Breakfast

Half of a cake made from apple and sweet potato (the whole cake was 714 yen). Jasmine tea.

Lunch

The second half of the apple cake.

Afternoon

Three Cissy-made waffles with baked-in banana slices.

Dinner

Cissy cooked chicken filets (spiced with some herbs and lemons) and green paprica (combined material cost around 300 yen). A piece of chocolate pie (100 yen). Some sour jelly gums.

Night

During the 9 o'clock movie (The Faculty, viciously cut for time, I hate TV) a pack of potato chips (120g, 180 yen)

When I first came to Japan I had never had a mobile phone and had never wanted one. However, having such a contraption is almost a necessity here, and frankly, quite convenient. So one of the first things I did during my second coming was to get a prepaid phone (since the stay was short I could not get involved with a lengthy contract obligation), and I use that same phone until today, which puts me on the way to become the owner of the oldest handset in Japan. There is no reason to switch from prepaid to contract, because with my usage patterns (basically only to receive calls) prepaid is fantastically cheap (1500 yen/month). So far, I have also stubbornly resisted the pressure to upgrade for any of the nice features that Japanese phones are so famous for. I have none of the following: colour display, dial tone polyphony, Internet access, email, digital camera, music player, GPS (including live map display and route guidance), TV reception, English-language user interface, games, Java, dictionary.

But this week I was tempted to get the latest innovation, mainly because it is just too weird to not want to have it: Sanyo introduced a new handset at the beginning of this year which you do not have to hold to your ear to listen. Instead you can press it against any bone in your head, which will cause vibrations in your skull that allow you to hear voices in your head. I ended up not buying it after all, because

• it would have been quite expensive for me to keep my number,
• it did not work all that well. You have to shut out normal hearing (which is fine if you work on a construction site and wear one of those protective headsets, but otherwise completely negates the usability gain) and even then, the volume was quite low (probably higher volumes would be unhealthy, who knows),
• the look of the handset is not so great,
• and finally, going from Sony to Sanyo does not feel like an upgrade, really (I am becoming kind of a brand person, at least in electronics).