wednesday. i meant to post more on wednesday. but i forgot to buy electricity. again. another romantic candle-lit evening for one, making your absence all the more present. jan. we spent a whole day together on wednesday. i was half an hour late and half an hour early. she always amazes me. she is in her mid-sixties and usually works seven days a week, traveling all over china for her job on the weekend. i found out she studied japanese for three years and she recently applied for a job in a small town near sapporo. she’s interested in ainu culture. she says the people she knows in japan are not into art and culture so it is difficult to find people to take her to museums when she is there. she feels japanese are less into their own culture than the chinese. this makes her sad. she took me to hip bellagio restaurant across the street from her house. we shared crispy fried doufu. she has funny hair. it’s shaved at the bottom all the way round and she ties the rest up into a short ponytail on the top of her head. her hair is white with strands of grey. it’s hard to imagine her with different hair. she gets lonely sometimes. she prefers loneliness in china to loneliness in australia. we went to the toy market together. i was her bargain girl. i’m really good when i’m buying for other people. we bought tiny toy cars, a wooden domino choo-choo train, a wooden calendar, a suspension bridge, wooden shoes to practice tying your laces, a horse, a wooden bottle game, a wooden chocolate cake and a wooden strawberry cookie baking set. and i bought london bridge for myself to use in class. when we got back to her house i asked her if i could stay another five minutes to look at the cookie baking set. i love the eggs. they come in a tiny carton of six and you can separate them into an egg white part and an egg yolk part. i forgot. but she mentioned it again. she was teaching ‘i get tired of’ because she says it all the time. and a four-year-old says: “i get tired of japan”.