lioness in japan

Nugget potato (minced chicken nuggets and potato wedges) with hot sauce.

Sometimes it’s easy to just focus on the bad and the weird in Japan. For instance, there was a guy who for no reason cut up his female neighbour into pieces and flushed them down the loo, or the guy who screamed at me in the Tokyo Met pool, or quirks like the popularity of maid cafes.

Japan is the fifth safest nation in the world and it has one of the nicest and most honest people on the planet.

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There is one product that always gets my Singaporean friends and family really interested — Meiji Amino Collagen (5,000mg). – Click here to go to Beauty Box!

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The picture above is an anti-nausea medicine that comes in powder sachets. It is recommended for those suffering from colds, fever, sore throats and vomiting. I am amazed that there is such a multi-purpose medicine — almost a cure-all.

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I am surprised how many mosquitoes come out to play in Tokyo’s springtime. The weather is absolutely miserable now with rain and temperatures hovering over a wintry 11 degrees.

After endless buzzing through the night and three big bites on my forehead (they look like zits!), the kangaroo directed the stand up fan at us. It worked but now he has a cold and fever.

The only comfort we have is these are just ordinary mozzies and not like the deadly dengue ones in Singapore.

It’s been a tiring, sleepless two days so I’m going to cop out and find mosquito repellent devices in the Lion City. Just not in the mood to hunt down stuff like this in Japanese stores today.

The dwarven board…flowers instead of teddy bears…

I forget how weird this looks to those who don’t live in Japan. Ambien asked me to pose for her. I was laughing my ass off…

I have reached a point where my paltry understanding of Japanese is not enough to skate by. The nitty gritty in moving apartments, shopping online, and speaking to customer service folks in Japanese is humbling. I felt like a three-year-old who had to ask my Japanese friends for help in these “adult” routines.

The latest incident involved me ordering a piece of glass instead of an exercise bench for the kangaroo weight-lifting sessions. Sounds dumb, right? Let me explain: the glass is meant to convert said bench to a coffee table and was photographed as a bench on Amazon Japan. Didn’t I see the word “glass”, you may ask? Frankly no, because I have a bad habit of relying on pictures and skim over clusters of hard-to-read Japanese characters.

Even a simple conversation with the Japanese company who delivered the glass was impossible to decipher after the first three sentences into our dialogue. I gave up in frustration, as he didn’t speak a word of English. With my tail between my legs, I called a Japanese friend to call them on my behalf.

I joined a school in Azabu Juban where I will take one-on-one lessons with a middle-aged sensei (teacher) starting in May. Japanese for busy people II will be my text. I prefer this brand of learning materials because it has explanations in English. When I was in that first intensive course last year, the daily lessons were conducted only in Japanese and I was so confused over certain grammar structures. The kangaroo uses this same series of texts so when I flipped through his book one day, I could completely understand the stuff that I was boggled over before.

During the trial lesson with my new sensei today, I had so much fun. I forgot how interested I am in language learning. I began the lesson with a resolve to go through the pain of studying hard for the JLPT test but emerged thinking, “I am going to enjoy this!” I like absorbing practical daily life type of expressions and words. Tanoshimi (looking forward to it)…

Two friends from Singapore are coming over to visit and I’m keen on showing off the new apartment. I want to cook them a Japanese meal but we don’t have a dining table. I perused a few furniture catalogs, and finally, the kangaroo and I agreed on a long, white dining table and five red/black chairs from Askul, an online office furniture shop.

It sounds strange to be ordering from them but their selection is quite flexible and home-friendly that you could very well decorate your house nicely with their offerings.

Anyway, I had to add our home address to the online form after the shopping cart was full. This was when the trouble started. This online form requires full-sized and half-sized font widths. What the heck are they, you may ask? Apparently, Japanese fonts run on a different kind of computer coding system. For English readers, this just doesn’t matter at all. Whatever you type into an online form, it would get accepted.

For banking online, there’s a soft keyboard (or, a virtual keyboard) for you to use so whatever you key in is set according to what the form requires — be it full-sized or half-sized. From my experience, you just need half-sized ones.

But for Askul, they have a mix. What the f%^^&*? Unfortunately, my old iBook only has a half-sized katakana palette:

For those of you who can read Mandarin, you can see the circled bit that it says “ban”.

Where are the numbers? Addresses are a mix of numbers and Japanese characters so it was infuriating to find the number palette with only full-sized font widths (again, Mandarin readers, see the “chuan” character?):

In the end, I had to ask a Japanese colleague to fix it for me on her PC. Why am I making a big deal out of this? Well, wouldn’t anyone hate to rely on others for even the simplest daily routines?

“Ah, the joys of living in a country where you don’t speak the language,” sighed the kangaroo.

Stomach’s heaving, waves of nausea coming at intervals of 15 minutes, and a burgeoning fever…plus a headache squeezing the top of my head.

I left work early today and am fretting about a number of things.

Firstly, I hate getting sick in Tokyo. It’s really borne out of a paranoid fear that I have something serious and I don’t have enough language skills to approach a doctor here. A friend recommended a clinic in Roppongi Hills on the sixth floor if I ever get terribly ill and need an English-speaking doc. But it’s still cold comfort to me because he or she would still be Japanese — again, I’ve to admit I’m prejudiced. When it comes to important matters like bills, banking, and illnesses, I’d like to be able to communicate well between both parties. It’s ironic because I learned Japanese to handle such scenarios but I still fall back on English…

Secondly, I don’t have the usual meds or remedies I like to take. Mental note to myself: I need to stock up funky Chinese herbal pills and the like when I’m back next.

Lastly, I feel like I have so much work to do but I can’t seem to focus. I keep wanting to run to the loo to gag or lie down on the futon. I’m so excited about getting things going that I feel I’m missing out by steering out of the superfast lane of the Internet highway even just for one day.

But the bright side of everything blue today is that the kangaroo is in town. It sounds wussy but it sucks big time when you’re sick and alone. I don’t have any friends here whom I’m close enough to whine to about such things and who would actually come over and hang out.

I didn’t realise how severe winter can be in Tokyo until the city is awash with lovely pink sakuras. Long avenues light up with the promise of a new season that bursts with rejuvenation and energy. More people are taking leisurely strolls because the weather is getting warmer.

The parks are jammed with people eating, drinking, and dancing to thumping music. The city just comes alive.

Yesterday was spent at a hanami (means looking at flowers) party at Yoyogi park with a fun bunch of peeps. My Singaporean girlfriend invited the kangaroo and I for an afternoon of laughter, chit-chat, and lots of munching and boozing. I could tell the kangaroo was enjoying himself because he forgot about doing his work and we even joined the group for dinner in Shibuya.

I’m nursing a horrible hangover because I literally drank an entire bottle of pinot noir by myself. The Japanese sure know how to party. A couple of friends from my running group said they were busy these two weeks with lunchtime hanami office parties.

I feel this is my first proper hanami with friends. My first hanami was actually the kangaroo’s company party so that’s not really a let-your-hair-down kind of event though I still enjoyed putting together an Aussie picnic. Last year I explored two other famous parks in Tokyo: Inokashira and Yasukuni.

So when’s the next party season? Summer’s hanabi (fireworks) festivals all over town and I’m looking forward to that.

It’s only been barely a month but I have a fondness for our cozy den — I thought a picture of our unusual living room/bedroom would be interesting for Japanophiles.

By the way, our futon and sheets are from Muji. I think they have good quality items that are moderately priced. Although they are more expensive than Ikea, they’ve got that edge with clean lines and sturdy products.

Living arrangements in Tokyo rival Hong Kong’s cramped flats. I got so used to our shoebox that the new space is simply intoxicating. In Singapore, a “three-room flat” (equivalent to a two bedroom apartment) is the norm and seen as fairly small.

This is a photo of the old place – 16 square metres in full glory:

Needless to say, I don’t miss it at all but it holds memories of negotiating our way, bumping elbows and knees, through our first year in Tokyo together. The journey was challenging but it makes our new home such a wonderful reward.