Tony sent me a link to an article about the blood type obsession in Japan.  I already knew that in Japan it’s much more likely that someone would ask my blood type than my star sign but I’ve always had to tell people that I didn’t know what my blood type was.  This answer was always received with shock as everyone here knows what their blood type is.

The last person to ask me was a doctor and he laughed at me when I told him I didn’t know my blood type.  Since the doctor needed to know I now know that my blood type is A+.

So, after reading the article, it’s great to know that people with my blood type are considered to be patient, uptight, sensitive, responsible and cautious.  Maybe I should just keep telling the people who ask that I don’t know what it is.

I realised today that this is the fourth December in a row that I have lived in a different place.  I also realised that this apartment is not cold unlike our last one.  The new apartment actually has air conditioners / heaters that work as they are supposed to.  We also have under floor heating in the living room and a blow heater of some sort in the bathroom.  No longer will the heated toilet seat make the loo the warmest place to be.

It’s still fairly mild in Tokyo and we haven’t needed to use the heating much.  At night I prefer to wrap myself up in a fluffy blanket rather than put on the heating.  I’m a bit envious of my friends who keep telling me about the snow they are having. But I do know that snow is one of those things I always think of fondly but that the reality is sometimes much less appealing.

Marty and I spent five days in November relaxing in Okinawa at the Renaissance Resort.  Marty really likes water sports and I love to look at the sea.  The sea at Okinawa can be emerald green and various shades of light blue when the sun shines deepening to a dark blue.

When I was a small child we used to go to the beach at places like Millisle and Tyrella in County Down, Northern Ireland.  I remember the sea as being gray.   It was also usually quite cold, unlike Okinawa, but I loved to go anyway.  It’s hard to remember those days but I think my sister and I would sometimes go to the beach with my Grandparents on a Sunday afternoon.  Tyrella always seemed more of an adventure as it used to have a rickety road to the beach and I can remember my Granda driving down it at one point with a flat tire causing the car to lurch from side to side.  (I think my Granda Bailie’s driving was always a bit of a family joke and any car he ever owned was always on its last legs.)  My sister and I used to hide in the sand dunes and then try to find creatures in the rock pools.  I’m not quite sure exactly what we were looking for and I have strange memories of my Granda wanting us to find something he called “winkles” and “willicks”.

I think I will always love the sea.

Over the next few weeks we are expecting to have friends over for dinner.  I have been trying to think of dishes to cook that are Irish but that don’t require an oven.  Food is one of the few things I can talk about in Japanese but I am never sure what to tell people when they ask about food from Ireland.  What are our traditional dishes?

I have seen recipes for corn beef and cabbage – but really I have never eaten that anywhere but America.  And I don’t believe that adding Guinness or Baileys to a recipe makes it authentically Irish either.  The other problem is that I’m from the North of Ireland so have never eaten Dublin Coddle or Boxty (actually I had to look both these up when I first came across them as I had no idea what they were).

Potatoes are a key ingredient in Irish cooking but I don’t like champ or colcannon.  I do like Irish stew and potato soup and potato bread but I need a bit more variety than this as I don’t think we can have potatoes for all the courses.

I do wonder though how much the diet of Northern Irish people has changed from the traditional meal of meat and potatoes.  I rarely cooked potatoes when I lived there.  I was much more likely to cook Chinese, Italian or Mexican food.  Every other restaurant is a Chinese restaurant and Indian food it also really popular.  It’s actually difficult to find anywhere in Belfast that serves food that could be called traditionally Irish or British.

I am seriously considering cooking chicken tikka masala as my main dish.  Jamie Oliver’s recipe for this is really good and it is one of the most popular foods in the U.K. It may even have been created in the U.K.  I just don’t think that my Japanese friends will  be expecting spicy food served with rice but they are much more likely to come across that in Belfast than they are Dublin Lawyer or Dublin Coddle.

I have spent hours writing Christmas cards. It was suggested to me that we send e-cards instead but I think they are a poor replacement for paper cards. The surprising benefit of writing cards is that I can now write our address in Japanese. It’s scary though to think that I’ve been here for two years and only now can I do this.

I am always amazed at the number of speakers they manage to find for a Shibuya.pm technical meeting.  Granted they don’t have these very often but 17 speakers and 18 talks is still a lot for one meeting. This does mean that many of the talks are very short but this is something I really like.  It’s easy to listen to a speaker for a short time – no matter what they decide to talk about.  It’s one of the things that made lightning talks so popular at the YAPC conferences.

There are about 100 people here and the meeting also has remote venues (there is a screen at the front of the room showing a video feed of the people at the other three locations.)

The meeting, like every other Perl event I’ve attended in Japan, is very well organised.  The meeting room is large enough for the attendees, there is wireless, and everyone has table space for their computers.  Sometimes I don’t like wireless at meetings as the attendees appear to be spending more time playing with computers than listening the speaker but here it’s evident that they are paying attention to the speakers.  The people around me, who are using computers, are writing up the meeting (like I am) or commenting on it on various social networking sites.

The meeting is running very smoothly.  With so many speakers it would be easy to have problems with the projector but so far so good.  Marcel described this meeting as a conference and although that’s not quite the case there is no doubt that a lot of time has gone into organising this event.

The first few times I came to Japan I went to Hakone hoping to see Mt. Fuji. We never got a clear day and I never saw the mountain.  Who knew that I would ever live in an apartment with a view of the mountain?

I keep getting asked about the new apartment but for some reason I haven’t felt like blogging lately.  Our new apartment is beautiful.  I love having a brand new kitchen to cook in though I wish it had an oven.  Marty is in love with the tatami room and he hides in there late at night with his computers.

There are still many things to do before it looks the way I want it to but that would mean shopping for furniture and I haven’t felt like doing that lately either!

We do have an amazing view across Tokyo.  Early this morning it was possible to Fuji in the distance though usually it’s much too hazy to see as far as the mountains.  Living in Jiyugaoka didn’t really give me a sense of the size of the city but looking out the window now there is no doubting that I live in one of the biggest cities in the world.

At the minute there are three woman in my apartment helping out with the packing.  They seem overly concerned about the number of coins scattered about the place and have started to create a pile of these on the dining table.  I really don’t like small coins and even though I try to get rid of them when I am shopping I always seem to end up with far too many weighing down my purse.  The worst culprit is the Japanese 1 Yen coin (worth about a half pence in sterling).  So far they have found 101 of these in the living room.  They have also found eight 5 Yen coins, forty-one 10 Yen coins, nine 50 Yen coins, three 100 Yen coins and one 500 Yen coin.  It’s going to get much worse when they get to my bedroom.

I also have coins for many other countries.  But I wasn’t expecting to find coins from countries I have never been to.  Seems that it isn’t only me who doesn’t like these cluttering up their pockets!

Marty and I are moving this week.  We have been told that it’s easy to move apartments in Japan but we are still finding it stressful.  First there is the expense.  We need to pay the agent, key money, and a deposit.  This comes to five months rent!  The key money is the bit I find strangest.  We have to pay the value of two months rent to the building owners as some sort of gift before we move in.

Then we need to pay the moving company.  We knew that this would be expensive and I started to investigate a variety of different companies.  But it turned out that there was no point in researching it.  The building we are moving into only allows us to use one moving company.  They told us that we are getting a discount by using them because we don’t need to rent “panels”.  I have no clue what the panels are for.

Actually “no clue” is starting to sum up the whole experience.  I have no clue what anyone has said to me on the phone when they have rang about the move.  I have no clue how to sort out the utility bills and services.  And I have no clue how I am going to understand the three woman who are coming to pack tomorrow morning.  At times living in Japan does leave me feeling clueless.