You may have won today, Japan....

In response to Sarah's second post from yesterday, here's the scoreboard so far:

Me vs. Japan

Public Transport: Draw. The trains and I have an understanding. It's the buses that I need to whip into shape.

Shopping: Japan. Unless there's pictures or it's a product for children (=no kanji) I have no idea what I'm buying.

Food: Me. I've only found two things that I don't like (some pickled green stuff and fishy sauce) and believe me, there's been plenty of things not to like.

TV: Dude, there's no contest. Japan. More on that later.

Plumbing: Me. It was a hard fight, but I prevailed. Today I took a hot shower (40 C, to be exact) without turning on the tub. Just so you understand, this is what it looks like:
although to be fair, the tub did start while I was taking the picture.

So as of this morning, the score was tied at 2-2. But today Japan struck a mighty blow in the form of safety training.

I'm sure you've all watched some horrible safety videos at some point in your lives. They all have truly horrible acting and several summarizing points at the end that are really, really obvious. Like in high school chemistry, "Don't have a snowball fight with liquid nitrogen." or "Johnny shouldn't have pipetted the hydrochloric acid with his mouth. Now he'll never taste again." So, imagine that for 5 hours.

The Japanese government has decided that anyone who works with or near sources of radiaiton must go through this training, i.e. watch these videos. What I find fascinating is that they don't care - at all - whether you pay attention or even understand at all. The first three hours of the videos were all in Japanese. Someone actually told me that it was just a ritual you have to go through, and several others suggested that I just take a nap. It didn't come to that, but I did spend about ten minutes watching the cat drama. (There were some cats in the field outside...they sniffed each other and hunted butterflies...did cat stuff...)

On the plus side, I did have a translator present for the lecture and mini-labs, and the test was given in English. The government regulations did come in an English version, although I think I may be the proud owner of the only hard copy of the regulations specific to SPring-8 in English.

So Japan, you've proven yourself a powerful and mysterious foe, but you haven't seen the last of me yet! Bwahahahahaahah!




PS. This is one of the reasons why Japan also wins the TV category. I may have to devote a whole post to the subject later on.
This is part of a show where you can win one million yen by playing hide-and-go-seek in your own house with these people.