ChanomiTalk

1ヶ月後の引越しにむけて、少しずつ準備をしています。
引越し業者が、無料でダンボールやガムテープを持ってきてくれました。
まずは、それらを組み立てなければいけません。

親切なことに、ガムテープを貼る位置まで点線で示してくれています。
こういう細かい配慮は、日本ならではなのでしょうか。
このダンボールを全部で２８箱組み立てて、同時に荷物をしまっていくのです。
ちょっと面倒ですが、実家での新生活目指して頑張ります！

At the beginning of March, I’m returning to Miyazaki. At the moment I’m preparing to move. When Japanese people move, they check out a bunch of different moving companies. I decided I would look at four. When I was making the appointments, I started off by saying that I was contacting a whole bunch of different companies, and they made the prices cheaper for me. The salesmen will to whatever it takes to get customers, like frantically punching calculators and calling their bosses to lower the price. One company even gave me a kilogram of shinmai, which is rice harvested less than a year ago. Given that rice is such an unusual, but genuinely useful gift, especially for Japanese people, I was surprised. However, I regrettably went with a different company.

When I chose my moving company, I had three things in mind. First, whether or not they were able to safely move my things. Second, the price, and finally their attitude towards the customer. By this I mean their etiquette, friendliness, responsiveness to my questions, the level of training of the mover, and so on.

P.S.: I’m planning to eat the shinmai together with some natto for a delicious meal.

Recently, I visited Taipei. It is a very busy city. The first day I had to attend a formal dinner. I discovered that according to Chinese custom it is necessary to toast a lot in order to be sociable and thank the host. As a consequence, I had to drink a lot and felt a little unwell. Fortunately, I recovered quickly and the next day was invited to a Yoga class. It was fun but required all of my attention and energy because the motions were extremely difficult and the temperature in the studio was intentionally quite hot! The next day, I went to get a massage. I spent two full hours getting a foot massage and a full body massage. The foot massage really hurt! No wonder the name of the business was Kungfu massage!

One of my hobbies is that I like to cook and the area where all of the staff meet where I work there is a fairly large barbeque set and one of the managers makes his breakfast there everyday. He seems to be a very good cook and the other day I mentioned on how wonderful the butter smelled when he would make breakfast. He uses a special type of butter. It is firstly, organic, and secondly is only made from May through to September. It comes from the first Spring grasses that the cows eat which is why it is only made during those months. To compare it with something would be the first pressing of vigin olive oil. It can only be bought at Health food stores and is fairly limited in supply so my manager always buys quite a few boxes and freezes them. He has never baked with the butter but I am sure it would difinetly add to the taste.

When I lived in Japan I worked as a scuba diving Instructor in the Izu Penninsula. I really loved it there and miss it very much. In Japan, the ocean is divided into sectors and each sector is run by one of the fishing unions. The fishing unions decide where one can dive and also on which days. Whenever one pays for diving in Japan there is always a fee that is paid to these unions. A blanket rule when diving in Japan is that the divers can not take any fish, shell fish or shells. One day after I had finished diving I was in the Harbor area ready to take my gear off and I was approached by 4 elderly fishermen. They were very curious as I was the first foreigner that they had ever met. They asked me if I would dive in the harbor area for a type of shell called “Sazai”. These are barbequed and taste absolutely wonderful! I told them that the law in Japan was that I could take nothing out of the ocean. They all laughed at this and told me that this area was theirs and that if they said it was OK then I could do it but only if they gave permission and that they were waiting for me.
The sazai is everywhere and withing 10 minutes I had about 20 very big ones. After I got all of my gear off they were waiting for me in a type of hut on the beach with a big barbeque in the middle. Within no time they had all of the shells barbequed and while eating they passed around an enourmous bottle of sake and when it got to me I pretended to drink from it! When it was time to go they thanked me very much and there was one fisherman who had remained silent the whole time and then finally asked me if all foreigners had such big noses! I replied that mine was average and that there were many people with bigger noses!

When I worked on the tugboat the farthest place I went to was Johnston Island. The tugboat would carry both jet fuel and automobile fuel in a very large barge that we towed out to Johnston Island. Johnston Island is a small island between Japan and Hawaii and although there are some Military personnel there it was mainly civilian contractors when I went. The Island was used to store all the poison gas and other hazordous materials from the first World War all the way up to the Vietnam war. When on the island one always had to have a gas mask with you at all times. All of us stayed on the boat instead of going on the island as we didn’t want to be there in case there was a problem. The people who worked there usually signed up for a 2 year contract that they could renew and other than alcohol and tobacco everything was free! If a person didn’t buy those items they could save a lot of money since the pay was very good. For many years a person there did not have to pay stae tax but eventually everybody had to pay the Hawaii state tax. At the end of each year you could go anywhere you wanted on vacation and the flights would be free! Talking to many of the staff there, the usual plan would be to work for 5 years and save up all your money and then you would have enough for college or for buying a house. From what I was told they don’t use the island as much anymore but that there is always a group of staff there because of all the dangersous materials.