Ju ichi ban - dedicated to the delivery man with the same name as in the post jew ban.

Ok so my updates are coming through fewer and further between now... but im by no means adjusted to living here, and i should make more of an effort to record these moments.

This time round i have the karate kids sensei guarding the recycling, health check ups and the Okayama Zoo to report

on.

Now recycling here is really huge - it should be known that Japan has a huge emphasis on recycling. Yes they do make a ridiculous amount of unnecessary garbage (for example individually wrapping each apple in plastic) but they do have a recycling system here that most people try to follow. So i have a recycling day assigned to my building and on this day (every second Sunday i think it is) you have a drop point where you take your glass/plastic and boxes etc to be sorted and recycled. Now i have been heading down normally rather late in the evening when the person assigned to look after the station has gone home, but the last time i went he was still there...... He was a short yet intimidating looking fellow who looked like Mr Miyagi out of the film karate kid. I waltz on up and being unable to read a single recycling box label attempted to apologise and ask where my bottles went - it was at this point that im sure i got told i was stupid and that i couldn't bring my bottles down today (im thinking its once a month now for bottles). I asked if i could leave them with him and he said "no" then i asked if i could go and he said "no" while all this time mumbling rather grumpy tones. So im stuck with an obviously annoyed old guy who looks like a karate master ready to explode with his ninja skills, bumbling about throwing my bottles around and giving me nasty looks an

d then every time i try to leave he arcs up. So to cut the story short i stood there for a good 15 minutes while i got a Japanese bollocking for something im a little unsure of but i know to do my recycling in the evenings and throw my bottles wherever i want from now on!

Last week work required us to get down the hospital for a check up - they take your blood and urine and check you weight and height as well as do chest x-rays etc etc... this was all good but i wish they had given me a set of slip on shoes that actually fit instead of a pair that my foot only half fit into and in turn made me shuffle like an old man around the ward..... one size fits all - if you're the one size that everyone else is! Now it was a very surreal event to go to one of these hospitals for a checkup - it was almost like the fast food version of health care where the number of customers that passed through were just as important as the checks they were doing. You went from station to station with the end goal being that you have a chat about your checks with your doc. I got to the end and im pretty certain my doctor barely looked me in the eye more than once and she didn't speak a word to me, she motioned for me to open my mouth and her assistant held my head like i was about to get ECT therapy, while she looked do

wn my throat, it wasn't like i was going to run anywhere? Anyway im wondering if my next visit will be more enlightening.

Last week i visited the local zoo with the children from our school. I felt a little bad for the animals but the kids seemed to love it. The zoo is basically the Ikeda family's backyard that they opened to the public. Its rich folk showing off exotic animals but the fact that it was family owned explained why one of the enclosures had dogs on display. The turtles covered in algae and lions that slept the day away looked rather nonchalant about their confinements which did nothing to give any sense of a natural habitat, and the wallabies in their cages looked like the emo kids of the animal kingdom! I did take some time out to have a little chat with a cow while i was there - i informed him as he licked my hand with his dirt ridden tongue that in my previous job we may have met under different circumstances.......... it was at this reflective and nostalgic point that i felt bad and had to buy him some food out of the vending machine........... i get the feeling that if he isn't fed by suckers from the public then he isn't fed at all cause he chowed my biscuits down so fast i almost lost a finger!

Oh yeah and i think i got swine flu... Last night i was talking to my imaginary friend thinking if i don't wake up in the morning maybe i should have cleaned up a little more. Now im sporting a choice as face mask!