This is my last night in Tokyo! It went by so fast. I just got back from the Canadian Embassy for a social thing. I have listened to more speeches from diplomats in the last three days than I care to think about and I know its not over yet. We leave for Nagano at 8 tomorrow morning. It will take four hours by bus to get there and we have to go dressed in full business attire because we will be meeting the mayor and the governor when we get there. I can’t believe we are meeting the governor of Nagano. It seems strange that he would want to come out to an event like this but it’s probably a PR thing. We had a night out on the town last night with our prefecture group. We went to a bar called Heaven or Hell. It was very strange indeed. The toilets are the weirdest part. When you walk into the stall, a giant pair of lips comes out of the wall towards you and stops just before the toilet. It asks you if you would like to hear music to make t easier for you to pee. I don’t know about you but if you have been drinking a few beers, you should really need that. The men’s washroom is like a fake media frenzy. All of these fake (or hopefully fake) cameras come out of the wall and take “pretend” pictures of you, again with the option of music.
Stranger still was probably our walk there. The homeless people in Tokyo live in the most clean and well constructed cardboard boxes I have ever seen. They are all neatly in rows. I never saw a homeless person sleep on the bare ground either. They always laid out newspapers and had a wet towel on their faces for the humidity. They also take their shoes off and leave them outside of their cardboard box. I couldn’t believe it. I would have taken a picture but I thought that would be inappropriate. The homeless are more a social artifact than a tourist attraction.
I went to a panel discussion on the life of female JETs in Japan. It was a little crazy. Apparently, abortion is very common here and is actually considered a form f birth control. A doctor would rather prescribe an abortion than the birth control pill. Insane! Also, there is no doctor patient privilege in Japan or if there is it is very loosely enforced. They told never to get a doctor in your town because if you go to them with any kind of problem they will call you supervisor or principal and tell them all about t. If you go a few towns away where no one knows you it’s not an issue. You’re making me nervous Japan! But they also taught us how to say “Get away from me, dirty old man!” I hope that that won’t prove too useful of a phrase. Apparently mace is illegal here but one girl said she would make her own out of wasabi. She may be insane because it all seems so safe here but you never know…
This was a very long post but I don’t know how long it will be until I have internet access again in Shiojiri. I hope you all are doing well. Talk to you soon.