Not natural

Four-thirty this morning I found myself cooking salmon. I had fallen asleep on the sofa, but promised Taka I'd do the salmon for her bento. By five(ish), I was washing dishes.

This is not a natural act.

As much as I would have liked to put off the clean-up phase of the whole thing until a more reasonable hour, that just wasn't possible. Aside from the obvious reasons (esp. after broiling fish), there are issues those of you in the States that have never spent an extended time abroad need to consider: No dishwasher other than yours truly and trash does not go out everyday. There aren't any outside trashcans or dumpsters, so (for the most part) everything stays inside until just before you need to put it out. In this neighborhood, burnable goes out on Mondays and Thursdays, unburnable on Saturdays and bottles, cans and recyclables on Fridays. Cleanup and sealed bags are important things here.

The scary thing is that by that time there were actually neighbors up and cooking as well. Breakfast, bentos, who knows? All I know is that it's just not natural. It's entirely possible they would think the same thing of me rolling out of bed around noon...but I know I'm right.

Okay. I go to extremes. There's no way I should be up so late or rolling out of bed that time of day. I wouldn't have if I'd had a job scheduled today, but it's a little frightening to think that some of my neighbors may have considered my cooking and washing dishes a normal thing at the five o'clock hour. I have an image of the obasans nodding their heads approvingly and thinking, "She's finally learning." (there's just no way they could wrap their heads around the fact that a man was doing any of that).

Random stuff:

Next week has two holidays. One Monday and one Friday. A three day work week for the normal (Taka included). Haven't tried yet, but I can already guess that roughly half the Japanese I ask will maybe at best be able to tell me what one of the two holidays are.

Another cool, breezy day. This time the weather idiots got it wrong (maybe they actually do flip a coin!). It was supposed to be hot. No complaints though, I love this weather!