Brrrrrr!!!!!!

It is cold today! We had such a mild, sunny weekend and we are making up for it today. It snowed. Amy is quite excited, thinks it looks like Christmas (not even a Christmas in NZ seems to have cured her of that Northern pre-occupation with snow!). She thought Santa might come and bring her another present.Invisible Niichan (big brother) joined us in the bath today. He is seven, and his name is Tommy. He was invented after we got back from NZ - I think Amy misses her cousins. He wears an invisibility cloak like Harry Potter and only takes it off when I am not looking. He tickled Amy in the bath and she could not stop giggling.We have sold three books on amazon japan. I sent one on Saturday at the main PO, which was fine, then went to the local PO today. Local POs are an unknown quantity in Japan. They can be great - close, easy parking, people know you by name, staff are used to your unusual requests (ie, sending overseas). Or they can be a nightmare - new staff, intimidated by your foreignness, unsure what buttons to press on the stupid machine that seems to make each transaction take twice as long as before, utterly ignorant of the various international parcel rates. It does not help that the organization makes a habit of rotating staff yearly or so, so there are almost always newbies around.Today was the latter type of day. I know the guy well - he's stuffed up my requests before! I am sure he was teased in school. He's just that type. He gets so flustered and stuffs things up even more. I decided to be very explicit and watchful - but he still managed to mess it up. How hard is it, when someone hands you two identical packages, and says she wants a book rate, to conclude that therefore, both packages are books? Does not the different prices you came up with ring an alarm somewhere? To be fair, I think it did - and he proceded to check each package again, twice, and still came up with a different rate. He was so muddled he just kept on pressing the same wrong button over and over.I even queried the receipts, and asked if it was book rate, and he assured me it was. In these situations, I just have to give them the benefit of the doubt. I was not sure what the receipt said, just that the description was different, with the kanji I recognized as 'book' and the counter for book, and nothing like it on the other. I had assumed the difference was just size, or distance. So I took it to my Kanji, who also found the second receipt a bit odd, so he telephoned them, and only THEN did Mr. PO discover his mistake.I actually felt embarrassed about going back for my 100 yen refund! But if we are going to be sending twenty or so books, I have to be sure he is going to get it right. He also gave me a packet of tissues, then bid me wait - I thought he would fetch some balloons for the kids, but he came back with - wait for it - a complementary Post Office sponge. At least it's useful...

First Blog

It's a fine and sunny Sunday morning and I am sitting down to write the first blog entry for the Yokomatsu family. Kanji is at work, Amy stayed the night with Baachan, and Lena is desperately searching for the little green Lego baby.Jiichan just came around to set fire to the lawn. Apparently that's what you do. Then you plant new grass in spring. I didn't question it, after all, Japanese grass is just different. I got out there and turned on the hose though, only to find the water came to a halt for some mysterious reason. So I went back inside and filled up the spaghetti pot with water instead. Jiichan gave up his pyromania in half an hour though, complaining that the grass was too 'blue' (which is Japanese for green, eg, traffic lights in Japan are blue).(I did discover however, that the burnt bottom of the spaghetti pot flaked off into the water, despite Kanji and Koutaku's reassurances that it was perfectly okay, and I should remove it from the toy closet and put it back in the kitchen. Mind you, they were drunk when they said that.)I am very busy today, with recipes to write for the Muroya soy sauce site, tests to mark for college, AFWJ's membership list to check, a play-group proposal to prepare, a postcard asking for soft toys to write and this blog to start!Shoichi told me on Wednesday that he and a friend are setting up a website for Yori, hopefully to sell the soy sauce overseas. He mentioned that he'd asked Justin to take care of sales in Australia - then asked me to help with NZ. So I am preparing some comments for the English page, selecting recipes using soy sauce, and researching NZ's import and customs laws. I am quite excited about it, because I love the soy sauce and I am always trying to impress on people the joys and delights of Japanese cuisine.I have also started selling our second-hand books at amazon japan, and signed up at a website to find new students. Thus, the chances of finding time to clean out the spare room are ever diminishing...