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Today was a sad day. My hat, the hat I scoured Tokyo shops for, meant to warm my ears for years hence, has been lost to a cold, premature death by the waterfalls of Lake Toya in Aomori prefecture.

Perhaps for an hour, it was hopeful of a happy reunion. Inevitably and all too quickly, that confidence faded with the residual warmth from my pocket. It lies collapsed somewhere, helpless and lifeless, that last shred of warmth long since sucked into muddy leaves and gray twilight.

The problem with group tours (okay, one problem) is that even when you realize you’ve dropped something, say, half an hour into a walk, you can’t go back for it. So maybe (just maybe) you jog back, intensely scanning the road, but after five minutes of blank trail, you have to turn back or you’ll hold up the bus. Also, maybe your dad is screaming at you and your mom shouldn’t be made to hold your stuff too much longer.

A replaceable accessory, yes. But I still feel like I’m letting someone down. Like disappointing a kid, or a puppy.

I know I could’ve found it. But I didn’t. And now it can’t be a hat, it has to be a decomposing lump of fabric, or maybe another scrap of nothing in the lost-and-found.
And all because I was careless.

Maybe I’m getting soft in old age. Or maybe I never outgrew an attachment to fuzzy things.

Bye, hat. I’m sorry.

Six days from right now, I’ll be on a plane from Tokyo to Hokkaido.
Two weeks from now, I’ll be floating somewhere over the Pacific.

One year goes by really really fast.
Goodness.
People keep asking what I’m going to fit in before I go, if I want to see or buy or eat something.

No, not really.

Partially because work is really busy, and partially because, well, I’ve been here for a year.

Thanks to Typhoon Melor (known to Japanese citizens as Typhoon #18), my last pair of sneakers from the states is probably not coming home.  Two have fallen prey to the wear and tear of Tokyo pavement, this last pair was doing okay, but after a few soakings, I begin to wonder whether I should stick my feet in them at all.  Like I said, not coming home.

On an unrelated note (but really, don’t all notes relate somehow to food?), they opened a wagyu hamburger place that’s smack in the middle of my walk home from Ebisu station.  I dragged a friend there for dinner last week.  It had opened the weekend before, but I was too busy playing in Kansai to check it out.  Plus, it’s kind of hard to march into a giant hamburger store by yourself.  Ramen, yes.  Burger, hm…

Yes, it was a $15 hamburger.  It came with 5 little wedges of potato.   We thought that was kinda stingy of them, but then we took stock of the burger.  The burger was delicious, and humongous.  Well flavored, good quality meat (made from black, raised-in-Japan bovine = black cows = blacows (the restaurant name)), savory tomato sauce (not ketchup), and for me…ahem…jalapeno + cheese.  Really good.  I think I have to eat gruel + boiled spinach for two weeks to compensate for the hit to the arteries(not happening), but reaaally good.

I go back to work now.

Today, we return to an age old topic.  Not my age, per se, though the number fits.

No, no…recently I think I set a personal record.  I really would rather not have.

That is to say… egads, but I really detest mosquitoes.

Yesterday was Autumn Equinox, a national holiday in Japan.  The first day of Fall.
On the night of the Last Day of Summer,  I was visited by the friendly mosquitoes of Kansai, en masse.  It seems they heard I was leaving and needed to get their last sips of type-O-Audrey before…

a) it gets too cold and they DIE

b) I leave their sorry sucker butts behind

I was, you know, trying to sleep.  But then I realized my leg (it was hot so I was halfway under blankets) was itching, and there was this all-too-familiar-whine.  The last day of summer being … summer, it was too hot to hide under the blankets.   So I had to either try to sleep while knowing I would be eaten alive, or do something about it.  The former proved impossible, the latter merely torturous.

Really, twenty seven is a bit much. At some point, you just have to start scratching.  And why DO some swell up, and others just turn into little bumps, and why do they all look like weird bruises to start with?  And why do the bruises swell in weird shapes and lines at first, but always end up round?  How quickly do mosquitoes digest, anyhow?  I mean, wouldn’t they run out of space?  Do they pee?  Sweat out the liquid and then come back for more blood cells?  Yet it’s very clear that one bug can bite you (me) multiple times, which makes me wonder why they don’t just get their fill the first time.

On another note, the previous trend to my left leg seems to have evened out, as my right ankle alone sports five itchy spots.

I succeeded in taking four of them with me.  I’m rather proud of this, as the killing happened between twelve and 3am, without turning on the lights (though I did put on my glasses).  See, you hold your arms up as bait, and with the non-bait arm, crush the bugs when they land.   It’s very disconcerting to hear the whine/buzz and KNOW that they’re lurking out there, circling, waiting. But when they settle for the kill, oh…you’ve got em.

You think that waiting for mosquitoes to land so you can smack ’em is gross?

It’s even grosser when they die with a wet “pop” instead of a quiet smoosh.  Then, you realize …this one was coming back for seconds.  And feel kind of grosser than normal.

Um…right.  So this season ends 27:4, victory to the home team.  Alas.  I am completely baffled as to why no one else in that house (3 other tasty tasty morsels) got chomped on.   In semi-related news, an unrelated visit to a traditional medicine shop the following day revealed that I may get eaten more because I am fat and like sweet things.  Riiight.  Thanks lady.  (My friend was advised to eat dessicated turtle carcass for her general weak constitution and stomach troubles.  Apparently, dessicated turtle changes you from the inside so that you actually glow, to the point that you stand out from the crowd, even in photographs. Or, you can just apply makeup that’s slightly too white for your actual skin color, and try to justify the sale of $80 dead turtle.)

I would like to conclude by reasserting my undying love for fall. As leaves turn golden, and air turns crisp, I imagine the silent death cries of my tiny nemeses. Such a lovely silence. So different from that obnoxious, sleep-destroying buzz.