Fat in Japan

The longer I'm in Japan the fatter I feel.... and not just fat, I feel overwhelmingly large. Nothing fits. I feel like Gulliver in Brobingag (if that's the place he went where he was huge, if not, I feel like something else!). My hotel room is the size of a cardboard box. My feet hang over the edge of my bed. The slippers they left out for me appear to be size 7 (One size fits all? Nope!). The guard rail at the train station is just above my knees. After I duck to get into the train, I take up twice as much room as anyone else on the bench. You can just feel people thinking, "great, I've got to sit next to the fat foreign guy!". The good news is that I think they're catching up to me. I see more and more fat Japanese all the time. I can't go for a walk without passing a McDonald's or KFC. Maybe next time I come back, I'll feel more at home. Dan

Trains or Pachinko in Mushashi?

A better alternative than making a long story short would be to eliminate the story entirely and but to the end. I'm stuck in Mushashi, Japan.

I think "mushashi" must mean "boring" in Japanese.

I'm sometimes accused of having an interesting life. In truth, I'm just good at playing up the one or two interesting things that, by random chance, occur.  Mushashi is a case in point. 

Mushashi is near Kawasaki, stuck between Tokyo and Yokohama. It is buried in the greater Tokyo/ Yokohama metroplex, and has apparantly been forgotten by everyone except those so unfortunate as to live here.

There are two key features of Mushashi; trains and pachinko.  There are 1960's era commuter trains all over the city, largely because if one is so moved as to go from Tokyo to Yokohama one must pass through Mushashi, and a train is a good way of minimizing any real interaction with the area. There are so many commuter trains on my walk last night I had to cross 5 different sets of tracks.

The other feature is pachinko. Pachinko is a ridiculously popular gambling activity, a little like slot machines.  There are pachinko parlors all over Mushashi. As one would expect, they're a bit seedy, and inevitably have a massage place next door, and (for some reason) a convenience store.  It used to be that when playing pachinko one had to twist a knob with a flick of the wrist.  Carpal Tunnel Syndrome because of this non-ergo friendly motion became a national crisis. In truly practical Japanese fashion it was corrected by replacing the knob with a push button.

I'm stuck here for three weeks.  I don't know whether to try to ride all the trains, or take up pachinko....

Dan