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Am in a writing mood and have thus written a lot...

Clumsy

I really must learn the Japanese word for 'clumsy'. I've never been particularly coordinated, but I may be getting worse. While teaching, I drop my pen and/or papers at least once per class. I've dropped my iPod on the cement ground, lost my DS stylus in my hurry to leave a train, and spilled green tea all over the DS itself.

This morning I almost fell down the stairs. In the last fifteen minutes, I've contrived to up-end a bowl of pineapple onto the carpet, dropped a bunch of gyoza (which I was transferring the vast distance of 3 inches) onto a freshly laundered pot holder, and almost knocked a plate off the shelf.

One mitigating factor, I suppose, is the severe untidiness of my apartment. It's no wonder I keep knocking things over and dropping them when there is stuff piled in every nook and on every surface around me...

(A few minutes after writing the above, I knocked over an entire glass of water with my foot. There's really nothing to do but laugh...)

Air conditioning

I took my inscrutable remote control in to work. To my relief, my manager immediately found out how to set it to 'cold' (something I was sadly unable to accomplish), and I have learned that my air conditioner is quite effective.

Somewhat less relieving is that the discovery that every time I turn the air conditioner on, all these little chunks of black stuff periodically fly out of it and settle on the carpet, or futon. I have tried cleaning out the grate, and have turned it on and off many times, but there seems to be no end to the amount of crud coming out.

Another undesirable discovery is that of the water that leaks out of the air conditioner. The drips land approximately where I place my head while sleeping, so my current band-aid solution (bucket on the carpet) is not going to be very feasible come late summer, when I need to leave the air con on all night...

MTMs

Although I have an ATM card which theoretically allows me to withdraw from ATMs for free, it's darn near impossible to do so.

Tell me this: why do ATMs charge an 'after hours' fee? So, if I queue up behind a long line of people in the afternoon, I can withdraw money for free. But if I come by at, say, 9:30, or on a Sunday, I have to pay extra.

Now, forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I wasn't aware it cost extra, or required extra manpower, to process my ATM transaction outside of bank hours. If we look at the name ATM, it does mean Automatic Teller Machine. Surely the point of them is their convenience; you can access them any time, rather than needing to go to a bank during bank hours.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe in Japan, when the machine says 'confirming card', there is actually some harried bank clerk at a computer somewhere, looking up your number and details on the other end, and manually confirming every transaction.

Jouzu da ne...

They say Japanese people typically express great admiration when foreigners show the most basic knowledge of anything Japanese. Now, for example, I don't really use any Japanese words in the classroom (apart from the occasional food, which can be nigh impossible to translate effectively), but once, after class, I was talking about learning Japanese, and I said 'konbanwa' ('good evening') in an example of something.

The student gasped and said 'wooooh, Nihongo ga jouzu!! You speak Japanese very well!!'

Now, I have had many people say this to me, but usually I've had to produce at least a full sentence, or several phrases, in order to 'earn' it. That said, I've been told my Japanese is very skillful after saying such complex and astonishing sentences as:
'It's good, isn't it!'
'Yes, please. This one.'
'I am studying Japanese.'
'Thank you very much.'
'The doors are closing, please take care.'

If I say anything at all in Japanese, it never goes unremarked-upon, but is always praised. I know the praise is therefore completely meaningless, but it still makes me feel heartened. Getting a 'waaa, Nihongo ga sugoi jouzu!' is much more encouraging than getting a blank, uncomprehending look. So I think the encouragement of random people is a good motivation for me in learning Japanese.

But just try to imagine, if you will, an equivalent situation in Australia. I find it very difficult indeed to visualise an Australian - any Australian - getting excited over a Japanese person's ability to say 'hello'.