Garbage update

I made sure I was out on the balcony at 8 a.m., hoping to run into the day's sandwich deliverer. It was Hsiao, who made fun of my bare feet. I had put some cans of er ... Strong Zero in a translucent bag and placed it inside the mesh bag as instructed. I held up a convenience store (conbini) bag containing regular trash. He said to place it on the ground near the mesh bag. Hey, this isn't so hard.

Receiving the sandwich (so far it's been egg salad with little fried medallions of ... something, plus a small dessert ― candy mushrooms with green-tea caps, Crispy Crunch slivers, fruit-and-chocolate bites shaped like incense cones), I say "itadakimasu" ("humbly received"), which I just learned yesterday and have been practicing all morning. You are supposed to say this to your waitress, your chef ― anyone who has prepared food for you. Can't believe it has taken me this long to learn this; it's basic etiquette.

I point to the window on the ground floor of the adjacent building where clanging and "bong-bong" sounds emanate every morning from 7 to 7:05.

"Buddhist?" I inquire.

"Shukyo (religion)," he says. "Tenrikyo."

I rush inside to look it up. The noisy folks are adherents of a new religion. They believe that a woman they call "Oyasama" is a conduit for divine truth. Cool, cool.