Things I Miss
As you can guess, there are many people that I miss desperately, but this post is about things, so here goes:Yesterday Tressa, Leah and I ventured out to visit a new mega-mall in the middle of nowhere. Actually, this mall, completed about four months ago, is about 30 minutes this side of Mito, our prefecture capital. That makes it about an hour from Chikusei, traffic willing. It was my first time in this mall, and I wasn't quite prepared for the slew of emotion it produced. Weird no, that a mall can produce emotion?
Well, this mall is very western. It's not an outdoor retail outlet, it's not a roadside stall, it's not a hodgepodge department store. It features a restaurant section as well as a cafeteria, a Starbucks among other coffee shops, western stores and brands, sale racks, and international food grocers. Spelled out: H-E-A-V-E-N. I had to keep a tight grip on my pocketbook for fear over an all-out shopping spree. Even so, I did go a little crazy: why buy one tanktop at $5 when you can buy four? I miss that.
This got me to thinking about other things that I miss. For starters, within the mall, I miss clothes sized larger than six. Tressa, for instance, is by no means chubby, and she takes the largest size of mens pants. Where do big Japanese ladies shop!?
I miss cranberry juice and sour cream. As predicted, 7/11 discontinued Cranberry Water. A loss I mourned for weeks. Months even. Granted I likely ate too much sour cream back in Canada, but after over a year-and-a-half of none, depression has set in.
At home, I miss sleeping on a real bed. I mean, Japanese-style futons aren't bad, per se, but they are not a bed. You kind of have to scramble out of them, and they certainly don't fill a room. And, as I like to believe I am the Princess and the Pea, I have stacked four on top of one another; now they sag and shift and despite the lack of pea, my sleep is usually fitful and unfulfilling.
I miss a refrigerator that holds more than half a grocery bag of groceries. I love vegetables, but to eat them every day I basically have to buy them every day. This is what people do here. there are tiny shopping carts at the grocery store and the cashiers look at you like you're a glutton if you fill yours up more than halfway. This is bloody annoying. My freezer holds the equivalent of one small package of meat. It's worse than that actually, because mine has a two-inch think layer of ice around it, to boot.
I, and my clothes, miss a dryer. The act of hanging my clothes is not so bad, but the result is devastating. Nearly all my shirts have miserably lost their shape; all my pants have stretched out to the point of no return. Any way you hang a T-shirt, it ends up with weird triangles protruding from it wherever you attached it to the hanger. I need a whole new wardrobe. What's more, the actual drying of clothes is completely dependent on the weather: if it's humid or rainy, they may never fully dry. You basically have to wait with your fingers crossed that the sun will shine at least once during the week, and then rush home to put on a load of laundry. How many times do I have to put on damp, grainy underwear? Add to that the stains that never fully disappear because there is only a cold-water cycle, and I am in Laundry Hell.
How do people live like this?
Why are you writing in 'RED'?