Companies in Japan Lie to Gaijin

In an office as small as a closet with children’s toys strewn about on the floor I realized I was already thinking about my next chance to run. I’m a daydreamer through and through and every time I find a new place to rest I want to run. I’m restless and unsatisfied but maybe I should explain a bit more.

I recently got another job in Tokyo. I don’t really know what I was thinking, I thought that maybe this time would be different. I thought that this time I wouldn’t find myself constantly disassociating on trains and hyperventilating when I’m alone. It’s our job as humans to keep on seeking the next thing to give us comfort and satisfaction. Maybe some people can be content in their work with just getting by and I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that. That is not for me.

Well let me start by saying that this company lied to me. It’s not surprising given the fact that so many companies in Japan that are hiring “foreigners” for a lack of a better word, are not exactly invested in your best interests. Imagine that. I went through a bunch of less than savory interviews with other companies including being harassed by a man named Rick. 

The funny thing is my gut instinct was telling me that there was something wrong with this company and that it just wouldn’t go the way that I had planned. That’s the problem with plans… they have the ability to fail and in that they are fleeting. But I ended up going through with everything and I thought I was signing up to be an admissions counselor at an actually established K-12 school which is a serious glow up from being an Eikawa (English conversation school) teacher who is as good as garbage nowadays in Tokyo.

Fast forward to my first day on the job. I have made the grueling 90 minute commute and I got sucked up into the human vacuum which I refer to as the morning train in Japan. Toes stepped on, asses touched, elbows in stomachs. It’s like joining a mosh pit every morning except there’s no sick rock music to accompany it, only really pissed off people who will literally fight you to make it to work on time. 

But alas… I made it to the office! The start of something new. Inside the school was another form of chaos which comes in the form of small children with sticky hands. Their screams echoed throughout the school and made my head spin and my stomach churn. Kids are my fucking kryptonite. I got shown off to the second floor were I met the HR manager who seemed to be about 12 years old dressed in jeans and sneakers— a far cry from the monochromatic suits I’ve been used to wearing for almost 2 years.

She then tells me that she’ll be taking me to meet my boss which is at another location. My naive ass thinks that they must just have a separate building for admissions staff, I mean they’re an established school, right? Yeah. No.

We end up at another school completely which is almost a 20 minute walk from the station which anyone from any large city in the world will know is business suicide. This start up school which is a sister school to the company I thought I was joining has a total of 3 students since its opening 6 months ago. You’ve got to be kidding me.

After receiving basically 30 minutes of job training from another scatterbrained individual I would be calling my boss from here on out I was thrown to the wolves making cold calls like it was telemarketing from the early 2000’s. The company thinks that outreach is best achieved through phone calls and generic Facebook posts which to me shows an obvious lack of understanding of basic marketing in 2020. Besides, none of my coworkers know Japanese and they all moved here like 2 minutes ago.

So that’s almost how I came to find myself in a closet sized office staring at the ground disassociating from my reality and probably wishing I were anywhere but here. Prior to the disassociation session I was in a car with one of the school’s executives. He had asked me to come over to sit in on a pitch meeting with a Japanese magazine company. The ride over was painful and he had a driver like he was Mr. Park from Parasite. The Big Boy Boss executive was sitting in the front seat alternating between cracking his knuckles and tapping his foot. I tried my magic skill of disassociation and contemplated jumping out of a moving car and making a run for it.

The representative who came over to pitch to us was a young Japanese man with shaky hands who reminded me of so many of the fresh graduate students that I had seen as an English teacher. He told us this was his first time using business in an English setting. The Big Boss Baby proceeded to fire rounds of questions at him in a heavy Indian accent and at that time I knew it was game over for our young Japanese friend. The Boss Baby started tapping his foot again. I contemplated flipping the table over. 

Every time one of the women in the room tried to raise a question or a valid point boss baby spoke over them because you know— women should just shut the fuck up. I chose to be quiet and emit my strongest bitch energy. If crossed by Boss Baby I knew that I would lose my job and I still need to pay the bills this month.

About 30 minutes into the pitch shaky leg got up and left. He couldn’t even be bothered to stick around for the end. What a cool and friendly guy. The poor Japanese representative was now tripping over his English and he seemed like after this meeting he might go cry in the men’s bathroom.

I walked the Japanese representative to the door and I started chatting with him in Japanese. He seemed immediately relieved to hear me speaking in his language and he told me about how nervous he had been. I told him he did a great job and to not be worried about anything. He smiled.

I felt for him. He was, after all, just a guy trying to do his best. But big boss babies tend to overlook those of us who don’t have personal drivers and a Rolex. That Japanese guy’s anxiety resonated with me because I’ve felt that anxiety for the last 2 years of my life. It really fucking sucks.

After the most unprofessional excuse of a meeting I’ve ever seen we got back into the car. Turns out Mr. Boss Baby has a young daughter who attends the school he manages. 

She begins to speak, “Daddy, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day! Can we—“ She is silenced with a shush.

He’s also a really fun dad it seems and an overall good human being. I’m so glad this clown is paying my salary. When we get back to the school I retreat to the closet sized office where I sit in a toddler chair and begin to disassociate to my monkey brain which has no intelligent thought. 

Like Morrisey said in one of his greatest songs, “In my life, why do I give valuable time to people who don’t care if I live or die?”

I really wanna fucking know why. Why the hell have we created a world in which we waste the greatest amount of time on people who are absolutely useless to the development of our lives? Just for money? Just for survival?

If I was able to spend even half the hours I have spent working on actually working on developing myself as a human I’m sure I’d be much better off than I am now. I just want the chance, the time, the slight opportunity to get myself back on my feet instead of being stressed and bossed around by people whose names I can’t even remember and I don’t even want to remember. 

I want to dedicate my time to my art. My passion. My loved ones. I don’t wanna dedicate my time to board meetings and business emails that will eventually be eroded and forgotten. 

I don’t want to be eroded and forgotten too. 

外人 The Outsider

What does it feel like to be “other”? I guess I never knew until I became the “other one”. The one who is isolated and the one who doesn’t know what to say or what to do. There have been so many times in the last years where I’ve felt like an embarrassment to myself. I’ve also felt like I’ve lost myself. This was the time when we were supposed to find ourselves. We were bright eyed and busy tailed and we thought that everything would be exactly as we imagined. We had no concept of reality and we were selfish. We still are.

I’m not sure where reality exists. Maybe it’s somewhere between the ears on either side of my head. We are often told what we think is what creates our reality. I’m not saying that there isn’t a benefit in therapy and shit if I could still afford it I would be trying it to help myself because I don’t know who the woman in the mirror is. She cries without control. She takes and never gives. On the outside she’s presenting what she hopes is the image of the adult but inside she’s still so scared and quite frankly stupid.

There I was— *record scratch sound* in the middle of an office filled with Japanese people in my stained winter coat that I can’t afford to have dry cleaned. How did I get here? *turns to break the 4th wall* anyways.. how did I get there? If I were a person that didn’t over analyze I wouldn’t have studied the things I did or written the things I did so bear with me.

Anyways, so I was in the middle of an open concept sweat shop that they call a Japanese office in my nasty Calvin Klein jacket. I’m that moment I felt so small even though in comparison I was actually a fucking giant. There it was that “gaijin” feeling. That fucking feeling. You don’t belong and you never will. You don’t belong in our office because you don’t know how to behave. You don’t know how to shut up and follow the rules. You don’t know how to swallow your pride and do the work that no one else wants to do.

You know what’s the funny thing about “gaijin”? The kanji characters itself are 「外人」this literally means “outside person”. Sometimes being “other” is built directly into the language with no interpretation required. And yes I know some of you are thinking, “Well shouldn’t you actually say.. 外国人 (gaikokujin)?” As if this is somehow better.  A slightly more polite version that translates into “outside country person”. Wow. So much better. Sounds great. There’s a reason only dumbass Trump supporters use words like foreigner in 2019. It’s because the language is dated. Our language shapes our world.

So what’s the problem with being an outcast? Haven’t I been one my whole life living in Utah as a non-Mormon who liked to dye her hair and listen to heavy metal? Yes and no. I’ve reached a new level— adult level. At this new level people like to shame you even more deeply that you could’ve ever imagined. They can slice you with a glance. Maybe that dress was too short. Or they saw a glimpse of your tattoo on your ankle. How unprofessional. Gaijin must be ruining our country if they think they can show up to work like that. Just like that, you’ve become the work pariah.

I’m being swallowed into the whole and I don’t know how to distinguish myself anymore. I hate to admit it but I’ve gotten by by bowing my head. If at all possible I try to avoid eye contact with anyone when on the train. I can sometimes feel eyes on me and I squirm away like a bug placed under a hot ray of heat from a microscope. I’m being torn apart bit by bit by their gazes and swallowed in the crowds. I’ve been swept into a dust pan like ashes. My spirit is broken and I need help to repair it but I’m still out here, alone.

Restless Reflections

I'm sitting here writing this in the middle of the night next to my snoring boyfriend. October has come and 2019 will soon be behind us. This year passed in such a blur. There were so many times that I wasted the day wallowing in my own loneliness. Of course there were many hardships-- most of which came in the form of finances and work related exhaustion.

In this last year, I've gained more knowledge about Japan than I ever even wished to know. If I had to take a guess I would say that I've probably met over 500 Japanese people through my job. I've encountered a lot of serious personalities, a lot of uncomfortable small talk, and many times I just wanted to put my head through the window (just kidding-- there's no windows in my office because I work in a dungeon).

I've seen a lot of the good and a lot of the bad that this place has to offer. I wish I could take little Alie up in my arms and tell her that every country and every place has it's ups and downs. When I was younger all I could see was Japan as this sanctuary where everything in my life would suddenly come together like missing pieces in a puzzle. In a way, some parts of my life have clicked into place but at the same time they've managed to become wedged apart in other ways. As I am growing up I am realizing that life will constantly try to throw a wrench in your plans. When one piece comes together another one may already be dislodging at the same moment.

To anyone who knows me, it's no surprise that I am skeptical of the future and often find myself wasting time over worries that actually have no merit in the here and now. I decided tonight to reminisce on some of the older posts on this blog (don't try to find them cause they're private yo lol das some embarrassing emo shit) and I stumbled upon some of my Japan fever dreams as well as some of the stuff that I wrote when I first came here and I was so unbearably alone and depressed.

I wouldn't say that now is a complete 180 to the Alie that came here in 2017 with no clue besides the love of Japan in her heart. But I have learned that no matter how isolated I feel, it's never really true. Another post that I wrote back at the beginning of 2018 described how much I missed my boyfriend after only knowing him for a few weeks. To be honest, at the time I really only had a small idea of who he was but of course a love-stricken heart doesn't know any better. All I wanted was the chance to share a day together and sleep side by side. In my romantic dream world we would cuddle and sleep peacefully side by side probably something like a god damn Disney movie. The reality is he sounds like a chainsaw when he sleeps and he steals all of my blankets. Most days I wanna push him off the bed so I can get a better sleep by myself. But when I read that post, a flicker of that feeling rose in my chest again. I need to appreciate what is here in front of me right now.

After reminiscing on that feeling for a moment, I reached out to fix his hair as he slept soundly (and loudly). He looks calm when he sleeps and the contrast of his inky black hair, long eyelashes, and pale skin make him look like a sleepy child without a care in the world. Before he fell asleep he had looked up at me with mildly blood shot eyes that caught the bedside light. When his brown eyes caught the light I realized how beautiful and warm they looked. I wondered if my own eyes could be that beautiful too. I have never liked my own brown eyes. Can loving someone else somehow help me love myself more too? He murmured 大好き (I love you) before passing out. I've never met someone who says I love you so earnestly and openly as he does. In a single day the phrase can leave his mouth up to twenty or thirty times. He's defying the standards of Japanese people while adhering to them all at the same time. He's the most astounding of all the Japanese people I've met.

I'm faced with problems that I know I will look back on later in this same blog post with insight and knowledge that I can't possibly know now and that scares the hell out of me. I want future me to come to me like that one weird Christmas story and relay to me all the shit that will go down in the next 3 years or so. Unlike high school, which I truly thought would be the most unpredictable time in my life, this is truly that time.

I know a few concrete facts. I need to change my job. What I'm doing now isn't enough and I'll never be satisfied being some under appreciated and overworked 英会話 teacher... which isn't really even like being a real teacher at all. Fact two: I want to stay with my boyfriend. In case you couldn't pick up by now, me finding a career that fulfills my life and staying with my boyfriend aren't exactly matching goals considering he lives in Tokyo. Sometimes my desire to stay by his side really clouds my judgement for what is right for myself. But I know he wants me to do what's right for me and he's never once tried to convince me to stay. He's my first love which some may be shaking their head at with the knowledge of someone much older or experienced than I am-- but the love that I have for him has only been growing over time. We have been growing over time. How can we continue to grow together?

But alas that's the future so maybe I should practice one more exercise in staying in the now by covering my surroundings one more time. It's Monday October 7th, 12:44 AM. I'm nestled in my fuzzy neon pink pajama pants with another fluffy blanket on top of that. Maximum comfort. My laptop is propped up on my knees while I type away in the darkness. I'm listening to Pierre XO (underrated YouTube artist) on my headphones to drown out the sound of Masa's snoring. He has rolled over onto his side and his hand wandered over to press against mine even while I'm writing. Even in his sleep he can't go a second without holding my hand. I might usually gripe about this or shove his heavy hand away, right now I'm simply enjoying the warmth of someone who loves me at my side. I want to appreciate it all more and more. Who knows what tomorrow brings-- so what's the point in straying from the now?

Breakdowns and Beautiful Blossoms

Hey all,

I know I've been doing a bang-up job of keeping this blog up to date but after my 700th breakdown since moving to Tokyo, I thought this would be a great time to elaborate a bit more.

My life is full of really high-highs and really low-lows. I was spoiled all throughout the month of March by the company of my boyfriend taking a stay-cation at my house as well as my parents and best friend who stayed with me for one of the most turbulent yet amazing weeks so far in Japan. There is nothing like family. Though there may be arguments, petty jabs, and general tiredness from sightseeing, I would honestly rather be bickering with them any day than be alone in silence.

Silence. A concept that I am not unfamiliar with and something that I would like to say that I genuinely enjoy. I never thought I would dread the silence. I never thought that I would play up to 6 hours of podcasts a day just to keep the silence away. My house is constantly filled with music, videos, and podcasts to keep my own thoughts away from myself. I don't want to admit the extent to which my breakdowns have taken me. I really don't want to acknowledge how many times I cried so hard my chest hurt and my eyes swelled shut. I don't really know why the tears come anymore but sometimes the sadness comes inside me, invades me, strangles me until my throat is burning and I can think of nothing to ease the fatigue except sobbing until I can cry no more.

I'm not boasting about the person I've become. I'm a genuinely needy and probably depressed person who cannot afford or find psycological help in a foreign country was not the look I was going for. Sitting here and writing this blog post at 2 a.m. just to listen to the tapping of the keyboard instead of silence was not what I would call "goals". Although I could sit here and beat myself up on a blog, I won't. I think I can do a great job belittling myself while chilling in the dark alone. I want to try to give myself credit for what I've done, how far I've come, and how genuinely FUCKING HARD this is. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but since day one I've had some unseen challenges and dark Babadook demons in my closet waiting to come out and bring me to the knees on my kitchen floor to cry (been there done that).

But, I know that I can come out on top. I know that I did all this for a reason. There are moments, however fleeting, that I feel this peace in my loneliness-- as if I'm not really alone somehow. For example, a few weeks ago I was hanging out in the super crowded and touristy area of Ueno for the cherry blossom festival. Everyone was posed for pictures, recording video, trying to get the best angle for an Instagram post. To be frank, no one gave a fuck about the cherry blossoms themselves. I decided to put the phone down, purchase some local yakisoba and a beer and take a seat under a cherry blossom tree. The petals were falling down like a sweet milky pink rain. My yakisoba noodles were salty and a bit vinegary with the pickled radish garnish on top. When it mixed with the dry acidity of my beer it created a sweet sting in my mouth. I drank that beer slowly (mostly cause I hate beer) and watched those trees intently. Again, I felt tears sting my eyes because crying might be my favorite new hobby. But I didn't cry. In that moment, I felt like someone was there with me (the Babadook demon?) and I didn't feel an ache deep inside my soul anymore. I said a toast to the trees, to the sky, to the unknown visitor who had joined me that day. Basically, I keep living here for those moments. Those sweet, beautiful, probably insignificant moments are the ones that I will never forget. Drinking a beer under a sakura tree with a friendly presence in the atmosphere watching over me. Yeah, that's pretty fucking rad.

I could easily contrast my awesome tree moment to how many times I refused to go out, how many times that I had an anxiety attack on the crowded streets of the city, how many times I protested to my boyfriend to just stay one more night so I didn't have to sleep in the dark alone. I'm not proud of that girl. She is too vapid, vulnerable, and susceptible to her emotions. Is she another side of me that I never faced before? How do I keep fighting this battle? Sometimes I don't know the answer. I just want to cry until it hurts. I just want to eat 7-11 food alone in my bed. But the cherry blossom moments, they call to me. They call me out of the dark cave that I call my house and into reality where I'm bound to face things that I hate to see and things that I love to see.

Maybe right now I miss my family and friends more than ever. Having them around was the sweetest treat a lone traveler could ask for. Their words of encouragement let me know that what I'm doing has meaning, what I've done is brave, and the life I've built for myself isn't just this house of cards that could fall down at any moment.

This isn't over. I'm not over. Thanks fam.

English Menus are Triggering

After what I consider a good attempt to learn Japanese for close to six years, it is pretty embarrassing and painful to admit how terrible my Japanese really is. Unlike English, where my strong trait is talking and never listening, in Japanese I am SO much better at listening. When I hear people talk, the words easily and pleasantly flow through my ears. One of my big motivators for learning Japanese in the first place was how entrancing it is by how few yet simple sounds the language manages to produce. Simplicity and beauty in everything it does, I think, could be Japan’s motto. Of course it could just as easily be, if it’s broke don’t fix it. 

I have to cut myself some slack because I spent approximately 1.5 years in high school learning the Japanese alphabet and watching anime with my weeabo friends. In college, I spent all 2 years of it actually studying Japanese 4 days a week. I wrote essays, studied grammar, gave presentations when I was forced to. I felt that I was getting a deeper grasp of some of the complexities of the language and the grammar. But I never ever spoke. 

I’m not saying my shyness to speak to strangers is a Japanese language thing, because I can’t even order at a Taco Bell in America without accidentally introducing the drive-thru guy to my dog out of sheer awkwardness and panic (that’s another story for another time). My mom has been making my phone calls for me for years out of sheer frustration of  watching me sit there trying to plan a script of what to say while calling the store to see if they have a certain item in stock. I don’t like talking to people. Unless of course you’re part of my fave 5 (the 5 people I actually enjoy being around in the whole world), we’re not going to communicate a lot unless you do most of the talking. I don’t know why this is, but I have a sneaking suspicion that some of this has to do with me having stray cats as friends as a child. But I mean, didn’t everyone?

Last year, my three months in Japan improved my listening skills by a landslide. But I still avoided putting myself into situations where I knew that I would be faced with difficult Japanese. Now, about 3 days into my part 2 journey of Japan, I was forced to go to the local government building to get my affairs in order. No one spoke English. While pointing to my residency card and repeating “jyusho” (Japanese for address) over and over again was not the highlight of my life, I got through it. I also enrolled for health insurance without understanding a damn thing the woman told me. Yes, it would be nice to understand these things. I understand that I have dropped the ball in many ways, and I’m not studying 4 days a week like I used to. But I would like to take small steps this year towards depriving myself of the English hungry self who feels safe and unashamed speaking her mother tongue.

First off—English menus have to go. The first thing people do when I enter a restaurant is reach for that English menu. While I would like to politely decline, I have no idea how to do that in Japanese, so I take the menu, but I turn it over to discourage myself from looking. Then, I order in Japanese. Despite my avoidance for English and my constant attempt to try to use as much Japanese as possible, people still speak English to me even when I am using Japanese. I don’t think my conversational Japanese is that terrible, but rather, I feel like it is a Japanese custom to cater to “tourists” even though I am technically a resident of Japan.

Today I went to buy myself a plant. Plants are a good substitute for friends and my mom told me that plants thrive off of people talking to them. Sounded like a good deal to me. In Kami-Itabashi, where I live, there is quite a few quaint flower shops. I surveyed the main street of Kami-Itabashi looking for a nice plant shop. I chose one with an old man standing on the porch having a smoke. I knew this would be another situation where I wouldn’t be able to ask much. How do I say, “Hi, I’m looking for a plant to fill the void where friends should be in my life, do you have any that are good for that? Also, low maintenance and can survive when I will undoubtedly go days without watering it.”

He notices me staring at plants and screaming on the inside, so he approaches. He remarks about how hot it is, which is child’s Japanese, so I can understand and reply. He’s not wrong, it feels like humid hell outside. He tells me the Japanese names of some of the plants because he can clearly see the struggle deep inside. He then shows me some succulents. How did he know that I need a low maintenance friend? He must be a mind reader. He tells me they are a cactus, which they are not, but like every Japanese person I have talked to, he is trying to comfort me with English. While the efforts are appreciated, it possibly makes me feel more stupid to speak English with a Japanese person who cannot speak it then to speak Japanese and make mistakes. 

I finally decided on some plant. I have no idea what it is. I just didn’t want a succulent and I didn’t want a flower that I would inevitably kill. The plant only costs me around 100 yen (approx. one-dollar) and he asks me if I have a planting pot and tries to sell me some French soap. I decline both, but comment on the nice smell of the soap. That’s as far as my Japanese takes me. He kindly wraps my plant and tells me thank you before sending me off with a smile. While not much communication happens, as with many of my interactions with Japanese people, he is kind and his shop smells like fancy French soap. I don’t interpret any ill-will and his patience makes me feel at ease. Luckily, these are how most of my interactions feel. I am grateful for their patience. I know many Americans who think that yelling louder somehow makes it easier to understand English. News flash: that doesn’t help, you’re just an asshole.

My only exception for speaking English is meeting other foreigners in Japan. And I don’t just mean white people. There are a lot of Indian restaurants in Japan with staff that speak English, Japanese, and their own native tongue. I went to grab lunch at one of these places, and while we start the conversation in Japanese, the second they offered up English I grabbed onto that thread as if I were drowning. I don’t know what it is about having that safe-space with other foreigners, but I don’t feel ashamed speaking English with them. But strangely, we still follow the Japanese custom of bowing to other another after they hand me my take-out bento. We are kind of trapped in a cultural no man’s land where we don’t know what customs to follow or what language to speak. People are weird. 

In short, I want to keep turning down the English menu. I want to struggle at more flower shops with old men who smoke and sell me soap. I want to reassure myself that there is no validity to the fear I feel when I enter a new space because the outcome will be okay. I will get through it, and I will come out of that experience feeling a little bit better about my Japanese. Here’s the middle finger to fear due to language barriers, because this time I won’t deprive myself. I’m going to eat at all the restaurants, buy all the plants, and do all the adult things. So save the English menu Japan, I’m coming at you with terrible Japanese. 

Depressed Stye Eye

Somehow, within my first two weeks in Japan, I got a stye in my eye. I’ve never had a stye before, so this was naturally the best time for it to occur. I diagnosed myself with my favorite doctor, Web MD. After performing a warm compress as many home remedies had suggested, I pulled the warm towel away only to discover that I couldn’t see shit. I had two options: freak the fuck out or dance around the room in my Black Butler blankie while blasting Where Are U Now by Justin Bieber. Obviously, I chose the latter. My fear of doctors is really quite humorous actually, especially doctors in a foreign country that I probably won’t be able to communicate with. The first time I went to a gynecologist she had to take my blood pressure twice because I was freaking out so bad she thought I was a 21-year-old with hypertension. Needless to say, doctors’ visits are not my thing.

My second week in Tokyo has consisted of me going to random places just so I don’t have to wallow in my deep loneliness. Having an eye infection, going days without actually talking to people, and living in a roach infested apartment is not the coolest combo. Usually there is someone nearby to force me to go to the doctor, make me some soup when my eye is producing weird slime, and tell me to chill the fuck out when I’m freaking out over literally everything. But there is no one here for me. Typing that is hard. Saying that is hard. I’m depressed. 

I’m in Asakusa, an annoying tourist place, sitting on some steps in front of some river. The water in the river is murky and watching the ripples move across the surface of the water has successfully distracted me from my own poisonous thoughts for at least 30 minutes. The longer I stare blankly at the surface of the water, letting my tired eyes lose focus, the water looks like nothing but patterns. I’m making myself dizzy, but I can’t even force my eyes to focus. The weather is disgusting. 90 degrees with 60% humidity makes me want to go home. But I came here so I thought I ought to get something done. I had an overpriced and quite frankly bad coffee at some shop that I thought looked quaint but in retrospect probably had a few health code violations. I don’t know what it is about eating near people who are smoking, but it makes everything taste like cigarettes smell. You know what, I think I’ll pass on cigarette taste and lung cancer. Thanks, but no thanks. 

Recently I’ve been waking up when the sun comes pouring in through my window at about 6 in the morning. Sometimes as I’m awaking I briefly think that my life in Tokyo was a dream, and I swear to God that I am still expecting to wake up in my house back in Utah. As my vision comes into focus, this heavy feeling of loneliness presses down on my chest like a brick. I am not home. I am here, wherever here is. I know the pain is worth something. I know the self-doubt is worth something. I keep asking myself terrifying questions like, “Why did you come here?” and “Did you make a mistake?” followed by such great hits as, “What if you can’t do it?” I ask these questions as if someone will answer me back. I don’t know who I’m talking to and what I expect to happen. I’ve never been one for God or a higher power, but you know what, I can see why some people dig that. Staring up at a cloudy sky and asking for answers while waiting for nothing in return isn’t fun. While the commentary from the peanut gallery in my brain is super encouraging, I try not to think too deeply about all of it. Luckily, since the area near my tear glands is so swollen, I don’t think I can cry anymore even if I wanted to. *I did cry more.

“Well didn’t you want this more than anything, Alie?”, some of you critics might ask. “Get off your ass and stop being sad”, some others might say. Easier said than done. Until you have been in my shoes. Until you have left your everything behind, don’t push your advice onto me. I understand that it was my choice, but that doesn’t have to stop me from being sad. I know that I longingly looked out the window every day at my 9-5 in America and thought about how life would be so much better if I’d only never left Japan. That’s the problem. We can never see what we truly have until it is gone. I never really thought about how nice it was to wake up and not feel so completely and utterly alone. I never thought about how nice it was to have a cat to pet and a dog to walk. I never thought about how nice it was to come home to a freshly cooked meal and parents who love me until I didn’t have that anymore. Maybe we should all dabble in a decent amount of deprecation, because it might just allow us to appreciate what we have a little bit more. When I come back home, whenever that might be, I will no longer be looking out that window longing for “freedom”, but rather, I will be enjoying every moment that I have with the ones I love. 

But right now, I reserve the right to be the depressed girl with a stye in her eye. So, don’t tell me to cheer up. I’ll cheer up when I’m damn ready for it. Right now, I am in my limbo, waiting for my life to make sense again and I can’t explain to anyone else how that feels. To quote a great scholar of our times, Mr. Marilyn Manson (you bet your ass I’m listening to my 8^thgrade emo playlist right now), “When you want it, it goes away too fast. Times you hate it always seem to last.” Think about it, okay? But for now, I am going to go home and warm compress my eye and try to get the pieces of my life back together again. 

0.75 Cockroaches a Day

In my first week in Tokyo, I experienced an average of 0.75 cockroaches a day. Don't ask me why I had that much time on my hands to actually sit down and figure that roach statistic out. As the encounters with my disgusting trash-eating friends increased, so did my understanding for how I have to deal with the little(?) bastards.

No one else in your life can kill your cockroaches for you. Hell, they can survive a nuclear holocaust or something (along with Twinkies apparently). If I think of cockroaches as some of the biggest demons in my life, metaphorically and literally, I know that I am the only one who will be able to step up to bat when I see one scurry across the floor in the middle of the night.

My boyfriend nobly stood up to the task while wildly spraying the surrounding cabinet space around three of the week one cockroaches that we had found. Of course, despite the fact that he also suffers from a crippling fear of bugs, he isn't here very often. So while his efforts stem from a good heart, I am the one who has to live with them. And I will add that I was the one who ultimately had to sweep up their crispy bodies and throw them off the edge of the balcony. Can someone file a complaint against me for throwing dead cockroach bodies off the edge of the apartment building? That would be a great conversation to have with my parents as I am explaining to them why I had to come back to America. "Well, you see, I didn't want to touch their dead bodies, nor did I want to walk down the 5 flights of stairs to dispose of them properly in the trash..." Does my laziness know any bounds?

Regardless of whether or not I am going to get in trouble for ditching roach bodies in the bushes, which will be decided at a later point, this is not my first experience with the nasty critters in Japan. Despite the supposed upgrade in housing from my last basement level room that somehow always felt like a cold, sad, swamp-- the roaches are still here. I now live on a noisy yet sunny 5th floor apartment in a place that is much larger and supposedly nicer than my last housing arrangement. I am also partial to the belief that unless you are a billionaire, you will likely have a kind of run-down establishment in Tokyo. What Tokyo boasts in bright lights, all-you-can-drink bars, and maid cafes, it lacks in decent housing arrangements. I think the idea is that you are either supposed to be so busy at work or obligational drinking with your co-workers after work to even have time to come home to your roach infested abode. Unless, of course, you are the lonely American girl who spent a good twenty minutes of her night curled over in the middle of the kitchen floor sobbing for no apparent reason, then you will not have enough time to notice your roach stats on a weekly basis.

Strangely enough though, I have had a few Tokyo long-time locals tell me that in all their years they have never faced as many roaches as I have in just about 4 months total time. I swear I'm taking my trash out regularly and doing my dishes, so don't even look at me like that. In my last apartment I went as far as to plug every single drain or crevice that I thought they could crawl through, but at the end of the day a city full of millions of people has roaches and I am apparently the fucking cockroach whisperer.

The first time I saw a cockroach I thought I was going to die. I could feel my pulse race and my mind went into immediate fight or (most likely) flight mode. I watched that big ass bug crawling around on the wall in the hallway of my tiny apartment. The cockroach was the only thing between me and the exit. I took a deep, wavering breath, thinking it might be my last. I don't know honestly what I thought the outcome of this encounter would be, but I'm sure I've seen one too many scary movies, so I think I thought the roach might just murder me in cold blood right then and there. After spending way too many minutes contemplating how I could go back to America without having to run past the demon bug on the wall, I ran for it. I remember, just like in the scary movies, I could hear it scurrying after me as I fled the apartment. Yeah, you read that right, they don't run from you-- they run towards you. Once outside the apartment, I really wasn't sure of my plan. The only thought that was in my mind was, "I want to go home. Now." After enlisting the help of my fellow intern to dispose of my very first cockroach, I'm almost certain I went back into my room and cried. I don't know what it is about those bugs that seem to defeat me or come around when I feel defeated, but my innate fear for them inspires a big dose of, 'I want my mommy' syndrome.

Now, in my new apartment, the first damn thing I saw when I opened the door to what is supposed to be my year long accommodation, was a cockroach scurrying under a cupboard. Wherever I go, they follow. But the difference between this time and last time is that during our first tango, I grabbed my handy-dandy bottle of Gokiburi Jet and killed those bastards, two at one time. I barely even flinched. I get kind of power hungry as I watch them wither and die as if to say, "Yeah! I'm an adult and this is my house! I make the rules and I say you should get the fuck out!"

I now treat cockroach killing as a sort of power trip and I most definitely have listened to Marilyn Manson to get me pumped up for killing. But that innate fear is still there. However, if I may return to the beginning of this post, I mentioned that no one can kill your "roaches" but you. I see these disgusting garbage dwellers as a metaphor for my fear. What I once let drive me out of my own house I now stand and face on my own featuring a can of super poisonous scary Japanese death spray. And no one is coming out alive when I have my potentially cancerous to humans and definitely deadly to roaches spray. There are those, like my boyfriend, who can come along and lend you a hand when you are trying to "rid the infestation" but the only one who has to live with those "roaches" is you. I can't believe I'm actually getting motivated while talking about killing bugs, but you better believe it.

So while I pray every night before I sleep that a midnight bathroom run doesn't turn into me screaming and running for the bottle of death spray, I know that there are going to be hardships. No matter how hard we try to prepare for them, they will often run out in our path in the middle of the night and scare the shit out of us. Life is unpredictable. But it is up to us to have the strength to face the fears that crawl out of damp and dark spaces and try and make us feel even more weak when we are already curled up on the kitchen floor crying (everyone does that, right?). So I'm not going to let a bug make me feel weaker than I already do. And I will be the one to conquer my fears on my own, as it has to be done. While it's not wrong to lean on others for that support to face your fears, just remember that they won't be with you during that midnight pee run. So, for your own sake, you're going to have to learn to fight the hard fights alone (ft. death spray).