No, I was not eaten by cockroaches

The cockroach wars were brief and (mostly) harmless. I felt a little vindicated that every single one of my friends in Tokyo (or at least all the ones I talked to) also had cockroach sightings that week. Apparently the cooling down outside drives them inside. I scrubbed my kitchen down, got all my flour / sugar / etc. in air-tight containers, and proceeded to lay about ten little cockroach poison thingies all over my kitchen.

Two days later I was on the way to church and realized that there was a cockroach sitting in my hallway. But it was just...sitting. It made no effort to run even though I was pretty close to it. I wondered if it was dead and left it there. When I returned, it had gone belly up, six legs angling towards the sky. This made me actually feel a little bit of pity, but two very useful things happened because I actually saw a dead one: I realized that my initial report of "two inches long" was...a stretch. Though they are definitely more than an inch long. ;) It was also very useful to know that the cockroach poison was effective, and that I didn't need to panic or start smashing my apartment apart or anything like that when I saw one.

Other happenings of the past few weeks...

Our new people came! We now have nine new missionaries here in Tokyo studying Japanese. So, I am no longer new. I am now "sempai", so to speak. It's been fun to watch them, remember what it was like to be new, and how much it sucked to be at the level of Japanese where one still regularly confuses the word for 'grandmother' with the word for 'buckwheat noodles'. It makes me feel rather important and accomplished to be able to take them into bento shops and explain to the cashiers that, the reason they sound so funny is that they only started studying Japanese this week, and be able to do it all confidentially since they don't understand what I'm saying. Not that I'm usually that mean...;)

It is strange to have it be autumn again, also because it is the first time the seasons have changed into something familiar. Not that Japanese seasons are so outrageously different from America, but there were usually new fruits, new smells, new customs, etc. It's odd to be walking down the street and realize that the air itself feels like an old friend, whispering memories of my first few months in the country.

In other news, I twisted my ankle last Friday. Typing emails on my cell phone while hurrying down stairs in Tokyo station is now a forbidden activity. Thankfully, God was merciful and it only seems to be a minor sprain. In the meantime, things have to go ever so slightly slower than normal, which is probably a good thing.

Last night, I bought green tea scented toilet paper. Just wanted to share that with someone. ;)