Look On My Curtains, Ye Mighty, And Despair

Occasionally I suffer from urges of a kind not stereotypically experienced by heterosexual males. A couple weeks ago, for instance, I was overcome with a sudden loathing for our curtains. Inspired by my recent ode to the Manila Airport Hotel, I could not for one minute longer bear to look at the translucent yellow shrouds that hung limply over our windows. They'd already been old and ratty when we moved in back in August, and though we'd mused about replacing them forever, we'd never gotten around to it.

Seeing that this repulsion came upon me at about ten o'clock on a lazy Saturday morning, I did the only thing I could: I roused Nana from her sleep (!) and promptly packed her onto her bicycle for a trip to the Nitori.

Nitori is the Japanese Ikea-meets-Bed-Bath-and-Beyond. It's also probably the most Japanese home furnishings store on the face of the planet. Quick, in your head, picture a Japanese home. That's not what they actually look like--who can really afford the space to hide away all that clutter?--but it is what Nitori makes you think yours can look like, if only you buy that second rattan lampshade and that beige stoneware bowl.

Now, I should tell you that I had never before in my life purchased curtains. I did manage to come armed with measurements (in metric! take that, NASA!), but beyond that, I knew nothing. Which is another way of saying that I wasn't even qualified to buy curtains in English, let alone in Japanese.

Nevertheless, the expedition started out as a success. Nana and I found the curtain section, quickly agreed on a pattern we liked, and grabbed some standard sizes, pre-packaged, that would get the job done. No Japanese required!

It turns out, however, that one of our windows is an odd one--double-width, with an awkward height. The only way we were going to cover it was with a custom job, which meant somehow ordering custom curtains, for delivery, entirely in Japanese, when I have a hard enough time ordering dinner at the ramen place, where the options are pretty much limited to ramen, ramen, dumplings, and ramen.

And yet, when plunged into the searing fire, I emerged anew, forged into that timeless hero among the household gods: Justin, the Custom Curtain Orderer (in Japanese).

I'm still not sure how I did it. It involved a lot of pointing and gesturing, followed by emphatic repetitions of the three-digit numbers I'd learned to say only a couple days before. A flash of my gaijin ID (aka "whitey card") was enough to provide my address, and seeing that I learned to tell time in Japanese a three weeks ago, I was more than apt to the challenge of arranging delivery. I did end up with a Nitori "pointo cardo" I don't recall ever asking for (or wanting), but hey, it was free, and you can't win 'em all.

But most importantly: the curtains are up, and they look pretty good. So now my tortured soul can rest at peace.