Now that winter is slowly coming to an end and we don’t have to fear freezing off our wings and fingers anymore, the duck and I are busy planning lots of outside adventures (in hopes that Japanese pollen is not as aggressive as what we are used to)! For being able to do that efficiently, the Japanese way, we took a gander at all of those handy dandy schedule books on sale at some of our favorite 100-yen-shops back in December.
In Japan, diaries with a monthly view are rather popular. When, a few years back, I observed my Japanese friend trying to fit yet another meeting into one of those little squares (the rule goes: if you have enough space to cram in one more appointment, then you have enough time to keep it), I was surprised. Now that I am older and wiser and honored to be friends with the duck (ahem) I finally understand why those kinds of diaries are so popular: the Japanese (especially those who are living in Tokyo) are busy; and if you want to keep up your social life while working overtime on your 11th day of the week, you better plan ahead a couple of weeks so that you can make it to your bi-annual catch-up session with your BFF (clearly, I’m exaggerating here – the duck and I are just lazy, so any work feels like it’s too much to us)!
All joking aside, we do know quite a few people in Tokyo who are so busy that we sometimes have to ‘book them’ weeks in advance if we want to catch up (and then cross our fingers that they do not have to work a sudden extra shift). Or, sometimes, we simply have completely different work schedules so that it can be rather difficult to have a fun chat over a nice curry after work because our ‘after work’ is completely different from their ‘after work’. And, of course, there is always this sneaky foe called ‘unexpected overtime work’ lurking around one corner or the other (not our corners, though! The duck and my corners are harshly lit).
So, after looking at dozens of different diaries for 2018, the duck and I finally caved in and got ourselves one of those monthly planner notebooks because if there is one thing that we learned in the short time that we have been living in Tokyo, it’s that some of its residents are pretty efficient in cramming friends, gym visits, language lessons, music sessions, weekend trips, marathons, wedding parties, waking up at 5am, volunteer work, sorting trash, cooking dinner for their children, going to Disneyland, and all those other important things into their already busy schedules. Well, often that does go hand in hand with a lack of sleep and attempts to catch up on some of it on the trains home from work, but even the duck and my very lazy, always sleepy selves are determined to make our new home proud by filling up our monthly schedules as neatly as we can!
That’s all from us for today.
The allotted blog-slot in our diary is over; now we have to laze around some more.
‘later!
The Duck in... side 