I am grateful that my travels have given me the opportunity to ponder and experiment with one of the main topics I want to explore: friendship. What does it mean to be a friend? Are there criteria? Who chooses the criteria? Who judges the fitness? Is it a completely mutual process (do all parties have to agree on terms in order to move forward)? Or can one person decide that their relationship constitutes friendship and act accordingly? Is it really so shameful if intimacy is assumed too soon? Or is it worth taking the risk for fear of losing opportunities? Is being considered a friend ever truly an insult? Or conversely, is it always a compliment to be treated as a friend? (more…)
Archive for the ‘Tokyo’ Category
Killing time with creativity
2010 -
07.25
So I am basically waiting around until that company tells me if I got either of the two jobs I am in the running for. One of them is in the mountains hours away from Tokyo, so I’m hoping it’s the other one, but who knows. I should hear by Wednesday, and then training is just 2.5 weeks after that.
The good new is that my writer’s block, which has been in place since 1998, has begun to lift and I suddenly have at least 3 projects I’m working on: a silly rewrite of Pirates of Penzance that involves a Pirate Queen and a kickass Mabel, an autobiography, and a sci-fi/fantasy about ‘real’ inner children. The last two may be woven into one story, if I can manage to figure out how to balance factual authenticity and elemental truth. I also have some poetry and songs and music and visual art things rambling about up there, too. An anime might just be the perfect medium to blend all of this into.
It feels so good to be in this place again. When I was in high school it was assumed by a lot of people that I would end up as a professional creative writer, but, like my singing I never had the confidence or sense of refinement that would have allowed me to integrate feedback or to really polish a work of art into something I felt was, not finished, but settled into itself. It feels really right for me to be revving up my art-side again. I fear the power of this side of me; my talent and what I could communicate and share. It’s shocking when I get a glimpse of my own freed imagination, but hey, I said this journey is all about dis-inhibiting myself, so here goes.
And I think this is only partially related to losing my PDA as this process had already started a couple weeks ago, but hey, who knows.
I lost my itouch!
2010 -
07.24
I am so pissed and sad! I even heard it fall out of it’s pocket and hit the door of the taxi as I was getting in, but at the time I thought it was just my backpack hitting the door. I realized it was missing like 1 minute later because I had just been reading a book on it and wanted to get back to it. I looked everywhere in the taxi, and when I got to my hostel and couldn’t find it, I asked the taxi driver to take me back to the train station and he wouldn’t! I was shocked! So I had to track down another taxi, but when I got there it wasn’t on the ground. I found a police officer and went through the process of getting someone who spoke English on the phone, walking around trying to find the police station and filing a report. Hopefully whoever picked it up will contact me by the email address that is on the wallpaper, but I made it decorative, and I’m afraid the amount of English might intimidate someone and they won’t see the email address. I don’t know.
I used that thing a million times every day, for reading books and playing games, taking notes that are now gone, using the map app to find my way around and, of course, my entire music collection. My laptop doesn’t have the music on it, either- it’s only on the hard drive with my friend in Boston. and i just downloaded robot unicorn attack on it, too! :P
hopefully my travel insurance will reimburse me, but as it was essentially my fault, I’m not sure.
~~~~~~~ additional~~~~~~~~~
After thinking about why this has affected me so much, I realized that the itouch was the only consistent thing that I interacted with every day, and shared my experiences with, really. In a sense, I think it was a surrogate friend to me in that it was the object that I sent my attention toward in each event each day. Without my itouch to ‘talk to’, sudden loneliness came over me as the shield of knowing my distance from my loved ones dissolved. Knowing this, I am feeling a lot better about the loss- at least I understand why I was kicking myself so hard for losing it. Perhaps it was anger at myself for choosing to leave my loved ones behind for this journey, which I still probably haven’t properly mourned. My social life has always been somewhat of a paradox, having been used to isolation as a child and yet still loving human intimacy so much. Being alone in Japan without my close friends is going to be harder on me than I realized. As I start to let in not seeing them for so long, the dream of living internationally starts to lose its lustre a bit. I’ve only been away for two months so far. It’s not always a longing for them, an emotion of missing them… rather it is like a hole in myself, and I can feel along the boundaries that something is missing, those little moments of fellowship that filled my days in Boston. I hadn’t known how much those would mean to me, especially as I was used to be alone for so long during my foundational years. During that time, I had my dog, Ginger, who was my best friend and, although brilliant for a dog, was simple enough to project my companionship needs on to. I did a similar thing with my baby siblings, too. Did I do something similar with my PDA? It makes me laugh to think so, and yet being without it there is a semblance of that same loss.
Well, at least it gives me an excuse to get the new iPhone when I buy a cell phone for Japan!
Must resist exploding all rugby…
2010 -
07.06
I am so hungry. I am also going to kill the giant 24+ british rugby team that has been here the whole time i’ve been. they’re so loud (until 4am), they trash the place (to the extent that the damages they have to pay are ‘less than kyoto’, which implies they go from place to place detraying things) and completely the most unabashed misogynistic and homophobic and racist utterly low people i have ever personally seen in action. i’m guessing they are all in college, so suddenly i am appreciating the maturity of my college friends. i have no idea why they are in japan because all they seem to want to do is ’shag Jap birds’ and then complain about STDs. i know way more about their habits than i should by sitting here in the common area on my computer. they are so loud, they are an entire pub all by themselves, and my ears ring when they shout at each other. i just cover my ears when there is a goal on FIFA. they went out to drink, and have now come back with six packs of beer each. please tell me this isn’t a british guy thing… it makes me appreciate my resident british guy 400% more than i already do! but, they have food, so i am jealous. *drinks more tea*
It’s not authentic if I don’t post about the bad stuff, too.
2010 -
07.05
ug. today sucks. i am hiding in the common floor of the hostel i stayed at this weekend hoping they don’t notice that i checked out this morning so I can use their wifi and sleep on the couch for a couple days until my next paycheck posts. i have $20 to my name but i can’t take out the money because the smallest denomination in the ATM is more than i have in my account. so i literally have no money (a couple bucks in change) and the only food i have left is 1 piece of bread and some PB and jam. so i have been applying for every job i can find but none of them would start now, anyway (they all start the last week of august). i don’t know how i’m going to have money after 2 more weeks when my unemployment runs out. i’m pretty scared. and the WWOOF season is pretty full, too, so the hosts i have been spamming can’t take me either, which would be a free way to hang out until i get hired, and then i could just spend my last unemployment check on transportation… ug, but i would need transportation to the job, too. sucks. the money ‘wasted’ on china is really going to bite me in the ass. and i still have so much to learn about shoestringing it but have no time for a learning curve. i don’t really know how to do this all above board, but many of the people i respect for their vagabonding are somewhat ethically grey pragmatists, so maybe i just need to stop being so puritan about it. not sure yet, but i am going to need to get creative. maybe it will just suck for these 2 days and then i will have another check that i can do better with. but only 2 more left after that. also, i have no interview clothes. i really hope i can get a job, otherwise i am going to have to… come home? i don’t think there is anywhere else i am more employable than here right now. again, sucks.
to kill time i have spent this weekend rewatching Evangelion, and am now catching up on the movies that were relased after the series, the last one just this year. there are posters all over the place for it, so i feel like i am catching up on the big thing in japan right now. however, this anime is one of the darkest, most distressing, overhaul by trauma pieces of media ever created, so my mood is very possibly being dragged into the land of melancholy by all the existential issues surfacing. but last night i wrote a very clear piece of prose on my old relationship, which, given that the theme of Evangelion could be considered as the boundaries between hearts and bodies and souls, seemed apt. so melancholy usually gives me permission to let in my own thoughts on topics that i can’t face in the day to day, so it is useful to me. and i’m not despairing, for all that i have reason to. i’m in japan, and i haven’t died yet with all the bad stuff i’ve gone through, so I will manage to work this out is some weird, sequoia-esque way as usual. i just don’t know what it’s going to look like yet and that has me nervous. i wish i could have more control than i have, but i think i have literally applied to every TEFL position posed on the web at this point, but i’m looking for more.
the good news is, the more creative i get at surviving in japan with no money, the more real adventures i will have, and the more interesting my blog will be. so you have that to look forward to.
time to think about what services are in place for baka gaijin who run out of money…
Started applying for TEFL jobs yesterday…
2010 -
07.03
and I have an interview tomorrow at noon! It’s just a screening interview with a recruiter, but it’s for the area where that beach I like is from, so that would be awesome if it were near the coast. Farther away from Tokyo than I would like, but I’m figuring out that I am probably going to have to choose between beach and big city. Wish me luck!
Media Section has Pictures and a Video!
2010 -
06.29
In staying overnight at a net cafe, I finally had enough internet time to upload everything! Please enjoy!
Japan totally wins…
2010 -
06.24
the potential residence contest compared to China. I have been here 3 hours and I feel so much calmer, it’s amazing. Even understanding 1% more language makes all the difference, being less intimidated by reading the characters, and being able to be polite with the majority of the struggle being courage to open my mouth and not the complete lack of memory about what to say… not to mention the infinitely cleaner environs and familiar styles of advertisements and mannerisms… its almost like I got to go home for a break. the stress flowing off me is palpable, and will be helped by a trip to the local onsen this evening. I’m going to take a day, probably, to check out tokyo, and then get my ass to the beach, pronto. Also, I didn’t sleep last night, so a lot of that is going to happen, too.