The Faint Smell of Burning Toast

AM

Since the fire on Monday, our apartment has smelt like burning toast. The mornings though, have been freezing and early on Wednesday morning, I noticed that the hills toward Mount Kongo were dusted in snow. Once again, it's as if a switch has been flipped from Autumn to Winter in an instant. Incredibly, the number of women wearing real fur seems to be in plague proportions. It is striking, how despite global opinion, Japanese people seem to be happy and confident enough to do whatever takes their fancy. Again on Wednesday morning, I read a Japan Rail travel advertisement for Tohoku that included a bowl of whale blubber soup as one of its attractions. Later the same morning, I spoke to three women about eating whale meat and they professed that it's smell made their stomachs turn - as school kids they had all been fed a steady diet of cetecean flesh for lunch. On a more boring note, this morning was essentially ruined by a trip to the immigration bureau. Although I got my three year visa smoothly, the sight of the 'crats wading through the overheated room a snails pace made my skin crawl. At least I won't have to go back for a while.

PM

The freezing gale that buffeted my trip home on Thursday night, was a crushing addition to my doldrums after finding that Brutal Truth had begun playing just as I clocked off at Nakamozu. All afternoon, I had been cold to the bone. Unusally, the school was barely heated, probably in an attempt to save money. As the year draws to a close, the business at work seems to be waning, and as a result, folding promotional flyers has again become a fixture to my days. A rare highlight on Thursday was being asked what I found embarrassing about Japan. I'm still not sure what the question actually meant, but my reply included the fact that nude bathing is reserved for oddballs in Australia. It's probably another example of Japan's collective neurosis that people are happy enough to show the world everything on the outside but nothing of their inner lives. Frustratingly fascinating.