I'm still ish. My throat's a lot better this week, but I've got a stuffy nose half the time and I'm choking up phlegm the rest of the time. I'm taking 黄色のベンザ、Yellow Benza, the go-to cold medicine here. Yellow is for stuffy and runny nose (so congestion?), blue is for fever and chills, and silver is for sore throat and headache.
Pictured: Yellow Benzablock,
Bufferin for when I run out of ibuprofen
(it's actually aspirin, but that was easier than trying to figure out which was ibuprofen),
and the yogurt Ichi-san told me to eat to prevent colds.
Total: Over $30. For serious.
Look, the box of cold medicine even says in English, "Self-medication."
Way to make me feel like a junkie. ¬.¬
So Ichi-san told me to get this type of yogurt, right, to help me get better and keep from catching a cold. He said apparently if you eat it every day for a month it should help prevent you catching a cold, but he only ate it for two weeks and still caught a cold. So who knows. But it's pretty yummy, so ah well.
Last Thursday was Valentine's Day, right? I had so much chocolate and stuff I packed up some of it and left it for my neighbor. That's the nice thing to do, right? I'm nice, contrary to popular opinion. Also, he's the only guy in my building. I didn't mention this last week because, believe it or not, I don't write about everything I do.
Just most of them.
Anyway. He came to my door while I was cleaning up and thanked me. He seemed somewhat intense about it, actually. o.O I figured I did something strange again, so I just told him it was nothing, really, that I just made too much and he always seemed really busy, and that I didn't need a gift in return or anything. Really I figured I'd just get another gift of chocolate or something on White Day next month. Which is totally not the reason I gave so many people chocolate. <.< >.> Totally not. Never. ^-^
On Friday I got a box from the Bestie. ^-^ Happy Valentine's Day to me!! She's awesome, have I mentioned?
I love that fox to death. He and I are buds. He sits in my lap at the table all the time.
Saturday I took my car to Obihiro to have The Car Guy look at it. I kinda backed into my apartment building and now there's a dent in the lift gate that I wanted to get looked at. The paint flaked off and it's rusting. On the way home I started feeling kinda melancholy for whatever reason and decided that I'd have a nice, quiet, melancholy night at home. Sometimes those are rather therapeutic, right? So I stopped at the liquor store and bought a bottle of wine. Then I stopped at the convenience store to look for chocolate-dipped potato chips (I know, gross, right? They're really actually good.) and wound up buying a bottle of cherry shochu, a kind of rice alcohol, too. Just in case I didn't want the wine, because I'm not really a wine person. Then Alchey Ashli went home and got down to drinking and answering student's letters.
I had one glass of wine and a glass of shochu and water, halfway through my second, when my doorbell rang.
o.O I didn't order anything online. Sadly that's the only time my doorbell ever rings, when the delivery guy is bringing me boxes.
So I got up and answered it, and it was my next door neighbor. He wanted to thank me again for the chocolates, and how about a meal or something? ....uh....okay? I was starting to feel the buzz, and him showing up suddenly confused me, so I was thought, I'm not hungry but hey, why not. But then he was like, 「お邪魔してもいいですか？」 "Can I come in?"
Uh.... huh? Did I miss something? I have no food. And my apartment is, as usual, a mess. But, uh, sure? Hang on a sec, okay?
So I ran back inside and quite literally, bundled things up and threw them in my bedroom. I threw things against the walls so my floor looked somewhat respectable. Tried to clear off some of my table and couch. As much whirlwind tidying as one can do in two minutes, you know. I went back out to get him.
And then things got...awkwarder. Like, I swear, I didn't even know the guy's name. But I'm sure he's a nice guy, you know? He brought some drinks, and I got him a glass. And we kinda chatted. He asked where my dad was. Did he think I had a visitor? Odd rumors make it around town--apparently my predecessor was best friends with Lady Gaga, tho I don't know the story behind that, honestly, and some of my elementary kids were convinced I put sugar in my milk at home. I don't know where they get these ideas. So I told him no, my parents weren't coming to visit anytime soon.
He liked the stuffed teddy bear I have on one of my shelves. Did my boyfriend give me that? Well, sort of, in a sense--it's one of the ones that Kengo gave me when we were....whatever that was. But I told him no, because that's a horrible story in English and I only sound whiny when I try to tell it in Japanese. No, and I don't have a boyfriend. I do have someone, I like though.
「あ、そうですか？オレじゃないでしょ？」 "Oh, really? It's not me, is it?" Laugh.
....no? o.O I don't even know you, dude.
Plus he's married. His situation is similar to that of my first host family--he works in a different town from where his family lives. In the case of my host family it was because the girls got into an elite high school (top school in Shiga, I came to find out after I left. I attended an elite school for two weeks without even realizing it. xD Typical Ashli.). In Oh No's case... I don't know. But his family lives in Sapporo while he works here in Taiki. The nights I noticed that he never came home were because he was seeing them in Sapporo.
I swear I'm not a creeper--he gets the newspaper delivered every day, and sometimes the newspapers don't go away. One time he was gone for quite a few days and I contemplated gathering his mail for him because the mail slot was getting rather full. That's all.
So, in short, no. No, it's not you.
But he kept doing that crap. He'd comment on something, and it was always "Did you get that from your boyfriend?" or "When is your father coming?", every five minutes. >.< My parents aren't coming, and I don't have a boyfriend, and no, the person I like is not you!! After about the eighth time I snapped at him, and he was like, "O.O You don't have to get mad..."
...... GTFO. >.<#
And then he wanted to see pictures of my house. Up came Facebook. Was that my dad? When was he coming? >.<#
And he asked me on a date. For serious. WTF, dude? No! But it's Japan, you can't laugh in a dude's face, so I told him firmly that no, I'm not dating him. For one thing, I don't like him. For another, he's married.
「じゃあ、俺が結婚していなっかたらよかったということ？」"So it would be better if I wasn't married?"
.....>.<#!! NO. GTFO.
But you have to be polite. I told him no, that's not it at all. And somehow it wound up that we have dinner plans at the local Italian place next month.
I already talked to Sheri. I'm going to stay at her house, far away from here.
But anyway. We were sitting at my kotatsu, right? I was sitting on my side, where I always sit, and he on the opposite. Then Oh No was like, "Come sit over here. It'll be like a bar!"
No, thank you. I'm fine where I am.
He asked if he should come sit next to me. No, thank you. You're fine where you are. But he got up and came over to my side of the table anyway.
>.<##
I kept looking at the clock. I asked him what time he had work in the morning and wow, that's early, maybe you should be sleeping! He asked if I was trying to tell him to go home. This is Japan, be polite. No, of course not, nothing like that..... We played that stupid game for about two hours. >.<
Finally, finally, he went home. After about three hours. >.< Then he said he'd probably drop by the next night, too. He thinks we should be drinking buddies--whenever one of us feels sad and lonely, we should get together and drink, preferably in my apartment.
Uh, how about no?
So yeah. Creepy neighbor is creepy. I emailed my coworker about it and she said he probably thought I was confessing to him with the chocolates and to lock my doors and not let him back in. I don't know what was going through his mind. There's a chance he could be a perfectly nice person and had no evil intentions whatsoever. Possibly. Still, he made me really uncomfortable, and as the vast majority of people who commented on my facebook so lovingly and gently and understandingly posted, that's horribly inappropriate, him being in my apartment alone, and it's my reputation on the line.
So the way this is going to work, see, is that this is Japan. Be polite. So I'm going to put him off. Oh, I'm busy, sorry, can't come play. So sorry, today's not good either. If he doesn't get the hint, then I tell him point blank, look, you're making me really uncomfortable and this is inappropriate, and it's causing me problems. Please stop and go away. And if that doesn't work, then I'm going American on his ass and answering the door holding a kitchen knife.
Speaking of kitchen knives (don't you love my segues?), I bought a cake for the office today. Last weekend was Supervisor-san's birthday and this weekend is Section Chief's birthday, except his birthday was actually last week. Apparently I misheard. ......x.x'' I swear I speak Japanese. I promise. Anyway. So I spent about $50 on a cake (cakes are expensive here) that was big enough for everyone in my office to have some and brought it in. ^-^ They were like, "o.O'' Okay?"
I was talking to Ichi-san yesterday and reminded him that I was bringing a cake and he started to say that Japanese people didn't generally do things like that for birthdays at work, but I gave him The Look and he kind of trailed off halfway through and then started laughing. Thanks, Icchan, thanks.
And Supervisor-san kinda laughed and was like, "You didn't have to bring a cake." I told him that if he didn't want any, that was fine, I'd eat his piece. He quickly said that no, that was okay, he'd eat it, thank you very much. XD
I started drawing little pictures on my students' letters. See, aren't they good?
So those were the highlights of my week. <3 This weekend is the Spring (ha!) Meeting and Cookie Bake for the Tokachi International Educator's Circle, and I have plans after. Woot. <3
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