A Slew of Random Sunday Night Observations

Let me start this post out with a tribute to the magic box that has finally brought the joy of the internet into my apartment: the Yahoo Broadband Trio 3-G Plus.

This little guy brings me 26M DSL (I applied for 50M but it’s not available here yet), VOIP service and broadband television. From the looks of it, it’s also a four-port router. I don’t have the television service yet, as an actual technician needs to come here to install the set-top box. Notice the paper thin Ethernet cable coming out of the back. Maybe we have those in America as well but I’ve never seen anything like it before.

I’ve been living in this apartment for well over a week now and until tonight, I had not thrown out any trash. The Japanese are famous for both their love of recycling and the product of that love, confusing local garbage disposal systems. The schedule by which one disposes of various types of garbage as well as the method by which one does so varies from town to town, so I decided to hoard my garbage until I was told what to do with it. Well, having been provided with a chart at work last week, I decided to give it a shot. From what I can tell, regular garbage (that is to say “burnable” garbage) is collected twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays and various types of recyclables (cans, paper, cardboard, etc.) are collected 1-2 times a month (they rotate on a week to week basis). I need to buy special garbage bags not only for the town in which I live but also different bags for the various types of garbage and recyclables. The chart (pictured below) even has regulations printed on it for disposing of motorcycles and couches and such. I do not plan on throwing away anything of that nature in the near future.

While the actual washing of clothing in Japan is done similarly to elsewhere (using a washing machine), dryers are extremely rare as most people line-dry their clothes. Pictured below is the clothes drying rack that I found in my apartment. I have been told that in the summer it’s too humid so your clothes never actually get dry. And in the winter, it’s so cold inside the un-insulated Japanese houses that clothes actually freeze. Wonderful.

In Japan, many products use small toys to entice the would-be consumer. Pictured below are two small figures that came attached to bottles of Coca-Cola.

Finally, my most unpleasant observation. I was told the other day by one of the office ladies that Beau (the previous inhabitant of this apartment) often referred to this place as "the spider house". Oh, how right he was. When entering the apartment, I often have to brush cobwebs and the like out of my hair. Today, after returning from throwing out my garbage, I discovered that about seven spiders were working furiously to enclose the front of my apartment with their handiwork. I grabbed a nearby shovel and attempted to break up the party but I'm sure that's not the last I'll see of them. Additionally (and perhaps most disturbing), when I retired to my room last night, a huge spider jumped on me from out of the blue. Needless to say, I killed the little bastard. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you, spiders!