Home Sweet Home (or similar)
[More notes from the land of Desperately Hoping To Get Blog Up To Date. This post I wrote just after I moved into my current place, which I’ve been at about a week and a half now.]
Finally, I have a place to live! I have to say, knowing I have a ‘home’ for at least the next month makes me feel a lot less adrift – though only about half as panicky about life in general.
There is an underestimated joy in unpacking – in shaking out and then refolding clothes just so, making little piles of books and toiletries, finding things you forgot you packed, tucking away the empty suitcase. My room is quite cozy, and actually of decent size, and even though it has this faint odour (kind of like flowery mop disinfectant?) it’s a lot less unpleasant smelling than my original room allocation, which had a stench that was unnameable and completely off-putting.
Also, I have a little fridge! Huzzah! After I got settled, I immediately went out and bought a bunch of beverages that I wasn’t even sure I wanted (or ever would want), “for later”. This included a carton of something that could be juice, or a really disgusting flavour of milk. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the almond-flavoured coffee I bought, which came in a special snowflake-emblazoned ‘Winter Package’ and was all sugar but very tasty. Themes are pretty big here – menus, window displays, aisle displays, brochures. I’ve seen it go from autumn leaves and jack-o-lanterns to snowflakes and Santa in a matter of days.
Speaking of beverages, I saw an ad on the train today – for something that said it was ‘vinegar and milk’. Sorry, I should elaborate – a drink that said it was vinegar and milk. There was a picture of the bottle on the ad, with a glass full of the stuff next to it - I assume it was meant to look enticing. Fail. People are supposed to drink that? A little research online (read: me typing ‘vinegar and milk’ into Google) informed me that it also has grapefruit juice in it, and there’s not really much vinegar. Well, phew! Citrus and milk, loads better!
However, being the adventurous lass I am (ha!) if someone dares me to, I’ll try it.
***
I also encountered some more ‘day-to-day life frustration’, re: my ineptness at reading and understanding Japanese. This time it was while I was trying to recharge my phone credit. I dialled the number on the card, managed to make it to a certain point, and then, at a loss, merely mashed blindly at the buttons on my new phone. I tried about five times, trying ‘0’ at the prompt (or what I thought was the prompt) and then ‘#’. Maybe saying ‘Hai’, or pressing ‘*’? Nope. I strained my ears so I was listening ever so carefully to the woman’s voice prompts each time – as though listening hard was really going to magically make my brain understand words I’ve never learnt the meaning of. For all I know, she was saying that I had incorrectly entered the code and was now going to be turned into a fruit bat.
Giving up on the ol’ ‘listen real hard and you’ll magically get bilingual powers’ tack, I then spent far too much time trying to match kanji on the recharge card to the kanji in the offending phone’s Japanese dictionary, with no luck – unsurprising, really, as I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I managed to make out only one word – ‘new; fresh; latest’. And that was it. Great. My ‘latest’ failure. I almost went bursting into the hall to flag down one of the other residents, but by that point I was all crazy and bug-eyed, clutching the phone and recharge card with all the desperation of a madwoman, so it was probably best that I didn’t. Instead I cheered myself up by putting a little Rilakkuma dangly thing on it – I mean after all, when in Japan…
[Total playa.]
***
I think it’s raining. Either that or it’s my fridge making gargling sounds. And what’s that? Someone playing pan flute at all hours of the goddamn night? Ah the delights of communal living.
No, it’s nice to have somewhere to live. I do still feel a bit like I’m in transit though. I mean, I like this guesthouse, but I kind of want to have my own place – where I can walk around with bed hair and not have to wait to use the bathroom, stuff like that. Not have people judge me when I make a peanut butter and banana sandwich, you know how it is. Am I destined to wander around Tokyo, from guesthouse to guesthouse?? Never really settled, always feeling like it’s life in a hotel? Oh well – like a rolling stone, I guess…
[Here be another delight of Japanese advertising. Okinawa, anyone?]
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