You're welcome

So I am walking around grocery store looking for something to make for dinner when I hear a small child whining to her parents.

When I am in the child's vision, all of the sudden, she goes quiet and stares.

Because, of course, I am probably one of the most unusual looking people she's seen in her life.

So she stares. Silently.

Of course, this is nothing even remotely unusual for me now, so I smile and wave to the child as I pass.

But this time I realized that my mere existence stopped the little girl from whining. Could anything the parents said or done have achieved that so completely?

I must be doing some people a favor by just walking around and not being Japanese.

So, you're welcome.

It's funny how I am an oddity around here whether I am actually doing something unusual or not.

:)

(Sorry about the lack of a second blog last week, I have a cold and it's sort of blocking the creative juices.)

Spring?

Sorry, I forgot to blog last week. My mood has been doing funny things lately (ok, so not "funny"), but I feel like I am doing a lot better now. I'll try to blog here twice this week.

Spring has come early this year, it seems.

The cold generally has a bad effect on my body and mood.

Cherry trees are now blooming. Usually they're blooming late March, early April as far as I understand it.

It's kind of funny how, although I've seen cherry blossoms before, the colors really impress me. Maybe it has to do with the fact that they're a real sign that winter is over.

My first Japanese winter is OVER. Although I suppose I should feel cheated by global warming making it end quicker or upset that the effects of global warming is -this- apparent.

I am -NOT- happy about global warming, but I can't help it if my body says "ewww" to cold and "hurray" to warm.

I hope the cherry blossoms stick around for a while, but I don't really know how these things work to begin with.

I suppose I hadn't really said a terrible lot in this entry, but I'll try to post again later this week.

Glasses and influenza

Who else thinks that my blog title should be the name of a rock song?

No? No takers?

Then I'll just skip to the blog then.

I got new glasses a few weeks ago. Perhaps the most amusing part of the process was how obsessive compulsive the man was about cleaning my glasses. He cleaned my old pair when I purchased the new glasses and then he cleaned the old pair AND the new pair when I went to go pick up the new glasses later.

I haven't even worn the old glasses since getting these new ones.

But I suppose I know that they're clean at least.

Today I was sitting in the teacher's room at an elementary school when suddenly someone was standing behind me and offering to clean my glasses for me. I was really startled, confused, and baffled by the situation. Finally, I realized that she worked for a glasses shop here in town. Apparently, it is normal for workers from glasses shops to go around to different work places, talking to people about glasses and cleaning people's glasses for them

By the way, the glasses store to shoe store ratio in this town is 6:1. There is only one shoe store. However, there probably are more glasses stores that I can think to count at the moment.

Isn't that weird???

The flu has been going around these days. 2 ALTs in this city have caught it already. I haven't yet and I don't feel the signs of my body fighting it off, so I guess I'm in pretty good shape so far. I think it is kind of funny that the Japanese use the word "influenza" for flu. For me, I've always heard the word "influenza" in places such as history books. People feeling sick these days have the "flu" and someone who died hundreds of years ago had "influenza." I know that they are the same thing, but I can't help but think that "influenza" is worse than "the flu".

People are constantly telling people to take care not to catch the flu these days. It's nice to see people have so much concern for one another.