Loo

For those who assume that living in a different country can't change you: you're wrong.

None of us are set in stone. Not our personalities, not our ways of thinking, not our habits, not the sounds we make or the things we like or the way we behave. We're like those little plasticine machines I played with as a child. Push a piece through the star shaped hole, you'll get a star. Push a piece through the triangle shaped hole, you'll get a triangle. And take a piece of plasticine of any shape - however old - warm it up a bit, push it through a different hole, and it'll become a different shape. We're only what we are because of the holes we were pushed through when we were still soft, and we only stay that way because we've hardened up a little and nobody has pushed us through a different one.

I think it's safe to say I've now been pushed through another hole entirely.

After three months here, I was an English girl watching Japan from far, far away, from inside a little foreign bubble. Six months broke the bubble: nine months forced me to step nervously outside of it. A year, and everything around me suddenly felt normal. Sixteen months, which is where I am now, and not only does it feel like home, but I'm actually starting to behave Japanese. I've started wearing sunblock every day, because I want - yet barely realise why I want it - pale, undamaged, younger looking skin. I look for whitening agents in my moisturiser because the thought of a tan is now repulsive. My make-up has subtly changed to make me more doll-like. I genuinely like cute things: or, perhaps I should say, I get it. I understand why you'd want a tiny duck or panda hanging off your phone, or your bag, or your wallet, or your scooter, and I have a range of small fluffy things attached to all of the above. My coat is baby pink. Baby pink. I think nothing of wearing clothes that have diamonte stitched onto them, or of slamming on a pink dress over Union Jack tights with grey leg warmers and a green scarf. It's an aesthetic free for all, here, and I now judge things by how kawaaaiiiii (cute) they are, instead of how edgy or cool. I'm even much, much quieter: I speak more softly, I'm more reserved, and I no longer feel the need to dance on tables or get so drunk I vomit on myself (although this may just be a result of increased age, rather than cultural expectations).

Even more strangely, the sounds I make have changed. Japanese has actually become a part of my instinctive, unconscious noises: when I'm jealous I'll say "eeenaa," (casually, I envy you) when I'm surprised I'll say "eeeeehhhhh?", when I'm agreeing or listening I'll make an "ur-ur-ur" sound instead of "mmm, mmm" and when I'm holding a hot cup of tea, instead of saying "ow ow ow ow" or "ch ch ch ch" which are variations of English expressions of pain, I'll say "t-t-t-t-t-t" which is an abbreviation of the Japanese word for 'it hurts': "itai". The food I crave is different: a bowl of rice on its own seems totally sensible. I get angry if I haven't had a cup of green tea all day, and the taste of sesame - unknown in Welwyn Garden City, unless you eat Sesame Snaps (and nobody does) - is daily and as familiar as cheese used to be to me. Buying stewed tofu and fish sausage and yam and noodles that have been sitting in hot flavoured water in the middle of a convenience store for a couple of days, being prodded at by old men, is a delicious treat. When I get a bowl of Japanese vegetables that 18 months ago I had never seen before, I get busy with my chopsticks as if I was born in the back of a truck in the middle of a field somewhere. Knives and forks are unusual and unnecessary, for the most part, and while I still don't like Japanese music (at all) I don't laugh or cringe when I hear it anymore, which I think is all Japan is going to ever get out of me.

It was only this evening, however, when I was on my knees, pimping up my own toilet, that I realised exactly how bad it had got.

Pimping up my own toilet.

Not decorating the bathroom. Not giving the powder room a makeover. No, I was fancying up the actual loo itself: giving it a fluffy purple seat cover, two long, pink fluffy stickers on the seat (to make it snuggly because, as the packet said, I deserve good sitting!), and arranging a nice stripy mat underneath it. I stuck a plastic detergent filled flower to the little tap that comes out of the cistern, and a sticker of a cartoon rabbit on the inside of the loo seat, so it looks nice when left up. None of this stuff, incidentally, I sourced for myself: there's an entire toilet pimping section in the local 100 yen store. And, on my way to finally buy toilet rolls, I thought: now, why does my toilet not have a fluffy seat like the ones at school? Is my toilet not as worthy as those toilets? Is that part of my house not worth 500 yen (3 quid) to make it cute? And I realised that my whole mindset had changed: where in England the loo was to be paid as little attention as possible - to be ostricised from general makeovers and ignored unless in use - the Japanese idea of making it the heart of the home (a place with its own soundtrack, and buttons to press, and heated seat, and own electricity supply) was suddenly far more logical. Frankly, I only resisted the fluffy toilet roll holder because I realised I had accidentally bought kitchen towels and they wouldn't fit.

It could bother me, of course, that I started off as one shape of plasticine and I'm gradually being forced into another. It could bother me that it was so easy to change me: could bother me that my identity - or whatever it is you call the parts of us that are set - is still so soft. But it's actually a beautiful thing: realising that who you think you are is all in your head. That the way you think and behave - even the noises you make - are all simply because of the shape you got pushed through when you were little, and you can change them so easily. Because it means that you can be anyone. And it means that you can move through the world and change with it, instead of forcing through it like a bullet. And it means that you can be whatever shape you want to be.

I doubt it will last when I leave Japan - I can't imagine pimping a toilet anywhere else in the world - but here? It's my home, and it's my toilet.

And they're both now entirely Japanese.