A few random notes

A few random things I find interesting to mention:

1) Bugs: There are plenty of them here. You can hear them buzzing all day and night. There are also flying spiders, which I've been unlucky to see during my first days at the dorm. And what's probably most funny is how scared the girls are of bugs. Even at the dojo the girls will leap up and shriek and shake until the bug is off of them.

2) Going grocery shopping is still quite challenging. I'm still learning what certain products are. I swear, it might seem obvious but you should try grocery shopping in a foreign country. How can you tell what is in a countainer when you can't see what's in it or read the information on the package? Today I brought my dictionary with me and looked up certain words like toothpaste (nerihamigaki) and sweet potato (satsumaimo). Really handy although I'm pretty sure it makes it quite obvious that I'm a foreigner.

3) When sick, people will wear surgical masks to cover their mouths. I saw this last time I came to Japan so it isn't new for me. To me, it goes along with what I know of Japanese culture: it's very important not to create problems for your peers. You do whatever you can to contribute to a healthy and efficient working place. So Japanese will wear masks to prevent from passing on their germs to others.

4) I find kanji (the complex characters Japanese use in their writing) to be very poetic. The other day, I learned that the kanji that make up the word hanabi (fireworks) is made up of two characters, the one for flowers (hana) and the one for fire (bi). Put together you have : fire flowers. As an artist, I find it creates beautiful images in my mind.

5) Lastly, the toilets... I don't have a picture to show you, but you can probably google it if you really want to know. Essentially, it's simply a hole in the ground. Now I don't know why, in such a highly developed and technological country, they still have such toilets. I do not see the appeal in crouching down (and there's no even a bar to hold on to) in order to do one's business. Thankfully they also have Western style toilets. In the university's bathrooms, there is usually one Western style toilet for each 3 or 4 Japanese style toilets. If I enter a bathroom where there are only Japanese style toilets, my urge to pee often disappears miraculously lol. But some Japanese prefer their toilets. My friend from Denmark, Zara, told me that she once entered a bathroom where there were both a Japanese style and a Western style bathroom. And to be polite, she offered the Western style bathroom to an old lady who had come in at the same time. But the old lady said she preferred the Japanese style bathroom! .... This remains a mystery to me.

That's it for today. Actually wrote quite a lot so hope you enjoy. If you have any comments/questions, don't be shy! Have to go work on a Japanese composition now where I'm supposed to write about myself. Catch up with you later!