japan

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Japanese society may be extremely rigid and unforgiving in many ways.

But it’s also kind of extremely understanding and welcoming to all kinds of kinks, weirdness, and otaku-ness. Especially when it comes to making money from all the said kinks and otaku-ness. Which means it’s pretty easy for people who are into some specific things (sometimes harmlessly weird, sometimes outright wrong…from having full arena concerts for holographic anime characters instead of real singers and to all kinds of fetish sex places, including common pubs where you can pay to touch women’s breasts all you like) to find a niche and fellow-minded people to realize their wishes and live true to their weirdness.

It’s a land of contrasts, and I think what makes it special is that you can find your own niche of extreme here, your own safe place, be it the clean places where everyone follows social rules or the underground places where everyone goes to enjoy breaking them very explicitly, and you can choose the world you’d rather live in here.

I, admittedly, land on the rather rigid side, and the weird places and things people do I sometimes hear about still blow my mind from time to time.

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Ordered a very overpriced late lunch on Uber Eats and realised I should have chosen McDonald’s.
They have a Hawaiian phase there now, with very good garlic shrimp burgers, pancakes with delicious caramel&macademian nuts butter, and vrry nice spicy new sauce for the nugs. I’m not a fan of McDonald’s and can stay away for months and not think of it once, but these spacial limited-time menus they get there from time to time are sometimes just pure genius.

The stuff I see on Ubet Eats sure looks pretty, buth both times that I tried it, the food itself felt worse than what I can usually get from my usual food delivery places, and definely didn’t match its pretty high price.

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I don’t like summer. The heat and humidity drive me to panic attacks, and make me want to stay inside for months. If I lived somewhere cold when summers were short and summer nights were cool, I’m sure it would be different.

But there is one thing about the Japanese summer that has gotten under my skin. It’s the cicadas’ songs. I don’t like summer, but when I lie in bed and listen to the familiar melodies of the Japanese cicadas outside that sing of summer heat, the world feels right.

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If I could live in Japanese society/culture but in Scandinavian (or even UK) climate and population density (and distance from Europe where my family is), I’d be the happiest person, I think.

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I’ve been avoiding using Uber Eats and instead relying on the more organisation-based food delivery services because there’s a certain comfort in the illusion of the ‘professionalism’ they afford. As in, the delivery people are people who do it as a job, and feel a bit more reliable.

I’ve decided to try it, because with this virus business there are now lots of very interesting restaurants to be found in the Uber Eats database that I probably wouldn’t found otherwise.

I tried.

The short version: It got delivered to wrong building. I had to go out and sneak into the next building to pick up a bag in front of some stranger’s door. Since I contacted the support before I found it, the Uber Eats support refunded me full price of the order and added a 500yen(almost $5) coupon. I now feel very uncomfortable, because even though it is a correct move on their part, I didn’t want the refund because I still got to eat the food.

The long version: There were some system problems with entering my address—it kept not showing and I tried re-entering in couple of different ways. In the end I made sure I entered all important information somewhere.

I also selected the option to have the food left in front of my door. Which is logical in the current times, but might have been a big mistake.

Our building has locked entrance, so unless the delivery person is let in by someone else entering/exiting, he would have to ring my room to be let in. I expected him to ring me anyway.

Instead, while I was waiting for the doorbell, suddenly I received the notification that the order was delivered and done. I went to look outside my door: nothing. I got my shoes and went down to see if he could’ve left in the lobby: nothing. I looked around the floor to see if it’s in from of any other doors: nothing.

I was already beginning to suspect what happened, because, unfortunately, there are buildings 1 and 2, with the same name, next to each other, and I live in the building 2. I looked over at the building 1 (because both buildings are in the ’empty square shape’ and you can see through), but I couldn’t see all the doors on the floor to say for sure. Besides, with exception for some taxi drivers, no delivery person ever made this mistake, as far as I know, because the tenants’ names are displayed on the rooms and mail boxes.

I contacted the UberEats support saying that the order wasn’t delivered. I then saw that the driver had uploaded the photo of the delivery and realised that he really must’ve delivered it to the next building and just left it in front of the door. I walked to the next building imagining if I’ll have to ring the person who lives in the room with the same number as I and ask them if they have food in front of their door. However, luckily for me, the building 1 doesn’t have the same locked entrance as we do, so I was able to just walk into the building, take the elevator to the same floor, and find the paper bag with my food in front of stranger’s door.

I brought the food home and messaged the support again, saying that I have solved the problem and found the food myself in the wrong building. I sent in the ‘evaluation’, and while I put the honest negative for the delivery to a wrong place, I still added a tip…well, because he did actually deliver and uploaded the picture of it.

A few minutes later the support wrote me back that they have refunded the full price of the order, and added a complementary coupon, and are very sorry for all the inconvenience. They ‘looked into the situation’ and found out that the delivery guy completed the delivery without the following proper instructions, and while they won’t fire him, they will make sure he won’t be making same mistakes again.

Thing is, this whole situation left me very uncomfortable. While, logically speaking, they are probably right to do it this way from the business point of view, because he did make a mistake of not making sure he delivered to the correct address and not contacting me (I don’t know if he ever rang the door bell in the other building)… I really would rather not get refund since I did get the food and he did actually deliver it, even if he made a mistake.

I may have a habit of glorifying people a bit too much when I don’t know them. As in, in my head, I actually imagine someone who tried to earnestly do the fob, believing he’d done everything correctly, and then receiving contact from the company saying that I told them he didn’t deliver the stuff and he won’t get paid because he made a mistake. And I don’t like it.

I hope at least the restaurant won’t have to be involved (not that I was completely satisfied with their delivery either, though) and UberEats will cover the price, instead of taking it out either of the restaurant or the driver.

The reason I wrote this long rambly post is that the feelings I have on this issue don’t really match with what I feel like I should be feeling.

What I probably should be feeling is relief that I don’t need to pay for this overpriced and stressful meal. The delivery person made a mistake. The mistake was avoidable, but he didn’t take steps to avoid it.

What I actually feel, is guilt for involving all these people (the restaurant, the delivery person, the UberEats people in general) and making their day worse by deciding to order food I didn’t really need that much. It feels like it wasn’t even 100% the delivery guy’s fault, because of the whole situation with two buildings and fact that I didn’t want to interact with people and requested the ‘leave in front of the door’ delivery. It also feels like it was me who should’ve taken more steps to ensure there was less margin for error for other people.

I also wasted 3 hours of my Sunday on processing this issue and it feels like a fail all way through.

…If I ever use Uber Eats again, I’ll have to remember to add a ‘make sure it’s the correct building’ to the notes.

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Fun fact:
I’m too lazy to look up the exact ‘anti-smoking’ law that was passed recently, but
On the scale of our company (around 1800 people?), in accordance with it, all smoking areas on the premises will be removed before April of 2020, no smoking areas will be established going forward, and people won’t be allowed to smoke anywhere inside or outside the company (since you’re also not allowed to smoke on the street). Anywhere.

So, factually, smoking people will not have a single option to smoke since the moment they arrive at work until the moment they leave 9-10 hours (at least) later.

(including all kinds of electronic and vaping smoking devices)

I have a strong suspicion you won’t be allowed to smoke anywhere except inside your own house very soon in this country.

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Oh Kojima-san…

Coming out on the stage in gamescofm discussing how Norman Reedus’s dick can be used as a weapon and a tool to connect the fractured world.

Also,

he kind of went from being mysterious and showing stuff that was ambiguous and impossible to interpret, to showing and saying too much about spoilery character settings all at once.

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And summer ‘vacation’ is gone.

With regards to the to do list, I’ve managed only the web page design update. Mostly.

Also, got back to OmmWriter in an attempt to rewrite the Prologue to the main ‘Chronicles’ series…and realised that, since it’s about to go over 10,000 words, I probably shouldn’t really be calling it just a ‘prologue’ anymore.

(Also, found out that I own at least 6 pairs of shoes I have never worn more than once…likely bought in a wrong size because I wasn’t able to handle being in the store. Trying to get rid of them using Merucari app now. In order to prevent the repeat of this in the future, I do believe I will now mostly only buy shoes using Amazon Wardrobe option (tried once, worked great). Because, apparently, unless we are talking about boots, I can spend 2 hours in a store trying on various shoes just, trying find a pair that will fit and won’t hurt (everything hurts), and still only get something in a wrong size and a skull-crushing and stomach-turning migraine from just being in the store…)

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The bad: Had to go to work in the middle of summer holidays, right on the next days after I got back from the airport in the evening.

The good: Managed to finish everything in 1 day, instead of 2.

The good: Didn’t have to turn on the lights in the office with no one else there and it was great. The best.

The bad: The people who passed by did believe it necessary to ask me if I just didn’t know how to turn them on.

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While I love to pretend like I couldn’t be happier about escaping the chaos, the buzz, the heat, and the air pressure, and all the ‘too much’ things about the overcrowded megalopolis city I live and work in, the first thing I notice when I reach one of the small towns I like to go hide in, is that I have very little ability left to deal with little things about living and being outside without the anonymity the state of being one speck of sand in the overflowing sandbox that is Tokyo provides.

I’m making this about more than it is.

I just can’t really handle the difference in amount of human attention you draw just by existing in a small town, and the way that difference feels on my skin when I say, enter a cafe.

And the fact that there are no easy chain coffee shops where I can pop in, quickly buy a few giant cups to go and haul them back to my room to read and write in peace nowhere in the vicinity is throwing me more than it should.

I’m too used to have a selection of various coffee shops on every corner… And now I need to gather courage before I can enter a new kind of place.

In fact, I wonder if I even can discover a place where I can get a coffee to go at all around here at all…