Hello, my name is Saga. You can call me...(long pause)...Saga

That's one of the few gems that I had to listen to at the orientation session the other night. Exciting stuff. My favourite was the prophetic -

Do not stare into the neighboring houses. Japanese people are upset when a stranger looks into their houses.

Good to know. Because in Australia, our favourite pasttime is pressing our faces against the windows, breathing heavily, and watching the people within. But with us being foreigners and all, the Japanese feel it's necessary to point this out. It reminds me of the time that mum came to Japan, and we went down to the old Emperor's palace to do our touristy bit. Our tour guide, a lady who was constantly waving an ugly big yellow umbrella above her head, told us not to scratch the moss or the wood pillars...

Never would doing something like that have occured to either mum or me, so we then felt obliged to run up to a wood pillar everytime she turned her back, and scratch the shit out of them. Now that I've been prohibited from staring into the neighboring houses, well...