Gives 'cosy' a new meaning

And onto my apartment. Sigh. The best description I can give is that it's miniscule. I'd spent most of training week optimistically telling everyone that 'Hey our apartments have to at least be bigger than our hotel rooms right?' And technically it is bigger but only by another meter square that encompasses the inbuilt kitchen and laundry (read: closet with a washing machine and shelf). It's a good thing I'm a relatively small person. Any bigger and I'd be suffering from some serious claustrophobia.

My bathroom does not have a super funky electronic toilet and I'm almost glad for it. The spray and the constantly warm toilet seat were beginning to freak me out.

There's a tiny balcony where I can hang out my laundry but since it's rainy season (I've seen more rain in the past two days than I have in two years back in Melbourne) it's not exactly the best spot for drying clothes. I went in search of a clothes horse today and was frustrated when my search came up empty. I mean, they have stores and stores full of random useless crap but they don't have clothes horses? I'm using my curtain rod in the meantime.

So a little bit about the area I live in. It's an industrial suburb called Shinmoriyama. The Asahi and Sanyo factory are nearby. My place is a 5 minute walk to the station, and there are a couple of large supermarkets and a bulk food store, 100 yen store (like a reject shop where 98% of things cost $1 but everything is so much better quality. It even sells some food items), a recycled/second hand store (a great little shop that has a crazy range of second hand goods, from tvs, computers, washing machines, tyres, surfboards, musical instruments, clothes, DVDs and CDs, and bikes. Another store full of random stuff but cheap good quality random stuff), an internet café, convenience stores, dry cleaners, pachinko parlours (their version of pokies), a post office and a littering of Japanese fast food stores. All of this is within a 15-20 minute walk from my apartment.

Something that I love about the area that also applies to most of Japan. The Japanese take advantage of every bit of land they can. A lot of the country is concrete and buildings so at every opportunity they plant a variety of the most gorgeous flowers and plants. The best example I can give is one construction site. There was scaffolding and fake fences everywhere but they literally built the scaffolding and fences around a tiny patch of flower pots. Such an amusing sight.

My area is littered with random mini rice paddy fields and veggie patches. Plus, I have a little river/canal thingy. And the best thing: it's clean! You can see the bottom and all the plants and giant fish and turtles that live in it. So bizarre.

Apparently Nagoya is the Nazi city when it comes to garbage. We don't get bins. We have to use specific plastic bags (which can be purchased at the supermarket) to separate our garbage into Non-burnable, burnable, Recycled (different bags for cans, bottles and paper). It's so confusing and I have so many different garbage bags lying around the place.The walls of my apartment are so thin. I can hear everything my neighbours are doing. It's not so great when I'm in bed and they use the bathroom. The trickling water sound always forces me out of bed to go to the bathroom.

Kitsch and Karaoke

On the weekend before kids training started, Nat and I went to get our inkans (name stamps: the Japanese version of a signature). While we were waiting for them to be made we wandered around the store. It was a department store called Tokyu Hands and it was a department store within another department store called Takashimaya. So it was kind of like a Target (except more stuff and better quality) within a David Jones (except even posher).

That was such an enthralling shopping experience. We were in the stationery section. You know what a stationery fiend I am. So I was in seventh heaven. There were so many random little things that were so kitsch: Animal shaped paperclips, animal shaped rubber bands, jumbo glue sticks, jumbo white out tape, gorgeous paper both for origami and huge sheets of it, calligraphy stuff, a wall of kooky pens and pencils, another wall of postcards and cards. I probably should have bought my postcards there but they were all too pretty to send. They would have been ruined. I would have felt like I was sullying them by simply writing on them.

While we were looking around and chatting this little old lady basically jumped on us and just started to speak to us in English. She'd done her Masters in Cambridge Uni in England and she was always wanting to practice her English. Since she didn't often get the chance to practice she liked to stalk people at the International Center and just start speaking to them. Hmmm…interesting. So we chatted to her for a while. She asked me if I was Taiwanese. She's not the only one to think Taiwan when they see me and I'm wondering why… She told us all about herself and her plans to go back to England, then very abruptly said, 'Okay thank you for talking to me. Goodbye.' Interesting.

We continued on to the kitsch section of Tokyu Hands. There was an entire level of random crap. It was chock-full of useless but aesthetically pleasing objects. There were lovely inkan holders with inbuilt stamp pads, crazy expensive Japanese fans, purring robot cat alarm clocks (freaky), toilet paper with English lessons printed on each sheet for the keen English learners who spend a of time in the bathroom, tissue paper that's printed to look like 10000 yen notes ($100) so it looks like you're so rich you can afford to wipe your sweat with money.

There were ant farms made from coloured jelly like substances, fish in tiny glass jars, and the piece de resistance: Facebank (nothing to do with facebook): it's a piggy bank shaped like a face and you feed it your coins and it swallows them (creepy).

On our last night in Nagoya we hit the city again. Went out for dinner. Ugh… One thing I can't get used to is that people are still allowed to smoke indoors here. Nagoya city has some public non-smoking areas but in restaurants and bars etc they're still allowed to smoke. It's so bizarre to be asked if I want a smoking/non-smoking area.


Then we hit a karaoke bar (yes, it was my idea but everyone else was just as enthusiastic about it). And please don't cringe. It was so fun! We got our own little lounge room thing complete with tv, microphones, couches, and random musical instruments. It took us about 10 minutes to figure out the karaoke machine. It was very hi-tech and in Japanese. Then we were off and running.


We started with an oldie but a goldie: Hey Jude by the Beatles. Then we really got into the swing of things with Creep by Radiohead, Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi, Girls just wanna have fun by Cyndi Lauper, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, Lady Marmalade by Everyone, She f**ing hates me by Puddle of Mud, Cry me a river by Justin Timberlake. Muhahahha. It was so funny. Everyone cacked themselves at my rendition of JT. And of course our personal paparazzo got great shots of the night. Great times.

First Impressions

Here follows my account of my first day in Nagoya city.

I always thought I had a good sense of direction. Apparently that changes when you get swept across the world. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm now 22. Age does funny things to a person. In my travels around Nagoya city, I got misplaced 4 times.

To be fair I was pretty sleep-deprived, all the street signs are in a different language and I later (very much later) realised I was looking at 2 maps simultaneously (they were quite similar and I only noticed when one of my landmark buildings kept disappearing. I thought I was going insane).

I always knew Japan would be different but you never realise how bizzare different is until you experience it first hand. It's the little things that catch my notice.

Taxi doors automatically open (the back door so you don't presume to get in the front with the driver). Only the driver can open the door. So clearly if he doesn't like the look of you he just won't open the door. And I say 'he' because I haven't yet seen a female taxi driver.

They have zebra crossings at all their pedestrian crossings but at most of them they also have ped lights so I have to get used to not crossing a road willy-nilly whenever I see a zebra crossing. Some of the pedestrian crossings sound like laser beams (pteu, pteu!).

About 60% of the population ride bikes. Most of them have front and back baskets. They are bike parking lots littered throughout the city where you pay to rack your bike, but some people just seem to line the bikes along the paths. That seems a little trusting to me. But maybe they have super tiny lock things that I haven't yet noticed. Most woman are very dressed up, full face make-up and HIGH heels. I've only seen two orange people so far which is refreshing. They even ride their bikes in their skirts and heels! I should have brought my office skank shoes. I would have fit right in (except for the wobbling. These women walk better in 3 inch heels than I do in flip flops).

Most people look like they're being led around by their universal remote-sized flip phones. They even text and ride. tut, tut. I know these gadgets probably have in-built microwaves and whatever but they are freaking huge.

I saw individually wrapped lemons for about $7 each (no thine eyes do not deceive thee). But that was at a specialty fruit store. Elsewhere lemons are about $1 each. Yep my constant gorging on cheap fresh fruit seems to be on hiatus for a while. The Japanese don't have enough land to plant fruit trees and stuff so they have to import a LOT of it, thus the exorbitant prices. Mangoes were nearly $20 each. Woo!

And while I'm on the subject of food and prices and because I know you'll ask... I have been eating. I've actually bought all my food from convenience stores. And before you freak out (mum and dad) they sell cheap fresh food there. Like a big pack of sushi I got for $3. Salads around $2. And rice noodles with veg and tofu that you add hot water to and it's just like the vietnamese 'fo'. Yum.

Oooooh, I saw an Omu rice cafe and the pictures looked really good. But I didn't try any because the line for it was around the corner. That's another thing... the cafe/restaurants are so small here, people line up to eat there. There are also restaurants where you prebuy your food from a machine. Odd.

I've also decided that I do not like the spraying function on the toilet. The warm water fountain is creepily accurate and it makes me want to pee more.