A fishy business

In a country whose predominant food source is fish, it is perhaps no wonder that one of the main attractions is to visit Tsukiji Central Fish Market. The largest in the world, about 2246 tonnes of fish is unloaded fresh from the docks to be sold and auctioned here every day.

A visit to see this phenomenon requires an early start. The market closes completely at 1 pm, most of the action is done by 8 am and if you want to see the auctions (where it is not unheard of for a single tuna can fetch 20 million yen) you have to be there well before 5 am. Not being naturally the earliest of risers, myself and a friend set our alarm for 6 am and arrived sometime after 7 am.

While the outer market is easily found from the subway stop, finding the real heart of the fish market was not as obvious as we had hoped. In spite of this being a major tourist attraction, it is primarily a place of business and you have to walk through a chaos of trucks shuffling boxes to reach the right area. We were temporarily stymied before we tried the age-old technique of following other gaijin (foreigners) which, after avoiding being run over and looks of irritation that would have been shouted curses in any other country, let us tumble into the right area. All things considered, it is perhaps not surprising that tourists were once banned from visiting here; frankly, we were a damn nuisance (^.^).

The fish market itself is a vast collection of closely packed stalls with containers displaying fresh fish and seafood in hundreds of varieties. Tuna, octopus, crab, lobster, eel, shrimp, blowfish, squid, hundreds-of-things-I-couldn't-identify-but-would-try-given-half-the-chance were stacked to overflowing and cut up before our eyes. Some of the fish were so big the plastic used to transport the carcasses away in resembled body bags at a scene of a crime.

After taking our fill of the sights, we moved to the next traditional step in this trip of having a sushi breakfast. Restaurants close to the fish market do a thriving business in selling the extremely fresh fish to hungry visitors and we queued for about half an hour before getting a seat at the small bar. The sushi was incredible and we had a selection placed in front of us that was made from fish that was almost certainly alive and splashing only a few hours previously.

Yes; stupidly early but yes; stupidly worth it.

Someone's calling ...

Since Japan's mobile phone network is too sophisticated to support neolithic western phones, I got myself a prepaid keitai (cell phone). By the time I decided that loosing all my friends at Shinjuku station was becoming wearing, I was only in Japan for another three months, so I opted for the cheapest phone available. This was a $50 samsung phone that (unlike the toilets) looks innocuous enough; a totally basic handset.

"So, what's your email address?"

Not the first question I was used to getting upon waving a new phone at somebody. I mean, I was all for it, I dislike making calls too, but sometimes having someone's number is useful.... no?

It transpires that all Japanese phones have their own email address. It's not that UK/American phones cannot also check your email, but it is an add-on feature that has a fairly hefty price tag associated with it. In Japan, however, you automatically get a number and email address and I can send and receive unlimited email for 300 Yen a month. That's $3, folks. I assume this is possible because the more sophisticated network allows significantly greater data traffic, so it's no problem for everyone to be emailing continuously. As a result, although my phone does SMS messages, it's an almost unused feature because people simply email texts.

In addition, my incredibly basic handset also displays exciting graphics when it gets an email (the text rolls along the screen and exclamation marks bounce out at you - yay for bounces!), has an infrared port to exchange numbers with someone, can do music and video and operates in both English and Japanese. I do miss predictive text, but typing in Japanese is fun.

The complete obsession Japanese have with their phones has led to two other phenomenon: Firstly, unlike in New York where the subway is the land of the dead, the underground stations in Japan all have reception. Secondly, everyone gets charms to hang off their phone on a hook that a wrist strap might go. Gift shops at temples and tourist sights inevitably sell a selection of these charms for people to collect. Currently, I have two "Hello Kitty" charms (that famous symbol of Japan), one from Gujo-Hachiman where the mouthless cat is performing the traditional steps from the Bon Dance festival and a second from Hakone where the cat is submerged in one of the black-shelled eggs cooked in the naturally sulfurous water there. I also have a small pot of gold from Hokkaido (the northern island in Japan) that a friend bought back for me.

It is also common to personalise your phone with rub-on stickers. Phone shops carry a wide range of designs to suit every taste. I chose a black cat with extra paw prints to walk around the phone's edge.

Riches, kitties, paw-prints and emails all on one $50 device. Calls are rather irrelevant really.

Come here often?

In addition to earthquakes and typhoons, Japan also enjoys being volcanically active. As compensation for the fact that you may be swept away at any moment by a steaming river of burning lava, the country is dotted with hot springs or onsens and bathing in them is a central part of Japanese culture.

My first experience of a Japanese onsen was (and I quote) a "hot springs amusement park" in Hakone, just outside Tokyo. The description, while crude, is rather accurate since the baths were divided into two sections: the "amusement park" section and the traditional baths. In the former, there were a series of medium sized public hot pools that took on a variety of flavours. You could bath in red wine, green tea, sake, charcoal, salt or (rather unpleasantly after the hot water) iced candy. In each case, the baths contained diluted forms of their theme and at certain hours were topped up with their main product. We saw a huge wine bottle being tipped into the red wine bath but just missed seeing the coffee added to the one next door.

After dipping ourselves in all available ingredients, we moved to the traditional section of the baths. These were relaxing, low lit areas with a number of plain hot baths both inside and out.

You were also entirely naked.

In fact, I expected to feel far less comfortable than I did. These traditional onsen are single sex and since they are the most common kind in Japan, no one makes a big deal about the lack of a bathing suit. In Japanese culture, such places are supposed to be ideal for breaking down class barriers, since you could be bathing next to a business executive or a truck driver, there is no way to know.

Upon entering the onsen, you shower and carry a small hand towel (almost completely useless for women, incidentally, since we have two disconnected areas one would ideally like to cover) which you place on your head (or somehow out of the water) when you enter the bath.

Tatoos are also completed banned at onsen, so unless you can cover it up, you can't bath if you've got ink. A friend mentioned to me that this is likely due to the affiliation between tattoos and the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia.

Naturally, being Japan, even a naked bath has to contain a level of futuristic technology. In this case, it was in the form of wrist bands which open your locker with one swipe near its detector, lock it again with another and can be used to buy food, drink (apparently milk is the way to go after the baths), massages, fish-that-eat-your-feet and so on, while you are in the onsen. Afterward, you drop the wristband into a machine which detects how much you owe and provides you with an exit card to swipe on your way out.

Who'd have guessed even a naked bath in a naturally heated pool could be upgraded?

The end of civilization

Unfortunately, the world is about to be destroyed by giant robots. Well, really, it was only a matter of time. Naturally, they started in Japan. I took photos (hey, I'm a serious tourist, doncha know?).

The official story for the gigantic earth-destroying mechanical monster standing in Odaiba (location of all terrible things, such as that 'Hello Kitty' Ferris wheel) claims it's a monument marking 30 years of the Japanese anime, Gundam. Rather like unfolded transformers, these robots are actually suits which contain a human pilot, enabling him to go out and fight .... really big shit.

The model was really rather large and every hour dry ice poured out around its feet and jet pack, the eyes lit up and the head turned. You could also walk underneath it (because I know you all wanted that image; apparently no gundam children for you).

Supposedly, it was also possible to buy a small model of the model that was a model of the anime... my head hurts.

Rubbish

Most things about Japanese food I have down. I walk into a supermarket, choose what looks good, go to the checkout and say "hai (yes)" to whatever they ask me. Occasionally, there is a slightly surprising occurrence whereby food gets heated and sometimes I acquire a pair of disposable chopsticks, but regardless I escape with my dinner and head home. The eating of said dinner I am ALL about. I have liked almost everything I have tried in Japan from octopus to mochi and am thinking of proposing marriage to my rice cooker. Finally, I'm done, I wash up and .... throw out the trash.

At this last, innocent step, my entire grasp of Japanese culture breaks down and I am left a horrified foreigner. Since space is a high commodity in Japan, garbage is divided into (at least) three sections: "burnable", "non-burnable" and "recycling". Items for each category go in different coloured bin bags and are collected on different days. The problem comes from knowing which items go in which bag:

A pair of wooden disposable chop sticks? Ok, surely burnable.
A dead battery? Definitely non-burnable. Fear my Physics degree.
How about a waxed juice container? ... Probably burnable.
The plastic wrap I had my sandwich in? ... it doesn't look burnable...

This is a large problem since the Japanese like their wrapping. I was presented with a vacuum packed potato shortly after arriving here and it took me ten minutes to release an apple I had bought from a store as a snack. In fact, the situation is even worse that I originally thought. Upon discussing the topic with friends, I received the helpful reply:

"Oh, well, it depends on the incinerator your district has."

Apparently, some incinerators can burn plastic and some cannot. You just gotta know. This has left me with the task of smuggling my garbage out late at night to surreptitiously stuff it in the apartment complexes bins and hope that no one sees me. The Japanese are serious about rubbish. Allegedly, if you leave your trash unsorted outside your house, your neighbours will return it to your door step for you to do properly.

I am wondering if plastic cannot be eaten. 

A Japanese Home

A bonus of travelling to Gujo-Hachiman for the Bon Festival was the chance to see a town outside Tokyo and (a somewhat more nerve racking venture) inside a Japanese family home.

Gujo-Hachiman is a small town north of Nagoya, a large city south-east of Tokyo. It is set in idyllic surroundings, buried in the heart of the mountains with a river running through its center. Carp fill the streams and the water is pure and drinkable. Drinking fountains in the form of pumps and waterwheels sit on every corner. It is also famous for manufacturing the plastic food that is on display in nearly every restaurant window in Japan. Inside one shop, a demonstration of this process was underway while in another corner variations on the usual display food were for sale, including a spilled bowl of noodles and a rice plate with beetles on it. The postboxes (far right photo) are an unnatural union between a British postbox and an American fire hydrant.

Being invited into a person's home in Japan is quite an honour and I was downright terrified of doing something horribly wrong. However, the friend-of-friend's family who we stayed with were extremely friendly and had their two small grandchildren staying with them as well. Kids, I concluded, were the same somewhat barbaric creations wherever they were from. However, it was hard not to be impressed when the five year old approached me and said in clear English "My name is Masaki". She then fled, leaving her three year old sibling, Yuki (gender indeterminable), to offer me a pair of mouse ears.

Like everywhere in Japan, shoes are removed before entering a home. In this traditional styled house, rush mats covered the floor and we sat on cushions around a low table. The walls are all panels that can be slid or removed to make a single giant room, or put in place to divide the house up into different areas. That night, we slept on futons, although they were the slim kind that can be stored easily for guests and I did not see what the family usually used. The shower room was separate from the toilet and did not have a tray but rather fed down to a drain on the floor.

As way of thanks for the hospitality, we brought a gift of sweets to which I added a picture frame I had bought in Florida. The giving of gifts is an important act in Japan and I had brought a number of small items with me to give away for just such occasions. As far as I could tell, it went down ok.

The family's kindness extended to a generous amount of food, most of which I was now familiar with. At the end of the meal, we were all given a plate for dessert.

"You will need to show Elizabeth how to eat this. She will not have had it before."

I looked down at my plate to see an innocent slice of watermelon there.

"S'ok," I assured my friend. "I've got this one covered."

Dance to your ancestors

The Bon Dance festival or "Day of the Dead" is a Japanese Buddhist event in which people honour the spirits of their ancestors. Many Japanese travel to their family home during this time and party the night away performing traditional dances in yukatas or, in some cases, shorts and luminous mouse ears (hey, I'm just telling what I saw!).

Tradition has it that during this time, the spirits of the deceased return to earth and lanterns are lit to help guide their way back to the family shrines. Having said that, the Japanese I spoke to seemed somewhat vague on the details and more focussed on the food and dancing.

The festivities last for several nights, but at the festival I attended in Gujo-Hachiman, only over the weekend did the dancing continue until 5 am, on other nights that week it stopped at 11 pm (for I imagine, fairly obvious reasons). The dances are performed in the street in what would be a circle, but is more oval due to the restrictions of the road. I confess to being a hopeless dancer, but the steps were simple and repetitive and even I got the hang on most of them in the end. Stalls similar to those you'd find in a fair ground sold toffee (caramel) apples and toffee grapes (!), fish on a stick (top right photo, I knew you wouldn't believe me) and takoyaki or grilled octopus (very yummy - trust me).

For this event, a friend's mother helped me with my yukata and the tying of my obi. An efficient Japanese woman, it was quite some time after we had arrived home that I was able to extract myself from its embrace.

WTF?!

Surreptitious camera-phone picture while queuing for the ladies restrooms at a motorway service station this weekend. Yes, there is indeed a urinal just off to the left, hidden from view at this angle by a low panel. Can I just say:

WTF?!

What sort of female has the ability to use a urinal, especially with the sort of projection advertised by that sign?! I can only think of three possibilities:

1. Transsexuals.

2. Individuals in possession of a she pee device. (I come from the home of the Glastonbury festival. I make no apologies for knowing about this creation).

3. Small male children there with mothers.

In the former case, is it really likely that you would want to demonstrate your anatomy to a long line of women with their legs crossed, especially when the men's restroom inevitably has no queue? I'm thinking not so much, even more so if you are trying to forget your born gender.

The second case would work, but are such inventions really so wide spread that its worth installing a urinal in a public ladies toilet?

As to the third... well, the figure is drawn in pink.

The mind, quite frankly, boggles.

Shake, rattle and roll

Sunday evening found me sprawled on my bed reading when suddenly my mattress started to shake. Well, I had to hand it to my neighbours. It was only 8 in the evening and they must have been at it like rabbits to make the bed vibrate ... and the desk ... and the TV stand and ... hmm, unless they were mounting rhinos I concluded there had to be an alternative explanation.

Welcome to my new word of the week じしん (jishin), earthquake!

The following day I discussed geological forces with my friends at work. They told me that there were earthquake safe spots where people were encouraged to gather. Unlike the hurricane shelters I had seen in Florida which tended to be sturdy school buildings, earthquake safe zones are areas of open space where nothing can fall on you. The observatory where I work is one such spot due to its specious campus.

"But how do you know when to go there?" I asked.

"Well," I was told. "You wait for the first quake to pass. Ideally get under a desk or table in case something falls on you. Then if a larger shake is likely to follow, you move to a safe zone."

"... how do I know if a larger quake is coming?" I enquired, bewildered.

There was a short conversation in Japanese and then my friend went to fetch her Japanese -> English electronic dictionary. She bashed in the phrase and I looked over her shoulder for the translation.

Sixth sense.

Gee, thanks. Early this morning I got to put my new theories into practice when a larger quake shook me awake at around 6 am. I waited, listening to my apartment complex. As far as I could tell, no one was moving. This was only moderately reassuring since the Japanese are so well organised I could quite easily see everyone sneaking out the complex without making a sound. However, it was early, I'd been up late and well ... fuck earthquakes. I went back to sleep.

I was reassured later that at times when people are supposed to move to safe zones, electronic speakers on the street announce warnings to flush people out of their homes.

At lunch today I asked whether it was likely that there would be more quakes coming.

"Well, we've had two so...."

.... so? That's probably it? They'll be another fifty? I still have no idea.

Despite being only mildly inconvenienced by the earthquakes (and actually finding the concept downright exciting), the quake this morning proved to have been relatively large. Although few people were injured, the major Tomei national expressway out of Tokyo has been damaged, right before the major national holidays.

Japan, mother nature does not think you've been good boys and girls this year.

Guerilla rain

Tokyo in summer has a similar feel to it as Florida; it's hot and humid with dark storm clouds that periodically collect above your head to dump their contents on your sandwich. (Yes, I felt it was aimed).

One such downpour found me mercifully on a bus with a friend as we set off in search of dinner. I indicated the dripping scene outside the window. "Ame," I helpfully provided. Rain.

"Yes," my friend agreed. "We call this kind of rain guerrilla rain."

I looked blank.

"Guerrilla," she repeated. "I am sure this is an English word."

Guerrilla? Gorilla? Neither giant chimps nor terrorists made a whole lot of sense here. The rain was not furry with a perchance for bananas and neither did it (fortunately) appear to be armed with guns.

Later on at the restaurant with the rain still hammering down outside, we remembered this inquiry and a third member of our group drew out his electronic Japanese to English dictionary.

"Guerrilla," he showed me the word.

"It is because it comes unexpectedly," my friend told me. "Like an attack." She viewed her empty sake glass. "I am sorry, I am drunk. I cannot explain further."

And that was the end of that~

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Lost in translation

While walking back home one evening, my friend and I were over taken by an ambulance passing at high speed, its sirens blazing.

"nee-naw, nee-naw," I commented sleepily.

"Sorry?" my friend looked blank.

"nee-naw," I pointed at the ambulance's retreated lights.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "We say pee-paw!"

There was a pause while we both considered this. The actual sound the emergency vehicle made was the same as in the UK, it was only our verbal interpretation that differed.

"What do dogs say?" my friend asked me suddenly.

I blinked. "Woof?"

She grinned. "In Japan, they say wan-wan."

Shortly after this, we passed a house where a black and white cat was eying us suspiciously from the front room window.

"Meow."
"Nya."

We supplied simultaneously, pointing. The cat left. European or Asian, its views on us were clear.

Stamp down

In a character-based writing system where no one has signatures, how do people sign official documents? I'd originally assumed that Kanji characters were as susceptible to an individual's handwriting as roman scripts and people scribbled their name at banks the same as in the UK. In actuality, everyone carries a personalised stamp with their name engraved on it.

A stamp? Surely that's utterly insecure?! What is to stop me getting a stamp of someone else's name and stealing all their doe?

... or was that too shocking a suggestion for any Japanese person to consider?

Apparently no, such deviousness is not below the moral threshold of every citizen. Rather the stamps are made of wood, not rubber, and so each one is unique. This posed the next obvious problem:

What if you loose it?

You have to register a new one with the bank, proving your identity with the documents you used to open the account in the first place.

My stamp arrived today with my surname engraved in Katakana (the Japanese phonetic script for foreign words): タスカー . It comes in a tube that looks like a lipstick with its own mini red ink pad at one end.

Currently, everything is getting stamped. You all belong to me. Me me me.

The ultimate peril

It's the strangest thing but I am truly terrified of theme park rides.

No, actually, that's not the strangest thing. The strangest thing is I'm on one now.

Well, theme park rides are scary: you might agree sympathetically. In fact, not enjoying being tied down and flung into a situation where by any rights you should perish might even be considered healthy. Then you might wonder how I am writing a blog. Even allowing for the fact that I've probably uploaded a written note later, a ferocious roller coaster does not normally produce extended prose.

The reason I am able to construct sentences is because I'm actually seated in a pink gondola on a "Hello Kitty" Ferris wheel. The speed? Hmm, anyone been on the London Eye?

This wheel is in Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. Its purpose is simply to provide great views of some of Tokyo's craziest architecture and it moves so slowly it never has to stop; people just hop on and off as the gondolas swing by the lowest point. The views, of course, were why I'd embarked this metallic creation of hell, before remembering that I'm terrified of such things just as the cute little pink door clicked shut.

I have no explanation for my fear. Many other things do not bother me at all. Standing up to address eminent scientists about my research? No problem. Moving to a country 6000 miles away which I've never visited? Nothing to it! A "Hello Kitty" observation wheel? Holy crap.

So here I sit, pumped with adrenaline, writing furiously to keep a sense of perspective while a sweet little voice talks to me in Japanese from a speaker above my head. Seriously, if Godzilla were to climb this Ferris wheel now, I would so have him.

FOCUS ON THE CUTE VOICE.

Now it has switched to English. It's telling me that we've reached the highest point on the ride.

Gee, thanks.

I'm really glad I didn't get a see-through capsule. Okay, I have to take a photo:

:: Clicks and looks at camera screen ::

Hmm, pretty.

No, this is ridiculous, I have to look....

... know what? Not so bad.

Elizabeth 1 : Hello Kitty Ferris Wheel 0

Walk to Japan

Sometimes I feel google map's directions can be a little too concise. On the upside, at least it will only take me 7 minutes.

Astronomical toilet paper

The International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) is an excuse for astrophysicists the world over to share their expertise with the general public and increase interest and understanding of science. Highlights have included seminars, public observing experiences, a 24 hour live online tour through the world's telescopes and the Japanese contribution ....

... the astronomical toilet paper.

Whether their painfully intensive education system has made the Japanese view each second of the day as a potential learning experience or whether this stems from their obsessively high tech lavatory design, the observatories in Japan have produced a toilet roll covered with astronomical facts.  Want to know what a molecular cloud is (ironically useful for my own work)? No problem, it's panel one. What about how a planetary nebular forms? Unless you had curry last night, you may be waiting a bit for this morsel of knowledge because it's not until sheet six. (Oh I am so not making this up, they have a website and everything.)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to enjoy the satisfaction of wiping my arse with my research. (So much softer than ApJ).

Fire & fans

In a country where etiquette is of primary importance, I was perturbed to find myself standing in my underwear in front of people I'd only recently met. No wait, the etiquette part is not relevant. This would have been equally disturbing back in Florida.

I should probably add that the individuals in question were female and that we were dressing in Japanese yukata before going to one of Tokyo's many summer firework displays. These casual kimonos are made of cotton (rather than multiple layers of silk) but despite the promise of less formal clothing, only the most experienced wearer could tie the obi (sash) without assistance.

Since it is common to wear a v-necked top under the yukata, I wasn't completely down to my underwear. That said, I was hoping for something rather more substantial than the hand towel that was passed to me. Said towel wrapped around my middle and a face cloth pushed in the small of my back for good measure. This turned out to be padding for the obi and sat underneath the main cotton garment. The yukata itself came next. Draped over my shoulders, it is a long bathrobe-type garment but its length is gathered up and secured by a thin cotton belt before being pulled and tweaked to hang correctly. The wide obi is then wound over the gatherings of the yukata and tied off at the back with an intricate bow. Add one pair of wooden shoes and tada! I would so make a Geisha.

Firework displays are a common place for both men and women to wear yukatas. Men's yukatas have darker, simpler designs and the obi is thinner. To my unashamed delight, they also do not wear a shirt and frequently leave the top half open. There was a vast number of people at the display, lining either side of the riverbank. I would estimate roughly a third were in Japanese dress. Food stalls selling toffee apples to Dominos pizzas lined the thoroughfare and the fireworks themselves went on for well over an hour.  

On the walk back home, I acquired a fan stuffed into the back of my obi; a traditional place to carry one. My only current problem is that I've been tied so tightly into my yukata that I've no idea how to escape.

Here I am, brain the size of a planet...

... and they ask me to run a shock tube test.

Contrary to its name, no actual astronomical observing is done at the National Observatory in Tokyo. As the city spread, the domes scattering the campus were converted into museums or declared part of Japan's history and left to be (somewhat ironically) observed. Real observing, such as at the Japanese Subaru telescope, is conducted in places like Hawaii while the city observatory buildings operate as offices for astrophysicists and house the tools for a superior different kind of astrophysics; the theoretical group's Cray supercomputer. (The security surrounding access to this machine made me wonder whether information about its existence was controlled. If so, me blogging about it... not so smart. But Google revealed that Cray advertised its installment at the Observatory in their newsletter, so they're totally going down before me.)

Half the battle in running large numerical simulations is getting your code installed on a new computer system. It does not matter how many times I do this, it never seems to be simple. Of course, this time had the added complication of all the system details being in Japanese.

Once I'd bashed everything into submission (including the Kanji dictionary), I set about trying a test simulation to check the code did not fail when run. This produced the response:

Job exceeds queue resource limits

Huh? This was a small programme that followed the motion of a fluid along a pipe (known as a shock tube test) and I'd only requested a single processor for it. It should not have taken more than a minute to complete. In fact, I could have solved it myself... though in a bit more than a minute. Upon investigation, I discovered that the error message above is misleading. What the Cray was really saying was:

Your job is too small for me to consider it worth my time to compute.

In fact, it transpired that the Cray wouldn't have anything to do with me or my simulations until I requested a minimum of 20 cores each with 4 processors on them. Which I did .... for this one shock tube test. It was the numerical equivalent of squishing a crippled ant with a heavily armored tank.

Well, fine. Two can play at this game. You want a real problem, Cray? One universe demand coming up...

Blood payment

Blood, toil, tears & sweat; the essential recipe for success from both Roosevelt and Churchill. However, I rather wish my weekly pursuit of a Grand Slam title on the Observatory's tennis courts didn't involve quite so much of the blood part.

The local mosquito population apparently think the visiting European is tasty delicious. Far more so than anyone else who appears on the courts. So while my friends straighten out stiff muscles this morning, I am considering gnawing off my arms to relieve the itching.

I was informed by a bite-free colleague that mosquitoes prefer people with O-type blood. Common as anything in Europe but a rarity in Japan where most people are A-type. I initially treated this theory with some skepticism. Japan looks to blood type like Europeans and Americans look to astrology; a person's blood group predicts their personality, love matches and whether they should be staying away from dogs with black spots for the next five days. Type Os like myself are destined to be outgoing and very social but tend to start more things that they finish. Type As (which I assume most of my friends are here) are calm perfectionists and highly artistic. Japanese anime characters almost always have a blood group assigned to them in keeping with their personalities.

In my mistrust of believing that blood group is the answer to all ailments, I turned to that one source of reliable information; the internet. Google informed me that there is scientific evidence for a mosquito preference to O-type blood which might indeed explain the excitement in the insect population of Japan upon seeing me. If nothing else, the stories are at least collaborative.

Damn it, now I'm at the end of this post I want to scratch again. Must. Keep. Hands. On. Keyboard.

Tsuyu

The rainy season (Tsuyu / つゆ / 梅雨 or however you'd like to write it; it's wet, that's the point.) in Japan was officially declared to be over yesterday. Weather, it seems, is not above Japanese bureaucracy. Somehow that makes me feel slightly better about my bank account.