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I¡Çve found myself doing a lot of reading lately.The cold weather and lack of insulation in my house has driven me to seek refuge in coffee shops. This is a bit trickier then it sounds. The stylish cafés along the waterways close around 8:00 at the latest. The staff at Starbucks start to hover around you around 10:00 until you become uncomfortable enough to leave, and Detour shuts its doors at around the same time.

Given my stringent after-work routine it¡Çs close to 9:00 by the time I arrive at Katamachi. I still fancy myself as a starving college student and as such refuse to spend 400 yen on a cup of tea at a place where I can only linger for an hour or so. This leaves me one option:

The grandfather of Dunkin Donuts

Mister Donuts is the largest donut chain in Japan. Their claim to fame (in my mind, anyway) is that they offer free refills on coffee and café ole. For Japan, this is huge. You can¡Çt even get a free refill at McDonald¡Çs (obesity problem solved!) and family restaurants charge a stiff fee for access to their ¡Èdrink bar.¡É In hindsight a family restaurant would be just as good of a place to lounge the night away on the cheap, but I can¡Çt break myself away from Katamachi¡Çs magical social gravity.

Walking around Katamachi reminds me of the arcade in Westland mall back in my senior year of high school. If there weren¡Çt already people you knew when you arrived, you could count on someone dropping in for a game or two of DDR before long. The ultimate passive social network. The best Saturday nights start at Mister Donuts when people you know happen by after your 4^th cup of coffee or on your way to pick up your bike parked in front of the Tatemachi McDonald¡Çs.

Kanazawa is small, in a good way.

A lot of people (mainly natives of the region) tell me how people from Kanazawa are particularly reserved and cautious of strangers, but this train of thought runs parallel to the Japanese Have Longer (Or is it Shorter?) Intestines and Can¡Çt Digest Meat Properly Express. If I had to argue for their case I would say that people are comparatively morose due to the lack of sunshine and unyielding precipitation, but I¡Çve found people to be extremely accommodating!

Being blindsided willy-nilly is not without its disadvantages. Sometimes you just aren¡Çt in the mood to see anyone and just want to study in silence, hence being at a coffee shop alone save for your book. Sometimes you don¡Çt want to run into that person. A more likely scenario for me is that you don¡Çt know who the hell they are. Oh yeah, you¡Çve seen them, chatted a bit, exchanged names and handshakes. But when it comes down to it I can¡Çt put a name on the face, much less remember the face!

If only I had my mask I could get by without such intrusions

Case in point:

There was a well-publicized party at APRE (groan) last weekend where I met someone who I had gone to Karaoke with. Except I couldn¡Çt remember their name. Or that I went to Karaoke with them. And this wasn¡Çt more then a month prior!

This continued for most of the night until I stopped making eye contact with suspiciously familiar characters. I know where all the missile tanks are in Super Metroid but I can¡Çt remember a name? Jesus Christ.

I¡Çve found that if I smile and make a self-depreciating comment people let this casual affront slide. But it happens so much that it¡Çs starting to bother me. But not enough to seriously bother me. Just enough so that my cheeks reflexively flush and I go home to write about it in my blog.

There are too many people in the world!

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