It’s official. The bugs are back. Over the past couple weeks the weather suddenly warmed up and humidity returned. Which is like an open invitation for the bugs. Each day I spend about 15-20 minutes of my time chasing mosquitoes in my apartment. Yelling at them, cursing them, their fathers and mothers, their unborn children who will probably torment as well. Though I kill one or two before I drift into sleep each night, I have far too many of those “buzzing by my head” episodes right as I find myself losing consciousness. I cringe, get up, stumble to the light, switch it on and stalk around my room angrily, looking for the offenders. Most nights, they seem to win, as I can’t find them. Sometimes they do their buzzing routine multiple times, keeping me up till odd hours of the night. My pet spider, who is graciously allowed to inhabit my place for free, is not pulling his weight. I discussed this with him just yesterday, but he seemed to be asleep.
And so… just yesterday morning I awoke to two mosquito bites on my arm, and continued to find bites throughout the day – including one on the small of my back. I had pjs on and was buried under the covers, so how he got there is beyond me, and also creeps me out since that must have been quite a feat. He probably went back to all his mosquito friends and told them of this grand tale of heroism…
So yes, spring. The cherry blossoms have come and nearly gone. I managed to get a few shots with my iPhone for you all, but really weren’t all as enchanting as I had envisioned them to be. It seems that their symbolism tends to be what excites everyone – especially for so many people who enjoy picnicking under the blossoms, otherwise known as “hanami.”
Now that the blossoms are dwindling away, buds of green have taken over. The hills around here actually look amazing, as the trees are so many shades of green and the cherry blossoms have given them an almost frosted look. Everything is alive again after winter and it is so refreshing.
In Japan, many changes occur around this time, in reflection of newness of spring. Such as the school year ending in March, and a new year beginning in April. Some teachers are transferred to new schools during this time, and within, school teachers are moved around by student level (1st, 2nd or 3rd years). So, I am teaching with some new teachers, whom I like, and also have more control of what is being taught in my Oral Communication classes, which has been even more refreshing and allowed me to really stretch out some more. Of course, I feel much more comfortable with what I am doing and find myself in these first classes just acting like my goofy self in order to relax the students and make them feel comfortable. I just hope all the good feelings last through at least this next term….(which runs until June/July). I spent part of Spring Break in Tokyo with David, which was amazing and all too amusing and again reminded me of how much I hate walking incessantly all day long half the time… especially when we were in search of food… we had to go to the U.S. Embassy 3 times to take care of marriage paperwork stuff. Of course, the third time, we had to go out and get a special envelope at the post office to put with my passport application, and since I didn’t want to come back and do it or mail it, we had to go out of the embassy, go to the post office, and come back. I didn’t know this before but when you go to the Embassy you basically go through security like at the airport. We have to take electronics out of our pockets and bags, take out liquids, put the bags through the scanner, walk through the detector, the whole nine yards. The most amusing part for me about this was how many electronics we had between the two of us. At one point, on I believe our 2nd or 3rd trip back in, David was trying to find his electric shaver somewhere in his bag, and since the bag has a million pockets; it was taking him awhile to search. I walked through the detector and was waiting patiently for him to finish digging through his bag, when one of the guards asked another guard (in Japanese) what he was looking for. The other guard replied “she-ba-“ (pronounced: shaaybaa, i.e. shaver) and started laughing, to which the other started laughing, and I of course started laughing because I found the situation so comical, as David is still, trying to locate the shaver…. (He did end up finding it though!)
I think pretty much most of the paperwork we had to do ended up being amusing more than anything and I had to try and keep from laughing in so many cases, such as when trying to be solemn and raise your hand to confirm you did indeed tell the truth on everything you wrote on such-and-such paper, or the fact that Fukuroi City Hall didn’t think we, as Americans, could get married in Japan, and then didn’t believe David’s middle name was his middle name (it’s Japanese and considered a last name in Japan), and finally when they asked David to confirm he was telling the truth about a translation, I, not really aware of what was happening, raised my hand and said yes too, to which both he and the agent told me I didn’t need to do that…. Oops…And, of course with the warmer weather, means I am out and about more. This also seems to translate into bicycle accidents. The first in my latest series involved me miscalculating the angle as to which I should take my bike up part of the curb. It wasn’t terribly steep, maybe a couple inches or so, but I ended up completely biffing it and fell off my bike, bruised up my arm and left hand.
The second incident I was just puttering home from the grocery store, hardly moving as I’m crossing a crosswalk at an intersection. For some reason I looked away or down, I don’t remember now, and ended up ramming into the curb on the other side (there’s a small 2 foot long corner of curb between the like 6 feet of flat sidewalk for the crosswalk. How I did this, I cannot really tell you. I braked, kinda fell, but still on my feet, as my bike flipped over (after the seat decided to jam itself into my crotch as hard as possible.) Sitting hurt for a few days after that. I also messed up the rear brakes pretty good and I had David on video chat that evening trying to help me fix them (it took forever).
My third accident was just the other day as I was pedaling down the sidewalk behind some person going really slow. I was keeping my distance but waiting for an opportunity to pass him. Finally as he crosses a street, he is veering to the right to go across the adjacent crosswalk. So I happily continue pedaling since I now have open sidewalk. Well, when he turned to the right, he immediately stopped, his rear tire directly in my path. This literally happened in about 2 seconds and I didn’t have enough time to avert my bike, and thus rammed right into the man’s rear tire (and the bike lifting up into me again… as if the pain I had before was some kind of joke). I probably yelled something out loud as this happened though I don’t remember now what it was, but as I caught myself falling and trying to catch my breath I muttered some “sumimasens” and hobbled off with my bike. He didn’t say a word, just turned and looked at me. And that was that. Maybe he couldn’t believe his lucky day, a blonde, female foreigner ran into his bike.
Why? Well, I am pretty much a kind of celebrity here. As the months have gone on, the stares never cease and I seem to attract a lot of attention. (We won’t even talk about what those ridiculous bicycle accidents do for attracting attention….) Lately, I’ve been wearing sunglasses so I can stare back without feeling bad. Sometimes I will meet peoples’ eyes but that doesn’t usually faze anyone. I wonder if my hair were dark brown if that would make a difference – something tells me probably not since I will end up attracting stares somehow anyway. David never seems to get stared at. Unless he’s with me. Oh wait, but then that’s me… We were on a park bench somewhere in Tokyo, just sitting there, talking or not talking, enjoying ourselves, and then every few minutes people walk by with their heads turned 90 degrees, just staring, to which I usually just start cracking up… No one has asked for my autograph yet, although I have been asked for my phone number before…
This is quite a lot, my fault for not updating sooner. Perhaps I will do better next time. Happy Spring!
P.S. David and I have recently had some interesting conversations about how things are at our schools, academics, clubs, etc, and so you might find what he has recently written about interesting (if you want to read more about how those things are in Japan, or at least a general representative, by no means representative of every school). http://aoyama81.blogspot.com/
