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About two weeks ago, I decided to get a library card for Kyoto city library. There are many branches around town, and I thought it would be a good idea to be able to lend books, as I love to read, and buying them can get very expensive soon (given the amount of books I tend to read…) So far, I was thinking of English books, of course, and maybe something easy in Japanese for children, with many pictures; but eventually I thought, I would graduate to novels for teens and adults. The Japanese love to read, there are bookstores all over the place, and even in trains there are equally many people staring into a book as staring onto a smartphone…

I have been to Japanese libraries before, in Nagoya and Hiroshima, so my expectations were quite high. Well, it turns out that the quality of Kyoto libraries is rather…underwhelming. It seems – I have seen four so far, so I may be wrong – that not a single one of the libraries has their own building, they are all stashed somewhere in some remote floor of a place that is mainly used for something else. The first library I went to was on top of a daycare facility, so they had mostly children’s (picture) books, which is okay, as I cannot read much more just yet. Another one was similar, and when I asked for English books in a third library, they showed me a tiny shelf with maybe 50 books in English, and barely a third was for adults.

They did send me to the “Chuo Daigo Library”, and told me it was the biggest one in Kyoto, and had the largest selection of English books, so I spent the afternoon there. Daigo is a part of town that I have never been to before, it did not make a very good impression on me to be honest, it looks like all the other busy Japanese towns; there are apartment buildings and a noisy, busy main road. The library is situated on the fourth floor of Daigo subway station, and indeed, it was the largest one I have been to so far. Their English section – still tiny – comprises two large shelves, bottom to top, and they have many English translations of Japanese authors – something I have hoped for. Unfortunately, they have a borrowing period of only two weeks (renewal is possible, but they ask for a single one only), so I only took a single book with me. I did make a list of a number of other books I’d like to read, and it should be possible to lend them at a branch that is closer to my place than Daigo – it took me about an hour to get there by subway.

All in all, I am not happy with Kyoto libraries as they are now. My soroban teacher confirmed that Kyoto’s libraries were not very good, compared to other libraries in Japan, even those in smaller towns around Kyoto. He says it may have to do with the fact that there are so many universities in Kyoto that have their own libraries, which are open to the public (although you cannot borrow books from them unless you are a student or working at that university). I hope that, once I figured out the lending system, I can lend books from libraries outside of Kyoto. It must be possible to get my fix here without spending tons of money, right?

It is very rare indeed that people in Asia in general, and in Japan in particular are rude to anyone, especially to foreigners. Usually they go out of their way to help you and do so with a smile on their face. Now, what do you think of this:

The other day, when I was in a bookstore browsing the (tiny) English section, a man came straight towards me. Our conversation was very short, I only said a single word in response. In virtually perfect English he said, “Can I ask you a very impolite and personal question? I nodded and he continued, “Are you a native English speaker?” “No.” At which point he raised his hand in a dismissive gesture, turned around on his heels and disappeared without a single further word.

This the first time somebody has been obviously rude to me in Japan (I mean the running away part, not the asking) and it still baffles me. I talked about this incident with a housemate of mine who has been living here for 5 years or so, and he said this might have happened because the man wanted to practise his English, used up all his courage in the first question and then did not know anymore what to say. I doubt that as his English was too good for that, though. My housemate also said similar things have happened to him – he’s a native speaker and gets annoyed when people don’t leave him alone, so it’s the opposite – and I should not take this too seriously. I am still somewhat annoyed by this though, especially as this totally hits my sore ENS spot: English Native Speaker…

The house I live in is a so-called gaijin house: Everybody has a private room, and we share facilities like kitchen, computer room, bathroom… We are also responsible for some house maintenance, meaning that we have to buy necessities like dishwashing liquid, replace broken light bulbs, take out the garbage, and keep the house tidy. Larger repairs are organized and paid for by the landlady and there is a cleaner coming once a week. In a way, it’s like a student’s dorm for adults, and mostly it works rather well.

Mostly. Right now, six of the eight rooms are occupied, that’s the largest amount of people living here since I came here. The house is still very quiet, and I am very grateful for this. Other things have changed though, for example we need a lot more garbage bags and have to take them out almost every collection day, and we seem to run out of toilet paper twice a week.

I had an interesting encounter concerning the latter issue with one of my housemates, a 50-something year old German. Essentially he said: “Oh, we’re out of toilet paper again, I know, but I don’t think I’ll go and get some because I bought the one before and I really think the new person (who moved in last week) should buy some, and besides, I’m leaving on Sunday anyway, so…” I managed to only remark that this is not the way things used to work around here, but I left it (and him) right there. No use making a stink in his last four days.

Inside I was fuming though. I mean, how old is that guy, 12? “But mommy, I did the dishes yesterday already…” I remember him coming in with four (in numbers: 4!) rolls of toilet paper and making a fuss about it as if he had just sponsored a complete bathroom renovation… Tit for tat, quid pro quo, and besides, I think I am perfectly entitled to…

There was something I found terribly obnoxious about Germans. Sheesh, if I could just remember what it was…

I’m very tired – I’ve just come back from a big tour through Kyoto with two friends of mine from Germany that altogether took about 11 hours… We spent the morning in the area around Ginkakuji, the Silver Pavillion, one of the top 5 sights in Kyoto. Then we had an amazing lunch at a ryokan close to my place, a seven course traditional kaiseki menu, which is essentially haute cuisine from Japan. Afterwards we took the train down to Fushimi Inari Taisha, the main shrine for the god of wealth and business, the one that has thousands of orange torii gates lining the paths up and down a mountain. Finally, I helped a friend buy green tea, and then we had sushi for dinner.

You see, I was very busy today, but we had a lot of fun too. I am especially pleased about lunch, it was my first kaiseki since I came here last year, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was delicious. Anyway, I am dead tired now and I have to see another friend of mine tomorrow morning… Hence, I will not look for a photo anymore, but go straight to bed now.

Last night, after a very busy day (I’ll tell you on Friday), I had my first soroban class that is the requirement for my visa. We have decided that in the beginning, I will join the last class of the day that has only teenagers clicking away, and which lasts for an hour, starting at 7 pm. I haven’t practiced in a long time, so I needed a bit of time to remember how to do division and especially multiplication, and I made many mistakes. Oh well, I have lots of time to improve.

When I finally went home after some extra training and a bit of chatting, it was already 9 in the evening and I took a small road that runs next to a little brook to get to the river and walk home along it. The brook is rather small and it runs through a residential area that is very quiet, with one-way streets left and right. Every now and then there are little bridges crossing the water, and although the night was cool (it had rained shortly before), I could see people standing on the bridges and staring into the dark bed of the brook.

It is often better not to show too much curiosity, but at some point I could not restrain myself any longer and I went onto a bridge myself to look down. It took me a while to find out what the people found so interesting, and I was glad about the Japanese couple next to me who kept staring down so intently, I might have left after all, completely clueless…

There were fireflies! I had never seen fireflies before, they don’t seem to live in the part of Austria I am from, so I was very surprised. They were of the greenish glowing variety, very nice, and very bright for their tiny size. I watched a bit, but left when it got too cold. The most interesting part about this was that the people who watched were doing so in complete silence, which is very unusual.

Tonight, I was chatting with one of my housemates in our kitchen for a while. He has told me that today, he had seen his first cockroach of the year (I haven’t so far, but I am sure they will become more numerous soon). Having finished our conversation, we left the kitchen, through a small corridor, one side of which is essentially one large shelf, currently mostly empty. I don’t know what exactly caught my eye, whether it was movement, or just an odd shape… Anyway, I took a closer look – and then I started running, because from the corner of my eye, I saw this:

I hate spiders. The photo does not really do it justice, because it is hard to estimate from it the real size of the spider. Believe me when I say that from toe to toe, so to speak, it is about the length of my hand, probably around 12 – 15 cm, which makes the body alone around 4 – 5 cm long. Have I mentioned that I hate spiders?

My housemate told me that it has been on the shelf for several weeks, but this is the first night I have seen it too. He is quite relaxed and claims it eats all the mosquitoes and we should just leave it.

I have relented so far, although I really hope the thing will not climb up to my bedroom. And if it does, it’s fair game. We had an equally large spider around the kitchen last year, and I only saw it once, thank goodness… Why can we not have nicer pets? I wouldn’t mind adopting any of the geckos from outside the house that sometimes – but only very rarely – find their way inside. They would eat mosquitoes too and are much less scary…

When I was in Tokyo this week, I spent quite some time in the trains and subways there. Whether it’s a bus, a train, a subway… any type of public transport in Japan is covered in advertisements. They are placed above the windows, next to the windows, hang from the ceilings across the aisles, and I am sure the only reason they do not cover the floors is that public transport is popular and usually crowded. Most ads come als old-fashioned posters (these days often with QR codes for them ubiquitous smartphones), but in Tokyo’s subways there are video displays above the doors announcing the stops – and in between the stops, they show little clips – advertisements, of course. Sometimes, however, we get something with a more educational value though…

With great interest I watched a little comic that went like this: A young woman with long hair sits in front of a computer, typing away. The hair eventually falls into her eyes and she brushes it back. The second time she has to do it, she flips it back more violently, her boss, who stands right behind her, gets the whole load smack into his face. Afterwards, we get to see a little instruction of how to tie your hair up and out of the way, and the clip finally concludes with a row of woman happily typing away, undisturbed, and a boss, obviously equally happy about all that increased productivity.

So far, so good, but for somebody not educated in proper office lady etiquette, it does raise a few questions:

1. Why are only women targeted? Surely, there are men with long hair too. I do admit that they won’t be working as typists though…
2. It’s all about productivity, right? Pity I did not get to see that clip where the chaps are invited to take fewer smoking breaks…
3. Why is a woman’s hairstyle anybody’s business? As long as she adequately, professionally dressed for the job at hand and gets it done at the end of day…
4. If my boss stands so closely behind me to get my hair into his face when I move – he may consider himself lucky I don’t wear extensions with steel reinforcements…

I am glad I don’t have these type of problems. Even if I was an office lady in Japan, I have had a short haircut ever since I moved to Asia for the first time. And it seems to get shorter every year. The only thing I regret about this is that now I need to have it cut more often…