Ready to go

I am finally packed up and ready to go! I hired a small, local moving company to move most of my furniture for the one and a half hour drive to my fiancé's place. The movers are very friendly and colourful characters. One is Greek, one is Italian and one is Australian. The weather forecast is predicting rain. I hope it holds off until we finish moving.

Last supper

Today, my fiancé came to my place to help with final cleaning and packing up before I move to his place with my cat. He is not too happy about my cat, because he is allergic to cats, but he is accepting her for my sake. After a hard day, we enjoyed our last meal at my place with a glass of wine.

Locquat Larceny

In my old house, I had some fruit trees, one of which was a loquat tree. It was fairly small, but gave quite a good harvest. Unfortunately, the birds would often get to enjoy the fruit before I could, so I put some netting over the tree to keep them out. The birds were not put off so easily. They worked out that they could get underneath the netting and fly up to the branches to get to the fruit, but they became trapped and couldn't figure out how to get back out. I felt sorry for them, so I lifted the netting for them. When they were released, they just walked away. They seemed to me to be so fat and full that maybe they couldn't manage to fly away.

The Birds

I have recently moved in to my fiancé's place. I am settling in gradually, but there is a lot of cleaning, renovating and improvements to be done. The house definitely needs a woman's touch.
One morning, I was surprised to see him suddenly run out of the house and bang violently on the roof gutters with a broom. I asked what he was doing. He said that birds had been getting inside his roof and nesting there. He could hear them scratching around from inside, waking him up very early. Then they have chicks and they make a lot of noise and a big mess. He says they a a real pest.
In the past, when we were walking together, he would always impress me with his knowledge of birds. I always thought he was a big birdwatcher and lover of birds, but his behaviour shows a big contradiction. He is not friendly to these creatures at all!

Japanese collection

I recently moved in to my fiancé's house. I am happy to be moving from a dodgy area with a high crime rate to a lovely seaside area. We had to reduce both of our belongings drastically, because we had to fit two house loads of furniture and all of our many possessions into one quite smaller house. My darling had a very big Japanese collection, including furniture, kimono, scrolls, kokeshi dolls and more. I didn't like many of these things and said that I think it's time to say goodbye to them. He complained to me "Why do I have to get rid of all my beloved Japanese things?" I replied to him
"You don't need them anymore, because now you have ME!" He laughed and agreed with me.

Mobile make up.

When I sometimes go back to Japan for a holiday and to visit my family, it is quite common to see people reading, sleeping, messaging or playing games their mobile phones, but recently I have been surprised to see a lot of women putting on their make up on the train. They don't seem to mind going out in public with unpainted faces and applying make up in front of everyone. Not just teenagers, but adult women too! Maybe they value their sleep and can't be bothered to get up 15 minutes earlier to do their make up at home. This is something that I have never seen in Australia. For me, this is like getting on the train naked, and getting dressed in front of everyone.
Am I too conservative and old fashioned?

Black tie baka!

Even an ordinary person like me is sometimes invited to black tie events. I used to wear an evening dress to this type of function, but either it shrank, or more likely, I might have grown a bit. At this particular party, I decided to wear a kimono. I didn't know many people, so I was glad when a gentleman approached me and gave me a top compliment on my outfit. 'You look lovely!' he said 'Where do you come from?' I thought to myself, obviously he knows I come from Japan, so he must mean where in Japan do I come from. I told him that I was from Kobe, near Osaka, but he just looked at me with a blank expression. I came to realise that he was asking me what country I came from. I couldn't believe it! I thought everyone knew about Japanese kimono. Oh well, I guess a black tie is not necessarily a sign of sophistication.

Onsen intruder

My fiancé has been to Japan many times. He loves Japanese food, including sashimi, and he can even eat natto! He also loves sake. He is a friend of Japan. 
On our first trip to Japan together, I wanted him to enjoy a special onsen, so I splashed out and we stayed at a lovely place in Hokkaido. He has been to onsen before, and enjoys it, but can not understand why we like to go several times in a day. For him, once a day is enough.
We both left our room to go to the onsen, and later, when I returned to the hotel room, he had already come back. I asked if he enjoyed it. He said it was nice at first, because there was nobody else there, so he didn't feel embarrassed. He soaked in the hot water enjoying the beautiful garden and forest views through the large windows. Then he heard a female voice call out something and in came a middle aged cleaning woman. He was quite surprised and sank lower into the water to hide.  After that he couldn't relax and soon returned to hotel room.

Lost in translation

Some of my Australian co-workers can speak a little Japanese language, but one guy can speak it quite well.  One day he rang me (he was speaking in Japanese) to say he would not be coming in to work because he had to go to the hairdresser. What?! I thought this was very strange, until I realised he meant to say 'hospital'. The words for hospital and hairdresser are very similar in Japanese - byouin and biyouin. I could easily understand his mistake.

I also sometimes make mistakes with English language. I remember I was having a conversation in English with a couple of colleagues. We were talking about the constitution, when suddenly they both burst out laughing. I had no idea why until they told me I had mispronounced the word 'constitution' and had been saying 'constipation' instead. Embarrassing! 

Flower thief

Since I finished my job, I have started to notice a lot of things that I normally wouldn't see. For instance, several children on their way to school, stop in front of my house and wave to my cat who is basking in the sun by the front window. I started to wonder what else I had missed while I was at work.
The other day I was watering my front garden early in the morning, when I saw an old lady walking along my street. She stopped at my neighbour's house across the road and pulled out a pair of scissors. She then began snipping a lot of my neighbour's flowers from her rose bushes and placing them into her bag. She wasn't taking the stems, just the blooms of the flowers. Maybe she was making potpourri or something. I really don't know.
She didn't seem to mind that I was standing there, watching her. In fact she looked right at me, but just kept on cutting the flowers. I was quite surprised by her cheek. I wondered how many gardeners would wake up and be shocked to find their lovely blooms missing. I wanted to shout out at her to stop, but you never know how people will react. My neighbourhood can be quite a dangerous place. More and more I am looking forward to moving.

Waterbed

I really love my water bed! I have slept in a water bed for more than 20 years. I always fall straight into a deep sleep, usually with my ipad or a book on top of me and my light still on.
Unfortunately my darling doesn't like my bed. He teases me and calls me a swinger or something, still living in the 70's. He says he thinks that it is strange to have a waterbed in these days of modern gel and latex mattresses.  Once he even said he felt sea sick! He always exaggerates. I'm sure that in his mind, he thinks he is bobbing around on a kind of giant hot water bottle in a choppy sea. I wish I could show him the structure inside. Actually it has a lot of support for the back. 
I don't know why waterbeds are not popular in Australia these days. Maybe it's because Aussies are heavier than they used to be.
It is certainly difficult to move a water bed. An expert has to be called in to drain and dismantle it.
I am moving in with my fiancé soon. I will miss my waterbed.

Contrasting service

Recently, I witnessed some big contrasts in service.
First I went to my local phone shop to enquire about getting a new phone. The girl there gave me a big smile, but her eyes were not smiling. I could see she had one eye on the clock. I didn't realise it was approaching 5.30pm. Closing time! She took some details quickly and hurried me out the door, telling me to come back tomorrow. I turned to ask her a question but she had already disappeared. I guess she had something better to do.

On the way home, I was feeling a bit flat. I felt like I had been escorted out the door by security at that shop. I thought to myself 'I am definitely not buying a new phone from there!' I stopped into a bottle shop to buy some wine. The salesperson was really knowledgeable and helpful and went out of his way to make sure I was looked after. Although I know I can not expect the very high level of service outside of Japan, where the customer is king, but my faith in people was restored.