Miss Hathoway, please circulate an “Out of Office” memo as I’ll be out for a couple of days.
It’s time for the Clampitts to return to Tokyo as we have over stayed our welcome in Hawaii. My mother in law fled our presence after 3 days claiming illness with both her mother and father- in Hong Kong – to cover her bases and make sure there was substantial distance between us. Then Luscious Lawyer started taking on additional jobs including tutoring an elderly man in poetry which left only the poor Captain who started meeting with “real estate agents” during the afternoon.
Ready or not, here we come. My situation analysis of the current conditions are sketchy. On the ground reconnaissance missions conducted by my trusty sources in Tokyo- our wonderful houseguest Gobot and Andretti-san- have reported that grocery store shelves continue to be ransacked by hoarding housewives and bottled water is a thing of the past. Restaurants are open, however Tsukiji Market- the largest fish market in the world (see earlier post here) has cut prices by 50% due to drop in demand. Costco will be my first stop on Monday- has it managed the supply and demand? Costco is not as popular in Japan due to the limited storage space of the average Japanese home. Our bathrooms provide extra storage of canned goods.
School reconvenes on Tuesday with 88% of the student population returning. Although all my Japanese friends stayed, all my ExPat friends left. Some are undecided as to their return date. A very good friend of mine- some of you may have heard of her, she was a little known member of the girl band “The Spice Girls”- Posh Spice, Sporty Spice, Ginger Spice, Baby, Scary and my friend Kitchen Spice. Well, Kitchen Spice lectured that everyone must make choices specific to their individual situation, that I must not only be accepting of those decisions, but supportive, AND I should resist the urge to badger. Badger? I would call it selling the benefits of coming back and highlighting the risks of staying gone. OK, I will exercise self-restraint when the opportunity presents itself in the future. Because I do, in fact, respect these very individualized decisions. You’re right Kitchen Spice. Bitch. I am so sad to go back without a few of my best friends. I am selfish. I want to sell them on coming back. I can’t help it.
So provided I’m not shooting giant crows in the park in order to provide the next meal,
or squeezing water out of poo Bear Grylls style, for the next several days I’ll be focused on getting back in to the new normal which I suspect which will include a new addition to my routine, making rice balls for the true sufferers in the North.
And then, as always, there’s something else to worry about:
See you next week…
