Laundry and Crashes

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11

Alarm went off way too early this morning. I bumped into Elizabeth as I was leaving for work. She doesn't have to go in until 9 or 10 and leaves at 3 or 4. At work today, there was me, and Kyoto-sensei, Mustache-sensei was back, ever so briefly, and a few other random people. Dead.

Luckily, for the first time, I brought my laptop with me. I was so ridiculously productive. I typed up my worksheets and formatted and it was good. I checked my e-mail and haven't gotten an e-mail saying there's a problem with my internet yet, so that's good.

I filled out a form that required the address in both kanji and in English. I spent a good long while carefully trying to mimic kanji. I think I did fairly well (Mustache-sensei said it was perfect, but he was obviously lying, although it was appreciated.) I need to turn it into my supervisor by Friday, so I hope Mama comes back soon. Also, it wasn't until after I finished the form (the second to last page in a pamphlet about the JET language course, that I found the instruction page, in the middle, that said to have your SUPERVISOR fill out all of those sections. Well, it's in pen, so it'll have to do. Also, who stuffs instructions for a form in the middle of a booklet?

I met another teacher, a mathematics one, who gave me a crouton-like snack. It was like a crouton,
except sweet. It was quite tasty. When I asked about it later, introduced myself, and talked to him, he pulled the second box off his desk and presented it to me. I hope I didn't just steal someone's gift. This is why I need more omiagye. I was told to bring none, but recommended to bring enough for my English teachers. But I get gifts from everyone. He was quite friendly, though and we chatted a good bit. His English is much better than my Japanese, although I completed the form today that says I'll be starting my Japanese course soon.

He eventually looked at the clock and asked when I went home. I said my contract ran from 8:25 to 4:15. He said that there was no one there except him (point) and that no one would care if I left early. He was pretty much telling me to go home and not feel I had to stay at the office. Oddly, I was being productive, so I only left about 10 minutes early.

I'm rereading “Memoirs of a Geisha” on my lunch break.

Came home and did some laundry. Bras hang from the ceiling.

Okay, these next paragraphs have been a week in the making. They are also not appropriate for the very young, the immature or the overly-mature. Please self-censor yourselves accordingly. I was warned before coming to Japan that Japanese people don't really have, well, enlarged sexual organs. Now, I can't comment on men, but I will say that, for what the opinion of a girl who really doesn't swing that way means, Japanese women are not... voluptuous. They are quite the opposite. Now, this is not bad. Princess Leia's breasts were bound, after all and she still got Hans Solo. But, I guess what it means is that outsiders, those visited by the boob fairy as children, kind of feel a bit... exposed.

I wasn't going to mention anything, especially as this is public, but I was talking to Elizabeth, and she brought the topic up. Elizabeth is cute, petite, and can even fit into Japanese clothing, unlike me, who still hasn't been able to find shoes that fit. And even Elizabeth says that she feels overly conscious of her chest. I know I do. I've started wearing my tightest fitting, bras, and even then, I feel inappropriately curvy. I wore a push up bra just one day and I felt like the entire street was watching me as I biked down the bumpy sidewalk (ridiculously bumpy, for the record) to work. It does mean that, from what I've seen of Japanese lingerie departments, everything's cute, because it's all for decoration. There is no practical aspect to a bra.

I need to find a better way, probably a more long-term way, of hanging out laundry than using safety pins to keep it on my porch railing.

Also, for the record, any warning anyone gave about how big the bugs in Japan are was really, honestly, I swear, not a good enough warning. Bugs here are HUGE. I have mistaken cicadas for birds several times now, and the beetles are the size of your thumb. There's something slightly horrifying about peaking over a ledge to see a beetle on the screen inches from your face that big. Horrifying.

So, between the gecko incident and the giant beetle crawling toward me while I hung out my laundry, I'm now terrified of leaving the door open any longer than it takes for me to slip through it. I used to prop the front door open for a breeze, but.... we might be done with that.

Also, the screen door to my porch keeps falling off. It's fallen off four or five times tonight. Really, it falls off whenever you try to open or close it. It went crashing off once tonight, too, which, while causing no damage, was remarkably loud.