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Baby Belle has a cold of mythical proportions. When she sleeps, snot bubbles expand and deflate from her nostrils.

So we bought a phlegm extractor. There are two ends. You put one end into the nostril. The other in your mouth. You suck on one end and the mucus flies from the nose into a container in the middle.

You should hear her scream.

One of us has to hold her head whilst the other sucks the stuff out. Afterwards, Reiko picks up the sobbing child and calms her. “There, there. Bad Daddy for holding your head. Come to Mummy.”

We went to the doctors yesterday and he had a similar machine. This one was larger and electrically powered.

If it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger…

Part of blogging is that you are supposed to keep posting new stuff. It’s a newsy medium which is why blogs that focus on current events are so popular. They can get the news out before the TV Bulletin and the Japan Times.

As I’ve said before a team of blind and deaf rats could get up to date news out quicker than the Japan Times.

When Baby Belle was younger I wrote lots of drafts in my moleskine notepad with my sex-on-legs fountain pen on the cramped train to work.

When I got home after the baby was put to sleep and I was fed, my brain was too frazzled to do anything but read a few of my favourite blogs and surf YouTube before repeating the act again the following day.

Thus I have lots of half-baked posts which are months out of date.

But there’s something in them. They’re too nice to stay in my notebook. So I’d like with your permission to put a few of them up before they crumble between my fingers into irrelevance.

I like to write posts denouncing Japan. I have drafts of several in my drafts’ folder. But the truth is I like a lot of things about Japan. And there are many things in England I’m glad aren’t around me anymore.

1: Chavs. There are many excellent photos there which I’m not allowed to link to. May I recommend this one?

2: The weather. Grey, cold and cloudy with a high chance of rain. I don’t mind rain. It makes the grass green and the flowers grow. A grey sky over a green valley can still be beautiful. A grey and cold sky over a series of flats, houses and shops is a recipe for depression.

3: High cost of living. Compared to England, Japan is a lot cheaper. Food is cheaper, the tax deducted from your pay slip is far less although you have to pay for the use of motorways and there’s no National Health Service.

I could only think of three. Fellow expats. Do you have any others?

The cherry blossom has mostly gone here in Osaka.　　There are a few brave stragglers refusing to die. But when the cherry blossom trees were in full bloom it was a glorious sight.

I’m trying to better myself by studying Japanese further past level three and I’ve come across a big hurdle.

When I studied for level three, all the grammar textbooks had English explanations. Now for level 2, every single textbook I can find has EVERYTHING in Japanese. This includes meanings and explanations.

This seems crazy to me. Why are the meanings of phrases and grammar points I don’t understand, in a language I don’t fully understand?

I studied two Modern Languages at University. If one of them had been Japanese, it would have been immensely helpful in my present life but I didn’t. I studied French and German. I never came across a textbook which had explanations in those languages. They were always in English.

My present study setup involves the grammar textbook and my mac on the kotatsu connected to Jim Breen’s outstanding Japanese dictionary site. This is so I can look up every single word I don’t understand.

But it’s a slow and laborious process when you don’t understand most of them.

When I was at University my friend told me a story of his guitar teacher. He didn’t know whether to buy a guitar that was new with a low fret action or an older one which was cheaper but harder to play. His guitar teacher told him he should buy the expensive one as there was no point in putting up hurdles between you and your goals.

I feel the same way here.

3,000 cherry blossom trees an hour away from my house and nobody told me?

via the novel Keeping Pace in Japan

I love cherry blossom time.

Whilst walking through the narrow passageways under Umeda train station which I like to call Salaryman Central, I came across this takoyaki shop which bills itself as the smallest takoyaki shop in Japan. It had newspaper cuttings to prove its point.

Takoyaki is fried octopus pancake balls and is a speciality of the Kansai region of Japan.

The shop may have been small but the takoyaki were normal sized. I’ve had better though.

I was at Costco the other day and I heard a girl scream, “Kawaii” (cute) at a plain white beer cooler. In Japan it’s impossible to escape the glare of Hello Kitty or the various wide-eyed manga characters.

With this in mind, I read an excellent article in the Japan Times about the kawaii phenomenon regarding the Tokyo Girl’s Collection 2007 Fashion Show

“Cute” — or “kawaii” in Japanese — is the theme word of the Tokyo Girls Collection. Neither Saori nor Mie could remember how many times they invoked the word during at the show.

“She says ‘kawaii’ for absolutely anything!” Miyuki Kidoguchi said of her 18-year-old daughter Tomomi whom she brought to the show. “Sometimes I think my daughter uses the word in the wrong way.”

…

Sociology professor Nobuyoshi Kurita of Musashi University in Tokyo, who has studied the “kawaii” phenomenon, said the word can also imply “acceptable” or “desirable”.

The rest of the article is an interesting read and helps shed light on why in the proximity of young women, you can hear, “kawaii!” fifty times a minute.

Link