Your Japanese word of the week is...

"yada~" which basically means "ewww.... no thanks!" or an otherwise equally emphatic "no thank you". Usually it's kids who say it but really, it's used by anyone any time they want to show a dislike or otherwise disinterest in something...... you can probably guess where this post is going to go then =P....

Bugs!
Yes, they're back. I totally forgot about them as the cold Russian wind currents swept the country and killed them all off, but as the temperatures (and humidity) go back on the rise, so do they.

The two things that gross me out the most are the spider webs seemingly everywhere and my new spotlight-cum-vending-machine which seems to have turned my front door into some all-night insect dance party........... without the groovy music.

Rent!
On the other hand, when I move closer to the town, hopefully I'll encounter fewer bugs since things like stagnant-water-filled rice fields and a lack of trees should mean fewer bugs.

At the same time, that's balanced off by the difficultly in renting rooms in Tokyo.

It's not out of the norm for apartments to require some if not all of the following: two month's rent up front, key money (which is essentially a "gift" to the landlord, sometimes as much as two month's rent), a "moving-in fee", fire insurance, a separate fee for utilities, a finder's fee (if the apartment was rented through an agent), and a guarantor, a sort of company or person who can vouch for your ability to pay the rent (there are guarantor businesses, but they charge for their services, which, unless there's more to it that it sounds, seems a very round-about way of facilitating rampant bribery......).

Assuming the rent is 80,000yen a month (~$800), that would mean to move in would require nearly 3 times as much up front.

Luckily, there are lots of people renting privately with as little up front as simply one month's rent, which is entirely reasonable. I've narrowed it down to either sharing an apartment within Tokyo or having my own just outside of Tokyo. I might aim to live within Tokyo because I am only here for 9 more months so might as well live in the heart of the city......... I'll let you know how it pans out.....

Pepsi!
Pepsi in Japan simply isn't very prominent but that hasn't stopped them from rolling out some new flavour recently, which I bought out of random curiousity.

Although the name should've tipped me off........ "Blue Hawaii" eh??.......

It's supposed to taste like "Pineapple&Lemon" but what it actually tastes like is........

Well, let me put it this way- it's like when regular people try to do fancy pencil sketches. People draw the same line over and over again trying to get the right curve to the face or shape of the arm, but at some point, it's so overloaded with "effort", it just completely ceases to resemble what the artist had in mind and just ends up being a mess of pencil strokes.

Pepsi Blue Hawaii is the palatable version of that mess of pencil strokes. If you try really hard, you can taste some pineapple in it, but essentially, it tastes exactly the way you'd expect a bright blue, palm-tree-adorned Pepsi would taste....... fake.......

Yada........