Faces of Japan

Not much to say. Just a lot of pictures of some beautiful children.

This is my favorite.

Unwelcome Squatters

In the 38 + years that we have been married we have lived in 12 different apartments or houses. We've never at any time had a problem with cockroaches--bedbugs yes, but that’s another story--until now. We were surprised when we encountered our first one about 2 weeks after moving in since the house had been empty for 2 months, and therefore no food had been left around. I don’t know the standard size but ours are about 1 ½ inches long.

As they are quite fast and can change direction in the blink of an eye, the battle has been quite a challenge. However, great hunter that I am, I have been up to the challenge. Seven have checked into the “roach motel” and never checked out. One sat still long enough for me to bop his (or her, how do you tell) head with the handle end of a butter knife. One I hit with a hammer, after spraying him (or her, see above) with furniture polish. One was on the kitchen counter and the only weapon I had available was a hand towel. Since my long term memory is still functioning, I recalled the high school locker room days of towel snapping and I stunned him enough to flip him into the sink and quickly turned on the garbage disposal.

The cockroach in the picture below, I trapped in the fridge. Well actually it was the old fridge that we had moved into the "monooki" which is a storage area about the size of a 1-car garage that is attached to our house. I had left the fridge doors open so it wouldn’t get moldy, and as I walked by one day I noticed the roach, so I shut the door. A few days later I checked and discovered that he had passed on. An autopsy was never performed to determine if death was caused by asphyxiation, starvation or heart attack.

I’d like to think that I am winning the war, but I’m not that naïve. I read that they can produce thousands of offspring a year so we’ll need to come up with some other methods, but the experience thus far does make for a good blog.

Donn

P.S. Well I guess I have to add a PS. I was ready to post this but last night as we were getting ready for bed, Daisy noticed that we had a visitor in the bathroom. As the weapons from my arsenal (see picture above) were all downstairs, I was in a bit of a dilemma but Daisy came to the rescue and handed me a washcloth that had become a rag. I entered the bathroom, closed the door and prepared for battle. He darted left...I smacked him. He feinted left and darted right...I smacked him again. Actually after about 10 smacks from the dry rag, he pretty well gave up the fight and I threw him outside. Another job well done.

Recycling

Living in Japan gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “paper or plastic?” For those of you who live in a big city, this would probably not be a big deal, but we lived in the small town of Sandy Lake where recycling was not a priority. Every week the garbage bag filled with paper, plastic, food, cans, small appliances and every other whatnot was set out on Sunday night and Monday morning it would disappear. Even when we started to recycle about 2 years ago, every “recyclable” thing went in the same cart.

But not so in Japan. Here we have a 16 page booklet which we affectionately refer to as our “garbage Bible.” We have many categories and many subcategories.
And it’s not just getting things in the right bags (blue, peach, and gray), we also need to know what day they will be picked up. The schedule is as follows:

Burnable Tues. & Fri. (blue bag)
Plastic bags/Wraps Thur. (gray bag)
Non-burnable 1st Wed. (peach bag)
Bottles/Cans/Hazardous materials 1st Mon. (bins at a different location)
Newspapers/Magazines/Cardboard/Clothing 1st & 3rd Mon. (bundled)
Pet Bottles 2nd & 4th Wed. (semi-transparent bag)

Yard garbage, leaves, twigs etc. are set out with the burnable as long as they’re placed in the transparent or semi-transparent bags; or the twigs can be bundled if the bundle is less than 60cm long and 30cm wide.

Sometimes it’s hard for us “gaijins” (foreigners) to know for sure whether something is plastic or paper (burnable) so the Japanese have symbols on almost everything. However, here’s where it gets REALLY complicated, some items require more than one symbol! For instance, PET bottles (bottles which usually contain water or some carbonated drink), may require three symbols: the PET symbol, for the bottles themselves which must be put in a transparent or semi-transparent bag to be picked up the 2nd and 4th Wednesday, the plastic symbol (on the right) for the lid which must be placed in a gray bag to be picked up on Thursday, and the paper symbol (on the left) for the label which must be placed in a blue bag and picked up on Tuesday or Friday...so if you think you got it all figured out, please come and help clue us in.

Some older things don’t have the symbols mark, and its not always easy to know for sure into which category it falls. When that happens I usually make an executive decision and put it in the burnable bag. After all, anything will burn if you get it hot enough!

Donn