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I saw this at a bookshop the other day. Is it this that is warped or is it merely my mind?

I am not one of the most pro-active people on this planet. In fact it is safe to say I may be one of the least. In a world with a corporate business culture where initiative and drive are rewarded and revered I will always fail. For after getting around to opening my own bank account after almost eight months living in Japan, I have just got around to arranging my own medical insurance coming up now to nine and almost ten months living in Japan.

The interesting thing is that as I have been here since June I will have to back pay for the insurance since June. Cunningly enough if I had had to use the Japanese medical facilities in that time when I was uninsured I would have had to pay full price for the medical costs. It seems unfair that they wouldn`t have agreed to cover the costs if I had paid for the insurance for or even from that month. Reiko told me a situation where if someone didn`t pay the insurance then got ill, paid it for one month and then stopped paying it until the next time he got ill that would be unfair though and I guess she is right.

In England we have the excellent National Health Service which means I have only paid for the time spent in hospitals and at the doctors indirectly through my taxes. Well if it`s so good in England then why don`t you move back there then I hear you cry. Well yeah I guess.

I still haven`t got the insurance yet.

I have written before about how bad Japanese television is. However there is one corner of salvation. My favourite channel in Japanese television is NHK-E. This is like the BBC2 late at night with Open University slots with balding barcode haired men explaining complicated physics in front of precisely annotated diagrams of triangles but the great thing about it is that this is all day - and even better - in Japanese. It brings on a whole edge of surreality to have something I wouldn`t be able to understand normally explained to me in a language I can`t understand.

I could watch this channel all day. In the early morning and late at night there are English, French, German, Korean and Chinese educational language programs depending on the day. Then there are crazy childrens programs including one starring ex-yokuzuna Konishiki (above) dressed up as what can only be explained as a large orange. These are useful for learning hiragana and kanji and for observing how Japanese children are taught and entertained. (And amusing my small pathetic mind)

There are two mindblowing sections on these programs. One is a piece where a ball is set in motion (similar to a domino) falling and knocking down pieces of wood and bouncing off springs on a well prepared path with such jaw dropping precision to finally finish by displaying a flag for the program. The other is a bizarre (and hugely enjoyable to watch) round game where people line up behind one another. The first man does an action to make one turn, then for the second turn the man behind him repeats the first action and the front man does the second action. This continues and for a couple of minutes with new and perfectly choreographed actions. For example the second man will pretend to inflate a foot pump and the first man will stretch out his arms as if he is being inflated. These are really fun to watch. If anyone knows where either of these can be found on the internet, please let me know and I`ll put them up.

Also on this channel I have learned how to coach elementary school dodgeball, watched high school baseball tournaments and learned intricate kanji taught by muppets. Therefore NHK-E, I salute you .

My parents are coming to visit for two weeks in five days time. This gives me a chance to play at being tourist after eight or nine months of trying to prove I`m not. Picture the scene:

Saturday comes in Osaka centre filling up with Western family tourists. But I`m not one of them Ah ha ha! I have a Japanese mobile phone. Look at it! Look at it! I`m not tourist scum, I`m English teacher scum. I can ask for a Mcdonalds meal at a level of Japanese that in any other country would have the cashier thinking illegal immigrant. One level up the greasy ladder!

But being a tourist does have its advantages. I can proudly wear my camera around my neck like a gold medallion broadcasting my copius stash of precariously loose yen in my back pocket, complain they can`t speak properly and if my pitiful Japanese crumbles like a wet sand in my hands, I can resort to the classic British tactic of trying to make them understand by talking even more loudly at them in English “I WANT SOME FOOD THAT ISN`T SLIMEY! EIGHT GOD DAMN MONTHS - GIVE ME SOME CHICKEN!” Well at least I`ll have some nice pictures…

This is my bacon burger meal at Wendy`s eaten in Namba which is Osaka city centre. We don`t have the excellent Wendy`s in England. Only Mcdonalds, Burger King and the bizarrely named Wimpy Burger.

I also managed to walk past a giveaway for free beer today. Score one for Simon. Queue in line for two minutes get three cans of beer. Thank you very much. After getting your free beer we were ushered/forced into their conveniently nearby placed alcohol shop where we could buy beer. Cunningly enough having been given free beer only fifteen seconds ago, the thought of buying beer didn`t appeal to us as much.

I`m ill and I haven`t done anything interesting recently apart from study Japanese, watch college baseball and edit my blog template.

Therefore taking a lesson from the mighty man at Anxiety Attacks that if you suddenly get too serious, post a crazy picture, I am posting the below one for your viewing pleasure. Thanks to Davecat for the photo.

Welcome to the fourth incarnation of Undercover in Japan. I hope you like it. Thanks go to the excellent man at Truck Spy for the template and adjustments. In the ten months I`ve been blogging I have used four templates and colour systems and gone through three name changes.

Today 23rd March marks the one year anniversary of the time I first came to Japan. It was on a three week holiday to Osaka to see Japan as well as being a surveillance trip to see if I would like to perhaps live here for a bit longer. I did.

I arrived early in the morning after a sleepess 14 hour flight exhausted. In the car ride from the airport back to the house I tried my first bit of (incorrect) Japanese on her father (Osaka asoko?) After that, without any further discussion on the matter we both mutually decided to speak in English.

It also marks the anniversary of my first trip to an onsen. Within an hour and a half of the first time I had met my girlfriend`s parents I was getting naked with her father, covering my modesty with a towel more similar in size to a flannel and entering a large humid building with many types of large mineral baths like fishponds containing either searingly hot or screamingly cold water and bewildered naked Japanese men. I (no less bewilderingly) enjoyed the experience although I was still English enough to not want to repeat the experience a couple of days later.

It was also my first proper taste of sushi. I had eaten at a sushi restaurant in Paris once but it was nothing compared to this delicious exhibition. I still wasn`t 100 percent convinced of the edibility of raw fish - raising the fish to my nose to test for freshness each time. It was my first taste of squid and octopus which I wasn`t a big fan of to start off with although I love now. They also proceeded to get me drunk on warm sake constantly refilling my cup each time I took a sip.

Afterwards we looked at seemingly futuristic mobile phones and digital cameras in the local shopping centre and passed bizarre cube shaped cars on the streets with names like Noah, Note and Fuga that could only appeal to the Japanese market. I spent the rest of the day in a dreamy stupor dulled by jetlag and sake. My first day in Japan.

This is a picture of a banzuke I got from the last sumo tournament which is a ranking sheet of all the sumo in Japan (and also a nifty piece of art.) The excellent man at Tokyo Times has a spare one (and a far better picture of it) and is willing to give it away to anybody who wants it. As written in his post: