The Battle for Bread

AM

Least: Just after 11:00pm, I listened in horror as the music of the rubbish truck faded into the distance. With no stinking bags of garbage left on the street it was clear that I had missed my chance to get rid of mine. Missing a 'household garbage' pick up can often mean having to live with a bag of food scraps and paper festering for a few days. Thankfully, in one small mercy, the tiny blue bin downstairs was empty, so I filled it.

Most: At 9:20am, I was struck by the cool temperature of the water coming out of the bathroom tap. For months, the water had been tepid enough to allow me to shave straight from the tap. I think the time has now come to return to filling the basin with warm water from the kettle and for some reason there is no hot water tap. I just want to know why they installed all the pipes in this building on the houtside with no insulation.

PM

Least: Some time around 4:00pm, Rosie and I began watching the Detroit Metal City movie based on the manga of the same name. The story centres around a young man who lives a double life between a complete dork and a crazed death metal vocalist. While the comic is very confronting, with shocking language, violence, male-male rape and treatment of women, the movie was simply painful. The shrill voices of the actors and the bad use of janglish swearing made it almost impossible to watch. In fact, I couldn't watch it any longer and had to evacuate.

Most: At close to 5:00pm, I decided to salve my pain from the Detroit Metal City movie by baking bread. The process was an experiment, because I was unsure as to the properties of Japanese flour and that I don't have a real oven. I chose a very basic recipe to minimise any disasters. After about and hour of kneading and rising, I shaped the dough into rolls and sent into the infernal reaches of a toaster oven (right). as I stared into to red glow, I could see the bread rising and browning, then blackening. I rescued the bread and realised that my experient had been pretty successful. We ate the bread with pasta topped by a simple tomato sauce. Another small victory in the battle for bread.

The Smells of Friday

 Friday 9th October 2009

AM

Least: At close to 9:00am, I was forced to end my slumber for the sole purpose of lugging a stinking bag of household waste down the stairs. Even though I probably could've waited another hour, I couldn't risk missing the musical blue truck. Missing a rubbish day can have dire consequences in Japan. There are no wheelie bins and rubbish that fails to make the disposal deadline must hang around the house for a few days and putting it out the night before is out of the question. A slave to rubbish.

Most: At about 9:05am, as I dumped a huge pile of garbage in the street, I once again wondered what the sickly post-typhoon smell of rotting fruit was, and why it was there. Initially, I had theorised that it may have been some elaborate after disaster dessert eaten after Melor because it smelled exactly the same as a plum that I met while eating an onigiri a few days ago. A brief look around gave me an east answer, it was all the fruit that had been blow off its branches durng the strong winds. Vaguely interesting.

PM

Least: Somewhere around 5:20pm, I detected a strange and awful odour, attacking my senses. Assuming it was just the fermenting guano pile next door I groaned and went on with my zombie-like participation in an online shoot-em-up. About five minutes later, I had a knock at the door and spoke to my neighbours who were literally being stunk out of their apartment. Despite sniffing the air like a bloodhound, I could only summise that the stench was coming from some malfunctioning factory working overtime to make up for the day off on Thursday.  Within an hour the stink had left as suddenly as it had arrived, though it left a note of rotting onions and decomposing cabbage.

Most: At about 2:20pm, I was riding my gutful of sushi home from Namba when I saw a 30-ish something man being man-handled by police into their car. Not surprisingly it was, about 100 metres from the police station in Nishinari. There seemed to be an awful lot of police patrolling the area on bicycles - maybe something was up or an important visitor was coming to town. I wonder what the man being bundled into the little police car did?

1,034,515

AM

Least: At about 10:50am I skulked down to the road to find that our bag of 'plastics' was still sitting there. I knew it had a yellow sticker on it, and I knew that I didn't know exactly what it said, but I had hoped that someone would decide that the offending bag was their problem and taken it away. Deep down, I think it was a laundry-related item that prevented the bag's departure, and deeper down I know I dragged the bag back upstairs.

Most: At about 11:15am during my excursion to the Family Mart and the Drug 11 I saw a youngish helmetless mother riding her bike with one helmetless kid in the back and a helmetlessbaby slung upon her chest. Her brakes screeched as as stopped. The vast majority of people never wear helmets while cycling in Japan. I've always wondered what the road toll stats are - they couldn't be pretty. And they aren't - 1,034,515 accidents and 5,743 deaths in 2007 (the lowest in 50 odd years) I carried my bag of plastics back upstairs.

PM

Least: Just after 4:00pm, I was teaching a class of 3-4year olds and one mother couldn't think of a more interesting way to redirect her child than to give him a smack. None of the other mothers blinked.

Most: Some time after 1:25pm, I became embroiled in one of Rosie's online arguments about the thoughts of Karl Marx. Some academic was boringly complaining that 'the people' have been too silent against the horrors of late-capitalism. I suggested that it was because most workers might be too comfortable to overthrow the capitalist system and the their (our) comfort was possible because of low wages in the developing world. Rosie threw that into the pot. I'm still unsure as to whether or not is was an interesting idea.

Harry Potter and the Something of Fire

AM

Least: At about 9:25am I awoke to discover that it was Sunday. Sunday is a day when none of the several types of rubbish are collected. By Sunday, we usually have three bags of rubbish lying in our kitchen.

Most: Close to 12:00pm, I was woken from my doze by the clanging and drumming of a procession passing beneath my window. Several trucks loaded with colourfully-cloth'd characters drove by at irregular intervals, probably on their way to some kind of summer festival. I managed to get a bird's-eye photo (above) through our pigeon-proof netting.

PM

Least: Planning to see a movie in a cool cool cinema we arrived at about 1:pm to find that the most interesting selection was Harry Potter and the Something of Fire - we weren't interested.

Most: At about 1:20pm Rosie and I decided to take a turn away from the teeming arcade near Dotonbori to find a bite. We settled on a little okonomiyaki joint in an alleyway. What made it great was the character greeting us from out the front (right) and the fact that the cooks made the food for us in front of our eyes then served it on a sizzling skillet. I ordered the modernyaki with squid and pork. They listened to Rosie's request for okonomiyaki sans meat. We'll go back if we can find it again!

Mandai Ike to Nakamozu

AM

Least: At about 8.15 I took the bottles and cans downstairs and left them on the road. The rubbish collection process in Japan is complicated - plastics on Monday, combustibles on Tuesdays and Fridays and bottles and cans on the second and forth Thursday of the month. Most of the rubbish is incinerated.

Most: Between 8:35 and 9:10 I waded through the humidity around Mandai Ike. I walked 5 or 6 laps. I saw visored Tezukayama Queens warming up for and performing their fan-yoga - the opening fans sound like the crackle of carbines in a firing squad. I saw birds waiting for a luckless fish, a large bee, turtles loafing about, dragon flies patrolling, sparrows and starlings scavenging and crows waiting for a scrap. The old men were either fishing or simply wasting time - all were smoking.

PM

Least: I went to the ATM at our local UFJ bank. I called on the machine to give me instructions in English. It responded favourably to my request, however at a volume too high for comfort. People turned their heads.
Most: At Nakamozu, I had just finished reading a very strange letter from an obsessed student when I was summoned to the window to look at fire-engines. The fire-engines and police were attending an apparent suicide at Nakamozu Nankai station. I saw the sheet and the body bag being carried away from the tracks. Withing 20mins the trains were up and running again.