A letter to the I-95

It is said that to get to know a person, you should walk a mile in his shoes. We travelled many hundreds of times that you and I, and yes, I-95, I did indeed feel I knew you well. Perhaps ... too well.

You ran straight and true, taking me from Florida up to North Carolina, and I know you would have carried me still further, all through the greater part of my journey. The problem is, I-95, that although you were swift and simple, I grew bored of your never ending concrete view with only gas stations adding colour to life with you. Additionally, my friends do not live close to your sides which perhaps tells you something deep about your life.

It's not me. It's you.

So I left you, I-95, to go with other, more exciting roads. I moved through many streets, admiring fall leaves and pretty towns. I cannot say I was ashamed of my behaviour.

It is true though, that such indulgences came at a price. I felt that you laughed as my gas meter bleeped red with no garage in sight. Perhaps I took your point. Perhaps you knew as well as I that minor roads north of Washington DC were not for people who wished to get somewhere. Perhaps you just hoped.

Whatever the reason, I-95, I did return to your cement embrace after the capital. I trust you, you see. You were able to guide me, and the eight million other people who flocked to your surface around Baltimore, along the East Coast and up to New York. I noticed your care in doing so; you were indeed painstakingly slow.

Despite the success of our reunion, I confess I-95, that we must shortly be parted again. I want to reassure you that my reasons are different. It is not that I am bored with your appearance. In fact, the entertainment of regularly crossing four lanes of heavy traffic to reach different exits is enough to sate any girl's desires. Rather, it is because you go up to Providence and really, who wants to go there?

I cannot stand long goodbyes, I-95, so I'm going to make this one quick exit as I turn towards the border. This time there is no turning back.

To the irritable man with the rollerboard suitcase ...

As with this post, it is sometimes necessary to write to people you have only encountered in passing. Such "missed connections" form a popular column in the website craigslist. It is in this style that I offer the following to a fellow passenger at Toronto airport last night:

"To the irritable man with the rollerboard suitcase,

I know you were irritated that night at Toronto airport. I know this because I had been just behind you in the queue, also being told I would have to wait for a seat assignment. I was also just behind you when you shoved your rollerboard backwards, causing me to trip and you ... you to look still more irritated that someone had the audacity to touch your luggage.

It is possible that your day had been harder than mine. Perhaps so much so that it explained why I was innocently heading to find a soda while you were embarking on a departure room rule of terror. If you had decided to ask, rather than ABH, I would have explained that my day had been one of trials and triumphs and I was thinking of selling the plot for a remake of Groundhog Day.

I had headed out that morning at 6 am to meet a potential landlord before he went to work. The apartment was nice and, after a brief consideration, I decided I wished to sign the lease.

Yay! Apartment!

Such an event would have been marginally easier if my future landlord had not lost his phone three days earlier, rendering him incommunicable until his return at 3:30 pm. Coincidentally, this particular time was also that for the last departure of the airport shuttle bus.

Nevertheless, I had happily wiled away the hours by trying to reach one of the three professional pet sitting services who had been ignoring my existence all weekend. They persisted until mid-afternoon when one of them finally broke. After scuttling between Waterloo and Hamilton (~ 1hr drive) to ensure bags were packed and cat briefed for good behaviour over the following weeks, I reached my landlord and agreed to meet him at a coffee shop ... that proved to be closed. A chilled twenty minutes later finally saw me signing a lease in a KFC.

At this stage, it was too late to contemplate public transport to the airport, so I had driven the rental car and dropped it off at the terminal. In their confusion at seeing a vehicle they expected to be in Waterloo, I was ushered into the help desk area. This left me at the back of a long line of customers (did I mention to anyone I'd driven the car because I was late?) who were being personally shown to their rentals by individuals who had mastered speaking English at one tenth normal speed. Finally, I was presented with the bill and ...

".... I'm sorry, you've overcharged me."

"No Ma'am, a large fee is charged if you drop the car off at a different location from your rental branch."

".... Even so, my original bill was $400 .... it is now $1450."

Okay, so perhaps, just perhaps, there was a slight slip. After some consultation, I received a new bill for $800.

"... This is still rather high."

"Well, you have the fee for being an underage driver."

".... I'm 29."

"We have your date of birth as 1985."

"That is incorrect."
(As you could see from my official Government issued driving license that is in your hand.)

"Oh right. Why is that?"

Know what? Not my problem. The fact my flight leaves in less than an hour, that is my problem.

Now running, I had leaped up to departures, sacrificed my toothpaste to avoid checking luggage and made up the blandest version of my life to date so the USA border control would be too bored to prolong our interaction.

So you can imagine, good sir, that I also was not thrilled to discover I was not guaranteed on this flight. However, unlike you, I did not resort to beating up other passengers although I note that, had I been so inclined, I would have at least picked someone with a seat.

Regardless, both you and I made the flight that day. You probably rolled off home without a care in the world. I, meanwhile, had to deal with yet another car rental desk.

"We only have a minivan."

I hate you."

Ain't never seen a pussy cat fly

Possibly one of the most daunting tasks involved with moving to Canada was the mechanics of shifting the cat from the hot tropics of Florida to the frozen north. Despite her strong interest in the idea, I dismissed the idea of adding her to my boxed belongings to be stored and shipped. This left me two possible options:

(1) Buckle her into the backseat when I road-trip it up the country in my beetle (a.k.a bad option #1).

(2) Fly up earlier with her when I go looking for apartments (a.k.a. bad option #2).

Since her views on the forty minutes drive to the vets seem akin to the torture of the Spanish Inquisition, neither of these were going to go down well. I opted for (2) on the merit that is was at least shorter.

Fortunately (or so I thought at the time), flights to Canada from the USA allow pets in the cabin, so I scooted to the stores to buy a soft carrier that would slide under my seat. I tried to make the whole situation as easy as possible: I found a direct flight out of Orlando, asked a friend to drive us to the airport so I could hold the carrier on my knee and asked another friend to look after Tallis Canada-side so she would not have to go into a cattery. I then layered the pet carrier with a puppy pad, a tee-shirt I had been wearing for a couple of nights, catnip and love.

Exactly what Tallis thought of this arrangement was made clear by her urinating all over said tee-shirt, catnip and strongly pushing the "love" factor before we were even out the driveway. Gritting my teeth, I changed the liner, shook out the tee-shirt and pushed kitty back into her carrier ..... did I mention she could get out of this? Actually, if it's zipped right to its limit and all the Velcro pushed down, we're good. Any tiny gap, however, and the furry Houdini can insert a paw and pull open the top. But hey, don't you just hate getting bored on flights?

To be fair, after the initial defacing of the carrier, things went as well as could be expected. Cat was not happy and scrunched up her fresh puppy liner and shoved it into a corner but failed to complete her wicked plan by not having the required bowel or bladder content. Cat owner was even less happy and, without a puppy liner to exploit, almost offered said cat to fellow passengers who cooed through the cage. That said, we finally tumbled off the plane in Toronto and headed to customs to present the required paper work to a lady who inquired:

"Is this all?"

Now, I had read the website information on pet transport to Canada (under "Food Inspection Agency") and called the airline to confirm absolutely and utterly that the only paperwork needed was proof of rabies vaccination, which the woman was now holding. Fortunately, I had not believed a word of it and was also carrying a health certificate from the vets and a medical history. I passed these over, which did not exactly seem to be required but satisfied the customs guard's desire to hold more paper and we were waved through.

Cat is now completely recovered and zooms around her new home with her tail held high. I am still in shock and need to sleep for a week. Next time, we're using drugs. And no, I'm not talking about the cat.

What ... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

My Mum once told me about a PR video she saw at work. It showed a foreign client talking to a receptionist. At the end of the piece, people were asked for their thoughts and they all agreed that the man had been very rude and brusque. It turned out that if you translated his words directly into his native tongue, he was actually being incredibly polite. This was put forward as an example to not take everyone at face value.

I decided to apply this principal when I went through USA border control this afternoon after my return flight from Tokyo. For the questions posed to me, I simply translated their words into those I am sure they meant.

Your J1 visa has expired. What are you doing here?
Welcome back to America; the country in which you have paid taxes and made your home for the previous five years. We are delighted to see you again. What brings you back to us?

When will you leave?
For how long will we have the pleasure of your presence during this visit?

[Muttered] Welcome to America.
Welcome to America!

To which I replied:

[Brightly] Thank you!
I don't like you either.

The process was short though, and not nearly as bad as I thought it might be. You are not supposed to enter the USA as a tourist without a return plane ticket and of course, this was my return plane ticket from when I left Florida four months ago. Since I ultimately drive to Canada, I had brought a pile of paper work including my new job contract to prove my intention to leave, but this was only checked once at the Tokyo end and not at the border.

So hello from the flip side, people! Now everyone has to prey for that bottle I bought in the Tokyo duty-free and had to stuff into my checked luggage at Dallas to be transferred to Florida. If it cracks, my poor Totoro will get soused. That's completely inappropriate for a sweet anime character.

mada mada

I am fully aware that my limited grasp of the Japanese language leaves something to be desired. However, exactly what my Japanese colleagues deemed that was came as something of a surprise when I received a dictionary of Japanese onomatopoeic expressions.

Put simply, onomatopoeic expressions are words we use to describe sounds. For instance, "meow" is an onomatopoeia for the sound a cat makes. Likewise, "zoom" is a word we use to describe the sound of something moving at high speed.

Hiccup, beep, bang, whir, croak, splat ... English is littered with such expressions. Yet, this is nothing nothing to Japanese. In Japan, onomoatopoeia describe not only sounds, but also sights and sensations. For instance, walking down a street you might see someone who was "keba keba", meaning they were gaudy or garish. This might well cause you to "jiro jiro" (stare rudely) which could attract their attention, leading you to be "oro oro" (flustered). However, then their partner might appear and it would be become plain that they were "atsu atsu" (head over heels in love) which would make you "niko niko" (all smiles).  As any good TeniPuri fan will know, "mada mada" describes "still having someway to go before reaching the goal".

As noticeable in the above examples, Japanese onomatopoeia are often repetitive, with the same phrase being repeated twice.

On that note, I shall declare to be "meso meso" tomorrow as I cry to leave Japan, before moving onto "koso koso" as I try to sneak through Florida stealthily to avoid being discovered by my old advisor. Then it's off to "samu zamu", the cold bleak wintery scene of Canada!

Takarazuka

Before I came to Japan, I read (or browsed, it was more of a picture book) "A Year in Japan" which chatted about the sights and impressions of a Western girl living in Kyoto. One of the experiences she mentions is the all-female musical production company, Takarazuka. Upon mentioning this to a friend, I discovered she was a huge fan and we went to two productions together, one in Tokyo and one in their home town ... Takarazuka ... which is just outside Osaka.

The town Takarazuka is the location of the highly competitive associated music school where students above the age of 15 (i.e. after Middle School) attend to train for the company. Although all female, the students are selected for "male" or "female" roles and they keep their assignment through the school and in every professional performance. The only occasional exception to this rule is when a normally-male actress is assigned to a female part for a particularly strong character, such in the recent production, Elisabeth.

The male roles are considered more prestigious than their female counterparts and as such, the lead "male" star is more important than the leading female. The top stars of each troupe of performers have their own official fan clubs who organise events and turn out dedicatedly to see the actresses entre and leave the theatre. These club members all wear a common item of clothing, e.g. a blue scarf or tartan jacket (see photos), to mark out who they are supporting and this changes from one performance to the next. When their actress arrives (wearing hat and sunglasses) and greets them, they all bow down (*cough* it's a little creepy). It is through these fan clubs and the sale of merchandise that the actresses make the majority of their money. 

Rules for Takarazuka actresses are extremely strict. The "male" actresses have to keep their hair short, only wear trousers, not skirts and speak in the Japanese male form. Female actresses must do the reverse and no one is allowed to date.

Takarazuka has five troupes of actors putting on productions around Japan. We saw "Snow Troupe" perform "Russian Blue" in Tokyo and "Flower Troupe" perform a version of "The Rose of Versailles" in Takarazuka. While in Japanese (and so at varying degrees of incomprehension to me), the productions are extremely well done with good music and interesting costumes and set design. It is fun to watch videos of the rehearsals during the intermission and see the actresses without their make-up (I always think they are much prettier without it since their stage face is heavy on lipstick).

At the end of all such performances, I normally walk around for several hours with my head in the clouds imagining what it must be like to attend a professional acting school and be a star performer. Then I come to my senses and remember, in all likelihood, the real answer is "damn awful". 

Cloth

One of the noticeable features of your average Tokyo subway car is the splattering of people wearing white cloth surgical face masks over their mouth and nose. Initially, I put this down to the recent outbreak of swine 'flu, but later discovered that it is considered basic manners to cover your face if you have a cold or cough to prevent it being spread. (Of course, the outbreak of swine 'flu rather extenuated this phenomenon, causing a national shortage of masks for sale).

There is a risk with such masks that you might inadvertently produce a bacteria breeding ground next to your mouth, but with every convenience store in Japan stocking them, switching to a clean one is not a major issue.

A second feature of day-to-day life is the lack of paper napkins, both in restaurants and public restrooms. At restaurants, you are provided with a hot or cold damp towel to clean your hands with before eating, but it is unusual to be given a napkin. Likewise, toilets sometimes have hand driers but never towels. This is because the Japanese carry small wash cloths (flannels) with them to wipe or dry their hands and faces. Because everyone has one, there is a big market in these cloths and you can get all designs and patterns from plain through to your favourite anime characters (I have one with Ghibli's Jiji the cat on it).

It is remarkable useful to have such an item with you. While I still frequently forget to pick one up on my way out, I may try and adopt the habit once I'm back in North America. Oh, by the way, that's Sunday. Man.