Fevers and Pizza

AM

Least: By 10:00am, the silence in my san-Rosie apartment was becoming too much. With a fever running my mind into madness, I wished I'd had someone to complain to. No-one in their right mind would be awake before 11:00am on a public holiday, so even complaint riddled sms messages weren't satisfactory. I settled on shouting at the pigeons and at the tear in the bin liner that let fishy juice out. I can see how isolation can drive people to madness.

Most: By 11:59pm, I looked back at my morning and found it as empty as possible for a public holiday. If I was serious, I would've at least had a hangover. The most interesting thing, unfortunately was that my cheesy phone alarm infiltrated a dream in which I was watching the moon landing from an incredibly high peak. The faux-classical music interrupted the guide just as he was saying "You can now see the vapour-trails - they're 2000 feet thick and...". I wonder what he was about to say. The alarm that robs me of sleep every morning, may also have robbed me of something interesting to write in this space.

PM

Least: Sometime after 1:00pm, I began the mind-numbing process of cleaning the house. For some reason our three-room cubby is the lintiest (the lint removing business is big in Japan) place on Earth. I'm not sure where it comes from, but I blame the previous occupants - they must've owned a lot of fleecy clothing or never vacuumed -probably both (I know who they are). Being without an effective mop, I settled on a soapy towel to clean the kitchen floor, an idea that turned out to be boring and backbreaking. The pain of cleaning briefly made me forget my raging fever but I'm still not sure which is worse.

Most: By 6:20pm, my mind was turning to pizza. After failing to understand the on-line ordering process, my eyes turned to my silver phone. The problem is that my Japanese is poor to the point that I can't really work out how to order food over the phone. The pizza-drive was strong enough though, for me to attempt a phone order from Dominos anyway. I'm sure the poor guy on the other end of the phone would've been groaning ("Oh dear, I got the foreigner") but I persisted. After some shockingly awkward pauses and flipping through the phrasebook, my conversation came to an end without an assurance of pizza. Amazingly, at 6:40pm, the pizza man arrived at the door carrying almost what I ordered - the only thing wrong was that I got a massive bottle of Coke instead of a Zero. The delivery man appeared to be asking me for a coupon, which I didn't have - so I paid through the nose. Incredible.

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Food Note: For lunch, I had a meal of pre-grilled sanma from yesterday's Life Supermaket experience. I heated it up in the fish-grill and soused it in ponzu dressing. The result was delicious and little different from the ones I bought fresh and cooked at home.

Have You Seen Chiiku?

AM

Least: By about 11:55am, I was tangled up in a roll of de-linting paper. My pants had been covered in a woolly coat of lint courtesy of our appalling washing machine. The rolller is a very effective weapon in the lint war, however its frustrating tendency to stick to one's hands and become an enraging part of a person's morning. Japan seems to be a very linty country and the scourge can creep up at any moment and overwhelm the unwary visitor. The war continues.

Most: At close to 9:40am, I finally resuscitated my habit of walking around the local pond. The oldish men were there in a blue cloud of cigarette smoke and just cracking their first cans of beer. A women sat for 20 minutes chain smoking and staring into the middle distance - thinking about her crashing bore of a husband no doubt. Further around the park, a 45ish year old man fumbled with his tackle as he waited for the little bells on his four massive surf rods to jingle with fish. I thought he might be crazy and in a beach fishing fantasy or simply testing out his new gear. As far as I could tell, he didn't catch the Mandai Ike monster or any fish. A sad side-story of my walk was a poster for a missing parrot named Chiiku. He was white with red cheeks and 30cm long. According to his overly formal portrait, he had a penchant for gold buttons and jewellery. I hope he is ok.

PM

Least: At nearly 9:00pm, with little to do at work, my industrious Japanese colleague asked me to write on several slips of paper. The boring part was, it was in hiragana and kanji, the former I'm not much good at, the latter I've never written a scrap. After carefully copying the example given to me, my erstwhile workmate could find nothing in her register other than to say "You had trouble with the su"? then "Oh, I can read it." Crushingly boring - especially coming from a noted apple-shiner.

Most: At about 9:50pm, I squeaked open our mailbox to discover some junkmail, a card, a letter from Rosie's mum and a padded bag addressed to me. Inside the padded bag was a book I evidently bought online a number of months ago and had sent by surface mail from England. The book, which contains the Conrad novellas Typhoon, The Shadow Line and another unmentionable title, was a nice little Everyman edition from 1950 with a nicely worn dustwrapper. I cannot remember buying the book directly, but surmise that it must've been one of the several items I drunkenly purchased after a night of Premium Malts. What a nice surprise - I should use surface mail more often.