Edojin

Yesterday evening, my girlfriend went to her hometown where she’ll stay for two days.

There are different commodities in public transportation in Japan, at various rates and speed: the bullet train will take you there in two hours, but will cost you a considerable percentage of your apartment rate; while the bus is cheaper, for a longer ride.  She chose the night bus; “I might as well ride while I sleep and save even more,” she told me.

During those two days, she’ll pack the rest of her stuff left at her parents’ home to bring back at our apartment, her longed kimono included.  Furthermore, she believes it’ll be good for me to live by myself for a couple of days, just to get the hang of life here.

I’m not sure what I will benefit from staying just two days by myself.  Twenty fours hours aren’t like twenty four months.  She has already done most of things that needed to be dealt with for us to settle: find an apartment, open a bank account, get my foreigner’s registration card…  Surely, the tasks that I will accomplish before she comes back will be the most mundane things done in our usual daily routine.

She carefully prepared enough food for me to eat during her absence — good curry with chicken, vegetables, and rice is plenty to satisfy my appetite.  The morning before her departure, she left a sheet of instructions written in Japanese with details of her bus schedule, how to reheat the curry, and a reminder that the recyclable plastic trash is to be collected the next morning.  I’m quite forgetful, so I took the trash outside during the night.

It’s only yesterday night that I realised it’ll be my first time to sleep by myself, with no one around me, since the day I left Ottawa.  I guess, unbeknownst to me, I really got used at living with her.  I couldn’t stand living with my family all the time, or my friends, and half the roommates I had; but her, no problem.

Everything is going well at this point, despite the cold I caught last Saturday in Odaiba.  Nobody likes having a cold, especially when you’re about to take your girlfriend out for dinner in an Italian restaurant the next day, like I did for White Day.  You should have seen her face when I gave her the cute little card I’ve made for the occasion.

I’m currently in Kawagoe, at the end of the train line from my local station.  I went to a coffee shop, got a small hot chocolate with a slice of New York cheesecake, and sat down at an empty table — a luxury in coffee shops of many urban areas.  I’m surrounded by Japanese people yet I’m shielded from the rest of the world while I’m listening to Mogwai.

This is what is going on right now.  Not too eventful, but that’s the way I want it to be.

Picture:  Another dog poop warning sign.  I’m collecting them.  It’s poop, yet so cute.

どうしてカナダでメープルシロップのキットカットがないのかな・・・

The Japanese love Kit Kat.  One theory as to why the chocolate bars are so famous is the name sounds a bit like the saying “Kitsu katsu!,” meaning “I’ll win!”  However, I have a better theory: it’s chocolate.

Although the famous crispy wafer is sold in many countries around the world, the largest variety with the most unique kinds can only be found in Japan.  There are a wide range of flavours from the typical fruity sorts like strawberry and blueberry to the typical Japanese tastes like wasabi and green tea.  There’s even a red wine flavour to strike your fancy!

Minmin brought a kind of Kit Kat that was particularly interesting.  Not because it was so different, but because it was so familiar.

Maple Kit Kat.  The package indicates the wafers are covered in white chocolate mixed with a small amount of real maple sugar from Quebec.  Indeed, it tastes like the sweet real thing.

The addictive sugary treat brought a question to my mind.  Eastern Canada is the world’s capital of maple syrup, and its cost here is a lot higher.  Yet, here I am, letting the maple chocolate melt in my mouth while none of my friends back home can get a hold of one.  It’s hard to believe that Canadians came up with maple syrup, but not the maple-flavoured Kit Kat!

We can only hope that, someday, Canadians will treat their own maple syrup just as well as the Japanese does.