The White Peril 白禍

"At last--the creamy taste of Cool Whip is now in a can!"

It's interesting that Alice should tag me with something food-related, given that my stomach is having more trouble than the rest of me adjusting back to life in the States. I'm not sure my answers will say much, but here they are.

What’s your favourite table?

My father made a beautiful oak trestle table for my parents' dining room. (It is the table itself we're talking about?)

What would you have for your last supper?

My mind would probably be too distracted for me to enjoy really good lamb or venison or beef, so I'll say vegetable tempura, which is heavenly when the batter and frying oil are perfectly prepared.

What’s your poison?

My favorite whisky is probably Laphroaig 10. Not a particularly highfalutin choice, but the one I reach for most. I like them peaty.

I do most of my drinking in merry, boisterous crowds, though, and I find that vodka and tonic (the well vodka wherever I am, unless it's particularly nasty) is both tasty and non-staining when my arm gets jostled. I had a nail-biting near miss with a negroni the other night that I don't care to repeat.

I like wine, too, of course, but I'm no geeky oenophile, and I generally find that whatever group I'm in has at least one person who's far more informed than I am, so I just go along with whatever he or she recommends we get.

Name your three desert island ingredients.

Peppercorns, sweet red bell peppers, unsalted butter.

What would you put in Room 101?

I guess it would be cheating to count strawberries, since I'm physically allergic to them.

I find the texture of globe onions repellant, though assuming Julia's like everyone else I know, she likes them and wouldn't mind having to eat them in my place.

Oh, and watermelon. I adore pink and green together, but I'm sorry--fruit should not be corky. (Don't bother telling that good watermelon doesn't have a corky texture. Yes, it does.)

Which book gets you cooking?

This may surprise some people, but in my case, Jane Brody's Good Food Book. Yes, I think Brody's too high-strung about nutrition and unproven dangers to health, but she genuinely seems to believe food should be enjoyed, and her approach in adapting recipes is often designed to bring the flavors of the star ingredients to the fore.

What’s your dream dinner party line-up?

I like large gatherings for parties, but not for dinner. Too many people makes lively shared conversation and pleasurably wicked confidences difficult, especially if several are new acquaintances.

All of that is a roundabout way of saying I like dinner parties with close friends.

What was your childhood teatime treat?

The Pennsylvania Dutch make great sticky buns, with lots of nuts and moist yeasty cake and enough syrup to make the entire population of the Northeastern Seaboard diabetic.

What was your most memorable meal?

Hmm. Probably when I was eleven and we were visiting my Auntie June in England, because it was the first time I realized that my parents and family elders thought I was ready to start being introduced into the adult world in public. No, I wasn't given a cigar and two glasses of port...just permission to order a main that came with artichokes and then after-dinner coffee. I like to think I still have my youthful energy, but I'm grateful I had the kind of family that still believed grown-up pleasures were something children should be taught to aspire to.

What was your biggest food disaster?

3 May 2001. Atsushi and I were giving a party over the Golden Week holiday for a few dozen friends in the afternoon. At about 10:00 a.m., I was julienning carrots for primavera sauce and lopped off the tip of my ring finger. I didn't cut it off at the joint or anything, but there was blood everywhere. Emergency room, painkillers, huge bandage, stern admonition from doctor to keep hand elevated above heart for the rest of the day. Luckily, gay guys know how to pull together in a genuine catering emergency, so we had five or six friends who finished my prep while I tried to be useful with one hand and an addled brain.

What’s the worst meal you’ve ever had?

Let's see. There was the Christmas dinner hosted by the owner of the bar that was kind of my local in Tokyo two years ago. It was oyster season, so the restaurant gave us its special ten-course oyster-themed prix fixe party menu. Have I mentioned that I can't eat shellfish? There were oysters in everything: oyster miso soup, oyster stew, oysters au gratin, raw oysters on the half shell, grilled oysters--it was like the Spam episode in Month Python, only with oysters.

I ended up snagging the two or three pieces of tuna and yellowtail sashimi that had found their way to the table, and then for the rest of the dinner subsisting on shochu and oolong tea and the occasional shiso leaf. When it was over, I collared my best friend and marched us to a little dining cafe in the middle of the gay district, where I demanded servings of their chicken karaage and steak-cut fries before they'd managed to get us sat down at a table.

Who’s your food hero/food villain?

My hero is whoever figured out that whipping cream turned it into whipped cream. My villain is the inventor of the no-taste tomato.

Nigella or Delia?

No offense to Nigella, but she's always going on and on about how sloppy and casual and unstudied she is while cooking, and see how I made this lovely soufflé by just pitching some eggs and flour into a ramekin and shoving the lot into the oven without getting so much as a smudge on my cashmere twinset? Just wait for your friends to arrive, pluck the perfect complementary wine from your little wine cellar, and there--instant party!

The problem is, a lot of cooking is engineering, and while it's not as hard as running a nuclear reactor, it really isn't as artless as all that. I haven't seen anything Delia Smith has done in the last decade or so, but from what I've read and watched of her, she's good at breaking down complex recipes into series of manageable steps and combinations of compatible ingredients.

Vegetarians: genius or madness?

Hold on--when I swallow this mouthful of steak, I'll tell you.

I don't make a practice of passing judgment on other people's dietary choices. I'll only note that, IIRC, lack of milk and meat aren't good for children's early development.

Fast food or fresh food?

You will not get me to apologize for my once-weekly trip to Burger King for a Whopper w/ Cheese combo with the largest fries and Coke. There's nothing quite like it to give you that pleasurable feeling of being at the very tippy-top of the food chain.

If I eat that way every day, though, I start to feel clogged up and crave steamed vegetables and rice for a few meals. And as Alice said, some very quick meals are among the most wholesome and satisfying. I love buttery scrambled eggs on toast with some black pepper as a light dinner, and it takes ten minutes if that to prepare.

Who would you most like to cook for?

Uh...my mother cooked most meals I ate until I was eighteen, and my father worked to pay for the ingredients, so I guess it wouldn't hurt to return the favor. I think they order in or eat out most of the time now, though.

What would you cook to impress a date?

I'm not sure "impressive" is what I'd aim for. It seems to me that a better precedent to be setting with date food is "luscious." Maybe grill up lamb chops and rinse the pan with a glass of wine? And make some mashed potatoes, which are one of the best-tasting foods imaginable when fresh from the ricer and fortified with butter and cream.

Make a wish.

I wish for development of more and better GM crops, and for less sanctimony and skittishness on the part of governments about introducing them.

Hello, nice gentlemanly Woofie-boys.

Why are you staring at me with those molten eyes?

I know you missed me while I was out all afternoon, but you'll have to wait before you curl up next to me while I read. Right now I'm trying to eat this hot pastrami sandwich. Yes, with all these puddles of gravy. And the french fries. It is as good as it smells, thanks for asking--aren't you happy for me? Num-num-num....

Now, come off it. You have the better lives by far in this arrangement. No one keeps a bowl in a special place for me and sends half my weight in kibble raining into it twice a day, like manna from heaven. I have to go out and get my own food.

Okay, fine, if you're going to be all technical, I didn't go out and get it--I was feeling lazy and called the diner and had that nice man with the nice calves deliver it. I know you noticed the calves, too, because when he appeared you started shouting, "Woof!" Well, it came out "Arp!" as always, but I know what you meant. So I didn't go out with a stone-tipped spear and hunt for my food and stuff, but I worked for it. And I had to get up and buzz him in and pay for it, which at least earned me the calories in the milkshake.

Must you sharpen your claws on my favorite Diesel jeans? There, that's better.

No, for the last time, I can't share food with you anymore. You know when Mommy took you in the cab to the man in the lab coat with the big, scary needle the other day? Well--

Don't you dare growl at me. If Mommy carefully avoided mentioning the big, scary needle so you wouldn't freak out when she packed you up in the pet carriers, it's not because I told her to! You didn't ask whether there would be needles involved, did you? Thought not. (I mean, really! "We're going to take a very special trip in the cab to see some pretty buildings uptown! Yes, we are! Yes, we are!" You seriously bought that?) So really, can you blame anyone but yourselves for having let your guard down?

Anyway, when you hear what the vet told Mommy, you may think the shot wasn't so bad by comparison: he said you're a porker and need to eat less. Yes, you, Blond Woofie. You don't think Daddy's giving you less food at a time this week because he suddenly decided to economize, do you? You don't want to turn into a dirigiwoofie, do you? The Goodyear Woofie. The Hindenwoofie.

Fine, that was a little uncalled-for. Sorry. Just trying to drive the point home. It's for your own good.

Oh, for Pete's sake, don't give me the teary-eyed routine. Most of us don't get to spend all day every day doing nothing more demanding than snuggling in while someone draws a blanket over our furry, sinewy little bodies and whispers that we're adorable and should just lie still while he gets us breakfast.

I am not a liar! I clearly specified "all day every day." Sheesh. You know, you can keep your eyes and snouts glued to every morsel of pastrami I convey from plate to mouth, but you can't listen to a thing I say. The last time I snu...never mind. It's none of your business. You just sit there thinking your coarse, untoward thoughts. I can't stop you.

There's just no reasoning with you two.

Oh, for the love of...here. A quarter-inch square of pastrami for each of you. And NO MORE. Just the lean part so your Daddy doesn't yell at me too much. Now stop staring!

A few years ago, my buddy gave his wife a pair of chihuahuas as a present. Now that I'm staying with them, they've become my companions.



Don't they look adorable?

Of course--in still photographs. In real life, though, they move.

I call them the Millicujos.

They open their little jaws and bark at the slightest noise, often for close to a half hour before settling down. Usually, it's the elderly elevator in our brownstone that sets them off, but sometimes the stimulus appears to originate somewhere around the kitchen skylight--a creak caused by the wind? the piping of a bird? Usually I can't make it out. No trouble making out their response, though.

The blond with the limpidly innocent gaze is, you shouldn't need to be told, the more implacably hostile of the two when the public isn't around to observe. Not by all that much, though. His darker, younger brother is a willing accomplice.

J. and his wife have nicknamed them "the Woofies." This is a courtesy title, about as connected with reality as "Princess Di." These two wouldn't be able to produce a butch, baritone, thrillingly menacing "woof!" if they sold their souls to Cerberus. Even "yap!" errs somewhat in the direction of resonance, as far as I'm concerned. My conclusion--borne of repeated and lengthy exposure--is that "arp!" is the best transcription of the noise they make (and make and make and make and make).

They've grown accustomed to me now, so they'll sometimes jump up into my lap when I'm trying to type. Mostly, though, they still eye me with deep suspicion. Unless I've just cooked something along the savory/buttery/meaty axis, that is. Then I become their new best friend. Their little eyes liquefy, and (I swear) they pout. For those who've been wondering why they're not hearing more about how adjusting to New York has been, a major reason is that I'm too busy defending my breakfast eggs.

There's a favorite story on my mother's side of the family: My great-grandmother's sister came from Poland for a visit in the 1950s, and seeing the variety of goods in a typical neighborhood grocery store, she burst into tears.

Japan is a first-world country, so it's certainly not the case that I've become unused to variety. But of course, the brands are different, the diet is different, what appeals to people is different, the cumulative effect of surveying the aisles is different. Coming back to New York means readjusting my eye and palate to New York food sources. We were going to order from Fresh Direct, but last night we passed D'Ag's on the way home, so we stopped in. I'm afraid I kind of embarrassed my friend by giggling at everything, but I couldn't help myself.

It wasn't the type and distribution of products. Even from only coming home twice a year for the last decade, I'm still used to that. It also wasn't that anything and everything comes in 50-gallon-drum size, which wouldn't fit through the door of most Tokyo houses. I'm used to that, too. What got me was the evolution in some specific familiar stuff. The most improbable brands have gone upscale.

Cheer's curvy new bottles look as if they were inspired by ewers from Pottery Barn; I half expected each one to come with a little basin in matching plastic. For detergent containers, they looked invitingly touchable, almost ergonomic. (And, unsurprisingly, they're clearly aimed at the lady of the house, with filigree patterns in the background on each label.)



There are formulations for the stuff inside that I hadn't seen before, too. One is supposedly targeted at dark colors. (The brand concept was developed by "strategy and design teams fully immersed in darkness." Is that the most fabulous thing ever, or what? And I like the way "Cheer Dark" sounds like Near Dark, the Kathryn Bigelow vampire movie that reunited many of the most memorable cast members from Aliens.)

I was utterly bewildered by a product called True Fit:

Nothing can ruin laundry day like finding a favorite shirt has stretched to the point of no return. Help clothes keep their shape with Cheer® 2X Compacted True Fit™.

Love your clothes. Treat them right.

Personally, my solution to clothes that could get stretched out of shape is either to take them to a proper cleaner's or to use a mesh bag in the washing machine, but I love the idea that there's a detergent out there that's specifically formulated for them.

Also, Dietz & Watson? I grew up not far from Philadelphia, and to me, Dietz & Watson means hot dogs and kielbasa. But not anymore. The company introduces itself on its website with this VERY WRONG sentence:

Welcome to Dietz & Watson, home to the World's Best Meat Delicacies and Artisan Cheeses.

Or maybe it's not so wrong. Dietz & Watson was always a local, family-owned company that emphasized homely production values. It's just that it used to be assumed that those values appealed to local just-folks types; now, rebranded as "artisanal," they've moved up in the world.

I love the disdain that drips from every phrase on this page about condiments:

The World's Best Meat Delicacies and Artisan Cheese deserve better than that "same old yellow or spicy mustard, horseradish without a kick or sour pickles without a snap". So we created our Deli Complements™ with just that intention, to complement our meats and cheeses with enhanced flavor profiles to satisfy today's adult taste expectations.

Enhanced flavor profiles! For a range that includes something called "Sandwich Spread." I love it! What next--small-batch Cheez Whiz in earthenware jugs stopped with natural corks? (And psssst! Kudos to your marketing people for choosing the right spelling of complements for this context. Now they just need to tell your webmaster to fix the filename for the image. And guys, this is America: the period goes inside the quotation marks.)



Also, check out the gigantic sandwiches featured on the "Healthier Lifestyle" page.

Sorry. The Dietz & Watson thing really amused me.

*******

It's been rainy for the last few days, and one of the things I always notice about being back from Tokyo is how much better New York looks in the rain. The grey weather can still be depressing, but there's something about the presence of organic-feeling brick surfaces sprinkled through the built environment that makes it feel less off-putting. The relentless onslaught of steel/glass/concrete/tile in Tokyo can really drag you down. And sidewalks in the City are so wide that you can actually navigate down them with an open umbrella without maiming anyone.

Does anyone out there know where my evening shirt is?

Well, what good are you?

I thought I always kept it inside the dinner jacket on the same hanger, but unless it's invisible, it's not there. I hope I didn't leave it in Atsushi's closet when I moved out.

*******

How is it possible for one man to have so many vases? If there were ever any doubt that I'm gay, it's been dispelled by the four boxes of decorative housewares I've just packed. Mind you, they don't include anything you could eat off or store something in.

*******

It's time for me to break a pair of sunglasses. Or maybe lose them. I can feel it. The weather keeps going from sunny to cloudy, so you need them sometimes and then not others. They end up in a pocket or dangling by one slender arm from my bag. I seem to have a thing for dropping them in cabs or putting them down on tables and putting something heavy on them. I school myself resolutely to keep them in their little crush-proof cases, but it never works.

*******

I'm not entirely sure why, but I have The Descent in the DVD player, and I'm finding it oddly comforting to have it playing while I'm packing. Given the increasing claustrophic-cave-like-ness of my apartment, you'd think it would make me afraid of confronting a throat-biting humanoid in the bathroom or something, but I actually find it rather cozy. And I used to be of those people who were completely unable to handle horror movies. (When I was growing up, all the talk of demons waiting to getcha we got in church affected my over-active imagination a good deal.)

BTW, if you like suspense and have a strong stomach, The Descent is a great little movie. It's bloody and seriously scary at times, but you don't leave it feeling cynically worked over. It's thoughtful and raises interesting questions without being pretentious, and the cave scenes are very persuasive even though they were all shot on a soundstage. I love hypertrophied old Hollywood glamour-orgy productions as much as the next gay man, but there's a lot to be said for a movie made by people who relied on ingenuity, skill, and conviction rather than piles of money.

On Saturday, I flew into Tokyo as a resident of Japan for the last time. Sometime in the next few weeks, I'll step out onto my balcony and see this view once more, wish Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown their best, and leave the apartment to the cleaners. Then I'm moving back to New York.



If you're a Westerner living in Asia, you have, at any time, at least a half-dozen friends who are trying to decide whether they want to leave or stay. It's just a topic that comes up a lot. Therefore, I was able to draw on a lot of advice, not all of it solicited. Most of the people whose opinions I valued echoed my Belgian architect friend (whose advice I did solicit, since he has a lot more experience with these things than I have): If you have experience working in Asia, you can always find a way to come back; but the longer you're away from home, the harder it is to find a way to return.

So I'm moving back. Taking a bit of a rest, staying with my old roommate in Murray Hill for a while, then getting a new job.

"Aren't you afraid it'll be hard to adjust?" I've been asked (and asked and asked). Yeah, sure. I've been in Japan my whole adult life. (I don't consider college and grad school adulthood--not when you're being funded by Mom and Dad or the Japan Foundation.) But people move to new places all the time. And New York is somewhere I've lived before anyway.

And yet...it's been a long time since I've lived in the States. When I last lived in America, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was still nothing more than a rather bad movie with Kristy Swanson. When the television show debuted and friends started raving about it, we saw it in Japan the way you saw American shows back then: friends sent videotapes.

I bought a few new CDs on their day of release a week or two after arriving in Japan: Bilingual by the Pet Shop Boys and Nine Objects of Desire by Suzanne Vega.

I don't remember which movies I first saw in the theater after coming to Tokyo. I do remember watching Alien Resurrection here when it was released. Japanese audiences are very quiet, so when the Winona Ryder character reappeared after being shot, my spontaneous cry of, "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD AND OUT OF THE PICTURE, YOU ANNOYING B..." could be heard echoing through the theater until my then-boyfriend clapped a hand over my mouth.

That's how long I've been away. Yes, I see my friends back home at least once a year, and I'm in constant e-mail contact. And there are loads of things that make keeping in touch easier. Everyone has e-mail. (That wasn't true even in 1996.) You can download just about anything. (When was the last time I had to leave the house without 6000 songs stored on a device the size of a deck of cards? I don't even remember.) You can torture people with your vacation photos without even having them printed; just create and online album and e-mail the URL to friend and foe alike. But it isn't the same as being there.

I'm not focusing on changes in pop culture stuff because I'm unaware that there are more important things in life. It just, when you live far from home and contact friends to find out what's going on there, they assume you're watching the news. If someone brings up what Obama just said at a rally the other night, it's because they want to discuss it, not because they think they're informing you about something happening at home that you couldn't have heard about.

It's the new movies and music and restaurants and things they tell you about to help you feel caught up. (Books, too, but despite being someone who reads all the time, I generally have a hard time getting into contemporary fiction, so my friends have learned to stop recommending new novels to me.) Even if you find soap-opera-ish dramas tiresome, knowing that a lot of the people you know are watching Ally McBeal or (now) Grey's Anatomy and gabbing about it at brunch on weekends becomes meaningful. You're not participating in one another's daily lives, but you can at least feel secure in the knowledge that you're not becoming strangers.

So. Three weeks to settle things here. Then however long it takes to get settled back in at home. I'm looking forward to the culture shock in a way. It would be a bummer if America and New York and I weren't different after twelve years. And now that Japan seems to be cool again, maybe I can parlay my experience here into a hip, cosmopolitan demeanor that gets the men flocking to me.

Or maybe I'll just seem out of it.

We'll find out soon enough.

So I haven't learned much Chinese in Taipei, but I have developed a nice line in learning which sinitic compounds used in Japanese do not carry over into Mandarin. You will doubtless profit from hearing that Chinese and Japanese write "lamb" differently.

I made this important discovery yesterday at the dry-cleaner's. At a birthday party for a friend over the weekend, another friend had (kindly) offered to give me some lamb but (unkindly) cut it so that some of the connective tissue whipsawed. I ended up with a very neat diagonal line of gravy spattered across my shirt. Chuckles all around. A torrent of fervent apologies from my friend--the only way to salvage your friendship with another member of the Family after you've ruined his outfit is to abase yourself big-time.

Luckily, I was wearing a T-shirt underneath, and Taipei's an informal city, so Mr. Button-down was relegated to my bag until the cleaner's could deal with him. Naturally, yet another (sloshed) friend decided to pitch forward (sloshily) and expectorate half his cosmo onto my shoulder a few hours later. (I know I'm something of a wit, but I don't think what I'd just said was that funny.) In case you didn't know, pink liquid shows up rather well on light blue fabric in bar lighting.

*sigh*

Given a choice between going through the rest of the night either (1) looking like a cosmo drinker who was too far gone to aim his glass at his own mouth or (2) barechested, I decided to keep the shirt on and adopt a happy/spacey expression. T-shirts are machine washable, after all, and I'm only in this city for another week.

Later, though, it was time to go to the cleaner's. The receptionists in my office offered to take care of it for me, but since I have a perverse sense of adventure, I went myself. That's how I ended up trying to explain to the woman behind the counter (who spoke a little English and a little Japanese but understood neither "lamb" nor "ko-hitsuji") what the hell was splashed across my shirt front. Luckily, through a combination of 羊 and 汁 and a few other Chinese characters, which I scrawled on an empty receipt as she giggled, I'm pretty sure I got the general idea across. Can't wait to see what my shirt looks like tomorrow!

Good times.

My computer came back from Toshiba this weekend, so I've been getting it back into something reasonably resembling the shape it was in before it went crazy on me. Can't quite get rid of all the crazy, though. You know how these things go--once you start installing programs and they start talking to each other, all kinds of bizarre things happen. I am now the proprietor of a machine on which

• iTunes has alphabetized my Madonna songs after the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and before 10,000 Maniacs. This state of affairs is so plain weird that I'm tempted to go to the Apple store to ask whether Madonna's first initial is now assumed to come after Z in the letters or before 0 in the numbers and other characters, just to satisfy my curiosity. Maybe something wacky happened when I sneaked my tracks back into iTunes from my iPod, which was the only place they'd been backed up? But why only Madge?
  
  
• no browser wants to open google.com or gmail.com. I've tried making a special permission in Norton 360, turning off the firewall temporarily, and using every conceivable alternative URL. Nothing works. Good thing Gmail Lite is around.
  
  
• the brightness refuses to stay set at three levels below maximum. It reverts to full-on lightbulb-in-the-interrogation-room setting whenever I restart the computer. Now that I think about it, maybe it did that when I first bought the machine three years ago and I've just forgotten what I did to fix it.

These modern conveniences--such a time-consuming chore to work with. Should be back as normal soon.

(BTW, speaking of Madge, the title of that newest single captures with exquisite, if obviously unintentional, perfection the strident haranguing tone she adopts when she gets going on one of her moral crusades. And please--no one whose personal dressing room and gym probably consume more energy per day than Sierra Leone should be preaching at us to...uh, actually, I'm not sure what the hell she's telling us to do. This is not one of her more incisive sets of lyrics.

But of course I can't help liking it anyway.)

Added on 28 August: Speaking of Windows-related woes (which started this whole situation), I just got this from a colleague. The parody of Word--I hate that damned paper clip!--made my day.

If there are any managers of housewares departments reading, may I ask you a favor? When hiring men, please make sure they're queens.

Straight men are great--my very own father is a straight man, and I just love and respect him to pieces--and there are plenty of roles they can fulfill in society that constitute a real contribution. Just not when they're supposed to be selling you vases, endtables, or curtains.

I thought I was going to end up making this guy cry yesterday by asking whether he could measure the depth of a vase for me. You know, I wanted to buy flowers for it on the way home, and I needed to know how long the stems had to be without unpacking it right there at the flower shop. (You can eyeball these things sometimes, but it can be tough to gauge how thick the bottom of something is.) If the flowers are too short, they have to be entirely defoliated and end up looking as if they were being garroted, which isn't a pleasing decorative effect unless you happen to live in a dungeon, and maybe not even then. The more I tried to explain this, the more traumatized he looked. By the time the ordeal was over (the first vase got marred when they tried to scrape off the brand label for me, so they had to bring a second one out of the stockroom--yet more agitated activity for one of these foreigners with their strange requests), I was feeling traumatized myself.

*******

Luckily, one of my friends was back from a week home in Australia, so we went out for a restorative drink and catch-up. Less luckily, just as the vase encounter had blissfully slipped from the memory, I was beset by two guys who had been talking and flirting with my buddy.

It was the usual round of questions: How long have you been here? Where are you from? Oh, and where did you grow up? Oh, where on the East Coast? Pennsylvania? Where in Pennsylvania? Oh. Well, then, where on the Philadelphia end of the state?

At this point, I know I'm in for it. Long draught of vodka. Sigh. "From just outside Allentown."

One beat. Two beats.

Oh! You mean like the Billy Joel song?

Now, that everyone I will ever meet in my entire life will respond to the mention of Allentown with that exact sentence is a harsh reality to which I have long been inured. That everyone seems to think he's the first to think of it also doesn't bother me--we're all less original than we like to imagine we are.

But rarely do two people utter it at the same time.

And then start singing the song at me in stereo.

My buddy, who's seen this conversation and my wearied reaction many times before, stifled an uncharitable chuckle and excused himself to go to the toilet. (Bitch. I'll remember that.) Fortunately for me, another friend, one who actually understands the meaning of loyalty, was on my other side. At the first opportunity, he commandeered my empty glass and waved one of the bar guys over. "Oh, darling--not just the Allentown comment, but impromptu karaoke as well? I saw your fist clenching and unclenching--just be glad it's over now and relax and drink this."

*******

And while I'm mewling, why do delivery services find it necessary to play head games with you? Tokyu Hands originally told me my latest acquisitions could be delivered between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., but that I'd be called with a more exact time this morning. Fine. I get a call at 8:30: "I'll be arriving at your place between 11:00 and 13:00." Okay. At least that's a reasonably narrow range.

At 10:30 I'm getting ready to get in the shower so I can be out, dressed, and maquillage-èd by the time the guy comes. (Just because I want to be able to leave for work right after receiving my delivery, not for the other reason that may occur to the image-conscious gay mind. Japan must be the only country on Earth without hot delivery men and construction workers.) My keitai rings. "Hi! It's XX from Tokyu Hands. I'm at your building in less than five minutes." Granted that being early is better than making you wait around endlessly, I was just lucky I hadn't decided to go out and run some errands under the assumption that it would be okay to be back at my apartment by 10:55 or so. (I've done so before with unpleasant results.)

On the bright side, the apartment is nearing completion.

Just finished using my ice cream maker for the first time; there's no better way to assess how nimble the temperature control is on your burners than by making custard. (Double boilers are for sissies.) Things turned out fine, though even on the lowest setting, we got perilously close to Scramble City. So we've now established that I can contrive all my staple foods without incident here.

I think I accidentally took Atsushi's grater and a few other kitchen-drawer things, too. Will have to give him yet another parcel of items now. We've been meeting pretty regularly; the still-friends thing is working, if still a bit awkwardly. This weekend, I finally had a chance to give him back my key to the apartment, and there was a sense of finality to it that put me a little out of sorts. (Silly, I know, given that we broke up in October and I moved out a month ago.) I've been on a Fleetwood Mac jag since then. Mostly Tusk. Yeah, yeah, yeah--Rumours is the break-up classic, but it doesn't fit. Between Atushi and me, there's neither Lindsey-Stevie hostility nor a John-Christine thing in which one helplessly watches the other's spiral of self-destruction. We're just kind of wary around each other--acutely attentive to boundaries and things. So it's mostly Tusk with Interiors thrown in occasionally.

In other news, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous here. Time to start thinking about houseplants, actually. Hope everyone else is enjoying the slide into late spring.

The apartment is basically assembled now. There was no DIY that would pass muster as such at, say, Casa d'Alger, but I did manage to set up a kitchen in which you can actually cook.

You know how it is when you find an apartment you like--there's always one thing so seriously wrong as to be a possible deal-breaker. Everything about this place was fine except for the kitchen, which has no counter space. I mean none at all. There's not quite a sheer drop from the edge of the cooktop into the sink, but the space between them won't even accommodate a dinner plate. By Tokyo standards, Atsushi's apartment was a cook's dream: task lighting; work space wide enough for your extra-long cutting board, a bowl or two off to the side, and your glass of wine; three burners; and acres of cabinet space. But then, it's a two-bedroom place, the assumption being that it will be occupied by a couple with children and that the lady of the house will not be satisfied with a kitchen she can barely turn around in.

My new apartment was designed for a (heterosexual) single person, so the assumption is that there will be nothing more complicated going on than the warming of a bento from the convenience store. (Okay, fine. That parenthetical was a little unfair. I have gay friends who can't boil water, too. But even they recognize that you need room for fabulous equipment on the countertop.) The only solution was to eat some space from the living room and set up a counter of sorts there. I had an old set of steel shelves kicking around that cleaned up fine, and the manufacturer still makes modular wood tops in the right size. I had a piece of cobalt blue acrylic cut to fit at Tokyu Hands and fastened it on as a serviceable backsplash. It works just fine and looks, frankly, much better than I'd expected. In Tokyo built environments, better than expected often has to be enough.

Still no plans to compromise on the throw pillows, though.

Since it's still (narrowly) Sunday where my own mother is, I think I can scrape by and still not feel late in saying, "Happy Mothers Day, mothers!" She and I just spent a happy half-hour discussing the trials and tribulations of moving into a Tokyo apartment. She reacted with proper Middle-American horror to the information that cold-water kitchen and bathroom sinks were still standard here until a decade or two ago ("Didn't I ever tell you that before in the last ten years, Mom?") and was relieved that my new place is hygiene-enabled.

She was probably slightly worried about the throw pillows--I'm looking for this particular shade of poison-green raw silk, see? Not chartreuse...yellower and a little more intense. Kind of like danger yellow with green highlights...without actually being iridescent. It's one of those things you can see in your head, and it just maddens you when you've gone to every department store and shop you know and no one can give you the poison-green raw silk you want. ERGGGH. The problem has now gone global, with friends in Bangkok, New York, and San Francisco having promised to keep an eye out for me.

Anyway, hope it a was a good weekend for everyone.

The walls in my apartment can talk.

Not in the if-these-walls-could-talk sense. Don't expect, if you come for a visit, to have the intercom system chat with you about whether I'm usually wearing anything when I eat breakfast. It's the water heater and ventilation system. Like those in Atsushi's apartment, they have enough buttons and lights to make you feel, as a friend of mine once put it, afraid you might launch something equipped with a nuclear warhead if you push the wrong part of the touchpad. Unlike those in Atsushi's apartment, they don't just beep at you when the fan goes on or the bath has finished filling. Instead, a chirpy woman's voice tells you, "Power is now turned on!" or "The bath is heated!" I'm sure it's a great boon for blind people living alone, but I just find it grating. I figured there'd be somewhere to turn it off, but I haven't found it on any of the (three) control panels. Yeesh.

Moving into my new place today--the moving guys should be here any minute. I had planned to get the deal where they pack up your entire apartment for you like dermestid beetles defleshing a skull. But since Atsushi and I still have all our stuff mixed together, I realized I'd be standing over them going, "That television, but not that one...that refrigerator, but not that one...that couch, but not the sofa," the whole time. So I did the kitchen stuff, the books, and the clothes. I'm not sure exactly when I'll have the Internet turned on in my new apartment, so posting will be as light as it's been lately, though you may not notice. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

So the Tokyo Gas repair guy on Monday spent an hour jiggling things around, frowning at my bathroom and kitchen keypads, and turning taps on and off before announcing that my water heater was on the fritz because a leak had caused a short at the main heating unit. The repair would cost about US $350, and the part wouldn't be in for three or four days. Not the worst-case scenario, possibly, but a pain.

That means I spent the next few days relying on the largesse of friends to stay hygienic. (I work out religiously, but I have equipment at home and run outdoors--no gym membership. And this being Japan, there must be a bathhouse somewhere in the neighborhood, but it seemed more trouble to figure out where it is than to bum off a buddy or two. Besides, borrowing someone's shower gives you leave to look at all his products at leisure without feeling as if you were snooping.) The part came yesterday; I skipped out of the office between our morning administrators' meeting and my evening mid-year performance review to be at home while it was installed. This morning I was able to perform my ablutions at home again. And to wash my tea cup and strainer without boiling another kettle of water.

What with all the busy-ness, I've only barely been keeping up with the news. (Something gay appears to have happened in New Jersey, right?) Anyway, Camille has another Salon interview that's worth reading. I usually don't agree with more than about 60% of her political pronoucements, but she seems to me to hit more bull's-eyes than usual this time around.

Well, that bites. Today's a day off for me, and I'd planned to run some errands and shop and stuff...then I noticed that the water heater wasn't working. As in, the electronic panel shut off whenever I turned on one of the hot taps. I've tried flipping the breaker and looking for a reset button, but no luck. The customer service operator at Tokyo Gas was very nice, but (naturally) she can't tell me when between now and 7 p.m. the repair guy will get here, so I appear to be staying close by until he calls to say he's coming. At least the gas itself is working, so I can boil water at will.

Now, I know I have a few readers who cook, and all I can say is, My dears, you are NOT adequately taking care of America while I'm gone.

On Japanese cable, they tend to air US shows with almost no commercials; that means that a show that's an hour long at home has fifteen minutes of dead space at the end, and on some channels, they fill up the time with kitchen gadget commercials.

So it is that I've just spent several minutes laughing my ass off at a commercial for something called the Pasta Express. I couldn't believe it wasn't a parody. Are people seriously that easily gulled? You pour boiling water into a plastic tube full of pasta and let it sit for fifteen minutes? We're making wallpaper paste, I assume? The commercial is beyond ridiculous, purporting to save the hapless householder from such difficulties as aiming the pot so that the pasta lands in the collander and...uh, I'm not sure what else the point is. You can't possibly be shortening the cooking time by not having a heat source keeping the water boiling. And even the commercial makes the pasta look clumpy when it comes out of the tube.

But you can apparently use the thing to make hotdogs or boiled vegetables and other things that are difficult to make with an ordinary stockpot and stovetop, too. Yet another advance in modern life.

I find the long-distance relationship thing easier if I keep the apartment as if Atsushi might return for good tomorrow. You know, no slovenly-bachelor stuff, and no putting his stuff out of sight so it's not "in the way"--I try to keep the sense of a shared life. And no junk all over the place. Sure, I'm normally pretty persnickety anyway, but when things are busy--and they have been lately--even I can get to letting things go.

Today was catch-up. Since I like to eat a lot of vegetables and they tend to go bad if not used quickly, I made my week's worth of vegetable scramble. Kind of like ratatouille, but kind of not--spring onions, broccoli, mushrooms, red and yellow peppers, eggplant, a can of tomatoes, whatever herbs strike my fancy. Darkened apartment, task lighting over the cutting board, glass of whiskey, humming along with 10000 Maniacs. It makes me smile a little that I still like Our Time in Eden so much. It came out my sophomore year, my most uncomplicatedly happy time at college--my best grades, starting a few upper-level classes, fun with friends all the time. Not much later, the shakeup that ended with my coming out and leaving the church I'd been reared in would start for real, after which being my friend was not much fun for a while. And Our Time in Eden, populated as it is with characters who feel weak-willed and are faced with sticky moral decisions--well, it was so much of that time for me that I thought I might end up sealing it off there and not wanting to return to it. But it's okay. (What's not okay is what happened to Natalie Merchant when she went solo. Gawd, what a grim little finger-wagging schoolmarm she turned into. She used to have such empathy for people who were having trouble doing the right thing without talking down to them--you could hear it, even if you didn't agree with the "right thing" according to her lefty politics. Tigerlily just killed that dead.)

Oh, speaking of plants, I was making vegetables a few minutes ago, wasn't I? Yeah. That way I can nuke a frozen portion and dump it over pasta or alongside a poached egg on toast or what have you. Not as fresh as the things just picked from the garden like we had when I was little, but a lot better than Birdseye. As I said, no slovenly-bachelor stuff.

BTW, I think my favorite passage about vegetables ever is Miss Manners's on artichokes:

Dear Miss Manners:
What is the most efficient way of eating artichokes?

Gentle Reader:
For those who want to eat efficiently, God made the banana, complete with its own color-coordinated carrying case. The artichoke is a miracle of sensuality, and one should try to prolong such treats, rather than dispatch them speedily. An important part of sensuality is contrast. First pull off a leaf with a cruel, quick flick of the wrist, dip it in the sauce, and then slowly and lovingly pull the leaf through the teeth, with the chin tilted heavenward and the eyes half-closed in ecstasy. If the sauch drips, a long tongue, if you have one, may be sent down to get it. When the leaves are gone, the true subtlety of the artichoke reveals itself: a tender heart, covered with nasty bristles. To contrast with the fingering, there should be a sudden switch to cool formality. The fuzzy choke should be removed with dignified precision and a knife and fork, so that the heart may be consumed in ceremonial pleasure.

The most wonderful of many wonderful things about Judith Martin is the way she makes life seem Alice in Wonderland-ish. You know, inanimate objects have personalities, people are strange, and unexpected things happen all the time, and you just have to roll with it.

Of course, people do what you do expect sometimes. I actually did go out and pick up some Royal Copenhagen the other week; the whole "Buy Danish!" thing seemed kind of hokey, but I've felt better and better about it as the reaction has unfolded since. Anyway, Atsushi already had some Royal Copenhagen stuff that he didn't take with him to Kyushu. You know how I've mentioned that he doesn't wear any colors except navy blue and the occasional so-dark-it's-almost-black forest green? Well, he's the same with furniture and housewares. This is what you get when Atsushi goes shopping for dishes:





No, don't adjust the color on your monitor. See? The placemat's green. It's just the dishes that have no color. All Atsushi's are like that. Well, he has a donburi or two with a pattern, but I think they were presents or something. The insides of the kitchen cabinets looked like a Walker Evans photograph until I arrived on the scene.

They don't anymore, because this is what you get when Sean goes shopping for dishes:





Unlike, presumably, the Queen of Denmark, I'm not really into the chalky pastels. But given that my tea and coffee things are already a million colors and patterns, having a few restrained, solid things kicking around is probably a good thing.

He comes home this coming weekend.

If you tend to approach the tasks of daily life with a normal degree of competence, the steps below may not make any sense unless you get a trusted friend to whack you in the head real good with a 2X4. If they still don't make sense, you may need another whack. If you try a third whack and end up brain dead, be sure to contact me, because we will then clearly be able to communicate as equals.

1. Decide under the influence of no-mercy Japanese commercialism that, even though you don't give a fig about Valentine's Day, it would be nice to surprise your Darling Longsuffering Boyfriend with a treat.
   
2. Order early enough not to rouse suspicions of possibly nosy concierge at DLB's apartment building that package is connected with Valentine's Day.
   
3. Go to Dean and Deluca website and locate suitable cookies.
   
4. Carefully type in your address for billing.
   
5. Carefully type in DLB's address for shipping.
   
6. Submit information.
   
7. Get error message telling you that you ignored (clearly visible) instructions to make all characters in addresses full-width and not half-width characters.
   
8. Correct numbers.
   
9. Resubmit information, having failed to notice that radio button for recipient and shipping address is still set to default of "Same as billing."
   
10. Receive notice that order has been shipped.
    
11. Reward self for thinking ahead, for once, with slice of lemon poppyseed cake.
    
12. Receive notice from delivery service that package is waiting in parcel locker of your own apartment complex.
    
13. Retrieve package to find cookies intended for DLB.
    
14. Idly wish there were a way to punish oneself for stupidity by uneating cake.
    
15. Put cookies on counter and figure you can express mail them to DLB yourself next day.
    
16. Look thoughtfully at cookies each time you pass counter on way to bathroom or kitchen.
    
17. No, make that covetously. Look covetously at cookies each time you pass counter.
    
18. Figure the hell with it and open cookies. Eat four with Murder, She Wrote.
    
19. Vaguely think about repackaging rest of cookies in order to disguise half-goneness before sending to DLB. Rationalize that he wouldn't have liked all the girly-girl packaging stuff anyway and might not have been able to finish cookies by expiration date.
    
20. Figure the double-hell with it and eat rest of cookies with blogreading, resolving to order another package next day.
    
21. Congratulate self for having chosen cookies that turned out to be seriously yummy.
    
22. Order another package of cookies next day, this time taking precaution of reading all directions as you go.
    
23. Well, except for the part about making all characters full width before submitting information.
    
24. Punch self in chest as punishment for not being able to remember, after nine years in Japan, that you need to read whether full-width or half-width characters are called for on an on-line form.
    
25. Strip off T-shirt and look in panic at chest to make sure self-punishment has not produced unattractive bruise.
    
26. Submit information by jamming finger into Enter key, which has served you faithfully while you told it to do dumb things.
    
27. Apologize to Enter key.
    
28. Be grateful you have blog that's read faithfully by DLB so that you can tell him you've done something idiotic again without actually having to, you know, tell him.
    
29. Look forlornly at tea and wish you'd saved one or two cookies.

I'm not sure what Atsushi was looking for when he found the Mozart Liqueur page, but he thought some of the recipes sounded soothing to the throat, so we picked up a bottle on the way home last night.

I'm being generous with the word "recipe" there, BTW. The recipe for Hot Mozart Milk is, essentially "Dump as much Mozart liqueur as you like into 30 ml of hot milk." Tasty, to be sure, but more like what one would usually call a "serving suggestion." If you want to make even less effort, you can make an Angel's Kiss: "Dump 3 parts Mozart liqueur into a glass and float 1 part cream on top." For dessert tonight, after an arduous day of shopping, we're about to have Mozart Ice Cream, the recipe for which is--how'd you guess?--"Slap as much ice cream as you like in a bowl and pour 45 ml of Mozart liqueur on top." Well, okay, that one's a little more complex because step 3 in the instructions tells you to add a spoon (JIC you thought enjoying this treat the authentic Salzburg way required you to do the no-hands thing and stick your face in the bowl). Priceless.

Atsushi is now on a plane. He will land at Haneda at around 9:30, arrive at our door at around 11:00, and leave for his parents' place at around 14:00. That gives us three hours together (sort of) to celebrate New Year's Eve, Japan's major holiday. Given how we'll have to shoehorn things in, I'm at least trying to make the house as close to spotless as possible, in the hopes that the effort will convey a celebratory air. Accompanying music by Heart. No, not the 70s stuff that we're all supposed to admire for creating a distaff Led Zep--sorry, Mom and Dad--but the 80s stuff that was out when I was in high school. You know, after the Wilsons looked at each other and said, "Millions of kids shell out for albums at mall record stores every day. Dammit, WE WANT THAT MONEY. Where's Diane Warren's card?" There's something very satisfying about lovingly, tenderly, soothingly moving a dusting glove over your favorite vases while shrieking "Who Will You Run To" along with Ann.

I don't know whether I'll be back between now and tonight's party. If I'm not, everyone have a happy and safe new year.

So I got this e-mail from my buddy Alan yesterday, asking whether I had any advice on improving reading comprehension in Japanese. It seemed odd. For one thing, his characteristic "Hiya darlin'" salutation was missing, and for another, he essentially works as a translator. If my reading comprehension is better than his--big if--it's not by much. It's certainly not by enough for him to be asking my advice about improving it.

But, having been asked, I wrote a paragraph of very earthy bitch-snark about the gross guy who'd been hitting on him when we were out a few nights ago and then a paragraph about reading fluently. Then I did what everyone who sends a lot of work-related e-mail does out of force of habit before clicking on "Send": I checked the address line. Whoops! The message had come from a different Alan, a reader with whom I've corresponded a few times who's studying Japanese in the States and who most assuredly was not sitting on the stool next to me being come on to by a falling-down-drunk guy in his 50s on Friday night. So I carefully excised the paragraph of bitch-snark and sent the rest along, thus sparing a fortunate reader a serious surprise in his inbox.

The surprise Atsushi got in his mailbox yesterday, on the other hand, was intentional. He's been worked to death lately, but he still makes time to come home at least once every third weekend, so I thought I'd get him a new business card case. You know, so even if he's meeting with trying clients, he can have a little reminder that I'm thinking about him. While I was at Seibu, it occurred to me that I forget to bring my own business cards places all the time--that constitutes a real problem in Japan, where exchanging them can be a multiple-times-a-day event--so I may as well pick one up for myself, too. The idea of his-and-his matching card cases struck me as a bit on the cute side, but...well, this is Japan. Cute rules. I absent-mindedly told the saleswoman to wrap them both as presents, and she looked at me askance. Probably thought they were Christmas presents for two girlfriends who don't know about each other.

Atsushi's officemates, on the other hand, will doubtless assume that the sudden appearance of an expensive new business card case is yet more evidence that he has a secret lady friend. A few years ago, when he brought Mozart chocolates back as his souvenir gift from our trip to Prague and Vienna, his colleagues joked that he must have gone with a chick because, as a man, he wouldn't have known about them. (Too precious, I guess? But the travel guides all tell you what the proper face-maintaining souvenirs to bring back to Japan are, and I would assume most single men just kind of get whatever's at the top of the list. I can't imagine Mozart chocolates aren't at the top of the Austria list, even if you don't do Salzburg, though I didn't really look. My own office got the Empress Elisabeth chocolates--I like the apricot and marzipan together--but they've known all about me from day one, so no eyebrows were raised. Need I mention that if we'd brought back anything but Mozart or Sissi for our gay friends, our status would never have recovered?)

I wonder whether the Dominican Republic--I've mentioned that I have a meeting there next month, yeah?--has any Japan-ready souvenir candy things. A sugar cane theme, maybe? If it's been a resort center long enough, getting them shipped back ahead of me so I don't have to carry them might be easy, but I don't think it has. Since I'm going home to the States, too, I'll probably bring back Jelly Bellys. They went over big when Atsushi and I brought them back two years ago. I have no idea why; they're just jelly beans, for crying out loud, even if you can mix them together to taste like pears poached in port with crème chantilly and slivered almonds, or whatever.

Speaking of desserts based on fall fruits, I have to think of something to make for Thanksgiving this weekend. Atsushi can't be home on Thursday, of course, but he's coming on Saturday. Our first Thanksgiving together was in 2001, so it's been obvious from the get-go that I'm not blasé about it the way I am other holidays. Maybe I'll even look into getting a turkey, though convincing Atsushi to take out a second mortgage might take some doing. And I'd have to dismember it to get it into the oven. But considering what the Pilgrims went through, the trial of shoehorning a farmed turkey into a little portable oven is hardly worth fussing over.

I hope no one has read this far expecting me to make a point. I've been a bit nettled lately by people praising Atsushi and me for maintaining a long-distance relationship and vaguely thought that might come up organically here, but we seem to have ended up on Plimouth Plantation exchanging business cards and faking Indian cornmeal pudding from three flavors of Jelly Bellys, so maybe I should save that for another post. (Yes, by the way, this is exactly what living with me is like.)

My cell phone was doing some weird things lately, and Atsushi pointed out that the inside of the tea kettle was getting corroded-looking; so I decided to use some errand time yesterday to get new ones. When I described the afternoon to Atsushi later, he laughed. "You've been contending with both the ancient and the modern today, huh?"

The kettle we had before was a regular aluminum job with a whistle--the sort of thing you buy when you're just moving into your first apartment and prioritize speed of acquisition over aesthetics. But while I was getting a new one, I figured I'd go for a 鉄瓶 (tetsubin: lit., "iron vessel", though the 瓶 part usually refers to bottles nowadays). A tetsubin is a traditional kettle for boiling water. I thought about looking through the catalogue at Seibu for one with an offbeat design, but when it's something as elemental as boiling water, it's kind of nice to go for the standard-warhorse model, so I did:





The good thing about an iron kettle is that, used over an open flame, it establishes an uncanny connection with our prehistoric ancestors, who had direct contact with fire, water, and mineral in slowly advancing out of subsistence on the raw provisions of nature.

The bad thing about an iron kettle is that it is a total pain in the ass to take care of--as I'd forgotten, not having used one for years, but quickly relearned yesterday. Those who care for their favorite old cast iron pans without a lot of huffing and puffing may wonder what I'm complaining about, but thing with a frying pan is, usually if you leave it sit for a while before cleaning it, all it has in it is grease. As long as you clean it before the contents go rancid, you're pretty much fine. You can't let water sit in a kettle, though, because it'll start rusting almost immediately. It'll also start rusting if you leave it wet, which is why you have to be sure to empty all the water and, while it's still hot, wipe around the spout and lid, where condensation is especially likely. (The instruction packet says, "Be careful not to burn your hands in the process." Yeah, no freakin' joke!) That means that if you're going to make a quick cup of tea before taking off in the morning, you need to factor in an extra 30 seconds or so.

The other thing you have to do, of course, is season it. So yesterday, while I was sitting hunched over my frighteningly competent new cell phone, I was also boiling kettlefuls of water and then dumping them. When they ran clear, it was ready to use. It took about an hour all told (for Tokyo, we have a very satisfyingly gusty set of gas jets).

Not so the cell phone, and it wasn't just because I was an overgrown boy playing with a new mechanical toy, though that was mostly it. The resolution power for both camera and display screen is unreal; I cropped one of my favorite pictures of Atsushi and set it as his...uh, what would we call it in English? 着信画面. Incoming call screen? I'm used to phones with good displays--this is Japan. But I haven't bought a new model for three years or so, and I'm still not quite used to it.

The ring tones are a trip, too, since phones now have their miniature version of surround sound. I went to one of the sites with Western pop music and looked at a few of the offerings. Eclectic doesn't begin to describe it; I made a beeline for the Tracey Ullman version of "They Don't Know." (Was that a hit in Japan? Do people remember it? I wonder. I don't think I've ever seen it in a karaoke book, but I wasn't looking, either.) It doesn't really apply to Atsushi and me very well--our friends kept trying to push us together and were frankly exasperated at the stately pace at which we courted each other, actually--but it's a very sweet tune to use to signal that your love is calling, so I programmed it in.

What isn't sweet is the fact that all the functions--the diacritical marks for kana, the delete button--are in different places. I asked at the shop whether going with the same manufacturer as my old model would help, but the saleswoman said National-Panasonic's moved everything around. It took me twenty minutes to type a four-line e-mail to Atsushi today. At least I haven't hung up on anyone, or anything.

I think this is the worst part: the time exactly between Atsushi's last visit and his next. In the few days before we see each other, I do the giddy-with-preparation thing. Right after he leaves, my worries over whether he's eating and sleeping right are animated by the fact that I've just been able to spend a few days taking care of him.

It's during the in-between time that I get--it isn't depressed. We're in a great situation compared to a lot of couples. It's just that my senses are slightly deadened. I don't do the slovenly-atavistic bachelor thing, of course. I just finished bustling around the kitchen to Mozart's 40th, making myself tea and poached eggs on toast with my usual homemade gravy and heating up some frozen ratatouille to go with it. (It's always funny how listening to music while cooking affects the result. One memorable weekend, Atsushi decided that he had to listen to, of all things, the death scene from Don Giovanni. Over and over and over. And this being a Japanese apartment, the living/dining/kitchen/non-bedroom space is all together, so I was auditing, as it were. I swear, my lasagne ended up viciously peaked and valleyed as if it were resisting being pulled into the pasta underworld. Since I poached today's eggs during the second movement of Mozart's 40th, they came out rather serene and perfect.) This afternoon will be sheet laundering. Atsushi's side of the bed no longer smells like him--just like sheets that need to be changed. And it's a very sunny fall day anyway. Good for airing things.

Since it's 1 October, I will also ritually listen to this album. It's amazing how silly half-superstitious fanboy habits don't desert you even when you've been a stodgy adult for a decade. It's almost a shame about the weather. I mean, that it's not a very good backdrop to the music. It's certainly cooler than it was a few weeks ago, but there's no real nip in the air during the day time. You don't get a sense that nature is hunkering down for winter. Not yet. (Of course, given the candy-assed winter we get in Tokyo, it's not really any wonder. As a transplanted Pennsylvanian, I miss snow, and the ubiquitous sleet and freezing rain hardly make up for it. I miss deer and maples with big leaves, too.)

Even so, I'm trying to speed it along a bit. The sweaters are within easy reach. See, weather gods? Sweaters--like what you wear when it's chilly. I realized, reaching for a short-sleeved job on one of the first cool days last week, that my favorite orange pullover, which it was stacked on top of, is almost exactly five years old. I bought it when Atsushi and I were I-think-we're-kind-of-dating-but-I'm-not-sure-ing. I figured that for a drive in the countryside (one of our first outings), it was best to aim for a sort of all-American rugged-but-potentially-huggable thing. Not sure whether it worked, though the ultimate result was clearly in my favor. I wish Atsushi were closer, but you can't have everything.