ダニエルの冒険

As I started walking home today, I passed a truck with a message in the window saying “be back soon”. There was an old man sleeping, in his work jump-suit, across the front seats. A lady in the truck ahead of him dozed. Both had their engines on. I walked down one more block and looked down a side street. A yellow Beetle was stopped outside a house with flashers and engine both on. Down two more blocks and I walk past a small house with its garage open onto the road, as it is every day. A car is parked inside with about two inches free on one side. The car hasn’t a scratch or a speck of dirt visible. I’ve seen the people who live in this house… the woman is at least 80 and about 4 and a half feet tall. Just past the house, an SUV with blue LEDs shining from under it overtakes a bus. I’m glad I decided to walk on the side of the road with the footpath. The people here are generally quite skilful drivers. I’ve often seen people reverse their cars into tiny driveways without a second thought. I’ve heard it said that Americans have trouble driving on Irish roads because they don’t have much practice on such small roads. The America-Ireland comparison can also be applied to Ireland-Japan. In fact, that seems to work in a few other ways. For example, when I go to an American house I’m always amazed by how spacious it is, and when a Japanese friend comes to my house, they have the same reaction. The same could be said for potion sizes of food, sizes of cars, sizes of roads, just about everything. I can’t imagine what it must be like for a Japanese person to go to an American house. Perhaps the same reaction as we would get from going to a chateau?

Toothbrushes are also out of scale here. I bought the biggest brush I could find without going down the aisle to kitchen utensils/toilet cleaning supplies and it’s still smaller than any adult’s brush in Ireland.

Conversely, as I’ve said before, apples here are ginormous.

Here, you buy bread by how many slices you want. There are bags with 4, 5, 6, or 8 if you’re really into bread. I usually go with 6, as it’s as much as I can eat in a day. I quite like this system because the bread is usually a bit thicker seeing as there’s so few slices (4-slice pan is about an inch thick per slice) and it means that the bread doesn’t have as much time to go stale.

An American friend in my class, John, had some clothes sent to him recently and they arrived yesterday. Jeans, underwear, shirts, etc. He’s about 6’3″~6’5″ and has to duck through doors. Clothes just can’t be bought for him here. There’s a teacher working the academic administration office here (Sugita-sensei) who’s about 6’2″. I wonder where he gets his clothes. He’s quite thin too so I wonder if he has to get them all tailor-made.

The desks in my class would be the right size for me if they didn’t have a metal rack attached under the surface to hold books. No one in the class ever uses them but they can’t be removed from the table. Myself and John hit our knees regularly. When I was on the train on the way to Disneyland Yukine asked me if I’m able to ride in economy class on flights at all with my legs. I explained the system:

1. Bulkhead is best.
2. Aisle is alright.
3. Window is worst.
4. Well, it is unless the place is wide and there’s that horrible horrible seat in the middle where you have two seats beside you… I’ve been there once and I am never going back there again.

I wonder, do Japanese people not even have to think about that? I should pay less for my economy tickets if so. My ticket price should be inversely proportional to my size as I’m getting a relatively less comfortable ride.