One year

We're officially half way through this gig. We arrived here one year ago today.

Here's what Craig and Cassia looked like:


And here's what I looked like:


A year later, Numazu hasn't changed in the slightest. But I suppose I must have, because it doesn't seem quite as bewildering or exhausting any more. When I step out the front entrance of our apartment building and look down the street to one of Numazu's larger intersections a couple of blocks away, I'm not disoriented. The Family Mart convenience store on the corner is familiar. The pedestrian overpass has been used many times. I know that if I take a right at that intersection, it will take me to many places I have been before and from which I can find my way back without a problem.

Looking over our north balcony, I see Ishibashi Plaza three blocks away. This is the main shopping centre I frequent at least twice a week. To think the first time I attempted to walk there I got lost and wound up in an industrial area! Inside Ishibashi Plaza is the fruit and veg market I buy my green groceries from (I haven't learnt its name) and Ito Yokado, the main supermarket and cheap department store in the same vein as Kmart or Target where I get my other groceries. In the last month I have finally learnt how to say that I don't have a Point Card and that I don't need another enviro-bag rebate card -- although I still don't know how to refuse plastic bags. Shopping is not so daunting or frustrating a task any more. I've learned where all "my" ingredients are, and have a pretty good idea of what I will and won't be able to find here. And all the rest can go hang. It's probably got pork or seafood in it anyway.

The day we arrived was hot and humid, and the cicadas were out in full force. When I awoke the next morning I immediately panicked that we had a gas leak in our kitchen; upon stepping outside for a moment I realised it was the buzzing of the cicadas. (We also don't have gas in this place -- everything's electric, but I didn't know that at the time.) I don't know if the little critters are louder this year than they were last year but I tell you what, if we really had a gas leak as loud as this in our apartment, we would have spontaneously combusted three weeks ago when one of our downstairs neighbours farted. But that's what disorientation will do to you, I guess. Everything seems louder, brighter, bigger and scarier than it really is.

There are many, many things about Numazu, and Japan in general I suspect, that still puzzle and annoy me. The way fire trucks go down our street at 10:30 p.m. with sirens blazing even though there's no traffic. The random announcements broadcast through the public speakers at 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Strangers good-naturedly giving Cassia junk food and useless little plastic toys. The rubbish disposal system. The bathroom sink, shower and kitchen plug holes which are designed to collect as much revolting slimy smelly gunk as possible and be very difficult to clean.

But I can survive. I've done my first year, it can only get better (or at least stay the same) for the second. And now I'll have a baby to help pass the time in 2010 too.

And to be fair, there are a few things I quite enjoy here. 100-yen stores. The fact that virtually everything's free for Cassia. The way people keep to the left on escalators at busy train stations. The extremely well organised and widespread public transport system. Not having/needing a car.

So, here's to another year in Numazu. May it fly.