Mrs Tsk *

After one week in Japan I have already started…
* …sleeping in my clothes because it’s too cold to undress.
* …peeing into a pet bottle at night rather than face the ladder-steep staircase to the bathroom.
* …buying beer from vending machines.

* …shuffling to the nearest konbini in slippers and pajama bottoms.
* …bowing to people I nearly collide with on my mamachari bicycle.
* …calculating the likely impact of earthquakes on three-storey brick buildings.
* …sleeping inside the futon closet like Doraemon.
* …operating my iMac from a fluffy zaisu (legless) chair equipped with a vibro-massage cushion from Donki.
* …shuttling four times at the sento between the sauna room and the cold water pool.

* …wearing a silly pink watch (amongst other affectations) because nobody will be rude enough to mock me.
* …informing Tokyo people that here in Kansai we stand on the right side of the escalator.
* …concocting a plan to steal the pop kabuki posters dotted around Shinsekai so I can make the best wallpaper ever.
* …wearing at all times a puffy caramel “lifesaver” that fastens over the shoulders with velcro pads, and a woolly hat.
* …finding it perfectly normal to cycle home several kilometers through covered arcades ringing with karaoke.
* …thinking of shoes as things that belong to rooms, not people.
* …thinking of bread as a sweet white chunk of fluff.
* …dining on cartilage.

* …being unsurprised when the water-heater talks to me with a woman’s voice.
* …finding the idea of taking a bath in the same room as the toilet frankly barbaric.
* …getting used to turning around and squatting over a hole in the ground to pee and poo.
* …worrying that the Chinese are going to nuke us some day.
* …getting used to the fact that my local shopping centre features the hanging gardens of Babylon on an eight-level roof terrace.
* …being so anxious about trash separation and collection rules that I consider smuggling the stuff at night to a secret landfill site.
* …feeling ambivalent about the fact that Japanese women bring out my inner pervert.
* …being roundly mocked by crows.
* …climbing the stairs using hands as well as feet.

* …banging my head on the top of the doorframe when I forget to stoop.
* …hearing the daylight hours measured by the chimes of an electronic Big Ben in the nearby primary school.
* …riding a bike while reading from the screen of a handheld device.
* …thinking it perfectly normal to lunch on octopus and the glutinous grey jelly known as konnyaku.
* …finding every little trip to the shops or the laundromat fascinating and exciting.
* …feeling happy to be alive.