgem cars, dodgem cars, please let the room with the dodgem cars be available. With renewed energy we quickened our pace and bounded into the foyer. My eyes excitedly scanned the board, dodgem cars, dodgem cars. No dodgem cars. Neither lit nor dark. “That’s ok, that’s ok,” I mumbled to myself “Let’s see what else they have.” Rooftop Cadillac, there it was, but the picture was dark. It was already taken. At this point, my eyes slowed. The board contained pictures, both lit and dark of ugly room after ugly room. Nothing bizarre. Nothing kinky. Nothing kitsch. Only rooms decorated by someone’s grandma on a budget without an eye for colour. Maybe bad taste was the new kitsch. Funnily enough, each room picture had little stick figures underneath with suggestions of how we could entertain ourselves while in there. I couldn’t decide on whether to sleep in a hideous yellow, orange or peach room, so while they were completely irrelevant, I chose our room on these stick figures. I looked at them and thought “No, I don’t have the flexibility for that anymore, too tired for that one..”, so peach won out in the end.

The picture went dark when I pressed the button in the corner and out spat a ticket with the room number. “Ok,” I said looking at Wayne, “so what do we do now?” I had heard of hotels with lights showing directions but this foyer was a mass of lights that would make a 70s disco look dull. I started to panic. Wayne was as dumbfounded as I was.

A woman came out of a door hidden in the badly painted wall and asked “Japanese?”

“Only a little” I confessed.

She shoved two laminated A4 sheets into my hands and gestured towards the elevator. Wanting to hide from the world at this point, I jumped into the lift dragging Wayne with me. Under the UV lights the glowing page instructed me in English how to get out of the hotel. Not in an emergency, just how to get out, period.

The room was not hard to find. As we stumbled in, an automatic payment machine began ranting at us in Japanese. Telling it to “shut the hell up” had no effect whatsoever. The printed instructions told me that I had to press a button to indicate our wish to “stay”. I looked and looked, but the button simply wasn’t there, or at least written in the same kanji that was on the sheet. However, the paper also told me that I didn’t need to pay until I wanted to leave and the machine went quiet after a while so I was happy to wait until morning to figure it all out.

The room was even ghastlier than it had appeared in the picture downstairs. And it stank. The stale cigarette smoke of couples past had permeated the bed, the bedding, the sofa and the horrible wallpaper. Under a huge flat screen TV was a vending machine with a difference. Cans of soft drink had been replaced with different “toys” that could be used to pass the time in the room.

There was a karaoke machine and microphone, playstation handsets and a small slot machine. The peach bedspread featured cute little snowmen with their cute little snow castles.

An internal door took us to the bathroom, which looked more like it belonged in a five star hotel room rather than the horrible one we were in. It was pristine and tasteful. The counter greeted us with a huge array of sample-sized toiletries, individually packed toothbrushes, a hairbrush and razor. A basket was filled with large fluffy peach towels and there was a small TV screen beside the computerized toilet. The door to the shower opened up to a whole other room. It was huge! Under the wall mounted shower was a small seat, a basin and more toiletries. The opposite wall had a couple of handrails with a cute little stick figure drawing suggesting how we might wish to use them. And then there was the bath! It was long, deep, molded and fittingly, large enough for two. It came with juccuzi jet and bubble bath and sat under yet another TV screen. Perfect to ease our aching legs.

It wasn’t long before I was ready to crash. With Wayne still soaking in the tub, I returned to the awful peach room.

Cool fluorescents and the TV screen brightly lit the room. Playing with the many buttons by the bed, I went through a variety of lighting options until the overhead and bedside lights were off. This left the room basking in a blue glow coming from the TV. I fiddled further with a remote and managed to turn it off, but its annoying light was replaced by equally annoying music. I switched the music off, on came the TV. TV off, music on. Music off, TV on. Eventually, with a quiet room, I threw the peach bedspread littered with snowmen over my head to block out the light and tried to sleep.

Just as I was falling into the soft comfort of sleep, the lights came on, then music, then the music was off and TV was on. Wayne was flicking through the remote like I had not long before. Deciding this time on the music option, I tried once again to get to sleep. As I drifted off for a second time, I was jolted awake buy a horrible computerized voice screeching “Okane okudasai, okane okudasai.” The automatic machine at our front door was demanding to be paid. Every thirty seconds it insisted “Okane okudasia, okane okudasai.”

Scrambling for the supplied English instructions, I rushed to the door. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut the hell up!” Completely disregarding my pleas, the machine continued “Okane okudasai, okane okudasai.”

The instructions in my hand were useless. All of the buttons it told me to push weren’t on the machine model in front of me. What concerned me even more was a note that once we had paid, the door would only be unlocked for five minutes, then relocked and another paid session would begin. “Okane okudasai, okane okudasai.” It was in the middle of the night, we had no intentions of leaving until daylight and certainly not of paying more than once for this hideous room. “Okane okudasai, okane okudasai.” The machine obviously had no intentions of letting up on its demands. “Okane okudasai, okane okudasai.” If I was to get any sleep, I had no choice but to call through to reception. “Okane okudasai, okane okudasai.”

As in my exhausted state I couldn’t understand what I was told over the phone, within minutes an embarrassed staff member came to our door. He told my teary self that even though we weren’t leaving until the morning, we needed to pay the machine to shut it up. They would fix the machine from reception so that we weren’t charged twice.

Our 9000 yen room suddenly cost over 11000 yen due to hidden service charges that were added on. So much for us saving money, it would have been cheaper to stay in a business hotel.

By now I found that any sound grated on me, so we turned the music off, draped the TV in fluffy peach towels and went to sleep bathed in a red glow.
After what ended up being a good nights sleep, we were woken in the morning by sounds of our neighbours’ activities. The walls were way too thin for this type of establishment. A leisurely bubble bath and all the great toiletry samples got us ready to face the world once more. Consulting the English instructions for the last time, I located the button on the automatic machine to unlock the room. Not willing to risk being locked back in, Wayne and I put our bags near the door and were ready to go. I pressed the button, opened the door and quickly jammed it open with my camera bag. We hurriedly stepped into our shoes and ran out into a fresh new day. The stay had been an experience, but we both agreed that it wasn’t one we wanted to do again in the near future.

Don't forget to write

I wrote this a few months ago and feel that I need to remind myself of my resolve....

Out the window, the landscape rolls past. Ugly concrete buildings of grey, brown or off-white; a small green patch of leeks rising proudly from the earth; the bright red of a Shinto shrine gate promising purification; a bare school baseball field that looks more like a prison exercise yard with its high wire fences; large blocks of apartments made colourful with futons hung over balconies, drying in the sun; a bright pink castle-like love hotel; the Vegas-style neon lights of a pachinko parlor luminous even in the daylight; in the distance, peeking out from the smog, untouched mountains looking like a backdrop painted in blue greens; a stream lined in cherry blossom trees still in their naked winter form, waiting for the new season to bring them back to life; a river filled with water, ice cold, carrying melted snow out to sea; the criss-crosses of a rusty red iron bridge reflected in the still liquid, a single weathered wooden boat by its edge; carved headstones in memory of ancestors passed; squat neat rows of tea bushes; a flash of white plum blossoms, promises of the spring to soon come; a tiny shrine by the side of the road, sheltering a stone deity dressed in brightly coloured child’s bib and hat; a billboard painted with a depiction of a battle long ago fought; parched rice fields decorated with tufts of rice straw in orderly lines, memories of last years harvest; all the while, the grey sky with patches of blue peeking through remaining constant.

A white gloved, uniformed man makes an announcement through the train in Japanese. My mind snatches at words it can understand; a broadcast of a station to come and a reminder not to leave anything on the train.

All the while, with each rhythmic click, each repetitive clack of wheels on rails, words are echoing through my head, advice given to me by a writing teacher over a year ago. “Show, don’t tell.” Her words come rushing back to me. “Show, don’t tell.” While this foreign landscape is rushing towards me, I realize that it is retreating just as quickly. I think about the year that has just passed.

I’ve been in Japan almost exactly a year this time around, as mundane things such as visa renewals and an expiring international drivers license remind me. A year and what? What have I done in that year? Plenty, but very little of what I came here to do. I came here to write, to design, to create, to photograph, to be inspired, to experience and to travel. Yet I haven’t. I haven’t written, I’ve blogged. I haven’t written, I’ve waffled. I haven’t written, I’ve regurgitated.

Now as the plum blossom signal a new season, they also signal a new resolve; a resolve to “show, not tell”.

The landscape continues to roll by unaware. A patchwork of greens, greys and browns.