The apartment is freezing. After months of moaning about the heat and the humidity in the summer now it’s time to complain about the cold. I don’t really like central heating but tonight I’m thinking that maybe it would be nice for the bathroom or the kitchen to be warmer. We have one electric heater on in the living room and it doesn’t seem to be making a lot of difference. I suppose I could put my coat back on.

I know it’s not warmer outside as we went out at stood on the balcony at midnight to hear the gong ring 108 times for the start of the New Year at the local Buddhist Temple.

Happy New Year!

My sister-in-law arrived today from the U.K. This was only the second long-haul flight she has ever taken and she wasn’t sure what she was allowed to bring in her suitcase. She had heard a variety of people complaining about having metal objects taken off them at the airport and was concerned about some of the things in her case. She decided to ring the airport in advance just to make sure that everything was allowed. I don’t know how the person she spoke to stopped themselves from laughing as she actually asked them if under-wired bras would be classified as dangerous weapons!

I’m supposed to be cleaning but instead I’m playing with my computer and listening to Sarah McLachlan sing Christmas Carols.

Marty was asking tonight if I thought we would ever feel old and I told him that “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple”. He had to point out that I am currently wearing a purple jumper.

I’ve finally arrived back to the apartment. It’s taken 20 hours since I left the London hotel but I don’t feel too bad. I left the monster case with a delivery company at airport and it should hopefully arrive in the next hour or so. I really like that I can pay to have my case delivered. It would be easy enough to take the case on the Narita Express but I hated the thought of trying to pull it through Tokyo and Shibuya station.

I went through the new security procedures at Narita for the first time today. It was really quick as they have added a queue just for foreigners with re-entry permits and there was only one person in the queue when I arrived (I used to join the same queue as Japanese nationals). It doesn’t take long to take the prints from your two index fingers or to take a picture. The machines are different from the American ones as they have a scanner for each hand. I also don’t get asked any questions about my reasons for being in Japan as the re-entry permit gives away the fact that I live here and have a visa in my passport.

I am tempted to lie down and sleep but I know that would be really bad. Our first Christmas visitor is arriving on Saturday and this place is a tip. There is hair in great balls mimicking tumbleweed in the hall. Marty has been ignoring the floors. Well, I suppose he has managed to cover the floor in the living room with rubbish. When I rang him from the airport he asked me to please not scream or cry when I saw the state of the apartment. I’m going to clean instead as that might be a more useful thing to do.

I’ve caught a bug. Or maybe it would be better to say that the bug has caught me as I’ve been sick now for days. I thought last night that I was getting better but I was much worse today. I had to run out of the room during my Japanese lesson this morning. Which surprised my teacher as I was reading a story about tea at the time and I had to stop mid sentence. My teacher is worried about me now as she thinks I’m not adjusting well to the climate here. She is encouraging me to eat sour plums and to drink hot water. I haven’t been able to eat much of anything but I wouldn’t think of eating sour plums when my stomach is so delicate.

Last night I walked into the bathroom and bent down to pick up some laundry. This huge, horrible, cockroach jumped out of the pile of towels and I dropped whatever I was holding and screamed. I must have sounded terrified as Marty nearly dropped my laptop in his haste to come to my rescue. I managed to hurt my left foot whilst jumping around trying to avoid the cockroach.

I was talking to Ohata-sensei about insects today and she told me that my home was very natural. She also said that if I can see 1 cockroach there are probably another 20 in hiding. And she told me that they like books!

I got up early this morning and read my email. That was a mistake. Sometimes my email contains things I would rather not read and I don’t want to start my day feeling angry. So, to take my mind off this I decided to find something to do that would be useful but would also allow me to stop thinking for a while. I ended up mending the hem on Marty’s new trousers. He had tried to do this with a combination of safety pins and some sort of clip like thing that is usually used to hold sheets of paper together. I used a needle and thread.

Some women take toiletries with them from hotel rooms - I take sewing kits. I’m not sure which hotel the kit I used came from but it was really good. Usually these contain one or two needles. This one contained six and all the needles were already threaded. This small improvement really impressed me. I could have threaded the needle myself but sometimes they are awkward and not having to do this saves me time. And if you need to sew in your hotel room you are probably trying to repair a button, zip or hem of something that you had thought you could just put on and wear.

Sewing was one of the things I learnt to do at school. I think in the past I have dismissed some of the things that I learnt at school because I don’t use them directly. It’s easy to think to look back at some seemingly obscure thing that I was taught and wonder what the point was. But the things we learnt in our past become the foundation on which we build new learning.

I have been trying to decide what to study next. As I have recently completed a law degree I was seriously considering a law masters in a computer related area. But that was mainly because it seemed to be a logical step as I was planning on combining two areas of previous knowledge. I think I would be able to do it but I don’t have any passion for the law at the minute. I considered a music degree but really I need to attend a university to do that properly and my limited Japanese prevents me from doing that at this time. I think I’ve decided on philosophy. I asked Marty to print me out the application forms last night. His response was to tell me that it was already hard enough to argue with me and did I really need to learn about logic as well?

Christine and Rachel have headed back home so once again all is quiet in our apartment. Marty took Christine to see the bridge she wanted to see, I took Rachel to see the zoo on a day when it was open and we even managed to go back to karaoke without anyone fighting. And we also took a trip to Tokyo Disneyland.

I don’t think I make a very good tourist guide. I tried to take Rachel to the zoo on Tuesday but it was closed. Tonight my sister wanted to see the Rainbow Bridge. She had seen this in Lost and Translation and wanted to see it lit up in the dark. Well, I did get her to the bridge but you can’t really see it properly when you are standing on it.

Rachel was concerned about coming to Japan because she had heard about earthquakes, typhoons and tsunami.  Yesterday we missed the typhoon and today we missed the earthquake.  Marty rang about it because it’s the first time since we moved to Japan that the elevators at his office have been turned off because the building was moving.

Hopefully there won’t be a tsunami.