mini milestones, and a big one coming up

Two weeks from Sunday will be one year since I moved to Japan. I promise to write a long, deep post about the past year, what I've done and learned, etc. In the meantime, to tide you over, two amusing anecdotes:

1) Last week Sarah, Jon and I went to Tokyo Disney. Or, rather, we tried to. By the time we arrived at 10:30, the park was already at capacity for the day, so we went to Disney Sea instead. Sea is more about the experience than the rides -- there's nothing in that park that compares to Space Mountain, or even the Matterhorn -- and I'm more about the rides. (Space Mountain! Matterhorn!) It was fun nonetheless -- a bit odd to hear Mickey Mouse speaking Japanese, but still fun. Japan and Disney are a match made in heaven; the Happiest Place on Earth meets the Most Inclined To Spend Ungodly Amounts Of Money On Cute Things Place on Earth. (see also: tiny dogs)

Now to the anecdote: There are two exits at the Disney subway stop, marked with signs in Japanese and English. As we surged through Minami Deguchi/South Exit, a Japanese girl, about 8 years old, tugged her mother's hand and pointed to the sign. "South! South!" she exclaimed, clearly proud to have recognized the English word. At the same time, I was saying to myself, "Minami! I recognized that kanji!"

2) Also last week, I finally made my first pilgrimage to the Shibuya outpost of Tokyu Hands, a DIY store with supplies for just about any hobby or craft you could name, plus things like luggage and bikes. I quickly realized this could easily be an 8-hour errand; six stories of amazing goodies! But I focused, got my beading supplies, and was on my way out when I was distracted by an entire floor devoted mostly to clocks. This may surprise people who've been in my apartment in Tokyo, which has NO clocks except the one on the microwave, but I LOVE clocks. I don't know why -- I barely use them, preferring my cell phone -- I just do. Then I saw a wall of posters, including an amazing, '50s-era map of Tokyo, with its major streets named "Avenue A," "19th Street," etc., just like New York City, during the occupation. I instantly thought the map would make a great going-away gift for Allison, one of my fave reporters, who just left for Italy.

There have been a lot of times in the past year when I wasn't able to buy something because I just didn't know how to communicate what I wanted. But I stood back, I did some mental vocabulary review, and I realized, I can make this purchase. So I found the nearest staffer and said, in Japanese, that I'd like to buy that map of Tokyo, on the wall over there, with a frame.

For the first time EVER, there was no hesitation on the part of the Japanese half of the conversation. She didn't look at me as though I was speaking Greek; she didn't say "sumimasen?"; she didn't repeat the request back to me in English; she didn't call a co-worker to come translate. She just went to the posters drawer, pulled out the map I'd asked for and said "Kono wa?" (this one?) I said yes, she asked if I wanted a white frame or a black frame, I said white, she asked me to wait while she framed it. And I had. The whole. Conversation. In Japanese. Without having to apologize, or explain that I only speak a little Japanese. It's like I actually can maybe sort of communicate, or something.

Thrilled with my purchase, and pumped about my conversation (Nihongo wa dekimasu, bitches!) I headed home, and decided to treat myself to the salami/proscuitto plate at my neighborhood pasta joint. It came, and my first thought upon seeing it was, I'm glad they brought chopsticks with this, because the basket on the table only has forks, and proscuitto is damn near impossible to cut with a fork. So I scooped up a hunk of delectable-looking ham.

Or, started to, but something immediately went wrong. The top chopstick shattered, and pieces flew everywhere. I was baffled -- what the hell just happened? -- but then, as I picked a sliver out of my hair, I realized ...

... that they were actually breadsticks.

Utensil identification FAIL.

(As Stacy helpfully pointed out to me later, what kind of jerk makes breadsticks that look exactly like chopsticks? In Japan?)

year-round insanity

One of the many cool things about Tokyo is that nearly every restaurant employs guys who zip around on little motorbikes, delivering food to anyone too busy/lazy/cold/hot/etc. to go get it themselves. You can get just about anything delivered here: curry, sushi, pork cutlets. Even booze!

Even this:




The skeptics among you may be thinking, yeah, this has been on the Internet for a while. It's totally Photoshopped. Funny, but fake.

Let me restore your faith, o cynics: this is NOT Photoshopped. This was in my mailbox when I got home from work last night. (And my 'Shop skills are nowhere near this good.) This is the Four Seasons pizza from the oddly named Strawberry Cones (the name makes me want ice cream, or maybe crepes, but not pizza).

Let's take a look at what we have here, shall we?

Clockwise from top left, this culinary masterpiece has four topping sections:

• Sweet corn, in what appears to be curry or barbecue sauce
• Tuna with potato, tomato, onion, garlic and parsley, crisscrossed with mayonnaise
• Salmon and broccoli with "gratin sauce"
• 5-cheese margherita

The toppings aren't that noteworthy -- pretty typical for Japanese pizza, especially the corn and the mayo. (Why must they ruin all food by squirting mayo all over it?)

The part that takes the cake, er, pie, is the crust. Note the artful arrangement of the extras. Each section gets two. First, the yellow globs (I think, based on my previous experiences with Japanese pizza, that these are mozzarella; this topping does not hold up well, as the globs get cold and congeal quickly.) Not in the mood for rubbery cheese balls? Well, you're in luck, because the other half of the crust is topped with ... pigs in a blanket!

All this can be yours for only $25!!!!!*

* For a medium. Large pizza is $35.

i sort of need that toe, thanks

Yesterday morning I managed to bash my left pinky toe into my coffee table. I hoped the combination of ibuprofen, wine and sleep would banish the pain by today, but it still Hurts. So. Much. If I did a "Things I Hate Right Now" list*, this would be number 1.

The pain's not really the problem, although I can't say I enjoy it. The bigger issue is that my primary mode of transportation is through the courtesy of my two feet. So impairing my ability to walk is the equivalent of wrecking my car.

* I've thought many times about creating this list, but I'm always reminded of the C&H strip where Calvin starts a list of "A million things that really bug me" and Hobbes says "How about excessively negative people?"

nihongo wa sukoshi shika dekimasen

("I can only speak a little Japanese.")

I thought it would never happen, but Tuesday night I finished Book I of Japanese for Busy People -- the equivalent of finishing a year of college-level study. Up next: Book II, which will prove to be a bit more of a challenge because parts of the book, including the dictionary, are written in kana; and starting the daunting challenge of learning to read and write kanji, the alphabet consisting of thousands of Chinese characters. I'm working from a book called "Easy Kanji," which is a ridiculous oxymoron. It's from the same series as the "Easy Hiragana" book I mocked in an earlier post, but I have to admit, that book, and its companion, "Easy Katakana," did teach me those alphabets. So I was kind of superstitious about sticking with the same series for kanji. But I've already realized -- I'm going to need a LOT more books. Muzukashii desu! (It's difficult.)

photos from my korea vacation

I'm leaning toward posting pics on Facebook rather than on Flickr these days, because Flickr allows only a few uploads per month unless you pay for a premium account. This album is accessible even to people who aren't on Facebook:

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37486&l=2a87f&id=720561445

Enjoy!

gain a fortune, lose a kettle

I started this morning the way I've started every work day this decade: put the kettle on to make tea; check e-mail while I wait for the water to boil.

The e-mail held the news I've been waiting nine months to hear: my house is sold. I've been afraid to even mention that it was under contract -- I know all too well that real estate contracts can fall through right up until closing. But it's done: all the i's are dotted, the t's crossed, every one of the 10,000 documents required to transfer a house is signed, by some guy named Carlos (the buyer) and by Mary Ellen (acting as me, through the magic of a power of attorney).

I'm 99 percent ecstatic about the sale. I wanted to sell for a lot of reasons:

1) My infernal ARM was due to adjust in November (yes, I'm one of those people who took out a hybrid ARM with the intention of flipping the house before the interest rate went up, thereby contributing heavily to the mortgage crisis. You're welcome.)

2) The mortgate, along with the various expenses of maintaining an empty house, were eating up a lot of the disposable income that was supposed to be one of the perks of working in Japan.

3) Most importantly, I didn't want to move back to that house. One big thing I learned from living there is, I am not handy, and I'm not a person who gets any pleasure from yardwork or gardening. I grew to hate the huge yard, which always needed to be mowed, or raked, or sprayed for ants, or have a giant nest of angry bees removed. I think my happiest moment in packing up the house was when I pushed my flimsy snow shovel into the trash bin and vowed that, as God is my witness, I'll never shovel again. On top of that, after living car-free in Tokyo, I can't imagine ever going back to a lifestyle that doesn't let me walk to nightlife, grocery stores and public transportation. It was a cute house and I'm glad I owned it, but next time around, I'll be looking for something very different.

The 1 percent is a bit of unavoidable melancholy that I always feel when I have to give up something that's been a part of who I am. (I think my bitterest tears were shed for my 1976 cobalt blue Corolla, with the rotting floorboards and the sticking carburator that stranded me on so many cold winter nights.) The melancholy is mixed with a soupcon of fear -- I literally can't go home again. I've cut my last physical tie to D.C., as well as giving up my biggest adult achievement and my primary source of equity.

But the fear yields something else: freedom. With that chain unbound, the world is my playground -- when my contract at Stripes ends, I can live anywhere I want. (Anywhere with gainful employment, that is.) Into the great wide open, and all.

Wait a minute, you're saying. Was there a kettle in this story? Was there a point to this story?

Yes, and yes. Getting there.

So, I read the e-mail. I did cartwheels. (Mentally.) I let out a breath I've been holding for nine months as the housing market descended to lows even Dante couldn't conceive. Then I put my last Earl Greyer teabag into a cup and picked up the kettle.

I should mention here that the kettle is, I believe, older than me. It's a sturdy old Pyrex percolator that my mom made her breakfast tea with, my whole life, until she got a bigger one and gave me the old one.

Ah, here it is, and it appears these were made between 1952 and 1960. Damn, it's older than I realized:

Just as I started to pour, the kettle broke in half. Just under the metal band -- suddenly I was holding the handle and the lid, and the bottom of the kettle was on the stovetop, and boiling water was everywhere. I got lucky -- most of the water ended up on the counter and the floor, although some of it did splash me, and I have a pretty nasty burn on my stomach. But it's small.

Somehow, though, the loss of the kettle hit me much harder than the loss of the house. Part of it was the shock -- the house has been under contract since May. (Also, physical pain played a role.)

I didn't mean to turn the kettle into a metaphor, but I just now did, in my mind. Because even though I'm sad to lose my heirloom (I maybe cried a little bit), I'm also excited to shop for a new kettle. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was eyeing jewel-toned OXO kettles at FrancFrancFranc, an awesome housewares shop. I coveted them, but turned away because I had a perfectly good kettle at home. And now, out of the loss, comes freedom, to buy a new one. So it's just like the house. And that's enough of this tortured analogy. Good night.

better late than never

Now that I finally have Internet (hooray!) I've gotten around to posting photos from cherry blossom season on Flickr, as well as some exterior shots of my apartment. I'll try to post interior shots later this week, but first I need to clean. :(

To see them, use the link at right, or find me on flickr -- username brechtgirldc.

those were some weird earthquakes

When I got home from work last night I was puzzled by a rythmic clacking sound coming from my bedroom. The culprit turned out to be the jewelry rack hanging on the bedroom door; the necklaces were gently swaying, and the sound was the noise they made as they hit the door. Clack, clack, clack.

I'm used to these tiny earthquakes by now -- another time, I noticed one only because I saw the reflection in my bedroom mirror rippling. But I noticed this one lasted longer than usual. Aftershocks, I thought, and then I felt an odd buzzing in my right ear -- kind of like a mosquito, but (for once) there were no bugs around. (I have a slight mosquito problem in my apartment.)

Something was definitely afoot with the earth's crust.

I sat down on my brand-new, super-comfy sofa to flip through a magazine while I waited for sleep to come -- and about half an hour later, the shaking started in earnest. (That turned out to be the 6.2 quake that hit at 1:43.)

Living atop four constantly clashing tectonic plates doesn't bother me: most of the resulting earthquakes are too small to feel. Even the bigger ones, I only really notice if I'm in bed, and they just feel like someone grabbed the bed frame and rolled it back and forth. (True story: my first quake happened when I was living at Hardy Barracks, and my first thought was that the people in the room next to me were slamming their headboard against the wall.) Obviously
I'm hoping the fates and the plates will postpone the Kobe-level, city-leveling quake that Tokyo is overdue for, until I'm done living here. But I don't waste time worrying about the possibility. If it happens it happens, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it.

Last night's quake was the worst one I've experienced. The shaking seemed to go on and on -- I estimated it at 3 or 4 minutes, but co-workers said it probably was more like 1. At one point I wondered if I should be in a doorway (the safest place to be, so you're not struck by falling debris), but it ended just after I had that thought. I think. The ear-buzz returned during the second quake -- I think the shaking played havoc with my inner-ear balance -- so I had a hard time gauging whether I was actually moving or just felt like I was. (Kind of like getting off the Spider at an amusement park, and you stagger drunkenly for a few seconds because you feel like you're still spinning.)

Nothing fell, though, and I dozed off and slept through the other quakes. (Reuters says there were five.) So I'm looking on the whole thing as establishing my expat cred -- now I have a "big quake" under my belt.

free Internet! (with $12 sandwich)

I'm posting this from the iGooogle Art Cafe in Roppongi Hills, a fancy-schmany mall in Tokyo. What's the art cafe? Well, as I posted on Facebook, I'm not entirely sure. It appeared overnight --a little cafe in the Mori Tower with glass display cases and a tiny laptop on each table. It seems like it would have taken a lot of time and money to set up -- but it's only here for two weeks.

I guess it's an art exhibit of sorts -- the name gave it away, and there's a list of famous Japanese artists outside. But when Sarah and I tried to look at the art yesterday, we were told we couldn't just walk around looking at it. The only thing we could do was order food and use the Internet. Apparently the art is just supposed to be ignored.

You know where you won't find any info on this cafe? On Google.

(Also? The default search engine is MSN Live, which cracks me up. You'd think if Google spent all the money to plaster its name and logo all over this place, not to mention creating sodas, an entree and a dessert based on its colors, they'd take the extra 30 seconds to set up Google as the search engine, no?)

So I came back today, and ordered a ham sandwich and tea so I could check e-mail on the seven-inch-wide keyboard and ignore the art, which is what all the Japanese patrons are doing. (I can report there is a giant orange Converse sneaker that appears to be made of plush in one of the display cases.)

This place is SO Japanese. Allow me to elaborate:

1) No fooling, a ham sandwich and a cup of tea cost 1,200 yen. (I'm overlooking that in favor of the exciting news that I ordered the food in Japanese, and even asked and understood what kind of cheese was on it.)

2) Like all electronics in this country, the laptops are miniature. They're about the size of a sheet of copier paper. I've made an estimated 600,000 typos while writing this due to the teensy keys.

3) The staff is super-over-helpful-genki-OK! I was hoping to maybe watch Top Chef on YouTube, but five IT guys and four waitresses are hovering around the customers, in case we somehow need help checking e-mail or are incapable of pouring our own tea, so it seems like that might be frowned upon.

4) Just, in general, WTF? Why does it even exist? Like a lot of things in Tokyo, I enjoy it and use it, but I can't say I understand it.

i'm starting to understand why mothra seems plausible

In addition to the giant crows that terrorize Tokyo, this city has the biggest earthworms I've ever seen. For serious, they're a foot long! That ain't right.

i swear the post office is toying with me

One of the perks of my job is having an APO address, which pretty much functions just like a stateside address, except for the odd Web site that can't handle military addresses (why do you hate America, Paypal?). The only downside is that the military postal system can be wildly unpredictable. Mail can take three days to arrive from the States, or it can take four months. You just never know.

That makes subscribing to weekly magazines a bit dicey, but I can pretty much count on Entertainment Weekly showing up every Tuesday to feed my pop-culture cravings.

Which issue of EW will show up is more of a crapshoot.

I almost always get a magazine, but they arrive in no apparent order. This week I got the March 21 issue, on the heels of the April 11 issue. The week before that, Feb. 15. But March 28 showed up right on time.

I'm convinced someone in the MPS is hoarding the magazines, and doling out one a week, at random. There's no other logical explanation. Not that that's a logical explanation, but knowing DOD, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Getting the magazines late hammers home the lightning-swift pace of American pop culture. The copy I got this week is only three weeks old, but it's already as out-of-date as a 1996 copy of Time in a dentist's waiting room.

It's also a reminder that with every passing week, I slip a little bit further behind the cultural curve. This weekend I watched "There Will Be Blood" and "Enchanted" -- movies I would have seen on their opening weekends back home. I finally understand the finer points of using "I drink your milkshake!" as a catchphrase, but I also know it's long since passe. (Thanks to Ken-Jen for cluing me in to that.)

Pop culture -- especially TV -- is one of the things I truly feel deprived of here. On the flip side, not having to keep up with 20 shows has freed up a lot of spare time that I now spend doing things like "studying Japanese" (I'm finally learning some verbs! Hooray for complete sentences!) and "interacting with other humans."

i hear that all the time

Last night, I was standing in the "vinegar" section of the super-expensive Meidi-ya supermarket, wondering why they had blueberry and raspberry vinegar but not the balsamic vinegar I wanted, and whether it was in fact right in front of me and I couldn't read it, when a Japanese woman approached me and said, in careful English:

"Excuse me, do you speak Laotian?"

I do not, so a typical Japanese Apology Standoff ensued, in which I apologized profusely for not speaking an obscure Asian language and she apologized profusely for having bothered me, for asking me a question, and for asking a question to which the answer was 'no.' This part took place in Japanese, and then she moved into a conversation in Japanese, so I had to backtrack and explain that I speak only a little Japanese. So she moved her apology back into her careful English, and explained:

"All gaijin kind of look the same to me."

rehab takes way longer than i thought

One of the great things about karaoke -- aside from the opportunity to make a drunken fool of yourself -- is finally figuring out those pesky lyrics that you've never quite been able to understand. (For the record, in "Baby Got Back," the line after "So ladies if the butt is round" is "and you want a triple-X throwdown." I'd always been kind of vague on that. Also? That's my juhachi-ban now. I totally rock that song, which I proved Saturday night after Teri issued her own -- non-X-rated -- throwdown by saying "No one can sing that song, it's too fast." NEVER challenge my ability to talk fast!)

And sometimes, you have that "Kiss This Guy" moment when you realize you've been singing the wrong words for years. That happened to me playing Rock Band last week -- the Clash are singing "should I cool it or should I blow," not "should I commit or should I blow" -- although I think my version makes more sense.

Saturday I was humbled again. I'd always thought, in "Rehab," that Amy Winehouse was saying she ain't got SEVENTEEN days, which -- c'mon, Amy, you can't spare two weeks and change to get yourself together? That's about the time you go between shampoos, right? But it turns out she ain't got SEVENTY days. So, OK, I can see her point. I mean, who does?

i had the power to go home, all along

One central fact of my life in Tokyo: doing Japanese things is convenient but hard. Doing American things is easy but inconvenient, because that usually involves trekking to base.

If you were to locate Yokota AB and Nishi-azabu (my 'hood) on a Tokyo map, you'd think, "Hey, that's not far at all." You'd be both right and wrong. If I was, say, a general, or Will Smith, and I could ride to base in a helicopter, it'd be a short hop. But for mere mortals unable to waste thousands of tax dollars, there are two choices: drive, or take the train.

The choice is pretty easy for me, because I don't have a driver's license. Or a car. Or any freakin' clue how to drive on the left.

Lucky for me, though: if you're going to rely on any train system, make it Tokyo's. Like almost everything in Japan, it's ruthlessly efficient. (D.C. Metro officials, take note: even though Tokyo's system involves several interwoven systems run by different companies, and is about 9,000 times more complex than any transit system in the States, it's rare for a train to be late, and "escalator outages at the following stations" is an unknown phrase. [The Japanese equivalent, I mean.])

So, yesterday I needed to do an "American thing" -- go to the doctor. I headed for Yokota, which is a time-consuming but not terribly hard trip. (Downsides: it involves four different trains, and at the last transfer the trains don't run very often. So the trip can take an hour or it can take 90 minutes, depending on the wait at Tachikawa.)

Or it can take four hours, when fate and gaijin ignorance collide:

I left Yokota last night with plenty of trains still running, and an assurance from the kickass hyperdia.com (thanks Dubees!) that the dreaded outdoor Tachikawa layover would be only a couple of minutes. That was welcome news, because the temperatures were "mid-winter" and I was dressed for "late spring."

Somewhere between Tachikawa and Shinjuku, my trip -- no pun intended -- started to go off the rails. An accident forced my train to hold at Shinjuku for over an hour -- and as Wednesday turned into Thursday, Tokyo's subway system bade the city goodnight, tucked its head under its wing, and settled into its nightly five-hour slumber. (A gripe: you'd think a city the size of Tokyo would run trains all night, but noooo.) By the time my train limped into the Yotsuya station at 1:15 a.m., my transfer trains had long since stopped running, and I was stranded.

Oh yeah, and I had no yen on me, except a handful of change, so calling a cab was out.

My immediate plan was to find an ATM, pay a giant fee, and withdraw some money, so my heart sank when I emerged from the station and discovered the surrounding area is almost vacant. Also? Japanese ATMs don't much care for them foreign-looking bank cards.

I started working my way down my narrow list of options. The Family Mart ATM rejected my card, as did the Circle K ATM. I passed a hotel (I wasn't sure if it was an actual hotel or a love hotel, but it was bitter cold and I was getting kinda desperate, so I tried it), but at that hour you needed a room key to open the front door. Freezing, exhausted and panicky, I tried the absolute last option: a 7-Eleven down the block.

My card was once again rejected at the ATM, and I broke down in tears, which alarmed the Japanese workers. One of them spoke a little English, and he anxiously offered to help.

(Aside: people back home often ask me if I speak Japanese. The answer: I'm learning, slowly. Mostly from a course called "Japanese for Busy People," which is geared toward people in Japan on business, so most of what I've learned is along the lines of "The meeting is at 3 p.m. Monday" and "I'm going to the Kyoto branch next week." We spend a lot of time making up sentences about the activities of fictional American businessman Mr. Smith, and his associates. Last week, the exercise "State who went where, and with whom" proved too tempting for me, and now Sumisu-san's having an affair with his secretary. It makes the lessons a lot more fun.

Anyway, I can communicate a little, but JBP hasn't prepared me for understanding the subway announcements that would have told me about the hourlong delay, or for trying to explain that I do HAVE money, I just can't access it, and I'm not just some insane airhead gaijin who can't hail a taxi and doesn't know how the trains work. I had a whole plan! But there was an accident! I don't think I adequately got that point across.)

SOOOO, the 7-Eleven guy's way of helping was to CALL THE POLICE to come help me. I was horrified, because there's all kinds of potential for something to go wrong there, and baffled, because how are the police possibly going to solve the problem? Bust open the ATM with a battering ram? Lend me 2,000 yen? Drive me home in a squad car? I felt like one of those morons who calls 911 to ask what time it is -- I had a problem, yes, but not one that needed to involve law enforcement.

So the police came, and at that point, I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability. WAIT, wait, sorry, that's a very funny Ron White routine. Let me start over. So the police came, and called a translator, who ...

(WARNING: anticlimactic ending ahead)

... informed me that taxis in Tokyo take credit cards.

yep, that sounds about right

The green sentences below came from Sharon's blog; she's talking about her 2-year-old.

If you replace "crying and yelling" with "gesturing and apologizing," this PERFECTLY describes my Japanese.

Each word was work and we worked awhile for her to get them down. When something came along and it was a word she knew, she used it and everyone cheered and then we went back to communicating with crying and yelling.

even cash registers need copy editors

The commissary just installed self-checkout lanes, which have to be the greatest invention since ... whatever cool thing was invented just before them. I'm squarely in their target demographic: extremely impatient, with a degree of computer literacy and no desire to unnecessarily interact with other humans. I also have a knack for picking the worst possible line, like the time the old woman in front of me at King Soopers paid her $67 grocery bill in dimes and nickels ("$63.35, $63.40, $63.45 ... oh dear, I lost count, I need to start over ...").

So I'm excited by the commissary's leap into the 20th century. I do, however, wish the software vendor had run the produce lookup menu past an editor:

At the top left: "Aplles".

It's possible that this is the only typo in the entire produce menu (this page of the menu covers anise through avocados). But as any editor will tell you -- where there's one mistake like this, there's usually more. And worse. Because you have to wonder, if the programmers couldn't be bothered to run spellcheck before shipping this software to the Defense Department, did they bother to ... debug? Beta test?

And yes, I'm totally going to start buying random produce so I can look for more typos on other menu pages. Because I'm an editing geek, and that's what we do.

Something like the opposite

It's not every day that you take a job in another country. Or a job that was vacated by one of your best friends. Or both. But if you do, you should know -- you'll end up living a slightly surreal, Trekkian Mirror Universe of that person's life.

This is how the word "coincidence" gets misused -- it's not a coincidence that Stacy moved from Japan to the States as I was moving from the States to Japan. It's exactly by design, because I moved to Japan to replace Stacy. (Except I can never replace Stacy. She's irreplaceable. to the left, to the left ...)

But it is a little odd.

Stacy recently wrote a great post about feeling her life in Japan slipping away. It almost blew my mind to read, because I'm going through the same thing in reverse. Even though I miss my friends in the States, and my TiVo, it's astonishing how quickly I've gotten sucked into my new life in Japan. I feel strangely disconnected from things that mattered so much two months ago. I'm no longer part of our D.C. office; I'm part of the Tokyo office now, and the people in D.C., who I worked with for six years, are "them." My house, my car -- those seem like memories of things that belonged to someone else. And in a way they did.

I started to write that I'm a different person now, but that's a bit much with the hyperbole. I'm ... not sure how to explain it. I can't find the word. I'm living outside my comfort zone, and loving it. I eat different food now. I live without a car, and don't miss it at all. I spend my spare time learning kana instead of watching TV, and it's exactly what I want to be doing. (So I'm totally dismayed that Stacy says she's already forgetting kana -- am I putting all this effort into something I'm going to forget two months after going back to the States? Yes, probably.)

I mass e-mailed my family the other day about my adventures in apartment hunting, and someone wrote back "you must feel so far from home." But I don't, at all -- this IS my home now. Of course there are things about the States I miss (chicken biscuits), but there's more than enough awesome things here (lack of open-container laws) to make up for those things.

To my Mirror twin: enjoy life on the flip side, and thanks for leaving those Q-tips in our desk. Gotta love that they're individually wrapped! God bless Japanese overpackaging.

Things I can say in Japanese now:
Whose cell phone is this?

Things I can't say, but need to:
Do you have any boots ...
... in black?
... in my size?
... for less than $600?