living with ghosts

my apartment building is only half full. like many residential buildings in japan, it's pretty small: 12 apartments. in the year i've lived here, i've only run into another person inside the building maybe 15 times. i hear doors open and close, locks turn, air conditioners run, but it's like people are slipping in and out, creeping around corners and up stairs, dissolving into wet shoe prints.
i don't mind; i like the quiet, and i can see by the laundry hanging outside that there's someone around, but at times it has drawbacks. i discovered one tonight when i came home from work. as the elevator door yawned open, i came face-to-face with seven hungry spiders who had built a network of webs over the elevator door and into the hall! they must've started this afternoon after i left for work, and clearly no one else had been that way since. i seriously considered taking the elevator back down and coming up the stairs instead.
in mie i became desensitized to spiders, but after a year of not seeing them, my natural disgust has returned. instead of avoiding them, i did a careful sweep of the doorway with my orange juice bottle and then scurried low and fast under the horrible ceiling.

incidentally, the first time i did run into someone was last october, two months i after i had moved in. i was wearing this:


and carrying these:


not really the first impression i was hoping for. halloween isn't celebrated in japan, so...i'm not sure what he thought of me. my costume was after japan's endlessly inventive decorative lunches called "decoben," meaning decorative bento.




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