The Write Girl

100 Cranes

2011-06-08T19:22:00.002+09:00

Over the last four weeks, Harai has been very busy making little paper cranes. The bird kind, rather than the large metal construction kind.

He's been doing this because he has even less to do at school than I do; as my assistant, he doesn't even have to pretend to plan classes that are all essentially identical while everybody pretends they haven't noticed that I'm teaching the same thing over and over again. In fact, in more general terms, he doesn't actually have to assist me either: he just has to stare out of the window until I whistle at him from the front of the room to help me hold up some laminated pictures of farmyard animals. I like to think of him as the Debbie McGee to my Paul Daniels, except - thank God - wearing a suit over the top of his lycra.

When he reached origami crane number twenty seven, I asked him what the hell he was doing.

"They're very pretty," I added, "but what the bollocks are you going to do with twenty seven small paper birds? Make a teeny tiny Hitchcock film?"
He looked affronted. "This is a very important part of the Japanese religion," he told me.
"Which one? Buddhism or Shintoism?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "Anyway, we make a hundred paper cranes, and then we string them all together. And then we hang them up in a shrine, and we make a....a..... how to say it --- wish."
"A wish? Like, for a new bike or something?"
Harai stared at me in horror. "This is religion, Holly, not Santa Claus. You wish for the health and happiness of a loved one. Or world peace."
"World peace? A hundred paper cranes for world peace?"
"Yes. So I am making a hundred cranes."
I looked at the desk, covered in origami. "Well, I'm very impressed," I told him, because I was very impressed. "You're just like a Japanese Miss World. Except short and male and wearing a tie."
"I'm not Miss World," he informed me soberly, and continued folding his paper.

He reached forty two today, during an origami session that I attempted to join in and failed horribly (origami requires skill, patience and attention to detail: three qualities I lack in abundance). I threw my scrumpled up bit of green paper on the desk.
"What's that?" Harai asked me.
"It's a frog." I bounced it up and down a few times. "See? It looks just like a frog. So how many have you got left?"
"Fifty eight."
"And how's world peace looking?"
Harai folded the paper again. "I've decided I want a Playstation," he said after a short pause. "They have a new one. I don't want world peace. I want a new Playstation."
"You're going to take your cranes to a shrine and ask God for a new Playstation?"
"Yes."
"What about world peace?"
"The Japanese government can sort that out. I think that's their business. My business is getting a Playstation."
"Right. Well, for your sake, Harai - and for the sake of your eternal soul - I sincerely hope that the Japanese government are all making cranes for world peace as fast as they possibly can."
"It's all they do," he said. "Sit around and make hundreds of cranes and string them together. Nice government. Very nice government. Japan is safe. And now I can have my Playstation."

Harai won't be getting his Playstation, though. Not if the cranes have anything to do with it.

"Harai?" I said a couple of minutes later. "If I help you, can I have it?"
"You want my 100 cranes?"
"Yes please."
"Why would I give you my 100 cranes?"
"Somebody I love is really sick, and I need to wish for them."
"Not because you want a Playstation too?"
"I promise I won't be wishing for a Playstation. Hand on my heart. Sick loved one only."
Harai looked at his little basket full of cranes and sighed. "Okay. Fine. I guess I don't need two Playstations." And then he looked at my origami attempt. "But I don't think God will be happy with your frog," he added. "You need to learn how to make cranes too. You give him that frog and he's going to take your Playstation away."
"I don't have a Playstation."
"Then he'll take mine, and that's worse."

Starting today, I'm making 100 cranes. Because - luckily for all of us - the Japanese government have already got world peace covered.

Which means that all of my wishes can go exactly where they're needed most: to my loved one.

Feeding Time

2011-06-07T14:49:00.007+09:00

I`d like to say that my imminent departure from Japan is causing grief - weeping, hysterical gestures and sleepless nights - but it`s not. In fact, quite the opposite. The fact that I`m finally leaving is causing great excitement in Nichinan, and I`d be stupid to pretend I can`t see it.

We`re all drowning in oestrogen. In the most literal metaphorical sense: drowning. It`s like being an incredibly reluctant part of some kind of pre-pubescent slumber party, complete with hair pulling and pillow fighting. Last summer, whatever idiots run JET (the Japanese Exchange and Teaching Programme, which should actually be JETP but as I said: they`re idiots) decided to replace the foreigners in Nichinan - a nice, mixed age, mixed gender, mixed race group of balanced, well rounded, differentiated individuals - with five young girls, fresh out of Uni. Five pretty, single, horny, 21 year old girls. In the middle of a bunch of rice fields. With nothing to do. And no foreign men. And no clubs in which to find any new Japanese ones. Just a 29 year old female "writer" (hermit) and a cluster of loved up Japanese couples.

And - predictably - they`ve all gone totally bonkers. Even more so than me. Bonkers.

I don`t remember being 21 (I actually don`t: it was nearly nine years ago and I was asleep for most of it), but I`m pretty sure I wouldn`t have wanted to be stuck in the geographic equivalent of a nunnery either. It`s been a nice bit of space for me - the alternative was snarling at every man in London - but the others aren`t doing so well. And I know that, because every time I see them I end up wishing there was some kind of third gender I could hide in.

I don`t know what these girls are like in real life (and working as a JET is not real life, by any stretch of the imagination: it`s the world`s weirdest and most absolute gap year). But I think - stuck where they are - they might be struggling. One announces at three minute intervals that she`s still a virgin - not in pride, I hasten to add, but in hurt and fury, as if it`s contagious and she`s determined to pass it on - and two of them have taken to wearing t-shirts featuring the faces of a Korean boy band and uploading them onto the screensavers of their phones. In their twenties. One girl has become obsessed with martial arts ("it`s just body contact", she readily admits), and the remaining girl is interested in nothing at all apart from her own marital status: at parties, she has a tendency to throw her arms around the neck of one of the other four and scream at the top of voice "Why can`t I get a boyfriend? Why can`t I get a boyfriend?" Which leads the rest of us - Japanese, mainly, and one poor sod of a man who sticks to his girlfriend as if she`s an intraveinous drip - to shuffle away and mutter something about needing to do some laundry. Because the answer is: nobody wants a girlfriend who shouts that sort of thing at parties. Not even in the middle of ricefields. Not even when there are no other options left. And no other parties.

It`s been bad all year, but it`s reaching fever pitch now. Skirts are inexplicably getting shorter and tighter - inexplicable because it`s the same group of people seeing them - and tops are so low they make eye contact impossible, even for other women. And God help any new man who wanders into the fold, whatever their personal attractions. As my friend J and I drunkly and loudly observed at the last party, as a new and relatively okay-looking guy innocently walked to the girl`s table: it`s like watching feeding time at the zoo. Laughter becomes hysterical, sex words are thrown in to conversations at random, and each girl tries to undo her friends for the prize (body secrets about each other are sprayed around like llama spit). And when they all fail - which they always do, because the men are so confused and spoilt for choice and overwhelmed they run back out with their tail between their legs - the girls fall back into the normal routine of flinging their arms around and talking about how long it has been since they last had sex.

Suffice to say: my departure is the best news they`ve had all year. We`re not really friends, and so they lose nothing: I have been - I`m sorry to say - caught laughing at them one too many times when tipsy to be a great loss to their inner circle. I`m also way too old to be interested in Korean boy bands (correction: way too English), and way too disillusioned and jaded to have any interest at all in why I do or do not have a boyfriend, so I have absolutely nothing to offer the conversation. I am, however, taking up a valuable teaching space in a valuable school, in a valuable house right smack-dab in the middle of `town`, that could be given to a nice, single, hot man. And it`s not just me that`s realised that.

"Oh we`re so sorry you`re leaving," they told me shamelessly at the last party, considering that only one of them has my mobile phone number (the martial art girl: that`s one way of dealing with the situation I respect). "Do you know who your replacement will be?"
"Somebody male, I`ve heard," I said calmly. I have no shame: I`ve heard nothing at all. It could be a married, middle aged woman for all I know. "Male, single and hot."
"Oh. My. God." They looked at each other. "Bagsy."
"Hey! Bagsy yourself. I bagsy too."
"I`ll see him first. You won`t get a look in."
"I will."
"I so bagsied him already."
"All you ever talk about is poo. Why would a man want a girl who talks about poo?"
"At least I don`t just talk about arm muscles."
"So? I like arm muscles."

And off they went: into the glorious madness created when nice, intelligent, normal girls are totally deprived of male attention for a year.

It feels good, actually, to know that by leaving I give them all a chance to find a man to share nicely: they`re sweet girls, and in the middle of all this goddamn rice they just need a distraction. And I`m gutted that I won`t get to see the aftermath if they do decide to try and fight each other for him. I imagine it as a sort of cross between an old Nescafe advert - borrowing a cup of sugar - and Return of the Zombies. Except Zombies in lipstick and really, really short skirts that show your knickers when you stand on the sofa of the karaoke room.

But as I leave the village that has given me so much - that has been my home and my refuge and my family for 16 months - I`m not going to lie.

It would be really, really nice if it wasn`t to the sound of white girls cheering.

Judgement Day

2011-05-20T14:31:00.004+09:00

Whenever you have plans, there's always somebody around to muck them up. And this time, the little party I'm supposed to be attending tomorrow is going to royally screwed by God, who is going to be holding Judgement Day while I'm still putting on my makeup.

Yes: according to a large group of extremely sane and scientific people led by a nice man who looks like this:

Judgement Day is tomorrow, 21st of May, at 6pm. Not 6:30, when I'd be doing my hair, or 7pm, when I'd be in the car on the way to the party. No: 6pm. Which is at around the point where I'll be getting out of the shower, and I'd really rather not be naked and wrapped in a towel when God damns me to eternal flames.

What's worse, according to the research I've just conducted, there won't even be a sit-down session where you put your case forward, point out all the nice things you've ever done and then defend yourself against all the cockroaches you've ever killed (six). No: apparently God has already made his mind up. According to the man above - Harold Camping - there'll be no preparatory talk and wrist slapping: just an immense earthquake that will work its way round the globe, opening up the graves of the undead and allowing just two hundred million of the saved souls to ascend to heaven. Or - I'm guessing - 199,999,999 saved souls and Mr Camping, who is presumably counting himself among them, or he wouldn't be spending his last week on earth holding his finger up and quoting out of the bible.

And, frankly, I'm quite excited.

I've weighed it up over a nice cup of coffee, and decided that - as 115 billion people have ever lived - that means (and my maths is infamously terrible) that one in every 590 souls that have ever existed are going to be saved: the other 589 are going to be subjected to five months of hell-on-earth while the lucky ones settle in and get Heaven nice and tidy, and then we'll be burned for eternity so that they've got something to cook their marshmallows on. And I say "we", because I really don't think I've got much chance of being that one saved soul. I don't actually have 590 friends, and yet I'm still not the nicest person I know. Which means that - statistically - I'm totally screwed.

As Harold Camping has lucidly pointed out, presumably to people who were not taking the end of the world quite as seriously as I am: "this is no laughing matter. It is not something where it's a tiny, tiny, tiny chance that it may happen. This is going to happen."

Which should make me quite worried, but I'm not. Why? Because if 589 of the people I love are all going to burn, I'd quite like to be with them. And if I'm not allowed to argue my case, frankly I'm not particularly interested in the conclusion God comes to. It all seems a little unethical, to me.

Saying that, it does mean that I'll be getting out of the shower a little early tomorrow, just in case. If Judgement Day thinks it's catching me with wet hair and an earbud in one hand, it's got another think coming.

And anyway: I plan on judging it straight back.

Being Craig

2011-05-16T13:45:00.004+09:00

Song lyrics can be fickle things.

For me, they`re the heart of music: the words inside are what I look for first. In fact, to truly enjoy music as music I have to cut them out altogether, which is why the songs that mean the most to me are always either wordless or spoken in a language I don`t understand.

For others, song lyrics are there mainly to give the melody something to shape around. What is said is less important than how it is said, or sung (which is, presumably, how Britney Spears managed to warble her way into a fortune). Thus inserting the word `ooh` or `baby` or `yeeeeah` or `zigazigah` doesn`t cause these people to flinch, because the word is just an addition that allows the singer to add another note, and for that note the listener is happy. While, for me, I want to take these pointless padded words and throttle them - and the singer - until they`re dead and silent.

There are other people out there, however, for whom song lyrics simply don`t exist. Somewhere between the stereo, or the iPod, or the radio, and the ears of the person listening, the words of music are wiped out entirely: unecessary, ignored and unwanted. And my friend Yuki is one of these people.

"I love this song," she says at intervals whenever we play a CD in the car. "Neh neh neh neh neh neh NEH NEH yes, baby neh neh neh OOOOOOO." That`s her singing, by the way. Not a self congratulatory dance. Five minutes later she says: "I really love this song too! Neh neh, neh neh neh, neh, ooooooh, you know, neh neh NEH."
"Yuki," I said eventually. "Why are you surprised? It`s your CD. And on that topic, why don`t you know the words to any of these songs? It`s your CD."
"What words?"
"The words. You know: what the person is singing."
She shrugged. "I can`t really hear any. It`s all in English."
"But, Yuki, you`re fluent in English. And you neh neh neh Japanese songs too."
"I just don`t really hear any. Holly? Will you make me a CD of songs like this?"
"Like what?"
"Happy, dance songs to party to?"
I listened to what was playing on the CD, and started laughing. "Yuki, this is called Torn, by Natalie Imbruglia."
"Yeah, I love it. So happy and summer party."
"Torn, Yuki. Like, ripped. Broken."
"Torn? What is torn?"
"Her heart. It`s a song about heartbreak. `Nothing`s fine, I`m torn, this is how I feel: I`m cold and I`m alone, lying naked on the floor`. By no stretch of the imagination could this be called a party song, Yukes. Unless it`s a really, really sick party."
Yuki opened her mouth in shock, and then paused. "Why is Natalie lying naked on the floor? What happened to her?"
"I think it`s a metaphor for feeling vulnerable and exposed."
"Wow. This isn`t a party song at all." Then she looked at me. "Unless we`re talking about you at your last party."
"I wasn`t naked, Yuki."
"You were definitely lying on the floor though. Cold and alone."
"I was definitely cold, but sadly I wasn`t alone because people kept jumping on top of me. But thanks anyway." And then I ignored the continued comparison between a drunk Smale and a metaphorical Imbruglia and went through the rest of the song, translating for her - from English to English - and trying to explain the inexplicable (torn skies, for instance).

It was only when she got to Stand By Me, however, that I finally put my foot down. Yuki could mutilate Imbruglia all she liked, but goddamit: she would be leaving Ben E King alone.

"Ne ne NEH ne ne NEH neneneneNEH," she started, "no I won`t be a Craig, noo IIIIIIIII won`t be a Craig."
"Yuki!" I shouted, with my shoulders starting to shake again. "Who the hell is Craig?"
"You know: Craig. Famous Craig. The guy in this song."
"And what happens to famous Craig?" I asked, shoulders shaking harder.
"I don`t know, but I think nobody wants to be him."
I squeaked with laughter. "It`s afraid, Yuki. Afraid. No, I won`t be afraid."
"Ooooooh." Yuki listened to it again. "That makes a little bit more sense. I`ve always wondered who Craig was."
"There is no Craig."
"I kind of miss Craig now," she admitted. And then she completed the track, singing "ne ne ne NE NE afraid, ne ne ne NE NE afraid," and looking at me proudly, like a dog waiting for a biscuit.

Words mean different things to different people: they always do. And nowhere is that more obvious than in songs. Where, to some people, words mean everything, and to some people they mean nothing, and to some people they mean anything they want them to mean.

And maybe that was always the point of music in the first place: to give us the words we`re looking for and can`t find anywhere else, or the silence we`re looking for and can`t find anywhere else.

And to help us to not be a Craig.

Roots

2011-05-13T08:35:00.002+09:00

The end is always hard, even when it’s right.

I’ve just handed in my notice. I’ll be flying out of Japan for good on the 12th of July; two months today exactly, I’ll be in England. And I’m finding it difficult to imagine already: finding it impossible to know what life will be like when Japan isn’t my home anymore. When my students aren’t my students, and my house isn't my house, and my scooter isn’t my scooter, and my bed isn’t my bed. When the rice fields I drive past aren’t my rice fields, and my spot on the beach isn’t my spot; when the shrine in the cave isn’t my shrine. When this country isn’t the one I come back to, and tie myself to, and dream in and about. I’m finding it hard to imagine my life without Japan in it, or what it will turn into.

And even as I start to pull away - as I start to gently tug my roots away from the land that has been mine for two years - it’s already hurting. This isn’t just the only country I have ever belonged to by choice, not by birth. And it isn't just the only country I have loved with all of me: loved the intricacies and the contradictions and the beauty and the strangeness, not because I come from it, but because I wanted to be here.

It is more than that. Japan is the country where I have learned to love children: to adore everything they are, and everything they have the potential to be. It’s the country in which I have created the strongest memories of my life - some beautiful, some painful - and it’s the country I have given the most of myself to and in. It’s the place where I have finally learned how to be alone, and how to be myself, and how to heal; it’s where I have been scared, and hopeful, and ill, and happy, and free, and in love, and lonely, and full of wonder. It’s the place where I’ve learned how much I am made of, and how little. It’s the country I came to for love, and was broken by love, and came back to so that it could heal me. It’s where I discovered how brave I can be, and how kind, and how strong. And it’s where I discovered that my world was conquerable, but that I was not.

Japan has been everything to me. It has been school, and home, and student, and whipping boy, and brick wall, and lover. And it has changed me completely, because the girl that gets off the plane on the 12th of July will be nothing like the one that got on it in August 2009. She’ll be lesser in some ways, perhaps, and more broken in others, but so much greater in many more. She’ll be someone I know much better, and like more, and understand fully. And I wouldn’t have her without love, or a broken heart, and I certainly wouldn't have her without Japan.

It’s time to do the hardest thing I have ever done and the lesson Japan has taught me: to know when to let go of what I still love and move forward. It’s time to take the strength and courage I have found here and start a new and terrifying adventure. One that will give me what Japan cannot give me, and take me where Japan can no longer take me. But as I start to separate myself from the country that has changed me, and become a part of me, I know that I will fail. Because it doesn’t matter how gently I pull, some of my deepest roots are going to break.

And when I finally leave Japan, I know a part of me will stay here.

Socks

2011-05-10T16:11:00.003+09:00

As a teacher - and I`d imagine as a parent - you get to go through childhood all over again, except from the other side of it. It`s like reading one of those books, told from different perspectives, or seeing a three dimensional shape from an angle you weren`t even aware existed. What seemed to be solid and definable and understandable suddenly flips - the candle in the middle of the page suddenly becomes two faces on the outside of it - and what should be the same thing, repeated over and over again, is actually a totally new experience.

And it can be a total pain in the arse.

Every lunch time, students and teachers in my school clean for fifteen minutes. And every lunch time for fourteen months, I`ve been fighting a battle. The battle to get children to understand what cleaning actually is.

"What are you doing?" I`ve said approximately 278 times at precisely 1:45pm. The child in question - a different child every week - looks up and points at the broom they`re holding. "Yes," I say in English because my Japanese isn`t strong enough to be faecitious yet, "I can see you have a broom. But waving it in the air doesn`t make the floor clean does it."
The child pats the floor with the broom a couple of times, looks at me again and then gazes out of the window. Sadly, I do not incite terror because I give out too many Winnie the Pooh stickers. So I grab the broom. "You have to actually sweep with it," I tell them with decreasing patience, showing them how a broom works. "Like this. Where dirt collects because you have swept it into one place."
I do a quick sweep, and then hand it to them. "Now show me."
And they get the broom again, pat the floor a couple of times look at me and then gaze back out of the window again.

In the last year one of the children has worked out how to make a sweeping motion, but now just sweeps at random in vague circles: scattering the dirt and leaving it in different places and then looking at me proudly. And they all do the same with flannels, which just sort of get flicked at random parts of wood work, and mops, which get duly soaking and then the water just gets flung around the room. Because - and I remember this clearly - when you`re a child, cleaning isn`t about making the room clean: it`s about pretending to make the room clean until everyone leaves you alone and stops trying to make you clean rooms. And there`s no concept of cause and affect - no awareness that if you don`t actually remove the dirt the room will stay dirty and it`s you that will be sitting in it, and not the teacher - so `cleaning` just involves holding the right equipment for ten minutes and assuming somebody else will do it for you if you can just wait it out long enough.

Which they will. Because every single lunch time, for a year, I`ve had to wait until they`ve gone and then clean the bloody room myself. In case the little ones get tetanus and I get sued for it.

In my struggle to get children not to be children, however, I have never lost my temper with a kid the way I lost it yesterday lunchtime. The humidity is horrible, the floor of my English room is continuously wet and brown and slippery, and even the boy students are refusing to sit down in case they get their trousers dirty which wreaks havoc with my lesson plans. And yet when I walked in today, this week`s lethargic and resentful student was standing in a brown puddle, slowly wiping the board. The already clean board.

"You have got to be frigging kidding me," I snapped, and took the cloth out of her hand. "Look at the floor!"
The student - at least thirteen years old - looked at the floor with total incomprehension. I could actually see her thinking: floor? what floor?
"Eh?" she said.
"The floor," I snapped even harder, and grabbed two cloths. "You can`t just pretend it`s not there, you know. Every single lunch time you pretend it`s not there. It is there. The floor is there. Not looking at it will not make it go away."
I gave her a cloth, pointed to the floor, and then knelt myself down and started scrubbing. After a few minutes I looked back up. She`d gone to the edge of the room and was vaguely dampening one of the windowsills.
"Oh my God, the floor!" I almost shouted in exasperation. "That is still not a floor!"
She glared at me, squatted down and started dabbing at the corner under the window.

I opened my mouth to shout again, and then gave up. For whatever reason, this student was clearly going to maintain her position on cleaning - namely that it was the details that counted because they were much, much easier to do - if it killed her. And it might, I decided as I scrubbed the whole floor yet again, for the 251st time. It just might.

"It`s too late," Harai said as he walked past and saw me on my hands and knees.
"What`s too late," I hissed at him, totally seething and covered in brown liquid.
"The Prince, Cinderella. He`s married now." And then Harai started laughing.
"Ooh, clever man, well why don`t you just -" and then I stopped. Because cleaning might not be a habit a 13 year old girl will learn, but you can bet that the words I was about to use probably are.

And I was furious up until I got home last night and started tidying my own house.

It`s okay, I thought as I swept around the rug. Why move the rug? How would dirt have got under there anyway? Exactly. And... no, the broom doesn`t fit underneath the fridge, and I can`t be bothered to move the fridge, so why don`t I just... well, you know. Leave it as it is. And the futon doesn`t really need airing today either. Because... well, how many times does a futon actually need airing, anyway? Exactly. I reckon over-airing is worse for it than under airing. It`ll get bugs in it. And as I went round the house, I found myself taking more and more short cuts, and making more and more excuses. To myself, of course, because there was nobody else to make them to, but doing a damn good job of it nonetheless. "There," I said when I had finished, putting the vacuum down and talking to myself again. "Good job, Holly."

And then I realised that it wasn`t a good job at all, and it was much, much worse than pretending to clean because somebody else was making me. I was pretending to clean because I was making me, and I was pretending to myself. And then I remembered a particular afternoon, when I was fifteen, watching my dad laboriously vacuum around a sock.
"Are you going to pick that up?" I had asked him, purely out of curiosity.
Dad looked at the sock as if it had just leapt at him, and then at a point somewhere behind my left ear.
"It`s an awfully long way down," he admitted after a pause, "so I don`t think I will, after all." And then he continued vacuuming around its little smelly socky edges.

The problem is, I think, that the reality of dealing with childhood all over again is that the picture hasn`t changed at all: it just looks like it might have done sometimes. We`re still the same inside, and the candle flips back again just as quickly as the faces flipped out. And maybe - I thought as I dragged my fridge out into the middle of the room in a fury - that`s part of the reason why adults get mad: because we`re not allowed to be kids anymore. And maybe that`s part of the reason adults got mad at us all those years ago: because we were.

Or maybe it`s just because the room was still filthy and when we walked away somebody else still had to clean it.

And pick up the sock.

And so the picture flips back again.

Correction

2011-05-07T09:20:00.001+09:00

Yesterday, I lied.

I lied for one of the worst reasons: to make it sound better. And because I didn't know how to deal with the truth.

Everyone didn't cry at all. I cried - in the toilets, all the way through assembly, at the beginning of lunch - but nobody else did. On finding out one of their youngest students had died, the school was dry eyed. And it was the single biggest culture shock I've had since I got to Japan, even though I thought I was done with being shocked here.

Each country, and each person, deals with death in their own way, and I know that my tears meant no more than their silence: that the hurt and pain they felt were greater than mine, because they had known him longer. But the reaction was so strange for me - so utterly foreign to me - that I lied to cover it. I lied because I didn't know what else to say.

There were no tears, from anybody. There were solemn faces for half an hour, sober speeches from a few teachers, and then it was back to normal. And when I went to have lunch with the class of the little boy who had just died, I walked past his table with a bunch of flowers and a photo laid where his lunch should have been and started crying again. But nobody else did. For half an hour I picked at my food, unable to concentrate with his little smiley photo a metre away from me and unable to eat with death so close, and his class shouted and laughed and put holes in their bread and wrapped it around their noses, as normal. They ate their biscuits and asked for seconds, and when I looked at his table his best friends were all giggling as they always do and showing each other the contents of their mouths. And in a way it was lovely: that children - and adults - can let normality carry on so quickly, and be so brave. And in a way I was rocked to my core, because that's not the culture I come from. And it doesn't matter how long I stay here, it never will be.

Death is heartbreaking and unfair, and that crosses all cultures. But the way people handle it? I've just discovered that does not. And while I don't understand the Japanese way, and I don't understand the dry eyes, or the laughter, or the bread round the nose, I respect it. Because it's that strength that makes them capable of picking up and moving on after a disaster, when my crying culture would still be crumbled on the ground.

I shouldn't have lied to try and make them like me, or to make them understood to me, or to make their sorrow like mine. Because that undermines their grief, and shoves it into the same box as my own.

And if I wanted to do that, I should have stayed at home.

Ryo

2011-05-06T09:27:00.001+09:00

There are times when nobody has anything to say, and now is one of them.

One of my little students has just been killed. Eight years old, crossing the road during the three day vacation we just had. Hit by a car going too fast in a village where nobody ever goes too fast in case they hit the children.

Everyone is very quiet, and everyone keeps crying. And now I`m going to have to spread the heartbreak, because he was one of the penpals of my sister`s class in England, which means that I have to make my sister cry, and then she has to make her class cry. And one little eight year old girl in England is never going to meet her Japanese friend.

It`s not fair, and there`s nothing any of us can say to make it so. He got eight years, and people who deserve less get so much more.

But from the tears this morning in assembly, I think Ryo must have made more of a difference in eight years than some people do in ten times that.

And that, maybe, is the only thing left worth saying.

Apologies

2011-05-05T07:39:00.001+09:00

There are different kinds of apologies. There are the kinds we mumble when we mean it but are too proud to say it; there are the kinds we throw around when we don't mean it but want to get out of trouble. There are the apologies we make because we feel we should make them, or because they're expected, or because we're told to, and then there are the apologies we don't really understand but make anyway because it's less hassle than explaining that we don't know why we should be sorry.

And none of them hit the mark. That's the problem with an apology: as we all learnt as children - and, later, we learn as the parents of children - "Fine! What do you want from me?! Sorry! There! I said it! Is that better?! Sorryyyyy! What can I say to make you just shhuuuuuuuuttttttt uupppppp?" doesn't cut it. In fact, it makes everything worse, because it just shows that the kid in question isn't sorry in the slightest, and doesn't actually yet understand the concept of apologies or what they're for.

And you'd be surprised how many children out there appear to be fully grown and fully functional adults.

Or, you know, governments. Or companies. Or owners of large oil plants.

Which is why it's so touching to see the latest news from Japan. Don't get me wrong: having a nuclear plant go pop is a bit of a cock up, whichever way you look at it. And not telling people living next to it to evacuate immediately is another pretty impressive mistake. And saying "sorry" is not going to change anything, and it's not going to make the radiation risks better, and it's not going to relieve North Japan of various death waves nobody can see. But the right kind of sorry? It makes a bloody big difference to how you view the situation.

Yesterday, during a visit from the president of TEPCO (Tokyo Electricity), a little old lady from Fukushima started shouting at him. "Say you're sorry!" she screamed at him. "I have no home - say you're sorry and mean it! Apologise from the very bottom of your heart!"
"Fine!" the child-man president would have snapped back. "What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry I ruined your life? That I wish it had never happened? Of course I do! It`s not going to change anything! Fine! I'm sorry!"
"We apologise profusely for any inconvenience caused," a British company would say. "It was horribly unfortunate. But if you try and sue us you will not win. Okay? And anyway, it`s not actually our fault, because a natural disaster is a natural disaster, and what are you going to do about it? Exactly. Shit happens. How were we to know an earthquake would hit there? It`s God you should be blaming, not us."
"Hey," an American company would agree: "you chose to live next to a sodding nuclear plant. I reckon that counts you as partially responsible."
"Plus," Britain would add, "I actually personally had nothing to do with it, because I`m actually just a figure head and was on holiday at the time."

Or maybe they'd just send a few shitty little emails distancing themselves from the event completely until the little old lady combusted with frustration and anger and sorrow and ripped her own little white hair out.

Not so yesterday. Yesterday the president of TEPCO got down on his knees - literally folded up on the floor - and begged for an apology with his hands clasped. "I am truly sorry from the bottom of my heart," he said to the little old lady from the floor of the evacuation centre. "I am so, so incredibly sorry." And the rest of the world unanimously went: hey! Why don`t our official people do that when they cock up too?

I don't know whether the old lady forgave him: I don't know whether it even impressed her. Maybe when you've had your home taken away from you and your family put at risk of cancer, kneeling apologies aren't quite enough, no matter how close to the floor they get. And the newspaper reports don`t tell us what happened next: whether she smacked him over the head with her walking stick or punched him in the face with a wrinkly little knuckle. But the apology impressed me, because I've seen very few real apologies in my life, and a whole host of half-apologies, forced apologies, defensive apologies, shouty apologies and accusational apologies. I`ve seen very few people swallow their pride enough to accept responsibility for something they may have done, whether by accident or not: whether directly responsible or not. I`ve seen very few people who have been wise enough to see that intention really doesn`t matter, because the results are the same even if you didn`t mean it. I`ve seen few people realise that the buck has to stop somewhere.

And I`ve seen far too many apologies coming from people who still behave like children: who don't understand the difference between a real sorry, and a sorry for the sake of saying it. And who don`t realise what an impact that difference makes to the person hearing it, or how far it goes to making the situation less painful.

If there's anything to be learned from yesterday - apart from not making nuclear plants that go pop during natural disasters - it's that a good apology, and a real apology, doesn't have to take forever. It doesn`t have to cost anything. It just has to come from the heart.

And - preferably at the same time - from way down on the floor as well.

Kimono

2011-05-02T11:23:00.007+09:00

A year ago, I bought a beautiful old kimono to replace the wall hanging the ex had bought me, and at the time it represented to me hope in freedom, and in recovery. And it still represents hope, only now I think it is finally hope for the future instead of for the past.

"You know," Kristin said to me on Skype yesterday, "I think it`s time you thought about dating again. At least casually. It`s been a year now since you`ve seen anybody, and it seems such a waste."
"Pff," I snorted all over my keyboard. "A waste of what? Honestly, I`ve thought about it, and maybe when I leave Japan I`ll go on a few dates. But it`s not long before I go travelling, so really it seems a bit pointless: you can`t hold down any kind of relationship when you`re never in the same country, so why start one?"
"At least put yourself back on the market, Hols. Give somebody a shot."
"Dude, do you have any idea how many times I`ve been Back On The Market? I`m not sure the market is going to take me back again. Or if it does, it`s going to cover me in little stickers telling the public what all my faults are so nobody makes the mistake of touching me again."
Kristin laughed. "Frankly, I think you put the stickers on yourself. Maybe you could go wholesale?"
"I`d be lucky to get Recycle Shop. Actually, I think - all things considered - I`m now heading for the bottom of a bargain bin somewhere in the storeroom." Kristin laughed again - because true things are always funny - and then I thought about it for a few seconds. "Actually," I said, "hold there for a second."

And I abruptly ran off, ripped the kimono off my living room wall - where it has hung for the last year - and dragged it to the camera.

"What do you think of this?" I demanded, waving it in front of her.
"Wow, Hol, that`s gorgeous." I held it a bit closer so she could see the yellow silk and the gold autumn leaves. "That`s a really incredible kimono." And then - knowledgeably, because she`s actually Japanese - "I think it`s a wedding kimono, actually. Where did you get it?"
"From the local Recycle Shop," I said, and sat down. "At the bottom of a bargain bin. For two dollars."
"Are you kidding me?"
"No." And then I looked at the beautiful kimono I`ve loved every day for a year. "Do you know how I felt when I found this, Kris? I was so excited and so happy. I got butterflies in my stomach and my hands started shaking, because it was so perfect, and so beautiful, and so exactly what I had been looking for. And I couldn`t believe how lucky I was that some moron had been stupid enough to throw it away, and a whole heap of idiots had been stupid enough to walk past it every single day without picking it up, and another moron was pretty much giving it away. I was literally shaking at my own good fortune that nobody else had seen how beautiful it is and what it is worth. And I immediately stopped shopping because I wasn`t interested in anything else, and I couldn`t let go of it: I clung on to this kimono for dear life in case somebody tried to take it away from me. And then I paid the money and raced out of there before anybody could fight me for it, and I`ve loved it ever since."
"I don`t blame you. It`s amazing."

"But don`t you see, Kris? Even if I am in the Recycle Shop, it doesn`t matter. It doesn`t how far into the bargain bin I slide, or how dark it is, or how long it takes, or how hidden I am, or how many other things are covering me up, or how many times I get given away or handed back: one day somebody is going to feel about me the way I felt about this kimono. They`re not going to believe their luck that somebody stopped wanting me, or that everybody else saw me and walked straight past. They`re not going to believe their luck that they found me and knew what I was worth when nobody else did. And they`re going to be so happy, and so excited, that they`re going to hang on to me for dear life and never let go."
Kristin welled up, because she always wells up: it`s one of the reasons I love her so much. "Oh, Hols. Somebody is going to be so excited to find you. And maybe you`ll feel the same way about them too."
"I will. No matter how many times I have to take them to the laundrette to get the smell out."
Kristin laughed. "Hey - the past always takes a bit of washing, right?"
I thought about it for a few more seconds. "It`s hope, isn`t it? This kimono: it`s hope."
"It`s more than that," Kristin said in a wobbly voice. "It`s a future."

For the second time, my kimono has taught me something. It has reminded me that you don`t have to be brand new to be loved, or hung out at the front of the shop. It has reminded me that it doesn`t matter if I end up in the bin a million times, or covered in a billion little stickers detailing my faults. It has reminded me that it doesn`t matter how far down into the pile I slip, or how many people walk past, or if I get put in the storecupboard behind the shoes filled with mould for the next twenty years. It just matters that one day I`ll be found by somebody who knows straight away that I`m exactly what they were looking for.

And that - when they do - I`ll never be put down again.

Weddings

2011-04-29T22:17:00.009+09:00

It's all over. Mum's long cherished ambition of her eldest daughter becoming Princess of England is now officially caput. Kate has married William, and ten years of my mum ending every conversation about my love life with "if you'd just taken that place at St Andrews Uni instead of going to Bristol, Holly" have all come to nothing.

I'm not a particularly big fan of weddings - buying a contract phone brings me out in commitment hives - and yet something made me watch the ceremony live this evening. And that something is Yuki. Who is more of a British royalist than anyone British I've ever met. Despite being 100% Japanese.

"We need to be home by 7" she told me while we were lying on the beach this afternoon. "I have to see the wedding. I need to compare my wedding dress with Kate's wedding dress."
"Your wedding dress?"
"Yes."
I stared at her. "Yuki, you're not even dating anyone."
Yuki stared back at me. "So?"she asked in confusion. "What's that got to do with my wedding dress? It's my dress, isn't it?"

She then spent the entire wedding hour sighing. "I want a dress with lace, now," she told me emphatically (or, as she later emailed me, "race"). "Lace all over. I have to change everything. It's so confusing. I thought I wanted one like Diana." And then she sighed again. "It's so beautiful. Just like a Disney wedding."
"This is a Britney Spears track, you know," I told her as the choir started singing.
"Really?" Yuki leant forwards to listen more carefully. "Wow. Which one?"
"I think it's Hit Me Baby One More Time."
Yuki leant forwards a little bit more. "I can't make it out," she said.
"That's because it's been adapted for Westminster Church," I explained, biting my bottom lip.
"Ah." Yuki nodded knowledgably. "It's beautiful. But I don't want Britney Spears."
"Lady Gaga?" I suggested. "I think they do Westminster versions of that too," and Yuki finally worked out I was winding her up and smacked me.

It was lovely, watching the event through the eyes of someone else. It's true that a little bit of the event seeped into me too, although millions of screaming fans don't exactly epitomise romance to me: it was a little more like a Beatles concert than a sacred and intimate event between two people in the eyes of God. Nevertheless, it was very pretty, it was very British, and they seemed genuinely very happy, so I was pleasantly touched and surprised at myself for being so, although reassured by the cynicism I felt over the blubbing strangers who had camped out for seven days to watch a carriage drive past (I wouldn't camp for seven days to be a part of my own wedding).

Through the eyes of the enraptured Yuki, though, I saw an entirely different event. I saw the climax of a dream: the way life should be. Life as a beautiful Disney movie, where we all meet a Prince, wear lace and live in a castle. And nothing bad ever happens again.

And the fact is: it's what we all need now and then. Not the truth - nobody ever wants the truth - but a version of it that makes reality go away for a little while. And so what if it's covered in lace and we've never met it before? It just makes the dream that much easier to believe in.

Me though? I might always be the little kid at the front of the balcony, with the scowl on her face and her hands over her ears (the kid who made me laugh just at the point where Yuki burst into tears). But it doesn't mean I don't believe in love, or in happy endings. It just means it can be a little overwhelming sometimes.

And maybe that's exactly what this wedding was supposed to remind us. That in a world where horrible things happen all of the time, love is the only thing we all stop for. That we can plough through death and hunger and war and cruelty and broken hearts and recessions and keep moving, but love is still the only thing that will make us all stand still. All over the world. English or Japanese; French or Chinese or Mexican or Russian or Australian; anywhere. Overwhelming, elaborate, glorified, gold coated love.

Or - perhaps more specifically - the little bit in the middle we all know is simple.

Fitness

2011-04-27T11:49:00.003+09:00

My relationship with exercise is not a healthy one.

It used to be. Way back in the 80s I was a fitness freak, except that because I was a child I didn`t know that`s what it was called. I thought it was called Doing Stuff After School Because Mum Made Me, and I loved it. I did ballet, tennis, and I trained for the county swimming squad for at least ten hours a week,, where anything less than full pelt was rewarded with screeching you could hear underwater. I was so fit, and so toned, and so healthy, that I had absolutely no consciousness of my own body. That`s how fit I was. It did what I told it to, there were no extra bits hanging off or wobbling, I was never particularly tired or out of breath, and my only real issue was a continued clumsiness that no amounts of knuckle wraps from the walking stick of my ballet instructor was going to fix.

And then it all went wrong. I started secondary school, and suddenly exercise became something different. It became something that the popular kids did - and that wasn`t me - and more importantly, it became the weapon with which they beat the rest of us. It only took six months of being last to be picked for a team before I dreaded PE: before sport of any kind was associated with humiliation. I was crap at all the sports they wanted me to play - partly because I don`t have the body of a sprinter, and partly because by the time you`ve had a "well we don`t want her" "you have to have her, there`s nobody left" "can`t we swap her for the one in the wheelchair?" conversation, you`re not feeling very netbally - and so my resentment grew. Combined with the curling-inward that happens when you`re a subject of general ridicule, I simply stopped exercising, because there seemed no point. I stopped swimming, I cancelled ballet lessons, and I was no longer interested in thrashing my dad at tennis. I pretty much stopped moving at all.

Since then, my relationship with it has been violent and abusive and manipulative. I`ve used exercise horribly. I picked it up, once, purely because I was dating a nice looking boy and I wanted to be prettier in my underwear so he`d like me more. When that ended (it obviously didn`t work), I didn`t speak to exercise again for over a year. I used exercise once after a particularly terrible bout of food poisoning because I figured that as I`d accidentally achieved such massive weight loss I was already ten steps ahead, and then blacked out a few times through exhaustion and decided to stop. I`ve used it because I`ve been lonely - I did that when I worked in PR - and then dumped it again when I rediscovered that wearing black and smoking was more fun. I`ve used it just before beach holidays, and I`ve used it in an attempt to attract men I liked. And, most recently, I used it because the pain of the last breakup was so intense that I thought any kind of external physical pain would help to distract me. It didn`t. I just hurt all the way through instead.

Not since I was twelve years old has being fit been fun for me. And because of that, I`m not. I`m the human equivalent of a Flump on a stick. I`m fat: not because I have to wear big clothes or people move up on buses when I sit next to them, but because that`s all I have. Fat and bone. And whatever is the minimum muscle required to move them both.

So it`s with considerable pain and difficulty that I`m trying to get fit again, at the age of nearly 30. Considerable. It`s also with a lot of swear words, fits of general rage and coughing. My new Pilates instructor - were she not on Youtube, and therefore unable to hear me - would be very hurt if she knew what I scream five minutes into making tiny little circles with my leg. And she seems like a very sweet lady. Very bubbly and cute. She certainly doesn`t deserve to have a rolled up sock thrown at her because I`m in so much pain that her gentle words of encouragement sound like she`s purposefully taunting me.

Likewise, my new Yoga instructor (I`m easily distracted) can tell me to feel my breath as much as she likes, but I can`t. All I can feel is the heart pumping in my cheeks and my throat constricting as I tell her exactly where she can put her downward dog.

It`s the running that`s really killing me, though. It takes me an entire hour to walk/jog/crawl/cough around the seafront that takes three minutes to drive on my scooter at 40mph. And I`m specifically not doing the maths for that, because I don`t want to know just how slowly I`m obviously moving. Or how much of my time is taken bending over and spitting up on the kerb. Or being taken over by little old ladies wearing much nicer tracksuit bottoms.

And yes: I`d obviously like to swim, dance and play tennis, as I did when I was a child. But I can`t afford to, and I have nobody to play with. So I`m doing what I can to get moving again.

The road to fitness, it seems, is long, and painful, and full of spit up and swear words. But this time instead of using exercise, I`m doing it for the right reasons: to be active again. And I`m trying to be nice to exercise in the hope that this time it will be nice to me.

Perhaps then at last our relationship will be a healthy one.

The Never List

2011-04-26T14:44:00.004+09:00

When I was a teenager, I walked to school every single day with the same girl. We had little in common apart from form teacher and the direction of our houses, but these two factors were enough to tie us into half a decade of tired conversations that both of us enthusiastically forgot a few seconds after they were finished.

All, that is, apart from this one:

"Are you revising for our exams, then?" I asked her, a few months before our GCSEs. She laughed.
"No way! Are you kidding? I just sit and watch telly every night."
"Really? You`re not revising at all?"
"I`m so bad, I know, but I just can`t find the energy after school."
"Me neither," I agreed, and - comforted that it wasn`t just me who was using my maths books as foot rests - went home that night and watched telly with a sense of peace I`d been missing for weeks that had been filled with my mum`s anxious nagging.

I checked in every week or so after that: was she studying yet? No, she consistantly told me. She was not studying. She never studied. And - just to be sure - I checked in with a few of my fellow schoolmates. Were they studying? No, they all told me. They never studied. Who could be bothered to study? Who had nothing better to do than study for stupid exams? And, they implied with a few raised eyebrows, my fierce questions about studying were making me look deeply eager and uncool, and so it was probably a good idea if I stopped so that I didn`t slip even further down the Geek ladder. So I relaxed, and - slightly ashamed that I`d been so worried - also refused to study. We would all fail together, I decided. It might even make me more popular, if I got the same grades as everyone else. Perhaps people would stop writing things about how Geeky I was in the school toilets.

And then came the day of our first exam, and as we walked to school - batting the same inane topics backwards and forwards - out came the revision cards. Hundreds of the buggers. Colour coded, printed, notated, filed in a little plastic box. Worn down by busy little thumbs.
"Eh?" I said, still confused. "Where did they come from?"
"Oh," she said, looking shifty. "I threw them together in about ten minutes."
I looked at the cards - a ruler had been used for all of the straight lines - and immediately suspected she was lying. And then I looked at the dates on them. Four months previous. And I knew.
"You`ve been studying, havn`t you," I said in a flat voice, panic rising up my windpipe. "You`ve been studying for ages."
"Not really," she said, without making eye contact. And then she lifted her chin and looked at me defensively, as if it was somehow my fault for believing her in the first place. "But, you know, Holly, these are our GCSEs. They`re kind of important, after all."

I`m not sure I ever got over the shock. When I said I wasn`t studying, I meant it. My not studying had been part of a greater plan to make me like everybody else. But the fatal flaw I hadn`t foreseen was: everybody else had been lying. When we got to school, everybody had revision cards. I was the only moron who had decided to tell the truth because it hadn`t occurred to me I`d get further ahead by keeping quiet. And the only thing I could do to save myself was hope and pray that I had studied hard enough for the last five years to be able to smudge through on long-term memory instead of short term (I did, but that`s not the moral of the story).

I`d been Nevered, I finally realised, and I didn`t forget it. Throughout life, it turned out, there are always people who will pretend never to do something because it makes them look better, look cooler, look less bothered, and because it fools everybody else into not doing it either and therefore gives them an edge over the competition. Because let`s make no bones about it: everything is a competition. Life and everything in it is a competition: to win, whatever the topic, even if it`s just to stay alive when everybody else is dead. It`s just a question of how seriously you take it, what you`re prepared to do to win, and exactly how you want to play it.

After my first Nevering, the list grew quickly. The Never Studyers continued all the way through Uni - sneaking in ten hours of essay writing time a night and then playing table football in public all day so nobody could ever guess - and then morphed into the Never Really Workers (the I`m on Facebook All Dayers, who absolutely were not). The Never Savers were the next big gang: the people who pretended that they didn`t have four pence to rub together and then bought houses with the 15 grand they`d accidentally saved on the quiet and looked a little bit smug when everyone asked how the hell they managed it. Then there were the Never Eat Vegetablers, who claimed to feast on kebabs and yet stuffed their faces with broccoli when nobody was looking, and the Never Do Exercisers, who pretended they could barely lift themselves off the sofas and yet ran 15k as soon as everybody looked in the opposite direction. There were the Never Drink Enough Waterers - insinuating that the only thing that ever passed their lips was beer and vodka, and secretly rehydrating - and the Oops, Never Use Contraceptioners, who were somehow never the ones who got pregnant. There were the Never Look After My Skiners - with AHAs and RetinAs and a Harry Potter cabinet full of potions and lotions to keep them looking pretty - and the Never Watch Calorieers who somehow stayed 4 stone forever, and the Never Dye My Hairers, whose locks remained gloriously and expensively highlighted.

I was sucked into all of them: partly because I`m stupid, partly because I`m incapable of detecting a lie, or a falsehood, or a smudged truth, and partly because I wanted to. I knew - deep down - that everybody I knew probably wasn`t broke, lazy, full of fried food, smoking and drinking chocolate milkshakes all day (the way they pretended they were), and surfing the internet, but I preferred thinking they might be, because I was. And it took me a very long time to realise that the only not to lose in every single way was to ignore what everyone else was saying and get on with my own plans. Like saving money. And looking after my skin. And eating vegetables. And drinking enough water. All of which I try very hard to do, incidentally, and I`ll happily admit it to anyone who asks, however uncool it makes me. Exercise is the last on the list: and that`s what I`m tackling now. And while I don`t like it much right now (it hurts), I`ve been amazed by the amount of Never Exercisers who have admitted to exercising regularly now that I say I`m trying to.

It will never end, of course: the claims will just start to shift. And they always come out in the end. The Never Wear Sunscreeners? Let`s see just how unwrinkled they are in fifteen years, when everybody who actually wore none looks like handbags. The Never Started a Private Pensioners? I wonder how many will be jetting around the mediteranean when everyone else is dividing their baked beans in half. It`ll be interesting to see just how many of the Never Do Weights group fail to ever get bingo wings, or how many of the Never Eat Non Animal Protein Equivalents have incredibly low cholesterol. As for the Never Do Exercisers: just how many will inexplicably still be able to touch their toes past the age of 50? Quite a few, I reckon.

And hopefully - with a little bit of effort now - I might be one of them.

I just won`t be pretending at any stage that I can`t.

Little Ones

2011-04-23T13:14:00.002+09:00

Fear is a strange thing: absolutely none of it is proportional.

I can go through any number of natural disasters, any number of miles, any amount of strange countries and languages and people, any number of muggings and threats and violence, and still nothing scares me quite as much as a little emotional rejection. There may have been a lot of earthquakes during my visit to Tokyo, but it was visiting my little students in Yokohama that set the fear of God into me. And it was with some sense of irony that I trembled at the entrance to a restaurant with cartoon pandas on the walls, knowing I`ve had my wallet taken at knife point and felt nothing. Never in the history of the world has a smiley faced potato croquette been so scary.

I didn`t expect them to remember me. A year`s a long time, even for an adult: for a three year old, it`s a third of their life. I expected tears, hostility, suspicion, shyness: I prepared myself for a lot of Why are you making me play with this strange lady, mum? and Why does she keep trying to hug me? Tell her to leave me alone or I`m going to kick her. I was ready for the most painful of all things: approaching a person you love and having it made clear that they do not feel the same way, except with the eloquence that only a four year old can have. I was ready for rejection in the most open, screaming, loud way possible. And I was frightened.

And so - because I approached the situation behaving like a small, scared child - they responded by doing likewise. When they pretended to ignore me and hid behind their mums, I barely noticed because I was so busy doing the same thing. When they scowled at me, I scowled at them back. When they refused to make eye contact, and stared at the floor, I was too busy staring at the floor to see it. When Shion`s chin started wobbling, so did mine. And when Kou tossed his head and marched off to a distant seat - punishment, for leaving him for so long - I tossed mine and did it too, except I pretended it was because I was putting my handbag in a safe place rather than that I needed to be far away and safe from his rejection.

Three or four minutes later, when the children had established that I was far more immature than they would ever be, they realised that they could never win - that three or four or five years of experience was nothing in comparison to my twenty nine - and buckled. Suddenly, they were pulling at my shorts: "Hollllllyyyyyyy. HoollllllLLLLLYYYYYYY. Loookkkk attttt mmmmmmmeeeeee." They were fighting each other to get on my lap. They were ripping up tissues to present to me, and offering glasses of water until nobody else in the water had anything to drink from. They were showing me their new chopsticks, and their new karate moves. They were asking me if I liked soccer any more now than I used to (the answer? no. And it`s still football). And, with things exactly as they used to be except one year later, I relaxed and started behaving like a small, happy child, instead of a small, defensive child: playing with my food and turning the napkin into a beard and the chopsticks into horns. And - for the record - they can practice as much as they like, but not one of them has a `funny face` yet to rival mine. I know this, because we tested it. They have a lot of work to do, but they`ve got another twenty four years at least to reach my standard of facial flexibility.

They haven`t changed at all. That`s what surprised me the most: in one year, they`ve not changed a jot. They`re a tiny bit bigger - and quite significantly bigger than when I first met them, nearly two years ago - and their hair is longer (and some of them have more teeth), but they`re essentially the same. The same movements, the same ways of making them laugh, the same things that make them cry (having a piece of your smiley pancake stolen, for instance, in Shion`s case). They eat the same: Tensho still pulls his meal apart, and Shinnosuke still works his way methodically around the plate, and Kou still attacks his from the middle, and Shion still defends hers like a small tiger. Some of them have grown up a little (more than I have): Shinnosuke is a little less cripplingly shy, Tensho no longer chews his own feet and Kou has a love for his new little sister that is protective and defensive - just as his love for me has always been - but they`re exactly the same little characters. And when I tickle-attacked them in the ball pit and they defended themselves by throwing balls (very hard: I got bruised) they did it the way they always have done: Shinnosuke, in a fit of giggles, Kou, with a little set chin and spark in his eyes (and the little damp fringe I know so well from when he was a toddler and needed a towel down the back of his t-shirt), Shion with perfect aim and Tensho, permanently hugging my legs.

I had missed them so much, and - honestly - the two hours I spent with them was two of the happiest hours I have ever spent, even if a large proportion of it was spent being ball-pumelled by fifteen toddlers (my kids totalled five: another ten decided to join in the fun of beating to death a big blonde girl). And what was amazing was the realisation - for the first time, really - that people don`t change. That the essence of each of these incredible children was the same as it was two years ago, when I had to sit one year old Tensho in my lap because he fell over when sitting on his own, and the same as it was one year ago, when I left them, and will be the same in years to come. That they`ll get bigger, of course, but Kou will probably always get pink cheeks and a sweaty fringe when he`s over-excited, and Shinnosuke will always work round his food in circles, and Shion will always growl like a fierce little cat if you try and touch her food. They`ll be the same people, but larger and more complicated versions of them. And the big things that scare them now will probably always scare them: just as they scare me, they way they always have. And they`ll love the same things they love now, just as I do too.

When I left them for the second time, I managed not to cry. I`ve promised to see them again - how, I don`t know, but I`ll do it - and the mums and dads have all emailed me since to say that they hope I come back for them. But of my entire time in Japan, my departure from my little ones this time was one of the moments that will stay with me the longest.

"Tell Holly you love her," Kou`s dad told him firmly in English as I said goodbye.
"No," Kou shouted, embarrassed and furious.
"Kou, you won`t see her for a long time again. Tell her you love her."
"No, I don`t," Kou yelled, hiding his head in his dad`s shoulder.
"It`s okay," I said, finally managing to behave like the adult I am. "Kou, it doesn`t matter. I love you."
"No," Kou grumped again, without moving his face. "No love."
And so I patted him on the back, gave the others a cuddle and walked away, fighting the bit inside me so silly and hurting.

I got twenty metres before "Hoooolllllllyyyyyyyyyyyy" started echoing around the packed shopping mall. Every shopper stopped and turned - as I did - to see five little people hurtling along the corridor towards me. "Holllllllllyyyyyyyyyy" Kou was screaming, followed by four smaller "Holllllyyyyyyy"s (Kou is the oldest).
I knelt down on the floor and watched them pushing through the crowds towards me, parents still standing where they had been left.
"Are you coming with me?" I asked them, laughing.
"Hollllllllyyyyyy I love youuuuuuuuu," Kou yelled, and then all of them hurled themselves on top of me. And when they`d been eventually pulled off by their parents, I got barely another twenty metres before they were all screaming "Hoollllllllyyyyyyy I loooooveveee yyoooooou" and hurtling towards me again. Three or four times, until their mums held on to their little arms and told me to run in the opposite direction or they`d chase me all the way home and I`d never get away. And a hundred shoppers stood, mouths open, staring at the only foreigner in the entire shopping centre, being chased by a herd of tiny, English-screeching Japanese kindergarteners, as if it was the strangest thing they`d ever seen. Which it may well have been.

These little children will always be who they are now: in one form or another. And the knowledge that I have been a small part of that - that I have been a part, in only the tiniest way, of who they are growing into - is one of the best experiences I have ever had. And of my two years spent in Japan, being chased across a shopping mall by a group of tiny children shouting in my own language is one of the highlights.

And that fear: the fear that they would no longer love me? It never had to be there. But it`s okay that it was, because that`s who I have always been too. And it`s who I will always be.

And - as tiresome as it often is - the people who love me probably wouldn`t want me to change either.

Smales Do Japan

2011-04-22T11:31:00.001+09:00

I`m back.

Not with a vengeance, because a vengeance is a very silly way to write, but back nonetheless. I`m rested, I`ve been fed on things other than my own burnt offerings, I`ve laughed a lot, and I`ve had my self-induced hermit-status blasted into smithereens. Frankly, it`s amazing what ten solid days of your parents will do. By the end of the visit, I didn`t know whether to hang on to them with my fingernails or boot them out by their bottoms, because my mum and dad are simultaneously the best people I know, and the most frustrating. I`d cleaned my house from top to bottom before they turned up, and they still managed to find ten or eleven things wrong with it and then give me a stern "Holly, you will always be single if you don`t learn how to pick up the post from the doormat when it`s delivered" talk. It turns out that you can be as old as you like, and as independent as you like, and as far away and as much missed as you like, but the first thing your mum will do when she sees you is still wipe her finger along the top of your shelves and announce that you`re a slob (okay, the first thing she will do is cuddle you and cry, and then she`ll hunt for evidence that you can`t survive without her).

It was a fantastic holiday. Dividing the time between Tokyo and Nichinan meant I`d done everything before, obviously, because I`ve lived in both for a long time, but it was a glorious, surreal thing to be able to repeat it all with people I loved. And - strangely - they didn`t respond the same way I did at all. The things I initially found difficult to handle - the crowds of Tokyo, the unknown language, the strange food - were taken entirely in their stride: literally, in the case of my mum, because she got run over on the famous Shibuya crossing, which resulted in my dad losing his temper and kicking the crap out of the poor cyclist`s bike. The food was of interest but only from a distance (in ten days we had two MacDonalds, a TGI Friday, five Starbucks and a billion tuna sandwiches) and the language wasn`t really an issue because I did all the talking. All of it. Every single word, apart from a few pinked cheeked "arigatos" thrown in by mum for good measure. And yet we still had an amazing time. Evidence, perhaps, that I made it rather more difficult for myself than I probably had to the first time round. Which, I think, comes as no surprise to anyone.

My family fell in love with Japan too, I think. Or, if not in love, then definitely in crush. I did everything I could to make them: showed them as much as I could that would make them love it the way I do. And it worked. They loved the excitement of Tokyo, and the incredible natural beauty of Nichinan. They loved Baba, who continued as only Baba can and chatted away to the whole family as if they had any idea of what she was talking about - and shouted at me for a million different reasons, including leaving my washing out again - and they loved Jiji, who set himself up with some ume-shu and grinned at them in silence for half an hour. They loved the amazing customer service, the politeness and sweetness of strangers, the amazing shrines and temples. Dad was made very happy by Mount Fuji, and mum managed five earthquakes a day from 35 stories up with amazing dignity and aplomb. They loved the rice fields, and the sea, and the mountains, and the high rises: we all very much enjoyed our Posh Dinner at the top of the Park Hyatt, aka The Lost In Translation Restaurant, during which we all pretended to be much cooler than we actually are.

And my current school behaved impeccably: namely, the children threw themselves at me with so much love and genuine enthusiasm that even my dad welled up, and my sister announced that she was leaving England so she could teach in Japan and be "loved like that" too. Apparently - according to Tara - I`ve not only passed on my accent to the little ones, but also my unconscious lifelong habit of touching the finger tips of the person I`m talking to: as my sister pointed out, every child approached me with their hands held up, and it was "like watching a hundred miniature Hollys". Which is a terrifying thought, but also an incredibly satisfying one. As my dad pointed out, after a little five year old formally marched up to him with no fear whatsoever and started a conversation about the weather, I`ve "really made a difference". And I`d never felt it quite so strongly as when the people I loved could see it too.

It was just what I needed: my family, being allowed to fall in love with Japan all over again, and not being on my own anymore. Ten days of love, and laughter, and company. It has re-set me: when they left, rather than hiding in my bedroom as I did before they came, I immediately organised drinks with friends, and planned a full weekend. I feel more relaxed, more happy, and more normal than I have in a long time, simply because allowing my family to see my life has made my life feel real, and has made me feel real, and has made everything feel less far away. Because I needed that love and support to reboot me. When I walk down the road now I know that my sister has walked down the same road, and just that knowledge makes it easier to walk down it and not feel so alone.

The irony is: now that my family have seen Japan, they want me to stay. They love it so much they no longer want me to leave, and they understand why I didn`t run away when everyone else did (we were the only foreigners in Tokyo. It was embarrassing, how Fair Weather the gaijins are. Last year it was full of them). They can finally see why I gave Japan two years of my life, even when it took so much out of me. And they can see it, just as I`m getting ready to leave.

I`ve got three months left in the country I love, and will always love. I`ve got three months before I leave Japan behind to start on my next life adventure. But with the new energy, new calmness and new happiness I have now, I think it`s going to be a wonderful three months. And I`m ready to enjoy them totally.

And that`s what a good family does. It strengthens you while they`re with you, and leaves you stronger when they`re gone.

Anticipation

2011-04-08T12:47:00.000+09:00

I`m so excited that Harai keeps asking me what`s wrong.

"I`m excited," I tell him every time he asks.
"But why are you singing?" he demands. Or "why are you bouncing up and down in your chair?" or "why do you keep making peep noises like baby bird?"
"Because I`m going to Tokyo tomorrow and I`m seeing the toddlers I taught in Yokohama, and then my family arrive on Sunday morning. And I haven`t seen the children for a year and I haven`t seen my family for eight months. So I`m excited."
"Yes," Harai confirms, still confused, because he knows this. I`ve told him every day for the last two months. "But why are you singing?"
"What`s not to sing about?" I squeak, pulling my hood over my head and dancing.
"Please stop," Harai says, and then goes back to doing whatever it is he`s pretending to do on his little computer just because it`s better than watching me dance.

I`m so excited. I never thought I`d see my little Joyland class again: when I knelt on the floor of the classroom in Yokohama one year ago, covered in kissing three year olds and crying my eyes out, I thought I`d have to imagine them growing older and never be a part of it. That`s the way of teaching, and especially in a foreign language: teachers are replaced too frequently to form real attachments, and ties are never deep. I`ve taught nearly five hundred children over the last eighteen months, and yet only five children have stuck: Kanata and his brick banging, Shion with her Minnie Mouse hood pulled over her eyes, Shinnosuke and his sniffles (hayfever), Tensho and his beloved red fire engine toy, and the inimitable Kou. But, while they`d stuck with me, I never for a minute thought I`d stick with them.

Apparently, I have. When I told their mums I was visiting Tokyo they said the children still ask about me, and have said they want to see me. Every single one of them: the whole gang, plus sisters, brothers, mums, dads, and - possible - grandparents. We`re all going for lunch, and - frankly - I`m terrified, because I`m not sure I believe the kids remember me at all. It took them four weeks to stop screaming with terror every time they looked at me the first time round, and I don`t have four weeks this time. I`m just hoping they can get their inevitable shyness, fear and shrieking out of the way in the space of an hour and a half, so that we can all have a lunch that doesn`t resemble some kind of Hannibal Lecter tea party except from behind their mum`s skirts. Failing that, they`re two, three and four years old: I`ll take a huge amount of presents and aim to buy their love back as quickly as possible. That will probably do it.

And then - even better - I get to see my family. My beautiful, dishevelled, sleepy and grumpy after a 14 hour journey (Tara) and tail wagging (dad) and scared of Tokyo radiation and earthquakes (mum) family. And I can show them exactly what I`ve been doing for 18 months: where I`ve been, what I`ve eaten, what I`ve seen, what I`ve experienced. I can show them the country I have loved so much - and hated with nearly as much passion - and it will all finally be real. And we can all spend ten days doing our best to get mum to eat something other than pizza.

I`ve not been truly excited for a long time, but now? I can`t stay still.

And if that`s not something worth singing about, I don`t know what is.

Fashion

2011-04-05T16:38:00.005+09:00

Fashion is subjective.

A large part of that statement goes without saying: of course it is. If it wasn't subjective, it wouldn't be fashion. It would be called telling us what to wear and then making us wear it.

The thing is: I don't think I've really been aware of just how subjective it is until recently. Today, actually. Specifically: 45 minutes ago.

I love fashion. As with everything, I'm divided into two: the part of me that adores fashion, and thinks it's incredibly important as the only art form we become a part of, and can - at a push and with a pinch of luck - be quite stylish, and the part of me that wears a tracksuit, Crocs and a hair scrunchie and thinks nothing of it. Were I ever to become famous I can guarantee that the latter would be what would go in the papers, but - truly - I do love fashion. Or at least I thought I did.

Recently, in what I can only describe as my umpteenth late 20s crisis, I've been deciding that I'm too old: that my heart just isn't in it anymore. In anything, but specifically in fashion. I've lost the will to style. I've been slipping down the slippery slope from casual to chav: from not caring too much if I'm caught in red rubber shoes, to realising I haven't worn anything else in 3 weeks, and that on putting a normal pair of 4 quid pumps I actually said "Oooh, real shoes". Today I wandered to the shops in stripy fleece trousers - fleece on the outside - (too short, too tight, not quite meeting my shoes), obligatory red faux-Crocs, chiffon scrunchie, hair band I bought to use when washing my face, jumper with natto stuck on the front, and didn't even realise I looked like Waynetta slob until I was at home, getting back into my more comfortable clothes. Seriously: these were the less comfortable clothes I had worn shopping. I owned items even more hideous.

In a panic - in a moment of Jesus-Christ-and-I'm-not-even-30-yet horror - I tugged on some normal-ish jeans and scootered as fast as I could to the local clothes shop. And then I scootered to another. And then another. Because all I could find was hideous, lace covered, flower covered, button covered, frill coated, beaded, sequinned monstrosities with bad English written cheekily all over them. Clothes that have clearly been designed for teeny tiny children, and yet somehow accidentally made large enough for adults. And I wandered the clothes aisles, picking them up in confusion, holding them against myself and thinking: this is it. It's all over. I don't understand fashion anymore. I'm out of the loop. Fashion looks more hideous on me than my stripy fleece trousers do.

And then I took myself to Uniqlo, which is completely bereft of all flowers and sequins and frills and lace, looked at the plain black tshirts and grey trousers and thought: oh God. And this stuff makes me look like a teacher. Like a teacher. And I might be a teacher - temporarily, for now, and somewhat reluctantly - but I don't want to goddamn look like one. I used to work in PR, for God's sake. I used to be cool.

At which point I gave up entirely, went home, lay on my bed and decided that it was all officially over. That my shot at style, and fashion, and looking remotely edgy or attractive - or even like I don't have old food stuck to the front of me - was done. I would just have to fade gracefully into the countryside, count myself lucky that my boobs don't yet touch my navel and hope that when death found me at least my knickers were clean.

And then - as if as a message from the universe - I remembered: the world doesn't end and start with Japan. Maybe, somewhere else - in a far off, distant land - there is a happy medium. Maybe, somewhere many, many miles away, there are clothes that are neither covered in lace and ribbons nor the fashion equivalent of an army uniform. Maybe - just maybe - there are clothes in the world that would make me want to wear them. That would make me want to get out of my tracksuit before the rot set in. And, with that glimmer of hope, I got up and looked on TopShop UK online.

And there they were. Clothes designed for adults, by adults. Clothes I could wear, happily. Better: clothes that I wanted to wear. That, frankly, I was clamouring to get my hands on, just so I could feel human and young and female and cool again. Instead of an old, frumpy countryside teacher which is how I currently feel (and, in fairness, look).

It's all still there: I'd just forgotten there was a world outside. And I've been so long in Japan, I'd forgotten that fashion exists that isn't Japanese. And let me tell you something you've probably already guessed: frilly, flowery, lacy little dresses look adorable on 5 foot 2 Japanese girls with no boobs and swishy black hair, but on a 5 foot ten curvy blonde? Not so good. I look like a cross between a fat giant Barbie and one of the little dolls my aunt puts on top of toilet rolls.

Frankly, if anything has made me realise how much of a shock returning to the West is going to be, it's the last 45 minutes. I'm an English girl who used to work on Carnaby Street - literally where the fashion of the 60s started - and I'd forgotten British fashion existed. Actually forgotten. I'd started believing it was me that was built all wrong, and not that I was in the wrong place for me.

I'm not too old at all, and I'm not dead yet. I'm not too tall, or too fat, or too blonde, or too "masculine" because I look terrible in a ra-ra skirt. I'm not fading anywhere gracefully. But I think it's time for me to start preparing myself to finally come home.

To a place where I can finally be myself again.

Road trip

2011-04-04T09:38:00.001+09:00

To be on holiday, sometimes the best thing to do is actually go on holiday.

It seems obvious, but it's not. It's quite easy to spend the time at home, sleeping and burning multiple pieces of toast, but the fact is: unless you go somewhere else, it doesn't actually feel like you're having a break.

I've not been on a road trip with another person since The Boy. We went on multiple beautiful, landscaped mini-breaks, most of which were spent with me either crying or wondering when I would probably cry next. And - let's be frank - it doesn't matter if you're camping at the base of Mount Fuji at sunset: if you're crying while you do it, or on edge just in case you start, some of the magic tends to evaporate from the experience. So I was a little bit reluctant (read: terrified) to go anywhere else with anyone else, whether a romantic partner or not. I didn't want to spend any more time seeing Japan countryside through a quarter inch film of tears or staring out of a car window with my chin wobbling.

I needn't have worried. Yuki had zero interest in making me cry, and apparently - and this was a revelation - I don't actually burst in to tears for no reason at all, so our 36 hours were spent blissfully histrionic-free. In fact, despite the fact that 15 of the 36 hours were spent driving, in the car, with nothing but each other for company, I discovered that I can spend large, undiluted amounts of time with another person without being constantly scared of getting into some kind of fight, or of saying something wrong, or of getting a pain straight through the chest as a result of them saying something even more so. This was also a revelation. I realised I'd avoided being in a small space with another person for over a year because I assumed that one or all of the above would be the outcome.

No: our trip to Beppu - the Onsen capital of Japan, and therefore my Mecca (making this my pilgrimage) - was marred only by Yuki's driving. Some of the most beautiful views I have ever seen - sunlit mountains, herons in flight, large red sunrises over the ocean, winding roads, large lakes and turquoise rivers, fields lined with cherry blossom - were interrupted, frequently, with "Jesus Christ, Yuki, why aren't your hands on the wheel? Either of them?" At which point Yuki would inevitably laugh.
"We're going to have a crazy trip," she would say happily, continuing to check the internet on her multicoloured, flashing phone. The car would wobbly climb another steep mountain to our doom.
"Yes," I would respond, taking her phone from her and putting it back in its fluffy holder (Yuki - and her car - are very female, and very Japanese: everything is lined with fluff, or leopard print, or swinging cartoon characters). "We are going to have a crazy trip. But we are going to have safe driving."
"Crazy trip, safe driving," she would repeat like some kind of mantra, turning around to see if she could find her fluffy box of tissues and letting the car do what it felt like doing in the interim.

According to the Road Law as interpreted by Yuki, you are allowed to stop whenever you want wherever you want: when I said I needed to throw out some of my Oden juice (Japanese stewed vegetables), she promptly slammed her foot on the break and brought the car to an immediate standstill, regardless of the fact that were were on a corner, and there was a lorry behind us. "I meant at some stage," I whimpered when I eventually got my breath back.
"Oh," she said, giggling. "Okay. Shall I carry on driving then?"
"Yes," I said, bowing to the lorry sitting furiously behind us.

According to Yuki's Road Rules, red lights are also not demands: they're suggestions.
"Gomen nasai!" (sorry!) she would shout, accelerating through them, as I held my hands over my eyes. "Well, I don't want to be rude, do I," she told me when I asked who she was apologising to: me, or the lights, or the other drivers. "I'm just apologising to all of you."

According to Yuki's Road Rules, the speed limit is also up for negotiation.
"You follow speed limits in the UK?" she asked me, going 100kmh on a 50kmh road. I think she could tell that I was leaning forwards every three minutes, looking at the speedometer and very quietly and very internally writing my own will.
"Yes. We do. More than this, anyway."
"Ah," she said, laughing again. "For the Japanese, it's more of an idea. We look at the speed limit and then go 30, 40, 50 kmh over."
"And the police don't mind?"
"Not if they don't see," she said, accelerating a little bit faster.

The only time she wasn't a bonkers driver was when we stopped at Takachiho Gorge and hired a row boat to paddle around the famous river at the bottom of it. And this is simply because she couldn't get the boat to move.
"It's impossible," she said after four or five minutes of grunting and waving the oars in the air. "We'll just have to stay here and look at the gorge. Our boat is broken."
"It's not broken," I told her, taking the oars off her and rowing away from the edge. "You're broken."
She gaped at my oars. "Oh my God. You're amazing! You're like a genius rower!"
"I'm not. I just understand that boat oars need to go into the water in order to work." Yuki started clapping. "Yuki," I told her firmly as I paddled away. "If we ever have to escape jail together, you are not allowed to be in charge of transport."

We survived, though. Actually, we did more than survive: we had a great time. We went to the best onsen either of us have ever been to - a natural hot spring in the middle of a pile of rocks, under the stars - we visited the local wild monkeys, and I got so close I could have touched one if it hadn't jumped up and screamed blue murder at me (Yuki nearly started crying), and we ate takoyaki (octopus balls) until both of us had stomach ache. It was lovely. Exactly what a holiday should be.

I feel more refreshed now that I'm home, and more eager to get moving again: I'd forgotten that travelling, and moving, and seeing new things, breathes life into me. I'd forgotten that I'm not a maniac, and can spend large amounts of time with one person without fighting, crying or staring at the horizon without actually being able to see it. And I have a new found respect for Yuki and her car. Both of which, apparently, have the power to make sure I never see anything ever again. Ever. Screw volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis and nuclear radiation: my life is in far more immediate danger because of a teeny tiny Japanese girl and her fluff filled, leopard printed car.

I have four months left in Japan, and I'm going to see as much as I can of it in the meantime: go on as many tiny holidays as I squeeze in. Because you know what?

A change is not as good as a rest at all. It's much, much better.

Frogs

2011-03-28T21:36:00.001+09:00

My father is having an issue with frogs.

It's not the first time. When I was eleven years old I accidentally told the French section of my family that my dad had a habit of calling them "the froggies" when they weren't in the room, and all hell broke loose. The froggies - namely my female cousins - went berserk, threw roast potatoes, started crying and stomped upstairs, screaming then you are all le roast boeufs; my dad looked sheepish, my sister put her napkin in her mouth so she wouldn't start laughing and I got it in the neck for ruining yet another Christmas dinner.

Now the frogs are causing problems again. Except that this time it's the small, green, hoppy versions, instead of the ones who live on the other side of the English channel.

We have a pond in my garden at home in England. For the first twenty years of living there, it was Pond by name only: consisting of a shallow dip of concrete, filled with rain water. Then my dad got all Home Improvements and had it made into what he calls a Proper Pond, with an embarrassing naked lady made of stone and pivoted - diving - on a metal spike, water spurting between two stones, a pump, plants that regulate oxygen supplies and four fish (one for each of my family). Mum and dad were both irrationally proud of the Proper Pond - regularly rolling the computer over to the window so that I could see it from the Skype webcam - and during my trip home many hours were spent pointing at said Pond, naming and renaming the four fish, and stopping the cat from taking a hungry shine to any of them.

Dad's not quite as proud of the Pond anymore. In fact, he's not proud at all. It has now - in his words - 'turned into a froggie brothel'. And he is not happy about it.

'I know it's spring and everything,' he told me: 'but seriously, Holly. I thought an otter had fallen in and was drowning, there was so much fuss. I went outside to save it and realised it wasn't an otter at all: there was a frog orgy taking place in my brand new Pond.'
I laughed. 'How many frogs are we talking?'
'Tens. Hundreds. I don't know, they're moving too much to count. I don't know where to look, it's totally unsavory. I have to walk to the garden shed with my hand across my eyes, dirty little buggers. I fear for the fish, I really do. I think they're still under there somewhere, permanently traumatised.'
'What are you going to do?'
'I don't know, Holly. Your mum keeps laughing at me. It's not funny. What can I do? I can't kill the frogs, especially not while they're all at it. But it's ridiculous: when they're done with their disgusting habits they're going to have millions of babies, and I can't kill them either. We're in trouble. I think I might have to move house.'
'You know what you are, don't you,' I told him. 'You're the madam of a frog brothel, dad. You're the Frog Pimp.'
'Oh Jesus Christ. I don't want to be the Frog Pimp. If even one of them turns out to be a prince, I'm out of here.'
'Dad, if any of them turn out to be a prince, you're sending them over to meet me straight away.'
Dad sighed. 'Remember when it was just a hole full of rain water?' he said in a tired voice. 'Remember that? There were no frogs at all. That was nice, wasn't it? They were the good old days, when I could walk into my own garden without being corrupted.'

Things have gotten no better. Yesterday morning dad dropped his mobile phone in the pond while in the process of keeping my mum up to date on 'the shenanigans', and by the time he'd made his way through the heaving, thrashing masses to retrieve it again the phone didn't work anymore. And to make matters that little bit worse: mum heard the splash, thought dad had suffered a heart-attack brought on by all the post-watershed action, immediately started crying and rang an ambulance, so dad was forced to explain to a handful of medics that he wasn't, actually, dying, but was simply preoccupied with trying to poke shagging frogs away from his phone with the end of a coat-hanger.

You know, he emailed me this morning, by the time I managed to get the horny little sods away from it my bill was astronomical. I think they must have been making long distance calls to the mangroves or the swamps or wherever it is they come from.
France? I offered tentatively.

Every dad hopes that one day his daughter will find a prince. Only my dad goes as far as collecting frogs for me, just in case.

Judging on current behaviour, however, I'm not sure that any of these froggies are likely candidates.

Whether they're French or not.

Japanese

2011-03-25T10:28:00.000+09:00

I`m so incredibly proud of myself.

"I need you to help me, please," I just asked my colleague, Yuko. We`re about to leave on Spring vacation, and I wanted to check that it would be okay for my family to visit the school in April before I left.
"You want me to translate?" she said.
"Please," I begged, and dragged her to the deputy headmaster (a man who I cannot speak to or look at without being reminded of Father Christmas: he is exactly like a younger, shaved, more twinkly Japanese brother).
"Excuse me," I said, and then looked at Yuko, "but my mum, dad and sister are all coming to Japan in two weeks, and I was wondering if it would be okay for them to come into school and have a look round?"
"Of course," the deputy headmaster said. "We`d be delighted. Excellent Japanese, by the way."
And then I looked at Yuko with round eyes.
"I just did that in Japanese, didn`t I," I told her.
"Yup. Fluent Japanese with a great accent. I didn`t open my mouth."
"And he just replied in Japanese, didn`t he."
"Yup. No English in the entire conversation."
"Shit." And then I jumped in the air and gave myself a high five. "I can speak Japanese, Yuko! I rock."

I`m not going to lie: it`s basic Japanese, and my skills are limited to really, really simple sentences. But I managed to say what I needed to say, without a translator, and that`s more than I ever thought I`d be able to do.

Eighteen months, it took me, to construct my own sentences. But was it worth it?

Hell, yes. Because now when my parents come I`ll have something to make them a little bit more proud of me.

Procrastination part 2

2011-03-22T12:00:00.004+09:00

It turns out that procrastination isn`t as much fun when there`s nothing to procrastinate from.

Last night I sent an incredibly long, passionate, heartfelt email to The Agent - apologising for pretending I had finished the book seven or eight times when I hadn`t actually finished the book at all and promising that this time I actually had and I wasn`t lying anymore and I was very, very, very sorry for being the Author Who Cried Finished - and she forgave me. The key difference between men and literary agents, apparently, is that when you send agents long, passionate and heartfelt emails, they actually read them.

So I have an agent again, and I`ve sent her the book, and now there`s nothing to do but wait.

Literally nothing.

I`m under strict instructions - from myself, and there`s no stricter instruction - to take a break, because I`m both physically and mentally totally knackered. I know this, because I have the skin of a prepubescent teenager half my age.

But it turns out that taking a break isn`t actually a lot of fun. All the things I squeezed into my days when I should have been writing - the websites I looked at, the books I sneakily dipped into, the tv shows I watched while I "ate dinner" (ie for the hour before and the hour after I had food in my mouth, which is - let`s be honest - most of the time), the friends I emailed, the incredibly long showers I had - have all lost their appeal now that I`m allowed to do them. I have literally hours and hours and hours of time to myself to do exactly what I want, when I want, how I want, and I don`t know what to do with any of them. It turns out the primary element that made procrastination entertaining was precisely the fact that I was supposed to be doing something else.

It`s been three waking hours without a book to write, and I`m already bored stiff. There`s no point in taking a half hour shower when I`ve actually got that half hour to spend taking a shower. The tv shows - now that I don`t feel guilty for watching them - are, as it turns out, incredibly dull: the frission of naughtiness was the only thing making them watchable. The books have transformed into study guides again: now I read them critically, trying to learn how to be a better writer, instead of reading them so I don`t have to be. The websites that were fascinating and from which I could not drag my eyes 24 hours ago are now totally inane. I`ve even found myself watching the underdog X Factor contestants on YouTube - the ones everyone boo when they walk on and then prove everyone wrong by singing Opera - and crying. Because there`s nothing else to do.

It`s pathetic, frankly. I went out for a drink last night to celebrate with my friends, and I spent the whole time yearning to get home to my book, and then remembering it wasn`t there anymore and sulking. I`m the annoying mother who complains about their kid constantly and then pines as soon as it goes away for the weekend. Worse: I have a two week holiday starting on Friday, and not a bloody thing to do with it but lie in bed and watch America`s Next Top Model. I`m dreading it already.

So I`ve found a new way to procrastinate. Half an hour ago, I distracted myself from looking at pictures of tropical islands on Google by writing a draft synopsis of the next novel. Ten minutes ago, I pretended I was looking on a baby site for my recently pregnated friend, when actually what I was doing was looking for names for new characters. And on my scooter this morning, I told myself that it was okay if I came up with a new plot in the processing of driving, because everyone knows that when you`re driving whatever you think about doesn`t count.

I am - in essence - procrastinating from procrastinating by writing another novel: I`m the procrastination version of a recently overrated Leonardo DiCaprio movie. And you know what? It feels good. And I`d imagine it`ll continue to feel good, up to the point where somebody rings me and tells me I need to write another book sharpish.

At which point - and this is just an educated guess - I suspect those islands in the Caribbean and tv shows and long hot showers are suddenly going to seem a whole lot more appealing.

The One

2011-03-21T21:06:00.000+09:00

I don't like dating.

I've never liked dating. The thrill, the chase, the excitement, the games: I don't enjoy it. I know a lot of people who do - who get some kind of sick buzz from potential rejection, whether theirs or somebody else's - but it makes me feel nauseous and frightened. I don't like exposing myself, I don't like making myself vulnerable, I don't like asking somebody to like me and I don't like deciding whether or not I like them. And, frankly, the last couple of years of heart carnage have not helped this innate instinct. I'll be honest: if I'm to be in a relationship again, it's going to have to come and bloody get me, because I'm going to be running away in the opposite direction as fast as I can. Love is literally going to have to find me, run me down, pin me to the metaphorical floor kicking and screaming and then spend at least three years sitting on my stomach singing nursery rhymes until I calm down enough to talk to it. I certainly won't be fluttering my eyelashes at it and taking it out for dinner.

For me, therefore, the stakes have been weighed up and thus is my conclusion: love can sod off. My desire to find the perfect man to love and be loved by is significantly less than my fear of the process by which I would do so, and so I have chosen to stay single.

The same, however, cannot be said for finding a literary agent.

While the romantic passions of my heart are easy to ignore, the cerebral passions are not. No fear, however great or paralysing, can stop my desire to write novels and to eventually sell them. Which means that however much I hate it, I have to find a literary agent, even if the process is precisely the same - and every bit as painful - as finding the right boyfriend.

I had one once: a lovely, award winning literary agent. It was a beautiful and promising relationship. She was the first agent I'd ever sent my (extremely incomplete) book to, she rang me within 24 hours of posting it, I went to see her in London, we sat in her office surrounded by best selling novels and talked for hours. There was a meeting of minds; we laughed, I got the pink flush I get all over my neck whenever I'm excited. She told me she hadn't been so excited about a writer in years and I started crying with happiness. It was the kind of date literary dreams are made of.

And then I immediately ran away to Japan, got caught up in the vortex of a soulless man, stopped writing completely, and my lovely literary agent's interest started waning. One month: still incredibly keen. Five months: keen but irritated. One year: less keen, but polite. Eighteen months: one word answers. Two years on, and she doesn't answer my emails, and she doesn't answer my phone calls, and I strongly suspect that she's got an entirely different tone for my number so that she doesn't answer it by accident and get forced into talking to me. And now I've finally finished the goddamn novel - finished it last night - it's too damn late. All I can do is leave a meek little voicemail asking her to call me when she isn't too busy with writers who actually write when they say they're going to write instead of falling in love and running away instead, and then hang up and cry into my pillow.

She won't call, of course, because I blew it. And I've been in the dating game long enough to know a dead duck when I see one.

So now I'm back to the beginning: forced to make an agent fall in love with me all over again. I have to send out manuscripts, I have to wait for them to call me, I have to hope against all hope that they want to see me and that - if they do - they think I'm worth seeing again. I have to check my goddamn email every ten minutes with a sinking feeling in the pitt of my stomach because there's nothing there. And worse, I have to compare them all to the lovely agent who wasn't just objectively one of the best in the business (and who two months ago sold a debut novel for a six figure sum), but who got my novel. Actually got it. Understood the characters, the sense of humour, what I was trying to achieve with it, where exactly in my heart I was writing from. Who gave me advice I worked into the finished mauscript - all of it - and which made it better, and saw all the flaws in my story before I did. Which is rare in any agent, let alone one who actually knows what she's doing.

In essence, I'm going to have to start doing with literary agents exactly what I'll have to start doing with men: looking for one to replace The One. And that is not pleasant at the best of times, let alone when you have to do it twice at the same time.

The difference is, of course, that I've weighed it up and decided that no amount of rejection, no amount of fear, no amount of pain, will ever stop me trying to find the right agent. And if I have to go on a million dates, and check my email a million times, and sit by my unringing phone for a million hours, I'll do it for the sake of my writing. But not for the sake of my heart.

So I may stay single, but unpublished? Not if I can help it.

Let the games begin.

Holiday

2011-03-08T09:33:00.004+09:00

I`m taking a holiday.

I`m not okay. There`s no other way to say it: I`m not okay. It`s not about where I am, or what I`m doing: it`s not my job, or my house, or my scooter, or my friends. It has nothing to do with my plans for the future, or where I want to go, or what kind of life I want to build. All of that is fine: great, in fact, because I live in a beautiful place and have a job that allows me to save money in the middle of a recession. It`s me. I`m the problem, and I`m what needs to be fixed.

I`ve told nobody this - not my sister, not my mum, not my best friends - but I`m still having nightmares about The Boy. It has been a year, and I still have nightmares almost every single night: nightmares so vivid that I frequently wake up crying, and so real that they haunt me when I`m awake. And I`ve told nobody because I`m ashamed: because I`m supposed to be over it, and because not being able to heal like I should makes me weird, and strange, and weak. But I can`t stop them: I can forget about him during the day, but when I`m asleep he always comes back. And it`s not even that I miss him anymore: the dreams where I woke up wanting to call him, or wanting to be with him, ended a long time ago. Now, they`re nightmares about how he made me feel. Ugly and talentless. Pointless. Uninteresting. Uninspiring. Crazy. Replaceable. Less than somebody else; than everybody else. Not worth loving, or of being loved. It`s as if the little voice that was inside me for twenty nine years - the little voice that whispered you`re not good enough, and you never will be - was proved, and made real, and dragged outside myself, because I wasn`t good enough for him, no matter how hard I tried, and I was replaced. Because he told me every day, in words or in actions, how unattractive I was, and how annoying, and how stupid, and how forgettable, and showed me - every day -that knowing me more made him love me less. Because he compared me, every day, to somebody better. Because he put me on a pedastal and then clawed me down, every day, until I didn`t know how to get back up again.

And now the little voice inside me has become big, and strong, and it has turned into him: the demons I`ve been fighting all my life have clustered together, and turned into one, real Demon I have to fight every single night in my sleep. Every night I try and I try to make him love me, and I try to feel worth it, and every night he - The Boy, turned into The Demon - tells me how useless I am, and how unloveable, and how unattractive, and makes me fight him over and over again. Until I wake up crying because every single night I lose. And the irony? I fell in love with The Boy in the first place because he was the only person who had ever told me he would fight my demons for me so that I didn`t have to anymore. And he didn`t just become one of them: he became all of them.

I can`t do it anymore. I`m not going `mad`, and I don`t hate Japan at all: I`ve just lost myself completely. The demons - the little ones inside me, and the bigger one that broke my heart - have finally won. A year of a destructive relationship, followed by a year of nightmares that get stronger with time, and I don`t believe in myself anymore: not as a writer, or as a woman, or as a lover, or as a person, or as a friend. I no longer believe that I can do anything, or that I`m worth anything. I`m struggling to write because I`m embarrassed of my own voice: I shy away from social situations, because I`m ashamed of who I am. I don`t look in mirrors, because I hate how I look, and I won`t apply for jobs because I don`t think I can do them. I`m not lonely because there`s nobody around me: I`m lonely because I stay away from everyone who is. I haven`t been on a date in a year: not because I haven`t been asked on any, but because I automatically reject all of them. And I`m scared of life, and of love, and of the world, and of my future: not because I have no choices, but because I don`t have the confidence to make any of them. Because where I used to be fearless, now I`m constantly terrified.

It`s my own fault. I should have realised a year ago that I wasn`t okay: that it was more than just a breakup. That it wasn`t just about moving across the world for and then losing the only man I had ever loved fully, which would have been hard enough in itself: that it was about having every fear and every insecurity I had ever had proved to me as true, and not being strong enough to deal with it. And while I did what I always do - curl back into myself, and cut myself off, and try to handle it all on my own - the only thing that could have fixed it was to let others heal it for me. To surround myself with people who would fight my demons with me: with people who loved me, and adored me, and could prove that none of it was true the way that one person - and his other girlfriend - proved it was. Instead of burying myself in the countryside in a strange place, with strangers, and fighting myself and my demons every night on my own.

I`m so tired; so unbelievably tired. It`s no wonder that life has lost its magic when every single day all of my energy goes on forgetting the nights. I`m not depressed, and it has nothing to do with bipolarity. I`ve simply been defeated.

So I`m taking a holiday. My parents and my sister arrive in Japan in four and a half weeks after eight months without them, and until then I`m not writing and I`m not thinking. I`m going to watch television, and draw pictures, and go for long walks, and ride my bike, and drag myself to parties - parties I`ve been rejecting for months, now - and force myself to have dinner with friends who barely know what I look like anymore. And - most importantly - I`m going to let myself be, until the people arrive with the weapons I need to start fighting again. The people who think that the world wouldn`t spin without me.

And when I`ve started to believe that too, I`ll be back.

To be - once again - somebody`s Write Girl.

Haruka

2011-03-03T09:31:00.003+09:00

The highlight of my school days, at the moment, is a little girl called Haruka.

Haruka is twelve years old, and she has Downs Syndrome. I have a much loved aunt with the same condition, so I had a special fondness for this little girl from the beginning and - when I was feeling homesick - found myself seeking her out. They`re similar in that they`re both extremely cheeky, and take immense delight in being as naughty as possible, as often as possible. I went swimming with my aunt a couple of years ago, and - on seeing that I had put my swimming goggles and swimming cap on the side of the pool - she waited until I had swum to the other side, deftly climbed out of the pool, walked over to my belongings and kicked them straight into the deep end, giggling furiously. Haruka, similarly, dragged Harai into the staff room a few days ago, wrapped in yellow tape: she had wound him in it so tightly that the poor man was waddling like a penguin, and had to be cut out of it. Haruka also has a habit of cheating when we`re playing games - she never lets Harai win, for instance, even when he`s winning - and although it`s been a number of years since I played Monopoly with my family, I seem to remember my aunt moving pieces when everybody was looking in another direction.

My attachment to Haruka is more than mutual, luckily: she adores me. She will run - full pelt - down a corridor to see me; her face lights up if I walk past; if she`s in a foul mood and nobody can control her, the staff come and get me because I`m the only person she listens to. Harai and I teach her English, and she will only repeat words if I say them: will use exactly the same tone (I was embarrassed to discover that her incredibly high pitched "hi!" in the mornings was an exact copy of my own). If we play card games, she smacks Harai if he wins, wrestles the card from him and then hands it to me: telling me, very sternly, not to lose again, and then patting me on the head. She makes me little cards, she has assigned me the blonde anime character on her pencil case, has introduced me very formally to her imaginary friend, and she`s constantly petting me: stroking my jumper, brushing my hair out of my eyes, telling me I`m pretty. It is, in short, the most loved I feel in Japan.

I keep waiting for it to disappear, which tells you everything you need to know about my feelings towards love: I keep waiting for her to stop. Every morning, I wait with an anxious stomach for her to see me, shrug, and turn away: for me to no longer be of interest. But she never does. Every single morning, without fail, her face lights up, she throws my own Hi! at me, and then she launches herself at my stomach. And it doesn`t matter how awful my hair is looking, or how terrible my outfit is, or how grumpy I am: Haruka will find something about me that she loves. A random curl, or a scarf, or a pair of tights. The colour of my eyes. And she will throw her arms around my waist, bury her little head in my stomach and give me the biggest hug I get outside of England. And in a country where affection is so limited, and where love is so reserved, Haruka is the person who gives me the warmth I crave so desperately. She`s the only person in the whole country who can change my mood entirely within three seconds.

She came in twenty minutes ago, and - jumping up and down with excitement because she had found me - threw her arms around me and told me I was beautiful. And I very nearly burst into tears. Instead I gave her a cuddle back, and then - because it`s the only way I know of showing affection across the language barrier - I gave her five stickers. Which delighted her so much that she promptly came back five minutes ago and took another three.

For the last year, since my break up, I know I`ve been getting icier and icier: less and less open to love, and affection, and showing anybody I care. But Haruka makes sure that the old me - the warm blooded, loving part - doesn`t die completely. And she reminds me that sometimes love doesn`t go anywhere: that sometimes it`s there every morning, even if you don`t expect it, and even if you don`t deserve it. Even if your stomach is tied in knots, waiting for it to end.

And for that - and for having such a wonderful, affectionate, mischievous spirit, for reminding me of my family and for tying Harai in yellow tape - Haruka is always the best thing about my day.

Castles

2011-03-02T10:45:00.000+09:00

"If I don`t write to empty my mind, I go mad." - Lord Byron

I feel far less bonkers today, which is good because I scared my grandad.

I was going to tell you about the antique chair we just bought for the living room, he emailed me half an hour after I posted, but I don`t think I should now. I`m worried it`ll tip you over the edge.

Worse: mum has yet to respond to my tirade against her sugar bowl, but I`m already feeling guilty. I feel I`ve repressed her ability to talk about it - or the matching cream jug - and I`m therefore a horrible and selfish daughter, as well as a mad one. She should be able to talk about any sugar bowl she has as much as she wants without me screaming stop talking about sugar bowls! I don`t care about sugar bowls! into the webcam, and then bursting into tears.

The irony is, of course, that I got out of bed at 2am last night in a fever of tossing and turning and sweating anxiety to write about how crazy I was becoming, and when the confession was made I fell straight into the deepest, calmest sleep I`ve had for weeks. It was a Catch 22: convinced that I was mad I refused to write for fear that the world would know it, and unable to write I got even crazier. And then I realised that in the two years since I started this blog I`ve been in every mental state under the sun, and a little bit of bonkers wasn`t going to bother anybody: or, for that matter, surprise anybody either. So maybe I should try and write my way out of the craziness, because it`s the only way I ever seem to get out of anything.

A reader suggested this morning that the route to happiness (and therefore, by implication, out of craziness) is being at home, surrounded by a constant, supportive circle of friends and loved ones. They`re totally right, of course. I know enough about life to understand that genuine contentment comes from loving and being loved: of feeling settled, and building a solid life around you that doesn`t fall down with one shake. I know from the way I feel when I`m with my family, and with the friends who genuinely adore me (and don`t wrestle on me naked while unconscious), that this is the ultimate goal. And, frankly, in my head, I`ve often compared my life to the metaphorical equivalent of Disneyland: pretty, exciting, but totally empty and devoid of any meaning. It`s like contrasting the Tower of London to Cinderella`s castle: I can create as many turretts and flags and stained glass windows as I like, but it`s not really a palace and there`s nobody living in it so I`m fooling nobody, and even I don`t care much if it burns to the ground. So of course I know that happiness - the kind of happiness that lasts - means leaving my made-up kingdom and starting, very very slowly and with a lot of hard work, to create something real. A world that actually means something, instead of just looking nice on the outside and entertaining for about three minutes.

But it`s not that simple for me. The desire to run away - to flip my life over - is still there when I`m home and loved: my craziness and hunger for the world still reers its ugly head. Sugar bowls scare me, because they`re sugar bowls. Sofas, mortgages, paint for the living room walls: they all terrify me, still. I`m not at the stage yet where I have learnt how to quieten down my fear of staying in one place, or of caring too much, or of promising anything to anyone. And my rented fairytale castle might be fake and lonely and empty, but I can`t build a real one until I`m ready. Until I have all the bricks, and I know what it looks like, and where it is, and who is in it. Until I have the energy and the desire to give myself to it properly. I can`t give up my fake plastic life for a real one until I find the one I`m looking for and know that it`s right.

Plus, let`s be totally honest: my CV is not exactly a shining example of employability, in that it works backwards. I started with responsibility and gradually decreased it to nothing: my return to the UK is going to herald the doll queue and serving drinks for the rest of my life. It`s not a prospect I feel any desire to rush home for.

Essentially, I`ve been waiting my whole life for the point where the balance tips: where staying and building means more to me than the freedom to run, and the desire for genuine happiness outweighs my hunger to see the world and live as I want to. And I`m not there yet: not quite. I`m damn close, though - my Tower of London gets clearer every day, and my desire to start living there increases - which is why my craziness is getting more painful: the internal voice calling me home gets louder and louder, while the voice calling me away fights harder.

But I`m not there yet. And until I`ve seen enough, and collected enough bricks, I know that I can`t start building. There`s a difference, after all, between settling down and just settling, and if I do the latter the castle I build will be no more real than the one I live in now. And it will give me no more happiness.

I know the life I want, and I know where I`m going: every day I know more about the life I`m heading towards. I know that it has a career I love in it, and people I love: a partner I love, a home I love, and children I love to match the family I already adore. And I know that it won`t involve running.

But until the time comes and the balance tips, all I can do is try and make this plastic castle life as pretty and as interesting as I can: as full of as many turretts and stained glass windows and flags as I can get my hands on. Keep moving, and collecting, and living, and understanding, and exploring, and - quite possibly - crying, until I know what my real life will look like.

And - writing - alleviate the madness.

March madness

2011-03-02T00:37:00.005+09:00

Like the hare in Alice in Wonderland, March is the month I go mad.

I don't know what it is - whether it's the effects of a long winter, whether it's spring fever, whether it's just a kind of annual clock built into me - but every March, my brain melts and I flip my life upside down. March is the month I walked into my old PR company and quit without any forethought; March is the month I tried to win BJITW; March is the month I fell in love with The Boy from 6,000 miles away, and - exactly one year later - it's also the month we broke up; March is the month I quit my job in Tokyo, flew home to England for five days and then flew back to Japan, crying the whole way. Every single year, in March my ability to reason goes out of the window. And every single March, I go totally bonkers.

I was early this year. I started going bonkers about ten days ago, which is why I've avoided writing this blog: even a mad person knows that you shouldn't write in public where everybody can read it when you're being a mad person.

And make no mistake: I'm totally crazy. I'm crying, I'm clawing at walls, I'm talking to myself, I'm flushed and itchy and constantly scowling. My writing - of which this post is an example - is completely incoherent, verging on bullshit. I'm having the most dreary dreams in the world which mean I'm foul as soon as I wake up, because real life is boring enough without making it last another ten hours every day. I hate everybody in the world, and I mean everybody: I screeched at my mum yesterday because she was talking about her brand new sugar bowl and I didn't want to, and this morning I shouted at a five year old who whacked my left breast and called me "grandma" without finding it in the least bit amusing. My confidence is zero; nothing is funny, nothing is interesting, and I'm so bored I want to rip my hair out, except that I also currently hate my hair and it will only make it worse. And I'm driving too fast because (and this shows I'm crazy) I'm secretly hoping something happens. Nothing bad, but just... something. I don't normally hope something happens when I drive: only in March.

And - most importantly - I am desperate to flip my life upside down again, but I don't know where to flip it to. I'm lonely, bored, deeply uninspired, and I want out of Japan, but I don't know where to go next. And I can't work it out, because the March madness means that I'm spending a couple of hours a day Googling working on a ranch in Mexico or teaching scuba diving in Jamaica (when I can't scuba dive), before I inevitably end up dissolving into a bonkers panic, screaming, throwing something, ringing somebody up just so that I can shout at them and then falling on to my bed, clawing at my chest and telling the walls how useless I am.

Normally, my life is like a pancake: incredibly easy to turn upside down. But this year it feels stuck to the bottom of the pan and I don't know what to do to make it loose again. Walking out of jobs, falling in love, breaking my heart, moving countries: all tempting, but unfortunately impossible this March.

So I'm just going to have to sit it out and see what happens. And hope that when April comes I'm just a fool, and I don't get trapped forever in March: a mad hare at my own bonkers tea party.

Surrounded by goddamn new sugar bowls.

In Passing

2011-02-20T23:17:00.001+09:00

My friend Yuki just sent me an email. I am so sorry that you passed away yesterday, she wrote. How do you feel today?

I didn't think I could get any sicker than I currently feel, but apparently - via the complex subtleties of the English language - I can. Passed out, Yuki, I emailed back. Passed out. I didn't die, although it now feels like I may have done. Small but extremely important difference.

Shit, sorry, she wrote back. Passed on?

Still means dead.

I'm sorry you fell asleep yesterday, she wrote. I'd be sorry if you died too, just so you know.

Which has actually made my hangover feel remarkably better. It's amazing how a little bit of your own death can put things in perspective.

Smacked bottom

2011-02-20T15:36:00.004+09:00

I just had what was - by all accounts - the best house party in the history of all house parties.

There was a naked wrestling match between five of the male guests, who decided at 2am to take their clothes off and start throwing each other around my living room. One of the guests fell asleep in the spare room, only to be woken up by an Irishman who had thrown Betty on top and was attempting to surf her. Half way through, a few guests disappeared to the local bar where they got on stage for an impromptu musical performance, complete with guitar, and then came back with printed out photos to show everybody. Baba - when I turned up with a male friend to borrow a wine opener - was delighted that I had finally found a potential husband, and arrived ten minutes later at the party with a huge bottle of sho-chu and strict instructions that I was to go nowhere near my scooter. There was a misunderstanding between three friends, which resulted in a lot of drunken crying, the boys took turns putting on my scooter helmet and punching each other in the head, and the girls took turns rolling their eyes at the boys. There was a tickling contest; Billy the 2Pint Bong was brought out, and brand new lifelong friends and possibly soulmates were made. It was, according to reports, the most fun anyone had ever had, and nobody will ever have that fun again. Ever.

And I say according to reports, because sadly I wasn't there for any of it.

I was there in body, obviously. That was the whole point. I was throwing a party because I've been so wrapped up writing that I've seen nobody for weeks and weeks, and I needed - desperately - to let my hair down and see my friends. So I didn't just plan a party: I spent the day cleaning the house, buying ice, alcohol, crisps, rearranging furniture, borrowing futons and cushions, and purchasing a brand new lipstick. I scrubbed and scoured and decorated and set up fairy lights in the living room. I even cleaned the spare room, and I never clean the spare room. So determined, I was, to let my hair down and have fun - and so nervous, I was, about being around people after so long on my own - that as soon as Yuki turned up I cracked open the rum, and by the time the second guest arrived, I was drunk. By the time the third and fourth guests arrived I was hammered, and by the time Shin rocked up and forced me to drink almost 2 pints of rum and whiskey with a dash of coke from a Bong (which - for the sake of my grandparents - is a long tube with a funnel that forces alcohol down your throat at lightening speed, although as my grandad used to be a policeman he probably already knows this), I was explaining to Yuki that whenever I pee into a Japanese toilet I end up peeing on my right foot and attempting to faux-demonstrate behind the sofa.

And that was the end of the party for me. I vomited, fell asleep wrapped around the toilet - which I haven't done since University - and was carried to bed where I stayed, unconscious, for the rest of the night. Apparently I was involved in some of the wrestling, in that for about five minutes they moved it to the bedroom for my benefit and for a little while I was sleeping underneath it, and I have a vague, dreamlike memory of running to the toilet to vomit again and being aware that none of the boys were wearing any clothes, which seemed quite normal at the time (my friends like getting naked: I blame onsens). But other than that: my party ended at around 9.30pm. Everyone else's ended seven hours later.

"What happened?" I asked the two remaining stragglers when I woke up this morning.
"Best party ever," they said. "Seriously. You throw awesome parties, Holly."
"Oh you're kidding me," I snapped. "I threw an amazing party and then passed out for the whole thing?"
"If it helps, you woke up when we were wrestling on top of you, punched Shin in the face and then immediately passed out again. So at least you did it in style."
"Oh for God's sake. The whole point of having a party was for me to actually have a party. Not to prepare one, sleep through it and then clean it up afterwards."

This morning, when Baba turned up to help me carry my rubbish to the bin (grilling me the entire way about why I couldn't get a boyfriend), she asked me if I had had a fun time.
"Not really," I said. "I drank too much too quickly, vomited and fell asleep after an hour and a half." This I told her via the international language of a drinky drinky charade.
"Horrreee!" she cried. "You are very naughty!"

And then she whacked me hard on the bottom. Which is exactly what I deserve at the grand old age of 29 if I haven't learnt by now that you can't transform yourself from teetotal hermit to party-girl hostess in fifteen minutes flat without suffering repercussions.

It is now Sunday lunchtime, and all I have to show for all of my hard work on Saturday is a smacked bottom, a stonking hangover, a rearranged house, four bowls of stale popcorn and approximately 24 bottles of half drunk coke in my kitchen. Which means that I'm going to have to throw another party in March so that I can finally have some fun as well. During which I will be staying well away from hard spirits, naked boys, Shin and/or his Bong.

After all, it's all very well and good throwing the best parties in the world, but there isn't a lot of point if you spend the whole time in another one entirely.

Breaking up

2011-02-17T10:09:00.002+09:00

There comes a point in every relationship when you know it`s the end.

For me, this point is normally well after the actual end has already happened. I`ll hang on in there, gamely trying to give it another go, until the other party is trying to kick me away with steel toed boots on and poking me with a long stick they bought specially. Not for me the habit of walking away from a relationship too quickly or too easily. No: I like to stay until walking is no longer possible, and all I can do is crawl along the floor using my chin as levitation.

Which is why what I`m about to announce comes as a bit of a surprise: to myself, if to nobody else. I`m leaving Japan.

Our relationship is over. It`s not on its way out; it`s not going through a few rough patches. It`s not struggling because of the weather. It`s dead: caput, rotting, deceased, gone to meet its maker. It was dying at Christmas - I had little to no interest in Kyoto, or Osaka, or Nara, and found myself thinking at the base of some of the world`s most famous temples and shrines Oh, look, another goddamn bit of red wood and some more bells - and by the time I came off my not-so-happy-pills there was really no way of saving it (drugs are the only thing in the world that can make me not care that I don`t love something: hence why I always end up on them in relationships with men). I`m not in love with Japan anymore, and yes: I`d like to be friends, but I`m only saying that to make us both feel better.

When Japan asks why I`m leaving, though, I won`t know what to tell it. But you used to adore me, it`s going to say: You said I was The One. I thought you found me exciting. And I did, I`ll have to tell it, but I don`t anymore and I`m sorry: my feelings have simply changed. I can`t change them back.

Everything I used to love about Japan now irritates me. The sound of the Japanese language - a language that deep down I still think is one of the most beautiful in the world - has started to bug the hell out of me. When my work colleagues chatter away to each other right next to my chair - inexplicably standing over me, as they`re doing at this very moment, for instance - and they make "eeeeeeeehhhh??" and "ugh ugh ugh" sounds that are very, very Japanese, I want to rip their vocal cords out with my bare hands. The children are frequently irritating me: their obsession with Rock Paper Scissoring me every time they see me now resulting in me dodging around the school trying to avoid their scrunched up little fists. I`ve lost my Rs: I`ve started speaking English with a Japanese L sound instead, which meant that the world gorilla a couple of days ago caused serious problems. I`m tired of having to say everything slowly, and carefully, and three times to be understood: I`m tired of never having a normal, natural conversation, where my brain is engaged with content, rather than simply execution. I`m sick of having to do paperwork for everything, because Japan doesn`t function unless you fill out a form for every element of your life and I do not like frigging paperwork. Which means I`m constantly in trouble. And I do not like being constantly in trouble, especially when it`s being in trouble in a language I barely understand.

It`s more than that, though. And these are the things I won`t tell Japan when it asks: the things that would hurt it unnecessarily. I`m sick of seeing green fields everywhere and signs I can`t read: I`m sick of not being able to buy a foundation in the right colour or shoes that fit me. The smell and taste of Japanese food is starting to make me nauseous: I`m avoiding soy sauce like arsenic, and the texture of rice is beginning to make me gag. The insincerity of the irrrrasssshhhiiimmaaassseee every time I enter a shop (weeeelllllccccooooommmmmeee) is driving me insane. Stop yelling at mmmeeeee I want to scream back: you don`t even mean it. I don`t want to do Karaoke, I don`t want to eat raw fish, I don`t want to look at any more goddamn rice fields. I don`t want to hear the strange chirupping sound the zebra crossings make when you`re supposed to cross, and I don`t want to have to listen to six different radios playing simultaneously when I go grocery shopping. I don`t want to see any more men that look or sound even remotely like my soulless void of an ex boyfriend. I don`t want to get stared at when I walk into shops: I want to be able to go for a goddamn dinner on a Friday night without an entire restaurant immediately turning around to stare.

Even the sea is irritating me. No matter what time of year it is, no matter what time of day it is, it`s constantly full of surfers who are out there regardless of whether or not there are any waves. All I want to do is stand on the shore and shout Stop littering up the water!

Suffice to say: I`m not in love with Japan anymore, and every day that goes past I love it a little bit less. So I`m leaving.

Unfortunately, I`m not leaving until July (unless the people I work for read this, in which case I`d imagine I`ll be leaving in about three hours). As with any long term relationship, you can`t just cut and run because the love is gone: there is administration to do, and important things to tie up. I have a contract to finish, and a lot of money I have not managed to save yet, and a book to finish off writing (that`s where I`ve been for the last fortnight, incidentally: the first draft is now done, and just needs editing). I have a school year to finish out, and goodbyes to say. And - more important than all of that - I need to work out what the hell I`m doing next, because I have absolutely no idea. The desire to hide in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet - so incredibly strong six months ago when I was heartbroken and exhausted and swearing off men forever and ever - is no longer there: a year of living on my own in the middle of bogging nowhere has killed it right off. And the desire to jump into another teaching job is also fairly miniscule. There are only so many children you can teach without getting one single sincere thankyou before you think: you know what? Teach your bloody selves.

It`s a temporary loathing: I know that. It`s the same with every failed relationship: at the point where you leave, it`s natural to hate everything. In fact, it`s necessary, or you would never leave in the first place. Deep down, under all the irritation and all the knee-jerk anger, I still care very much about Japan: deep down, of course I`m very fond of the children and the food and the culture and the language. I don`t regret being here. But I don`t love it anymore, and so it is over. And while I may return one day, it will only be for a holiday, and it will only be as friends.

I`m terrified. I don`t remember what life is like without Japan, and I won`t know where to go, or what to do, when it`s over. It has become a part of me, and the thought of being anywhere else scares me senseless. I have no doubt that when I go I`ll feel lost, and scared, and I`ll miss it horribly and wish I`d never left. And I also have no doubt that now I`ve told it I`m leaving, I`ll start wishing I could stay and loving it all over again. But it doesn`t matter. When love is gone and you know it`s not The One, the only truly honourable thing left to do is to leave before you start looking for it elsewhere. To leave before you have to drag yourself away, or end up in two places at the same time. Before you end up hating it and spoiling it forever.

But the beautiful thing? The strength to leave Japan is the strength that Japan gave me.

And - for that, and for many other things - I will always adore it.

Anne

2011-02-02T11:08:00.001+09:00

Yesterday, I learnt with delight that Anne of Green Gables - my favourite book of all time - is huge in Japan.

It was a book that was a pivotal part of my childhood, because I, too, was a freckled, redheaded, skinny child with no friends, an overactive imagination and the inability to put anything in perspective, and so I loved all of the Anne books with a deep and fervent passion: drew an entirely unrealistic amount of comfort from her lifelong romance with Gilbert Blythe and her meteoric rise from unloveable orphan to - ahem - teacher (at the time I was deeply unimpressed by this: with hindsight, perhaps even less so) and I was definitely under the impression for a long time that she and I were actually the same person, a century removed from each other. She remains, as far as I`m concerned, one of the most vivid fictional characters ever created, and so while she may not have been particularly well loved by my peers (they were busy dancing to MC Hammer) it wasn`t a massive surprise to me that she`s been adored in Japan for decades. Harry Potter, it seems, was not the only Western children`s novel that captured the imaginations of a nation of adults, and Akage no An (Anne of Red Hair) was both an anime and a compulsory text in Junior High school for a number of years.

I can only assume that those years were not the ones during which the head of the English department at Kitago was at school.

"Have you heard of Akage no An?" I asked her this morning.
"Of course!" she said. "It is very famous here. Although I never read it. But I heard of it."
"It`s my favourite book!" I told her enthusiastically. "Isn`t it wonderful? Isn`t it just so heartwarming?"
My colleague looked at me in shock. "Mmmm," she said. "You really think so?"
"Of course! I`ve loved it since I was a child. It makes me so happy."
Yuko looked even more alarmed.
"It makes you happy? But it`s very sad, isn`t it?"
"Is it?" I`m rereading it at the moment, but I couldn`t remember it being particularly sad when I was eight years old. "What`s sad about it?"
"Well, she dies doesn`t she?"
"Umm...." I trawled my memory. "I don`t think so. I mean, there`s six books and she gets married and has children. Maybe she dies in the last one, but...."
"No, I`m certain she dies. Anne with red hair: she dies, I am sure of it."
"Really? Crikey. What have the Japanese done to it? She didn`t die in England."
"Yes, yes, she dies. Very sad. And she`s - - - nandake....." Yuko got her dictionary out. "A Jew?"
"Anne of Green Gables is a Jew? Now that definitely wasn`t in the Canadian version. Why have the Japanese made her a Jew?"
"She`s a Jew and she dies. It`s terrible. Not heartwarming at all. It shouldn`t make you happy, Holly."
"No, I can see that dying wouldn`t be heartwarming but...." I looked at Yuko. "Hang on. A Jewish Anne who dies and it`s very sad? Are you talking about Anne Frank by any chance?"
"Anne who? Did she have red hair?"
"No. She was a little girl who kept a diary in the War and was killed by the Nazis, and it`s very sad and does not make me happy."
"That`s it! But she`s not Anne with Red Hair? She`s not this Anne of Green Gables?"
"No. She`s a different Anne entirely."
"Ooooh. I thought they were the same person. That`s why I never read the book."
"Right. Well. There is a bit of a difference. Unfortunately, because Anne of Green Gables is fictional and Anne Frank was not."
"Maybe I`ll read that one now then. If she doesn`t die in a concentration camp."
"I think I can promise you quite solemnly that Anne of Green Gables does not die in a concentration camp. Tragically, the one who did was real."

I`m not sure, exactly, what the marketing around Anne has been in Japan, but it has clearly become a little bit confused; leaving an entire generation to well up as soon as they spot a red plait. And as happy as I am that Anne is so popular here - both of them, combined into one person - it seems even more poignant that the fictional girl got such a lovely ending, and the real girl such a tragic one.

There`s scope for imagination here, after all, in swapping them over.

Scooby Died

2011-02-01T10:26:00.001+09:00

When you learn a lesson in one area of your life, there is absolutely no reason why this lesson can`t be applied to other parts of it too.

From my last foul relationship, I learnt a lot. I learnt that hanging desperately on to something that is constantly trying to hurt you is extremely dangerous. I learnt that depending on something that is going nowhere is silly, and that if it has to be kick started every morning there`ll never be a point where you don`t expect it not to kick start at all. I learnt that if you can`t tell where something is going you`re probably not supposed to go with it, and if you have to beg it constantly to function you probably shouldn`t be with it in the first place. I learnt that if you spend more time and energy worrying about when it`s going to fall apart than you do enjoying the fact that it hasn`t yet, there are better things you could be doing, and if you`re constantly tensed for the end then you`ll never enjoy the beginning. I learnt that if something is trying to kill you it`s a good idea to walk away before it manages it, and if they have a deep dark hole in them that you can`t see but know is there then there`s absolutely no point in trying to block it up because you can`t. And I learnt - perhaps most importantly - that if they`re old they`re old, that it`s not a good thing if you look closely and find that they`re going bald, and if you ignore it they`re just going to get older and balder.

All of which can also be applied to my scooter.

Scooby did his best, poor mite. He has gamely carried me to and from school for nearly three months: dealt with all sorts of bad driving and rough country stones and ash from volcanos. But it has been clear for a while now that it was never going to be a healthy relationship: that every single morning it was extremely debatable whether or not he was going to wake up again, no matter how hard I kicked him. He has one mirror. He has no speedometer, which isn`t actually a problem because he can`t go any faster than 30kmh but it still doesn`t bode well for this general health. He`s had five flat tyres in three weeks, and he won`t stop indicating, except that he changes his mind every three seconds about what direction he plans to head in. He has, as of this past weekend, no light, which means I can`t take him anywhere at night-time, he coughs for the first 20 minutes of every ride, and his tyres are so sleek and smooth I can see my face in them. And you`re not supposed to be able to see your face in tyres. It`s very dangerous.

Normally, of course - if I was the Old Me (this is how I now refer to the Me who was a bit of a walkover) - I`d wait and I`d wait and I`d wait and I`d hope that somehow, magically, he fixed himself. And even though I`d know that it was pretty rare for scooters to fix their own tyres and brakes and front lights and indicators, I`d still hope. I`d get on that damn scooter and I`d continue whispering please please please continuously, and hoping furiously that it didn`t get fed up and decide to kill me just to shut me up. And then, even though I`d know, deep down, that it was inevitable, I`d wait until it was too late and he fell apart completely and stopped functioning and then I would cry and cry and cry because I`d be totally screwed and probably in pieces too.

Luckily, I`m not the Old Me anymore, and the New Me has learnt her lesson. I`ve been secretly prowling around scooter shops when Scooby wasn`t looking for weeks and weeks now, and last night I finally found something that Will Do: a scooter that actually functions. It`s not my perfect scooter - it`s not the cream and brown leather Italian Vespa I`m going to end up with one day - but it`ll get me to and from school for the rest of my time in Japan, and I can pimp it up nicely enough to make it acceptable to myself and to my students. So I bought it. I handed the money over on the spot and I bought it: both on impulse, and on sensible consideration. And I have one week to wait before he`s ready to start his next relationship and we can begin something new together.

This morning, minutes after coaxing Scooby awake, he died. In fact, he chose the most dangerous possible time to fall apart, just as I knew he would: at the exact moment I pulled out in front of a large lorry. The back tyre exploded, Scooby made a very sad little sound and gave up the ghost exactly two thirds of the way across a main road, and I just about made it to safety before the lorry forced me to give up the ghost too. And as unsentimental as I am, now, (the New Me, not the Old Me), I`m ashamed to say that I swore, left the dead Scooby on the side of the road and got an incredibly expensive taxi to work. And I may have stuck my finger up at him as the taxi drove past.

So I`ve finally learnt my lesson. Just. I learnt my lesson about 12 hours before I would have had to learn the same lesson all over again, except this time with a lorry smashing me up instead of a boy. And it still cost me 25 quid in taxi fees.

When something is broken, there`s no point wasting your time and energy and money trying to fix it: get another one. Don`t wait until it leaves you a mess on the side of the road. And if the next one isn`t perfect? So be it.

It`ll help you to get to the one that is.

Literary

2011-01-29T12:55:00.007+09:00

Of all the things I wanted to be as a child - ballet dancer, scientist, astronaut, astronomer, paleontologist (geeeek) - writer was never one of them. I wrote because I loved it: diaries and poems and short stories from four years old upwards (perfectly rhyming stanzas at six? Hell yeah). But be a writer? It never even occurred to me. Writer wasn't on the career's list, and when I went to talk to my career counsellor she never suggested it.

'What do you love doing most?' she asked me, age 13 (me, not her. She was fully grown up).
'Writing,' I told her.
'Excellent,' she said. 'Have you thought about being a journalist? Or in PR? Or in advertising? Or an English teacher? Or an English lecturer?' She got a list out. 'These are all career possibilities that involve lots of writing.'

All, that was, apart from writer.

So it didn't occur to me. In fact, my intense love of writing actually pushed the idea further away, because it was so much a part of me already that I took it totally for granted, the way you don't realise how much you love somebody when you're with them all of the time. So I carried on writing - filling up pages and pages and practicing different styles - and simultaneously panicked about what I was going to do with my life. Chose English Literature as a BA because it involved reading books, and that seemed good, and Shakespeare as an MA because it involved reading Shakespeare, and that seemed good too. I was so shy that it took four entire years of University to submit anything to the Uni newspaper, and I was so shy about writing that I refused to apply for journalist jobs because it meant other people reading me. I went into PR because sometimes - when I was really lucky - I got to write a Press Release about compost, and when I applied for Best Job I had to do the take where I said "I'm a writer" six times, because I kept laughing. And I only started this blog because I was told that I definitely wouldn't win the 70 grand Best Job prize if I didn't. And the 70 grand carrot was enough to get this donkey moving.

It's taken 29 years for me to be able to say I'm a writer, because I am: regardless of whether I ever get published or not. I'm a writer because I write: because I get up in the morning and I write, and I write during my lunch breaks, and I write in my evenings. I'm a writer because it's what gives my life significance, and because without it I'm not sure I'd bother. I'm a writer because I have a passion for it that is greater than any passion I have ever had for any man, and will always be greater than any passion I have for any man. I'm a writer, not because I chose it - not because I came out of that career's adviser's office and said "I will be a writer" - but because it chose me. Because nearly three decades of running away from it and ignoring it and refusing to talk about it or think about it has done absolutely nothing to alter the following fact: writing is what makes me happy. And everything else in my life is just what I do when I'm not writing.

Just as the career's adviser didn't tell me to be a writer, though, neither is there a career adviser that has told me what to write. And so I have struggled horribly. When I eventually realised that my only dream was to write novels, I very sensibly started trying to write novels. And, as a girl who likes to think of herself as vaguely intelligent and has been known to take herself a little too seriously from time to time, I wanted to write good novels. Award winning novels. Critically acclaimed novels. Literary Fiction novels, as The Guardian calls them. Novels with really cool illustrations on the front; the kind that people pick up and say "you know, this really is so surprising coming from somebody so young" (I would have been young if I had managed it when I started trying) and "it just totally breaks all the boundaries of fiction, don't you think?" So I wrote. I wrote seriously. I wrote pages and pages of Literary Fiction, and then - when I was 26 - I wrote an entire book of Literary Fiction: 102,378 words of the bugger. Deep, moving, stylised, with no quotation marks around the dialogue because that seemed pretty clever and modern (I put them back in eventually because I didn't know who was talking). My Big Achievement. The novel to change all novels. And then I read it and realised it was a bit crap, and the agents I sent it to agreed whole heartedly. They did, however, really enjoy the funny bits, and suggested rewriting and editing the rest of it out, and that left me with about six pages from start to finish.

As far as concerned, I was therefore screwed. What the hell was the point in being a writer if I wasn't going to win a Booker Prize for it? What the hell was the point of writing a novel if it didn't prove to everyone how clever I was? So I sulked, and I got stressed, and I tried to start another Literary Fiction novel, and wore lots of black and smoked and told everyone how hard writing was, and how they didn't understand.

It was only as I started re-reading all of my favourite novels - Anne of Green Gables, The Borrowers, The Far Away Tree, Pollyanna, What Katy Did, Great Expectations, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Pride and Prejudice - that I realised the key to my issue: I don't like Literary Fiction. At all. If a book falls into nothing but Literary Fiction (Life of Pi and White Teeth, I am looking at you), it tends to be instantly forgettable. Impressive, yes, but untouchable. Because they're not the books that change lives. They change newspapers, yes, and they change award panels, and they change bestselling lists, but they don't change lives. They just make it look like they could do.

So I put down my serious face, and I put down my next work of Literary Fiction, and I put down all hopes of ever getting a Booker prize. I put down all of my stylised efforts, readopted the speech mark, and resigned myself to being ignored forever by readers of The Guardian. I started writing a book that made me laugh: created characters that I fell in love with. And you know what? It's been easy, it's been fun, and it's been exactly what made me love writing to start with: the ability to make myself happy, and hopefully do the same to others. And my novel, in all of its fluffiness, is very, very nearly finished.

Last week at a teacher training course, I met a boy who told me - within two minutes - that he was "writing a novel" (funny how quickly that tends to come up in conversation: I still don't know his name).
'Really?' I said. 'Me too!'
He looked at me sceptically. 'Yeah? You don't look like a writer.'
'Thanks,' I said cheerfully. I have zero interest in looking like a writer: I'm quite happy looking like I can barely read. 'So what's yours about then?'
'Oh,' he told me airily. 'It's literary fiction. I couldn't possibly sum it up.'
'Fair enough,' I said with a grin. 'Mine's not. Not at all. It's about a 14 year schoolgirl called Harriet.'
Understanding dawned on his face. 'Oh, so not like a real novel, then.'
'Nope,' I said happily. 'Not a real novel at all.'
'You're lucky,' he told me, patting me on the shoulder. 'Literary fiction is so hard. It's so slow, and so difficult, you know?'
'Nope,' I said. 'No idea. Mine isn't in the slightest.'

Being a writer may not be a choice, but what you write is. And I've finally chosen to write the kind of books I love reading.

It seems so much cleverer that way.

Volcano

2011-01-26T20:16:00.002+09:00

Last year I was a little upset when the volcano in Iceland erupted: 27 years in England, I'd spent - give or take six months here or there - and there'd been no impressive acts of nature at all. As soon as I was gone: poof! Volcanoes exploding, snow falling, heat waving: God doing as much as he ever does to the weather in Hertfordshire.

To make up for it - to say sorry for giving me no drama - the neighbouring volcano has just erupted. Poof! Just like that. And the first thing I knew about it was Baba screaming through my window.

'Ho-rrreeeeeeeeeeeee,' she was screeching. 'Ho-rrrreeeeeeeee.'
I was in bed, sick and reading my Kindle, so I didn't appreciate all the noise.
'Ho-rrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,' Baba shrieked again - and trust me, this lovely, cuddly old lady can shriek like a banshee - so I got out of bed.
'Mmmm?' I said in the international language of stop sodding shrieking at me.
'Look!' she yelled, and then pointed to the sky. At which point I realised that there was no sky, and it was a blanket of ash. Then - priorities firmly established - she pointed at my washing line. 'Take your washing in!' she yelled. 'It's going to get all dirty!'

I got my washing in, and then I went back to bed. Eventually, when I was hungry enough to require getting out of bed, I took myself outside and realised I couldn't see a thing. Not a single thing. The entire air was full of ash. It was all over my scooter, and all over the floor, and all over my face, an inch thick like snow. And - because I'm never prepared for any kind of emergency - I had to drive to the local shop to buy myself dinner: drive through air absolutely solid and grey, breathing through a mask. Thinking as I did so: thank God it's not a real emergency. Because when a real emergency happens, I am going to be totally screwed. All I've got in the freezer is icecream.

It's quite exciting, actually. It's getting thicker and thicker by the hour, and it's absolutely silent outside: the ash has muffled everything. In the six minutes it took me to drive to and from the shop, I managed to collect a coat of greyness so thick that I could - and did - draw patterns in it with my fingers.

'Oh,' the shop assistant said when I was asked him what the hell was going on. 'Just the local volcano erupting.'

Oh, just the local volcano erupting. Which is not a sentence we hear in Hertfordshire all that often.

As disappointed as I was at missing out on the English natural phenomenons, I'm quite certain I've held out for something a little more dramatic. And possibly a little more dangerous: I have no idea how healthy it is to be surrounded by a thick blanket of ash. I didn't give up smoking so that I could breathe a volcano into my lungs.

Whenever you forget you're abroad, there's always something to remind you all over again. A little bit of something you'd never expect in Welwyn Garden City. A little bit of foreign magic.

And as dangerous as it might be, it's also a little bit thrilling.

Poof.

The Beholder

2011-01-25T23:32:00.006+09:00

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”

- Miss Piggy

I'm a redhead.

Who knew? I certainly didn't. Up until recently, I hadn't seen my natural hair colour in fifteen years. From the first, tentative streaks of pink as a teenager, to the bleach blonde bob that was my trademark for half a decade, I've been dying my hair: both in the sense that it was dyed, and in the sense that I had killed it. Long, short, white, grey (by accident), red, fluorescent orange (by accident), brown, black, fringe, crop, bob: I have done it all. All, that is, but leave it alone. I'm nearly thirty years old, and I've just discovered that the mean boys at school were all absolutely correct and I am, in fact, ginger. Or auburn, if you're going to be kind (and they weren't). Which I suppose explains all the freckles.

Beauty causes great internal conflict for me. The shy, introverted, bookworm part of me finds beauty and the concept of it uncomfortable: finds the idea of chasing it, or bowing down to social expectations of it essentially dull, stupid and shallow. Judging the internal by the external - making any kind of evaluation based on our packaging - leaves me vaguely angry and self-righteous. There are things to be doing other than checking our nails and extending our eyelashes, after all, and the cerebral part of me finds oohing and aaahing over lipstick a little nauseating and inexplicable. That part of me would far rather read Dickens than Cosmopolitan; refuses, categorically, to wear make up if I'm just going shopping, and is happy to wear the same pair of army trousers for a week. The girls - the kind who judge the world and everybody in it by how pretty or how handsome they are - make me sick and bored and anxious. And the boys who like those kind of girls? They make me even more so. Which is all totally understandable: I wore knee length jumpers for my entire teen years, spent so much time buried in books I didn't see my own face from week to week, and my cerebral, shy mother used to tell me as a child that washing up liquid was "all I needed for my hair" and that she didn't "believe" in moisturiser (as if it was some kind of fairy, or Santa Claus).

The other part of me, though - the creative part, predominantly - tends to fall more towards the concept of personal beauty as one of the highest forms of art, and on that I'm more like my father. As Oscar Wilde claimed: "To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances." When nothing, really, matters - when life is so transient, and so short, and none of us really know what the point of it is - there is an ugliness and stupidity in ignoring what beauty already exists, or in not trying to find it or create it or augment it wherever possible. For if we can write beauty, and we can paint it, and we can sing it, and we can carve it, why the hell should we not embody it as well? How can the world be a beautiful place if the people in it are not becoming part of that? And in painting ourselves, are not women finding a creative outlet for self expression prohibited, by society, to most men? Are they not taking back a little of the creativity that they've been denied for centuries? Is it not, in that sense, the purest concept of feminism? Is beauty, then, not to be celebrated and treasured and protected just as a poem is, or a story, or a song: more so, in fact, because it is more natural and more temporary?

And that part of me - the part of me prone to making daisy chains and putting them in my hair - is the part that very much enjoys reading Cosmopolitan and painting my eyes with green metallics and reading the ingredients on fifteen bottles of moisturisers and discussing the best way to apply foundation. That part of me finds it incredibly offensive that my intelligence can be called into question in any way at all because I find skincare interesting, or because I know how to apply mascara properly. That my in depth knowledge of King Lear can in anyway be undermined by the fact that I enjoy dipping my fingers into sparkly eyeshadows now and then; that my ability to hold a coherent argument can be questioned because I like looking at shoes. And that part of me is also the part of me that develops girl-crushes on beautiful women constantly, and tends to fall horribly in love with horrible, beautiful men, and values beauty - all kinds of beauty - far more than it should be valued. Because I sometimes mistake beauty, in all of my love for it, as something than runs deeper than it does.

Beauty, for women, is hard. I'm sure it's hard for men too - what with all the daily shaving they have to do - but it's harder for women. We value ourselves by it more, and we are valued for it more. We have been brought up to both chase it and reject it: to prize it immensely, both for ourselves and as the means of Catching A Man And Having A Family, and yet also to fear it, because of what it often implies about our intelligence and what it will one day say about us when it goes. And it's a balancing trick all women have to try and perfect: being pretty, and being interesting, and yet not minding too much that one day we'll be neither.

The key, of course, is to work on both at the same time: to be beautiful where you can see it, and to be beautiful where you can't. To understand and love your own unique brand of it - the thing you bring to the world that nobody else does - without making it everything. Being able to rely upon the beauty we can't see. To be capable of enjoying external beauty, and loving it, but still retaining the ability to walk away from it when we have to, and hold on to what's inside.

Because red hair, blonde hair, dark hair, short hair, long hair, no hair, we should all be able to walk away from the outside kind of beauty. For there's only one thing we can all be sure of:

One day, it is going to walk away from us.

Again?

2011-01-25T17:40:00.000+09:00

My brain shook, and my brain shook, and my brain shook, and then I started hurting all over, and then I got a fever and started vomiting, and then my words started slurring, and then I decided that I wasn't so happy about all of these withdrawal symptoms and took myself to the doctor. Who told me not to be daft, because I wasn't withdrawing from anything: I had influenza and had to go to bed with medicine and water. Which I am now just about to do.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that something has to change, because working with children in a country against which I have no inbuilt immune system is trying to kill me on an almost weekly basis. I am constantly ill.

But I'll think about that later. Right now, I'm going to wrap up and go to bed where I can enjoy all the shaking of what's left of my brain. And the destruction of what's left of my immune system.

Singing

2011-01-24T12:50:00.003+09:00

This morning, I sang in the shower. I sang in the shower. It wasn`t pleasant, and it was almost indecipherable (it was I`m blue dabadeedabadoow dabadeedabadow, which is in my friend`s Top Five Worst Shower Songs) but I sang. In the shower.

I haven`t sung in the shower for nearly eighteen months. I haven`t sung, in fact, since I left England originally, in the summer of 2009, where I was prone to singing in any kind of washing environment I found myself in: would set myself up in the bath with a shampoo bottle and happily warble my way through the remaining four Worst Songs. I was too on edge when I got to Japan to sing - too out of my comfort zone, too nervous - and then I was too stressed because The Boy kept inexplicably disappearing (to The Other Girl), and then too heartbroken, and then too sad. And for the last six months, I`ve been too drugged. Drugged right up to the eyeballs, which is only becoming clear now that they`ve finally left my system and I`m sober again. And, apart from occasional brain shake (common withdrawal symptom, where it feels sporadically like somebody has grabbed my brain and is shaking it around my head), the only really terrible side effect is: singing. And the only people who really suffer because of that are my neighbours.

Nobody takes anti-depressents because it`s fun: if you want fun, you go for the kind of drugs most doctors refuse to prescribe. You take anti-depressents because there`s no other choice, and so - because once you start having panic attacks in the middle of National art galleries there really is no other choice - the side effects have to be just ridden out. But (and trust me, I`ve Googled it) there hasn`t been a lot of research into the impact of anti-depressents on creativity. Mainly because you can do science experiments on a number of factors related to drugs until the cows come home, but just how sparky your imagination is or how many pages you write a day don`t tend to be two of them. They`re quite tricky to measure in a laboratory.

This morning, I didn`t just sing. I got out of the shower and I did a little bottom dance with my towel - for my own benefit, obviously, because I live on my own - and then I walked like Michael Jackson back into my bedroom. It was only as I did a little spin at the end and winked at myself in the mirror that I realised: I`m playing again. Not because I feel like I have to to maintain appearances and convince the world that I`m alright when I`m not, but because I am alright, and because I`m perfectly capable of having fun on my own. And because me dancing with a towel makes everybody laugh, because I can`t dance and I have zero towel-related coordination.

Better than that, after six months of being too anxious to write, and then six months of being too hurt to write, and then six months of being too numb to write, I`m suddenly not too anything at all: I`m Goldilocks with the right temperature porridge. I sat at my computer this weekend and I did what I haven`t done since I got to Japan: wrote from 8am in the morning until 11pm at night, burnt five slices of toast because I kept skipping back to the computer to alter a line midway through cooking, had my lunch with one hand still typing and forgot to have dinner completely. I couldn`t stop writing: got up at 2am because I`d suddenly thought of a great sentence, and my fingers were bored. My brain wouldn`t stop whirring: after so damn long asleep or hurting or licking its wounds, it was gagging for a little run around and refused to stop moving (especially during the brain shakes, which are very unpleasant and I`m very glad that Google says they`re normal because I thought for a little while that something had come loose). And while memories of Him are cropping up again after six months of absolutely nothing - vivid and powerful and so real I can smell him, which is unfortunate because smell was not one of his best qualities - I`ve realised: it`s okay. Because it`s a sign that my imagination is back again, and wide awake, instead of lying in a stupor in the back of my head somewhere, fanning its face. So whenever a romantic or painful memory pops up all colourful and shiny, I pat myself on the back, congratulate my imagination for being so vivid, and push it away immediately with all of my brand new strength. Instead of hating myself for not being able to control it, and hating the power of my own mind.

Everything is real again. Colours are real and smells are real and people are real. I suddenly have interest in the world again: want to go places and see things that seemed pointless a month ago. I want to climb those mountains and jump into those lakes and get lost in the middle of a desert somewhere. And, true: when I went to an onsen with Yuki last night I nearly passed out, because brain shakes and hot water are not a good combination, but for the time when I wasn`t clutching my head and swaying I was capable - finally - of holding a coherent conversation, because words fit together again. Writing, speaking, singing: words that had totally disjointed - like a jigsaw with no picture to follow - suddenly make sense. It`s like the writing version of Dangerous Minds, where all the naughty students abruptly start behaving, and it`s wonderful. I just can`t stop them all from spilling out.

Prescription drugs are great, but only for as long as they help. When they stop helping, and you`ve healed the way you`re supposed to, it`s time to try and take your life back again.

And it all starts with singing in the shower.

Fortunate

2011-01-23T01:08:00.006+09:00

On the first of January this year, I went to a temple in Kyoto and stood in a queue for an hour and a half, being hit by melting snow falling off the trees, in order to ring a bell for the New Year. This is normal in Japan, and our queue was considered a short one. When I'd done queuing for whatever ringing the bell brings you - general good luck for the year, I believe - I queued to stroke a big stone for good health, and then I queued to get my fortune. Because once I was into the swing of queuing, my theory was: I might as well make the most of it and get everything I can. Which isn't exactly in the true spirit of Shintoism, but is certainly in the true spirit of the British Queuing mentality.

For the uninitiated, getting your fortune in Japan involves giving somebody money, and then being presented with a big box. You shake the box, and a stick falls out of a hole in the bottom. On the stick is a number that corresponds with a number on a sort of ancient wooden filing cabinet behind the person you just paid. They retrieve the appropriate piece of paper from the appropriate file, hand it over to you, and you decide whether or not you like your fortune. If you like it, you keep it and it comes true. If you don't like it, you tie it up in the temple and The Gods take it back. Like a sort of exchange and refund policy, except without the refund (they don't return your money).

The fortunes tend to come in three general styles: great, okay, and terrible. Obviously on either end of the scale what you do with it is obvious. If it's a great fortune you punch the air, put it in your pocket and declare that it's absolutely unquestionable, and if it's a terrible fortune you tie it immediately to a tree and declare you don't believe in all that crap anyway. The problem comes, of course, when you get an okay one, because then it all depends on the specifics. And depending on the specifics is extremely problematic, obviously, when you don't understand the specifics in the first place. To most Japanese people, the ancient kanji, hand-written style of the fortunes makes them difficult to read: to me, it just looks like a lot of pretty scribbles. Worse, there is nothing more boring than reading somebody else's fortune, so the translations I got were lacklustre and vague to say the least.

"Good health," the wife of the friend of a sort of friend told me, after I had pestered her for ten minutes. She was busy with her own fortune, which is fair enough: she'd only met me a few hours before. "You get good health. Not great health, but okay. You're not going to die or anything."
"Well, I guess that's a good thing," I acknowledged. "What else?"
"Your dreams won't come true," she said, scanning my paper quickly. I was naturally appalled.
"Hey - what do you mean my dreams won't come true? What does it say? Exactly what does it say?"
"They won't come true." She went back to her own fortune.
"But that's terrible! I don't want my dreams not to come true! What else does it say?" I shoved it under her nose again. She looked like she wanted to smack me.
"It says the person you are waiting for will come."
"Right. Does it say anything about them? Name, address, telephone number?"
"No. It just says the person you have been waiting for will arrive, and you will have love. So this is a good fortune."
"But what about my dreams?"
"Not this year. You get love this year. No dreams."
"Do I get dreams next year?"
"I don't know. This is just the fortune for this year."
"So do I tie it up? I tie it up, right?"
"No. Because then you might not get love either, and you could end up with nothing. I'd keep it if I were you and just be happy with what you got."

I didn't know what to do with my fortune, as mixed as it was, so I popped it in my bag and decided to think about it. As far as I could see, there was probably some kind of 28 day return policy so I had time to ponder on it. And ponder on it I have.

This morning, I went to my favourite temple: the one in the cave by the ocean near my house. And I stood in the silence and the dark, bowed, put my hands together and then got the piece of paper out of my bag.

"I'd like to return this," I said as politely as I could, to whoever or whatever it is I pray to when I'm down there. "It's not really the fortune I was looking for. I mean, it's very nice and everything - finding the person I'm waiting for and love and all that, and I appreciate the nod towards my health and me not dying - but it's not really what I wanted. I can see where you were going with it, I really can, and I appreciate the sentiment: I know all my friends are getting married and you think I must be lonely etc. But I'm fine, and really I'd much rather have my dreams come true this year, if that's okay with you." I paused for a few minutes, and then continued, feeling guilty: like a spoilt kid returning a carefully considered birthday present. "I really hope you don't think I'm being ungrateful, and I know that by returning this I might just end up with nothing. But if I keep this in my bag... Well, it's accepting defeat already. And I can't do that. It's not even the end of January yet."

I looked at the scribbles on the paper, and then I took it over to the post and tied it firmly up. Then I came back to the bell, rang it and clapped my hands twice, which is what you do when you've been speaking to a Japanese divinity. It's polite. "Thankyou," I said. "Amen. Or whatever the Shinto version of that is. Really appreciate the no-quibble return policy."

After twenty two days I've decided to take the risk and gamble it all, knowing I may well end up with nothing, because that seems infinitely preferable to sticking with a fortune I don't really want. And if it all goes horribly wrong, I can always comfort myself with the knowledge that I get another one next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. And so on until my dreams come true.

Because as far as I'm concerned, that is exactly what is going to happen. I'm just going to keep returning them until I find a future I want to stick with.

Swans

2011-01-22T11:08:00.004+09:00

"If something is hard to do, it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson.

Last spring, when I crawled back to the UK on my heartbroken hands and knees, I crawled straight into breakfast with my old boss.

Of all the things I got from working in PR, I count myself luckiest for two of them: Helen, my no-bullshit and frequently cross with me kindred spirit, and CJ, my old Account Director. I adored her with a passion: adored her even more because she seemed to be quite fond of me too, which made no sense whatsoever because I was not a particularly great Senior Account Executive. And yet: as prone as I was to screwing up - losing cuttings, crying in the toilets because I'd failed to get a story into The Daily Mail, getting stroppy with clients because they were quite obviously total imbeciles - CJ never lost her temper with me: fiercely defended me when I was told off by other Directors repeatedly and listened to all of my ideas, even when they were terrible (dogs in capes, for instance). She was and is a goddess of a woman - strong, feisty, clever, funny, scary and warm - and I found it difficult to believe that she could ever have been anything like me, but she claimed that she was: that it had taken her a good few decades to transform herself from a pissed off, tempestuous Account Executive with no shoes on and knots in her hair and pink round her eyes into the heart of the agency (which she still is).

'But you're so.... calm,' I said to her one day at the age of 25, as I necked another bottle of white wine to numb the pain of yet another disastrous, clingy (them, not me) relationship. 'So strong and together. So wise.'
CJ laughed. 'I wasn't always. And you know what? I'm still not. I'm like the swan. Floating calmly along the surface of the water with the current, but underneath sometimes my little legs are still going fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.'

So when I went home last March - thin, tired, heartbroken and in pieces - it was CJ I went to: got up early in the morning so I could get into the centre of London and have breakfast with her before she went to save the world of PR. And as I played with my croissant and distributed it, uneaten, around the plate, CJ took one hard look at me and told me to never speak to The Boy again, because he was and would always be poison.

'You know,' she said, 'I do understand. I understand what it's like to fall in love with bad people. Like you, I spent my entire twenties being thrown around and stomped all over: always in the middle of some kind of romantic drama. I was always the mistress, the rebound, the fling, the whipping boy: I was the girl boys called at 2am and never before, and the girl who they took out their past relationships on, and the girl who walked in on them with somebody else. I was always trying so damn hard, just like you. I was always trying to change them, and holding on for the day they would treat me well, or hoping for the day they would love me properly, and forgiving all of the days they hurt me in between. Forgiving infidelity, forgiving nastiness, forgiving just plain disinterest. Hating myself a little bit more every time.'
'I'm so tired,' I admitted. 'I can't keep doing it. I actually can't keep doing it.'
'Of course you can't. And you know what stage you're at now? You're at the stage I hit at the end of my 20s too. The stage where you think: you know what? Fuck it. Fuck it. I'm not trying anymore. I cannot be bothered.'
I pushed my croissant around the plate a little bit more. I was so exhausted that only a third of her words were sinking in: the rest were bouncing around the room.
'And then what happens?'
'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'Nothing. Nothing happens for a bit, and you rest from all the effort you've spent up. And then something happens.'
'What happens?'
'You realise the most important thing in the world.'
I looked at her in surprise. Was she going to tell me the most important thing in the world, just like that? Just thrown over a destroyed croissant? 'And what is that?'
'That good things are easy.'
I frowned. 'That doesn't sound very British,' I told her. 'Aren't we supposed to value difficulty? You know, sticking things out to the bitter end and all that?'
'Yes, and it's bullshit. If something is right, Holly, it's easy. I spent my 20s trying so hard, and it was only when I hit my 30s and gave up trying that I met my husband and realised I didn't have to do a damn thing. I didn't have to be somebody else, I didn't have to forgive him daily for being horrible to me, I didn't have to sit by my phone and wonder where he was. I didn't have to make him love me. He just did, and it was easy. Because let me tell you something: life is hard enough. It's going to throw its own crap in the way. Love shouldn't have to be one of them.'

It all seemed very wise, of course, but I was too tired to really understand: too exhausted to do anything with it. But I tucked the nugget away, like a little squirrel with a nut, and now that I'm awake and rested again I've been turning it over and over, and nibbling on it to see how it tastes.

And she's right. As always, CJ is perfectly right. And she's not just right about love: she's right about everything.

Everything I have ever had in my life that has been good and right for me has been easy. And the minute something becomes hard, it almost always means: it's not right for me anymore. My best friendships turn up on their own, naturally, and require no repeated effort (no effort beyond being a friend, which is easy when you are one). My best jobs fell into my lap, and barely required being applied for. The best items of clothes I have ever bought I bought without a second thought - picked up because I loved them, and kept them long after laboriously chosen items had been thrown away - and the best hairstyles I've ever had have required almost zero maintenance. The people I love the most make my life easier, and not harder, and spending time with them is never, ever an effort of anything other than geography. Life decisions that seem natural have been my best moves, and everything - everything that seems tough, or difficult, or uncertain - has been a mistake. Because that is exactly why they were difficult in the first place: it was nature's way of trying to tell me that.

And nowhere, I realised this morning, does it apply more than writing. The best writing I have ever done has been easy: fluid, natural, quick and almost embarrassingly effortless (as if it's been written already, and I'm just copying it out). The best ideas turn up on their own, and the best chapters take almost no time to write at all. When I'm stuck, it usually means: the idea I'm working on is crap, and I just don't know it yet. When I don't know what is happening next, it usually means: I'm trying too hard. When the writing doesn't work, it usually means: I've tried too hard. And - as with boys - I've spent many, many years feeling that I should be trying harder with my writing. Struggling with it because it seemed like the honourable thing to do: the dignified thing to do. Rather than accepting that easiness is a good thing, and nothing to be ashamed of. Because it's nature's way of saying something is perfect for you, and that you're doing it right.

If ever one sentence can change a life, that one is mine. I've always tried so hard, under some kind of impression that it was a good thing: to fight, and to hold on, and to struggle. But it's not. Constantly clawing against difficulty is nothing to be proud of, and it doesn't make you stronger, or more impressive. It doesn't make you better. Far more admirable is searching for a way, at all costs, to make life easy again, and to walk away if that's what it takes to get there.

Most of the good things in life are effortless, because it's how life shows you that they're right for you in the first place. The best thing any of us can really do is glide on the current, as smoothly as we can, and save our energy for when we have no choice: for the times when life throws crap in our paths, and our little legs really have to go fuck fuck fuck underneath the water.

And the rest of the time? The trick, I've finally realised, is to stay as serene and as calm as we can on top of it.

Buddy

2011-01-20T21:32:00.002+09:00

Everyone has one thing they want more than anything else: one thing they follow through their lives, like the donkey after the proverbial carrot. Sometimes it's vague - a feeling of happiness or contentment they had as a child - and sometimes it's specific: a place, a beach, a square of a field in the sunshine, a person, a tree, a corner of a bed in the right room. More often than not nobody knows what it is but the person who chases, and even then they're not quite sure: propelled towards they don't know what, and they don't know how, but propelled just the same. And, every so often, it's a little easier to identify, and a little easier to name. A little easier to point at and say: that's my carrot, and always has been. It always will be, even after I've eaten it right up.

For me, it's a book with my name on the spine: a story I can leave behind. But for my sister it's even more specific than that. And his name is Buddy.

As teeny, tiny children - a couple of blonde heads, wearing identical clothes (thanks mum) - there was rarely a day that went past when my sister didn't ask for a puppy. When she wasn't asking for a puppy she was running towards a puppy; when she wasn't running towards a puppy she was hanging onto a puppy by the neck; when she wasn't hanging onto a puppy by the neck she was asking for a puppy again. Every Christmas, she would write a letter to Santa, and every Christmas - when my list stretched on, sometimes, for pages (I was often just writing for the sake of it, or because I wanted to test Santa's patience) - it would read: Dear Santa, I want a puppy, Love Tara. Sometimes, when she was worried that she wasn't being polite enough, it would read, Dear Santa, Please please please can I have a puppy, Love Tara. Or, when she got frantic, Dear Santa, Have I been bad? Please may I have a puppy this year. Love Tara. In fact, before she could write those infamous words, her letter to Santa involved a rectangle with four sausages coming out of the bottom of it, two circles attached to the top of it and a smiley face, under which - when she hit three or four - would be carefully written the letters DOG. Her first word was: doggy. As a toddler she would go into an adoring trance whenever a dog was anywhere near by, and no amount of "leave it alone, Tara, it's dirty" would keep her away from stroking whatever mangy mutt wandered past. And for many years she was devoted to the idea of being a vet, until she realised that she had zero interest in any other household pets, and so might be a little too exclusive to make a living.

Sadly, I simultaneously had a phobia of dogs - thanks to being 'attacked' by a Rhodesian Ridgeback at the age of three - so needless to say my parents spent a large proportion of our country walks trying to keep my sister from breaking loose and sprinting across the fields towards an errant dog, and to stop me from breaking loose and sprinting across the fields away from them. Our Sundays were therefore punctuated, frequently, with pre-school screaming: both enthusiastic and terrified.

My sister has never really been able to put her passion for dogs into words, other than the fact that they are unconditionally loving, happily dependent and capable of being fiercely loved without getting twitchy: similar reasons, in fact, to why I prefer cats. All she has ever known is that a puppy would complete her, and that her life would be perfect from that moment on.

And a month ago she finally, finally got one.

His name is Buddy. He's a Boston Terrier, and when she got him he was eight weeks old, and small enough to fit into a hand. I've met him, via Skype, and I've never seen a funnier looking dog: he's all wide set eyes and droopy cheeks and set chin, like ET but covered in fur. He's extremely naughty - has ignored all of the many, many toys my sister bought for him in favour of her best bra, which he carries around in his teeth - and goes into a heavy sulk whenever he is taken for a walk: has to be dragged along Brighton seafront, with his little bottom resolutely planted in the sand. Apparently he has zero interest in any kind of fresh air, and will only participate in any of it if he's wrapped firmly in a blanket and carried around, and Tara gets appalled looks daily by her neighbours as they watch her pulling a teeny tiny, furious puppy along the pavement with his paws dug into the cement. I bought him a Santa outfit for Christmas, and he destroyed it before it was out of the wrapping, and his favourite activity - from what I can tell, via a webcam - is either sitting on my sister's lap and trying to get down her top, licking her face, or sleeping.

All in all, he is, in fact, quite a lot like her boyfriend.

And my sister is in love. She's the happiest I have ever seen her; like a wax figure with a lamp in the back of her head. She doesn't just see a dog: she sees 27 years of wanting and chasing and hoping and dreaming and sending letters up the chimney, all wrapped up in a 12 week old bundle of alien-like, cross looking fluff. Something to love, and something to love her back: unconditionally, unrelentlessly. She finally has her carrot, and - honestly - I've been scared for her. Scared that she would be disappointed; that nothing could ever live up to a quarter of a century of wishing.

"Is he what you thought he would be?" I asked her at the weekend, as we chatted with Buddy curled up on her lap, snoring.
"Holly," she said, looking at him and pulling at his ear. "He's not what I thought he would be. He's so, so much better than that. He's absolutely perfect."
At which point Buddy woke up and looked at my sister with an expression that simply said: Likewise. And then he climbed up to her shoulder again and tried to get back down her top again.

We all have one thing we chase: one thing to make it all worth it. Be it a person, or an object, or a place, or a corner of world that's ours, we should all keep trying to find it. Keep pushing towards it, no matter how hard it gets, or how many letters we have to write, or how many wrong ones we have to chase and hold onto first. Because all we can ever really hope is that when we get it - if we're lucky enough to finally get it - it won't be just what we wanted: it will be even better.

And if we're really, really lucky, it will be a carrot worth every single second of the journey.

Maps

2011-01-18T13:25:00.003+09:00

As a child, I didn`t know where anything was. In my immediate surroundings, yes, but also on a geographic basis: the world, to my tiny eyes, was Welwyn Garden City and the little bit of Hatfield we drove through to get to the swimming pool. I didn`t know where Norfolk was; I didn`t know where Ireland was, and I had no idea where or why Wales was; I knew where France was - because that was where my Aunty lived, and she bought me really nice presents - but I didn`t know where China was, or Russia, and I`m not quite sure I`d even heard of Japan. All I knew was that these places were very far away and had nothing whatsoever to do with me, and that was just fine thankyou very much.

Geography, in truth, was my least favourite subject at school. I wasn`t allowed to be creative when we coloured in maps - apparently I had to stick to the allocated colours and any attempted shading was not appreciated - and I had absolutely zero interest in anything that looked remotely like a symbol for a post office. For a child who loved every single moment of school that involved studying (and loathed any moment of school that involved any other children, which was unfortunate because there were quite a lot of them), I have no idea what kind of shocking techniques my Geography teacher employed, but I hated him and I hated his terrible subject with a passion I only otherwise felt for the art teacher who kept trying to draw on my work. So the world - after it was forced down my throat - simply bounced straight back up again. And at the age of 20 I still thought that Belize was in Europe and Nepal was in South America.

My love of the world and geography - of real Geography (which means, as far as I`m concerned, knowing where countries are and a little bit about each of them, and wanting to go there) - therefore came late. Really, really late. At around the age of 21, in fact, when I suddenly realised that if you went very far in any direction from any position in England you ended up in a much, much more interesting place: a place that wasn`t England. And that was a good thing.

So it`s ironic, really, that as a teacher of English abroad I`ve managed to do the absolute opposite for my students.

Encouraging a passion for the world - for different cultures, and different countries, and different people - is what keeps me going at work (that, and buying things on Ebay), so it stands to reason that the best thing I`ve bought to Kitago Elementary school is a Penpal exchange scheme with my sister`s class in Brighton. A Penpal exchange scheme that worked so smoothly - identical amounts of children, identical ages - that I barely even noticed we`d set it up. It started with mutual Christmas cards at the end of December, and now 34 nine year olds in Japan are Best Friends Forever with 34 nine year olds in England, and my sister and I barely had to lift a finger.

And the change has been astronomical.

Suddenly, England exists. I can stand as long as I like next to a blackboard, a living and breathing example of the fact that England exists, but I don`t think that any of the children in my second grade class actually believed me. One set of cards with little photos on them - their very own English person, to name and cut out and keep - and they suddenly know that England is real.

"Mine is so cuuuutttee!" one of my girls shouted, cuddling a photo of a girl from Hove called Hannah.
"Mine is cuter!" her friend yelled, trying to trump Hannah with Jessica.
"Well mine has red hair, just like Ron Weasley!" a little boy triumphed. "None of yours have red hair!"
"Mine could beat yours at skipping rope any day," someone else shouted.
"But mine has yellow hair like Holly Sensei, so I win!" another jeered.
And when I told them that my sister would be visiting in person in April, and that they would be getting new cards in a few weeks, they stood up, air punched and screeched "Whooooooooooohhhhooooooooo!" It is only a matter of time before they allocate each other points for various aspects of their Penpal, and start swapping them in the playground.

For my class, though, English children are exciting, but not unimaginable: they can speak a little English (I hope: I try, anyway), they know where England is (now: it`s taken me nine months of map pointing) and they see me every day, and I fly the English flag for them far more passionately than I would anywhere else in the world (I`m up against all the Americans here). For my sister`s class in Brighton, on the otherhand, the concept of writing to a Japanese class has - according to Tara - taken them to a level of excitement she doesn`t otherwise see unless chocolate is involved.

"I`m serious," she told me last night. "They`re obsessed. It`s scary. We`re talking about a class full of nine year olds who don`t know where London is, and they`re coming in to registration every morning full of facts about Japan, because they`re all going home and they`re looking it up on the internet every night. It`s all, `did you know that that in April the cherry blossoms come out and they`re called Sakura, Miss Smale` and `Tokyo is the capital of Japan, Miss Smale,` and `did you know that Manga is what they call their cartoons, Miss Smale`. They made me set up a Japanese display on the wall. They want me to play games in Japanese - I`ve had to learn basic words so that I can teach them - and today we`re making Origami. One Christmas card from a Japanese class and my students are absolutely in love with the entire country. I`m just terrified of the next question, which is going to be: Miss Smale, when do we get to go to Japan and meet them?"

And that, I think, is the whole point of teaching. Within a month, over 60 children who had no interest whatsoever in any part of the world other than Kitago and Brighton are fascinated in somewhere else, and in the people who come from there. They want to know everything: what they eat, what they wear, how they speak, what games they play. And they`re realising already what it took me 21 years to conclude: that the world isn`t a big flat bit of paper to shade in and stick pins in, but a place full of people to talk to and things to learn and fun things to do. That they can go there. That they can communicate with it. That they can be a part of it too.

So, while I may not have known where anything was as a child - or have been interested in any part of the world I wasn`t standing directly on - I think I`m finally making up for it now. By bringing the world to where I am, and giving it to my children.

And sending a little bit of it back home to England.

Pink rashes

2011-01-17T23:28:00.001+09:00

Drugs work.

Six months of drugs, and I'm no longer unhappy: I'm no longer in any kind of pain. I no longer pine for The Boy, or for love, or think about him in any way other than with distaste at my own weakness. I no longer hate myself, or agree that I am 'poison'; I no longer care what others think about me, or feel the need to claw for some kind of reassurance that I am worth loving. I don't cringe when I look in the mirror anymore, and I don't cry at parties; I don't sob in the shower, and I don't run to the toilets in the middle of class for any other reason than to go to the toilet. I don't wish I was smaller, or darker, or more American, or owner of a different shaped nose; I don't imagine what life would be like if I could be louder, or quieter, or much cleverer, or much less so. I don't look at the past and wish I could change it, and I don't look at the future I wanted and still wish I could have it. I don't play scenes over and over again in my head, as if I could ever change them. For the first time in my life I have started to believe that losing me is a loss, and that just because someone doesn't know doesn't make it any less true: it just makes them more stupid than they were for losing me in the first place.

And, while I'm still instinctively raw - while I still automatically shy away from any kind of romance or intimacy - it's in a scabbing, healed over kind of way: not in a fresh wound kind of way. And it's with the knowledge - a new strength that runs through the middle of me like the steel pin in a broken bone - that none of the past will ever happen again. Because I'm no longer a person who will let it.

The drugs work, but now it's time to stop. I don't need them anymore, and I don't want them anymore. I don't want to feel hard, and resilient, and distant. I don't want to feel impervious to everything around me: untouchable and unreachable. I don't want to feel calm, and serene, when I've never been calm and serene. I don't want to feel incapable of love, even if I'm also incapable of pain, and I don't like the smile I've started to believe is my own: a placid, peaceful smile, that doesn't reach my eyes. I don't like the fact that my own laughter surprises me, and I hate the fact that my writing has become so empty, and so emotionless, and so devoid of beauty, because I can't feel anything at all, and so when I write that's all that comes out: nothing.

I'm scared. I'm scared of going back to where I was: to the place where everything hurt, and I thought about him all of the time, and I hated myself all of the time. I'm scared of waking up in the morning and crying, and going to bed at night and crying, and walking around in the middle of the day and crying. But I'm far, far more scared of never crying again. And of never hurting again. And I'm terrified of drugging myself so far and so deeply that I forget who I was in the first place.

It's time to start feeling again: the good, and the bad. It's time to wake up in the morning and not know exactly how I'll feel at every minute of the day; to hear and see from the inside, instead of constantly on the edge. I want to get excited again, or upset if I have to. I want the pink rash on my neck that turns up when I'm embarrassed or shy or nervous or anxious - a rash I haven't seen in six months - because it means that I'm reacting to the world again, and letting it in. I want to feel as if things are real again, instead of running past me like a film I'm always, always watching. And I want to be inspired again, so that when I speak there's something to say.

I've had the rest I so desperately needed: the six months of sleep and nothingness, away from the hurt and emotion that wore me out. I'm finally ready to wake up again.

The drugs work.

And that is exactly why I don't need them anymore.

Amazon

2011-01-16T20:27:00.004+09:00

It arrived. My scary electronic baby substitute arrived, just at the point when I wasn't ready and my flat was a mess again, which is probably what happens when it's a human being as well.

To celebrate my giant leap in technology - despite the fact that I can't quite work out which buttons to press - in 72 hours The Write Girl will be available in Kindle Blog format, on Amazon. Feel free to snap it up like cold cakes, because apparently they're going to try and charge you for it. It's simply there if you suddenly need a way to get it in four inch sized font (grandad), or on a bus on a far flung part and exotic piece of the world (Sarah), or on set location for your next blockbusting film (Johnny Depp or James Franco).

Me, I'll be reading something better. Because I'm going to be reading everything.

Delivery

2011-01-14T15:18:00.000+09:00

It hasn`t been delivered yet, and in the interim I`m going a little bit bonkers.

I`m not even shopping for books in advance: I`m shopping in advance of advance shopping, which means making a mental note of everything I want, in advance of making a physical note of everything I want, in advance of purchasing it. That`s two stages removed from shopping, which is probably the furthest I`ve ever got. I`ve been browsing for accessories, even after I`ve already bought accessories. And the excitement - the stomach clenching Oh My God I Will Have Every Work by Dickens Right With Me All The Time, Like Seriously All The Time excitement - is making it difficult to function. Every time I try to speak to people, all I can think is: That includes A Christmas Carol. I`ve not read A Christmas Carol. I`ve always wanted to read A Christmas Carol. Which means that I block out the actual conversation I`m having and end it by staring in to the middle distance and muttering to myself about Tiny Tim. I`ve even cleaned my house, so that the Kindle feels nice and welcome. I don`t want the Kindle coming in to a mess, so I`ve arranged a nice chair, with a nice table, and a nice space on the nice table for the Kindle to sit on and feel happy and at home.

Worse, I`ve just - and I`m a little bit ashamed of this - stolen a piece of black card from the staff stationary cupboard and cut it into the shape of a Kindle with precise measurements so that I can make a little Japanese silk holder for it before it arrives, because I have a sudden almost uncontrollable desire to sew something. I`ve also practiced holding the card so that I get a feel for the size of it; a couple of times I`ve actually put the piece of cardboard into my bag and then pulled it out again with a flourish, pretending to show somebody with shy and yet tangible smugness. And, when that grew a little dry, I decided to actually show somebody. Regardless of the fact that it hadn`t arrived yet.

"Look," I told Harai.
"It`s a bit of black card."
"Yes. But look, isn`t that a great size?"
"It`s a bit of black card."
"But next week it will be my new Kindle."
"Ok. But now it`s a bit of black card."
"Use your imagination, and don`t be rude about my black card."
"Okay."
"And then next week you can hold it if you want."
"Ok."
"But only if you promise not to drop it."
"Ok."
"Do you want to hold it now?"
"No. It`s a bit of black card."
"Ok. You think I`m a bit mad, don`t you."
"Always."

And all of this would obviously be extremely worrying if I hadn`t just come to one, alarming conclusion:

I`m finally nesting.

I`m nesting for a Kindle. I`m 29 and while I`m by no means ready for a baby - or in a position to have one, get one or keep one, which is handy - clearly something biological has started happening to my chemicals, because now I`m nesting for a piece of electronic equipment. Preparing, fluffing, protecting, readying myself. Talking about it to anyone who will listen, thinking about it when somebody else is talking. Getting my surroundings perfect, just in case. So while I am going bonkers, it`s a relief to know that at least it`s in exactly the same way that most other female 29 year olds go bonkers: a predestined, natural kind of bonkers. A chemical kind of bonkers. Except that I`m doing it for a bit of plastic and not a human being, which makes it a little more concerning. Or less. At least this way I`m not roping anybody else into my mania, or prowling the streets looking for somebody to become co-owner.

According to delivery times, I`ve got another five days to wait, and it`s becoming uncomfortable. I just want it to arrive, now, because I`m anxious to see just how long I can keep this thing functioning before I break it, lose it, lose interest in it or decide that I hate it and give it to somebody else. Because maybe if I practice and practice and practice, then when I eventually get a baby I`ll have learnt how not to break it, lose it, lose interest or decide that I hate it and give it to someone else.

And the Kindle? If it`s lucky it`ll be the first in a long line of things I learn to look after properly.

Kindle

2011-01-11T22:34:00.000+09:00

Addiction isn't pleasant, and it's taken me just 36 hours to crumble. 36 hours of chewing my nails and clawing at the walls and walking around school with a face like my sister's new puppy (Boston terrier. Cute, cross looking and dedicated to a life spent being carried whenever possible. My sister needs to drag him along the sea front for exercise). 36 hours of feeling panicky, and sticky, and unpleasantly anxious: as if something, somehow, somewhere, is wrong. Missing. Gone. 36 hours of feeling a bit sick, and I gave in. I've just bought a Kindle.

I don't want a Kindle. No: I want a never ending supply of English language books in a never ending library that stretches as far as I can see: much, much bigger than the stupid British library which smells of dust and weirdos and much, much more inviting than Cambridge University library which is full of the sound of people breathing too heavily through their mouths and licking their fingers so they can turn the pages over. I want my own private library: glorious and full of sunshine and books and books and books and the smell of paper and a million different stories, with a really cosy chair next to a fire, and - possibly - a sunken bath which is always ready made and yet the moisture never ruins my collection. I want a little oak ladder I can stand on and slide along the shelves with, and flowers in big pots next to the windows. I want to feel each and every page of the books that never end: because I can never, ever finish them all. To feel the immortality inside each of them, and breathe them in, and know that I can never be bored, and I can never be lonely, because the greatest minds and greatest characters and greatest places in the world - and outside of it - are all in one room. My room. That's what I want.

I don't want a little bit of grey plastic onto which I can download novels at $0.01 and then flick through with the click of buttons. That is not the fantasy. But I cannot be without books. 36 hours ago I ran out - I ended my collection with Catch 22, an epic satire - and the consequential breakdown was not pretty. At one stage I started reading the back of my box of tissues, like an alcoholic draining the last of the toilet cleaner. And then I found myself pawing at the Penny Vincenzi paperback - left behind by another teacher - before physically forcing myself to leave the house before I did myself anymore damage.

We all have our fetishes. My sister likes tv adverts: if she hasn't seen one in a few hours she gets jittery. My dad likes (men's) shoes: even when the shops are shut you have to drag him past, kicking and screaming to "just see in the window". Mum's a fan of Solitaire - it calms her down - but for me: it's books. The whole world could come to an end, and as long as I had a good collection of excellent novels I couldn't care less. I'd be escaping into a different one anyway.

36 hours of increasing desperation - of nervousness, of irritation, of genuine, obsessive stress (what do I do? what do I hold??) - and I've crumbled. Until I find my never ending library of real, paper books - and either stop moving around the world or get it to move around with me - I'll have to read from a Kindle. Another screen, which is just what I didn't want. And yet anything - anything - is better than the thought of another 36 hours with nothing to read.

Which is a shame, because that's exactly what I'll have to go through now. Hanging on Amazon's delivery service like a junkie waiting for their next shot. Hoping - shamefully - that it turns up before the weekend, even if it means missing my friend's house party because I'm at home, greedily stuffing my face on the works of Austen in a dark corner of the kitchen somewhere. Wondering if I can find another dark corner of the party and carry on when everyone else is asleep. Wondering if I can find an even darker corner and perhaps leave early in the morning so I can get home and carry on stuffing my face where nobody can see me.

Greed and obsession aren't pretty things, but you should never judge a book by its cover.

Because none of these will have one.

Tissues and radishes

2011-01-07T16:08:00.001+09:00

I`ve always known that at some stage I would turn into my parents - both of them - but what I didn`t realise was that at some stage on the journey I would metamorphosise into an old man from a 90s BBC television drama.

It started with the underwear. As single as I am, as stuck in the middle of nowhere as I am, I`m only just 29: I should have many years of buying useless and scratchy and ill fitting lace items ahead of me. But it`s cold: the kind of cold where the only sound you can hear hundreds of times a day is the world "cooollllldd" repeated resentfully over and over again (which is unfortunate, because in Japanese it is also the name of my ex: which leaves me a teensy bit on edge and a bit grumpy for the majority of winter). So I bought a nice, slightly fluffy thermal t-shirt to go under my clothes: ostensibly to render nice, summery clothes still wearable in the middle of December. A pretty, faded pink colour. Delicate. Feminine. Warm. And then, when I had realised just how warm it was, I realised that my legs were cold, too. And they had matching fluffy leggings. Leggings, I told myself. And leggings are cool, right? Leggings are hip. And I chanted to myself on the way to the checkout counter: I`m 29: it`s okay to wear cool, pink leggings under my clothes. It`s okay. It`s okay. Just don`t look at the old women next to you. Just don`t look and then they`re not there.

Except that the leggings were so fluffy and warm, that I started wearing them everyday, under my trousers. And when I realised that there was no elastic and they were starting to sag somewhere around the crotch area - sag down to my knee area, in fact - I didn`t care, because I was so damn warm. And when the top started to sag, and both items started fading from a pretty, fluffy pale pink to a sort of off, dubious looking white, I didn`t care, because I was so damn warm. And when the fluffiness went sort of bobbly, and the bit that held them all up gave way and started sinking down to meet the crotch - forcing me to, with no notice, pull them up with both my hands and do a little jump in the middle to get leverage - I still didn`t care, because I was so warm. Until the moment when I climbed into bed for my 4.30 nap (this is all I can manage before my heating turns on), waddled back out like a penguin and spotted myself in the mirror: white bobbled crotch by my knees and waist sagging to meet it, and one hand tugging them up by lifting my right leg in the air. Oh Good God, I whispered to my reflection. They`re not leggings at all, are they. They`re old man knickerbockers.

The second sign was the radish. It`s bad enough that my scooter has - as my dad pointed out - a basket. It`s bad enough that there`s one mirror missing, because the dude at the garage tried to impress me by "fixing it," and snapped it right off in front of my eyes. It`s bad enough that my scooter makes VRRRRRROOOOOO-eh-eh-eh-VRRROOOOO-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh sounds when I try to go above 30kmh, as if I`m committing scooter cruelty, and that I`ve tried to make it more road worthy by sticking reflective red things all over the inner parts of the wheels like some sort of training bicycle. But nothing makes you look less like a hip young 29 year old and more like a little old man from the countryside than a 2 foot Japanese radish sticking out of your basket. I didn`t even eat it: that`s how embarrassing it was. I resented it too fiercely.

The third sign was sticking tissues up my sleeve because I was scared of being caught with a runny nose, and the fourth and final sign was this morning, on my faltering, wobbling drive to work. A large car waited until I had indicated to turn right, pulled to the middle of the road, and then nipped past me - catching the back of my jacket and giving me a fright - and yet I didn`t swear and stick my finger in the air. No: I raised my hand, and I shook my fist. My whole, clenched fist. And then I screamed "Oooh, you..." and faded out into nothing. Which is - as we all know - just one step away from shouting "Why I oughta". And nobody knows what they oughta do, because the sentence is never, ever finished.

It`s been a nasty shock, frankly. One month into my 29th year, and I`ve accidentally stepped into the armchair in Last of the Summer Wine or Only Fools and Horses. And it`s not been pleasant. So I`ve pulled the tissues out, replaced the underwear, thrown away the radish, and practicised sticking my middle finger up like a nice, ill mannered youth. For the few remaining years where I still am. And my lovely, middle-aged, slightly bonkers parents: one of which lives in a series of brown leather jackets and the other of which sometimes wears black PVC in public?

If all I do is turn into them, I think I`ll be counting myself lucky.

It

2011-01-06T20:25:00.003+09:00

As passionate as I am about the English language, I never thought I'd get into a scrap over personal pronouns.

I was wrong. Today, I had a forty minute fight - verbal, emotional, extremely loud and verging on the physical - about the use of subject markers in the teaching of English to Japanese children. Harai was on one side of the argument, I was on the other, and the head of English was perched awkwardly in the middle trying to get on with some marking.

"They're too hard," Harai shouted at me.
"What are you talking about?" I shouted back. "You just used one! They're not too bloody hard. I. You. We. He. She. They. On what planet are personal pronouns too hard?"
"They won't understand!"
"They're eleven years old! Why won't they goddamn understand? There's a direct equivalent in Japanese! Anyway, it's my job to make them understand! That is why I'm here!"
Harai pressed his lips together, which is his sign for: I am angry but far too repressed to tell you that.
"Don't press your lips together at me," I told him fiercely, because I'm not repressed in the slightest. "It's my job to teach them the English language whether it's hard or not. If you want to tell me it's boring, that's fine. It is boring. But don't tell me it's too hard."
"Your job," he said in a hiss, "is to make English fun."
"Oh. Oh. Now my job is to make English fun, is it? Because a few weeks ago I was making English too fun, you said. They were enjoying themselves too much, you said."
"Well your job is to make it just fun enough."
"No. I know exactly what my job description is, Harai. I'm trained approximately a billion times a term in a neverending round of ridiculous meetings that I could run myself while unconscious. I am here to assist as a native speaker with Junior High school, to serve as an introduction to English for the kindergarteners, and to prepare the ground from which the beautiful flower of English will bloom for the Elementary school children. And I mean that exactly, because at one stage I remember seeing yet another goddamn Powerpoint presentation with soil and a little watering can and some dude spreading imaginary Powerpoint fertiliser."
"I don't understand you," Harai admitted after a pause. "You speak too fast."
"I know that." I paused and sat down in defeat. "Oh, I don't care," I muttered. "Teach them what you want. I just don't care." Then I furrowed by brow and shot back up again, even though Harai had done nothing other than tighten his lips again. "Actually, Harai, I do fricking care. My job is to make these children love English by getting them used to it and fond of it before they hit Junior High school. And what the hell is the point in making them love English by only teaching them useless bollocks just so they can go to Masa's class in three months, get confused, and spend the rest of their lives hating English and looking back on my class as the only time in their short lives when they didn't hate English because all we did was play card games? Well? What the hell is the point in that? Maybe if I incorporate things worth learning into my fun lessons, they won't find the next grade so hard and they won't be confused and they won't end up hating English, like the rest of the adults in Japan. And maybe if they don't hate bloody English then they won't be scared to ever leave Japan like 80% of the population, and they might actually get out into the world and see that there is still one out there. And their lives will be fuller and better and more rich because of it. Because they don't hate English. That's my goddamn job, Harai, and it starts with personal pronouns."
And I sat down again, feeling very much the way Bill Pullman must have felt after he made that rousing speech in Independence Day right in front of Will Smith.
Harai jutted his chin out.
"Personal pronouns are hard and unecessary."
"Really? You want to try and construct a sentence about anything interesting without one? I can make them easy, and I can make them fun. It's no problem. You just have to let me do it. They can all learn together."
The head of English butted in.
"She is making sense, you know, Harai."
"Just subject pronouns," I wheedled. "No objects. Just subjects."
Harai scowled.
"You can have one," he finally muttered. "One pronoun."
"What can I do with one fricking pronoun?"
"Okay, two. You can have two pronouns. But no more."
"Six. I need at least six. I need I, you, he, she, it, they, we."
"No. It's way too hard. Way too hard. Not fun. Three."
"So which ones am I going to leave out? She, perhaps? Just let them think that everything in the world is male? Four. I need four."
"Four. Okay, four. But no more than that. Or English won't be fun anymore."
"Fine." I stood up and dusted my trousers off. "Four."
Harai glared at me.
"It had better be fun," he said.
"It's going to be so fun," I told him. "It's going to be too fun."
"Not too fun," he corrected. "Just enough fun."
"Yes."
"English sucks," he told me.
"And you're the English teacher," I sighed. "And we wonder why the government employ me too."

Four pronouns. A forty minute fight and all I got was four pronouns. I've chosen I, you, he and she. And when Harai's not looking, I'm going to sneak in it, too. When it's too late for him to do anything about it. And too late for him to do anything about it.

I never thought I would have to fight, kicking and screaming, for the personal pronoun: but I do. And if anyone needs to know why: that was three in one sentence. A sentence that would have made no sense otherwise. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let Japanese children hate my language because I haven't had the balls to fight for the tools they need not to.

There appears to be quite enough people who hate English teaching them it as it is.

Irony

2011-01-05T20:36:00.004+09:00

Here is the fundamental irony of writing: when things are happening there is no time to write it, and when there is plenty of time to write it, nothing is happening. It's the essential paradox of creativity: in order to be active you have to be inactive. Even war poets have to sit away from the bombs if they're going to get anything down worth reading, otherwise their poetry would get blown up.

I don't like travelling. I need travelling, but I don't actually like it. I think about it all the time, I dream about it, I research it, I look at photos, I save money obsessively. The thought of going to Nepal, or India, or Thailand, or Mexico, or Russia, excites the very bones of me, and at no point in any of my life plans do I intend to stop. It gives my life a meaning I can't find through anything else: seeing new things, new cultures, new adventures. It's fuel, in the most basic, fundamental way, because without it I dry up and shrivel. But do I like it? Not particularly. I often get bored, and I often get frustrated. I get annoyed with the people I'm travelling with, and when I'm on my own I get annoyed with myself, and I get annoyed at public transport, and at getting lost all the time. I am spectacularly bad at travelling - can land in a tiny, three person village and still manage to miss the main tourist spot - and indecisive, which means that I spend a large proportion of my time staring at a map and at the sky and then at a map, and then at the sky again, continuously, until I throw my backpack on the floor and sit on it, sulking. I pack the wrong clothes, I get grumpy because everything smells within two minutes, and I get tired looking at all of the things I'm supposed to be looking at. And - regularly - I skip looking at the things I'm looking at so that I can go and sit in a cafe and read a book, which I could do at home. And do do at home. So essentially the highlights of my trips are very often the things I do for free when I'm not travelling anywhere.

But the point is: none of that is the point of travelling. Travelling is about testing yourself. It's about seeing who you are away from your comfort zones, and pushing yourself out of the habits you fall into more and more easily as you get older. And it's about those tiny, fleeting moments - the sunrise, or the mountain, the wave, the shrine or the person - that you wouldn't have found anywhere else. The ones you can save up and store for a day when fleeting moments are the only things you have left.

I've just come back from ten days in Kyoto, Nara and Osaka: three of the most exciting places in Japan that failed, spectacularly, to particularly excite me. In all honesty, this is probably because Japan feels like a home, now: I understand the food, I'm starting to understand the language, and I understand the culture. I couldn't see any of the cities as I would have done a year and a half ago, when temples and huge shopping malls and karaoke and fried octopus balls would have shaken me to the core. This time it was: oh. Osaka is like Tokyo but smaller. Or: oh. Kyoto is like Hamamatsu but bigger with some nice shrines. Or oh: Nara is kind of cute, but my God the rain is heavy and ooh - is that a shop that sells falafel? There are fantastic things about living in a different country - becoming part of another culture, rather than just bobbing along on top of it - but the downsides are: travelling inside the country doesn't really feel like travelling anymore. It's like going to Norfolk for a holiday if you're a Brit: nice, and pretty, but that's about it.

There were, of course, the moments that made it all worth it. There almost always are. Sunlight pouring through the thousands and thousands of red shrines at Funishimi Inari in Kyoto; making mochi with a group of cheering men and talking to them all in Japanese; Todai-ji, the world's largest wooden building and buddha; standing on top of a mountain as the sun went down on Christmas eve; wandering the streets of Gion; watching a big black car pull up outside a large old house in Kyoto and seeing a real Geisha bow to a man through the swinging curtains; smelling the Octopus in Namba, Osaka, which seems to fill everything and everyone. The snow on New Year's eve in Kyoto; ringing the temple bell on New Year's day. Drunk and giggling with one of my old girlfriends from Tokyo in a Purikura at 2am. Taking a public bath on a 14 hour ferry with the water moving up and down and trying to drown me. All amazing and worth every single minute of the infinitely long hours spent listening to strangers fart in the capsule next to me.

But here's the truth: the moment that made it all worth the most was the moment when I landed back in Miyazaki, in the blazing sunshine, and smelt the rice fields and trees and fresh air. The train journey back to my house, with the mountains on one side and the sea on the other. And my house, filled with the computer I needed to start writing again, and my beloved books for me to carry on reading. And there's the crux of the irony. For those who truly love creating - who breathe through it, and live for it, and can't really function without it - living life is always going to come second to processing it. And yet nothing can be processed unless it is lived first.

Some people create things around the things they do, and some people do so that they can create around it. And my trip to Kyoto, Osaka and Nara - as expensive as it was, and as fun (and often as lonely) - was the latter for me, because everything always is. And I only really realised that as I sat on the train home and knew that I had gone away purely so that I could come back again and write about it. Because all of that fuel was needed to keep me going. Because all of those moments have been stored away to use, as I need them, in creating.

Because here's the truth: if creativity can only come from the inactivity of activity, then one has to be active first. In order to write poetry about bombs, you have to see and feel them to start with. In order to create, you have to live in a way that makes it almost impossible. In order to make anything, you have to start by pulling it apart, and prodding at it, and working out what made it work to start with.

And if you want to process the world, you have to be a part of it first.

Countdown

2011-01-01T14:17:00.000+09:00

You can say what you like about my parents, but nobody can accuse them of not having perfect timing. They wanted to wish me Happy New Year at midnight, and they were damn well going to wish me Happy New Year at midnight, regardless of my thoughts on the topic.

It was a quiet, sweet sort of New Year. A few friends, some great nabe (traditional Japanese winter casserole), some great sho-chu (traditional Japanese potato-based spirit) and some great comedy on television (traditional Japanese end of year show where eight comedians get locked in a resort for 24 hours and try and make each other laugh: if they laugh, a masked man runs in and whacks them very hard on the bottom with a large trojan. Very funny, and very Japanese. In England watching fully grown men bend over tables and get their bottoms whacked by other fully grown men is the sort of television you have to pay for on your credit card).

At thirty seconds to midnight, we filled our glasses, held them aloft and waited for the countdown.

And my phone rang.

"Happy New Year!" my dad shouted down the phone! "Where are you?"
"In Kyoto," I shouted back. "Happy New Year!"
"What time is it?"
"Thirty seconds to midnight." I looked at my friends, holding their glasses aloft and waiting for me to finish my conversation.
"Oooh, just in time! Did you get the packages?"
"No, not before I left."
"Oh. Well I got the camera lens you sent, but there's a problem, Hol, because apparently we have to pay VAT on it and they won't let me have it until I pay the extra seventy quid..."
Twenty five seconds! the tv cried behind me.
"Well, um, can we write to them, dad?"
"Maybe, but it's outrageous that I have to pay VAT on a gift - it's the bloody customs department - seventy quid VAT, I don't see why I should have to pay that on the..."
Twenty seconds!
"Dad, I love you very much, but I have twenty seconds to go before midnight and I don't want to start the new year talking about VAT."
"Well, we have to talk about it sometime, Holly."
"Yes, but please - " fifteen seconds! "not right now?"
"Okay, okay. Sorry. Thoughtless of me. Speak to your mum and wish her a Happy New Year."
"Dad- hurry up, I've got fifteen sec..."
"Happy New Year sweetheart!"
"Happy New Year, mum."
"Where are you?"
"Kyoto."
"Are you on your own?"
"No."
"Oh thank God for that."
"It's okay. I'm okay."
"Are you safe?"
"I'm in a living room, so: yes. Mum, I love you but I -"
Ten seconds! My friends were now glaring at me with their glasses still held in the same position.
"Darling, your Aunty Maine is here. Have a quick word."
"Mum, I really have to go -"
"It'll only take five seconds. Here's your Aunty Maine."
"Happy New Year!"
Five
"Happy New Year Maine. I love you! I have to go!"
Four
"Where are you?"
Three
"Kyoto. Happy New Year but I have to..."
Two
"What's the weather li..."
"Snowing!" I shouted, and slammed down the phone.
One
"Happy New Year!" my friends all cheered, with just enough time for me to pick my glass up and get glared at for creating such a celebratory, party atmosphere.
"Happy New Year!" I cried as the temple bells started chiming, and then sat down, exhausted.

It's going to be a good 2011, I can feel it in my bones. A year full of success and love and conversations I'm busy resisting. And the support of a family who offer it at all times, in all seasons, whether I want it then or not.

Which, as far as I can tell, is exactly a family is supposed to do.

Moving

2010-12-29T18:34:00.000+09:00

I'm finally ready to finish.

Nobody understands why it has taken me so long to write a book. My family don't understand, my friends don't understand, my ex didn't understand, and one of my closest friends certainly hasn't got a clue what is going on, and her increasingly frustrated messages to me now begin and end with "are you done yet?" and "where the hell is it?" Not for Helen a bohemian waft of my hand and a mumble about inspiration: she's extremely successful, extremely hard nosed and "not interested in anymore of your stupid shillyshallying, Smale. Finish it. Do I make myself clear? How hard can it bloody be? When you worked with me I couldn't get you to stop writing fiction when you were supposed to be writing press releases." And, if she's extremely irritated by my flower-in-the-hair-responses, she brings out the big guns, which are either: "My aunt has written and published three books in the time it has taken you to write one," or (the one that hurts the most) "You realise that you're no longer eligible for any young writers awards now anyway?"

As the friend who probably understands me the best, though, she's right. I have been shillyshallying. Shillyshallying, in fact, is exactly what I've been doing: shillyshallying with all my might. Because the truth is: it's not hard. Since I started writing the novel, I have written over 300,000 words of this blog: enough for four full-size pieces of fiction. If I sit down and try hard, I can easily write 6,000-8,000 words a day, which means that I could write a novel in two weeks, with space to edit at the end. And it hasn't taken me two weeks. It's taken me nearly two years, which - considering I wrote the first six chapters over the Christmas weekend of 2008 - isn't very impressive. I even managed to fit in a great deal of chocolate eating, a couple of black and white films, a pub session and about 32 cigarettes on that particular two day writing stint, and I still managed to pull something together coherent enough to interest an agent.

The truth is simply this: I haven't wanted to finish. It's like a smoker who wants to quit smoking (and I can say this with some authority): no matter how many times you try to quit, it won't work if you secretly don't actually want to. For whatever reason - because you think it's cool, because it calms nerves, because it tastes nice, because it reminds you of being young or of better times or of not caring about the lines around your mouth because you don't have any yet - you can throw your cigarettes away as many times as you like, but if the desire not to quit isn't actually there, you'll simply replace them the next day. For me, it was only when I woke up a few months ago, ran my tongue around my mouth and realised I had no interest in ever smoking a cigarette again that I actually stopped smoking (and haven't touched one since: the desire has simply gone).

It's like that with writing. It hasn't mattered how many times I've told people I'm ready to finish The Novel: I haven't actually wanted to. Secretly, deep down, I wanted to keep it going. And not for just one reason: for a million different reasons, and all of them powerful ones. Because I love writing it, the way I love reading a book I love, and so by slowing it down it delays the pleasure and chews it up into bite sized pieces I can eat whenever I'm hungry and sad. Because it's comforting to me, and something to think about. Because when I'm lonely - which is often - it becomes my best friend (I'm aware of how terrible this sounds). Because it gives my life meaning, and I've not been sure what to do when it's over. Because I drive home from school to a flat that isn't empty, because my book is sitting on the computer, waiting for me. Because everything I do is a procrastination away from it, which sort of gives my life a heavy structural feeling, which I have learnt to depend on. Because while I'm still writing it, I'm not just a teacher; I'm a writer who teaches. And I don't want to be just a teacher. Because it gives me a reason to stay where I am, without feeling like I'm opting out on life. Because I'm writing.

And because I'm terrified of my life without it, and I'm terrified of what will happen if it's not good enough.

Which is it in a nutshell, and the people who love me know it. The book isn't finished because I'm scared of finishing it, not because I can't finish it. I'm scared of not writing, or having something to write, and I'm scared of being alone, and I'm scared of having no direction, and I'm scared of failing. In essence, I am doing with this goddamn novel what I do in relationships: refuse to commit, refuse to throw myself into it wholeheartedly, because I'm scared of what will happen if it doesn't work out. And because I don't want to have either everything or nothing, so I'm sitting in limbo where I can have both (and neither).

It's finally time. I'm 20,000 words from the end (four days, if I concentrate), and I'm bored. Not of the story, thankfully (because that wouldn't bode well), but of my own fear. And of the procrastination which is born of it. I'm bored of being a teacher-stroke-writer in a little flat in Japan because I'm too scared to finish the book and either be a writer-stroke-teacher or just a teacher. I'm bored of dancing around the ending, of glancing at the manuscript from my bed and hopping around it: not because I don't know what to write, but because I know exactly what to write and I have done from the start but I don't want it to be over. I'm bored of putting the ending off so that there is still something in my life that I can control: when and how I finish. And I'm bored of not moving onto the next step because I'm frightened of where it will take me. I'm bored of being frightened of the things I love most, and of all the things I love most, writing is what I love the most. It always has been.

I'm bored. It's 2011 in three days, and I'm ready. I will be back at home from my little holiday on the 2nd of January, and I am not moving out of my flat for any reason until it's finished. And then I'm taking whatever the next step is. Wherever it takes me. Even if it's a bad one. Even if it's scary.

Because at least then I'll be going somewhere.

Capsule

2010-12-28T18:07:00.003+09:00

When I was a baby, my first ever bed was the bath.

I don`t quite understand how this happened. The official parental line is "we lived in a tiny studio apartment and we didn`t have anywhere else to put you," but this depends on my birth being utterly unexpected, like a surprise bouquet of flowers from a stranger. And it wasn`t, presumably, because I was a baby, and not a bouquet, and my father was not a stranger because he lived with my mum as her life partner and had bought her quite a lot of jewellery over the previous few years. So the only real question left is: at what stage in the nine months previous did they manage to skip the topic of where they were going to put the kid?

There was no water in the bath, I`m relieved to say, and according to my mother it was "extremely comfortable and I was very happy," which I don`t think she can really vouch for, not being me as a three day year old child. Either way, my first few nights in the world were spent in the bath, at which stage my parents realised that they probably needed to wash at some stage and needed to find somewhere else to store me. At this point, they took the door off a small single cupboard, removed their clothes, filled it with cushions and blankets (it was snowing), hung sparkly things from the ceiling to distract me from the therapy I would need in the years to come, and then stuck me in there.. Where I spent the following two years of my life: in a cupboard.

Dad has conveniently wiped all of this from his memory; when I ask him, he says it was "more like a very small room," while mum maintains that I "was the happiest baby she ever saw and never once cried" (at which stage I point out that I probably was crying, but they couldn`t hear me because I was in a cupboard). But in all truth I probably was happy. If part of the shock of being born is moving from a tiny, safe space to a very large, unsafe space, then a cupboard is probably the best upgrade possible. And, when we moved house and I finally had my own bedroom, I was naturally terrified. At any given moment, my mum would come into my bedroom to find me either asleep in the airing cupboard, curled up like a small cat, or in my sister`s cot (yes, she got a cot. No cupboards for the second born).

Because of this past, it shouldn`t really come as a surprise that I`m not scared of small spaces. I`m not scared of big spaces either - I`m not scared of any kind of space: only what is inside it - but it`s true that when I`m sleepy I will seek a warm, soft, dark, small space, and if I find myself in a warm, soft, dark, small space by accident I will automatically fall asleep. In my fantasy dreams of The House I Will End Up In, my bathroom is massive, and my piano is massive, but the bedroom is tiny, and dark, and it has sparkly things hanging from the ceiling.

As a result, it is with great excitement that I have tracked down the Japanese Capsule Hotel: the smallest space anyone can pay to sleep in. Originating in Japan - for business men who used to visit all-night public baths after a late night drinking session and then fall asleep in the corridors outside - these are literally capsules: spaces large enough to crawl into and lie down in. They are stacked together like bricks, they are cheap(ish - for this horribly expensive country) and they are supposed to be tiny, dark, economical and private.

Which is why I write this line with heavy disappointment, following a year of anticipation: they are not.

Spending the night in bed with a stranger is bad enough, but eight of them? Twenty of them? Thirty of them? It`s the world`s most uncomfortable one-night-stand. You`re literally half a metre away from the next sleeping body in every direction, and you can hear every single noise they make. The most private of times, the most intimate of moments - the moments where we dream, where we sleep, where we fend off our nightmares and hold up our dreams - are shared with people you have never seen before. You are woken in the night by the sound of loud and congratulatory farting, by snores, by people turning over, by women crying, by drunk hiccups, by people turning the pages of books. Next to you, the girl moans in her sleep: on the other side, a boy is texting somebody something important enough to say at 4am It`s like being part of a science fiction novel: I have never felt more conscious of the lack of originality of myself and my own body functions - my need to crawl into a space and sleep, my need to sort through my dreams - than when I am lying as a part of a thirty block capsule, in a 400 capsule building, wearing the same complimentary outfit as 400 other people. All dreaming and snoring and farting the night away. All feeling the same as each other.

I have one more night in a capsule in Osaka. My friend joined me from Tokyo yesterday; tomorrow I stay with another friend from Miyazaki. I have one more night to crawl into my very own science fiction and feel like what I am: just another brick in the wall, identical to all the others..

But I`m so incredibly relieved that I did it. Because a dream achieved is a dream achieved, even if it`s created next to a billion others, and the same as all of them. And although I won`t sleep tonight - the girl opposite has a cold, and some sort of obsession with scrunching up what sounds like crisp packets - I`m going to be fascinated to lie awake and think of all the sleeping people around me. Of all the intimate moments that I never get to hear, or see, or understand usually. Or want to.

And, at the very least - when I`m staring at the three foot high ceiling at 5am and making fingers at the walls - I can comfort myself with the following thought:

At least now I`m grown up I don`t have to sleep in a bath.

Christmas paper

2010-12-26T21:28:00.006+09:00

This weekend has been a weekend of firsts.

It`s the first time I`ve ever been to Kyoto; the first time I`ve ever seen the Golden Temple: the first time I`ve ever seen a real Geisha (but not the first time I`ve forgotten my camera at the exact moment I need it most). This weekend was the first time I`ve ever helped to make mochi; the first time I`ve ever witnessed the incredible politeness and accurateness of a Japanese internal flight (in approximately twelve minutes we will be experiencing turbulance, and we are very sorry for this); the first time I`ve fallen asleep next to a shrine (it was at the top of a really big mountain). It was the first time I`ve ever started doing a little embroidery in the middle of a pizza restaurant - and the first time I`ve really realised how weird I can sometimes be - and the first time I`ve ever ordered a two pint glass of beer by myself and gotten drunk with nobody to make it socially acceptable. It was the first time I have ever had a long Japanese conversation with a stranger, and the first time that when a stranger congratulated me on my language skills, I felt I deserved it. It was the first holiday I`ve ever been on and not lost my camera, and the first winter weekend where I haven`t bought and lost a pair of gloves. This time I only lost one.

It was also the first Christmas I have ever spent on my own.

I thought it would be okay. In fact, I thought it would be great. I would take my savings - most of them, thanks to the expense of Japan and the goddamn neverending purchase of gloves - and fly to Kyoto: luxuriate in my freedom, read books, drink coffee, wander around temples, and pretend that I was Scarlett Johanson in Lost in Translation, because my hair now looks just like hers did then. I`d be at one with Buddhism and Shintoism and go shopping and buy pretty things and listen to my iPod and connect with various Gods because, after all, it was just another day, wasn`t it? Just a day after the 24th of December, before the 26th, at the end of 2010, and I wasn`t even Christian. I was whatever I felt like that day, and everything else was nostalgia and the trickery of irrational emotions. My heart making no sense at all against the logic of a brain that told me that Christmas didn`t matter because it was a day like every other.

It did matter. If I`ve been quiet for the last two weeks, it`s because my heart and my head have been at war again; because every time I sat down to write this blog all I could write was I don`t want to be alone at Christmas. Five drafted blog entries that start with I don`t want to be alone at Christmas. And because I knew that I couldn`t start every blog for two weeks with I don`t want to be alone at Christmas, and because that was all my heart was saying, and because my brain couldn`t talk loudly enough to cover it up, I wrote nothing. And I tried to think nothing. I got on the plane, thinking as little as I could, and I fought with myself for the whole weekend.

Look at that lovely temple, I told myself fiercely; isn`t it beautiful? Isn`t it a once in a lifetime experience?
It`s Christmas. I want to go home.
Don`t be silly. Look at the red leaves on that tree - take a picture to bore other people with for years to come.
I don`t care about leaves. I want to go home.
Come on. You are lucky to be here. So many would kill for this.
I`m lonely.
You`re not; you`re independent.
I`m sick of being independent. I`m lonely. I miss my family. I miss my ex boyfriend. I miss being loved. I miss loving. I miss love. I don`t want to be on my own anymore.

And everywhere was full of love. Everywhere I looked was bursting at the seams with it. Couples, touching hands on the edges of lakes; little kisses, little presents, little hairs moved away from eyes. Tiny children squealing because their father was pretending to drop them, the way I squealed when my father pretended to drop me. Conversations that only two people understood: looks that only two people could see. And I didn`t feel reassured by it, or wrapped in it; I felt outside of it; as if every single touch, and look, and word, was building a fence around something I couldn`t be part of. And it didn`t matter how much mochi I made, or how many Geishas I saw, or how many temples I walked around at fell asleep next to: it wasn`t Christmas for me. It couldn`t be, when I was all I had.

I walked through too many Christmases this weekend. There was no Kyoto, no matter what the roadsigns said. I walked through the Christmases of when I was tiny and lay awake, heart pounding because I was scared of Santa, and the Christmases where we all clambered into bed together - my sister, my mum, my dad and me - and the Christmases where we`d go through each present one by one, and open them at the same time. I went through the Christmases where we all got drunk together - all 14 of my family - and the Christmas last year where I took the boy I loved on his first ever rollercoaster because I didn`t want him to be scared of them anymore, and he didn`t take me anywhere to help me not be scared of my love for him anymore. I walked through all of the Christmases and all of the love, and they lay behind me like a long path I wanted to be on, and Kyoto wasn`t there. It was just me, alone with the past and the love I wanted.

Still want.

There are little bits of paper all over Kyoto; little bits of paper in stars and hearts and circles, tied to things and stuck to things and written all over. And they are wishes. Thousands and thousands of wishes and dreams, stuck to the fences and tied to the trees of Kyoto. And some of them are now mine.

And this was what I wrote on Christmas day: I don`t want to be alone anymore. A dozen pieces of paper in Japan, all saying what I was too scared to write here. I don`t want to be alone. Not at Christmas, and not at all. I want somebody to brush the hair away from my face; I want to wake up to see the face of somebody who wakes up to see the face of me. I want to pick up a child and make them squeal because they love me; I want to feel that squeal as mine. I want those gestures: the fingers touching, the jokes I understand. I want somebody to love me enough to take me on a rollercoaster because they know I`m scared. I want my family.

I won`t be spending Christmas alone again; wherever I am in the world, I`ll go home. I don`t want loneliness. Because it`s not independence, no matter how many times I chant it in my head; it`s just shutting yourself outside the gates of other people`s love, because you`re too scared to ask to come in. Because it`s a rollercoaster you`re scared to get on, and there`s nobody who cares enough to help you. Nobody to hold your hand when you`re frightened of getting close to anyone. Nobody to hold your hand to keep you there when you do.

This weekend was a weekend of firsts, in many ways. And as great as it was, I hope that it was also a weekend of lasts. That next Christmas, it`s different.

And with every piece of paper I have, I am making the wish that this will be the very last year I have to end on my own.

Gyu

2010-12-20T13:23:00.000+09:00

Sometimes irony arrives as a gentle nudge; an elbow in the ribs and a subtle wink, like a friend down the pub. And sometimes it`s more like a red hot poker poked inserted straight into the middle of your face, or somewhere less prominent, by somebody who doesn`t like you very much. And pimping your own toilet only to contract a nasty bout of stomach flu the next day is probably the latter.

That is where I`ve been for the last ten days. In my pimped up toilet, sitting on my new fluffy rug, vomiting into my nice heated toilet and making the most of the toilet roll that the handsome man forced into a two-trip outing. And writing anything - blogs, books, emails, shopping lists - was pushed way down the list: somewhere underneath keeping down a bowl of rice and actually paying my health insurance so that I could go to the doctor. And cleaning my apartment, before the rats ate me.

I didn`t make it to the doctor (I spent all my money on re-pimping), and the rats didn`t get a nibble but a possum nearly did (I left a French window open and it wandered into my bedroom), but today the worst seems to have past. Apart from lingering nausea and total and utter exhaustion, I`ve made it to 1pm without event, and that`s the best I`ve done in ten days.

More importantly, my awful sense of humour has come back (it left somewhere between the second and third day, or round about the third bleary eyed reading of the manga comic in my loo I don`t even vaguely understand because the only hiragana and katakana I can read are a e i o u and they have yet to write a story that only features vowels).

And my humour, as humour tends to, made the most inappropriate return possible.

Every lunchtime, each class Jankens each other for a remaining carton of milk (plays Rock Scissors Paper, which is actually a Japanese game). The chant begins "Saishou gu" - which means: first the rock. Except that the word for milk in Japanese is gyu. And I`m nothing if not a total geek for word play. I have a qualification in Shakespeare, and he was the Emporer of it.

"You should say Saishou gyu," I told a group of twelve frantically competing ten year old boys.
"Eh?" they said with slight irritation. I`d broken the rhythm of the game, so keen I was to interrupt with my brand new pun.
"Saishou gyu. You should say saishou gyu."
"But it`s saishou gu," one of them said in confusion over his shoulder. Stupid foreigner hung unspoken.
"Yes, but gyu. It means milk. Gyu?" I wasn`t going to let it go, and started pointing frantically to the carton. "Saishou gyu? Instead of saishou gu? Like, meaning: first the milk?"
Nine eyebrows lifted, and one politely nodded to show that he had understood that I was attempting to be funny.
I, on the other hand, collapsed into a fit of tired, considerably skinnier giggles.
"Saishou gyu," I muttered to myself. "Saishou gyu." And then took myself to the staffroom, where my colleagues treated me to exactly the same reaction ("English humour").

Ten days spent running in and out of the toilet, and I`m slightly insane with tiredness. But with one little terrible, terrible joke, I think I`ve started to claw my way back to the world of normal people again.

And as lovely as my toilet is, I think - after ten days of solid consideration - I definitely prefer being on the outside.

Loo

2010-12-09T19:58:00.003+09:00

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.

29

2010-12-07T23:44:00.000+09:00

"29," Harai said this morning. Not good morning, not how are you, not you look nice today. "29." And then: "Why are you smiling?"
"Because it's my 29th birthday."
"You should not be smiling."
"But I love birthdays."
"At your age, you're not supposed to be happy about them."
"Why not?"
"Because every year you are getting older."
"But, Harai," I pointed out, handing him a birthday doughnut, "I am also getting cleverer, happier and richer. And that totally cancels out the old part."
He scowled at me.
"You're just like Princess Diana," he told me: "she said that too." Which temporarily wiped the smile off my face.

In 29 years, I have never had a better birthday. I woke up to my family, which I haven't done since I was a child: spoke to my sister and her brand new puppy and my dad on webcam, and my mum via dad's mobile phone held up to the microphone, all while lying in bed under the duvet. I ate chocolate for breakfast. I opened presents and chucked the wrapping all over my bed. I thanked my dad for my imaginary Olympus camera, which has yet to turn up. And then I took myself to school, gatecrashed the Kindergarten with a bag of candy and got more love and cuteness than any 29 year old can possibly handle: 36 five year olds, standing neatly with their hands together (and sometimes smacking each other, which added to the performance) and singing/shouting "Happy Birthday" in broken English. They then threw themselves at me and covered me in "I love you"s and "Happy birthday"s and "I want a cuddle"s and "Holly Sensei, I saw an elephant on the television and it was grey and pooing"s until I couldn't move or breathe without a kiss being enthusiastically planted on an area of my face or hands.

My favourite 13 year old student made me a card, perfectly written in English, telling me that "you make me so happy when you speak to me," and gave me a little heart keyring. A gaggle of ten year olds all drew identical pictures of me as a yellow haired manga standing next to huge amounts of cake and then clustered around the staff room because they were too embarrassed to give me them. A member of staff I have never spoken to found out it was my birthday and went to the shops at lunch to buy me a cake. And all day long, my friends from all over the world sent me messages.

This evening, I met with ten of my closest friends for dinner, and didn't stop laughing: was showered with the most thoughtful, beautiful, amazing gifts. Harai bought me a little music box that plays the one Japanese song I can sing; Shin and Miyuki bought me a little gothic doll and a tripod for my imaginary camera; Naho and Julian bought me an incredible handbag to replace the piece of crap I carry around at the moment. Yuki baked me a cake without egg in it, because I hate cake. Yoshiko bought me a box of cheese, because I love cheese. And they all gave them with so many cheers, and so much enthusiasm, that my cheeks hurt. And then they paid for my dinner.

I'm 29 today, and yes: I'm older. I have one year left until I'm thirty, and in the race of life I'm many, many laps behind where I probably should be. But I don't care. It was the best birthday I've ever had, and I was just where I wanted to be: albeit, without the family I wish could have shared it with me.

Cleverer, happier and richer. As far as cards go, they trump older any day. And if my 29th year continues the way it started, it's going to be a very good one.

And I cannot wait.

Red cheeks

2010-12-05T17:00:00.002+09:00

I'm all better again, by which I mean: I'm back to being totally crap.

For nearly two years, only one man has existed for me. From the first minute (I was in love almost straight away) to long, long after I should have stopped, he was the only man I romantically cared about. Celebrities were of no interest. Male models were of no interest. When friends waxed lyrical about the various attractions of men on the street, it was as if they were invisible to me: I barely registered them as male, let alone desirable. When I read books, each romantic lead - no matter what the author told me they looked like - morphed into Him. When I watched films, I despaired at how dissimilar the heroes were, and how much of a mistake the director had made in not casting The Boy, or at least someone who looked vaguely like him. I congratulated myself daily on the fact that the most beautiful man in the world said he loved me, and showed pictures of the most beautiful man in the world to my friends and family on a minutely basis, so that they could confirm how lucky I was (they did: he was and is extraordinarily, almost surreally, handsome). No other man existed, as far as I was concerned: I was the cat with the cream, and I wasn't interested in milk anymore. So I was unbelievably hurt when he noticed other girls: not least because I didn't understand how the romantic and sexual world hadn't shrunk for him as it had for me.

Now that I'm healed - his looks haven't faded in my memory, but his goodness and kindness have and so his beauty is less - the world has suddenly opened up again. And I'm back to being absolutely ill equipped to deal with it, because I just spent fifteen minutes catapulting myself around a huge pharmacy, playing accidental hide and seek with a very good looking man.

Japanese men are gorgeous. Not all Japanese men, obviously: there are varieties of attractiveness as there are with any race, in any country, in any part of the world. Further, many of them are shorter than me, and a lot of Japanese men actively make themselves less attractive (in my westernized eyes) by chasing the Japanese ideal of male beauty: a feminine, soft skinned, waxed, whitened, made-up, pampered type of beauty that most Japanese women adore (all of the boy bands wear lipstick, for instance, pluck their eyebrows and spend longer on their hair than any woman I've ever seen). Those who do not, however - those who are happy to look like men, and sometimes grow facial hair, and let their hair and eyebrows roam freely, and perhaps go swimming even though it makes them browner - are often incredibly, stomach flippingly beautiful.

And when they are stomach flippingly beautiful, frankly, they should not be allowed to walk around large pharmacies, forcing unprepared and very shy girls to duck behind shelves of moisturisers and perform all sorts of embarrassing stunts so that they can hide.

It was ridiculous. In two days I'm 29, and yet I found myself focusing on the back of a packet of conditioner as he walked past, and then glancing at his retreating back only for him to turn around and look at me, causing the conditioner to become the most interesting thing I had ever read. I then ran to another aisle so he couldn't see me, and he inexplicably decided that he, too, wanted a moisturising face mask and stood next to me. I then scampered off as quickly as I could to the green tea section, and he decided that he was going to take a stroll along the aisle behind me, with his hands in his pockets. He didn't even have the kindness to openly gawp (this happens sometimes: less because I'm female, and more because I'm a different colour to everyone else), but simply glanced up now and then and continued very, very casually stalking me around the shop, like a real, proper man interested in a girl, instead of a Japanese boy intrigued by a foreigner.

Fifteen minutes, I ran away for. I couldn't even buy what I went in for, because I couldn't bring myself to buy a multipack of toilet roll in front of him. I considered making really snuffly noises so that he would assume I had a really, really bad cold, but there really is no way of buying toilet roll without conjuring up the inevitable image that you are going to be using them on the toilet, and I didn't want him to picture me anywhere near a toilet. So I simply focused very hard on innocuous, innocent things - moisturiser, tea, tofu - until he left me alone and went to the check-out. Even then, when I finally thought I was safe to enjoy looking at him and his scruffy handsomeness, when I glanced up he was still glancing at me from 50 metres away. I had to squat down under cover of needing a lip salve that was on the very bottom shelf, and stay there until he had gone.

I'm crap with the opposite sex. I always have been, and I can't see that changing, even as I head into my 30s. I'm too shy, and when I see somebody I genuinely like my immediate impulse is - and has always been, even as a little girl - to leg it, and run away as fast as I can. Combined with the fact that I'm not ready for romance yet, that I really, really don't want to be hurt again, and that I don't speak Japanese well enough to conduct any kind of relationship, and the beautiful boy was quite lucky that I didn't lock myself in the pharmacy store cupboard and refuse to come back out until the shop was closed.

I can't spend my life running away from handsome men (although in a few years I will no longer have to: they simply won't be chasing me). But, even as I was ducking behind the moisturising shelves, it felt good: to be able to see somebody else, after two years. To be embarrassed by and for somebody else. Even when it doesn't go any further than that. Just to have my world open up a little bit more. Crack by crack, and inch by inch.

While I need to be on my own for a good while longer - to really enjoy the freedom I have found - I still want the world to be as big as it can be. I still want it to be a world that makes my cheeks turn red.

And, if my game of hide and seek today is anything to go by, it's now a world that can make my stomach flip again. And that is a very, very good thing.

Illuminations

2010-12-03T18:41:00.005+09:00

Romance truly comes in all shapes and sizes.

Harai has a girlfriend. He's had a girlfriend for some time, apparently. When I reprimanded him for not telling me sooner, he shrugged and said he forgot. Forgot. As if this new girlfriend was taking the rubbish out, or paying a gas bill. I told him that if he wanted to sit next to me for 40 hours a week going forwards he'd better not forget again, and he said he'd try but he couldn't promise anything because he has lots of other things to think about.

In truth, I've got friends who date so frequently, and with so little fussiness, that I have little to no real interest in who they had dinner with on Saturday: it's just another name I'll stumble over at some stage and get in trouble for not remembering. Harai is not one of these people. Each and every girl is an event and a curiosity, and I wanted to know more.

He was not forthcoming.

"What is she like?" I asked. I pulled my seat closer and blocked our part of the office, so he couldn't go anywhere.
"What?" he said uncomfortably. It's not culturally acceptable to be openly interested in the details of somebody else's life, but I'm still crashing my blazing Western path through the school.
"It's not a trick question, Harai. What is she like?"
"I don't know. Quiet."
"Don't be daft. What is she interested in? What does she like doing?"
"Nothing."
I laughed.
"She likes doing nothing?"
"Yes."
"Does she have any hobbies?"
"Yes. Her hobby is sleeping," he said solemnly.
"I don't think that body functions really count as hobbies, Harai. Especially not when you're unconscious for them."
"Also, knives and plates and forks."
"Her hobby is knives and plates and forks?"
"Yes."
"Give me something to work with here, for the love of God. Buying them? Collecting them?"
"No, looking at them. She likes looking at them."
"In museums?"
"No. In shops. Not buying. Just looking."
"Gosh. Looking at plates. And what else?"
"She likes looking at soft toys."
"How old is she, Harai?" I asked suspiciously. "Do I have to report you to the school board?"
"Twenty seven."
"Okay. That's alright then. Hobbies are looking at kitchenware and toys. And what does she look like?"
"I don't know."
"You have met her?"
"Yes."
"But you don't know? Are you dating with your eyes shut?"
"No. Normal. She's normal. Normal stature. Normal face."
"Height?"
"Normal. A little smaller than me." (Harai is five foot zero, but I let the word 'normal' slide.)
"And hair colour?"
"Black. Brown. Black. Red." Harai paused. "I don't know."
"Try and notice when you're at the restaurant tomorrow, for God's sake. And what do you talk about, you and this minx? While you're not talking about her sleeping?"
"We talk about the future."
"Ah. Hopes, dreams, ambitions?"
"No. We talk about our next date."
I laughed again.
"You spend your current date talking about what you will do on the next one?"
"Yes."
"And what else?"
"I think of three, maybe four topics, and then I explain them and she tells me her opinion."
"Like what topics?"
"For instance, the Illuminations in Miyazaki. I told her about them."
"And what was her opinion?"
"She likes Illuminations."
"Of course she does."
"Why are you laughing?"
"It just seems very... Sensible. All of it. She sounds very sweet, honestly, and I'm so sorry for laughing, but do you really like this girl, Harai? Will you get married?"
He shrugged again.
"Maybe. I like her very much. But I am a Japanese man," he explained. "This is normal. She would make a good wife."
"No doubt: she spends most of her time unconscious. I'd make a good wife if I was unconscious too. But, Harai.... What would your dream woman be like? What would she love? What would she be passionate about?"
He thought about it for a few minutes.
"Computer games," he said earnestly. "Dead Rising. Mortal Combat."
"And does your new girlfriend like computer games?"
"No," he said with incredible sadness. "Only when she is very drunk."
I laughed again and rolled my chair back so he could escape.
"Then I think you've just found your girlfriend two brand new hobbies."

Love comes in all shapes and sizes, and far be it from any of us to understand what makes each other tick: I'm sure there is much that Harai is not telling me, and a depth of emotion he is simply refusing to show. But thank God for different tastes, because if we all wanted the same thing from love, and the same thing from romance, and the same thing from each other, few of us would get it. And with all the love I see, daily, and all the love I hear of, that's clearly not the case. It seems there's plenty to go around, and more than enough for all of us.

We just need to make sure it's allocated properly.

Decking the halls

2010-12-01T10:46:00.004+09:00

Christmas is coming, and the KFC chicken nuggets are getting fat, because they don`t eat turkey in Japan and my 25 year old Japanese friend has never seen a whole dead chicken before because they don`t sell them here.

For a country with no Christian background and only 0.5% Christian population, Japan certainly enjoys Christmas. While many Japanese people may not know what it is, or why they`re celebrating, or who Christ is or what he apparently did, they still enjoy a nice tree and some decorations and a few good presents. And why not? A lot of England is no longer practicing Christianity either, and yet we`re all still happy to claim a festival that gives us something to do in the darkest, coldest months of the year. Probably because it was a pagan festival long before it was ever Christmas, and Pope Julius I allocated Christ`s birthday to the date it currently is simply so that the transition would be easier for pagan Romans, who still wanted to eat and party at the end of December even if they were being forced to worship something else. Because, let`s face it: otherwise December would be absolutely sodding unbearable.

Jesus, for the record - according to the Bible - was born in September. You think any wise men would have been in a field watching sheep in the middle of winter?

Thus because they therefore have as much right to it as we do, Christmas in Japan is well underway. Lights are up as only the Japanese can do it: covering every inch of space, in Hello Kitty shapes and Donald Duck shapes and AnPanMan shapes and - surreally - a five foot glow in the dark giraffe. Western Christmas music is playing in every convenience store, every supermarket, every restaurant. Violin versions of Jingle Bells are filtering gently through the local onsen (replacing violin versions of The Carpenters, which is nice, because one should not ever have to listen to Close to you while naked and surrounded by naked old ladies). And all of the merchandise in the shops is Christmas themed. And I mean all of it. In a country where everything is seasonal, and the changeover is so fast that you can`t afford to get attached to anything, every product currently embraces the Christmas spirit. Coffee has little wreaths on the wrapping; chocolate has holly all over it (in more than one way); icecream is decorated with snowflakes. For a month or two every year, you can`t eat or drink anything without knowing that Christmas is just around the corner (and then, on Christmas day, KFC has lines outside it, because it`s chicken and The Colonal has a white beard and a red outfit and looks a bit like the pervy younger brother of Santa).

Japanese children love Christmas, obviously, but they always seem a little wistful, because it`s not a family holiday here: it`s a couple`s holiday. Cards have couples kissing on them; Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse rub noses in public as often as possible, wearing red and white costumes (despite living in different houses, as I discovered at Tokyo Disneyland last Christmas, so it`s clearly all for show, or maybe they`re just like my parents). Loved up couples walk hand in hand down fairy-lit paths that have been fairy-lit especially for loved up couples to walk down, and restaurants are full of tables for two. So, while the children are obviously extremely keen on all the lights and presents, they don`t really get to be as much a part of the celebrations as they do in the West.

Unless they`re my children, that is. I went out last night and bought a little Christmas tree, and as much tinsel and glitter and holly as I could find and decorated my classroom. I bought sweets and filled a sack with them, and sprayed fake snow all over the windows. I put a Christmas cd on, and filled the air with the smell of... well, whatever the Christmas candle smells of. And every single child that walks past makes "oooh" and "aaaah" sounds, and presses their little face up against the window like a tiny oriental Oliver Twist. Which means that I`m going to keep decorating until it`s a grotto, because I want to give all of my kids a little, tiny feeling of the way I used to feel at Christmas time and still feel: a little bit sick with happiness and magic and excitement.

Harai is providing the necessary male reluctance and confusion by sitting in the corner and taking 25 minutes to string one bauble, before announcing that he`s tired and it`s difficult and then lying down on the floor.

For me, the trappings of Christmas still work. I don`t know if this is normal for an adult, but my heart still flips when I see a Christmas tree. When I hear Christmas songs, I`m immediately happy. Christmas lights get me excited (all year round, actually). It`s like in Brave New World where the babies are trained to respond to stimuli: just one fairy light, just one line of We Wish You A Merry Christmas, just one snowflake, and I`m filled with cosy wellbeing and a desire to tell people I love them and eat chocolate. Even more so than normal.

What is strange, though, is that with age I`ve discovered that Christmas no longer needs to be so literal. The excitement and happiness stored up from all the years of beautiful Christmases as a child (nobody can decorate a room like my mum) only need the slightest catalyst to be released. Cold air and wood smoke, for instance. I drive through it every morning, and every single morning it feels like Christmas. Oranges: I drive past an orange tree orchard twice a day, and twice a day I`m back in my bed, waiting for Santa (apprehensively: I didn`t like Santa. He scared me). Never mind the Christmas lights: if I`m driving late at night, all I have to do is lower my eyelashes and the white and red and green road lights all blur and look like decorations. And I don`t need a cd player: I can hum a Christmas song whenever I like, and I do. I`m making Harai extremely uncomfortable.

It doesn`t matter, really, whether Christmas means the birth of Christ, or whether it means presents, or whether it means lights and nice food. It doesn`t matter whether it`s family, or couples, or children, or adults. It doesn`t matter whether it`s a big turkey or a bucket of KFC nuggets. It just matters that at the darkest, coldest time of the year, we all find a way to make ourselves a little bit happier.

And, if possible, to make others a little happier too.

Ming

2010-11-30T21:59:00.001+09:00

My slow and steady linguistic education of the locals is gradually gaining power. Little by little I am making them English. Not English-speaking, but English. And never mind the children - although they are certainly now saying barth instead of baahth - I'm talking specifically about the adults of this sleepy yet hungry little town. Or, at least, I thought I was.

Harai was the first to succumb to my teaching powers: his language is becoming more and more British by the day. This morning he told me he was "utterly knackered" and I swelled up like a proud parent. Shin quickly followed suit, although let's just say that he was more open to the learning process: we have spent many a long road trip trading English swear words for Japanese swear words (which is an unfair exchange, frankly, because we have a lot more, and the Japanese language isn't nearly as rude or as imaginative in its implied violence as ours is).

My final conquest, however, is my new friend Yuki: a Japanese girl with an extraordinary grasp of English, who teaches it in the local English language school: a school which includes many of my brightest and most interesting pupils.

And I think it's fair to say that Yuki is absolutely gagging to be Anglicized.

"Tell me more," she begged over dinner two nights ago. "I want to speak British, not American."
"Okay. So, one of my favourites is sod off."
"Sot off?"
"Sod."
"What does it mean?"
"It means go away. But not as nicely. However, it's definitely less rude than fuck off, and less harsh than bugger off. Literally, sod is a kind of wet compressed mud, but don't worry about that. It also means you annoying person, but with undertones of envy."
"What else?"
"We're flexible in England with any kind of swear word followed by the word off."
"Git off?"
"No. Very good for remembering that one, though. I'm impressed. Actually, it's..." And then I got a little piece of paper and a pen out. "Look. The thing with British swear words is that they're not as simple as they seem. They range in strength, in connotation, in gender, in intention. You can use some of them playfully with your close friends, and you can use them angrily, but if you just fling them about it's going to make you look like a tit."
"A tit?"
"Literally a breast. But it means a fool. I'll write that on the chart here." And I drew a line, from Mild to Strong to Very Bad. And then I started filling it in. I gave each a gender, word derivativation - Yuki knew, for instance, the word bitch but had no idea it meant female dog - and meaning. I also did sub-bubbles, for instance linking 'tart', 'hussy' and 'yo yo knickers' - all quite far to the left - with 'slut', which was relatively far to the right. I also drew dotted lines between words that had similar insinuations: certain ties in term of definition.
"Wow," she said when I had finished and she was staring at the little chart I had made perfectly sized to fit in her wallet. "This is awesome. I'm going home and I'm learning all of these. I have so many really annoying Australian friends, and they're such... knobs. Is that right? Plonkers, if I'm being less harsh, dickheads if I'm being a bit more so. Yes? I'm going to really enjoy telling them so."
"Excellent. Make sure you learn levels, though, so that you can use them appropriately."

This morning, my favourite student - a student I share with Yuki - approached me with her usual lit-up expression (she is a ridiculously intelligent 13 year old, inordinately bored by school and absolutely fascinated with anything Western: she watched Burton's Alice in Wonderland in English, and likes me because I "sound like Alice"). She delights in being mine and Yuki's go-between.
"Holly," she said, and she put her fist out. "Yuki says to give you this." I bumped fists with her.
"Thankyou. Give her this too."
"She says to ask you how's tricks."
I laughed.
"Tricks are awesome, thankyou. How are tricks for you?"
"Spectacular," she said.
I laughed again; that's Yuki's favourite response to anything.
"Do you know what's for lunch, by the way?"
"Pork," she said. And she made a face. "And it's totally minging."

Are you teaching your 13 year old students my precious British slang? I emailed Yuki.
Yes, she emailed back. They love it. Don't worry; not the swear words. Just the slang. You should see them suck it up. Yesterday they got their notepads out and they all carefully wrote To Ming. I ming. You ming. She mings. They ming. It's minging. They minged.
Well, I wrote back. At least they can conjugate it properly.

My linguistic influence is spreading far and wide: from me, to my friends, and back to my students again. I'm just hoping that it doesn't spread even further. To their parents.

As lovely as it is being able to truly immerse myself in another culture by rotting away at their language with my own, I want to keep doing it for a little while. And if all the brightest 13 year olds in the city start talking like 13 year old British children, we may have problems.

They might end up sounding like me.

Backwards

2010-11-29T16:06:00.005+09:00

"Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder." - Thoreau.

I`ve worked my life backwards.

This is something I only realised last night when I was lying in bed, ruminating on my upcoming birthday. Next week I start the very end of my 20s, and so I treated myself to a little imaginary montage of the past decade: a montage that didn`t have a Rocky theme tune, but probably could have done if I hadn`t ben too lazy to get out of bed and turn iTunes on. And, as I was remembering - preparing myself to move forwards into my 29th year (every girl needs a good year of preparation at least before she hits 30: this is a medical fact) - I realised that I had done everything in exactly the wrong order. As if I had lived my life through a Looking Glass.

In my early twenties, I dated a very nice young man. He was intelligent, sensitive, artistic, supportive and absolutely in love with me. We were together for over three years, and eventually we got a flat in a nice part of Oxford and moved in together. At the age of twenty three, I couldn`t get a real job, but I had a real relationship: intense, deep and absolutely ingrained in me. We had a sofa. We had a blue kettle. We had a bright pink wall in our kitchen (okay, so that was me, but perhaps more specifically I had a boy who would let me paint a bright pink wall in our kitchen). He loved my parents; I loved his. He wrote songs for me and filled the bath for me when I was tired. I had moved to be with him (shocker), and we did everything together. We talked of marriage, babies; he had no interest in any other girl, and genuinely thought I was the world`s best catch. I was utterly set.

Until I woke up one morning and realised that I wasn`t happy, and that I couldn`t do it. That I had everything - the lovely boyfriend, the nice house, the trips to Ikea where he didn`t complain, the potential father for a whole bevvy of sweet, intelligent, probably ginger children - and it was all wrong. That what should make me happy inexplicably didn`t. So I ran away, broke his heart and he never spoke to me again. Which still haunts me, but I had no other choice: I had no idea where I was going, or what I wanted, or who I was, but it wasn`t that. It wasn`t her.

And I fell straight out of that relationship into a relationship with my new career, for a PR company in London. Without quite meaning to, I`d gotten myself a job, and I threw myself into it with all the passion of a girl who doesn`t know what she wants and wants to forget about it: working long hours, attending parties, dating really, really unsuitable men. Until I turned around two years later and realised I was on a ladder I had no interest in climbing, and that if I didn`t get off pretty quickly I was going to end up too high to come down again. So I jumped off into unemployment, and wrote a really, really bad book that never got published. I also applied for an international competition, got shortlisted and spent three months of my life running around to radio interviews and tv interviews and doing God Only Knows What for the sake of... something to do. Another direction to run in.

At which point I fell stupidly, insanely in love, moved to Japan and fell apart. Which was absolutely and utterly inevitable, in hindsight: had he not been a morally devoid robot, I was only held together with sellotape anyway. It was just a matter of time before something unstuck me.

My friends have all done it the sensible way. Been stupid in love and fallen apart in their early 20s (and perhaps made a bid or two for fame), gotten a career and worked their way up to a decent company, and then fallen in love again, moved in and bought a sofa. Marriage and babies and puppies and trips to Ikea are therefore the next step. Me: I`ve gone the opposite way. Started with the stability and abundant success, and spent ten years taking it all apart. Started with The Dream, and pulled at it and pulled at it until there was nothing left. Until I`m working abroad as an extremely overqualified TEFL teacher, living on my own in the middle of a rice field and surrounded by people who don`t speak the same language as me.

And I have never been happier.

That was what I realised last night. I had it all at the beginning, and I have spent my 20s reaching each dream goal and realising that it wasn`t what I wanted. And it has taken reaching them for me to realise that they couldn`t make me happy. My life - which up til now I have seen as a series of failures, and a series of me running away from responsibility - hasn`t been pointless: it has been driving me closer and closer to knowing who I am, and what I want. To knowing that, for good or bad, my path is different to the one I was expected to take. To realising that every single step I have taken has been a good one.

And no step towards happiness, I have finally realised, has been as pivotal as the one that hurt the most. The heartbreak that ripped me up exactly one year ago next week (he broke my heart on my birthday, which was sweet of him) was both inevitable and necessary: held together with bits of sticky plastic as I was, it was the only thing that allowed to break down and start again. The only thing strong enough to force me to revalue my life, and realise that I had to start from the beginning: to learn, from the very start, what I loved, and what I was good at, and who I was. To be somebody I understood. To learn how to be alone. To learn how to love that person without needing anybody else to love it for me.

I`ve done it. Slowly - so, so slowly - I have put myself together again: infinitely better than I was to start with. I have started from the beginning. I have let go of what I thought I wanted; started understanding the things that do actually make me happy. Freedom. Independence. Travel. Art. Writing. The things that make me me, and give my life a meaning.

And if I have been quiet for the last two weeks, it`s because I have been scared of rocking the bliss, and scared of announcing it. Scared of saying: I wake up every morning in a house I love, listening to music I love, drive a scooter I love through countryside I love, to a school I love, to play with children I love, and I see friends I love and write a book that I love more than all of it. And every week I speak to my family, and every day I make plans for a life that has no bounds, and no limits, and no restrictions. A life that is as free and as full as I want it to be. And it`s not Japan that has fixed that for me. It`s the me I have changed here.

Happiness cannot be chased. For the last ten years I have run after it so fiercely: chased the dreams I thought were meant for me, and been made so sad. And it was only when I was broken and had to start again that I realised it was there all along: in knowing who I am. For while I`m only at the beginning, I finally know how to find myself again the next time I get lost.

I`ve lived everything backwards, and I`m glad. Because I am here, and I am more me than I have ever been before. More me than I ever could have been, trapped in a house in a small town in England, or working my way up a career ladder in London, or living my life on the other side of a lens in Australia. More me, because I`m no longer even slightly scared of where my life is taking me, or what I`ll end up doing or being. Because it will all be great, as long as I have the courage to keep believing that it can be.

It has taken every single step to bring me here: to a place where I can be happy. It has taken every single step, and especially the ones that hurt.

While I didn`t use a Rocky theme tune, I could have done. Because the next time I slip down, I know it`s going to be a hell of a lot easier to pick myself back up again.

And that deserves some kind of music.

Word

2010-11-24T20:58:00.003+09:00

When I was little, there was only one thing more important to me than winning an argument, and that was having the last word.

I don't mean figuratively. I mean absolutely literally. It didn't matter who it was with - with my mum, or my teacher, or my little sister, or the lady in the shops who looked at my sister in a strange way - as long as I was the last one talking, as far as I was concerned I had won. I don't know where this logic came from, but it was unquestioned and unquestionable. I remember, in fact, at least one argument that consisted of:

Me: I hate youuuuuuuuuu. (Slams bedroom door.)
Mum: Right. You're going to stay in there until you calm down, young lady. (Starts walking back down the stairs.)
Me: (Opens bedroom door.) I will not. (Slams bedroom door shut again.)
Mum: You most certainly will. I'm not having that kind of behaviour in my house. (Continues walking down the stairs.)
Me: (Opens bedroom door again.) I'll come out whenever I like. (Slams door again.)
Mum: We'll see about that. (Goes into living room and shuts living room door.)
Me: (Opens bedroom door, goes down stairs, opens living room door.) See? (Goes back upstairs and shuts bedroom door.)
Mum: (Puts head in hands.)

I even invented a game with my sister, for when we shared a bedroom, that allowed me to practice my art in the comfort of my own bed. It involved each person saying one word until one of us fell asleep, and the last person to speak won. (Although obviously there was nobody to gloat to at that point, so it was a very quiet kind of success.)

It therefore comes as no surprise to me that I did one of the most peculiar things I've done in a long time today, without realising that I was still playing.

Today, I wrote my will. I'm 28 years old, I own absolutely nothing, and I wrote my will.

I also wrote goodbye letters to my immediate family on nice paper that I went out and bought especially. It has little cartoon fairytales on it, because a) I live in Japan, and cute paper is the only kind of paper they sell and b) what do you write your final words on anyway? I spent a good ten minutes in the shops trying to decide between different levels of cuteness, and giggling in the process. Would it be horribly inappropriate to tell my loved ones I would always love them on Alvin and The Chipmunks paper? How about Harry Potter? Would Hello Kitty and Sesame Street (yes, they've teamed up) alleviate the pain? How about Donald Duck? A last little attempt at giving them a chuckle? Or would the joke get lost somewhere in all of the pain of me being, you know, dead?

And then, when I had chosen the most appropriate paper, I spent three hours writing sincere, heartfelt letters to my beloved family - separately, one to each - and sobbing into my jumper. Wailing incoherently until snot was pouring out of my nose and I had to sit with a kitchen towel next to me. Sobbing and occasionally giggling because I was well aware of the pathos involved in crying hysterically about my own death, and of writing about myself in the past tense, and fully, fully conscious of just how much of a plonker I was being.

The thing is: I'm almost definitely not going to die right now. I have no intention of it at all. But a beautiful white pigeon flew into the window at school today and snapped its neck in front of me. North Korea and South Korea are - as of yesterday - ready to launch various atomic weapons at each other, and I live 150 miles away. I drive a scooter 60kms every single day when I am a terrible, terrible driver. I eat Jaffa Cakes lying down in bed, which is a choking hazard. Men who like wearing my underwear know where my house is. I appear to have the immune system of a gnat. So it doesn't seem as morbid after a little thought as it does straight away to prepare, just in case. To be ready, just in case. Life is stupidly fragile, and do I want the people I love to never know what they mean to me? After all, death is never unexpected. It's just the timing that's up for debate.

There are people in my life who are extraordinary: who have such kindness and grace that it takes my breath away. Who have such integrity, heart and passion, humour, intelligence and creativity, that my entire life - and everything I am - was built and now hangs on the people they are. Who have been there for me, who have supported me, who have cherished me and protected me: who have given everything for me. Who have loved me more than I deserve to be loved. And I will not leave them without telling them that every part of me that's good has come from them, and that everything in me that is not I've tried to push away for them. I will not treat death as if it doesn't exist, just because I would rather it didn't: for my sake, and for theirs. And if it means sobbing into my own jumper at the ripe old age of 28 and leaving stains on cute Japanese cartoon paper, then so be it. I have chosen the right to say goodbye. And I have chosen to live my life as if it could end at any moment. Because one day it will.

Of all the arguments I have ever had, and of all the arguments I have ever won, this is the most important. Because I am not arguing with life: I am arguing with death. And when that last door slams, I will not stay behind it: I will come back out with more to say. I will let words continue to be more powerful than life, or death, and I will be speaking of love when I am no longer here to say anything else. And with my final goodbye I will win my final argument.

If there is only one thing of me I want to be left behind, it's love. Every single kind of it.

And that - when everything is over - will be my last, last word.

Tired

2010-11-21T18:21:00.003+09:00

I'm sick of the sound of my own voice.

It happens sometimes. To everyone, I hope, but certainly to me. I get irritated with my own thoughts and my own noise and whatever it is I'm saying or trying to say, and all I want is to shut myself the hell up.

Which is harder than you'd think. Even when I'm on my scooter - ostensibly driving - I'm chatting away: internally, of course, but nevertheless with great enthusiasm. Ideas, observations, criticisms. Hopes, dreams, memories, jokes; words relentlessly pouring through my head. A typical minute would be: I need a way to make that photo richer, maybe a filter, I could angle it so the light is - is that character saying enough? isn't she a bit two dimensional? what if I - wow, look at that cloud, it's really prett- could i stop the scooter and take a pictu - I'm late for work, and I don't care. It smells like oranges, and Christmas. What does Christmas mean to Japan? Is it time to start thinking about Christmas yet? Ooh, if I sing wearing a helmet my chin vibrates. There's a heron; I remember that heron last year, on the beach with Sa... No. Think of something else. The heron is flying away anyway. There's another one! Two herons! Is that lucky, or is that just for crows? Am I going too fast? If I crashed my scooter, would people miss me? Maybe for a few minutes. God, I'm so replaceable. My nose just snotted on my scarf, and I sort of want to lick it. Hey dude, get out of my bit of the road or I'm going to stop my scooter and punch you right in the - That smoke smells amazing; I wish I had somebody to make a fire for me. But what if the filter was tinted, would that wor - no, what if I give a little more of the plot to the other charac - another heron! Three! That's definitely lucky, right? Today is going to be a good day, the herons have ordained it. And so on.

I'm trying to get away from it this week. I'm worn out with it, and so tired, and so confused by the point of it. So unsure of who could possibly be interested, when I'm not. So tired of hearing myself. I'm learning to play the piano again because it doesn't involve words. Sleeping, because I dream in pictures. Onsening. Vacuuming things. Drawing. Anything that doesn't involve thinking or speaking or any kind of language. And it's working a little bit, but not quite enough. It's like sitting on a really noisy child, who's squealing and yelling and trying to pinch my bottom so I'll let them back up again. And half of my energy is spent just hissing Be quiet. For five minutes. Please? Then you can come back out and do what you want.

So I'm not indulging the sound of my own voice this week. I'm taking a holiday. This week, the words in my head are doing what I tell them to do. And so I'm not writing this blog, and I'm not talking for the hell of it, and I'm not even going to think if I can get away with it (of course I can get away with it: I'm a teacher). No words, outwardly or inwardly. Not until my own voice has learnt how to behave, and each word isn't so damn heavy and exhausting.

And maybe, eventually, I'll train my own voice how and when to shut the hell up.

Whispered

2010-11-16T09:03:00.000+09:00

Ten hours, and only because for nine of them everybody was asleep.

I`m not telling anyone, Grandad emailed. Especially not your grandma. Although, for the record, learning to ride a motorbike makes you a better driver. And he used to be Chief Constable of Hertfordshire: he should know.

Mum went predictably bonkers. Never mind your father. He`s a pussycat compared to what I`m about to do to you. Followed by three pages of a lot of allusions to God and praying, even though I`m not absolutely convinced mum is religious. She only appears to be religious when I`m trying to drive motorbikes. Oh, and I`m ringing your dad right now, she added. Right this second. Hold on to your seat.

Dad, however, is worryingly silent. Zero. Nada. Which leaves me to wonder: is, perhaps, there a tiny part of my father that`s proud of me for wanting a motorbike? We`re peas in a pod, after all, so if I want to drive one, isn`t there a small chance that my dad has always secretly wanted to drive one too? Maybe - under all the fatherly terror - there is a little bit of him thinking that`s my girl. Maybe there`s a little bit of him thinking: go Hol.

Or maybe he`s just busy warming up his vocal chords so he doesn`t strain anything on our next phone call.

Perhaps motorbikes are dangerous after all.

Whispers

2010-11-15T08:46:00.003+09:00

I`m about to play a game I like to call Blog Whispers. It`s a simple game, and wonderful for many reasons: not least because it gets me out of telling my father things I don`t want to tell my father.

It works like this:

I blog. My grandad, my Aunty Judith and my mum read the blog post at various points of the week: usually in that order. If my grandad reads it first, the chain is slow because he doesn`t like tattling on me, so he`ll tell my grandma and then she`ll probably tell my dad next time she sees him by slipping it accidentally into the conversation after making him a coffee so that she can slip it accidentally into the conversation. If my Aunty Judith reads it first the chain is very slow, because she lives in France and so she would have to email my dad specifically in order to tell him, and so she may ring my grandparents and ask them to bring it up if they haven`t already. If my mum reads it first, it`s like a wick soaked in petrol: the whole place goes up with a bang immediately, and my dad has been rung before she`s even finished the sentence.

Needless to say, my dad has never, ever read this blog. To the best of my knowledge, he wouldn`t know how to find it if he wanted to. Which is great, because when he finally found out that The Boy existed this summer, it took my entire family to prevent him tracking him down and breaking both of his legs.

Anyway: the race is on. I`m about to see exactly how long it takes for this news to reach my dad.

Next summer, I`m taking a motorbike exam.

Not a scooter exam. A motorbike exam. For big, fat motorbikes. You know how they say that if you start smoking marijuana it always leads to harder drugs? It`s the same for driving fast. You start on a 30kmh scooter and next thing you know you`re driving at 40kmh and the little speed light is flashing so hard it`s about to fall off and you`re glaring at the big motorbikes zooming past you and thinking you total bastards. I feel like a granny on Scooby. I love him, obviously, but I suspect that by next summer I`m going to want to get off and push him everywhere to see if it makes him go faster. And I`m hooked on it: on the freedom, the independence, the peace, the excitement. The feeling that you are totally in charge of your own direction. I am totally hooked. I can`t imagine wanting to drive a car again. (Until I have a child, and then I`ll probably try and strap them to my back and maybe go a little tiny bit slower.)

Which doesn`t mean I`m getting a motorbike next summer. They`re too expensive, they`re too big, they`re too much maintenance: my life is too transient and floaty to allow me to invest in a proper mobile phone at the moment, let alone a vehicle. But it`ll mean I`m better at scootering, I can drive a bigger scooter, and I can drive a motorbike if I want to. And that`s the key point: if I want to. The key to all freedom. Opening as many doors as possible. So that if I get into a situation in Nepal or Vietnam where it might be a good idea to get somewhere else fast, I can hire a motorbike and do it. If I want to.

I think it`ll be about five days. My dad is the most playful father in the world, but something about having his eldest child crushed under the wheels of a lorry is probably going to make him lose his sense of humour, so it`ll be about five days before we have the following conversation:

Dad (lips pulled tight): "What the fuck do you think you`re playing at? What`s all this about a motorbike? Don`t even think about it. Do you know how many people die on motorbikes every year? Do you know how dangerous they are?"
Me: "I didn`t say I was getting a motorbike. I said I was going to take a test and get a license."
Dad: "I don`t want you anywhere near a fucking motorbike, Meatloaf Junior. You get a license and it`s just a slippery slope. You are not getting on a motorbike, do you hear me?"
Me: "I`m 29 in three weeks. I can do what I want."
Dad: "I don`t care if you`re bloody 63 in three weeks, you are not getting on a sodding motorbike. Not now, not next summer, not ever. End of conversation."
Me: "I am."
Dad: "Can I still ground you?"

Five days. Much less if my mum makes it to a computer in between now and then. And - whenever this news reaches my dad - I am going to be in so much trouble. Which is why I`m letting someone else tell him.

Let the game begin.

Japan

2010-11-12T19:33:00.007+09:00

This morning, everything changed.

I have a confession to make. When I came to Japan in August 2009, I didn't come for Japan. I was running away and I was running towards: away from a life that was boring me, and towards a boy I loved more than I thought I could love. It wasn't about Japan at all, and it never was. It could have been anywhere: if The Boy had been in Korea, I'd have gone there. If he'd lived in Poland, I'd have gone there. In a hut in Mongolia? I'd have followed him. I didn't care, as long as I was away from England and with him. Away and towards.

My interest in Japan was not - as I said on my visa application - lifelong. It wasn't even six months long. I had never had any desire to see it, and no desire to find out anything about it. I didn't know one single word, and didn't even know where it was on a map. The process of falling in love with a half Japanese man changed that, slowly, but it only changed my interest in the culture of one person. The language he spoke, the food he ate, the heritage he had been born with. The customs he understood and the festivals he had taken part in. Japan became of interest to me simply as the country that had helped to produce the thing I loved best, and as the country I wanted to be a part of because I wanted to be a part of him.

When I arrived in Japan, that didn't change. I loved it, obviously, but I loved it as a beautiful backdrop to love. It wasn't Mount Fuji at sunrise: it was Mount Fuji at sunrise behind the boy I adored. It wasn't Tokyo Tower: it was Tokyo Tower on one side and the boy I loved on the other. It wasn't a shrine: it was a quiet place where we could hold hands. It wasn't a blue sky: it was a blue sky that meant we could lie on the beach and kiss. It wasn't Christmas day in a foreign city: it was Christmas day in a foreign city with the most beautiful boy in the world. Japan was all tied up with him. I loved it because I loved him, and the two were part of each other.

On the day it fell apart - on the day he went to bed with somebody else - Japan remained a backdrop, but it became a backdrop to confusion. Unsure why he changed so suddenly, unsure why he couldn't look me in the eyes, unsure why he kept crying for no reason, the backdrop receded even further. It wasn't a boat party in Tokyo: it was water I stared at as I tried to ring him and got nothing but voicemail. It wasn't a beautiful sunset; it was the sunset where he told me he didn't know if we had a future, but not why. And - when he eventually told me what exactly he had done with our future, and how many times - Japan became simply another part of the picture that hurt. The Japanese onsens I would go to because the hot water made the hole in my chest ache less; the Japanese rain that made it okay to cry. The Japanese toilets I would hide in; the Japanese food I could no longer eat.

I didn't know. I was too close to it to see the truth: that Japan was The Boy. He wasn't Japanese to me: he was Japan. And when he broke my heart, the only thing I wanted to do was get the hell out. To run away from the country that was him, and had always been him. That had only started existing for me when he did. Because every single thing that was Japanese hurt me. The places we'd been, yes, but more than that: the country itself seemed to poke at me and prod at me so that every single step, no matter where it was, hurt all of the time. There was no refuge. And, just as I missed him and fell apart for him, so Japan cut away at me constantly. And when I went home to England in March, it was the first time I had been able to breathe for so long I wasn't quite sure how to anymore. Thin, ill, unhappy, heartbroken, devastated, I returned to the English soil I had left when I was so in love and happy, and I could barely stand up.

At the time, nobody understood why I wanted to go back to Japan. Even I wasn't sure; I accepted the new job in an almost drunk haze, and booked the plane tickets like a sleepwalker. And, frankly, I have no idea how I managed to do it. How I managed to get back on a plane - two stone lighter, ten years younger, still in millions of pieces - and fly back to the country that had destroyed me. To fight the demons again, when I had already lost so badly. Completely on my own.

And I still don't know how I found the courage to do it, but this morning I woke up and I suddenly knew why.

My heart has healed, at last, and Japan is finally mine. When I ride through rice fields and smell the orange trees, I am simply riding through rice fields and smelling the orange trees. When I sit and watch the ocean, I'm sitting and watching the ocean. When a small child lights up and screams my name, it's their face I see and my name I hear. When I go to an onsen, there is no pain to take away. I speak a language that is my language and not his, and hear songs that he understands but does not own. The mountains are mine. They are my white herons and it is my wood smoke. The insects outside are mine: the sunsets are mine. Japan is not him anymore: it is Japan, and it is mine. And - in the process of taking it away from him and separating them out - I have lost a man and fallen in love with his country instead.

The Boy is gone - from here, from me - and I am glad. But he will never be gone completely. Because in loving Japan - boy and country - I have become somebody better. I have shown incredible weakness and desperation, I have felt love for the first time in all of its power, but I have also found beauty and strength, bravery and independence, kindness and compassion. I have lost myself completely, and found more of myself in return. And I have been crushed and found the courage to start again. To run towards, instead of away. To become the person I didn't think I could be: somebody who finally likes herself.

Japan is no backdrop: it is a country that gives as much you have the strength to ask for. And in returning, I have fallen in love with it all over again.

And this time it's not going anywhere.

Cheeky

2010-11-10T18:31:00.002+09:00

I am not a happy bunny. At the local police station were:

11 pairs of knickers
2 bras
1 bikini
1 swimming costume
2 pairs of trousers
1 pair of leggings
3 shirts
4 dresses
Any number of black socks/tights that I refused to pick up and identify.

All mine. My neighbour has obviously been a busy boy over the last six months, because there were 512 items of clothes spread out on tarpauling that filled an entire side wing of the police station. And all I could think was Oh Jesus Christ, I hope he took some of mine. Because how embarrassing would that be? My 40 year old male neighbour, who has the "hobby" (the policeman's word) of collecting girl's clothes from washing lines, not taking any of mine? It would be the ultimate insult. It would mean that even a 40 year old pervert doesn't like my fashion sense.

As it was, I am still extremely unhappy for the following reasons:

a) Out of 500 items, 25 pieces is not that many. I left my clothes outside for a very long time, frequently: he had ample opportunity to take more, and one might even say I was begging him to. Which means he didn't want to. Which was very rude of him.

b) The things he did take were unpleasant. I don't actually want them back, and I haven't got any room for them in my wardrobe because I've replaced them with nicer things. And now the police are going to make me have them, which is very rude of them.

c) He altered my trousers. He inserted a shorter elastic into the waistband. Which offends me for four reasons: i] because it means that he was obviously wearing them ii] because it means that he is slimmer than me iii] because his sewing skills are better than mine and iv] because now I can't get into them.

d) He forced me to go shopping all over again for my own bloody clothes. I don't like shopping. Especially not twice. And I wanted all the items that weren't actually mine instead.

e) I was forced to acknowledge the fact that out of 500 items of lacy, flowery, flouncy, pretty Japanese clothes, my checked shirts and plain cotton Marks and Spencers knickers were the least feminine, the least attractive and the least sexy of all of them. And then I was forced to admit to owning them in front of three nice looking policemen.

f) They made me take photographs with each item. I had to point at them while they danced around with an SLR. Except that nobody told me what facial expression I was supposed to be adopting - angry, bitter, relieved, hostile, disgusted, confused, insulted - so I ended up being photographed pointing at my own knickers and grinning inanely at the camera. At one point I believe that I tried to do the "Peace" sign. I do not know what they will do with these photographs, but they had better not end up in the local paper.

g) I had to buy cheesecake to get over the shock of it. And it was very expensive.

So, no: I am not a happy bunny in the slightest. This thief has made a mockery of me, with his fussy fashion sense and his alterations and his insinuations about my weight and hip size. And I have many nice knickers that he didn't take; many nice pieces of underwear that are not multipacks from Marks and Spencers. If he is reading this, I would like to draw his attention - for instance - to the polka dot Elle MacPherson bra he took. I have more of them. He should have just been a little more patient. I would have washed them at some stage.

If there's anything worse than a 40 year old thief with a penchant for the knickers of strangers, it's a 40 year old thief with only a penchant for some of them. I didn't see anything belonging to Baba, for instance. And - while I'm embarrassed that my knickers have now been seen by many, many strangers - I'm relieved that I was at least one of them.

Just.

Pants

2010-11-09T19:23:00.001+09:00

My issues with underwear in Japan have been ongoing.

It's not very easy to buy knickers here - with hips my width - so losing them is extremely tiresome. Six months ago, the wind blew them away. Then a set of Borrowers stole some. I asked my mum to send me more, and she did: they disappeared too. A little bemused, I bought fifteen pairs when I was back in England for the summer - some of which were quite nice - and spent this morning running around the house screaming Why can't I find any bloody knickers again? at the top of my voice. I threw socks around in a hissy fit; I checked the laundry basket four times. I even climbed into my cupboard to see if they were hiding at the back somewhere. There wasn't a knicker to be found. I have spent six months convinced that I am so bad at doing laundry, my knickers actually vanish. Into thin air. Like hair elastics.

I just had a visit from the local Police.

I panicked, obviously. Somebody shows up at your house in a foreign language and flashes a badge at you like they do in the movies: you panic. I immediately got my Legal Alien card out and gave it to them, and then I apologised profusely for leaving cigarette butts outside my house, and then I spotted an empty wine bottle left next to the doormat and apologised for that too. Convinced that they were about to arrest me for being messy, I bowed three or four hundred times and said sorry as many times as I could and tried to flutter my eyelashes, unsuccessfully. They didn't understand me, and I didn't understand them. It was great fun, in a perverted, scary kind of way.

And then I noticed that they were both blushing.

"Your....." one of them managed to blurt out eventually. "Your underwear."
"My what?"
"Your underwear. We have your underwear."
Silence.
"What?"
"Your underwear. It's in Police Station."
"What's my underwear doing in the Police Station?"
"Somebody stole it. Been stealing it for long time. Did you notice?"
"Umm. No."
"You not notice?"
"Umm, maybe," I said, because what else could I say: I thought the washing machine was making them disappear and there were small people living under my floorboards?
"We have underwear as evidence now. You can come tomorrow and pick them all up."
Silence.
"Thankyou."
"We are very sorry for your underwear."
"Me too. Umm - who was it?"
"Bad man. He tell us. He is..." - and then they made the sign for handcuffs.

I don't know what's more worrying: that a stranger has been stealing my underwear; that it's being held as evidence in a Police Station; that I sleep without locking any of my doors or that I thought I had a magic washing machine and fairies.

But I do know one thing. When I go and pick it all up tomorrow, it had better be bloody clean.

Talent

2010-11-05T15:51:00.001+09:00

It turns out that Facebook isn`t the only way one can procrastinate. Who knew? For people with real skill, with real passion, with a real desire to spend their time doing totally pointless and irrelevant things, there is always a way. And - without sounding too arrogant - I like to think I am one of them.

Today, I have exceeded myself: probably because I have so much more time to waste now that I am no longer as socially interactive.

First of all, I made a coffee.

Then I discussed with Harai the difference between "mosquito" and "eskimo" (because I look like an eskimo, today, and not a mosquito).

I tidied my desk. And retidied it. And messed it up again. And discussed the villains from Spiderman 1,2 and 3 and found pictures to illustrate my point (which is that there are villains in Spiderman 1, 2 and 3).

Then I created a brand new email account. I changed all the settings and played with the colours so it looked pretty. I moved all of my contacts - one by one - from one email account to another. Of course, there was a button I could press that would do it all for me in two seconds, but oh no: one button? That`s of no use to me. If it doesn`t take me twenty five minutes it`s not what I`m looking for. I caught up with a few old friends by email - included a few little adhoc and nostalgic stories about our childhoods together in them, just for the sake of effective bonding - and updated my email profile even though it is set as private. I investigated every single thing that could be done on the settings page (including finding out what a POPmail is: very useful), and then I investigated all the other things that could be done on all of the related pages that have ever been linked to or will ever be linked to.

When that was fully, fully explored - and no corners were cut, let me assure you - Gmail suggested that I set up a Google home page, so - because it was done so politely - I did just that. I added a currency exchange button and a Wikipedia button and a button showing pretty pictures and a button that had a spider on it, until I remembered that I don`t like spiders and removed it again. I moved them around the page many, many times. I changed the theme, so that I would feel truly comfortable when I was online. And - in a matter of merely five or six hours - I was technologically very, very efficient. I had saved many, many minutes of time annually.

Then I wrote a paragraph of my book.

When that was done - in about three minutes - I went outside and sat on the pavement for a little while, practicing my Japanese by asking lots of questions about vegetables in English. Then I swept the English room. Then I decided to make a little display of Western Celebrities photos - including Johnny Depp - on the board. For the sake of the children, obviously.

I made another coffee. And discussed with Harai the computer game he is playing ("Fighters of God." Not "Fighters of Goat.")

I read a Japanese fairytale because the front cover had a dog on it.

I searched for Nice Beaches In Vietnam on Google. And established that there are some.

I wrote another paragraph of my book. This took two and a half minutes.

And then I went back to see if I should probably change my new email account theme to something a little more creative.

One day, no lessons, eight hours to myself - undisturbed - and I have been utterly, utterly unproductive. I have been unproductive with such skill, and such devotion, and such passion, that I wonder if perhaps this isn`t my real talent. Sod writing: I am The Procrastination Girl. I can find anything to do that isn`t what I`m supposed to do. Even without Facebook. And that, as far as I`m concerned, is an achievement in itself. Most people have become so used to procrastinating in just one way, they`ve forgotten that there are many, many other ways to do it.

This afternoon, when I`d changed my email account theme all over again (it has Ninjas on it now), I went back to write my book and realised - as if I had ever forgotten - that I had just one more way to procrastinate. Just one more way to push the inevitable back a little, and roll around in it a little longer.

And thankyou. Because you`ve just read it.

Learner

2010-11-04T09:27:00.004+09:00

Never let it be said that I am not a genius. In the task of Getting People To Not Try And Kill Me, I have found the ultimate scooter weapon:

Learner Plates.

They are magic. Suddenly, nobody is cutting me up anymore. Nobody is beeping. Nobody is revving behind me, or trying to race me at lights. People are giving me such a wide berth that they`re in danger of driving into the barrier on the other side of the road. With one large sticker, purchased for 60 pence and intended for cars, I`m not That Racer Who Needs To Be Taught A Lesson anymore: I`m Just A Little Beginner, Bless Her. I`m not cocky and arrogant: I`m brave and vulnerable. I`m no longer That Crap Driver Who Wobbles: I`m Doing My Very Best, Poor Thing. I`m not Driving Too Fucking Slow; I`m Being Very Sensible And Respecting Big Dangerous Vehicles Like Us. Nobody glares at me anymore: they look at me fondly and paternally as they take a twenty metre detour around me. Look at her go, I can literally see them thinking. Look how gutsy she is. Why, she could be my own daughter. I must take extra special care not to hit her or frighten the poor little thing with my big angry van.

And, just like that, I`ve finally discovered what most women learn in kindergarten: that faking vulnerability - or simply admitting what was there in the first place - brings fondness and security. That being soft and humble and wide eyed and oh-so-scared-of-the-world makes the world want to protect you. Because as long as you let everyone believe you need them to take care of you - as long as you`ve made it clear that you`re lesser, and softer, and smaller and passive - people will take care of you. As long as you convince them you think they`re powerful, they`ll give you all the power. The trick of wiley women since the beginning of time. The trick that never, ever fails to work: that of perceived weakness.

The trick I`m using this once simply so that the world doesn`t keep actively trying to run me over.

I`m no more vulnerable today than I was yesterday when I was shaking my fist and driving into fences. I drive exactly the same: at the same speed, in the same part of the road, with the same wobbliness. I`m no more or less capable of being crushed by a truck: if something large and steel hits me, I`m still just as screwed. And I`m not scared at all. I`ve jumped off a mountain with a piece of material attached to my back: going 30kmh on a small piece of metal doesn`t frighten me in the slightest. But with one outward sign, I`ve made everyone think that it does.

And that, apparently, makes all the difference.

Face Off

2010-11-03T21:53:00.002+09:00

My relationship with Facebook has always been a tumultuous one. Like lovers we've flirted, argued, fallen out, become obsessed with each other, gotten bored, broken up and declared that we will never, ever have anything more to do with each other again if it kills us: repeatedly. I've even done what I do with all of my most passionate relationships: burnt bridges with my writing that ensure - hypothetically - that there is no going back even if I want to (and I do always want to).

Like any love, Facebook is often wonderful: a tool that allows ease of communication that our parent's generation couldn't imagine. Friends in one place: their lives and their pictures and their thoughts in one place. The ability to be constantly plugged in to the people you love, as well as many people you don't. A source of entertainment, of security, of support. A great way to flirt, to hook up, to meet people of the opposite sex (I've started at least two relationships with it). Fun. Interesting. Funny. For many people, Facebook is a great and noble thing.

It isn't for me. And I can't do it anymore.

Facebook creeps me out. The love has gone - died, finally - and the whole thing creeps me out. Never mind that instead of writing a tricky chapter of my book I'm procrastinating by looking at wedding photos of people I've never even seen; never mind that instead of preparing for my classes I'm changing my profile picture. Never mind that I've seen 45 photos of a baby somebody I knew 20 years ago just had. Never mind that I actually find myself caring if somebody tags an unflattering photo of me, as if anyone doesn't know what I actually look like. Never mind that instead of reading Steinbeck I'm reading the status update of a person I met three times in 2002. This is all peripheral: a waste of time, of course, but time is easy to throw away. I also spend at least five or six minutes a day talking to insects, and that's a waste of time too.

No: the creepiness runs deeper than that, and my problem is this:

We have evolved over a very long time to exist as individual entities. In ourselves, with ourselves; with our own thoughts, in private. If we were supposed to be aware of everything that everybody we have ever met is thinking, seeing, doing, or feeling constantly, we would have evolved so that we can do that: we would have a small inbuilt radio in our brains, tuned into our peers. We would be able to convey our thoughts telepathically. If our lives were supposed to be exposed to everyone all the time, we would all live in one large room - like some kind of futuristic orgy - and talk at each other all the time and compare how fat we've all got or how old we're all looking now, or how successful/well travelled we've become, or how quickly each of us got "snapped up".

This hasn't happened. We are still separate entities, and yet we have started living like we're not. And I simply can't handle the noise. I don't want to know the thoughts of hundreds of people at once: many of which I didn't want to know the thoughts of when they were actually in my lives. I don't want to hear their jokes, or know how much they drank, or what they're doing on a Friday night. I don't want to see their new house, or their new haircut. If they're my friends, and I love them, I want them to tell me - properly, in time, as they choose - what they want to tell me: me, and not everyone. How they're feeling, what they're doing: what they've done to their hair and why. But a blanket form of communication? It's just too damn noisy. Like walking into an electrical shop with every single item turned on. I just want to listen to one goddamn CD at a time.

And it's more than even that. Our lives all take one individual direction at a time - we can only ever float on one current - but Facebook makes me feel like everyone is on one big tide: coming in and going out again at the same time. And I don't want to feel that. I don't want to subconsciously direct my life because of what everyone else is doing: feel pressure to marry because everyone else is, or get a real job because my friends all have them, or go to lots of parties so that I have photos too. I don't want to pitch my life into the mass and compare it, contrast it, fight for it, defend it. I don't want to feel like life is in any way a competition. I don't want to either feel proud of it in comparison - as free as I am, and as independent - or ashamed, because I am alone and taking so many risks. I don't want to know if I win or lose. I don't want my life to be in any way pulled or tugged by the lives of others: by the masses that sweep me along every time I click a button. I just want to do what is right for me. And take my own direction regardless.

The thing is: life fluctuates. While making friends is part of its beauty, so - too - is losing them. Just as we take people into our lives, so should we let them back out again: if I've learnt anything this year, it's that holding on to anything is not natural. Knowing everyone forever is not natural. And hearing them constantly - throwing our lives in to their current and letting ourselves be tugged along with them - is not natural.

I know who my friends are. I know the people are who are there when I'm sad, or will laugh with me when I'm not: I know the people whose engagements and weddings and babies I will be thrilled by, because I will be a part of them. I know who I care about, and who cares about me; I don't need to be reminded by a photo of them and a few lines of writing every few days. Because the people I love I will love away from Facebook, and the people I don't will fade away: just as they were supposed to. And my life will continue in its own direction, in its own way, as it should. Quietly and passionately and bravely and independently. Genuinely and with integrity. Without all of the noise.

Contentment in life is not about turning on all the music you can find at once and playing it as loudly as you can: it's about finding the pieces you love and listening to them, one by one. It's about following your own tune.

And now that I'm no longer a part of Facebook, maybe it'll be a little easier to do that.

1.2 billion

2010-11-02T15:16:00.003+09:00

Fact: There are 1.2 billion blogs in the world, and 95% of them are dead.

I`ve lost my readers. I don`t know where I put them, but one minute they were here and the next minute: poof. Gone. Much like the keys to my scooter yesterday, which the man at the petrol station put in the bin by accident; leaving me to wander around the garage patting my pockets for twenty five minutes thinking I had finally gone senile. Thousands of readers, skamoosh: just like that. Poof. And I`m patting my pockets but I can`t for the life of me work out where you`ve all disappeared to.

Some countries have run away quicker than others. Japan? Almost invisible, now. America and Australia? Scuttling away as fast as they can. England`s still hanging on in there - thanks to my mum and my sporadically interested sister - and Eastern Europe is still checking in now and then, to see how I`m doing. But Asia? It`s pretending it never even knew I was here in the first place.

I can`t work out what it is I`ve said. It`s all been very sudden. I`ve sniffed my armpits and established they`re okay - normal after a morning spent pulling sweet potatoes out of the ground - and I`ve licked my hand and smelled it: seems fine. I`ve checked my recent posts and I don`t think I`ve said anything more offensive than usual - ignorant and stupid, yes, but no more intentionally than ever - and while my mood has been a little more erratic than ordinarily, I`ve been much worse. Even more worryingly, a lot of my hits now appear to be coming from people looking for "the biggest kissing lips in the world" (no idea: not me), "how to cook goya with natto" (don`t), "naked women in Japan" (plenty, but don`t look on the internet: they`re much nicer in real life) and "where to buy a male bra" (again: not here, although I might look into it). It all feels a bit like I`ve closed my eyes on stage, accidentally broken wind or stuck my middle finger up at the audience and then opened them again to find them replaced with a load of porn-obsessed, natto-obsessed, bra-wearing strangers who aren`t sure why they`re here either and are angry that they`ve been given the wrong directions.

I don`t want to care, but I do. I care hugely. I`m racing around, trying to work out what it is I`ve done. Removed myself from Facebook and thus insulted my friends? Yes: but not because I don`t like anyone; just because I need to focus on my own life rather than procrastinating via the lives of others (I am easily distracted by anyth Ooh, a cat). Stereotyped Japanese drivers? Yes, but only because it made me laugh. Stopped making this blog interactive? Yes, but only because I`m very shy and scared of what people might say. Accidentally insulted God and His Acts? Yes, but only because I`m neither very funny nor very religious. Admitted that sometimes I get sad, and sometimes I feel lonely? Stopped or continued talking about The Boy? ( I can`t work out which is worse, or which I`ve done.) Admitted that I worry, sometimes, for my heart`s future? Yes, but I`m also content with the path I`ve chosen, and aware that with the things I`ve given up I`ve gained the freedom I always needed more.

Of course, the answer`s probably simple: my writing has deteriorated, and I`m no longer saying anything that people want to hear. I`m talking when I should be quiet; making a noise - as my mum would say - for the sake of it. And so every single instinct in my body is now telling me to apologise, hide away, and stay there until I`m doing something interesting again and my skills improve. Until I`m on telly, or I emigrate, or I have my heart broken, or I sink into deep depression, which is what this blog has so far hung from: draped across the events in my life like a flimsy, whimsical cloth.

I`m not going to. There are 1.2 billion blogs in the world and 95% of them are dead. Which means that the internet is a sad graveyard of words: chock full of people who had something they thought they wanted to say and fell silent: who started writing, and stopped. Who lost faith, or got shy, or got scared, or felt lonely - who watched the readers leave and felt every rejection - and gave up. And if I follow them, then this will just be another dead blog. Just another pile of dead words on top of billions and billions of others. Just as useless to start with, but just as important. The basic human desire to communicate, which every single one of us should hold on to. And keep alive.

I`m not killing this tiny corner of the internet: it gives me too much pleasure, too much satisfaction, and it holds too much of my past now. And so - although I want to find you all again - this blog will continue regardless. Because it is my writing and my little life: prone to mistakes and tedium and repetition like anything else. Prone to bobbing along, sometimes, like anything else. Prone to continuing alone, regardless. And prone to getting better and getting worse and getting better again, and trying and faltering and trying, just as we all do. And refusing to shrink down and die with the others.

95% of blogs in the world are dead, and this will never be one of them. I`ll be here, waiting, if you decide to come back. And if you don`t? I`ll be here anyway.

Because - no matter who or what I lose - I will always be somebody`s Write Girl.

PS comments are back on. Call it a compromise. :)

Morning Roads

2010-11-01T09:19:00.003+09:00

I love my scooter. I love driving through the rice fields as the sun comes up and watching the birds fly up from the road; I love looking at the mountains and feeling part of the countryside rather than simply moving through it; I love the smell of the petrol and the flowers and the grass and the morning fried chicken from the back of the supermarkets; I love the freedom and the independence and the strength I get from feeling so vulnerable. I love how peaceful it is, and how therapeutic. I love how I feel every bump in the road, and I love how rosy my cheeks get after 50 minutes in the cold on a November morning.

What I do not love is how many people keep trying to kill me.

Japanese country roads, I discovered this morning, contain the following people:

Japanese boy racers. Found all over the world, except with the notable exception of having so many small, fluffy things hanging off their rear-view mirrors that when they hit the zooped up accelerator, beep and cut you up, they get hit in the face by a small yellow duck. Plus their cars are normally pink. They don`t like going at 30kmh, and so try to kill you.

Old Japanese ladies. Sitting on five cushions and yet still unable to see over the steering wheel. Treat their car very much like a trolley at the supermarket. Have no idea how to speed up, slow down, stop or direct the car in any particular direction, and are constantly outraged by the fact that other cars - and the people inside them - exist. A permanent expression of rigid concentration belies the fact that they`re actually thinking about which cat to embroider next. They can`t see you, and wouldn`t know what to do if they did, and so try to kill you.

Old Japanese men. Almost always driving a silver or white van. Usually have a cigarette hanging out of their mouths. Believe without any hesitation that they are Master of everything: the world, Japan, their homes, their wives, their children, and the road. Dislike anyone who has anything to do with any of the above without their permission. Will wait until you`re two metres away and then pull out of front of you with a blank and yet strangely confrontational expression. Believe you deserve to die anyway because you`re foreign and probably want to bomb them. Can see you, and so try to kill you.

Young Japanese girls. Talking on mobile phones. Distracted by the boy on the other end, the swing of the keyring attached and the bouncing reflections of the stuck on diamonte. Also distracted by how nice your tights are when they drive past, and the boots you`re wearing, and the fact that they can see a blonde curl and therefore suspect that you may be exotic. Unable to hear you over the J-Pop. Forget that they can`t tell you you`re cute while driving, get too close, and therefore try to kill you.

Japanese mums. Give you a wide birth - because they don`t want to kill anyone - but are usually too busy fighting with the children in the back to notice that they`ve forgotten to get back into the lane, nearly hit a truck and then pull back so quick that you drive into the back of them. Don`t want to kill you so badly that they accidentally try to kill you.

Japanese motorbikers. Have to prove that they are not on a scooter and in fact have a special license by overtaking as fast as possible and wearing leathers. The need to establish road hierarchy (which goes lorry - truck - car - motorbike - bicycle - pedestrian - scooter) makes them treat you the way a butler treats the little boy who does the washing up, and requires them to sneer at you through their helmet visor. Don`t want to kill you, in case they end up dead too, but would like you to know that if they do they will die far, far cooler.

Japanese lorry drivers. Nice men - always men - who are the kindly uncles of the road: give you plenty of space, a wide berth and worry constantly that they are going to kill you. This does not, however, alter the fact that they are 150 times your size, made of solid metal and they wouldn`t even notice if they did.

Japanese people putting their rubbish out. Step onto road as if it is not a road and try to kill you.

Japanese people crossing the road. Ditto.

And, because this pretty much covers everyone in rural Japan at 7.30 on a weekday morning, I nearly died quite a few times today. Which was scary, but also quite exciting: usually by 8am I haven`t even managed to finish my coffee. And extremely illuminating. I had never noticed any of these people when I drove a car.

None of these people, however, want to kill me as much as the following person:

Me. Gaijin so thrilled with the rice fields as the sun comes up and the birds flying from the road - and the smell of chicken and flowers yadayada - that she sort of forgets she`s on a scooter surrounded by fast moving metal. So busy shaking her fist at the above list like an old man from the 1940s (because she can`t remember which finger Japanese people don`t understand) that she fails to drive properly with the other hand. And is forced to repeat, over and over again, like a mantra: Do not show off in front of the kids. Do not show off in front of the kids. Do not show off in front of the kids.

Because let`s be honest: if I drove into the fence last week it was because I was showing off in front of the kids. And this morning, as I vvvrrroooommmed in to the school playground surrounded by whispers of "Who is it? Who is it?" and loud cheers and many many "Coooooooooollll"s - my own, sad, personal fantasy (the fantasy that almost undoes 10 years of "Geeeeeeeeeeeeeek") - I was hard pushed not to speed up and drive into another fence. Because I was showing off in front of the kids again.

I love my scooter. I love the freedom and the birds and the chicken and the rice fields etc. But I don`t love the people who try to kill me while I`m on it.

And that includes myself.

Dancefloor

2010-10-31T04:14:00.003+09:00

Some emotions are so old, and so well buried, that when you feel them again it's as if they're new.

When I was a child, every year my school would hold a disco. And, every year, I would don my best velvet waistcoat, take my hair out of its permanent pony-tail, and attempt to occupy some kind of space on the dance floor. I would half-heartedly jump up and down, I would twitch from side to side, and - most importantly - I would try to pretend I recognised music that was quite clearly not Tchaikovsky's Dying Swan. And every year I would nervously await the final three and a half minutes of the night: the three and a half minutes that made me try and fake a sickness every single year, on exactly the same date.

It was always horrible, and I can still remember exactly how I felt. I can remember the cold chill I got when the lights went down, and the churn of my stomach when the pace of the music slowed to a rate that forces you to cling in pairs. I can still feel the sense of shame as I immediately retreated to a dark seat in an even darker corner, and the pain and sense of exclusion I felt as I watched every one else choose somebody to dance with that wasn't me. I remember the humiliation - trying to become invisible - and the hurt that I wasn't visible enough. The desperate wish to be somewhere else, and the more desperate wish to be someone else. The hope, tiny and improbable as it was, that perhaps that year somebody would pick me.

And I remember - inevitably - the moment when the teachers would look at the remaining boy (whoever it was that year), and at me, and would then make a little gesture that said: well, go on then you two. You're a girl. He's a boy. Dance. As if we were being problem children by sitting it out, and destroying the happiness of the couples by watching forlornly from the edges: our sadness making everyone uncomfortable. As if we had given up all rights to picking our partners by not being popular enough. And as if anybody would do. Because we just needed somebody to cling to, didn't we?

Of all my memories of childhood, that one hurts the most. And - when I left school - that was the one I left behind with the most gratitude. Never again, I thought. Never again will I have to sit on the edge of the dancefloor on my own and watch the room fill with couples. And I didn't. I stayed away from them during University formals, and I always left the club before the music slowed. I made sure, as an adult, that I never ever had to feel again what I felt as a nine year old girl.

Twenty years later, and the room is filling all over again. And I feel nine, all over again.

Everyone I know has now chosen their partner, and been chosen. They've fallen in love for the last time, and now they're starting the long, long slow dance that will (they hope) last the rest of their lives. And I am still sitting on the edge in the dark, on my own: being pushed towards the leftovers, regardless of who they are, because they're somebody to hold onto. Watching the couples, and watching their happiness, and recognising those feelings of loss and loneliness all over again. Wanting it for myself, and knowing I don't have it. Wondering why. And knowing as I knew back then: that when everyone has chosen, you have to sit the rest out. Because it's too late.

"Do you think," I said to my dad last week, "that most of the truly amazing men in the world are taken by 30?"
I had hoped he would roll his eyes and tell me not to talk nonsense; had hoped I was talking nonsense.
"Mmm," he said. "Probably. Well, the nice ones get snapped up, don't they, and then they stay there because they're nice. I was snapped up at 23."
"Are any left?"
"Possibly. But there's usually something wrong with them. Commitment fear and trust issues and infidelity issues etc. Same goes for women though."
"Do you think I've missed the boat, dad?"
"Maybe. But you can always wait until round Two and go for the divorcees."

And I laughed, but it made me sad. Not because I want to settle down now - the thought terrifies me - and not because I want a house and children immediately, or even very soon. But because I've never really had love - never been in love and been loved back at the same time - and so it seems tragic that I'll never have it when I'm young, and if I get it when I'm older it will never be a fresh love: will always be on the back of something failed and tired and sad. That I'll never get the innocence and hope and whole-heartedness that everyone deserves once in their lives. And it seems tragic that I'm still in love with a man who doesn't love me back - still unable to shake him from my heart - and that while I waited for him everyone started dancing.

When I was nine, I knew there were no real options if I wanted to maintain my dignity and self respect. I couldn't charge on to the dancefloor, picking apart couples or waiting for them to fall apart of their own accord, or stand on the floor shouting in protest, or cry in the corner. And I couldn't pick up whoever was left, just because they were left. Twenty years later, I still have no options. I won't meet somebody here - we don't speak the same language - and I can't move home to London purely so that I can pick up whatever is left before it's too late. I can't start ploughing through bars and clubs trying to find anyone still on their own; even if I was ready to date again - which I'm still not quite - I couldn't do that. It's too far from who I am. And - more importantly - I have a life to get on with. Plans. Hopes. Dreams. Ambitions. I'm not giving them all up just so that I have somebody to dance with before they're all gone.

There was one secret dream I had, when I was nine, that I never told anyone: the dream that would stop me dissolving into a lump in the corner. When I was sitting on my little chair in the dark, I used to imagine that somebody new would walk in. A boy that nobody had seen before: who was so beautiful, and so intelligent, and so charismatic, that he had been somewhere else when everyone else was choosing. So amazing, that he had seen more than just the dancefloor. And he would walk in, and every single girl in the room would wish they hadn't picked so soon: would regret how quickly they had made their decision. But he would look at them, and look at me, and see all of it. All of me. And he would ask me to dance.

The emotions I pushed down so long ago have risen back up again and startled me. But - as when I was nine - there's absolutely nothing I can do but wait, and use my time as wisely as I can. Accept that perhaps I'm not meant for dancing. And hope that if somebody amazing turns up, I'm the one he wants to dance with.

Even if we're a little late.

Outcome

2010-10-30T10:07:00.000+09:00

It missed. At the last minute, it changed direction and headed off towards Tokyo.

But everything is still cancelled. And I still have flu.

Typhoon 1 -- Holly 0.

God wins.

Victory

2010-10-29T12:52:00.001+09:00

I`ve totally triumphed over the typhoon. In case anyone was wondering if it`s possible to win against God and any of his Acts: it is. And I have just proved it.

It`s still coming. It is definitely still coming. The wind has picked up, it`s freezing, the corridors at school are making whistling noises, and animals are going bonkers: tweeting and gathering and hiding and getting over-excited and/or anxious about their potential doom (do typhoons kill birds? The Miyazakian birds seem to think so). I haven`t started stockpiling marshmallows yet, but I`ll do that as soon as I get home. I certainly don`t want to be put in a situation where I have no marshmallows left when the wind hits.

However, I`m also a little otherwise occupied because of the following, oft-repeated conversation:

"How are you?"
"I`m fine," reply 36 little voices at once.
"Fine is not an answer I`m interested in. Who`s hungry?"
Fifteen hands go up.
"Who`s happy?"
Two hands go up.
"Who`s sleepy?"
28 hands go up.
"Who`s great?"
One optimistic hand goes up.
"And who`s sick?"
36 hands go up.

And then, in case they haven`t communicated properly, the teeny tiny ones climb on to my lap, wait for me to say something, and then cough in my open mouth. Or wipe their noses on my shoulder or hand. Or - inexplicably - take something off their lip and try and stick it on mine. Or lick my nose. Or lick their own hand and then wipe my face and then lick their hand again. Or kiss me straight on the mouth. Or roll a piece of rice between their fingers and then try and make me eat it. (At least, I hope it`s rice.)

I am therefore - along with most of the Elementary school teaching staff, and all of Kindergarten - sick. Nose running, throat burning, unable to speak properly. Which, I`m beginning to realise, is an occupational hazard, because nobody in the entire world can confront 500 slightly different flu germs a week and remain able to breathe at night and not wake up dreaming that you`re buried in sand. I can pour multi-vitamins down my throat with all the enthusiasm I can muster, but there isn`t a single letter of the alphabet that can protect me from that.

So I win, and the typhoon loses. It can blow as hard as it likes - it can cancel every single plan I`ve made for the next three days, and it can stop me having dinner with my friends - because I can`t go anyway. I`ll be scowling at inanimate objects in my bedroom regardless of what the weather does: I`ll be wrapped up in a blanket eating KitKats no matter how violent God wants to get or not get. It`s up to him. It doesn`t make the slightest bit of difference to me anymore. It can`t touch me.

Thus my flu has given two fingers up to the typhoon, and I am victorious. Snotty, growly, scowly and victorious.

And no matter how sick I get, isn`t that all that really matters?

Typhoon

2010-10-28T14:00:00.000+09:00

Sod`s Law is back in full force.

I haven`t stopped asking about typhoons. During Typhoon Season, I drove my friends and colleagues mad with my "is it a typhoon yet?" enquiries. I would text them, I would email them: I would follow them around the staff room when they were trying to make coffee like an annoying toddler.

"Is it a typhoon yet?"
"No. It`s just windy."
"Is it a typhoon now?"
"No."
"What about now?"
"Still windy."
"What about last night?"
"Just wind."
"Tonight?"
"Wind."
"But it`s really windy."
"Yes. It is really windy. But it`s just really windy. It`s not a typhoon."

And, by the end of Typhoon Season, when I had still failed to witness a typhoon, I was having proper little tantrums.

"Is it a typhoon?"
"No."
"But wwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyy nooootttttttt?"

Because we don`t get typhoons in England - we don`t get anything exciting in England - and so earthquakes, typhoons and perhaps tidal waves and hurricanes are unbearably exotic to me, and confirm that I am abroad. Indeed, any violent, extreme Act of God from a God who rarely even notices that England exists -and, when he does, just covers it in a bit of snow - is therefore exciting, and in some strange way acts as a little gold sticker that proves I was here.

However, Typhoon Season came and went with no typhoons, and eventually - with much sulking - I stopped enthusiastically tugging at the back of shirts whenever there was a bit of rain, and muttering "Typhoon? Typhoon?" in my sleep every time the wind blew.

October has been a quiet month, and I`ve been stony broke: eeking out pasta sauce with stolen packets of ketchup, and nicking toilet rolls from MacDonalds and popping leftover bread rolls from the school canteen into my pockets. But this weekend was going to bring relief from that, in the form of an all expenses-paid trip on Friday as part of an International Festival (I am international, and so all I`m expected to do is turn up and be foreign and they`ll pay for everything: a little like an gaijin escort), a huge fancy dress Halloween party on Saturday, and shopping for winter clothes with my new pay cheque on Sunday. Everything had been planned down to the letter: costume, travel, exactly how long I could go without shopping for food because I`d be eating bar snacks, exactly how much longer I could go without doing my laundry or owning a decent jumper.

And what would you know: now the typhoon is coming.

Everything is cancelled. International Festival: cancelled. Halloween party: cancelled. Shopping: cancelled. Offer to buy me drinks and food: cancelled. All interest in me being foreign: cancelled. Imaginative and yet cute Halloween costume: cancelled. And, instead, I get to sit inside all weekend, hoping that my roof doesn`t blow off, unable to invite anybody round because they`re not allowed to go outside in case they get hit by debris and sticks and glass and whatever else gets flung around in a typhoon (I don`t know, obviously, because this is my first). I get to have no electricity, probably, and no hot food, and nobody to talk to, and I get to sit in stinky clothes and freeze to death. Which is extremely far from the weekend I had planned, and somewhat diminishes just how exciting Acts of God can be. Because this God is obviously not as exotic as I had hoped, and obviously just a killjoy and pain in the arse.

Of course, now that I have no interest in the typhoon, or in any kind of weather update, everybody I have ever met is contacting me to tell me it`s coming.

"Typhoon at the weekend."
"I know."
"There`s a big typhoon on Saturday."
"I know."
"Typhoon tomorrow."
"I know."
And then the killer:
"Maybe typhoon this weekend. Maybe not. But everything is cancelled anyway."

To which I can come to only the following conclusion: Acts of God abide by Sod`s Law just like anything else. And if this weekend is ruined, I asked for it.

Many many times.

Meatloaf

2010-10-26T22:02:00.001+09:00

My parents just found out about my scooter.

I wondered how long it would take them. Mum's been at school all week, and dad wouldn't find out until she read my blog and told him about it. And read it and tell him she clearly did.

"What the fuck do you think you are playing at?" my dad yelled down the webcam. Or: his shirt button yelled down the webcam. Mum's face was taking up the whole screen.
Mum pressed her lips together. "What is the one thing I have always asked you to never do, Holly? One thing?"
"Don't run holding scissors?"
"No. Don't ride a motorbike."
"It's not a motorbike. It's a scooter."
"It's a motorbike. It's a slow motorbike."
"It's a fast bicycle, mum."
Dad started pulling at the wheelie chair.
"Let me speak to her. I want to speak to her."
Mum leant towards the camera.
"Your dad wants to speak to you now," she informed me, in case I was both blind and deaf.
Dad sat down so that all I could see was his neck and chin, and mum perched on the chair next to him.
"Don't sit on my frigging glasses!" he shouted immediately. "Jesus Christ."
"I didn't! They are not sat on! I sat next to them!"
"Why are they bent in the shape of your butt then?" Dad put them on and glared at me. "One day and you fucking crashed the thing?"
"Only into a fence."
"Who do you think you are: Meatloaf? Sell it immediately. You are not born to ride motorbikes. You're like your mother."
"Oy," mum said. Then she poked the top of her head into the screen. "This is my contemptuous look, Holly. I am giving your father a contemptuous look."
"That's not contempt," dad replied, scrunching his face up and shaking his fist at the camera. "This is contempt."
"That looks like anger."
"No - this is anger." He did the same face.
"That's nothing like anger."
"And this is happy." Dad did the same face. "See how versatile I am?"
Mum pushed him out the way and stuck her face back in the webcam.
"I'm still contemptuous, as you can see. Holly, sell the motorbike."
"Did you get hurt?" dad barked, pushing mum out of the way again. "Did you break it?"
"No, but the basket fell off."
At which point dad shouted with laughter.
"The basket? What kind of motorbike is this? Too right you're not Meatloaf. Meatloaf doesn't have a basket on his motorbike."
"I told you it's a scooter."
"Give it up, Holly. You remember when you decided to ride my bike, eighteen months ago? And you put that poofy girl's seat on it and then crashed it and wouldn't get on again? I still have to ride that because I can't work out how to get it off again. A man's bike with a girl's fat bottom seat. I get laughed at by the boys."
"He does," mum added.
"Although it is pretty comfortable."
"It is," mum agreed.
"But still: a fat bottomed girl's seat. I'm not a fat bottomed girl. Sell the motorbike, Holly."
"No. And it's a scooter."
"Don't make me come over there," mum said, leaning into the webcam again. "See this? This is my threatening face, Holly. Look at it and take note. I don't like motorbikes."
"And you're not meatloaf."
"I know, but it's a scooter."

Parents put a lot of hard work and effort into turning their little spoilt brats into decent, workable human beings: they don't really want to see all of that effort get wrapped around a tree, or ploughed into a rice field. I can see that. But I'm going to be super careful, from now on. So careful, that nobody will have reason to worry about me and my transport.

Which is, for the record, a scooter.

Fried Fish

2010-10-23T16:03:00.001+09:00

If you`re interacting with children on a daily basis, the assumption is that every day you`ll become more like a child.

You don`t.

If anything, the inner child recedes: when confronted with the real thing, it simply can`t compete. Whether it`s the simple joy of jumping up and down for absolutely no reason at all, or the stomach clenching fun of looking at someone until they give up and look away again, or the never-ending fascination in Rock Scissors Paper when there`s nothing to win but honour and pride in the shape of your own hand, as an adult you just can`t convince yourself that you enjoy it now as much as you used to. It`s just not easy to air punch and scream with jubilation because your hand is flat and theirs is in a fist: not so simple to really feel the triumph. It`s more of a and there you go, don`t mess with me because I`ve been playing Rock Scissors Paper since your parents were embryos kind of satisfaction (accompanied with a raised and wise eyebrow, because none of them have worked out that Japanese girls always choose paper and Japanese boys always choose rock and so I always win).

Worse: understanding fades away completely. I didn`t understand children when I was a child, and now that I`m a fully grown adult I understand them even less. I`m 28, and I`ve done a lot of things in my life that could be regarded as cool: been to celebrity parties, worked in trendy London media (with sparkley loo seats), been on telly, been told by the (gay) TopShop Creative Director that I`m "totally cute", featured on the front of a fashion magazine, visited 18 countries, paraglided and whitewater rafted and rock climbed and hot-airballooned, and partied until 7am in some of the best cities in the world. But as far as the children I teach are concerned, there is nothing less trendy, less hip and less cool than Holly Smale. The teacher who doesn`t know any songs by Arashi, and who picks up pencil cases covered in celebrity photos and says "Ooh, and who is this lovely chap?" The teacher who has nothing fluffy or sparkley or funky in her hair at all, who wears pink Crocs all the time, has a jaunty, terrible Japanese accent, drives into fences and hands out Winnie The Pooh stickers to 11 year olds.

Which means that as young as I am in adult terms, I`ve become used to seeing myself through the eyes of children: of feeling decrepit and totally, totally past it. I`ve gotten used to entertaining them with my failure to be cool: to dancing like an embarrassing old Aunt at a disco, or singing the vocabulary they`re meant to be learning instead of saying it, or meowing like a cat, or taking my shoes off and wandering around the classroom in bare feet. I`ve gotten used to not really knowing what it is to be a child.

And I have finally, finally triumphed.

For the last week, a small, cheeky little boy has been calling me Muxing. She`s another foreign teacher in the area, she`s of Chinese descent, and I have absolutely no idea why he is calling me by her name because we are not similar in either looks or mannerisms. He shouts it down the corridors, he says it in the middle of class whenever there`s a moment of silence, he waits until I walk past and then yells it at me in repeat. He waits until he has the biggest group of students possible, and then he screams it at the top of his voice. And I have reacted just like an adult.

"Muxing!"
"I`m not Muxing."
"Muxing!"
"I`m not Muxing."
"Muxing!"
"I don`t understand; why are you calling me Muxing?"
"Muxing!"
"Stop calling me Muxing."
"Muxing!"
"Stop it."
"Muxing!"
"Stop it."
"Muxing!"
"Why?"
"Muxing!"
"Why?! WHY WHY WHY WHYWHYWHYWHYWHY?"
"Muxing!"

Finally, something clicked. The realisation that the only way I could get him to shut the hell up (Muxing, incidentally, replaced Fried Fish, which was his previous favourite shouting phrase) was to think the way a child thinks.

"Muxing!" he shouted.
"Oh, I understand!" I yelled back in Japanese. "You love Muxing, don`t you?"
"Eh?"
"You love Muxing! You love her. You luuuuurrrvvve her. Mwamwamwa you want to kisssss her."
"No! I don`t love Muxing!"
"You do!"
"I don`t!"
"You do!!! You love her! You love her so much."
"Yes!" all his little 9 year old boy mates started shouting, laughing hysterically. "You love Muxing!"
"You must love her! You must!"
"No, I don`t love Muxing!" he yelled, stamping his feet in fury, and then scampered off.

I walked past him a few minutes later, and he said absolutely nothing. Not Fried Fish, and certainly not Muxing.

That`s the thing with children. It`s all very well and good keeping your distance and behaving like an adult, as long as you remember what it`s like to be a child.

And somewhere underneath all of it, I think I still do.

Crazy Pills

2010-10-22T09:27:00.006+09:00

I`m running out of drugs.

I tried cutting my dose by biting them in half (they taste really, really disgusting), but I`m not quite ready yet: the number of cigarettes smoked immediately tripled, breaths between smoking halved, sadness started creeping into the middle of me, and I began missing him badly and painfully again, which I cannot afford to do. So I sent mum and dad a plea.

Seven crazy pills left, I emailed. Tick tock tick tock. Need you to send more. Mum, I`m going to bet you`ve lost the prescription haven`t you.
What prescription?
The prescription I left with you.
I don`t know where it is.
Yes. Thought so. Dad?
I`m on it, he emailed. What happens if you run out?
I won`t die. But I will start crying in the loos at lunchtime again and staring at the ceiling for hours and hours and hours wishing I was someone else. And I`ve got much better things to do with my time.
Gotcha. Will get you some even I have to steal it from my doctor friend when he`s in the pub.

Dad turned the house upside down, found the slip, went to the doctors`, got another prescription, went to Boots, and then sent the following email (copied and pasted, because I cannot write like my father):

Bad news is ready for next Tuesday!! BUT: I threatened them with abuse and horses heads in beds --result ''lets make that Wednesday." SO: Said she was a fine looking lady and perhaps she'd like to go for a drink sometime --result '' I meant next Thursday.'' SO : Broke down, told her my Giro was lost in t`post and that I was having panic attacks --result ''Make it week after next and stop being a woss.'' SO: Asked her very nicely if she could possibly help for the sake of my daughter ---result: ''come back at 5.30 today and i'll make sure its done.'' There is a lesson to be learnt here but needless to say I havn't any idea what it is!! Dad xxxx

To which my mum responded to us both immediately:

Mark, if you have ever wondered why I love you, this is it.

Love makes itself known in the strangest ways, and often in what is done, rather than what is said. My dad - the man with the biggest heart in the world - doesn`t need to tell me he loves me (although he does): he shows it every single time he swoops in to save me. And if I need faith in romantic love, I don`t need to look much further than my parents. Who - for all their eccentricities - still love each other and look after each other and fight for each other, the way they both love and look after and fight for me.

The crazy pills are just the temporary lifebelt thrown to me in a storm; but the boat is my family. And when one kind of love threatens to pull me under, another kind of love always pushes me back up again.

And - luckily for me - that love will always be stronger.

Full support

2010-10-19T12:10:00.006+09:00

Harai has been good to me this morning. I`ve been a little shaky - what with nearly dying against a rice-field fence and ruining all of my hard earned street cred in the process - so he has gone out of his way to distract me.

And I do believe he`s managed it.

Harai: (Laughing.) I am bad man. I laugh at bad thing. Look. (Shows me fax.)
Me: That`s just pretty scribbles to me. What does it say?
Harai: Sometimes, when sun goes, bad men come out. And they send message to look out bad man. This girl, little one, is walking yesterday at 10am. Sun not gone, but walking. Old man stops car, and says girl, come here. Girl walks up to car. 70 year old man in there. 170cm high.
Me: That wasn`t bright.
Harai: No. And girl says what? And old man lift up his top and show her his brassiere.
Me: His what?
Harai: His brassiere. (Cups his chest with his hands.)
Me: His bra?
Harai: (laughing). Yes. His bra. Girl upset.
Me: I bet. What colour was it?
Harai: I don`t know. It doesn`t tell me. But his t-shirt was grey.
Me: Why was he wearing a bra, Harai?
Harai: I think he is mad man. But also in Japan there is fashion for guys to wear bra.
Me: Guys?
Harai: Guys. Like me.
Me: You wear a bra?
Harai: No. But some men do. Important men. They wear it when stressed to feel.... refreshed.
Me: Refreshed? Why would they feel refreshed?
Harai: Because they under pressure and then they put bra on and they like phooooooooooooo, and they relaxed. They like I am free and easy now.
Me: I don`t believe you.
Harai: Okay. I show you.

And then he got on the internet and showed me this:

Me: Gosh. He does look relaxed. Who is it?

Harai: Environmental Governor I think. He want lots of men to wear bra.

Me: Well, I can see his point. He is very free and easy. Are you going to follow advice?

Harai: No. I am not stressed. But if I did, I wear black or red. Not pink. I am man.

There are all kinds of support in a crisis. Lacy, pink, cropped, full length, underwired and silky. Padded, layered and ruffled.

And Harai told me about all of it.

Scooby Don`t

2010-10-19T09:23:00.005+09:00

There are so many things I want to do before I die. I want to publish a book and paraglide in front of Mount Everest and trek through Nepal and get an A level in a foreign language and be adopted by a stray kitten and be adopted by a stray child and sleep in a blanket in the desert and fall in love and visit a hanging monastery in China and scuba dive without panicking and be bought the perfect piece of jewellery without picking it first and stand up on a surfboard and see a geisha and a red squirrel and a wild polar bear.

And I have always, always wanted to own a scooter. Even though they scare me. Perhaps because they scare me.

"I`m getting a scooter," I told my dad.
"No, you`re not," he said.
"Yes I am."
"No, you`re not."
"I am."
"God, you`re so pigheaded."
"Yes, I am."
"Just like me."
"Yes, I am."
"I`m getting a scooter," I told my mum.
She cried.
"I`m getting a scooter," I told my best friend.
"Do you know yourself at all? Like, at all?"
"I`m getting a scooter," I told my sister.
"Oh for fuck`s sake."
"I`m getting a scooter," I told Harai.
"Because you are -" and then he held his finger up to his head and twisted it a few times.

So - because I`m nothing if not pigheaded - I got one. Or, more specifically, Shin gave me his old one. And - even though he asked me very nicely "not to pimp like girl" - I pimped like girl. I gave it a stripy seat and gold fish stickers and a little diamante cross. I went on the internet and ordered reflective red stars so that I would be visibly cool at night time. I scrubbed it and patted it and sang to it and I named it Scooby. And I pottered around on it all weekend: down to the beach, to the shops (when I didn`t actually need anything from the shops: I just wanted to drive to the shops), round and round the back streets at 30kph like a little old lady joy rider, wearing my pink coat and the white helmet with permanent marker drawings all over it. Bursting with pride because I was so free, and so brave, and proving everyone and their assumption in my crapness so wrong.

And, today, I was going to tell my parents that I had, in fact, got a scooter. And that - contrary to expectations - I was extremely capable, sensible, good at driving and unlikely to die at all.

This morning, I crashed it.

The drive to school is a long one: 20 km through rice fields. But I was careful. Heeding Shin`s advice ("take it eeeaaazzzy, Noppo"), I took the back roads, I stayed in the middle of my lane, I indicated and checked my mirrors, I never went above 30km an hour and I only put my iPod in one ear so that I could hear whatever incandescent road rage was happening behind me. I added an extra 5ks to my trip to avoid the roads with trucks, and I sat properly so that my posture was exemplary. And when I got to school - about 50 minutes later - I was absolutely full of it: specifically drove past the entrance so that I could give the clustered teachers and students a little regal wave, and then turned into the car park to put my pretty, pimped up bike somewhere prominent. Turned it off, took my helmet off and grinned at about twenty (awestruck, I thought) open mouthed teenagers.

"You can`t park there," one of the teachers shouted at me. "You can park nearer the school, in the bike area."
"Okay!" I screamed back gaily, holding my helmet under one arm like they do in the films and flicking my messy blonde hair the way they also do in films (despite the fact that it was stuck to my head, which it absolutely never is in films).

And then I turned it back on and shot into the fence.

In fact, I didn`t just shoot into the fence. Terror and humiliation caused me to hold on to the accelerator - instead of letting go (who knew?!) - and so I shot into the fence, and then powered myself into the cement water ditch running along side it. The bike mangled with the fence, got stuck in the ditch; the helmet crashed to the floor, and - in the meantime - Harai was pegging it across the carpark shouting "Hollllllllyyyyyyyy!!!"

By the time I had finally worked out that I had to stop accelerating into the fence, the front basket had been ripped off the front of the bike, I was bright red and shaking like a leaf, and every single one of my students and colleagues was open mouthed for an entirely different reason.

"Are you hurting?" Harai said as he pulled up next to me, absolutely horrified.
I covered my face with my hands.
"No. But I couldn`t be more pissed off with myself if I tried. I am such a loser."
"You look quite cool before bang, though," he reassured me. "Nice pink coat."

I`m so sorry, I emailed Shin as soon as I had stopped trembling and swearing. I broke your bike.
ARE YOU OKAY? he emailed back.
Yes. But the bike isn`t. I mashed up the basket.
Don`t worry. The bike is indifferent.
Yes, I replied drily. That bike is totally indifferent.

It doesn`t matter what I do. It doesn`t matter how careful I am, or how slow I go, or how brave I am: I am crap. Inherently, genetically crap. And while I`m not giving Scooby up, I`m going home tonight and I am insuring myself up to the hilt. Because while I can`t let my inevitable crapness stop me from doing things - otherwise my life will be as terrible as my skills are - I can certainly make sure that when both my legs are broken, somebody else is paying for it.

Owning a scooter might be on my list of things to do before I die, but if this morning is anything to go by that might be sooner than I hoped. And that irrational fear of scooters? It might be a little more rational than I thought. Which only gives me one more reason to keep going: the conquering of all things that scare me.

That, and being totally and utterly pigheaded.