Sickness

Well, it has been a relatively dramatic 24 hours - relative to what I normally do on Thursdays - and I am now in quaranteen, or whatever it’s called when you are escorted off the school premises like a leper and told to stay in your house until further notice.

I don’t have Legionairres disease. Seven hours, three doctors, two surgeries, one hospital, one urine test, one blood test, one spit test, one chest x-ray and 8,000 yen established that. What they also established, unfortunately, was that I do have something.

“No Legionairres,” the doctor told me after an entire afternoon spent reading F Scott Fitzerald in an incredibly uncomfortable chair.
“Good,” I said. “I’m glad about that.”
Then she pointed to my blood test results.
“Sick, though.”
“Yes, I thought I might be. I don’t feel great.” I knew that I definitely didn’t feel great because I had just cried three times in the doctor’s waiting room, and I only cry for no reason at all when I’m pretty sick.
“Very high temperature, big white blood cells, antibodies.”
“Ah. So what’s wrong?”
“Sick.”
“Yes, but what’s wrong?”
“Big white blood cells, antibodies.”
I got ready to cry again.
“They’re symptoms of my sickness, not what’s causing it. What have I got?”
“Sick,” she said again. “Medicine.”
“For what?”
“Take medicine.”
I gave up, because I was too hot and tired and weepy to argue.
“Fine, just give me the drugs,” I told her, and then I got up and left and cried in the car because of how much they had charged me for what was now technically half a day’s holiday allocation.

This morning, I woke up and got out of bed; by which I mean that I opened swollen eyes and rolled onto the floor so that I could wedge my way upright with my elbows. My throat hurt, my head was hot, my ear felt like something was using a pick axe to climb into the inner part of it, and I was so tired that even a wooden floor looked comfortable to curl up on.

Which meant, obviously, that I went to school. I’m British; if you can still move you’re alive, and if you’re alive you’d better get your arse to work or everybody will whisper about how weak you are, and how they should have employed somebody a little less wan.

My school, unfortunately, did not agree.

Midway through my first lesson they rang the hospital to get my results (which would be highly illegal in England, but is standard practice here). And then: chaos. A teacher walked into my lesson and dragged me out almost bodily.

“You must go home now.”
“Huh? I’m okay. Honestly, I'm okay. I feel fine.” And comparatively I did: I've felt much worse and gone to work.
“Are not okay, are very sick. We spoke to hospital.”
“Huh?”
“Very bad news.”
“Am I dying?” I laughed, and then I stopped laughing because they weren't laughing. In fact, they looked very angry, and/or worried and/or anxious (I don’t know: I haven’t worked out those subtleties of Japanese facial expressions yet: fierce politeness means that it all kind of looks the same).
“You have serious illness, go home right now and stay home.”
“Midway through my lesson?”
“Right now.”
"It's just a cold."
"It's not just a cold," they said, which threw me for a loop, because what do people get if it's not just a cold? I thought that was the only type of illness there was.
“Oh,” I said, and then I was escorted off the premises without being allowed to say goodbye to any of my students or get my coffee, still sitting on my desk, and still not having a clue what was wrong with me or when I was allowed to come back or what I was supposed to do in the meantime.

Now I have nothing to do but sit at home and wait until somebody tells me what the hell is going on. And I'm not very good at sitting and waiting at the best of times, let alone with a very angry, if not raging, temperature.

So - until I have any idea of what is wrong with me - I think I'll just sit and have a nice little pointless, reasonless cry instead.

Leg Pulling

Health and beauty are important to women; especially women who are nearing their thirties and are therefore rapidly losing large quantities of both.

As my friend and I are two such women - me far more than her, although we are both the wrong side of 25 - we go at least once or twice a week to the local onsen, the Cherry. It’s not the nicest onsen in the area, it’s not the biggest onsen, and it doesn’t have the best free shampoo, but the water is known across this part of the country for being - well, pretty much magic. Which means we both spend as much time in it as possible, as often as possible, in the hope that we may accidentally step out one day with the skin we had ten years ago (a watery time machine much, much better than anything Michael J Fox ever climbed into).

I feel like crap, I texted her last night. I’m exhausted constantly and I’ve got a sore throat and I’m hot and cold and I’ve been up all night coughing up green shit.
Me too, my friend texted back. It must be work stress.
I didn't say anything, because it might be work stress for her but it is quite tangibly not work stress for me. I barely do any.
Onsen? she suggested.

So - as I never need persuading to sit in a hot tub of water and do nothing for two hours - we headed to the onsen, chatted cheerily to the naked old ladies and straightened out every problem the world had ever gallantly offered us.

“I feel so much better already,” my friend eventually admitted, after we had popped up again from holding our breath under water as long as we could.
“I love that this water is so smelly,” I said. Which - for those of you who have never been to an onsen - it is: a yellow colour, sulphorous, salty and full of minerals and other stuff I know nothing about but sounds really, really fun and good for you. The smellier the better, as far as my friend and I are concerned. It shows it must be doing something.
“It really feels like we’re getting better, doesn’t it?”
So we dived under the stinky water again, and - after another fifteen minutes of turning into salty little prunes - we eventually climbed out, feeling wonderful, coughed up some more green shit and went for a cigarette.

All of which means that the round of emails I woke up to this morning did not exactly fill me with the sparkle of a million fairies.

The Cherry Onsen was on the news last night, a local friend had emailed the Nichinan group of us. Legionairres disease has been found in the water. Does anyone go there?
Wouldn’t touch that place; it’s minging, another friend had replied.
Don’t Nam and Holly go there every week?
Yeah. Nuff said. Hahaha.
I wouldn’t worry. Apparently you just have to be concerned if you have cold like symptoms.
Are you pulling my leg-ionairres? Ahaha.
They said on the news you were only at high risk if you go under the water. And if you smoke.
Who goes under the water at an onsen?
Probably those two dickheads, the email round concluded, as if both of us weren’t cc’d into every single one of them.

I’d just finished reading when my phone beeped with a new date suggestion from my friend.

Two words: Irony, and Doctors?

There are very few things as important as being healthy and beautiful, you see. And not being dead or hospitalised from Legionairres disease is probably a step in the right direction. As is getting out of the healthy and beautiful smelly water that may have given it to you and getting into a doctor's surgery.

I just doubt that it will be as much fun.

See-saw

Ignorance is bliss. Which is lucky, because it`s a state I quite naturally revert to without much effort at all. It`s trying to change it that gets me into trouble.

As an experiment, three days ago I attached a meter to this site. I was curious; first of all to see how many people read what I write, and second – when I realised that the application showed me a lot more than just numbers – to see who was reading it, where they were reading it and how long they were reading it for.

I know a lot about you, now, reader. Not as much as you know about me, but I know a lot more than I did. I know what computer you use, I know precisely where you live in the world – down to the city - and I know what network you`re on, how you found me and what you clicked on to accidentally stumble upon this site. I know what time you read it, how many times you read it, which pages you click on. I don`t know your name, age or gender, but I`m convinced that if I could just work out which button to press, I would not only be able to work these out; I would also be able to find out what you had for breakfast this morning, whether you`re thinking about getting a new haircut in the next week or so, and if you pick your toenails in front of the television or not.

Luckily for you, I haven`t established which button this is yet.

Which was interesting for about three seconds – somebody reads this in India? Do I know somebody in India? Germany? New Zealand? Denmark? – and then became confusing and slightly scary. I started worrying over every single detail: would somebody from Canada be offended if I wrote this? What about Essex? What about Hatfield? What could I write of interest to someone in Denmark? Why did one person only spend one minute on the page? You can`t read anything in one minute. Didn`t they like it? Did I upset them? What did I do wrong? How can I make them like me more? Why is my sister not reading it? Why is my best friend not reading it? Is that entry one of my ex boyfriends? Is that daily click – from a precise area of Japan – from the ex boyfriend (heart spirals into mouth); and if not – definitely not, wrong language, wrong computer - why the hell is he not reading it too? Why doesn`t he care anymore? Why doesn`t anything I think or feel make a difference to him when he used to read it religiously, every single morning? Why do I still care so much about him - what he`s doing, what he`s thinking, how he`s feeling - when he doesn`t even stalk me sporadically anymore, and it`s so goddamn easy to?

And, before I knew it, my beautiful, invisible readers – mysterious and international and kind and forgiving and utterly unknown and strange to me, even the ones I knew – had become horribly real: horribly known, horribly transient, and horribly discerning. And – most terribly, in one particular case - horribly absent. The faceless, nationless, invisible people who visited my blog suddenly had computers and locations and `click numbers` and short boredom thresholds, and I realised that I had forgotten the fundamental rule of writing; that the reader is always, always half of it, and what the reader brings to each sentence is equally as important as anything written there. And that I need you all far, far more than you could ever need me, because writing does not exist without readers, whereas a reader will still exist without a writer. And my dependency on you to be who you are in my imagination was even more important than your dependency on me to be that way in yours.

It has made me so sad - so incredibly sad - because, as always, I pushed too far. I couldn`t just write and be read. I had to try to make sense of that relationship, as I try to make sense of every relationship: and, in trying to hold it in my hand and pull it into pieces so that I know more about it, I nearly crushed it. I had forgotten that the reader`s unimaginative, cruel and base exposure to me - in the form of scary, unsympathetic numbers, and scary, unforgiving silences - could be as damaging to my writing as my total and callous exposure would be to my readers.

The writer and reader have – always have had, always will have – a unique dependency on each other; they balance on the see-saw of creativity with such fragility that one tip too far can be enough to push it over and stop the process altogether. And I need you all to be what you always have been; as much to my imagination – as mysterious and infallible and invincible - as a writer should always be to yours. Even if I am partly writing, secretly, for a reader I love that has long since gone.

So please, readers, whoever you are - whether I know you or not, whether you read for one minute or two minutes or five hours or two seconds: keep reading. Keep your side of the see-saw off the ground, and I will do the same to mine.

I have turned the meter off, now, and it will stay off. You have your privacy back, and I will force out nothing else. I don`t need to know, and I never did. Not who you are, not how many you are, not where you are. Not whether we had a past, or whether we have a present, or whether we might have a future. It doesn`t matter. I write, you read, and the rest should just be as perfect as we imagine it to be.

I don`t want to destroy something beautiful by pulling it apart to see what it`s made of. I have done that to my heart already. I will not do it to my writing too.

Fame

The paparazzi just won't leave me alone. A year ago I was on telly for eight minutes - bitching and glaring and saying exactly what the director told me to say because I'm nice like that - and the media are apparently still hungry for my blood; twelve tiny months later and they've tracked me again so that they can suck me dry with all their unwanted attention.

This time, it was embarrassing: the way they tried to force me into any context so that they could compromise my privacy and sell more papers.

First, they didn't tell me they were going to be there. That was the first sign that they wanted me in their newspaper. Then they didn't mention me by name at all; that was the second sign that they had organised the entire article around me. Then they didn't mention me in any context whatsoever, even slightly, and talked about something else entirely, and that was the third sign that they were just going to keep trying to force me into the media limelight whether I liked it or not. Then - shameful, shameful journalist - they put at least twenty five people in front of me in the photograph, and waited until I was facing the wrong way and half way through a sentence before they immortalised me: they clearly weren't even going to pretend that anything in the world mattered but me. Blood sucking immoral scum, that's what the media is.

"Where?" my friend said when I showed him the picture. I have five, in case four of them get ruined.
"There," I said, pointing.
"Where?" they said again.
"There," I said a little bit crossly, getting a pen out and circling my head which is bobbing around somewhere at the back of the group.
There was a pause.
"It looks like you've been photoshopped on."
"It does not."
"Yeah it does. Look: you're not the same colour as anyone else at all."
"That's racist. You're racisting me."
My friend laughed, the bastard. He's clearly in on it with the media, trying to suck my life into an egocentric void. I won't let it happen. I'm real, you know. My dad was born in Hatfield.

So I took a copy to Baba instead.
"Doko?" she said, and even I know what that means, so I pointed to it a little more crossly.
She went to get her glasses, and then - after a few minutes of peering - she laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed until I grabbed the newspaper back off her. I think she's racisting me too.

They didn't stop there, though: oh, no. The local media all got wind of it, and twenty minutes later Baba was sticking herself to my spare room window like one of those little gummy toys you throw from a distance and yelling "T.B" at me, even though I was sitting just the other side of it.
"T.B!" she shouted. "T.B!"
So I followed her to her house to watch my fame blossom further.

It defied belief, really. Different journalists - ones with filming cameras this time - had filmed exactly the same story that had nothing to do with me whatsoever and then (how they can look themselves in the mirror at night, I don't know) failed to put me in it. At all. I was in the staffroom at the time, tie-dying bits of paper. I didn't think they would sink that low, but they had: they had made the story all about me again, because what was everyone in Nichinan going to be thinking except: where's that white girl that looks photoshopped on? Exactly. How horribly upsetting for the people the feature was supposed to be about. Sidelined because of my glory, once again.

It's shameful, really, the way the media hounds and hounds us until we're driven to our own obliteration. It's a good thing I'm so grounded, really, or God Only Knows what would happen next. As it is I'm that close to falling out of a Nichinan nightclub with my skirt tucked into one of my three remaining pairs of knickers, just so that the media can take another piece of me. And - if it wasn't for the fact that there aren't any clubs within a 200km radius - then I probably would do exactly that.

Luckily, the slippery slope of fame and glory out here isn't particularly slippery or slopey: there aren't any clubs to go to or drugs I can abuse when the attention gets too much, and there isn't an rehab to enter myself into when the drugs get too much, and there isn't any magazine I can sell my story to when the rehab gets too much. There isn't anywhere to slide into, frankly, which I think might be a restriction of the inherent freedom I should have to destroy myself in public.

The next time the media wants to coast off my fame, if there aren't at least thirty five people in front of me before they take the photo, I'm going to sue.

Those soul sucking paparazzi bastards are just going to have to try harder if they want to try and make fame change me.

War

The ceasefire is over. Baba invaded my territory today - just like that, just because she felt like it - and she has crossed a line.

Last night I did my laundry. Actually, this should read: last night I did my laundry again, as I did it two nights ago and then forgot about it and left it there to stink and ferment in the washing machine so I had to repeat the exercise yesterday. This morning, late for work again because I was too busy writing witty comments on my Facebook page that nobody ever, ever reads, I piled my washing into a basket, took it outside, hung one pair of knickers, looked at my watch, swore profusely and jumped into my car so that I wouldn't get sacked from a job I actually quite like this time.

It'll be fine, I thought. I'll just have to wash it for a third time when I get home this evening.

I have just returned from work, driven into the car space in front of my house, parked very, very badly and then found myself thinking - for a few, confused seconds - that I must have accidentally trained my washing to jump from a basket onto a clothes line, pin itself there very neatly and then completely forgotten about it. And then: no, I thought. Everything has been hung inside out and straightened and pegged perfectly at the seams, and there's no way anything belonging to me would do that of its own accord.

I was just walking around and talking to the washing, hanging there in well behaved submission, when Baba pops her head out of the house next door.

"Horri," she shouts, and then she points to my washing and her watch, to show she understands why I ran off this morning with one shoe still untied.
"You did this?" I said in English.
"Of course," she said in Japanese.
And then we stared at each other with a glint in our eyes; a glint that - and I could be wrong - looked remarkably like the reflection of a gauntlet being thrown down.

Japanese grandmas are unbelievable; they just don't know when to stop. I knew Baba was going to cross a line someday soon. I was prepared for it.

I just didn't know it was going to have my washing attached to it.

Time wasting

Sometimes people accuse me of wasting my time. And, frankly, I have no idea what they mean. I think I invest my time very wisely.

Harai Rocks, I wrote on a piece of tie-dye paper I made in one of my free periods today. Then I handed it to my colleague.

“Here`s a present,” I told him. I give him so many hand-made presents (I have so many free periods) that he barely even looked up.
“Thankyou,” he said when he eventually did. Then he looked a bit confused.
“Do you know what it means?” I asked him, realising from his expression that he didn`t.
“Yes.”
“Which bit?”
“Harai. That`s my name.”
“Uhuh. What about the other bit?”
“Yes.” And then he made a hand gesture to indicate being smashed over the head with a rock. “Hard thing. Throw at me,” he said a little sadly.
I laughed for the first time.
“You think I want to throw rocks at you?”
“Yes,” he said.
I laughed for the second time.
“Just a minute,” he said, and then got his computerised dictionary out and looked it up. “I shake?” he asked me, showing me the entry.
I laughed for the third time.
“No.”
He looked perturbed, and scanned the dictionary again.
“I swing from side to side?” he said in complete earnestness.
I laughed for the fourth time.
“It means you`re cool, Harai. Rock n roll.”
There was a silence.
“You have heard of Rock n roll, right?” This - after all - is the man who thought Hey Jude was “the cleaning music”.
“Mmm,” he said unconvincingly. “Michael Jackson?”
And I laughed for the fifth time.

Three minutes that piece of paper took me to make; five belly laughs I got out of it. So for anyone who accuses me of wasting my time, there`s the proof that it`s nonsense. Three minutes exchanged for five laughs.

By anybody`s standards, I think that`s a very wise investment.

Mosquito

I don`t like mosquitos. I don`t like them more than I don`t like celery or egg, and that`s a lot because celery and egg are both revolting.

The feeling, unfortunately, is not mutual.

Last night I was very busy, writing and then immediately deleting lines from The Book and ultimately getting nowhere at all, when a mosquito plonked itself on my computer screen.

“Hi,” it said.
“Excuse me,” I answered: “could you move, please? You`re blocking my cursor.”
The mosquito kindly moved himself so that he was blocking the letter a in that instead.
“Are you here to bite me?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”
“Would you mind not? I`m allergic and I swell up and it hurts a lot.”
“Sorry,” the mosquito said: “but I`m hungry and you taste like tiramisu.”
“That`ll be all the coffee I drink,” I told him.
“Mocha!” a little voice from somewhere behind me yelled. “There`s lots of chocolate in there too.”
“Oh bloody hell,” I sighed, turning around and seeing nothing. “There`s two of you?”
“More than two,” the initial mosquito replied, matter of factly. “You left one of your fly screens open slightly.”
“Which one?”
“Well I`m not telling you that. You`ll just go and shut it.”
He had a point; I would just go and shut it.
“So you`re definitely going to bite me?” I asked him.
“Definitely. You`re delicious.”
“Then I`m going to have to kill you,” I said sadly. “Sorry about this. Could you move off my computer screen? I don`t want to get you all over my book.”
The mosquito politely flew to the wall, and waited. I lifted my hand and approached him slowly.
“I don`t want to do this,” I told him crossly. “But you`re going to bite me in the middle of the night and I`m going to itch and swell up for a week afterwards.”
“Yes,” he said. “I understand.”
I got a little closer.
“Why did you have to come in?” I asked him.
“Because I`m hungry and you`re delicious.”
“That makes sense I suppose.” I got a little closer. “I`m going to kill you now.”
“OK,” he said. “But let me just make one point: if I don`t bite you, I die. If I do bite you, you itch. It`s a small sacrifice for you, and a big one for me.”
I paused.
“I hate you,” I said.
“I adore you,” he said.
“Ugh.”
“You`re not going to kill me, are you.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Go on.”
“I am.”
“Do it.”
“I AM.”
And then without wanting to in the slightest I brought my hand away.
“I knew you weren`t going to do it,” the mosquito said happily, flying away. “People who taste like pudding never can. Too sweet.”
And then he disappeared into nothing as only mosquitos can.

Late last night, I woke up drowsily from my sleep with a buzzing in my ear.
“You`re going to do it now?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
"Promise to bite me once?"
"OK."
“OK.”
“I love you,” he reminded me. “Now, hold still.”

And this morning I was covered in bites.

Return of the Knickers

I think my mum had a little word with my Borrowers. I'm not sure how; perhaps I left Skype running last night while I was swearing at my washing up and telling it to do itself for the fifteenth time. Perhaps they climbed up on to my desk and had a conversation with her while I was in the bath for the third time (it's very humid in Nichinan at the moment). Either way, she had a word with me and then she had a word with them, and it obviously worked.

Holly Smale, she emailed me.

Except that she didn't, because she's just had large scale surgery on her right hand and can't really do anything with it apart from hold it aloft like an injured boxer and pull faces.

Hollly Smle, my mum emailed me with her left hand. Are u tlling me tht u have no wy of loking ur door and no wy of escping and no knickers on? Are u tlling me tht u just tld the whle world that u hav no underwear and an opn house? Am not happy. Not sensble of u. Am snding knickrs straght away. Find ur KEYS. And she capitalised KEYS, just in case I had problems working out what the hell she was talking about.

I didn't say I had no underwear at all, I emailed straight back, rather offended. I do have some. I just have to do my laundry every three days, that's all. And that is far too much.

But it was too late; preservation of her daughter's wavering dignity came first, so mum obviously had a very strong word with the little people and threatened them with necessary violence, because things immediately started coming back.

First they returned my car keys. They left them in my third drawer, inside an empty box of ChocoPies. I think they ate the ChocoPies first - because I certainly don't remember eating ten when the box was full on Tuesday - but, as they left all the wrappers in my waste paper basket, it's going to be hard to prove anything.

Then, the following morning, they returned my house keys. They put them in the pockets of my jeans, so they were cleaned nice and thoroughly by a spin through the washing machine. This was very considerate of the little people, even if it did risk both breaking my domestic appliances and putting a hole in the only pair of jeans that will fit me in the next year or so (I am not Japanese jean size; I don't think I ever have been). But - as the little people bravely put their lives in danger by climbing inside the machine to leave them there in the first place - I'm not going to be too critical about it. They returned them, and that's what counts.

They also - in a bid to apologise and encourage my mum to leave them alone, presumably - returned three lighters, six hair grips, a biro and a mini packet of peanuts, unopened. In a fit of overwhelming strength they had lifted up my futon and placed them all under there, scattered at apparent random; a momentous feat, because even I struggle to pick it up as often as I should.

As a result I've been rather hopefully waiting for the return of my knickers. I've even carefully cleared a space in my underwear drawer for them, which involved taking everything else out and dumping in at the back of the wardrobe in a strategically managed lump.

Nothing. Not a peep. Not even the minging beige ones with pink flowers on them. Nada. I am still knickerless (relatively, not absolutely).

So, Borrowers; this is a message to you, in case you've worked out how to read this blog. Return my knickers, or I will get my mum on you. And she's already got one hand bandaged up; she's got nothing to lose my smashing up the other one as well.

Borrowers

I think I have Borrowers; tiny little people who live under my floorboards or perhaps behind my fridge or perhaps in my sink drain (something is blocking it), and come into my house when I am asleep and take away small things they think I don`t need and won`t notice. Things like needles and pins and socks and bits of thread and hair elastics and hair pins. Things that I buy, and I buy, and I buy, and yet I never seem to have, even though there should be thousands of them somewhere in my house. Which I wouldn`t mind, except that – as they don`t ask me for them first and they certainly don`t give them back – they are less `Borrowers,` and more `Stealers.`

These little thieves, however, have recently gotten a little ambitious. Whereas I will reluctantly keep buying hair pins and hair elastics for the rest of my life – until I get fed up of it and shave my head to spite them – I can`t very well do that with my house keys. I have no idea what they want my house keys for – perhaps they`re sick of waiting to run in behind me when I open the door in the evening – but they`ve nabbed them and snuck them to whichever part of the house they are luxuriating in (a tower constructed entirely of different coloured cigarette lighters, I would imagine).

“Awesome,” they will have said to each other, dragging the keys along the floor behind them and wondering what they are going to do with my massive, fluffy Hello Kitty keyring (“a kitsch Japanese sofa?”). “We can now come and go as we please,” they will have said, and been very pleased with their new `borrowing` (theft). Except that they seem to have forgotten that they can come and go as they please anyway now, because I have no keys with which to lock my house and therefore have to leave my door open at all times, which would be a problem if I didn`t live in Nichinan.

Which I wouldn`t mind so much, but this obviously gave them a taste for keys and they decided to increase their collection; a few days later my car keys also went missing. I can only assume that they are currently building a very tall car seat and some kind of long stick so that – between the group of them – they can navigate the steering wheel, use the breaks and `borrow` my car to go on little trips to the countryside where they can steal milk and apples and whatnot (just like my mum used to do; they called it "scrumping" to make it sound more cute and less illegal).

This also wouldn`t be so much of a problem – I trashed the house looking for them, failed to find them, cleaned the house back up and then used the spare keys to get to work – but I draw the line at them taking my knickers.

They took my knickers in Yokohama: them or another set of similar borrowers.

“It`s not Borrowers,” my ex-boyfriend would explain every time I told him that little people were stealing my underwear. “It`s perverts walking past your washing while you`re at work.”
“Are you sure it`s not Borrowers?” I said.
“I`m sure it`s not Borrowers.”
"Are you sure it`s not you?"
"I`m sure it`s not me. I don`t want anything to do with them."
“But they`re taking an awful lot of them.”
“Yes, somebody has a lot of your pants. They`re probably selling them on the internet. Stop drying them outside.”
“But.... why?”
“Three words; we`re in Japan.”
And we were both lost in silence for a few minutes, thinking of all of the strange and wonderful things those three words, in fact, cover.
“I still think I`ve got borrowers,” I insisted eventually, partly because I`d rather have little people living in my bathroom pipes than weird men making money out of my underpants without giving me a cut of the profits, and partly because I`d rather have my clean knickers sniffed by weirdos than dry them inside where they`ll start to smell unsniffable.

It can`t be perverts in Nichinan though: Baba would string anyone who went within ten metres of my knickers on the line next to them, and – trust me – she is always, always watching (sometimes, when I`m feeling antisocial and bad tempered, I creep into my house and keep all the lights off just in case she can see I`m home). So it has to be Borrowers.

God knows what they`re doing with them, though. Cutting them into clothes, using them as bedspreads, hanging them up at the windows as curtains: attaching them to a pole and using it a sail for their summer getaway boat. I`m just glad they`re all Primark and cheap as chips, because the seams should be incredibly easy to pick apart.

It`s hard not to feel a little resentful – unable to lock my door, unable to drive, wearing the same three pairs of knickers in rotation – but I just hope they`ve made the most of my goods. I`d hate to have to borrow them back.

And mum – if you get a chance – a pack of knickers in the post would be lovely. I`ll ask my Borrowers what colours they`d like you to get.

Baba.

I am having a fight with my next door neighbour. It started out as a little battle, and it's now a full blown war. It was foolish, really, and I should have known not to get involved; fighting somebody who has spent 70 years practicing was inevitably going to end up in humiliating defeat. And - predictably - I have just been humiliatingly defeated.

It started, I think, for a few reasons. Firstly, we don't speak a word of the same language, which means that we have to communicate in international gestures. Secondly, the Japanese culture means that you have to retaliate, and you have to do better. Thirdly, we seem to have mutual, unspoken feelings for each other that we are both desperate to express, and no words with which to do it.

First of all, she attacked me with food. Tempura, to be precise. She turned up on my doorstep, willynilly, and handed me a basket of home made, hot, deep fried vegetables and fish that smelled absolutely delicious. And then, to top it off, she made me call her BaBa, which is what little children call their grandmas (Obachan is the more grown up term).

That was the beginning; and I have to make the point at this stage that she started it.

So, to pay her back for the tempura - and not knowing quite how to - I took her a big bunch of flowers. It was a good shot, and she was suitably cowed by my retaliation. She wasn't taking it lying down though; she started knocking on my window to let me know when it was about to rain, and then she delivered the right bags so that I'd know how and when to put my rubbish out.

I wasn't having any of that - obviously - so I picked a bunch of flowers from a field near my house and took them round to her (I'm not very imaginative and I can't cook; so she got flowers twice). Then I got home from work and discovered that she had saved my washing from a rain storm by climbing up onto my step and taking it into her house, and then drying it and ironing it for me, and I had no option: I had to make sure she never, ever did it again by inviting her and her husband (Gigi: grandpa) to my house party with a little note that had balloons drawn all over it.

BaBa and Gigi were so utterly furious that I had invited them into my home when none of the other gaijin had after two years, that they turned up with a table, cushions, sake, umeshu and six home cooked dishes: including chicken nanban, the local speciality. Then they tried to cheer me in public, just to really, really piss me off.

I spent an hour or two writing a letter to them in Japanese (I got somebody to help me, obviously), but BaBa - who has a good forty five years more experience than me - had obviously decided that she was totally fed up with all this nonsense and she was going to finish the war once and for all. Today, when I got home from work, she called me rather aggressively into her house and plonked into my arms the most beautiful, raw silk, pale pink kimono that - it transpired, through hand gestures - that she had made specifically for me because of my blonde colouring and because she knows that I love them (I have one hanging on my living room wall because they are the most beautiful clothes in the world).

"Presento," she said, which would be the only word we have exchanged thus far that both of us understand: mainly because it's the same in both English and Japanese.

I don't know what to do now. I thought I was warring nicely - half obeying the ancient Japanese gift tradition (Omiyage), and half giving her things because I genuinely think she's awesome and want to show her it somehow, and I like giving presents - but I'm not quite sure how to respond to a handmade, specifically designed, silk kimono. Somehow I don't think giving her flowers for the third time is going to cut it.

I feel a little guilty because I don't need another grandma - I already have the best one back in England (still eating birthday cake) - but I think my own Baba will be pleased that there is somebody like her in Japan, looking out for me and my washing when I am so far away.

Now I just need to think of something that will knock this old lady next door out of the water, once and for all.

I don't give up battles that easily. Especially not when I'm fighting grandmas.