Won't Miss #537 - mold

The wall behind my washing machine - it turned nearly black with mold that grew in warmer months and died in colder ones then came back around again the next year.

During my first year in Japan, one of my coworkers told me about how mold seemed to spring up everywhere in his apartment. He told me that a pair of shoes that he left in his genkan (entryway) had even seen a crop of the stuff take up residence. When I expressed that that sounded incredibly gross, he said it was no big deal and that "mold is a gentle creature" and he just wiped the stuff out of his shoes.

My previous post reminded me of something I would have rather forgotten. That is, the ease with which mold tended to take hold in Tokyo. I can speak for every single place in Japan, but I can say that mold seemed inescapable in the humid sub-tropical weather there. It did not matter how well we ventilated our home. In fact, it was so poorly insulated that there was no way to make it anything but drafty both against the summer heat leaking in and the frigid cold in winter.

I grew up with relatively humid summers in Pennsylvania, but we never faced the sort of mold that I encountered in Tokyo and I absolutely do not miss it.

Will Miss #534 - not having to run the cold water

There are habits that you get into for a good portion of your life that you can forget that you ever had if you've been away from them long enough. I'm not talking about unforgettable things like smoking or compulsively turning around three times and whistling "Dixie" before you turn the door knob for fear that the boogie man will be on the other side if you don't. Not that I've ever done that...

I'm talking about things like growing up in the Northeast and having to run your defrosters on your car such that doing so is second nature or remembering to take an umbrella in Tokyo because it's the rainy season. One habit which I had completely forgotten about which was a regular part of life in the U.S. was the way in which you've got to run the tap on the cold water for awhile every time you need water for drinking. This is necessary because you have to flush the pipes in case lead has accumulated. It's not only annoying, but wasteful, and where I'm living at present is in an extended drought so it feels especially so.

The reason that you don't have to run the water in Japan is that they don't use copper or lead in their pipes. They use stainless steel. When I lived there, I didn't have to stand around running the water before I could drink it and I miss that. 

Won't Miss #448 - the shampoo

I'm not saying it'll turn your hair green, but just using this picture because this lovely woman has awesome hair.

Back when I first started working in Japan, one of my British coworkers at Nova was having a conversation about going about ones daily life in Japan. She mentioned that she had to spend a lot of money on shampoo because she had to buy imports or have things sent over from England. When asked why, she said that Japanese shampoo was like dish soap. She said it was too strong and stripped her hair of essential oils. After many years in Japan, I forgot about this conversation and tended to just slather my head with conditioner ever time I shampooed, but it came back to mind once I returned to the U.S. and took my first shower and used American shampoo. I'm not sure what the issue is with Japanese shampoo and my hair (which is "normal", neither fine nor coarse), but I'm guessing it may be formulated for coarser hair than the average Western person. It seems my former coworker was right about the shampoo being harsher on at least some women's hair.

I won't miss the stronger/different shampoo in Japan.

Won't Miss #419 - only 2 burners

A lot of short-timers in Japan never really do much in the way of cooking. For them, a toaster oven and one lonely gas burner is more than enough to sustain them between "konbini" (convenience store) sandwiches and rice balls (onigiri) and dinners of UFO yakisoba and instant ramen. For me, as someone who cooks and cooks a lot, having a mere 2 burners on a gas table requires a lot of messing about to get the job done. It's not even about complex meals, but if you want to cook a vegetable, a starch and a main meat or fish dish, that's a three-burner deal right there. I'm not talking about multi-course haute cuisine, but just a basic meal with different components. Though I've become fairly good at juggling, it gets pretty tiresome and troublesome at times.

Some Japanese people have proper stoves (with 3 or 4 burners) in their homes, but most apartment dwellers are stuck with one or two burners. I won't miss the limits on meal preparation that have been a part of my life in Tokyo.

Will Miss #402 -the AFLAC duck, Japan-style

Not one, not two, but 3 variants on the duck, and they're all decked out for Halloween!

In the U.S., the AFLAC duck mascot is shown as a real duck. This makes sense since insurance is serious business, well, except for the part where ducks aren't exactly representative of maturity and responsibility. In Japan, the duck gets the same makeover as everything else. It is "cutified" and most of the AFLAC storefronts that I saw included an enormous and utterly adorable stuffed toy version of said duck.

Seeing it there made the whole sense that buying insurance was this adult thing which addressed the need to be secure in cases of death or destruction a little less daunting, and I miss the way that this soft toy softened the feeling associated with something like insurance.