Between arguments with and bills from the Japanese social security office (I spent 6 weeks asking them to send my a bill so I could pay, and they kept giving me the run around and asking me to pay.. without a bill. Finally they sent it last week with a 1 week deadline) and various stuff in my personal life (let’s not go there), it’s been a pretty lackluster Thanksgiving and start to the Christmas season. But rather than reflect on the details of my life (which is kinda what blogs do), let’s talk about something else entirely!<\/p>\n
That’s right, boys and girls. Today we’re talking abou Tokyo Life and Junk Mail<\/strong>. I know it’s something you’re all dearly interested in, so you can thank me later.<\/p>\n It actually may have nothing to do with Tokyo–or Japanese culture in general–and might be more of a big-city thing, but I’m pretty surprised by the sheer volume of junk mail\/advertisements I get here. It’s not the standard American fare, either; some coupons, an advertisement for a body shop, a kid whose been missing for 46 years, and maybe a credit card offer that hints at an interest rate you’re totally not qualified for. No, actually there’s very little of that<\/em> in Japan. Here, you get fliers for anything and everything under the sun, most particularly restaurants (expected), realtor advertisements (if I live\u00a0in an apartment<\/em> now, I can assume I already have a place to live, yes?), travel (“O_O I want to go to Disneyland RIGHT NOW!!!!!”), and adult DVD delivery services (…??????? Apparently they can promise delivery within 30 minutes).<\/p>\n What surprised me about all this, also, was the volume. I leave my apartment early in the morning and throw out the junk. I get home 10~ hours later, and there’s more. Throughout the day, it’s someone’s job to wander around and shove advertisements in people’s mailboxes. And believe me, they do cram it in<\/em>. The man who lives above me is either dead who hates checking his mail, because his box is filled to the point where they’ve started literally stuffing it into the box. To combat this, the apartment provides a box to just throw the advertisements\/junk into so I don’t need to take it up stairs, but it still gives me a good 5 seconds of something to look at before I head off to work every morning.<\/p>\n Now, why did I just ramble about junk mail? I have absolutely no idea.<\/p>\n Not completely<\/em> satisfied with just sitting around and feeling bad for myself, I’ve decided to resurrect the ‘Christmas Cookie Decorating Party’ event from last year. As one can easily guess, it’s kinda hard to find a bunch of young adults who want to spend an afternoon putting colored sugar on cookies, so I recruited some of my ex-high school students! I haven’t seen most of them for 1-2 years since their graduation and they’re all well into their university lives, so it should be fun getting together. I need to start tracking down some cookie cutters soon and all that stuff. Fortunately, Amazon has anything and everything you could ever need.<\/p>\n Now that I’ve rambled about some completed unrelated and disjointed stuff, I’m gonna get on with the rest of my evening! I’m sure I’ll have more cheerful news soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Between arguments with and bills from the Japanese social security office (I spent 6 weeks asking them to send my a bill so I could pay, and they kept giving me the run around and asking me to pay.. without a bill. Finally they sent it last week with a 1 week deadline) and various stuff in my personal life (let’s not go there), it’s been a pretty lackluster Thanksgiving and start to the Christmas season. But rather than reflect on the details of my life (which is kinda what blogs do), let’s talk about something else entirely!<\/p>\n