I’m nearing the end of my six month long intensive Japanese course.  I have four days left and they mostly consist of exams and preparation for the 5 minute talk I’m expected to give next Friday.  I have been asked by a few people if I think my Japanese is improving.  I find it hard to tell.  I have weekly tests and homeworks, which I get good marks in, but I still feel clueless on most days.

I think part of the problem comes from living in Japan and being constantly shown how much I don’t understand.  When I was learning other subjects I didn’t have any idea of the scope of the problem.  I thought I was good at science when I was 11 years old.  And I was, I was good for an 11 year old who only knew about the things my teacher had taught me.  I didn’t spend my days being shown science journals I couldn’t read or having to listen to people speak about advanced scientific concepts.  I had no idea how vast the subject of science was but I felt good about science and thought it was something that I would be able to continue to study.  I wonder if I would have decided to study science in university if I had been constantly bombarded by things I couldn’t understand?

In Japan every day I hear conversations I don’t understand and see media that I can’t read.  This doesn’t mean that I will give up but I do feel like there is a giant mountain in front of me that I will never be able to climb.

Today Marty and I decided that we would walk along one of the emergency evacuation routes out of the city.  We planned to walk for around 12 kilometers as it was supposed to be a beautiful spring day with temperatures around 24º C (75º F).   The walk started well though the route wasn’t overly exciting.  Normally we avoid main roads when walking around the city but during a disaster it seems that walking along large main roads is advisable.  It’s also the place where most of the support stations can be found.  I have never looked for these before but restaurants and convenience stores that are going to serve as support stations during a disaster have a sign on their door:

After we had been walking for about forty minutes the weather started to change.  We could see odd looking clouds in the distance and the wind picked up.  We ended up walking into a yellow dust storm.  I had never seen one before and I don’t want to see another one.   The temperature dropped by about 10º C and we spent the next hour or so eating dust and trying to prevent our eyes from streaming.  Our pleasant spring stroll became a battle against the elements and we did not manage to walk the 12km. We gave up at about 8km and decided to get the train back home.

Once we got off the train it started to rain.  We were both filthy when we got home.  Sunscreen and dust don’t seem to be a good combination and I had black streaks running down  my face.  I think we are going to spend the evening hiding inside the apartment.

Tokyo has amazing public transport but today all I can see are its flaws.  It’s snowing.  It’s not pleasant outside but it’s ten times worse on the trains.  The trains are always packed in the morning but when it snows they end up fuller because of delays and to avoid the horror of driving in Tokyo when there is snow.  More people, more crushing, and more heat.  The heat is unbearable.  I managed to remove my hat, scarf, and gloves on the platform before getting into the train but that’s not enough.  Within minutes I could feel the sweat trickling down my back.  Trying to remove a coat on a train so full you can barely more your arms is maddening but I actually managed to do that this morning, it was that or pass out.

Mind you, the problem seems to be me.  Everyone else stayed fully clothed as if it was snowing inside the train.  I have no idea how they do it.  I didn’t see anyone else drink water but I carry water in the Japanese summer and winter because both have their own forms of overwhelming heat.  I have considered not wearing so many winter clothes and just deal with the freezing when I’m out walking but I also have to sit in a classroom for hours.  Yesterday during class I was so cold that one of the other students offered me his coat.  Our teacher finally noticed that it’s not normal to wear scarves and gloves in the classroom and had the heating turned up.

Today I have enough clothing to be warm in class, but it’s going to be grim getting back home again.

I didn’t notice the snow this morning.  It’s a national holiday and we had no plans to go out.  Our apartment is on the 24th floor and when I looked out I saw white.  I assumed I was looking at a low cloud and thought nothing more of it.  As the day went on I saw more and more mentions of snow on Facebook so I decided to take a closer look out the window.  The low cloud was actually a blizzard of wet snow.  Our balcony was covered in snow and so it seems was most of the city.  I have never seen so much snow in Tokyo.

I like the way snow looks and I always think that it will be a good idea to go for a walk.  Marty was amused as he had suggested that we go skiing today and I had told him that I didn’t want to go out in the snow.  But I’m not always consistent and walking in the snow seemed very different than travelling to a mountain to get to snow.  I did end up wearing my ski wear as there was a gale blowing and I wanted to be comfortable.  As always it was not easy to walk in the snow.  After about thirty minutes of plodding along the muscles in my legs started to complain.  We had to be very careful near the roads as the cars were having a terrible time getting anywhere and some of them were sliding across crossings when they should have been stopping.

I wanted to take pictures but it wasn’t easy to do that.  Apart from the blizzard making it incredibly difficult to focus correctly the lens didn’t like the change in temperature and steamed up.

I do hope that the weather improves before I travel next week.  Snow always means delays and many flights were cancelled.  I was amused to read about the train delays in one news article:

Delays of as long as 10 minutes are expected for bullet train services to and from Tokyo.

I do love living in a city where a delay of 10 minutes makes the news.

We are not going to cook Christmas dinner this year.  Marty wasn’t able to get the day off work so we decided it would be easier to go out for a meal.  I cooked dinner the last couple of years and it was a challenge finding the ingredients I wanted.  This year we have a new one – I’m on a gluten-free diet.  There is a theory that eating gluten makes my thyroid disease worse.   I have a thyroid hormone that has not been improving with medication and it’s possible that changing my diet will help.  I’ve been gluten-free for a couple of months now and I’m certainly doing a lot better than I did this time last year.

Being gluten-free in Japan is not easy.  I never thought of wheat as an ingredient in Japanese cooking but it’s everywhere.  The main problem is that there is gluten in soy sauce.  There is even gluten in most tamari, though I have often heard it described as wheat-free soy sauce.   Eating out has become a challenge.  I can’t eat noodles, tempura, ton katsu, or yakitori. I have been avoiding my favourite French restaurant as the smell of the bread drives me mad.  I can still eat Indian food, but I really do miss pasta and pizza.

Bread is becoming very popular in Japan.  The coffee shop I study in on weekdays does not contain a single thing that I can eat.   I can bake my own things but I need to be careful about the flour I use.  Rice flour is naturally gluten-free but lots of the rice flour here has gluten added to it to make it easier to bake with. There are no gluten-free bread or pasta products in the local shops  I was told that that it is possible to buy bread made with rice flour but all the ones I have seen also contain wheat.  I have been able to find a few things online but they are expensive and since I do cook a lot of my own food I have just made other things.

I did order a couple of things from the UK and I am looking forward to trying my gluten free Christmas cake.   I also ordered a packet of gluten-free rolls, the type that you bake in the over, but they were horrible.  I was going to throw them out but I ground them up and made stuffing with them which wasn’t bad at all.  I should really try to make gluten-free shortbread for Christmas but I haven’t had the energy to do that.  It’s time consuming and I worry that I will spend ages fiddling with it only to find it tastes bad.  Maybe this year we’ll have gluten-free cupcakes instead as I know they taste good.

There is something odd that happens quite often in Japan.  A foreigner speaks one sentence in Japanese and they are immediately complimented for their skill at speaking Japanese.  This is usually said with great enthusiasm and sometimes with surprise.  It’s a hard thing to listen to because you can’t actually tell if someone is skilled at speaking a language based on one sentence.  My Japanese is also not very good so I feel strange when people tell me how skilled I am.  Today it happened after one word.

Marty was looking at a Galaxy Note at a Galaxy exhibition.  It was a largish room and we were the only people there who were not staff.  None of the staff wanted to speak to us.  The staff who were supposed to be monitoring our table were standing against the wall.  They were both trying to talk the other one into speaking to us and neither of them wanted to try speaking in English. Finally the woman approached us.  She spoke slowly and said, “konnichiwa”.  Marty responded with, “konnichiwa”.  She clapped her hands in excitement and told Marty that he was really good at speaking Japanese.  It was bizarre and we did our best not to laugh, but I assume her enthusiasm came from relief that we did not look blankly at her.  It’s good to know that Marty is skilled at saying “good day”.

Even though I have been living in Tokyo for just over six years I still see food in the supermarket that I don’t recognise.  The types of fruit you can buy change with the seasons and winter citrus season has arrived.  Today I could have bought a 4 kilo box of mikans. This may seem like an odd thing to comment on but fruit is very expensive in Japan.  The concept of buying so much of it at one time now seems like madness to me.  I did stop to admire it though and the other citrus fruits.  I have known about oranges, grapefruits, lemons, and limes, for most of my life but I did not know that so many other citrus fruits exist.

When I first moved I discovered yuzu, which tastes somewhere between a lemon and a lime and is excellent in dressings and with fish.  Last year I discovered dekopon which is a wonderful sweet orange-like fruit.  Today I saw something called a kabosu and another fruit called merogourudo.  The kabosu was small and a darkish green.  It looked like it might be bitter and since it cost about 200 円 ($2.40) I decided not to buy one.  But the merogourudo thing was fascinating.  It looked like a large mutant grapefruit.  It’s English name is Melogold Grapefruit and it’s the biggest grapefruit I have ever seen.  Reading about it online suggests it may turn out to be the sweetest one I have eaten.  It was 238 円 ($2.90) and seemed much better value than the tiny fruit.  I have not eaten it yet as I will have to wait until I feel hungry enough to tackle such a large grapefruit.

A Large Mikan and a Melogold Grapefruit

It looks like there will be no Mario Kart tournament in our apartment this afternoon.  The disk drive in our Wii is broken.  It makes a terrible noise, the sort of noise that sounds like CD death, so we have stopped using it.  I went online to buy a new one but was surprised that it’s more than twice the price in Japan compared to the UK.  A UK one is no good to me but the price differences did make me look into this a bit more.  It turns out that there is going to be a new Wii released before the end of the year, and it will be released in the UK before Japan.

It would be silly to buy one today.  I imagine that when the new one is released in December that the old one will come down in price.  The new one looks interesting but it’s not going to be possible to buy that in Japan when it is released as most stores have stopped taking pre-orders as they can’t meet demand.  Looks like I’ll be waiting a while before I get to play again.

Tomorrow I begin a 3 month intensive Japanese course.  I’m not exactly looking forward to this.  I have thought about doing it before but my travel schedule has made it almost impossible.  This year, however, I have no plans to travel between now and New Year.  It’s been nearly two years since I attended a Japanese class and I have forgotten so much.  I had to attend a test on Saturday morning to determine which class I should enter.  It was not a pleasant experience. The first half was a written test which highlighted just how much I had forgotten.  I could read it, but I could not answer most of the questions.  The speaking part was an exercise in frustration.  Apart from one question I understood everything I was asked but I could barely form a coherent sentence in response.

The next few months are going to be challenging.

I love spring in Japan.  The summers are hot and humid, but spring feels like a good Irish summer.  Yesterday, I finally felt well enough to venture outside to see the cherry blossoms.  It’s one of the most talked about seasons in Japan, but it is fleeting.  I feared that I would miss it, but there are still many flowering trees in this area.

I’m not sure how much longer the flowers will last.  The streets are covered in petals and when the wind picks it snows cherry blossoms.

Sakura Snow