In fact, it makes me pretty cross and grumpy: as anyone who has been stupid enough to try and cuddle me/ text me/ talk to me/ kiss me on the nose in the last few days will happily attest. I'm an absolute nightmare. It's so bloody boring and stressful, and - in my opinion - utterly unnecessary. All I really want to do is jump on a plane, watch a few films and then roll up in a shiny, sparkly Japan where I will be greeted, obviously, by my own personal Geisha-themed musical group and beautiful Japanese man (before being handed bowls of noodles and a nice rush-matted floor to sleep on, which I will reject in favour of a huge bed). But noooooo. Noooo. Adventure doesn't work like that, apparently. I can't just rock up with trainers and start climbing Mount Fiji. I can't just buy a nice pair of chopsticks from Habitat and then start clicking away with them in beautiful candle-lit restaurants. Or wander into a Karaoke bar and start belting out a song I don't know the words to. Nooooo. Stereotyped experiences take a whole lot of goddamn planning, apparently, and it's doing my head in.
They want a visa. And references. And filled in job application forms. They want to interview me on Skype. They want an international driving license. They want to know if my hair colour is natural (kind of). They want me to work out - all on my own, I hasten to add - that my hairdryer and straighteners won't work out there because of a voltage problem. They want me to rapidly learn more about Japanese geography than I do about British geography (done. I don't know where Norfolk is, and I couldn't stick a pin in Manchester, but I know precisely where Tokyo, Nagoya, Shizuoka City, Hamamatsu, Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima are, and I know what kind of bears they've got in Hokkaido). They want me to be able to convert pounds into Yen, when all the 0s on the end make me feel a bit sick (I have dyscalculia, remember). They want me to have injections, and projections, and dejections, and rejections. They want bank statements and personal statements and referential statements and statements that don't involve any kind of swear words. I feel like I'm entering some kind of paperwork black hole already, and I haven't even arrived yet.
But it's ok. I'm writing lists on everything - everything: the cat is starting to look at me suspiciously in case I try and write one on her too - and I spend my entire life at the moment typing the words jobs, japan, hair straighteners and oh Good God please fucking kill me into Google. Something's going to click, though. Eventually. Of course it is: it has to. And if it doesn't, it doesn't make much of a difference anyway. I've got my ticket. No visa - so I won't be allowed past the airport barrier - but I'll still make it to Japan, one way or another. Even if I'm a grumpy, tired old mess by then: a mess with frizzy hair and encaphalitis and no means of proper transport.
All I'm going to say is: there'd better be a beautiful Japanese man waiting for me at the airport with a singing, dancing Geisha band (and I don't care if they don't exist: they should) and a steaming hot bowl of noodles, or I'm turning around and coming home again. Goddamit, I will not be cheated out of an adventure because of bad planning; and I'm not going to let bureaucracy cheat me out if it either. And if I have to write on the cat in order to get there in one piece, then so be it.
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