Shins and knuckles

There are two types of shame.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fluff

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

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

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

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

Butter tubs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presents

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

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

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

The Hokey Pokey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Floors

Six weeks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How long for?" I sniffled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The kindness of strangers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shoulders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thought about it for a little bit.

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

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

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

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

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

Eh? I said.

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

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

But do people stare? 

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

Do people say anything?

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

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

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

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

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

But is there? she wrote.

Yes, I admitted after a short pause.

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

Yes.

Is everyone very good at it?

The people who do it are.

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

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

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

I stared at the screen again. 

Mostly and mostly and no, I said. 

In what order? my sister typed back immediately.

In that order, I replied. 

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

Mmm, I wrote dubiously. Is it about shoes? 

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, I admitted finally. One. 

And then I ate a piece of chocolate.

Bubbles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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