Small Mercies and a Bad Lunch

AM

Least: By 10:10am, I came to the impossibly boring realisation that instead of finishing work early, I had to do three hours of overtime, then my usual six hours. My six hour day had suddenly turned into a nine hour day with an incredibly inconvenient hour gap in the middle. A few hours later, I was able to spend a cool fifteen minutes at home scoffing a paltry lunch of crap from the Family Mart (see below). I believe I was duped into doing the overtime, with the keyword missing from my phone conversation on Tuesday. The minor hangover didn't help either.

Most: At 8:00am, my alarm tore me out my slumber and set the train in motion to get ready for work. The amazing thing, was that after last night's debauchery, I was almost free of any hangover symptoms. Maybe it was the thirteen plates of sushi that I had inhaled before going to T's Kitchen. In a day of disappointments (see above), the lack of a serious hangover was a small mercy that prevented a bad day becoming worse.

PM

Least: At about 1:20pm, it dawned on me that my decision to return home after morning training was a foolish one. By the time the slower than slow train reached Tezukayama, I had walked to the Family Mart and then home, I had only fifteen minutes to relax in shoeless homely glory. As I ate my cobbled together lunch of a convienince egg sandwich and an onigiri, I couldn't help thinking of what could've been. I pictured the sushi conveyor, full of delights doing laps around the restaurant without me. I then pictured the pile of plates that could've sat in front of me just before 1:45pm. I reckon the pile could've been fifteen high.

Most: At 6:10pm, I was bracing to make good on my agreement to hand out tissues at Nazamozu station after being propositioned by the busy-bee staff. A few minutes later, I heard the barking of a political rally crashing through the third floor window. By some miracle, the local government had decided that my time of need was the also the perfect time to give speeches to the masses. Thankfully, the masses were so numerous that it was impossible to carry out the tissues mission. This was the second, slightly larger mercy for the day. In lieu of the tissue distribution, I merely had to suffer the indignation of stuffing them while talking to an eighteen year old schoolgirl. The schoolgirl has a school concert tomorrow - she is doing a dance routine.

Rhinos versus Flamingos

AM

Least: When I woke at 10:00am, it became clear that the morning period would produce no activity. Aside from lugging the vast bags of plastics down to the road, not much happened, and with only two hours left had little chance of doing so. Every night, I plan to rise early and go for a walk, or do something useful, but recently its promise has never been realised. If it wasn't like daylight outside the balcony all night, I could leave the curtains open and rise with the sun. No hope.

Most: By 10:20am, I had scanned all of the relevant websites and television channels in search of analysis of last night's historic change in government. Like most Japanese, I have spoken to there was general hope for change, but with little indication of what change is required. Perhaps the change is an unknown unknown and people just haven't been conscious of what they might possibly be missing. Maybe Japanese society will be able to climb out of it's weird post war funk (although sometimes I feel like it could be 1905 still). The trains still ran on time and the tram still shook our flat every five minutes - so it goes.

PM

Least: At exactly 12:54pm, I had finished the gruelling process of paying the rent through an ATM down at MUFJ Bank. Aside from the insurmountable language barrier, there seems a ridiculous number of options to choose from. Being the end of the month, the queue was especially long as people spent many minutes feeding cards and booklets into the machines, paying bills and such. It's been seven months but rent day has never approached being easy or interesting.

Most: Sometime after 9:35pm, I sat on the Midosuji line between Abiko and Tennoji thoroughly drained from a day of slicing flash cards. My minor cheer came from reading the subway courtesy posters (photo right). The theme of the advertisements is to discourage people from rushing onto the train and forcing the doors. Rather than use graven images of human beings, the Osaka Municipal Transportation Bureau chose zoo animals to drive the point home. Cartoony drawings of a gorilla, a herd of Rhinos and a snake are depicted barging onto the train  terrifying a spectacled dog and several flamingoes - it's a jungle out there.