Gaijin

Anyone reading this who is under the age of 18 or male may now wish to leave this blog site.

Something weird arrived in the post addressed to me today, I cannot read it so I am curious as to exactly what it is. An envelope with a cartoon picture of two young women looking at each other with a knowing look in their eye, as if to say. "Let's go there together".  At first it seemed that I had been invited to join the secret society of Japanese fish grilling or perhaps ikebana. I had been hoping to have a few such lessons so that I could improve my knowledge of 1. how to cook a decent meal in this country and 2. to expand my knowledge of floral arrangements. Upon opening the letter, I am now convinced that indeed I have joined the secret society of women, I have the membership card to prove it. They seem to have my birth date wrong though, I was born on the 27/07, but not in the year 1939 as they seem to think. I would love to post a photo of the booklet here but fear that someone reading my blog may take the cartoons of female anatomy the wrong way. As far as I can tell from the pictures, there are 7 steps to being a woman in this country, all revolving around DNA. I have a  membership card now and appreciate that as an alien in this city, someone is really looking out for me.

FYI, Did you know that as registered aliens, we are the recipients of a monthly cash benefit for our children? We receive 13000 yen per month for each child.

Life is starting to settle down here now. For a moment the other day, I forgot I was in Japan. A beautiful still and sunny morning, 3 aeroplanes flying over head, not a cloud in the sky. The house is equipped, we have a washing pole, finally found a plug in Nagoya so that we can wash the dishes. (Please refer back to the kitchen sink plug on a previous blog) Still a bit challenged by shopping for food, still trying to find a strong coffee, although managed to get a drive through Starbucks coffee served with ice.  I am really suprised to find so many American chains here Starbucks, Maccas, KFC, Mr. Donuts, 7/11, and how to find someone in Japan? Directions via convenience stores. "I'll meet you at Family Mart," or "turn right at McDonalds and left at 7/11".

It is good to be an alien for a change. Not being able to communicate with people is a challenge, but to be in this predicament for a short time is a good experience for us. We are the foreigners now, perhaps we can appreciate life for foreigners in our own country of Australia and appreciate the difficulties that they must have. Simple things, such as installing a Japanese wireless system at home or when is a chemist a drugstore and when is a chemist a chemist and where is a chemist? How do you say that in Japanese? How do you ask for dencorub in Japanese?

For those interested in the outcome of our Nagoya Bay hermit crabs; we started with 8, spent AU$60 on a tank and set-up, spent the next day fearing for the lives of our newly named pets, and watched in disbelief as the harmless crustaceans new home turned into a "Tank of Terror". These Japanese hermit crabs are really aggressive, the big ones ate the medium ones, slowly ripping off their claws, consuming them limb by limb-ouch! We now have two enormous hermit crabs, Nugget and Samantha and two minute ones Mini max and ????, obviously not worth their trouble to eat.

So, we continue our adventure as gaijin in Japan, we are trying to pick up a little bit of the language and learn as much as we can about this fascinating culture. But for the time being we can only peer in and imagine the real Japan.