Cats

Part of the beauty of Japan lies in its ability to make simple what the western world makes complicated; to reach into the human mind, acknowledge what it sees there and then celebrate it. If human desire is a splinter in all of us, the western world is the kid that walks around on the balls of his feet, wincing and pretending it is not there; Japan is the kid that pulls it out, gives a loud and proud cheer and then shows it to all of his friends.

This is a culture where the things that every human secretly wants - that every human secretly needs - are acknowledged, celebrated and catered for instead of furtively hidden away. Pleasure is made an event, instead of something to be ashamed of. There are cubicles you can rent by the hour to watch videos and drink tea under a heated blanket when you're bored; there are capsule rooms you can rent to take a nap in at lunchtime when you're hungover. Love hotels - one of the country's biggest money spinners - are glossy, romantic hotels designed for couples to use; pay by the hour from an anonymous vending machine at the front, complete with little face washes and hair brushes to tidy up when you're finished. In England, thousands of teenagers use passport photobooths to take 'creative' photos with their friends; in Japan, they have designated creative photobooths for teenagers, complete with an inbuilt photoshop to cover up the spots. In England, people convert to Christianity for five minutes so that they can get married in a pretty church; in Japan, they skip the hypocrisy and simply build beautiful, non-secular registration offices that look like churches that anyone - regardless of faith or religion - can get married in. We all like to soak in a hot bath, so in Japan they scrap five foot tubs filled with grotty tap water, and create twenty foot oak lined public tubs filled with bubbling mineral water. There is no human desire that Japan does not acknowledge and then - without shame, without embarrassment - rejoice in, simplify and beautify.

Today, however, I experienced possibly the pinnacle of this culture; something that could not exist in England, simply because it the rationality of it is so devastatingly Japanese.

"We're going to a cat cafe," my friend said while we were wandering around Harijuku after lunch. "I need a coffee."

"Okydoky," I replied, because - frankly - I'm not that bothered by what I do, as long as it's something I've not done before. And I needed a coffee.

We climbed to the top of a high office block, and then queued for 20 minutes outside a room that looked - unsurprisingly - very much like an office.

"So," I said eventually, after 15 minutes of waiting in line (there are lines for everything in Japan: if there isn't, it's probably not worth bothering with). "Cat cafe, hey. Is it cat themed or something?"

"Not exactly," my friend said as we were ushered into the room and had 1,000 yen taken from each of us.

She was right: it wasn't cat themed at all. It was simply a room, with chairs, filled with cats. Real, live cats; sleeping, playing lethargically with toy mice, lolling around and occasionally trying to hump each other. We had paid 1,000 yen to drink a cup of tea and sit, for an hour, stroking cats.

"We just pat them?" I said to my friend in confusion.

"Yep."

"And then what happens?"

"Nothing. We just pat them and then we go home."

"So it's really a...." I thought about it. "It's a kind of intensive cat-fix centre."

"Yep," my friend said, prodding affectionately at a particularly sleepy white one in a very large and fluffy pink tower.

"You'd never pay eight quid in England to stroke a flamin' cat," I muttered, and sat in a chair to drink my tea. "You'd just go and find one on a street corner somewhere."

After fifteen minutes of confused and cynical patting, however, it all suddenly started making sense. The music was low and soothing; the room was warm and filled with the smell of coffee; the cats were... well, not affectionate, exactly, but lethargic and generally bored enough to be pretty amenable to anything. And - as I stroked, and told them they were cute, and played with the feather attached to a stick they gave me - I realised I had missed it; that I had missed interacting with an animal, and the calm and homey-feeling that cats automatically encourage, just by being there. That I had missed being able to relax with a cat on my lap, even if it wasn't my cat; missed playing with one, and laughing when it chewed on my jumper, even if I had no idea what its name was. And that Japan had somehow known I needed that feeling, and had designed a room specifically for it.

Japan, to some, seems crazy, eccentric, hedonistic, but to me it makes sense. Perhaps it has one of the world's lowest crime rates simply because it represses nothing, and encourages everything; there is no concept of sin as long as nobody is hurt in the process, so there is nothing left to rebel against, and no boredom to alleviate. And - in contrast to a western world filled with psychoanalysts who are trained to make us understand ourselves in the most forced, complicated way possible - it's a culture that does that in a simple, beautiful, hedonistically childlike way.

It's true that in England, if you want to stroke a cat and don't actually have a cat, you find one on a street corner, give it a furtive pat on the head as you walk past and hope its owner doesn't notice. And - okay - it doesn't cost eight quid a pop, but it doesn't feel as good either. It doesn't satisfy the bit inside you that really just needs to cuddle a cat for a minute.

And a culture that knows that, even if it charges you for it? That, to me, is a culture worth celebrating.

White Christmas

There is nothing as wonderful in the world as the imagination. No matter where you are in the world, and no matter what you're doing, you are never far away from where you want to be.

Today - for me - is Christmas Eve. It doesn't matter that it's sunny outside; it doesn't matter that everywhere is open; it doesn't matter that it means nothing in Japan; it doesn't matter that I am on my own. Today is Christmas Eve, and so I have made my own Christmas. Nat King Cole and Judy Garland are singing as loudly as I dare play them in a flat made of paper, I have peeled a couple of oranges and left them around my flat, and I've lit a couple of hazardous candles. A pile of parcels and cards from England are sitting in a pile on my table, and I'm humming to carols while I make my Christmas Eve dinner (chocolate followed by another helping of chocolate, which is pretty much what I'd eat at home as well). It's A Wonderful Life is up and ready to play, and Skype is set so that my mum can read me The Night Before Christmas on the webcam before I go to sleep. I've concentrated so hard now that - as far as I'm concerned - it's actually snowing outside; I only have to close my eyes to know exactly how my family's Christmas tree will look, and exactly how the house will smell, and exactly what they'll be doing round about now (my dad will be stealing chocolates off the tree and my mum will be shouting at him and telling them to put them back).

This is my first Christmas away from the people I love, and I thought it would be harder: but it's not. I forgot how powerful the heart is, and how persuasive the imagination. In my mind, I'm there: I'm with my mum, tucked up in front of the telly drinking Baileys; I'm with my sister, smoking in the garden where my parents can't see us; I'm with my dad, scolding him for being late back from the pub for lunch. I'm helping my grandma with the brussel sprouts, and my grandad with the turkey. I'm covered in snow, and shaking myself off on the doorstep so I don't make a mess of the carpet. I'm there, and the small matter of a few thousand miles doesn't make a difference to me. Christmas is for the people you love, and my heart is with them, even if I'm not.

I'm not just dreaming of a White Christmas this year; I'm dreaming of a Christmas, full stop. But it's enough. The imagination is like the snow covering England at the moment, and you can do what you like with it; make what you will with it. And - this year - I'm playing in it with my family, and leaving footprints all over it.

Because, on my favourite day of the year, there's nowhere else I want to be.

Merry Christmas.

Gardens

When you're sitting comfortably, the foundations beneath you can often go unnoticed. Perched where it feels nice, the rot eats away until you wake up one morning and realise that you've fallen through to the bottom.

This might be true of life and love - yes - but, unfortunately, it's also true of my futon: a futon that is quite literally, physically and not in the slightest bit metaphorically covered in mould.

I had no idea. Not even the faintest inkling. I've been happily sleeping inches away from a green, wet, festering layer of something that smells not very nice: all the while congratulating myself on the nice, tidy state of my flat and the fact that I now do my washing up at least every other day. Worse - and this is truly disgusting - it's a mould that must have grown from the steam from my showers, the sweat from my nightmares, the damp from my breath and the vapour from my hideous attempts at cooking: in short, it's my mould. Mould grown from me. And I've been rolling around on top of it, wondering why all was not right with the world. Indeed, I wouldn't have found it at all if I hadn't decided to do a Christmas Clean and sweep 'under my bed'; something I've never done before, and wouldn't have thought about if I hadn't spilled a cup of coffee under there a couple of days ago. (I once witnessed my father vacuuming around a sock: I was not brought up to clean properly.)

Everything suddenly makes sense. I've been falling asleep and writing and waking up on a rotten bed; I've been visiting Onsens and scrubbing myself red raw and squeaky clean, and then putting on my pyjamas and lying on top of mould. I've made dreams on a foundation of something green and slimy: how could I expect any of them to come true?

Of course, it turns out - now that I've done a little research - that a Japanese futon is not a western mattress: it needs tatami mats (which I don't have), and to be aired daily (which I don't do), and to be put away in cupboards during the day (which I don't have, or do). A couple of months of just changing the bedding, apparently, leaves you with some kind of botanical garden in your bedroom; one that means you have to spend the night on the wooden floor with a blanket, because you've now got nothing else to sleep on.

At least it's forced me to do what I may never otherwise have done: to scrub every inch of my flat, instead of just waving a broom at the centre parts of it. It's ensured that I will never again cat lick my flat, and consider it clean. And - even more importantly - it's made sure that this time, it really is a fresh start when I wake up tomorrow morning. And that the next time I dream, it's going to be on something that doesn't have rot in the middle of it.

Swimming

Being the person I want to be, sometimes, can be so hard. Sometimes, it can feel impossible. The bad parts in me - the incredible selfishness, the temper, the drama, the impatience, the impetuousness - rise up with such power, with such force, that they feel like a tidal wave I can't fight against: one that will crush me and carry me into a dark, hard place that will be nothing like the place I was swimming towards. And sometimes I am so tired that it seems like the easiest thing in the world just to stop. To let go, and let myself be swept - limp and exhausted - back to the place where I can destroy, and rant, and demand and control and be a subject of my own whims and emotions and passions. Even if it means that I can no longer hold my head up, because it is ground into the sand.

It's too easy. Too easy to be bad. Too easy to be selfish. Too easy to be crazy. Too easy to do what I want to do, sometimes, even if it's not good for me. And when I'm hurting, it becomes even easier. To forget about dignity, and pride, and honesty, and integrity. To forget about the things that I value more than I value getting what I want, which is - when I'm tired, when I'm exhausted - all I can ever really think about. No matter how hard I try not to.

In short, I'm still heartbroken. I'm not over The Boy; not even slightly. I'm functioning again - I'm eating, I'm sleeping, I'm laughing, I'm playing with the children, I'm enjoying my friends, I'm seeing again (the sky, the buildings around me, the people on the train next to me: all obliterated in the immediate pain of the breakup) - but I'm not whole. I think about him all of the time. I miss him all of the time. I want him back, all of the time. And every time I try to push my love for him away - to put it in a little box with a Christmas ribbon, and tuck it away somewhere where I can't find it when I'm drunk or emotional - I can't do it. It's too tangible, as if I can prod it with my fingers, and it makes me feel simultaneously heavy and slightly sick - as if I've eaten too much of something bad for me - and empty, as if I've vomited everything that was good.

Every day, still, is a struggle against him. A struggle to let him go. To be a good person. To fight my instincts - the instincts that want to ring him, and text him, and email him, and tell him when something good happens, and when something bad happens, and when something irrelevant happens, just because I want him to know that it's happening, and to know that I'm still alive and hurting - and behave with dignity, and pride, and self respect. Because every day feels like I'm wading through a thick, sticky river of minutes without him, and every crowd is crammed full of faces that are not him. And the absence of him - the space that he has left behind - feels so heavy that it's hard to stand up; and contacting him feels like the only possible way I can make it lighter, even if for a tiny, tiny while.

But I have no choice. I either give in - and get swept into the wave of selfishness and vague stalkerdom - or I fight it, and try to push through: hope that soon the minutes will get less sticky, and the crowds will have their own faces and not just an absence of his. That the weight will be lighter, in time. Because I have to have the grace and dignity that are more important to me than love; that are more important to me, even, than happiness. And anger and emotion and futile text messages are not going to give me them. Only walking away can do that.

I'm not sure I'll ever quite be the person I want to be; that I'll ever have the peace, and grace, and bravery, and dignity, of the future self I am constantly swimming towards. But this is not the heartbreak that will take me back to the shore, and leave me broken on the sand. It is the heartbreak that I will hold onto like a raft: that will, perhaps, eventually - one day, when I least expect it - carry me with it, and take me that little bit closer.

EJ

The problem with believing in something is that sometimes it can be really, really inconvenient. Beliefs can screw you over, just as fast as they can save you.

I've always had this deep conviction - small and insignificant as it might seem - that the minute you start to create something for somebody, it is theirs. Whatever it is - whether it's a poem, or a story, or a piece of art, or a song, or a doodle on a page while you're on the telephone - the minute that first line is down, or the first note is sung, or the first word is written, this thing is no longer yours: it belongs to the person for whom it was intended. They are, in fact, in a way the creator: they have inspired it, and you are simply the means by which it has appeared. So - in the nature of all that is good and honest and innocent and beautiful in art - it should remain so. In some cosmic, unseen force, this thing that only exists because of another person in the first place has tied you to them inextricably (even if temporarily, like Donne's fly) and can never be changed, unless destroyed. To go against this and do something else with it is simply bad luck: it is inciting the power of art and of music and of innocence and of beauty, and it is turning it against yourself.

I call it the Elton John Effect, thanks to his lazy reappropriation of Candle In The Wind, written for his childhood idol Marilyn, and handed over to Diana because - presumably - he was too worn out from The Lion King to bother writing a new one. Every note in the second version sounded embarrassed; ashamed of itself, in knowing that it was meant for somebody else. Like the second proposal to a different woman with the same ring and restaurant.

Anyway, a while ago I started a drawing for The Boy; a drawing that was going to be exchanged over Christmas on our holiday together. Now, the holiday's cancelled, The Boy is gone, but the drawing is finished. I carried on - possibly putting more effort in than usual, thanks to the concentration that combined heartbreak and long lunchbreaks bring - and it's done; possibly one of my best (which is not saying much that isn't strictly comparative: I'm not an artist and never have been).

And now, of course, I have to give it to him. I have no other option. It is his drawing, whether I like it or not, and so it has to be his: to give it to anyone else, or to keep it, would be to evoke a lot of bad luck and Elton John inspired shame upon myself, which frankly I don't think I could handle. So I have to hand over something precious to me to somebody who probably doesn't want it; who will say thankyou and pop it in a drawer as a reminder not to date anyone who draws things. I have to hand over another piece of me, and know that I may never see it again.

The thing with beliefs is that - uncomfortable as they sometimes are - they cannot be avoided; they can only be followed, quietly. And all I have to do before I pop this drawing in the postbox is remember that it was never mine to start with.

And possibly play a little Elton John.

Apology to Grandma

I got shouted at by my dad last night. We'd barely connected on Skype before he was having a go at me. Or, I should say: before his stomach was having a go at me, because he still hasn't mastered the art of standing where I can see his face on the webcam.

"You swore on your blog," his stomach said to me crossly, and my mum looked anxious next to it.

"I did not!" I remonstrated.

"You did, and it upset your grandma," dad's stomach barked at me. Then he bent down so that I could see the bottom of his angry chin.

"Where?" I demanded. "When?"

"Well I don't bloody know," dad shouted: "I don't read it, do I. I've got much better things to do. But you swore, and it upset your grandma, and I don't like you upsetting your grandma. So you must email her and apologise and stop bloody swearing."

"Yeah," my mum said, raising an eyebrow at me. "I wonder where she gets that from, Mark."

"I've got the vocabulary of an angel, I'll have you know," dad stormed, and then his stomach paraded into the back of the living room so that the cat could sit on it.

I went straight back onto my blog to check for sailor-talk, and sure enough: there it was. I can imagine exactly how the moment went. Grandma will have been reading my blog outloud, possibly to my grandad - with her reading glasses put on especially - and then she will have inadvertently said the dastardly word, and there will have been a shocked pause.

"Well," grandma will have said, looking a lot like the Queen but a little bit more dignified. "I don't think that was necessary."

"She's young," grandad might have said, or possibly: "she's in a very emotional place right now. She probably didn't even notice." Then he may have added: "and it was in quotation marks, which means that somebody else said it. She's just reporting on a conversation." Or, even, "she's very busy at the moment. Maybe she didn't have time to edit properly."

Grandma will have looked even more dignified, and possibly have adjusted her glasses a little bit.

"If she's very busy I would have thought it would take less time to not add that extra word," she probably said. "And there are lots of other words to use when you're emotional. There's no need for that kind of language. No need at all."

And then she would have carried on reading the blog, because she's my grandma and she loves me and she'd already forgiven me.

Language is a funny thing. Sometimes it's less something you use to communicate, and more something that uses you. And when I'm emotional, and tired, and angry, and stressed, I forget that my writing can affect people other than myself. And make them emotional and tired and angry and stressed too.

I'm so sorry grandma. I promise to be better in future. And if I'm not, just blame my dad. I got my vocabulary from an angel too. :) x

Great expectations

"The thing about life," my friend emailed me yesterday, "is that it's important to have no expectations. If you do, it will always disappoint you. If you don't, then it can't."

Ever since I was little, Christmas has been the emotional pivot of the year for me: the high point from which the rest of the year hangs, like a nail in the wall. Perhaps because I'm a Christmas baby and it was the first thing my brain ever registered, it has an importance for me that none of my friends seem to experience. When I was tiny, by the beginning of November I'd start feeling queasy with excitement; by the end of the month - when the trees were up and the music was playing - I'd be unable to sleep at night. By the time my birthday was over - barely even registered, as overshadowed as it was in my head - I would be a small, twirly ball of frantic nerves and hopes and expectations and dreams. Visions of sugar plums didn't just dance in my head: they paraded, they stomped and they generally made noisy nuisances of themselves and kept me up at night, bouncing on my bed.

Every year, I would wish that it could be Christmas forever. The lights, the trees, the music, the smells, the open fire, the chocolates. The scent of orange and cookie and cinammon; the warm, fluffy films on telly; everybody looking happy even when it was dark; my parents moving my presents every day because I wouldn't stop looking until I had found them. Okay, I wouldn't let Father Christmas in my room at night to fill my stocking - having strange old men in my bedroom scared me - but I would still creep down to the fireplace every hour or so to check if he'd been, and if the reindeer had eaten the carrots. Christmas was magic; it was the only time of year when anything could happen, and where good reigned, and where beauty triumphed, and where I was allowed to wear my best dress to school without being told I'd end up ruining it.

And then it would be over. After two months of tail wagging and sticky palms, Christmas would be over: an open stocking, a lot of wrapping paper and a Queen's speech, and everyone would be asleep in front of the tv, stuffed to the brim with roast potatoes and snoring. The magic and the beauty of it always seemed to pop, as if somebody had taken a pin to Christmas and it had exploded. And every year - when I waited for my dad to start farting in his sleep in front of the telly - I resented it a little bit more. It depressed me a little bit more: that the magic could disappear like that. That it could be all over, like that. Until I stopped looking forward to Christmas, because it was only going to disappoint me.

I'm 28 now: this will be my 28th Christmas, although I was only two weeks old the first time I had one. And I know, now - finally - that it was never about Christmas. That the day itself doesn't matter.

Christmas is not about the 25th of December. It's not about the brussel sprouts and the roast potatoes and the crackers and the snoring. It's not about the farting and the inevitable quarrels and your sister's rabbit eating the bottom half of the tree lights. It's not about one day at all. Christmas is the hope of brussel sprouts and roast potatoes; it's the magic of dreams, and looking forward to something, and believing in something that isn't real and doesn't have to be. It's about the happiness that can only be got from expectation, and plans, and the total and whole hearted embracing - without fear, without restriction - of something that will always, always, always end, and was always going to.

Just because something ends, just because it disappoints, just because it doesn't turn out the way you hoped it would, doesn't mean that dreaming of it, and hoping for it, and expecting it, is a waste of time. Dreams can stand up on their own, without the realisation of them. They don't need to be made real to be worth having. And the Christmas I loved, I realised eventually, was the hope of Christmas. And that hope of Christmas - that build up to it - may have been inside me, but it was just as important and just as tangible as anything on the outside. It was just as special. And it was just as worth holding on to.

This year - on my 28th Christmas - I'm having to deal with a lot of disappointments, a lot of crushed dreams, and a lot of tailored expectations. The end of a lot of the things that seemed so magic to me for so long, and popped overnight.

But I will not regret them. I will continue to hope, and dream, and be disappointed, and watch things end. Because it doesn't matter. If Christmas - the Christmas that matters - is in the hope of it, then so, too, is life. And I shall continue to have great expectations of it.

A Natural High

"A natural high," my friend said over coffee last week. "That's what you need. That's what everyone needs when they're feeling low."

"What a terribly good idea," I said, wiping some of the chocolate-cherry mocha from around my mouth and leaving the rest of it in a moustache shape that would later embarrass me in front of the children. "How very smart you are."

So this weekend, I went para-diving from one of the base mountains of Mount Fuji. At 1,500 feet, it was about as high as I could get.

There's not much to say. There was nothing to say when I sat in the van and climbed the mountain to the jump-off point. There was nothing to say when I jumped from a 1,500 foot cliff face with nothing but a double duvet attached to my back, and there was nothing to say when I realised that I was floating thousands of metres above the ground with Mount Fuji looming huge and snow-topped in front of me, and miles and miles of Japan stretched beneath me, and bright blue sky above and around me. There was nothing to say when the instructor asked if I was alright because she thought I might have passed out, and there was nothing to say during the fifteen minutes while we floated back down to the ground like tiny little spiders attached to our flimsy little web sack. There was nothing to say at all. Words totally disappeared. All I could do was make small, fishy, gasping noises, and try to communicate to my worried instructor via exhalation just how silent it was, and how peaceful, and how calm, and how utterly, utterly unterrifying.

And how happy it had made me, and would keep making me as long as I could keep remembering it. Which would be: forever.

"I did it," I said to my friend on my return.

"Eh?" she replied, redunking her tea bag. "Did what?"

"Found a natural high." I showed her the photo of my parachute. "And you're right. It was just what I needed."

There was a pause while she looked at the photograph, and then she frowned and looked back at me.

"I was talking about multi-vitamins or something," she said eventually. "An extra banana at lunch or something. But yeah." She looked back at the photo.

"That'll probably do it too."

Nakedness

Sometimes in the process of rebuilding you have to start again.

Japan gets a lot of things very, very right. Waste disposal, transport, taxes, public service, food, restaurants and incredibly effective face wash: Japan nails them. The cities are clean, the crime is low, the countryside is beautiful and the past-times are genuinely entertaining. This is a country where themed 'Love Hotels' (paid for by the hour, anonymously) aren't seedy or embarrassing but romantic and fun; where drunken karaoke is weekly; where adults can read comics on commuter trains without shame; where fat, naked men push each other around a stage for public amusement. Christmas isn't even a holiday here, but Japan still has the best cookies, lights and generally festive twinkle-fluff I've ever seen; I've eaten the best pizza of my life in a country where it's nothing short of a novelty. If the world was a playground and the countries its children, then Japan would be the really irritating little kid that gets everything right in class, wins all the football medals and still manages to not get their head put down the toilet. (The UK would be the fat, spotty one following around whoever was the scariest that day: probably America.)

Nothing in Japan, however, is quite as right as the Onsen; a hot spring public bath. Because traditional customs in Japan are based on Shintoism, cleanliness is of utmost, sacred importance, and public bathing in hot mineral water is therefore an ancient and still fervently upheld Japanese custom. It is commonly thought that the hot minerals heal, restore, regenerate and cleanse, and the communal nature helps to create ties of harmony and peace between strangers, thus strengthening Japan as a whole.

Which was all very well and good, but my first accidental visit to an Onsen - four days after my arrival in Japan - led to me bursting into tears, weeping incoherently at the receptionist and then running out again. All I knew was that I'd gone for a swim and found myself in a room full of butt naked old women, scraping themselves down laconically with sponges and staring at me.

'W-w-was i-i-it a a a jjokke?' I sobbed down the phone to The Boy, sitting on my suitcase and weeping into my coat at Nagoya train station.

'Was what a joke?' he replied in confusion.

'Th-th-th-the place you sent me!' I cried. 'What was it?'

'An onsen?' he said in still more confusion.

'B-b-b-b-but they were all naked!' I choked, welling up again. 'Why? Why would you do that to me?'

'Oh baby,' he said after a good five minutes of laughter that cost me about 500 yen in phone bill; 'onsens are naked. That's the point of them. It didn't even occur to me that you didn't know that.'

'W-w-w-well, n-n-n-n-ow I d-d-do,' I stuttered, and caught the first train I could back to a place where people wore clothes and didn't manhandle their breasts in front of me.

Yesterday, in the spirit of positivity and harmony and 'embracing shit' - as my friend put it - I decided to try again, and I finally understood what the onsen is about. Always a fan of having my bath water too hot, five different mineral pools - one filled with ice cold black mud, and one with extremely hot black mud - did, indeed, relax, rejuvenate and cleanse; I wallowed like a happy little pig until my friend told me I'd gone purple and should probably get out before my head popped.

But it was more than that. The room was full of women of all ages, of all sizes: utterly, utterly naked, and utterly, utterly comfortable with that. Women of 90, children of 10: they wandered, they bathed, they chatted, they scrubbed, and they generally made themselves brand new again. With bathing costumes on it would have felt hedonistic, sordid, pointless, Western. Without them, it felt like a kind of rebirth. Something natural, and clean, and innocent. And yes, we got stared at, but after ten minutes the little old Japanese women were laughing with us at our squeaks in the cold mud, and chatting with us about... well, I don't know what they were chatting with us about, but it all seemed rather lovely.

Everybody needs a chance to start again: to strip away all the hard stuff, and the hurtful stuff, and the stuff that weighs them down, and put it in a locker, grab a towel and immerse themselves in something that will take it all away. And Japan - the country that somehow knows what it is you need before you know it yourself - has it already built into its ancient customs: the cleansing, purifying, harmonising experience of the Onsen.

Pink, glowing and utterly naked, I left the room full of unclothed strangers this time feeling calm, and clean, and ready to begin again.

Character

All loves are alike, but all heartbreaks are unhappy in their own way.

I've not left my bed today, because there doesn't seem a lot of point. It's raining intermittently, I'm crying intermittently, and - although if I could coordinate the two to stop or start at the same time they might cancel each other out - I'm not in the mood for timing.

The worst thing about hurting is knowing that the other party is not. If you get hit by a truck, you want to at least know that you've dented the fender; if you fall out of a window, it's nice to know that you've left an impression in the grass, however faint it might be. If somebody takes your heart out of the fridge, breaks it and then eats it in pieces, it would be reassuring to know that they haven't gone surfing for the weekend to celebrate. When they do - when the truck drives away unscathed, and the grass pings back, and the boy takes his board and a group of friends to the sea - it feels as if you were never there to start with. As if you have dissolved, somehow, into thin air: the way a fly might feel after it has flown into your eye, obliterated itself in your pupil and then been blinked away without even a slowed step.

Too much of anything can be unhealthy, and it is certainly true of the 'character' I am - according to my friends this morning - building. I don't want to build character anymore. I have enough of it already, and too much of it makes you hard and impermeable and brittle: ready to snap at the next disappointment. I don't need to learn to be happy alone: I am already a solitary creature, and struggle to be with others in peace. And - before they say it, even though I know they mean well - I don't want to be made stronger either. I am more than strong enough. It's being vulnerable that's hard for me. It's the weakness I needed to practice.

Somewhere, in all of this - in giving everything you have for love and losing it all, spectacularly - is a lesson to be learnt. There is always a lesson to be learnt, just as there is always a seed in every fruit (and sometimes many: for instance, in a strawberry). But I have to be honest: from my bedroom - a safe zone that ironically was rocked last night as physically as it was emotionally, thanks to a large and rather scary earthquake that woke me up at 4am - I can't see it right now. I'm not sure what there is to be learnt. Whether I should be learning that you should never give anything up for love; that you should protect yourself at all times, in case it hurts at the end. Whether I should be learning to be suspicious, distrusting, hard, strong. Whether I should learn to hide my feelings, or control them, or kill them before they kill me. And never again repeat the mistakes I made this time.

But if I do that, then the heartbreak wins. If I do that, then the love - the next love, wherever it may come from - will lose. Because I will have so much character, so much strength, so much knowledge, that it will not be able to reach me. The delicate things that love grows from - trust, hope, vulnerability, self-sacrifice, weakness, innocence - will have been tucked away so far inside me that nothing reaches them anymore, and I will forget that they are even there.

I will not learn from my mistakes this time. I have learnt enough. I will not be stronger, I will not be wiser. I will not hold my head up and pretend that I'm not hurting.

Because if I do, then I might never be hurt again. And that, I think, would be the saddest thing of all.

Chocolate Orange

Somebody once said that you can live, or you can write about it; and the same is true for love.

Over the last nine months, I have loved somebody very much. I loved them so much that I moved to Japan to be with them; that I refused to write about them or talk about them, in case it made it less real. As if the writing would make them fiction, after so long of feeling like the fiction I wrote was real.

I mentioned a couple of months ago that they broke my heart, but really it was more like the slam on the top of a Terry's chocolate orange: they simply punched the top of it - welded together because of time spent in the fridge, rather than because of essential construction - and have spent the last few months taking away the pieces, segment by segment. The details don't matter, because the details never matter, but they kept going - kept coming back, kept saying sorry, kept saying they loved me too even though it wasn't enough - until it was all gone. Until I realised that all I was doing with my time was touching the bits that were still there and wondering how long I had left with them.

I think they're all gone, now. I think the last piece was taken today, while I sat on the phone to him outside a pub in the rain, staring at the inside of the hat he bought me, and crying. He took the piece, and he said sorry, and I said it was okay even though it wasn't, and then it was gone. He was thorough, methodical: almost surgical, really. And the last piece hurt the worse. I held on to it as hard as I could; I clung to that bloody last piece with all of me, because it's the last piece you need to prove to yourself that you ever had a heart at all. And because - when it's gone - there's nothing to show that it was ever there to start with, except for an empty wrapper and a few crumbs you'll probably throw to a stranger when you're drunk and lonely and missing him.

While he took away the pieces - and did, probably, what a sensible boy does and ate them - I was waiting. Waiting for what, I don't know: for the fragments of utter happiness when he was with me, for the spaces in between when he wasn't and I hurt because of it. To see which bits of me I'd give him the next time he came back; which bits of me he'd take with him the next time he left. And while I was loving, and waiting, and living, I couldn't write. In the last few months, I've written barely a thing. Not a page of a book, not a line of a poem: nothing, apart from the blog that hardly knew he existed. Nothing to do with working too hard, it was about feeling too much: as if the two couldn't exist together. The living - the good stuff - was too alive to write; the falling apart - the Terry's chocolate orange - was too broken for it. So over the last nine months I have lived, and I have loved, I have been taken apart, piece by piece, and - just like many people who spend their time really living, and really loving, instead of locked away on their own - I've written nothing at all.

Now I'm locked away again. He has gone, and I'm back where I always thought I would be before I met him: alone, again, and writing. Wondering how to pass the hours until I really, really understand that he's not coming back. Still touching the air where the pieces used to be, and wishing I had some left to give him, even if just so he could eat them again.

And - as I listen to the sounds of people coming home drunk, happy, and in one piece - I worry whether some people are made to love, and be loved, and others are made to simply write about it.

Shins and knuckles

There are two types of shame.

There's the public type; the hot flush that races over you when your skirt falls down half way through a ballet performance, or when you pee yourself on the first day of primary school, or when somebody loudly declares in front of a classroom full of 12 year olds that they'd rather die than kiss you. It's sudden, it's horrible, and it's exposing, but it never really touches you: not in a way that means anything. It's a flush that runs round the outside of your body, and then it leaves again: a diverted electrical current, over as quickly as it came, and the seed of most anecdotes, and most lingering childhood memories.

And then there's the private type. The shame that sneaks up, quietly, and heats the inside of you. The electrical current that runs through the middle. That can't be ignored, even though you are the only witness; that can't be silenced, even if you're the only one who knows it's there. That strikes to the bones of you, and then stays there.

In the supermarket this afternoon I had both types of shame in quick succession. A flush that heated the outside of me, and then - immediately - heated the inside of me as well. Rolling my basket around the aisles in bored, hungry distraction, I smashed straight into the shins of a little old man who was trying to do his weekly shop without physical injury. My cheeks went pink - appalled by the fact that I had hurt somebody weaker than me because I wasn't paying attention - and I apologised as profusely as I could, graciously accepted his apologies for being in my way, and then (feeling the flush die down: it was an accident, after all) made to turn away again.

As I turned away, I saw the little old man look at the contents of my trolley in unmasked surprise, and - looking down - I saw the contents as if I hadn't just put them there myself. Pasta. Pasta sauce. Pizza. Pesto. Soup. Bread (muffins, actually). Cheese. Chocolate. Frozen vegetables. A veritable culture shock of Western junk food; food that was as strange to him as Japan was to me. And then I looked at the contents of his basket: fish heads, seaweed, rice, noodles, chicken knuckles. Things that, to be frank, I couldn't actually define, because I didn't have even the vaguest idea what they could be: they were just Japanese foods that I didn't recognise, and so I no longer even looked at them properly.

And, looking back at my trolley again, I realised that the food in my basket was the same food that was in my basket at University. It was the same food that was in my basket in London; it was the same food that was in my basket when I lived at home with dad, and it was the same food that was in my basket when I lived with my friends in Bristol. I had moved to the other side of the world, and I - without even thinking about it - had continued doing exactly what I had done in England. In fact, I had gone out of my way to do it, because you can bet that the aisle for chicken knuckles and green tea here is a damn sight bigger than the aisle for pesto. I was in my little Western bubble (worse: my little Holly Smale bubble), and it didn't matter where in the world I took myself, that won out. I was simply moving myself and my habits around the globe, and never really letting the place I was in touch me.

The flush of shame in the middle of me was bad, but it only got worse as I continued walking in a trance around the supermarket. How had I apologised to the old man? In three words of Japanese, repeated profusely and at varying volumes. I didn't have enough Japanese to apologise properly, or to really understand what his response had been. Knowing enough to get by on a day-to-day basis, my Japanese learning has stopped: laziness, and habit, and tiredness mean that I know as much of the language now as I did two months ago. And so, like my culinary tastes, my mind has shut off from Japan too. I might as well have been in Tesco, this afternoon; a Tesco simply moved ten thousand miles to the right.

It wasn't who I thought I'd be: somebody with the courage to move themselves geographically, but without the courage needed to pull themselves out of a bubble of habits that has taken 27 years to build. I thought it was enough to get on a plane, but it's not. You can change the world around you, but unless you change how you see it as well then you might as well stay in the same place. And I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed that I've gone so far on a journey and then closed my eyes once I've arrived there.

I wish I could say that I put all my shopping back: that I fiercely returned the stupidly expensive pasta sauce - that has travelled just as far as I have - and filled my basket with knuckles and heads and dried octopus instead. I didn't. I'm not that brave yet.

But the first step to breaking out of a bubble is knowing you're in one in the first place. And the next time I accidentally take a chunk out of an old man's shins, I'm going to know how to say sorry properly, even if I'm full of pizza.

So that - next time - the shame is only on the outside of me, instead of in the middle.

Fluff

No matter where you go, there inevitably comes a time when a traveller - at least the average, poor traveller - has to choose between eating and culture; between affording basic bodily requirements, and the need for something that represents the deeper psyche of the country they are attempting to absorb. In Australia, it was a sausage on a boat and swimming with dolphins. In Russia, it was buying a large bottle of vodka and then passing out in a toilet (even though I was 17). In Jamaica it was a carved wooden giraffe and dancing to a kettle drum, and in America it was having a large family domestic in the middle of DisneyLand, just outside Space Mountain, and then purchasing a 12 pack of doughnuts. It's all about choosing an experience or item that personifies the very soul of the place you're in, and you can't put a price on that.

Except that you can, actually: it's about 4,000 yen. For 4,000 yen, I am now the proud owner of a giant, bright pink, fluffy, all-in-one Hello Kitty babygro. A babygro, I hasten to add, that I will have to wear solidly for almost two weeks, because it's Halloween, I teach children, and you can't teach children at Halloween in Japan without dressing up like a massive Hello Kitty. Or you can, but it means faffing around every morning with green make up and various witchy accessories, and then not really impressing any of the kids anyway because... well, you're not Hello Kitty.

In a land where the key religion appears to be that of Cuteness - where crisps have faces and books are comics and grown men have furry toys hanging from their briefcases - I have been baptised in a blaze of glory, and will arise - pink, fluffy and ridiculous - on Wednesday morning, knowing that I am now truly a resident of Japan. Further: when Halloween is up and I no longer have to wear an outfit that I have to unbutton from the neck in order to go to the toilet, I am going to take my pink fluffy self and my remaining food money and spend the Halloween weekend in a pink, fluffy bar somewhere in Tokyo, drinking pink things, pouting, and generally being as adorable as I can.

Because you can't put a price on culture: especially the kind of culture that doubles up as incredibly comfortable pyjamas when it gets a bit nippy inside.

Butter tubs

Epiphanies sometimes turn up at strange times, and a big one arrived this evening as I was washing a tub of butter.

Sniffling at the last few dregs of my dying cold, I realised that I'm not in Japan to have my heart broken or fixed, or to learn a new language, or to teach children. I'm not in Japan to eat rice balls, or to spend the majority of my time converting yen into pounds and back into yen again in my head, or attaching small, cute and sparkly things to my phone and handbag and purse and keys. I'm not in Japan to learn how to eat food I don't like, and I'm not even in Japan to experience a new culture, or meet new people, or see new things. Those things are important, and will be done - and are being done - but they're not the reason I'm here, even if they were the reason I came. It all became suddenly clear to me this evening as I rinsed out my butter pot and put it carefully in my 'plastics' bin so that it could be recycled properly on Tuesday when the nice men come and pick up my rubbish.

For the first time in my life, I am living on my own. I'm not living with a boyfriend, I'm not living with flatmates, I'm not living with friends, I'm not living with my parents. For the first time in my life, there is nobody cooking for me, nobody paying the bills and then writing down my share of them on the back of a Sainsburys' receipt and circling it in blue, and then circling it again in blue, and then circling it in red and leaving a shitty note next to it. There's nobody cleaning up my mess or telling me to clean up my mess, nobody telling me when to get up or when to go to bed, or whether I should go out or stay in or watch tv or go dancing or eat more vegetables or eat less chocolate. The washing up is my washing up; the toothpaste all over the sink is my toothpaste; the toothbrush lying in the toothpaste all over the sink is my toothbrush; the electricity that they are threatening to shut off (at least, I think that's what they doing: all the Kanji is in red, anyway) will be my lack of electricity. If I don't wash my duvet cover it starts to smell, and if I drop my underwear in a pile on the floor, it's bloody well still there when I get up the next morning.

I came all the way to Japan for a culture shock that I could have got in a bedsit in Stoke on Trent, because it's not about the language or the food or the fashion or the random earthquakes. It's simply that, for the first time in nearly twenty eight years, I have been forced - for the sake of sanitary survival - to stop thinking and acting and living like a child.

It's a painful realisation. Seven weeks of skidding around my new life like Bambi on ice - breaking things and burning things and dropping things and trying to work out how to use a rice cooker and a washing machine and an air conditioner, and sulking and crying and moaning in the process - and it was all because I am, basically, a spoilt, lazy little kid who hasn't got a clue how to change the bag in a vacuum cleaner because if I leave it long enough then usually somebody else will do it for me. Twenty eight, and the most important thing learnt from working with small children is that I still behave exactly like them.

So that's what the butter tub told me. As I carefully rinsed it - remembering, now (unbelievably, with all the freshness of a new realisation) that if I didn't, it would leak all over my floor and then I would just have to spend longer cleaning it up - I suddenly became aware that I was doing something incredibly adult. That I was doing something unreasonably boring that I didn't want to do, because it was the responsible thing to do and would save me time in the long run. And that I was doing something - anything - without the ingrained and utterly innate conviction, somewhere deep inside of me, that somebody else might do it for me. And it wasn't the first thing I'd done, either. I'd paid my gas bill on the way to work. I'd put money in my piggy bank instead of spending it all on pretty little notepads and cheesecake. I'd even hung my clothes out to dry and then remembered to take them back in again before it rained and they all stank like dog. I'd started growing up already, and I hadn't even realised it. I'd just noticed that my bedding smelt a lot nicer.

Being adult isn't a lot of fun: not at this stage, anyway. The boring stuff seems to take up an awful lot of time: almost all of it, in fact. But I've realised that that's why I'm here, and why I should stay. Because - before I head off into the backpacking paradise of Asia (which is just a playground for other spoilt kids like me who don't like washing up) - I need to learn how to be an adult, like all the other adults out there who are nearly thirty years old. I need to pack away the bit of my brain that still wants to sit on the sofa and throw biscuit wrappers at the bin from six feet away, or - at the very least - insert a new bit of brain that tells me to go and pick them up again afterwards. And I need to learn how to fend for myself, instead of hoping that somebody will come and save me and I won't have to.

After all - as with anything - if I can just learn the rules of adulthood well enough, then I can start breaking them again. But, when I decide to leave the washing up for three days because it's my goddamn washing up and I have better things to do, at least now I'll know that I'm being a kid about it.

Presents

The problem with the mind is that it has a body of its own, and it doesn't really matter how positive your attitude is: germs are germs, flu is flu, and snot hooked out of the noses of children and immediately wiped on your hand is likely to make you poorly, sooner or later. Six weeks of gliding through a shimmering sea of bacteria with merely a faint cough and regularly bad nightmares has finally culminated in a flu the likes of which I have rarely had before: a flu created and harboured and presented - in little tiny open tissues, like badly wrapped gifts - by a hundred sniffling children. I don't even know which one dealt the final mucussy blow, or whether it was an admirable joint effort: the kind of joint effort I can guarantee they won't be making when we display their respective (shambolic) plays in Spring.

Either way, I'm sick as a dog, and - because my company deduct a hefty amount of money from my pay packet if I call in sick - I dragged myself into school this morning and watched in foggy, feverish interest as the children reacted to their usually loud and genki teacher suddenly begging them in husky, cracked whispers to "please, for the love of all that is good and painless, be quiet." Where usually I prefer teaching the little boys (they tend to be more affectionate and less manipulative, although they break wind far more frequently), today - unusually - I noticed with vague interest a marked change in attitudes; the boys, realising that I could no longer scare them, started to run amuck, while the girls - conversely - became maternal and started petting me and fetching tissues and reprimanding the boys. One of the older ones, in fact, put her hands on her hips, clipped her English into shortened vowels and became so much like me in a bad temper that I feared for the impact I had already made on a young life in such a short time: my short fuse was not supposed to be one of the skills I was passing on.

Anyway, until the fever lets up and I can take an easy part in basic human activities again -breathing, speaking, entering a train carriage without pressing my forehead against the cold window - I am taking to my bed, and letting the children fend for themselves. As tempting as it is, this is a gift I don't really want to send back.

The Hokey Pokey

A long time ago, people thought that the earth stayed still, and the stars revolved around us; that - for anything to change - we had to wait for the universe to move. Then, of course, we learnt with some confusion that we were not in the middle of the universe, that it was us that was spinning, and that for things to change we had to turn ourselves in a different direction, face the sun and see things in a different light.

Three days it took me to realise that I was facing the wrong way, and that the stars did not revolve around me. Three days of crying and looking at plane timetables; three days of eating chocolate until the smell of it made me sick; three days of wearing pink sunglasses on the train at 8 in the morning so that nobody could see my even pinker eyes. Three days, and then I was trumped by my two favourite children: one in tears, and one in sadness.

The beauty of children is that whatever you feel, they feel it stronger. Their happiness outshines any happiness you can hope to experience; they find incoherent laughter in things that you can only snicker at. Their world is infinitely larger and scarier than yours, and their tears are hurting them more than yours possibly can. Which is why any intense emotion makes an adult feel like a child again, simply because that was the time when our emotions were at their most pure; unsullied by any weariness or experience or knowledge that things will, eventually, get better, and that nothing is as black and white as it initially seems. The knowledge that makes everything - no matter how awful - somehow easier to handle, and simultaneously less beautiful in its ever fluctuating shades of greyness.

Three days after I had cried for my mum, I watched my favourite little boy - Shinnosuke, a sensitive, sweet, sunny, artistic and unfeasibly tiny two year old - curl himself up on the floor in pain and sob into the carpet; crying for his mum as if he thought his whole body would break without her. Trying to pick him up had no effect whatsoever - he was incoherent and rigid with missing her, and his whole body lifted in the same bent and tiny shape like a scared and shaking little hedgehog - so I stroked his hair as calmly as I could and ignored the impulse to curl up on the floor next to him and cry for my mum too. I knew what he could not, at two years old - that I would see my mum again - and so I talked to him quietly until he lifted his little distraught, pink face and tried to explain in Japanese that he didn't know where his mum was, and I tried to explain in English that she would come back. I then held my arms out and asked if he needed a cuddle, to which he responded by climbing immediately onto my lap, putting his tiny arms around my shoulders and sobbing into my neck as if his little heart was falling apart. Trying not to cry with him, I continued my class with the little boy on my hip until - six or seven minutes later - he stopped crying, smiled at me, climbed down and promptly started doing the Hokey Pokey with the bravery of the world's smallest soldier: a bravery I realised in shame that I, twenty six years older than him, had yet to really display.

A couple of hours later, my other favourite child - a tiny, thoughtful and incredibly intelligent little girl, who has an adorable tendency to refer to herself in third person, both in Japanese and English - sat down at the small writing table with me as I tried to explain basic emotions: happy, sad, exited, angry. Giving all of my students a piece of paper with different faces, I produced a range of coloured crayons and asked them to colour in the emotion they felt: a task that was too advanced for almost all of them (being between one and three years old), and which therefore resulted in a mass of yellow and pink squiggles over the page, the table and their hands. Shoko, however, looked at me with a frown as I pointed to each of the faces, and then grabbed a black crayon. Watching her in shock as she scribbled furiously over the angry face, she then took a yellow and drew briefly on the happy face, and then took a blue crayon and carefully coloured in the sad face.

"Shoko sad," she said in a serious voice, and pointed to the blue face.

"Are you?" I said in confusion, still trying to adjust to the fact that a barely-two year old knew how to associate colours with emotions. "Why are you sad?"

"Happy!" one of the older children shouted, scribbling on the floor with yellow.

"Shoko sad," Shoko repeated, ignoring the other child with barely contained contempt. Then she looked at me with a face full of the kind of sadness that I barely remember, and I realised that something inside me felt ashamed for the second time that day.

"Why are you sad, sweetheart?" I asked her again. Then - because I needed to know - I asked my assistant to ask her in Japanese, in case the language barrier was causing a problem. My assistant asked her, and Shoko simply shrugged and looked at me again.

"Shoko sad," she stated in a quiet voice without the slightest self-pity, and then handed the picture to me. "Finished," she added, and went to play with the toy rabbit in the play box.

Between them, Shoko and Shinnosuke ended my three days of crying. Shinnosuke, for having the bravery to dance the Hokey Pokey when he was exhausted and all sobbed out, and Shoko, for understanding that it's okay to be sad sometimes, even if you don't know why.

I was facing the wrong way, that's all. The sun was up behind me all along. And it took a couple of two year olds to make me realise that - when you've got your back against the dark - there is nothing in this world that can't be handled with a pencil, a good dance, and a little old fashioned bravery.

Floors

Six weeks.

The general prediction was three, but I was hoping for seventeen or possibly eighteen: nineteen or twenty if I could find a pot of Marmite somewhere. But six weeks it was: six weeks before I cracked and demanded that I be sent home to England, and I didn't care how I got there. In the luggage compartment of Ryan Air; in the large handbag of a lady, shared with a small dog; tied up with string and dragged behind a Eurasian bus: any which way, as long as by next weekend I could have a cuddle with my mum and a cup of tea and a conversation with a person in the local newsagent, just because they would understand me.

"No," my dad said immediately. "Absolutely not. We've not even finished redecorating your bedroom yet."

Mum pushed him away from the computer with one hand, muttered "don't be so sodding insensitive, Mark," waited until he had stropped out of the room and then sighed at the webcam. "Sweetheart," she said, "I'm with your dad on this one."

"Aha!" I heard dad shout from the kitchen. "You see?!"

"Mark!," my mum shouted back, and then pointedly shut the living room door. "We'll send some money darling, enough for you to buy food. But I don't think you should come home. You need to give it a chance there."

"But. I. Want. To. Come. Home," I gulped incoherently. "I. Don't. Like. It. Here. I. Hate. It."

"No, you don't," mum said in the voice she used when I fell out of bed, broke my nose and was still fast asleep when she came in to investigate: kind of soft and warm and worried and a tiny bit amused. "You do like it. You're just having a bad day."

"I'm. Not. I. Want. To. Come. Home," I gulped again, wiping my nose on the back of my hand and then wiping my hand on my jumper.

"You'll regret it if you do," mum pointed out reasonably. "Anyway, there isn't a lot to come back to. The weather here is awful. And we're sanding down the floorboards."

"I. Want. To To To To To C C Co," I announced, and then exploded into tears again.

"Tell her we've already booked tickets for a visit at New Year," I heard dad shout through the wall.

"That is not the point," mum yelled back.

"It is the bloody point," dad said, putting his head round the side of the door. "What are we going to do in Japan if she's back in the spare room in England, making a mess again?"

"B-b-b-but," I wailed, putting my head in my hands; "muuuuuuuuuuuum, please don't make me stay. I'm lonely and I'm tired and I'm broke and I don't understand what anyone is saying and I w-w-w-wanttocomehome."

"Make her stay," my dad said, and then peered at the webcam. "Can she see me?" he asked mum.

"Yes, and I can hear you too," I muttered crossly.

"Stay," dad ordered, with his eye taking up the entire screen. "You're out there now, you might as well stay."

"How long for?" I sniffled.

"Until you don't want to come home anymore. Then you can come home." Dad paused thoughtfully. "Or," he said, "until after January the 3rd, because if we fly back before that it's really expensive."

"Just give it six more weeks, sweetheart," mum said, glaring at dad as he started muttering about floorboards again. "You're done six weeks, you can do another six. And then if you still want to come home, you can."

"At least the floors will be nice by then," dad said, perking up a bit.

Six weeks. Six whole weeks. So much has happened in the last six weeks, it seems impossible that I can know what I'll be doing or how I'll be feeling in another six. The shameful truth is: I've had my heart broken, and when your heart is broken there is nowhere you want to be other than home, there is nobody you want to see other than your family, and there is no worse place to be than on your own, penniless, lonely and stranded abroad. But, ironically, the comfort comes from that same source. Because - when you've had your heart broken - there's nowhere that will make you happy anyway. And nobody who can make it better, even if it feels like they might be able to when they're not there.

So, England or Japan, Welwyn or Mitsukyo (from one shithole to another: I am apparently incapable of living anywhere nice), it doesn't really matter where I am for the next six weeks. I just have to keep my chin up, work as hard as I can, eat as rarely as I can, spend as little as I can, and wait until my life isn't on the floor again.

As my dad reminded me, though: the beauty of constantly ending up on the floor is that you can always look forward to the day when it'll become shiny again.

The kindness of strangers

There are moments, here and there - scattered throughout life like chocolate sprinklings - that are so perfect, and so solid, that you can almost touch them with your fingers. Like the good bits in a MacFlurry, they're not very frequent: you happen upon them by accident, and by the time you've realised they're there they're dribbling down your chin, or they've somehow attached themselves to the front strands of your hair. Which makes it even more important that you remember to stick your tongue out and catch them properly when you find them.

Today I had one of the most peculiarly beautiful, James Stewart-esque experiences of my life, and I didn't see it coming. I didn't even see it in the distance: I was swearing and sweating so hard, in fact, that I almost missed it. 

This morning, I decided that I was going to go on a mini adventure. A Saturday without any money, thighs that have seen far too much ice cream recently and a prefecture (Japanese county) I have only ever seen from over the top of the heads of other commuters on a packed train all indicated that I should take my bike for a ride, so I promptly ignored the fact that my front light doesn't work, took a quick glance at a map on Google and rode off into remarkably ugly Japanese suburbia. I knew where I was headed - the studio I work in, via a pretty park with a zoo in it - and figured I'd be back in an hour and a half, which included fifteen minutes to eat a riceball in the middle of some picturesque flowers somewhere and maybe feed a giraffe. Google said it was three miles, so three miles - I reasoned - it had to be.

It wasn't three miles. Or if it was, I hadn't factored in a) not being able to read road signs b) not being able to ask for directions c) not having a map d) being incredibly unfit and e) being crap at riding bikes. After three and a half hours of cycling up hills and through blankets of mosquitos - and seeing no signs whatsoever of either park or zoo - I finally managed to reach my destination, only to realise that I couldn't remember for the life of me how to get back. And I couldn't find a map that wasn't in Kanji. And I still couldn't read any road signs. And it was getting dark. And my light hadn't miraculously started working at any stage on the journey. And I didn't want to cycle anymore, because I couldn't feel my thighs. And my Saturday had sucked.

Having sat on the kerb and had a little cry - which is what I always do when lost, stressed or simply after exercise - I got back on my bike again and started cycling, tearfully, towards something that looked vaguely recognisable, and actually looked far less recognisable the closer I got to it. Realising I was totally and utterly lost and too exhausted to continue, and deciding that I had nothing better or more constructive to do, I stopped abruptly at a junction so that I could carry on crying without causing a traffic jam. In front of me was a tiny old lady with a white hand bandage standing completely still, staring at the floor, waiting quietly for the green light so that she could cross. 

With what was left of my strength - and with all of my linguistic power - I asked the little old lady where Mitsukyo station was. She spoke rapidly in Japanese and made enough complicated hand gestures to make it clear that it was a long way away, that it was difficult to get to, and that I was screwed. She then pointed at the sky and made it clear that it was getting dark, and that - again - I was definitely screwed. Then she took one look at my face, waved her hand at me and asked me to follow her.

Walking slowly with my bike next to me, the little old lady then took me at least thirty five minutes through winding back streets without saying a single word. I couldn't speak - partly because I was so overwhelmed at her kindness, and partly because I didn't know how to say anything - and she didn't or couldn't say anything either. We simply walked through tiny, quiet streets, with the sky getting redder and redder and darker and darker, and the only sound was the click of my bike wheels. After a mile or so, she stopped on the pavement and silently got out of her bag a piece of paper and a pen. Then she drew - with her bandaged hand - a very simple map, pointed down a long road and smiled at me. Then she bowed, turned round, and started walking back the way we had come.  

It took an hour to cycle back to my house down one very, very long and dark road, but I didn't cry again. There are some moments that come when you don't expect them, and they are supposed to be held on to. And, without a doubt, that one - the kindness, the bandaged hand, the silence, the click of my bike wheels, the sunset - was absolutely one of them. 

Shoulders

Today, finally, I received an email from my little sister. Five weeks, and not a bleep; she is citing moving house as a legitimate reason for the silence, apparently.

3/4 of a mile, I pointed out. You moved 3/4 of a bloody mile. If you stand on your tiptoes you can still see the roof of the old flat. 

It's very hard work, my sister responded, ignoring me. Our sofa is heavy.

I moved 6,000 miles and still managed an email, I answered in a sulk. 

You weren't carrying a sofa. It's taken weeks to be able to feel my hands properly again. Anyway - I've been reading the blog, and you've not answered any of the things I really want to know. 

Maybe you should have emailed me then, I typed back. 

Are you going to sulk about that for the rest of the time you're out there? she asked. 

I thought about it for a little bit.

No, I eventually, sticking out my tongue at the computer.

Don't make that face at me, she wrote. I can't see you but I know you're doing it. Anyway: the first question is... 

I quickly braced myself for some soul searching, which basically involves revolving my shoulders a couple of times and eating a piece of chocolate.

What's it like being taller than everyone? she asked.

I stared at the computer screen; the shoulder rotation had clearly been a total waste of muscle exertion.

Eh? I said.

Well you're taller than everyone, right? You're five foot ten. And blonde. What's that like?

Um. I thought about it. I'm taller than most people in London too, I pointed out.

But do people stare? 

Yes, I said. But I'm staring at everyone too, so it's ok. 

Do people say anything?

Sometimes, but I can't understand most of it. 

Second question. What's the food like? Is it all sushi?

No, I replied. But there is a lot of sushi. And fish. And rice. There's also crisps and chocolate and pot noodles and pasta and pesto and curry, just like in England.

Cool, mum won't die when she visits then. Ok, third question: is there Manga everywhere?

Tara, I said, Japan isn't just one big cliche you know.

But is there? she wrote.

Yes, I admitted after a short pause.

What about those games where they hit buttons and dance around? Are there lots of them?

Yes.

Is everyone very good at it?

The people who do it are.

What about those girls in crazy clothes? Are there loads of them? Do they all look like dolls?

Not really. Most of the girls are dressed like London girls. Only better.

Are the kids you teach adorable? Are they tiny? And have you tried to nick one?

I stared at the screen again. 

Mostly and mostly and no, I said. 

In what order? my sister typed back immediately.

In that order, I replied. 

I think I would try and steal one, she said. Maybe you can nab one at the end of your year there. Stick them in your suitcase. Ok, most important question....

Mmm, I wrote dubiously. Is it about shoes? 

Oooh! she said. It wasn't, but do they have nice shoes?

Very. I don't fit them, but you might. They're not too expensive either.

There was a silence while Tara pondered that fact. I might visit after all, she decided eventually. Ok, so, most important question, Oh Lady of Bad Romantic Luck. Boys. Met any cute ones? 

There was a pause while I wondered just how much to tell her. While I wondered whether to admit that I had met somebody; when it could jinx it, or fall through, or make me look foolish or naiive or stupid if it all went wrong. That - after three years of being on my own - I might not actually be on my own anymore. And that I wasn't quite sure how to deal with that, and so was quite possibly hiding it from everybody, including myself.

I rotated my shoulders a few times, and decided that it was probably time to answer the most important question. Even if briefly, for now.

Yes, I admitted finally. One. 

And then I ate a piece of chocolate.

Bubbles

Language is something I have always taken for granted. Unlike numbers, words have never scared me: in fact, from a very young age they gave me power. If I wanted to negotiate an extra ten minutes in the garden eating mud, I could argue with my mother about the importance of a free childhood and varied diet. If I wanted an extra dollop of icecream, I could charm the shop-keeper into thinking it was an investment (like a drug dealer). If a boy was mean, I could write a letter that would make him cry; if somebody made me angry, I could make it very very clear exactly how I felt straight away. Books, poetry, plays, letters, emails, blogs, press releases: I've sucked them all up, chewed them around for a bit, swallowed as much as I can and spat out the bits that stuck in my teeth; partly because I love the English language for itself - the sounds, the subtleties, the forms - but mostly because I love the ability to communicate effectively, and to absorb the thoughts and sounds of other people the best way I know how. Through words.

And now, effectively, I'm screwed. Living in Japan, I feel the way Superman might feel after a large piece of Kryptonite has attached itself - via a piece of chewing gum, perhaps - to the bottom of his shoe. I can't read anything. Not a road sign, not a train sign, not a sandwich packet, not the buttons on my washing machine or rice-cooker, not my gas bill (if that's what it is: I haven't been able to work it out yet) and certainly not any novels or plays. I can't speak: I walk around in a vacuum of silence, because all I can say is "thankyou," "sorry," and "where is the toilet/subway/convenience store/nearest rice ball". I therefore can't charm, I can't argue, I can't make jokes, and I can't reason my way out of hostile situations or work out where I am when I'm lost. Worse still, I can't listen. It's like watching the world through one way glass, because I can see people but I can't really hear them; I can tell that they're making noises, but I don't have the faintest idea what any of them mean. The joy of sitting in a crowded cafe and listening to a hundred conversations and a hundred different lives is gone: I sit in a crowded cafe, and it's just me. Me, and a hundred lives that I can't even begin to wonder about, because they are all completely unknown to me. Just like that, my power has evaporated, and the way that I process the world has evaporated, and I am simply floating around in a confusing, silent little one-way bubble. A bubble I can't pop, because - even if I could convince somebody to talk to me, or sit next to me, and even if I could learn the questions to ask that would help me to break through it - I wouldn't understand the answers. And so I am utterly and completely alone, apart from the handful of English, American and Canadian friends I have made, who have simply joined me in my bubble and float around in it with me.

Which, on one hand, is not what I want. I came to a different country to experience a different culture; not to simply float through it, buying English muffins and expensive butter and pretending I'm actually back in England. I want to understand people; I want to hear things. I want to know what people are thinking and saying; I want to begin to comprehend what is going on around me.

But, on the other hand, my senses are being stretched in entirely different directions. I have spent so long focusing on the power of language that I have entirely forgotten the importance of everything else. In my silent little bubble, I am suddenly noticing facial expressions, gestures, the shade of somebody's cheeks when they're embarrassed. No longer able to express myself verbally, I have suddenly become very aware of the way I stand, the way my mouth is set, the expressions I make when I'm tired, because I'm suddenly very aware that these are the only things I can be judged by. Like watching a silent film, or watching a  foreign film without subtitles, the world has suddenly changed shape, and - after a short period of utter incomprehensible silence - I'm starting to read it differently, and be read differently in return. It's a quieter kind of communication, but it's no less worthy. Like somebody who loses the ability to see and learns to smell everything - every single nuance - instead, I am finally learning to read body language, which is a skill I have always lacked (as anybody who has ever been on a date with me can testify).

It doesn't mean that I am not going to try to learn Japanese, of course: I'm carrying my phrase book around with me, even if it sinks in slowly and painfully and with the kind of effort my 3 year olds don't seem to need. If I leave Japan without being able to at least understand a little of the language around me, I will have wasted my time. 

But.... I'm going to try to hang on to this new world too; the one you don't need words to understand. Because it's one that's not limited to this country, and it's a skill that I should be able to take with me everywhere. Even when the bubble is broken again.

Too tired to write. Too tired to sit up properly, actually; am lying in a semi-vertical position on a futon, waiting to get the energy to climb back down ladder from loft* to go to the toilet. Considering some kind of bed pan, because knees have locked again. Five classes (back to back without toilet breaks: probably why my bladder has sealed up), 7 hours of teaching plus three hours preparation, one mouthful of pasta, one punch in the face, one smack on the arm and eighty three loud and imminently arthritic knee clicks and I'm just about ready to a) climb into my teeny tiny Japanese bath and drown myself b) burn all of my school books on large bonfire and then get fined by Yokohama government for polluting atmosphere, and c) get every single one of my baby making tubes tied, in no particular order. 

Compensated for lack of time to eat with three packs of crisps and four chocolate bars before and after day. Forcing junk food into pre 9am and post 10pm slots is not on any dieting manual I've seen recently, frankly, so if I don't render myself broken with joint problems, I'll be so fat somebody is going to have to roll me home. 

Will write more when properly awake and legs can move, if do not fall down ladder in state of semi-paralysis.   

*PS mum: yes, I have a ladder up to my bedroom. Please don't worry, bed is far from edge. And am very careful climbing. And hold on tight and do not swing down from ledge with hands. In fact, apparently I look like a sad little baby monkey, clinging on to the edges and pouting.  

Leading and Whiting

Well, I didn't make the studio a sky at all. Not even a little bit. I didn't make the studio a sky, or a sea, or the bottom of a garden occupied by fairies. I didn't convince them that they were pirates, or spies, or aliens, or princesses. No. What I did, in fact, ran something like this:

Me: "Yoshi, please stop crying."
Yoshi squeezes herself behind door and continues crying.
Me: "Yoshi, sweetheart, please stop crying."
Yoshi continues crying and says something indecipherable in Japanese.
Me: "Look! Yoshi! Here's a rabbit! Can you say rabbit? It's coming to..."
Yoshi looks appalled, smacks the rabbit and starts crying so hard that snot drips off her chin. Hiro runs up and tries to kick Yoshi.
Me: "No! Hiro! Don't kick Yoshi! No kicking of Yoshi! Naughty!"
Hiro kicks Yoko instead. Yoko starts crying.
Meanwhile, Shina - who wants nothing more than to stay away from kicking boys - creeps into the corner and picks up a red brick. "Brue!" she shouts enthusiastically.
Me: "Good girl, Shina! Except that it's red. Can you say 'red', Shina? Red?"
Shina nods and screams "Brue!" again. Hiro - in sheer fury that I told Shina that she was good, and, possibly, that she can say 'brue' - kicks Shina, who throws the red brick at Yoshi. Yoshi screams something in Japanese, hits the rabbit again, continues crying and desperately tries to turn the door knob, like a tiny little prisoner in a bad made-for-tv drama.

Frankly, my studio wasn't so much a sky as a warzone - with little plastic bricks as weapons and laminated word cards as shields - and my imagination ran out after 45 solid minutes of screaming girls. The bunny had used three different accents, I had crawled around on all fours mooing like a cow, I had hopped around the room like a rabbit only to be met with three seconds of blissfully shocked silence (followed by shouts of "Usagi! Usagi!"), and the only thing that could distract the kicking boys was to give them something to kick, which they promptly lobbed - with their hands, just for the sake of irony - at the girls, who sniffled even harder. It was less about inspiring children and more about acting as a policeman for teeny tiny ASBOS.

Which is not to say it wasn't also rewarding. When they were good - when they sat down on the carpet neatly, or thought that my cow puppet pretending to eat their hands instead of an imaginary sandwich was the funniest thing they had ever seen - I got a glow that leaked out of my ears, because they were the most adorable children in the world. When the little Japanese version of myself (an eight year old who has her own English dictionary that she carries around with her in a tiny pink satchel; her mother says she "wanted it for her birthday") grabbed my hand and said, very soberly, "I am leeding" - instead of "I am reading" - the high five I gave her was so genuinely enthusiastic she almost fell over.

But... My God. It's bloody hard work. And it's far less about teaching, and far more about trying every single thing in your power to get them to notice that you're even in the room at all. It's like the world's worst date; every time you think you've come up with something interesting, and you're mentally patting yourself on the back, their eyes suddenly glaze over and they're staring at a fascinating bit of fluff on the carpet again. For every inspired puppet show that sparks something for three minutes, there are another fifteen minutes where you are desperately grappling with basic verbs and trying to distract them from a piece of blue tac on the bottom of their shoes. And yes, all you have to do to get their attention again is scream "race to the wall and put your heads on the floor!" but a) that's not on the curriculum b) somebody usually gets trodden on and c) you have to do it too, and there's only so much flexing my body can take before it starts making loud snapping noises.

I'm going to stick it out, though. I may not want to be a teacher on a permanent basis, but this is a life lesson. I'm stretching myself in directions I never thought I could or would, and I mean that metaphorically, spiritually, and very, very literally: even my toenails ache with all the jumping and crawling and hopping and hokey pokey-ing (American version: presumably "cokey" is too drug-addled for toddlers). And yes, I did spend at least ten minutes (while at the convenience store, queuing up for yet another bloody rice ball) calculating that I worked half as hard and for twice as much money when I was in PR in London, but hey: if that's what I wanted from life - an easy, well paid, ride - then I would have just stayed there. Clearly self-inflicted torture and bruises on the knees are what I prize above all experiences; that and the shame of knowing that a 1.7 year old with the world's cutest mullet and a passion for ponies can speak more of a second language than I can.

Anyway, it's all very good practice for when and if I ever decide to inflict my genes on another human being. Because you can bet your arse that they'll be fascinated by blue tac and carrying a dictionary around with them. They'll probably have asked for one for their birthday.

Making the studio a sky.

The problem with releasing the inner child is knowing how the hell you're supposed to get them back in again. Because kids really aren't that easy to control; especially when you've spent the last 17 years pretending that you were never one in the first place.

School training started three days ago, and already I'm exhausted. My school encourages as much activity and as many games as you can possibly fit in, and - frankly - I'm not known for my athletic abilities or my physical stamina. Three days of rolling around on a carpet and pretending to be a fish - of shuffling along the floor on my stomach - and my muscles ache, my bones ache, and the little bit of my knees that used to have skin ache. And this was with a class of 7 fully grown adults, also training. We haven't even come into contact with the kids yet, so I can only imagine what will happen when there are 10 five year olds released into the room.

What's strange is that, for the first day at least, it all felt very, very strange. My body didn't feel like it was supposed to move like that; using all of my limbs (instead of just the bottom bit of my legs) to move around felt silly, and the shapes I was expected to get into felt bizarre. After years of sitting politely on chairs and walking upright, suddenly crouching into a crab shape and scuttling across the room felt ridiculous and embarrassing. Worse, the imaginary worlds that I had to play in (it's an English-through-Drama school, so the more imaginary worlds the better) felt pretty much invisible. I've learnt to create imaginary worlds sitting at my computer and using my head, but the ability to create that world and then physically play in it - to make that world real - disappeared a long time ago, and for the first day or so "let's go to the bottom of the sea!" just meant: "let's turn bright red and hope that this section is over pretty damn quickly, coz I can't see no sea, and I can't see no fish, and I definitely can't see no shark that we're all pretending to scream at."

But it came back. With a startling loud click, it all came back. Well: part of it did, anyway. I was never a particularly physical child - prone to reading books and sitting neatly and practicing my letters on sheets and sheets of green paper - so the physical element still feels a little bit strange. But playing in other worlds? Thinking like a child? Remembering what makes children laugh? Easy. And the more realistic you can make that world - the better you pretend to zip on your wings before you go flying - the more fun they have, and the more fun you have, and the more they learn. And the more they learn - I've only just realised - the more you do.

Because it's something I needed. Being an adult and walking straight and sitting neatly and exercising my brain has occupied the last twenty years of my life; in all honesty, I was chasing after adult conversation and behaviour long before I stopped being a child (when I was five I took my Godfather aside and soberly told him to "tell me grown up stuff, please"). But this is a different kind of hard work. This takes over your whole body. This isn't all about thinking; it's about doing, instinctively, and being. You can't sit down and write about an evening floating in space: you have to strap on your helmet and make the studio the sky. You have to encourage the children to stop seeing it as a classroom, and instead see it as a blank canvas that can be anything. Because the power of their heads and their bodies to make it anything is all there; they just need to tap into it.

Japanese children haven't been brought up playing these kind of games, and it's been a long time since I played them, so in a way we're starting off at roughly the same stage. But it's a stage I think I've been missing: a stage that is going to help me see the world differently. Because in opening the imaginations and the worlds of these tiny little children, I have to open mine as well. And - as a writer - that's exactly what I needed. To move away from the desk, and learn how to create a world and then actually play in it. To start using the creative part of my brain as a muscle that moves again, instead of one that just sits and stagnates in the dusty part of my brain, under the bit that works out the water bill and how much tax has been deducted from my wage slip.

It was never something I was looking for. When I came to Japan, I came for the travelling and the experience; teaching was very much secondary, and a way to make the money to stay here for a while. But I've already realised - before school has even started (I meet the kids on Monday) - that this part of the adventure is going to be as tangible and as powerful as any of the rest of it. Because this is the bit that has taken me out of my comfort zone; not walking, upright, sensibly, with other adults who just so happen to be from another country.

It's going to be hard, and it's going to be knackering, but I'm going to try as hard as I can. And if the child in the middle of me is so desperate to come out, I'm simply going to let her.