A Little Morning Project

One of my students once remarked that she thought that I was "good with (my) hands" because I did things like build my own simple monitor stand and paint or cover pieces of furniture on my own. Given that I have little regard for my skills in these endeavors, I thought she was giving me far more credit than I was due. Nonetheless, I do enjoy doing such things even when the results are hardly noteworthy.

When I was younger, I used to do these sorts of things all the time. Some of them were pretty good and others rather so-so. Mainly, I liked to paint murals on my bedroom walls, though I was also handy with pen and ink drawing, calligraphy, and making montages. I also used to embroider, crochet and to a much lesser extent, knit. Unfortunately, I don't remember how to do any of those things anymore.

Still, there's something very gratifying about doing something creative with your hands, even if it's unimportant or someone else's idea. This morning, during my usual time wasting on the Internet, I ran across instructions for an oil lamp made from tangerines. With mikan season in full force, I thought I'd give it a try. The instructions are here.

Taking pictures in the dark is hard, so please don't judge my blurry picture too harshly.

The main problem I have with a lot of on-line information, particularly projects and recipes, is that a lot of people aren't entirely honest about the ease, shortcomings, or desirability of the results. I'm pleased to say that this was one occasion where the project pretty much lived up to its potential. It took me about 10 minutes to do this, and about half that time was spent eating the contents of the mikan.

I made my candle about an hour ago (pictured above in its early stages) and it's still burning fine. I have a few notes though about how it burns, however. First of all, my patterned center hole looks kind of cute (at least for a first try), but it was too small. The inside of the pattern started to darken and smelled a bit burnt. I recommend cutting a bigger hole. With mine, I removed the top and just cut it larger once it started to darken up. Also, the top starts to dry out after about 40 minutes and it will look darker around the top when the lights are out and it's illuminated, giving a less even glow. With the lights on, it's still pretty much uniform in appearance, but if you want a uniform glowing ball look, you'll want to light these later rather than earlier.

The site that I got this from said that it smells faintly of orange while burning, but mikan don't seem to do that. I'm guessing other citrus fruit might do better on the aromatic front. Obviously, it's safest to put this on a plate and you absolutely have to keep an eye on it. The bottom of the mikan absorbs the oil pretty rapidly and I don't know what the consequence of this will be after hours of use. Note that I used canola oil rather than olive oil since it's cheaper and I have more on hand.

I think that 6 or 8 of these placed in a double row in the center of a table would look great for a romantic dinner or for a holiday dinner (as long as other lights like candles were on the sides for more illumination). I'll note that mine burned very dimly at first but got a good deal brighter as time went by.

Update: As the burning approached the 2-hour mark, the bottom of the mikan started to burn (like a larger wick) and the oil started to bubble and smell like burnt oil. Clearly, you can't burn these for too long, but they're good for about 90 minutes.

Christmas Decorations 2008

The wooden "Merry Christmas" sign was a present from my husband a long time ago as was the clear candy dish (and the almond roca wrapped in gold in the dish). He also procured the Simpsons Christmas mugs. The acorn candles actually came from my brother-in-law in more cordial days.

Note: Any picture can be seen in a larger version by clicking on it.

Every year around this time, the web is full of pictures of elegantly appointed decorations in homes that resemble none that I have ever stepped foot in. That's not to say that such homes do not exist. I'm sure they do belong to people who have figured out a way to live life in perfectly color coordinated, immaculate, perfectly lit houses that do not require trash cans, power outlets, cables, cords, or most common electronic household items. I'm sure of the latter because those things are always absent from those gorgeous houses with their perfect holiday decor.

This paper tree was a gift from my friend the wombat stuffer last year. He sent it to me along with a bunch of other goodies after listening to me complain for ages about all the things I didn't or couldn't have in Japan. My students think the tree is very cute. I think it's a wonderful reminder of friendship.

So, every year, I drag out my box of ragtag, hodgepodge, mixed up Christmas decorations and attempt to adorn my apartment in an aesthetically pleasing manner. They may not look perfect, but almost all of them are reminders of thoughtfulness, consideration, generosity and kindness on the part of others.

The gold candles and the Santa candle holder were gifts from the CH. The gold candles smell wonderful, like holly and berries. They're the last of huge box of gorgeous candles the CH got me and I refuse to burn them because I want to remember their scent and the larger gift they came with. The snowman between the candles were from the wombat stuffer. It reminds me of Calvin & Hobbes as well as my good friend the stuffer.

So, my decorations may not be perfect or impressive, but they make me happy, and they put me in the right spirit.

The round tree candle holder was also from the CH. I love candles. It's a beautiful holder, but you can't really tell from this picture. The Skull plushie gets a blue Santa cap at this time of year.

Today, I went out and bought bags for student baked goodies offerings this year. I also mixed up a huge quantity of peanut butter cookie dough and froze discs of it for (near) future cookie making.

The CH gave me the plates, holders, candles and wooden NOEL train a long time ago. The lights are actually new. I bought them from Amazon Japan and didn't realize they were musical lights. Fortunately, there's a switch to turn off the music.

In past years, I've often waited for the spirit to motivate me, but this year I decided to make make the spirit on my own. I'm hoping it sticks with me for the duration.

Adventures in "New" Used Furniture

There's a style of low profile office chair which I ran across at a second-hand items shop about 6 months ago. It was black and only about 3000 yen (about $30) and looked like it'd suit the CH's need for a replacement chair at his office. Unfortunately, my rickety old chair, which I had repaired 3 times and extended the life of for another year and a half, finally gave up the ghost and I ended up with the chair intended for my husband. (He was in need of a new chair because his company's president replaced everyone's comfortable chair with nicer looking, but very uncomfortable chairs).

Since that time, I've been checking the same shop every time I ride my bicycle past it hoping that another one would show up. This particular type of chair is well-suited to Japanese apartments because it is light and has a low back so it doesn't seem so large in a small space. It's also wider and has good lower back support and is more comfortable than most conventional office chairs.

My new chair, restored to working condition.

Well, today was the day another one of these chairs showed up. The odd thing was that it wasn't there when I rode past it to the supermarket, but it was there 10 minutes later on my way back home. This one only cost 1890 yen (about $18) so it was a steal at that price. The only bad point was that this one is red and showed a bit more wear and tear. It's a little dingy, but I figured I could reupholster it. My husband can take the black one to his office and I'll use the red one.

So, that would be all well and good if that was the end of the story. Of course, then this wouldn't be an "adventure". The used items shop is about a 7-minute walk from my apartment and charges for delivery so I decided to just push the bike I was on with my right hand and drag the chair along the sidewalk with my left hand. It was noisy, and a little troublesome, especially with my bad back, but I got it home and was very pleased.

I put my groceries away, chatted with my sister a bit on Skype, and then decided to try out the chair. When I sat in it, it leaned forward any time I did. It was as if it was hinged. I turned it over and saw that two of the four bolts were missing. The front ones were there but very loose, and the ones from the back were gone. Given how loose the ones in the front were, my guess was that they were shaken out during the journey rather than absent all along.

The main problem with losing the screws is that the base of the chair is very thin so you can't replace them easily with other bolts. They'd have to be exactly the right length and width. Also, Tokyo is not exactly overflowing with hardware shops with a plethora of bolts for every need. In fact, I have no idea where to find a specific size bolt. Given the difficulties in replacing them, I though the best course of action was to retrace my steps and hope to find them.

Now, if I lived in the isolated countryside or in some quiet suburb, this wouldn't be a big deal, but this is Tokyo. There are people and cars everywhere. To add more fun to finding the lost screws, ginkgo leaves are all over the ground and blowing around. That means there are chances that they could be covered, swept up by the ever vigilant shop keepers sweeping several times a day in front of their stores, or ran over by a car. Yeah, I crossed a major street (Ome Kaido Avenue) full of traffic on my way home.

Still, I gamely retraced my steps and found one of the screws, sans its nut, at the curb where I crossed the street. I was actually surprised to find one at all and pocketed it. When the light changed, I crossed the street carefully scanning the crosswalk. However, I figured I'd be screwed if one fell in the street because tons of cars drive over the intersection every minute. It could be thrown, crushed, or stuck in some one's tire if it happened to fall on the crosswalk.

After walking all the way back to the shop, I came up empty on the second screw and decided I'd give up after one more pass over the crosswalk. Strangely enough, I found it lying in the middle of the street undamaged and with its nut intact. I must say that I felt really lucky to recover them under the circumstances.

Of course, my entire experience was two parts luck (finding the chair, then finding both lost screws) and one part bad luck (the loose screws). I can't believe that the people who assembled the chair were so careless as to leave the screws so loose that simply pulling it along the sidewalk for 3 minutes made them fall out. I guess it could have been worse. All 4 of them could have fallen out and the chair could have fallen apart before I got it home.

Note: This chair is obviously the Stockholm office chair sold by Walmart in the U.S. There are no Walmarts in Japan so I have no idea where this came from. I've never seen one like it in any shop. If anyone else knows where these can be bought in Japan, I'd appreciate knowing. I did find a Japanese version of this style of chair called a "Roco desk chair" (ロコデスクチェアー), but it's not the same exactly, though it still has the appealing low profile style.

Mortified

In an earlier post, I mentioned that we nearly made it through the summer without any cockroaches penetrating our inner sanctum. That was on October 19th. I figured that the roach had sneaked in on my clothing which had hung on the line, but I did find it odd that it was crawling high across our white living room wall rather than lurking in the shadows or wedging itself behind furniture. Roaches like to be wedged between two narrow areas so they are touching something on both their tops and bottoms. They don't like being high and in the open.

At the time, I recall thinking that I was glad that it didn't show up in a similar place during one of my lessons as it would be horrible for me to be teaching a student and to have a roach crawl by where a student could see it. I know that people who live in Tokyo are aware of the inevitability of roaches, but I can't help thinking that they'd believe I was a really dirty person or that they couldn't feel comfortable in my apartment if a roach might amble through.

I saw what I hoped was our first and last cockroach of 2008 on October 19. Now that it's November, I figured the likelihood of one showing up was pretty low, until two days ago when one of my worst scenarios played out. Several nights ago as I was teaching a student around 7:20 pm, something dark and high up on my whitish walls caught my eye. A roach was slowly crawling across the wall on the left. When I saw it, it was behind my student, but I believe it made it's way over the wall and out of my field of view.

I don't know if the student saw it once it passed my peripheral field of vision, but I did notice her eyes dart to the left several times (though her head didn't move). Of course, a lot of people look to one side or another while thinking as we naturally look to the side of our brain that we're utilizing while concentrating, and I didn't know if she saw it or if she was just thinking. By the time the lesson ended, it was nowhere to be seen and I figured it had crawled behind the bookshelf that is at the end of that same wall.

Since I didn't want that thing running around after my husband got home as they creep him out rather fiercely (and I'm not too great a fan of them either), I tried to hunt it down. I rocked the bookshelf in the hopes of scaring it out, but it didn't show. I took apart the bookshelf which was chock-a-block with heavy books and pulled it away from the wall, but it wasn't there. I got a flashlight and searched a lot of darkened nooks and crannies including under the bed, behind the sofa, behind the T.V., etc. and I couldn't find it. I was already tired and all of this searching was the last thing I needed. Finally, I gave up, turned off the kitchen light and at that moment it scurried from a dark corner and I nailed it with roach killer.

Though I was mortified to see a roach on my wall during a lesson, its presence as well as that of the other one was educational. It's no coincidence that both of them showed up late in the summer after the air conditioner in the living room was no longer used. Though I've plugged every hole that I know of in the apartment, there is one I can't plug and that's the one's related to the air conditioner itself. My guess is that they are coming through a hole that was made during the unit's installation which is a less attractive route when the AC is used. The reason they are high up on my walls is that that is where the entry point is. I don't know if they can crawl through the tubing which water drips through or if it's some other hole, but clearly I'm going to have to try and lock off this point of entry when the air conditioner is not in use if I want to avoid them with more certainty.

As for my student, I'm hoping she wasn't freaked if she saw it. She's a pretty level-headed person, and a nurse, so she's seen some pretty gross stuff. If she shows up next week, I'll be in the clear. If not, well, I'll know what happened.

Almost Made It

Despite living in a major city known for summer infestations of roaches, my husband and I have not suffered much from these adrenaline inducing creatures. In our worst summer, we saw three. In our best ones (in about our first 10 years here), we saw none at all. This year, I had been hoping that we'd have a repeat our best.

I'm sorry to say that a summer spent unsullied by scurrying creatures was ruined the night before last when I saw the first roach of the year high up on our living room wall. It's usually safe by this time of year because it gets colder the roaches head south for the winter, but one just managed to squeak in and spoil our record.

The reason I had high hopes for not getting any cockroaches this year was that I figured out that the way to keep them at bay was both to keep trash (especially stinky, food scrap-filled trash) under wraps, keep things clean, and keep all points of entry screened off. The latter is rather tricky since most Japanese apartments have a lot of little holes through which insects can crawl in. I blocked off our kitchen ventilation fan's gaping hole to the outside last year and that helped a lot. I later figured out that the shower room vent (which is frozen open from rust) and the drain were the other major points of entry and keeping the shower door closed in the risky months discouraged roaches from coming in for a stay if they wandered in because they had no access to food. I guess they could eat our soap or much on hair in the drain, but that's likely less tasty (even from a roach's point of view) than stray kitchen crumbs that don't get vacuumed up.

Since I went to such pains to plug up all the gaps, I wasn't quite sure how the one that got in the other day made its way in, but I have a suspicion. A few days ago when I was pulling laundry off the line in the evening (after dark), and I thought I saw something large and dark on a light-colored shirt that I brought in. At first, I thought it was a moth and that I'd trapped it between the clothes when I tossed them in a pile, but no moth presented itself as I folded and put everything away. I believe now that the roach piggy-backed on a shirt and scurried away when I wasn't looking. Later, it resurfaced on the wall of the room in which the clothes had rested in their unfolded state.

I don't like killing anything, insects included, but roaches (and mosquitoes) require capital punishment for their incursions. The lone roach that made his way into our place this year got gassed to death. My husband carried out the sentence and the accused fell behind the T.V. to quietly expire. I feel kind of bad about it. I wish it had just stayed outside where it could have lived its disgusting existence out in peace.

The Peeper is Back

When the weather changes from stifling, humid and hot to cool and dry, my windows go open for a few months and stay open until it gets unbearably cold. That means that my privacy becomes an issue as there are four windows in my apartment and three of them can be clearly looked into by neighbors or their visitors. If I'm cooking at the gas table, I'm literally standing next to (less than 3 feet from) anyone who rings the doorbell of my neighbor's apartment.

In fact, yesterday morning, my peeper was back for another peek through the kitchen window. This time, I happened to be in the kitchen as she stood out there and gawked intently. When she saw that I was about to see her, she scampered away. That being said, I realized that this was not a person who was simply trying to invade my privacy. In fact, it was not my privacy that she wished to invade at all. Before she started peering into my kitchen, she had been ringing the neighbor's doorbell.

Said neighbor is the one who is in and out of his apartment day and night at the strangest times. He is certainly not your typical "salary man". The peeper was trying to contact my neighbor and, given the proximity of my window to his door, I believe she erroneously believed the room she was trying to look into to be his and didn't know it was connected to another apartment. I think she was trying to see if he was home and not answering his door. Given the fright I gave her (and the fact that my front door is not more than 2 feet from the window she was looking in), I hope she'll work out that this is the apartment next to his and stop sticking her nose into my business.

Privacy has also been on my mind as of late for another reason which is rather removed from my personal experience. I've been reading a memoir written by Leonard Nimoy's son, Adam. Any time a celebrity or psuedo-celebrity writes a book, you might expect some juicy bits of gossip or at least some amusing observations or anecdotes. Wil Wheaton's "Just a Geek" is a good example of one such book. And, no, not every memoir I read relates to Star Trek.

The reason Adam Nimoy's book brings privacy to mind is that it fails largely because of what I believe was an attempt to keep too much private. The book reads like a decent blog which keeps any really deep and intriguing information or serious introspection or emotional response under wraps. In terms of his family and particularly his father's privacy, I admire the restraint he shows. However, he didn't really even reveal much about himself or any sort of profound self-discovery about his life as a result of growing up with a silver spoon, succeeding, and then failing as a result of being a drug addict. As a reader, I found the book very shallow as a result.

The lesson I learned from reading his memoirs is that it's okay to protect everyone's privacy and to keep your deeper thoughts and demons to yourself. However, you can't write a very interesting book if you keep such things out of the view of prying eyes. There is no having your cake and eating it too when it comes to privacy. You can either sell yourself and your story and jeopardize your privacy and those around you who are inevitably revealed, or you can keep yourself off the auction block and work as, oh, say an accountant. You can't write a good memoir though if you restrict yourself to talking about the bland facts.

All good writing involves putting yourself at risk. Even when you don't display your deepest, darkest secrets or feelings, good writing will ultimately betray your character to attentive readers. In both fiction and non-fiction work, you can always see the needs, fears, and ego of the writer embedded in the stories and perspectives.

Little Compromises

I spend some time every week thinking about refining my living space. I do this not because I'm hopelessly obsessive (well, maybe a little), but because I spend a lot of time in that space and it's important to feel comfortable in it and satisfied with it. I've traveled down a long and labor-intensive road to get it to a point that I'm largely, but not completely, happy with.

That being said, there are some things I'll never be really happy about that I have to accept because of the compromises I'm either forced to make or unwilling to consider. On the "forced" front is the small space situation and the lack of built-in storage. There's no getting around having a small place unless you're so wealthy that you don't mind tossing your money down the crapper for the sake of elegantly wasted space. I love a good barren minimalist landscape in a home as much as the next neurotic compulsive anal-retentive neat freak, but I'm not willing to work harder so I can throw money at having such a place.

The points which I'm unwilling to consider though not forced to accept are based on a lack of desire to sink money or materials into making things better. I have the money, but I'm not willing to replace something for aesthetics unless it is so painfully awful that it would embarrass me in front of open-minded people. When I say "open-minded", I mean people who don't think things that are worn-looking are "dirty" or unusable.

There's an obsession in Tokyo with replacing things that look old whether they have excellent utility or not and it's extremely wasteful. Tokyo has been my first experience with homes that last 25 or so years and get replaced. The concept of a disposable houses never occurred to me until I came here. I'm not sure if this is in line with an aesthetic which values what is new, novel and modern or simply related to keeping the construction industry going by having them use the cheapest materials so that places start to fall apart after a certain period of time. Honestly, I half expect the apartment building we currently live in to get replace in the next 10 years if the landlord can get permission to rebuild it with a third floor. I think this building is about 25 years old now.

Some people may not know it, but Japanese apartments get "gutted" between tenants. They strip out the walls, floors and often any installed cabinetry and plumbing. It's on a deeper level than what you tend to see in the U.S. where walls may be painted and carpets cleaned, but most of the fixtures are left in place. Since I've lived in the same place for so long, this stripping is long overdue for the cheap materials in it, but I'm not giving in to the urge to have the landlord replace things. He'd certainly do so if we asked.

My walls may be smog-stained and crumbly from humidity, but that makes them no less utilitarian. Also, let's face it, I can have the landlord strip the pathetic cheap covering from my walls and slap up pristine new ones but it's going to get covered in smog again in a year or less and humidity is going to make mold form behind cabinets during the first summer following the new installation. I know how much dust accumulates in my place and I'm unwilling to create piles of waste for the sake of temporarily "clean" walls. They are clean. I washed the damn things myself. They are just old and show it.

Still, I look around some times at the things that I hate like open shelving or the necessity of having part of the pantry on display because there simply is nowhere else to put things and think I should just give in to the urge to replace them with some sparkly new thing. I consider it a test of my ethics to not give in to superficial, materialistic urges such as these. If I'm going to say we shouldn't create unnecessary waste and live simple, frugal lives, I should damn well be prepared to live a life in tune with that.

The Smelly Throne

Some topics are best left not talked about, but somehow people manage to talk about them anyway. This may be one of those times. Any types with extra super sensitive tummies may want to leave the room.

Now that the sissies have exited the building, I'll say that today, we're going to talk about toilets. Yes, there is no stone which I won't lift up and discuss what is crawling beneath it.

I'm a very clean person as is my husband. Despite the lack of gratification in the process, I clean the bathroom about once a week if I can possibly manage it. I'm not sure how often a person is supposed to pour toxic chemicals into the commode and swish them around, but I figure once a week ought to be fairly reasonable.

Needless to say, my toilet is clean. In the summer, unfortunately, that doesn't mean it is always "fresh" smelling. When it gets hot and incredibly muggy, whatever bacteria or as they're referred to scientifically, "stink particles", that cause that "toilet" smell seem to go into hyper-drive and no matter how much I scrub and clean (with special attention given to under the rim), a vague smell of eau de toilet is present, often just hours after a cleaning. Since I detest artificial air fresheners and believe adding chemical "positive" smells to bad smells only creates a highly unpleasant funk that may eventually give you brain cancer, covering the scent with chemicals is not an option.

I've tried those hocky-puck like cleaning disks that you put in the back of the tank, but have had a disastrous experience with one. As chronicled in my former blog, one of them melted into a blob of goop then slid into the plug and left the toilet running through constantly. The fun that ensued as a result of this encounter with such a disk is chronicled in a story here. Needless to say, the consequences of using one of those things has put me off of using them forever. I don't even know if it would have helped.

Note the handy-dandy spout on the back of the tank the pours into a basin with a hole in it in the tank back. Also, note how inelegantly the plumbing was punched through the wall on the left. It's like someone just shoved the pipe through and didn't even try to drill or create an elegant hole. That's some craftsmanship.

Recently, I've started taking advantage of the hand wash basin integrated into the back of the toilet. I can't do this all year because the water is freezing cold when it's not monstrously hot outside, but I can do it in summer. I made this move to further my efforts to save water. I put a container of liquid hand soap on the tank to use for this purpose. The soapy waste water goes into the toilet tank and is used for flushing. Little did I know that this was going to kill two birds with one stone. After I started washing my hands, the smell problem disappeared. The small amount of soap which gets into the tank water appears to be enough to neutralize the odor issue that occurs in the summer.

The neatness with which making an environmentally sound choice to change my behavior solved this problem is oddly pleasing. It's as if I've had a very rare experience with karma giving me an instant reward for good behavior.

Born in a Barn

When I was young, I did a lot of the sort of things that kids do when they are not yet shackled with the myriad of details and concerns of adult life. I think that life lasted for me until about the age of 12 when my self-absorbed obliviousness ended and I caught on to all the stuff my parents never for one second tried to hide from me about the harsh realities of life. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for making me feel old before I was legally old enough to vote.

Before I was consumed by a life of responsibility and worry, I'd blithely do things like leave the door open or stand in the doorway in the dead of winter allowing the frosty bitterness inside and the precious, precious heat outside. Invariably, as I stood there, my mother or father would shout, "close the damn door, were you born in a barn!" This puzzling, but multi-purpose, statement could apply to allowing the cold in in winter or allowing bugs in in the summer. Had I been older, and less fearful of punishment, I'd have retorted with, "you know I was not born in a barn because you're the one who gave birth to me."

Now that I'm older and more attentive to things like bugs and allowing precious air of the desired temperature to escape, I can empathize better with my parents concerns. In particular, the issue of allowing insects in is an issue for me because I have about 10 or so people coming to my apartment for private lessons every week. Invariably, several of them will just stand in the door allowing it to hang open behind them. No matter how many times I say, "please, come in," they stand there. If I make the mistake of saying anything like, "how are you" or "it's hot, isn't it," they will stand there holding the door ajar while addressing my polite smalltalk as if it somehow helps them speak.

Just outside of my front door, my landlords (who are also my neighbors) maintain a small garden of nondescript foliage. The whole thing is dark and relatively unimpressive. It looks like someone threw seeds around in a random fashion and cultivated what happened to grow. It'd be a nice plot of nature in the concrete jungle if it weren't for the fact that it's a haven for bugs. When the students come in, this heavily infested garden is lurking right behind them and the door being held open is an invitation for insects to come into the apartment. In fact, mosquitoes so love to raise families in there that students who stand at the door for a very short time waiting for me to answer will be bitten as they wait. Of course, once the mosquitoes have snacked on succulent student flesh outside, they come inside and have my husband or I for dessert.

I've even gone out of my way to talk about the situation with the students who have been holding the door open. As we sit in the lesson and a bug flies around distracting us or if I see a student intently scratching (it's always a mosquito bite), I mention the fact that there are lots of insects in the neighbor's garden and when the student comes in and holds the door open, bugs fly in with them. I do this to no avail. Even when I make it clear that their behavior is what is letting insects in, they still hang in the doorway with the door open. I'm guessing they do it unconsciously.

Maybe I should start saying, "were you born in a barn?" when they do this. It probably won't work any better for them than it did for my mother, but I think it's supposed to ease my frustrations.

"Hoovering"

Back when I was working at Nova, there was a British employee who introduced me to the use of "Hoover" to mean "any vacuum cleaner" much in the same way that Americans use "Kleenex" to mean any facial tissue or "Q-tip" to mean any cotton swab He said that he and his wife needed to "hoover" their floors because of the dust mites living in the tatami, but they hadn't purchased a "hoover" yet. (Incidentally, Japanese people use "Hotchkiss" to mean "stapler" is a similar adoption of a brand name as a generic item name.)

In my Nova days, both my CH and I were working full-time at our respective schools and one of the first things that fell by the wayside was vacuuming duty. There were times when the floor of our apartment had accumulated so much debris that it was necessary to scrape off the bits that stuck to our feet before getting into bed lest we drag crumbly bits into the sheets. That's not an admission of which I'm especially proud. However, it's also obviously not one of which I'm especially ashamed either or I wouldn't be admitting it here. And don't ask what it was that we were stepping in as it's been awhile and I don't remember. However, based on what tends to accumulate on the carpets these days, I'd guess it's lint from doing laundry, tiny bits of paper from torn edges of various paper products, (my very long) hair, mature dust bunnies, and crumbs from food preparation and consumption.

As I'm sure is the case with many people, I have harbored an intense dislike for vacuuming more than many other household tasks. In the past, during our salad days of debris-strewn floors, I'd enlist my CH to take care of it about once a month when I couldn't stand it anymore and he was fine to do it. Since quitting my full-time job and inviting private students into my house, I don't have the "luxury" of vacuuming only once a month. Now, I have to do it at a minimum of twice a week or risk my poor students having to brush debris off of their feet after being seated on the sofa.

Since I have an apartment which is so small that the power cord on the vacuum can stretch and reach all rooms, you'd think it wouldn't be such a big deal. The entire task usually takes no more than 15 minutes, and even that is with my hitting some nooks and crannies and the walls and maybe a computer keyboard. Still, I find lugging out the vacuum, assembling its hose and dragging it around the apartment an odious task 85% of the time. The only time I enjoy it the least little bit is just after the vacuum cleaner bag has been changed. At that point, it has extreme suction power and it's an effort to move it along the carpet. If it happens to suck up an errant corner of a sheet or a piece of paper, I have to turn it off and extract the object from its ravenous orifice.

The reason its satisfying when the suction is hyper-powered is that I feel like it's really digging in and doing something. When it's at its average power, it just seems like its doing no better than I could with a broom and some vigorous sweeping of the topsoil. Of course, it's really important to actually use a vacuum cleaner in Japan or your ankles will get nipped to pieces by "dani bugs" (dust mites) so any thought of cleaning with an old-fashioned sweep is off the table.

It's not so bad, really, but there are times when I say 'damn the students' feet' and just let it go for a whole week. As far as I know, no one has ever dropped my lesson because of a dirty floor, but somehow I doubt they'd tell me if they gave up English study because my crumbs stuck to their toes.

Moss and Me

Former home of a dearly-departed spider plant and cushion moss.

For awhile now I've been wanting to enliven the atmosphere in my apartment with a bit of greenery. A normal person would just go out and buy a plant and learn how to care for it. However, normal people have the advantage of not living in near cave-like darkness because they are on the bottom floor and in the center unit of an apartment building surrounded by taller buildings.

I've been researching greenery on-line for some time now trying to find a plant which will both endure the dimness of the cave-like environs of my domicile and the ineptitude of my care. You see, I don't have the best track record when it comes to caring for plants. Some time ago, a friend of mine gave me a black coffee mug with a spider plant growing in it. I warned her that I thought I'd end up killing it and she indignantly informed me that spider plants required very little care and were quite hardy. The only thing I can say about that is that I still have the mug.

During one of my recent runs for milk at a local 99 yen store, I noticed one of the plants they had outside the shop was "cushion moss". Moss is often viewed as a weed in the U.S., but is common in Japanese gardens. I looked up moss and found that it thrives in the shade and needs lots of water. Since I'm not looking for tall plants so much as just something green which won't die on me, I bought one of the tiny moss planters and am going to use it as a test run for my green thumb. If it survives, I'll consider investing in a planter of some sort and expanding the planting.

I do believe that, if a plant could think like we do and conceptualize the world as humans, they would see my purchase of one of them as the equivalent of a knife-wielding maniac descending on some poor helpless puppy and beg me to pick some other specimen and spare its life.