This week's writing exercise

Katherine came up with it: write about some complaint you have about Japanese life in general, using any form of the verb "to be" only twice and the noun "milkshake" exactly once. Below is my attempt at satire.
-----------------------------------
My biggest complaint about life in Japan: there simply aren’t enough Japanese people around. True. Non-Japanese people pervade all aspects of my so-called “Japanese” life. Every morning, a bus-full of Chinese migrant computer workers get in the way of my parking spot. Every evening I hear the Thai-ish goings-on of my next door neighbors through the nori-thin walls. My drinking buddies on weekends consist of Yanks, Brits, Canucks and other varieties of English-speaking boozers. Show up at an AJET party or JET orientation event? The same English-speaking fools, harmlessly jolly in a very un-Nippon way. My fellow students at the Wednesday Japanese class? Malaysian, Singaporean, Brazilian, and not a single daughter/son of Yamato. In my three months here I have yet to have a proper conversation with a proper Japanese person. Where do I have to go in Japan to find these people?

Some of you, less knowledgeable in Japanese culture and language, may mistake the people you see everyday and their nonsensical utterances as Japanese. But not me. I have taken a full semester of Japanese language prior to my coming here, and I have watched countless Japanese movies and anime—in Japanese with English subtitles, mind you! With the above qualifications I can assure you that the gibberish out of these people’s mouths, be them supermarket cashiers, your co-workers, or the ojisan behind the ramen counters, hardly resemble the Japanese under which I was schooled. Just the other day, I got lost trying to find the milkshake shop, thinking that I might meet some Japanese people there. I asked a woman on the street for directions, and she tried to fool me into thinking that she spoke Japanese with five minutes and three paragraphs of jabberwocky, when I know enough Japanese to know that a simple “あそこです。“ will do. Nice try lady, but no mochi.

If you have sighted a Japanese person during your stay, please contact me immediately.