Protocol 7

I have a confession to make. It’s the kind of confession that you normally wouldn’t bring up in mixed company, or with people you don’t know very well, but the blank buffer of cyberspace gives me enough false courage that I can talk openly. The whole thing happened a number of months back, but my conscience has been dogging me ever since. I’ve tried to justify the experience by telling myself things like, “But you didn’t know!” or “You were just being polite!”, but in the end these soothing excuses amount to nothing more than a bucket of fail. No one forced me to do it, I did it of my own accord.

I ate a lobster. I ate a lobster while it was still alive.

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When we first set off to live in Japan, five to ten years sounded like a good amount of time to spend battling robots and learning to be ninja. However, angry robots are a bit thin on the ground, and stealthy is hard to come by when you stick out like a sore thumb. And so, after three and a half years of ramen and karaoke, it is time to say farewell.

My mom always told me that you wake up one day and you *just know*. You know that the cycles of love-hate are no longer dialectic but circular, the horse has been beaten, the pigs are flying… whatever metaphor floats your boat. Okay, so we didn’t exactly rub the sleep from our eyes and reach for the suitcase, but close enough. Not to mention I really can’t stand Japanese beer.

And since beer (and whiskey) is the elixir of life, we’ve decided to head to Canada, land of beer, beer, and something called hockey, which must be a sport fishermen play. And while I’m excited about the beer, I’m worried about retrofitting my computer to the telegraph system used by the citizens, not to mention learning the language.

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Mal was found in the garden, unhatched, and incubated by a black chicken. She¹ came later than the rest, towards the end of the summer, once they had already fledged and left the hen house. It was clear she was a mallard, not a muscovy, and with that the decision was made. A week later she was standing in our kitchen, peeping and looking around curiously, the hen house replaced with a Japanese apartment. We nervously welcomed her, like new parents, attempting to erase the chicken imprint and raise her with an affinity towards people (or at least us).

Mal loved the camera from day one.

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1. For the first four months or so we thought she was a he, and the pronoun change took some adjustment. [↩]

i.

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The rainy season has come and gone, replaced by a blazingly hot, humid, and repressive summer. The days are now averaging around 35º C, hot enough to render yours truly into a lifeless piece of flesh lounging about in her underwear in front of two electric fans. Cold showers provide temporary relief from the oppressive heat, as does a trip to the local combini, where we can bask in the coolness of regulated temperatures while browsing for chocolates and canned oxygen. For extended relief we head to the river, where cooling waters have an undisputed and rejuvenating effect on tired summer bodies. As it’s too hot to continue typing, the narrative will henceforth be strictly visual.

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The West has always lagged behind Japan when it comes to technological innovation, especially in the realm of robots and heated toilet seats. Humanoid machines and warm bums are indeed exciting, but pale in comparison to the unsung combini (convience store), whose shopping experience Japan has elevated to an artform. And the Pièce de résistance? Canned oxygen.

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I’ve never been a fan of shopping, unless it’s for electronics or the occasional thrift store foray, so you can imagine how happy I am that the three pairs of pants I brought to Japan are falling apart. Falling apart is an understatement - the hems are gone and the fabric is wearing thin - I carry around scissors and safety pins just in case of further impromptu degradation. I usually enjoy flipping through racks of thrifty threads if I’m in the right mood, but I *hate* shopping for pants about as much as I hate pretzles and elbows. To say that I possess a megaton of hate would not be an exaggeration. And shopping for pants in Japan effectively doubles, if not triples, my pants-shopping hateration.

It’s always been difficult for me to find pants that fit properly, and in the past I’ve generally stuck to wearing men’s suit pants. Occasionally I will find the odd pair of jeans that happen to fit, but in a world that loves low-riders and skinny jeans, they are few and far between. In Japan, the task of locating pants that can sustain my trunk’s junk is nigh impossible, and I’m a size six back in the States. In a country that boasts size 00 (yes, that’s double zero), a girl who usually doesn’t have body issues suddenly begins to plan her upcoming crash-course diet of seaweed and tofu (and beer, natch). After two hours of fitting-room devastation I found one pair that fit, but made me look incomprehensibly short, like I had been squished in a fun-house mirror. The next size up was in the plus-size section. Needless to say, I’m still sporting the same threadbare leggings I was last year.

The evenings are beginning to cool off, which means that Chapter One: pnts and kzi vs. Murphy’s Law and Japan[1] is drawing to a close. It was chapter of epic proportions in which we saw our heroes move halfway across the world, engage in mighty battles with the most formidable of bureaucratic systems, dodge deportation and food poisoning, discover innovative ways of using clothing for pillows and blankets, dance lithely between pronounced cultural differences, obtain gruesome facial wounds, and drink lots of beer.

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