I made a faux pas last night.  I was eating roast chicken in an American Brasserie near Roppongi Hills.  Normally in a Japanese restaurant you are given a towel to wash your hands before eating.  But since this was an American style restaurant they didn’t do this.  After I had finished eating my dinner I picked at the chicken with my fingers while chatting.  I was interrupted by a waitress who rushed over with a towel.  At first I thought she was giving this to me so I could wipe my hands once I had finished eating the chicken. But she took the towel out of its wrapper and wanted me to wipe my fingers before I continued eating.  I like eating with my fingers, and I forget that in certain circumstances it will horrify the people around me.

I think this is the first time there has been a tsunami warning for Tokyo since I moved to Japan.  Every Japanese T.V. channel is showing some sort of warning.  Some stations have subtle little wave images at the top of the screen and others, like NHK, have the screen dominated by a flashing map of the country highlighting the problematic areas.

The advisories state that they are expecting a wave of up to 2 metres to hit Tokyo bay and that people should evacuate the seashore.  We are going to stay at home today and we don’t expect the tsunami to cause us any problems.  We will, however, still pay attention to the advisories in case anything changes.

I was trying to find a Japanese T.V. program to watch while eating lunch earlier this week.  While flicking I came across what I thought was an exercise program.  There were three woman skimpily dressed in yellow, orange, and purple sports wear doing aerobic exercise while chanting, “Are you serious about anyone” in English.  This was strange but not as strange as the next scene which showed three salary men in business suits doing the same thing.  At this stage I still thought it was some strange exercise program and they were showing people carrying out these exercises in the work place, some sort of lunch time exercise madness.

But then it moved on to two Western people sitting at a table laid out to look like a romantic dinner.  There was soft lighting and hideous outfits more suited to the 1980s than 2010.  The woman said in ridiculously slow English, “Shall we make a toast”.  And the man responded with, “Here’s to your lovely eyes”.  Well, since the program also had subtitles showing a translation of the English I finally worked out that this was a program designed to teach English.

I couldn’t decide what was more strange – the weird exercises or the phrases they were teaching.  I mean, if I was on a date and someone made a toast to “my lovely eyes”, I would either burst out laughing or try to think of a way to quickly be somewhere else.  But then watching salary men do what looked like bust improvement exercises while chanting, “You look sensational in that dress” was one of the strangest things I’ve seen on T.V.  Well, at least in the last month, I do after all live in the land of strange.

In the U.K. when you are ill you go to see general practitioner (GP). It’s the GP who decides if you need to see a specialist. But in Japan they don’t seem to have GPs. I wanted to talk to a doctor last week about multiple things, but I couldn’t do that. I had to pick one of the things and see someone about that. I went for the joint pain as it’s keeping me awake at night.  The receptionist said, “you wish to see an orthopedics specialist”? And I looked blanked while I tried to remember what orthopedics is. I did eventually remember but would not have remembered the word myself if someone hadn’t suggested it.

I saw the orthopedics doctor and was sent for blood tests and x-rays.  I am still amazed that I can have x-rays done right away and sit down five minutes later and talk to the doctor about them.  The x-rays didn’t show anything out of the ordinary and I was told that the results of my blood tests would take a week.  I went today to get the results.  They weren’t very interesting.  They show that I am sick.  But I knew that already, it’s one of the reasons I went to the doctor.  It doesn’t give any indication as to why I have joint pains, but it does at least rule out rheumatoid arthritis.

As well as not being able to see a GP I also can’t get re-fill prescriptions.  I find this incredibly annoying.  It means that I have to go and see a dermatologist once a month if I want to have feet that don’t bleed.  I tried to see the dermatologist today but, unfortunately, they don’t work on the same day as orthopedics.  It would be easier if they were closer, the surgery is about an hour away, but it’s my limited Japanese that means I have to travel so far.

I’m not overly happy.  I left the doctors today feeling sick, with blood tests to back that up, but with no actual cure.  I need to go back and see someone in internal medicine.  I also need to see a dermatologist.  But first, I need to go the thyroid hospital, as I’m due another set of blood tests.  This is not going to be a fun week.

In Japan Valentine’s Day is a day when women buy gifts for men. For the past few years we have ignored this tradition and bought gifts for each other but  this year we decided not to bother with gifts or cards. Instead, we stayed at home and cooked together, though Marty did buy me a piece of my favourite chocolate cake.

Valentine's Chocolate Cake

Grocery shopping on New Year’s Eve in Tokyo is every bit as bad as grocery shopping on Christmas Eve in Belfast.  Normally I would avoid doing this but we only got back yesterday.  In Belfast, when I wanted to go food shopping before a major holiday, I would go to somewhere like Tesco in the middle of the night.  But here in Tokyo we don’t have 24 hour mega grocery stores. Normally I don’t miss them but being able to go to one shop would have made things easier today.

The first shop I went to was so crowded it was hard to get inside.  I persevered as it’s the only local shop where I can buy cheddar cheese.  The second shop I went to wasn’t much better. I wanted to see the display of crab and fish but I couldn’t face fighting my way through the crowds to do this.  I quickly decided that we weren’t going to have any traditional Japanese New Year food and instead bought the ingredients for making chicken soup, Irish stew, and chili.  The only Japanese thing I bought was a black Ebisu stout in the hope that I can use this instead of Guinness in my stew.

I’m also not going to eat soba to welcome the New Year.  Instead I’m thinking about chocolate and champagne, though neither of those things is likely to help me have a long life.

Happy New Year!

Marty convinced me to join the local gym.  We signed up on Sunday and now I need to work up the nerve to actually go.  This is not because I think people will laugh at my dreadful fitness level but because there are 75 rules of conduct for using it.  It took my Japanese teacher an hour to translate these and then another hour to go through the additional instructions I had been given.

Marty broke a rule while entering the gym on Sunday as he didn’t remove his shoes at the entrance.  I was dawdling along behind him and saw a couple of other people remove their shoes, so didn’t make the same mistake.  (My enthusiasm for signing up was evident in my reluctance to enter.)

I know that there are rules for using gyms in the U.K. but I can’t remember being explicitly told that it was forbidden to drink alcohol inside the gym.  Here there are lots of rules about shoes, but then wearing appropriate foot wear is an important part of the culture.  I find it odd that tattoos are forbidden but this also seems to be a cultural issue.

There are some rules that amused me:

• Don’t dye your hair in the shower room
• Don’t do your laundry in the shower room
• Don’t read newspapers or magazines in the sauna or steam room
• Don’t scrub or exfoliate your skin in the sauna
• No gargling is allowed at the water fountain
• Don’t wear jeans or skirts during aerobic classes

I find it odd to provide such explicit rules.  Why say that you can’t do your laundry in the shower room?  Is it O.K. to do this in the swimming pool or in the spa?  I imagine not, but when I see rules like this I start to wonder if I can do anything I want as long as there is no rule against it.

There was a a whole separate page on how to use the swimming pools.  I’m not sure I want to actually try swimming.  Before you enter the pool you have to sign some sort of health-check sheet and have your blood pressure taken (and it seems you do this every time you go).  You also must wear a swimming cap – something about hair clogging up filters.  I don’t own a swimming cap and my Japanese teacher thinks I’m going to need to buy one for a child as my head is small.  She said I would look cute.

Then there are the instructions on how to use the lanes.  There are one-way lanes, u-turn lanes, beginner lanes, and  lanes that you can only front-crawl in.  There are directions on the proper way to overtake a slow swimmer.  Seriously it tells me that I can only overtake on the right.  There are also the expected rules about noise, splashing, diving, walking…  I wasn’t actually expecting there to be rules about how to stop and walk in the swimming pool but it seems that the madness is endless.  And then there is the mysterious rule that states it’s O.K. to wear gloves in the pool.  Neither my teacher or I could come up with any explanation for that.

Given how horrified I am with the whole thing I have rang a Japanese friend who is going to go with me to the gym tomorrow.  I’m hoping that if the staff start to yell at us for our stupidity that she can at least translate for me.

As the days get colder the sky is getting clearer.

Fuji View

Marty and I spent a day at Disney Land so that we could watch the Hallowe’en parades.  He loves the silly songs and dances that the audience are taught.  I was impressed with the food.  We had a beautifully presented meal at the Blue Bayou restaurant.  My starter had a spider’s web drawn on the plate.  I don’t know what it was drawn with as it was so pretty I didn’t want to make a mess of it by eating it.

Scallop Starter

My dessert was shaped like a dragon. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it but the sweet potato cream was lovely, though I still think that food shouldn’t be purple.

Dragon Dessert

After spending yesterday studying I was pleased that it’s still beautiful outside today. I was worried that it would be wet and grey and that I would get stuck inside. Instead I got to go out and cycle along the river. My joints are aching and I feel tired but I still enjoyed it. I love that there are flowers blooming. The air smells sweet and it would pass for spring except for the changing colours of the leaves.

The ride wasn’t completely peaceful.  Being foreign seems to attract strange people or maybe it’s the clothes I wear cycling…  I don’t know what it is, I just wish it would stop happening.  I don’t mind if people stare or if they are friendly and say “Hello”.  I do mind if they get really close to me when I’ve stopped at the traffic lights, leer, and then start asking questions.  I have no idea what the man was trying to say but he made me feel uncomfortable.  I kept saying that I couldn’t understand and wished that the lights would hurry up and change so I could cycle away.  He may have been saying something completely normal but I would have understood had he been trying to chat about the weather or ask me where I was from, which are the most likely things to be said to me by strangers when I’m out cycling.

This odd encounter made me wary of the other men moving towards me when I stopped to rest.  One did get close enough to say “Hello” but I just said “Hello” back and cycled away before he could attempt to engage me in conversation.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like that this area is friendly and that people smile and say “Hello” when I’m out.  It’s just sometimes people can be a bit creepy or invade my personal space.    Today was one of those days when I noticed.  I saw the group of young men who stopped to point and stare at me when I cycled past.  I noticed the man who followed me around the supermarket when I was getting my groceries, probably because I turned and nearly walked into him at one point.

Tokyo is such a packed city that at times you can’t avoid being crushed together with other people.  Today, when I was out along the river, I just wanted to be left alone to enjoy the fact that there are only a handful of people around.