Darlo's World

Since arriving in Japan I’d noticed my head being significantly more itchy. I’d also been having a lot more dandruff than I’m used to tackling with Head and Shoulders (or the Asda equivalent thereof), and to be honest I’d just put it down to me having a strange head. When I had it cut, my head (and the short sharp bristles that could be considered hair) was again itchy, but that was nothing new to me. I good shower and a shampooing was all I usually needed, even though I’m literally just shampooing scalp. But no the itch continued, so me being me just thought “oh sod it” and got over it … as I began to brush the dandruff from my shoulder.

Fast forward to yesterday when I overhear a conversation happening right next to me. Some of the girls were discussing Japanese shampoo and American shampoo and it turns out that Japanese shampoo (and conditioner which I never use) makes your hair quite dry. Ureka! Problem diagnosed. Only problem now is that I don’t really want to import what I’d consider to be more a comfort product, so again I’m still sticking to my “sod it” plan. Ironically I remember hearing about a similar situation on 苺マーシマロ (Strawberry Marshmallow, go back a few posts for a video)
where one character had imported products because Japanese ones were too strong for her. I won’t post a clip of that scene, mainly because it takes place in a bath and I don’t want people to get in trouble for watching that kind of scene at work, school or whatever, but I’m sure you can find it on YouTube.

So what does shampoo have to do with the market? Well, not much really, well, for me anyway. I just wanted a way to link the two. Anyway, as I’ve mentioned over and over the pound is really taking a beating price wise and at five o’clock last night (according to one BBC chart) it was less than 120 to the pound.

What does this mean though? How can I spell it out in a simple understandable way? Ok …

• Imagine winning £1,000 on the lottery.
• Now, instead of that being a prize it’s just a loan, so you have to pay it back.
• However, instead of it being £1,000, it’s actually just £600
• Now to top it all off, when it comes to paying it back you still have to pay £1,000 (plus interest of course)

I found a chart that clearly shows the fall on the pound starting just before I arrived in September. For copyright reasons I won’t post it (don’t want to piss off the BBC), but you can see it by clicking here.

Last night during dinner I came up with a crazy idea to try to help me learn Japanese better, or if not learn it then at least remember grammar and vocab that I already (should) know. I’d decided that starting from today I wouldn’t say a word of English, limiting myself to just Japanese and the farty bit of French I can still remember (ironically I’ve been speaking a fair bit of French since getting here). I did agree with myself not to limit my writing, otherwise most people reading this wouldn’t have a clue what I’m on about, regardless of whether they understand England or Japanese.

Waking up this morning, I managed to last … hmm … about 2 minutes before muttering in my native tongue. Blast my crappy memory. I picked up again but continuously slipped back into English throughout the day, my longest stint being the 5 hour period that I was in my room and didn’t say a single word. I gave up this evening and agreed I’d start again tomorrow, writing a note for myself to read in the morning to remind me.

As far as listening practice goes last night a friend and I watched the remaining episodes of 苺マシマロ (Strawberry Marshmallow – see the YouTube clip at the end of the last post) and both agreed that not only was Miu one of the most interesting characters we’d seen, but our understanding of spoken Japanese had improved. I am also aware of the sadness in the fact that two men living in an awesome city stayed in on a Friday night watching a cute cartoon.

For one of my Japanese culture classes here I’ve been reading The Japanese Mind (edited by Roger J Davis & Osamu Ikeno), and as far as books you have to read for class go it’s not half bad. It looks daunting (by my reading standards ¬_¬) at 270 pages but it’s chapters break the book up well into managable page durations, and doesn’t seem to be filled with excess filler and boredom. Yes unlike most books, I’ve been able to read this without it putting me to sleep, congratulations that book.

Finally I want to give a plug to a webcomic I found because they advertised on here, guess it worked. Optipess by Kristian Nygård takes the kind of weird, subtle and at times slightly twisted humour and presents it in a short 4 panel style comic.