I looked down at my damp smelling, hole filled little £5 Primark jacket - worn through an entire Japanese winter - and my festering fake turquoise Crocs, similarly worn through a Japanese summer, and my cheap grey jumper, tugged on by 30 five year olds every day. I patted my hair, pulled into a pink scrunchie. And then I glanced at my reflection in the train window and confirmed that I wasn't just wearing no makeup again: I had to think really carefully to remember where in my flat it might actually be. I hadn't seen my mascara in nearly two weeks: nearly as long as I hadn't seen my tweezers or used a razor.
"Know what you mean," I replied, and pulled my hood over my head.
Japan is one of the most fashionable countries in the world, but it seems to have the opposite impact on most of the Western female friends I have. Surrounded by perfectly glossy, perfectly accessorized, perfectly made-up Japanese women, most of us foreigners have simply given up: we can't compete, we don't fit the clothes, and there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to bother anyway when we're so ill equipped to manage it.
The thing about fashion is that there is more than one point to it, but - for a Western girl in Japan - almost all of them are wiped out entirely. Fashion is about identity; about making yourself stand out. As a foreigner in Japan, you already do: thus the subconscious desire to make yourself even more conspicuous completely disappears. Fashion is also about being noticed, and here the impact is two-fold: not only are you noticed no matter what you wear, but you are also simultaneously ignored because Japanese culture dictates that nobody ever - ever - looks at anybody else. Whether you're crying openly on a train (done) or drunk (done) or dropping change all over the floor (done done done), you still feel invisible; so dedicating any time to impressing the public at large is totally pointless. Futhermore, as a (very tall, in particular) Western girl, you will rarely - if ever - attract the attention of a Japanese man (and absolutely never attract the attention of a Western man, because they're usually there because they like Japanese women), so any hope of using fashion to appeal to the opposite sex is totally redundant. Which, strangely - as fashion is the cultural equivalent of brightly coloured mating feathers on birds - makes a Western girl feel pretty much androgynous, no matter how much time she has spent getting ready.
Being a minority - as any sort of minority will tell you - is difficult. Trying to fade in instead of stand out shakes at the foundations of you; it drags inwards what used to be displayed on the outside, and - before you're even aware of it - you're a creeping, shamed shadow of who you used to be, and pride in yourself has taken a backseat to an overall feeling of insignificance and embarrassment.
It's shallow, and it's vain, but I've realised that fashion is important to me. It's not everything - it's just the coating - but it's a reflection of how we're feeling: of who we think we are. I miss wearing pretty things; I miss walking down a street and being looked at by girls who like my clothes and boys who like what's in them. I miss feeling good about myself, and I miss feeling attractive, and I miss feeling individual because of how I express myself, and not just because of my race. I miss not feeling completely and utterly invisible, no matter what I do, and no matter what I wear, and no matter what I say. Which is what I am in Japan: invisible. And, after eight lonely, unfashionable months, this is now also how I feel.
I'm ready to come home. The things that make me who I am - my family, my sense of identity, my ability to communicate to and understand the people around me - are not here. And while I love Japan for everything it has and is, I do not love what it has done to me. I do not love how it has made me uncertain of who I am, or what I have to offer the world. I do not like feeling as if everybody can see me, and nobody can see me at the same time. I do not like how it has made me whiney, and needy, and scabby, and depressed, and how it has made me feel utterly worthless. I do not like how it has drained me of everything I used to prize so highly - energy, a sense of humour, a love of life, the ability to find my mascara in three seconds flat - and filled me with the moaning, miserable complaints of the kind of person I used to avoid sitting next to in pubs.
It's time for me to come home, and it's time for me to make myself feel like someone worth being visible again.
And, frankly, it's time for me to relocate my makeup bag.
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