Nichinan

I’m writing this from one of my new friend’s computers because there is no internet at my house yet; it takes ten days for one of the internet people in Nichinan to process my cash deposit, work out where I live, put down their cup of green tea and amble slowly 300 metres to set it all up, apparently. There is no internet access in the town apart from in Macdonalds, and nobody who works there has any idea at all what the password might be. My friend – who appears to like me, thus far - is currently at work, but luckily her computer is easily accessed because she leaves her front door open all day and night, every day and night, in case anybody needs to borrow anything. And because, in Nichinan, locking your front door or closing any of your windows is unecessary and socially offensive and basically bad manners: the cultural equivalent of tying your wallet around a table leg in somebody’s house.

And that, I think, tells you everything you need to know about Nichinan.

I have a habit of building castles in the air and then reacting furiously – but, for some unknown reason, with equal surprise – every time they get knocked down. Places, holidays, jobs, people, relationships, pets: all of them constructed meticulously, perfectly and in great detail, and then blown apart with either one reality bomb or lots of disappointment grenades thrown in quick succession (or when the goldfish fails to do anything at all apart from just flamin’ sit there). And – honestly - I thought the same would happen with Nichinan: a tiny, piddly little town in the middle of – even by Japanese standards - absolutely nowhere. A town consisting of one long road lined with closed, falling down buildings and 100yen shops and shoe warehouse outlets: where a tour of everything interesting in a car takes three minutes, but it’s so spread out that a stroll takes three hours, and the same man owns the local restaurant, convenience store, supermarket and my flat.

It hasn’t happened at all. My castle in the air was pretty much spot on, and Nichinan is exactly what I hoped for, and exactly what I needed. After eight months of cramped, cold, lonely, heartbroken, ugly unhappiness in Mitsukyo – where the best view involved walking past cement and wires and climbing to the top of the supermarket carpark to lean over the wall and look at Mount Fuji, some 100km away - Nichinan is glorious in every possible way. There are empty, desolate, stone grey beaches lined with jutting rocks, green mountains, miles and miles of beautiful rice fields, and trees of pink blossom filled with birds that actually sing in the morning instead of just staring at you or shitting on your head. I have a car – which has always meant, to me, freedom and inherent grownupness – and a proper, massive, traditional Japanese flat with soft tatami floors and a huge futon and a totally unecessary spare bedroom that I have no idea what to do with but am currently filling with wet laundry just because I can. There are bars and restaurants where the waiters learn your name, and lovely new friends who assume they will see you at the weekend, because what the hell else is everybody going to do? The air smells good, all the time, and the fact that I speak no useful Japanese at all has caused much hilarity and entertainment in the Post Office, the supermarket, my landlord’s house and with my new neighbours, who spent twenty minutes trying to tell me to take my washing in because it was about to rain via a mixture of charades and sound effects. And, while I haven’t started at my new school yet – I start tomorrow - apparently the teacher I’m assisting likes to use the film ‘Terminator’ as an English education tool and tells the sixteen year olds how to correctly pronounce the phrase today I’m very hungover.

I’m not stupid: I know that this is the first rush of love, and the rosy glow will wear off eventually when real life starts nudging in. And I also know – and have already felt in the last few days, unfortunately – what I knew anyway: that heartbreak doesn’t go away just because you’ve moved it a few thousand miles, and that you still think of him and her together and cry a little bit and throw things very hard whether you’re on your tiptoes in a supermarket carpark or sitting on the edge of some rice fields in the sunshine. But I can tell you something: it’s much, much nicer hurting somewhere beautiful and calm and clean, and it’s a lot less dangerous to throw pebbles into a lake than from the top of a three story building. And I suspect the healing process is considerably quicker, too, when you’ve got a big blue sea to run into, rather than just a whole load of freezing cold memories.

It’s difficult to say, sometimes, whether decisions we make are right or wrong: there are always so many other paths we could have taken that could have been better or worse than the one we chose. But every single day, now, I wake up and I can feel the pieces of me very slowly, little by little, shred by shred, knitting back together again. I can feel my belief in good things and in beauty and in love gradually reshaping. And I can’t think of anywhere else in the world where that would have happened; where the peace and prettiness and friendliness would have healed me so quickly already. I can’t think of anywhere else in the world where I would have been so willing to let it happen, or so prepared to help it along.

I love it here, and as far as I’m concerned, Nichinan can be as slow as it likes; and the internet people can drink their tea and take their time and turn up when it suits them. I think I’m probably going to be here for quite a while, and I’m more than happy to wait. 

Back to school

Being a foreigner in Japan sometimes feels a little like being back at primary school. There are so few of us, and we're all so isolated, and so far from home, and are so easily distinguished from a distance, that most of us have the slightly vague, wide eyed, excited, scared look of five year olds, no matter how long we've been here. There are a few, of course, who have gone the other way completely - there are always a few who go the other way completely, in everything - and who loudly drop Japanese words and phrases into English sentences, as if to prove that they are, in fact, pretty much one of the locals and have no idea what you're saying unless you put the word 'ne?' on the end (a sort of 'isn't it?' or 'y'know'). But, for the most part, we gaijin generally tend to constantly look a little bit out of our comfort zones; not quite sure about the language, not quite sure how to integrate into local situations or customs, not quite sure how to order food unless there's a picture to point at, and not quite sure if the toilet is going to flush itself automatically or not when you stand up (usually: yes. But there's always a few seconds while you have to hover around to check).

Because there are so few of us, therefore, we all stick together in little, soggy clumps: just like at school. It doesn't matter whether you've just seen someone on the street, or sat next to them for three seconds on a train, or in a training room: it's perfectly natural to go to the pub with a total stranger and decide much later whether or not you want to actually be friends. And - just like at school - you can then spend the next couple of months avoiding them in the playground if you realise you've both come to different conclusions. Except that, this time, you're not five. You're a fully grown adult, in a suit (or whatever I can find that looks vaguely like one), with a job and your own house. Which makes it even funnier when you have to dodge across the park to avoid the weirdo who talked at you about aeroplanes for three and a half hours.

The school experience, though, is about to become very, very condensed for me. Tomorrow, I move to Nichinan: a teeny tiny little place at the bottom of Japan, next to the sea. From Tokyo, with 8 million people, to Yokohama, with 3.6 million, to Fukuoka, with 2.6 million, my environment has been getting smaller and smaller, but it's about to get as small as it gets: Nichinan has 57,866 people, spread out over 536 kilometres, and only seven of them are native English speakers. I therefore have seven probable friends in my immediate future (unless my Japanese improves vastly on the bus journey down there), and it feels like I am moving to the world's tiniest new classroom.

Usually, when you get a new job and move to a new area, you have to start again: you have to start building around you. Friends, hobbies, supermarkets, food in the kitchen cupboards; all accumulated piece by piece, little by little. The strange thing about my new position is that - because it's in the middle of nowhere, because it's a rare position, because my predecessor inherited everything from his predecessor - everything is already there. My flat is included, with my brand new grey car - apparently - sitting in the driveway waiting for me, already insured up, and pasta in the cupboards and detergent on top of the washing machine. I know - and will be shown in person - where everything is: my supermarket, my gym (2 minutes away), my beach (2 minutes away). I know what my school looks like, and what the children I will teach look like, because I've already seen photos and worked out who the trouble makers are. I know what the waves next to my house will be like tomorrow, because I've looked online. And, most importantly, most terrifyingly, I know - pretty much - who my new friends are, because I've already stalked most of them on Facebook a little bit (just enough to see what they vaguely look like: not to the extent where I know what their favourite kind of cheese is and where they went on holiday in 2008). Essentially, I'm taking a life that's already made up for me: I can just paste a photo of my face where the old teacher's face used to go (I haven't actually done that, obviously. It would be extremely weird. But I'm just pointing out that I could if I wanted to).

Which, in a way, is great. The last six months have been so different from that - every single thing I've had to struggle for, find for myself, work hard to maintain - that it sounds pretty nice, to be able to walk in to a new life and have everything already laid out for me (I'm half expecting my first day's work clothes to already be on the bed, waiting for me). But in another way it's terrifying. If these people don't like me - and there's every reason that they won't, because they didn't like me at school either (my mother once told me that "if I ever went on Big Brother I'd be voted out in about three seconds by my housemates and general public, because.... well, let's just leave it there, shall we?") - then I'm in a very tiny city, surrounded by people I don't understand and people who are ducking in the supermarket aisles so that I don't see them and throwing pencil sharpeners at me if they see me on the beach. As Brian says in Starter for Ten: "you know those people you befriend in the first term and spend the second one avoiding? I think I'm one of them."

It has started well, luckily: they're all taking me out to dinner on Monday night (I made no bones about contacting them immediately and asking them to like me: it tends to be the best way to get people to like you). What happens from therein, though, I have no idea. From that point on, I have to rely on my own personality, and that didn't work out too well for me 23 years ago: I can't see why it would suddenly become easy now just because I'm bigger and I can buy people drinks as bribes. I might have to resort to offering people the use of my new fountain pen so that they keep talking to me.

I'm nervous, and I'm worried, and I'm excited, and I really, really want people to like me. I've worked out what I'm going to wear, and I've got my pencil case all packed, and I'm working out what a good greeting gift would be that will make them all think golly, isn't she just the nicest thing in the world? before I open my mouth and ruin it. And I'm already deciding on a few witty anecdotes to introduce myself with, in case I get asked to introduce myself (I will certainly have to do that on my first working day, although it will have to be in Japanese, which could be somewhat tricky as all I know how to say is where is the elephant). Basically, I'm this close to either peeing myself a little bit or holding onto my mum's hand and crying.

The irony is, of course, that I'm moving to Nichinan to start my new job in a school, teaching little children. And - frankly - I don't think I've ever felt so much like one in my entire life.

"£200,"

said my mum straight after I posted the last blog.

"What for?"

"For talking about him," mum answered, crossly. "You promised. For a year. Remember? No talking about boys for a year, or £200 goes to your sister."

"No, I didn't!"

"You did! It's right down here, in black and white."

"Right down where?" There was a pause while we both checked for back references (we both studied English Literature at University, and so we were clearly both getting ready for a text-off).

"It's here somewhere..." mum muttered, audibly and somewhat violently clicking her mouse at me while I muttered about creative freedom and the liberty to talk about what I want to talk about on my own blog.

"Aha!" she said eventually. "Here. Thursday the 13th of March. I promise...ladadalada No blogging about dating or kissing or romance or love or handholding for one whole year."

"So?" 

"So! £200!"

"Was that blog about dating, mum?"

"Well, nooo, not as such."

"Was it about kissing?"

"No."

"Was it about romance or love?"

"No. I guess not."

"Was there any mention of handholding?"

"No."

"Was it about anger?"

"Yes."

"So.... do I owe my sister £200?"

There was a pause. 

"I suppose not," my mum eventually conceded. "But that was a close call, and you're getting off on a technicality, Holly."

"Well, that's the way of the law, mum," I said. 

"You won't get away so easily next time," she added. "I'm on the ball. No talking about love, alright? And no talking about him."

"Deal," I said. "I think my pillow has taken the brunt of my communication anyway, to be honest."

"The next time, I'll make sure it's his head," my mum said fervently. And then changed the subject because my dad had just walked in and he knows nothing about any of it whatsoever because his temper makes my temper look like small fry.

Some things run in families, and I strongly suspect that a hot temper and a desire to really, really analyse writing might be two of them.

Neighbours

There is a lesson to be learnt from everything, and today's lesson is: you never know who is in the next room.

After I walloped the hell out of my pillow at 3am last night, and screamed into it, and bit it a little bit, the only thing I could reassure myself with was that nobody knew, apart from the man next door who turned his television on approximately twenty seconds into my violent outburst (actually it was more pathetic than that: in my head it was a little like a Rocky montage, but in reality it hurt my wrists quite a lot and involved a lot of flailing and ouching). Today, I met the man with the television. He was sitting next to me in my teacher training. 

"Where are you staying?" I asked conversationally when the boring man in the suit had stopped talking for five seconds.

"Comfort Inn," he said, so we walked back together. When we got to the reception, I told them my number. 

"1345," I said.

"1346," he said in a strange, flat voice - as if he didn't know that I knew that he knew what I was doing last night at 3am - and then he wouldn't look me in the eye. Or maybe he would look me in the eye: I don't know, I was too busy staring at the carpet. This is the girl who screams and beats things in the middle of the night, he must have been thinking. This girl, who seems totally sane, pretty much, in the daylight, is the fruitloop I've been scared of running into in the corridor in case she thinks that I am also part of the bedroom furnishings. 

"What's really nice, though," I said after the long elevator silence where I tried to look as much as possible like a passive, non-angry, non pillow attacking kind of girl, "is that the walls here are so thick. You know, not like normal Japanese walls. Proper, brick, thick walls."

"Yup," he said, staring straight past me (or maybe he was staring straight past me: I don't know, I was still staring at the carpet). "Very, very thick walls."

"Soundproof, in fact," I added, and then he looked at me strangely and I wondered if possibly - just possibly - the television had been coming from 1344 instead. So I resisted my next planned remark, which was that the pillows are terribly difficult to fluff, aren't they?

I think my secret might be safe. Until, of course, I meet my neighbour on the other side. And - knowing my luck - he'll probably turn out to be my boss.

The Reds

When I was little, I believed what people told me to believe. There were lots of questions, of course - why, how, what, when, who - but never the right one, which was: really? When I was five, a school friend told me I could get cancer from drinking tap water, and - even though I wasn't quite sure what cancer was - I still held up my glass to the light for at least a month before I drank it, just in case the cancer was floating around in there, waiting to get me. I genuinely believed that there were fairies under the flowers in the garden, and spent many fruitless hours kicking my mum's roses about in the hope that it might 'knock them out of the petals' (sorry, mum). My friend's mother casually told me one day to "always, always wash your face with cold water before bed and in the morning, and then you will stay looking young," and I genuinely thought that she had given me the secret to immortality and eternal youth; not one day has gone by since where I haven't religiously, obsessively and almost violently followed this advice (it's not working, incidentally: it just makes my face go red).

Nothing, however, has stuck with me quite as relentlessly, or quite as powerfully, as the need to control my temper. Prone to furious outbursts since birth - throwing myself onto the floor in Sainsburys at the age of three, smashing plates on the floor at the age of four, punching a little boy in the face at the age of seven - I was told, over and over and over again, to count to ten. I was told to take a deep breath. I was told that it's not very nice behaviour in a young lady, or that is not how you make friends and influence people, Holly Miranda Smale. And then I would be sent into the corner of the classroom, or up to my bedroom, or into the bread aisle of the supermarket, until I could calm down and get a hold of myself. And, usually, given a quick, friendly wallop on the backside while I was there, just to really reinforce how much of a brat I was being.

And so, little by little, it sunk in, in the most literal, childlike, black-and-white way possible. There was no medium ground. It was clear: my temper was bad. My temper had to go. My temper had to be pushed down, down, where all the counting in the world wouldn't pull it back up again; to where the Sainsburys floor would be forever safe from my beating little fists. And, slowly, I managed it. I went from being a very, very angry little girl, to being a sullen but relatively docile teenager, to being a generally sweet tempered and passive early twenty-something who regularly let boy racers cut her up in the car without a word, didn't complain when somebody nicked her wallet and didn't raise her voice when somebody accidentally-on-purpose ripped her favourite dress at a party because it was nicer than theirs. The general public belief, I think, was that I had probably 'mellowed with age', and - apart from a few hissy fits when very drunk - I had, indeed, succeeded. I had finally taken control of my temper. 

Except that now I wonder whether that really happened, or whether my temper simply took control of me. I became so used to pushing it away - that familiar, burning, raging, red feeling that boils at the bottom of my throat and makes everything go a little blurry - that it became second nature to me, and I didn't stop to think about where I might be pushing it to. I didn't consider what happens when you seal a boiling kettle tight shut, block up the airways and then leave it, simmering, for a long, long time: whether the steam will start coming out of - and creating - lots of different cracks when the pressure becomes just too much. Whether what used to be anger will start coming out in other shapes and forms: confusion, tears, stress, indecision, emotional instability. And, frankly, when the boyfriend you love and moved across the world for tells you on the phone that he's been sleeping with someone else for three months, lying to you daily for three months, telling you his 'battery was dead' and 'work was manic' and he's 'surfing with friends' for three months, but 'he's really, you know, sorry', and you respond immediately with "oh. ok. Well. I love you, we can definitely work through this," it's probably an indication that you've finally pushed the anger far, far too deep for it to be any good to you at all. Because sometimes, just sometimes, it's exactly what is needed. It is what's supposed to be there to protect you from being hurt even more. To stop you from 'understanding' them, supporting them, and blaming yourself for their infidelity, which is what I decided to do instead of walloping him one.

I haven't let myself be angry. Months and months of heartbreak and pain and betrayal and sadness, and yet not one single ounce of anger: I've kept it all tied up in tears and understanding and empathy - pushing it away, quietening it down - when really what I should have been doing was throwing things and breaking things and telling him to fuck himself (sorry, grandma, but it needed to be said). Because that would have been the right reaction, done by the real me: the me that punched a boy in the face 22 years ago for much, much less. Instead of pushing the anger down, and pushing myself  down with it. And losing myself in the process, because all that has been coming out of me ever since is steam.

Tonight, for the first time, I locked myself in my Comfort Inn bedroom, and finally - finally - beat the holy crap out of my pillow. I beat that pillow until it didn't look much like a pillow anymore; until my hands hurt and the gentleman next door turned his television onto full volume. I beat that pillow until I was too worn out to beat it anymore, because it's not okay to be lied to, and it's not okay to be betrayed, and it's not okay to be hurt by someone you love, and it's not okay to feel like you can't be really, really fucking angry about it all just because you believe that you should learn to control yourself, Holly Miranda Smale. And it's alright to be angry for yourself, when it's the self that you're protecting.

The pillow is back in its rightful place, now, and I'm calm and serene again, and the television next door has gone back to a normal level. But the minute I get to Nichinan, I'm taking up Kickboxing. I need a safe channel for my anger, that doesn't involve pushing it down so that it seeps out of me and makes me crazy, but that doesn't involve breaking too many things either, because I'm not five anymore. So I've decided to opt for kickboxing. Or maybe karate, if that's an easier activity to find in Japan, what with all the waxing on and off I grew up expecting from this lovely country. Because, when all is said and done, I'm not a calm girl, and I've never been a calm girl. I'm just a secretly angry girl, being walked all over.

So: kickboxing, or karate. The secret to getting the steam out in the right direction, at the right speed, in a safe place. Or - failing that - I'll just have to find another Sainsburys floor somewhere and try and beat that up instead.

Fukuoka (pronounced Hoo-Kyu-Oka, dad: stop embarrassing the travel agents)

Maybe it's the fact that my hair colour now matches my eyebrows, maybe it's because I keep looking over the top of a map at the sky as if it's going to help me, maybe it's because I'm the only Westerner I've seen outside of the Youth Hostel in two days (they're all in there, eating crisps and watching Rocky VII); for whatever reason, Fukuoka appears to be trying to adopt me. I can't move for kindly strangers trying to take me under their wing: bus drivers, acting as a personal, free taxi service (shouting "this is Hakata Station!" in English and then waving me through without a ticket); kindly old ladies, approaching me as soon as I get off the bus to ask if they can help me get somewhere, anywhere; romantic couples, waving shyly at me through the sakura blossoms as I walk past; young girls accidentally sending me to the wrong bus stops and beaming at me while I wait to sneak back across the road; old men smiling at me for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I buy a coffee, and the people in Starbucks seem genuinely delighted; I eat curry, and there is an excited buzz throughout the restaurant. If every city has a personality - and, of course, it does - Fukuoka, even in the pouring rain as it is today, seems to be the busty, bustling neighbour who brings round hotpot and then plays Poker with you and lets you win.

Even my brand new, free hotel (paid for while I teacher-train for four days) is delightful. Okay, so I can't steal the hand-towels and bed linen and dressing gowns because they've all got Comfort Hotel monogrammed on every corner, and my radiator sounds a lot like it's on a runway about to take off, but I have complimentary coffee, internet, shower facilities and a Japanese television that I don't understand at all but is really entertaining anyway. Plus I've got a view - of sorts - and access to as many free films as I want, courtesy of the clever people who sit at the back of cinemas and film through holes in their popcorn buckets and then upload it onto the internet.

Nothing, though, told me as much about Fukuoka as the gentleman who walked me across the road this morning. Having just dropped my bags off at the hotel, the reception staff had photocopied a map for me (without being asked: they were trying to adopt me too, I suspect), and they had then drawn little circles around the hotel location and where I was supposed to be going for my initial teaching meeting, with a nice wiggly pink line in between the two destinations. Having skipped happily five minutes down the road, I was just standing in the vague area of where I thought the meeting could be when a gentleman tapped me on the shoulder.
"Can I help you?" he said.
"Thankyou, domo, arigato gozaimas," I answered, bowing three times, because I still haven't worked out when to respond in English and when to respond in Japanese, so I do both in case I get it wrong and it's rude.
He took my map from me very earnestly, and then led me in total silence back across the road. Six or seven minutes later - having asked a number of strangers the directions in Japanese - he brought me promptly back outside my hotel.
"Here you are," he said, and - looking at the pavement - sped off across the road again, leaving me touched and pink and giggling slightly to hide in the reception area for another ten minutes until I could creep out again without upsetting him. He'd been so keen to help me, that he hadn't realised he was taking me back to where I had started from.

This isn't my resting place, unfortunately; it's a good seven hours bus trip from Fukuoka to my new home, in the south of Miyazaki. But if the welcome here is anything like the one I can expect when I get to Nichinan, I think I'm going to fit in very nicely indeed. Even if I spend most of my time being sent in totally the wrong direction.

Little steps

I knew it would happen. I wasn't sure when, but I knew it would turn up one day: and it has. On Sunday the 29th of March 2010, to be precise. At 28 years, 3 months and 22 days old.

The day where I officially turned old.

Unfortunately, it didn't - as I assumed it would - coincide with the day where I also became responsible, or mature, or tidy, or organised, or sensitive to other people's thoughts or feelings. I thought it would happen all at once; that it was a kind of trade off. You know: you give up being cool or hot for a nice smelling kitchen and friends who no longer forget your birthday on purpose in vengeful retaliation. But it wasn't a trade off at all. Just as I now have spots and wrinkles, I am now old and immature. And it has crept up on me entirely without notice. Or without much notice, anyway (I should have noticed that I no longer use hair straighteners because 'what's the point').

It all happened on one trip to the pub, just before I left England.

"It's bloody freezing," my sister pointed out, because it was - as she had astutely noticed - bloody freezing.

"You need a better coat," I said, tugging at the ruffles of her very beautiful and trendy Brighton bought coat with pursed lips. "This is not warm enough."

My very beautiful and trendy Brighton based sister rolled her eyes at me.

"Yes, but look how pretty it is," she announced. "Who wants to be warm when you can wear something this amazing?"

"If it's not keeping you warm then it's not doing its job," I said disapprovingly, and - I'm ashamed to say - without the vaguest tone of irony.

"Its job is to make me look good," my sister replied. "Thus it is doing its job."

I tugged at the padded sleeve of my long, quilted, bogie green parka.

"You need a coat like this," I said smugly. "I'm cosy as you like. I could walk a dog for hours and hours and not feel the slightest chill."

My sister and I then both laughed warmly at the idea of me walking anything - dog or otherwise - for hours and hours.

"I might need a coat like that," she said eventually, when she had got her breath back. "But I sure as hell don't want one."

Then, as if the warm-but-ugly coat had set me off, it all started happening in quick succession. I turned down free wine because 'I might get a headache on the plane.' I ordered a side of vegetables because 'I hadn't really eaten any greens for a couple of days.' I found myself getting interested in a conversation about the BA strike. And then it happened: the point of no return.

"My God," I said as my youngest cousin turned up at the dinner table. "What has happened to you?! You've shot right up."

My youngest cousin - all eleven years of her - looked at me with what I can only describe as vague disgust.

"Hmm," she said.

"No, seriously," I said, still reeling from how much of a difference eight months makes to a ten year old girl. "You look like a grown up!"

"Hmm," she said again, sitting down and trying to move away while I pinched the sleeve of her jumper and breathlessly exclaimed something about how lovely it was, being gold and everything.

"Hasn't she grown?" I repeated to my sister, pointing at my now pink and mortified relative.

"Stop it, Holly," my sister said tiredly. "You sound like one of those embarrassing old Aunts."

"But she has," I said, suddenly realising that perhaps all the times I'd run away, bored and humiliated, from a similarly delighted old lady, perhaps she had also been genuinely startled by my dramatic increase in height and maturity. Perhaps I, too, really had grown.

"Seriously," my sister hissed. "Cut it out. You're embarrassing me." 

So I gave up, and asked my fifteen year old cousin what A Levels she was doing and what her career plans were instead.

It doesn't sneak up on you at all, old age: it rushes up in scary, noisy little steps, making a big bang and clatter and bringing you to a stand-still, like the wrinkle under your eye that doesn't go away when you stop smiling, or the white hair that comes back no matter how quickly you pull it out. And then you go away, and you forget all about it, until you find yourself pointing out a pretty skirt and announcing you would never pay that much for a 'couple of flimsy bits of material', and it's there again, just one step closer.

It can make all the noise it likes, though. I know old age is coming, however small its steps, and I'm not scared at all of turning around and laughing in its face. In fact, I'm really quite looking forward to it. Perhaps I, too, really have grown.

Fluffback

“I didn’t call you Fluffy because you had curly blonde hair,” a very old exboyfriend just contacted me to tell me (old in terms of how long ago our relationship was, not because he’s currently collecting his pension).

“You read my blog?” I said, surprised and a little bit smug at the same time.

“Sometimes, when I’m bored silly at work,” he answered. “Don’t worry, it’s pretty far down my reading material list. Usually just before I start doing Suduko via The Sun online.”

I ignored him, because it’s more flattering to think that he’s stalking me a little bit than that my life marginally pips a small grid of numbers in entertainment value.

“So, why did you call me Fluffy, then?” I growled.

“Because you’re a bit… well.”

“A bit well?”

“I hadn’t finished. A bit… well… ditzy.”

“I am not ditzy,” I said, drawing myself up to my full height even though our discussion was online and he couldn’t see me. I’d like to think I was writing a bit taller, though.

“Hols, when I asked you once to give me an example of a definite article, you said ‘cat’”.

“Well it is a definite article! It’s definitely a cat!”

“That’s not a definite article, Holly. And you thought Peru was in Asia.”

I would argue against this, but then he’d ask me to tell him where it actually is, and then I’d be in even more trouble.

“You’re without exception one of the fluffiest people I’ve ever met.”

I retaliated with a stream of very unfluffy curse words.

“And,” he added once I’d stopped swearing at him, “your nose is sort of fluffy.”

“My nose?”

“It has little tiny fluffy hairs on the end of it.”

There was a silence while I digested this, and then I gasped, horrified:

“I. Have. Little. Tiny. Fluffy. Hairs. On. The. End. Of. My. Nose?”

“Yeah. You can’t see them. Only feel them if you kiss it. But your nose is definitely fluffy. It’s a definitely fluffy article.” And then he laughed, as if he’d just said something funny, instead of mortifying and possibly emotionally scarring.

“Like a… monkey?’ I pretty much sobbed at him.

“No, more like a baby rabbit or something. That’s why I called you Fluff. It wasn’t an attempt to compress or supress or digest your intelligence or anything like that.” He paused and then added: “I think you do that pretty well on your own, to be honest.”

And then he laughed, as if he’d just said something really, really funny again.

If there’s one thing worse than being called Fluff by every man you’ve ever dated, it’s finding out that it’s because you have hairs on your nose. Having spent the last hour rubbing it with my finger and trying to reach it with my lips to check, I think that it’s nonsense: my nose is perfectly smooth, thankyou very much.

But - in my effort to prove my exboyfriend wrong - I have a strange feeling that I may have accidentally proven him right. 

Fluff

I arrived back in Japan last night, with the blossoms just breaking out and a new part of the country and an air that is already fresher and sweeter than Tokyo, and that`s with advanced jetlag and a cold - but I`ve decided to write about my hair instead. Changing your country is all well and good, but nothing shakes a girl quite as much as changing her image.

There is a big difference between moving where you are, and moving who you are, and 10,000 miles is not quite enough - I decided when I got here and sniffed the air - to feel like I`ve started again. So, to help me feel like the fresh beginning is quite as fresh as it could be, I got the brown hair dye and the scissors out, and I now have short, auburn hair that laughs in the face of mousey roots and will probably get far less confused tugs from five year old Japanese children (one of my previous students collected one of my long blonde hairs from the carpet - when she thought I wasn`t looking - and put it proudly in her pencil case). Practically, and culturally, it should help me blend in and go relatively unnoticed (as long as I can find shoes that somehow reduce my height by a foot or two). Practically and culturally, it should save me a lot of time and effort, trying to find a Japanese hairdresser who doesn`t look at my blonde highlights and run into a backroom crying and searching for her college hair manuals.

It`s more than that, though. As I stood and stared at myself in the mirror this morning, feeling strangely bereft and asexual and a little like a large French pageboy from the 1400s, I realised that my fine, bleach blonde curls have always been part of my identity, and they`ve tied me to it. Without any exception, every boyfriend I have ever had has loved them; without exception, every boyfriend has called me (thinking themselves stonkingly original, obviously, as all men do) Fluffy, or Fluffs, or Baby, or Kitten. Round eyes and fat cheeks haven`t helped me in my attempt to be taken even remotely seriously, obviously, but I have lost count of the amount of men who have kissed the end of my nose and told me I`m cuuutte. Regardless of the fact that my IQ is often considerably higher than theirs, or that the pinnacle of their creative talent involves pointing a camera at something pretty and pressing a button, or that their idea of biting wit is to say "toodaloo" every single time you announce that you`ll be going to the toilet.

"Is Fluffy writing?" they would say, when I sat down with at my computer (except that the `r` would be missing, so it would be Is Fluffy witing?"). "Is my Fluff drawing a picture?" they would say when I went anywhere near a piece of paper (except that it would be dwawing - presumably, again - in case the r scared me and my fluffy little endeavours). And then they would ruffle my hair, stroke my nose and tell me how sweet I looked when I concentrated. And, when I finally lost my temper, they would remind me how incredibly enchanting and adorable I was when I told them to "seriously, go and f*ck themselves."

It`s a hair colour, and that`s all it is, but it changes more than the colour of my hair. When I`m blonde,  I get more attention and I get more compliments, but I also get cheated on repeatedly (with brunettes), patted on the head, walked all over, ignored and patronised. Without my wispy yellow curls, I go completely unnoticed (I`m not particularly attractive without them, basically: they are the curtains in front of the magician) but I also feel stronger, more creative, and more independent. The blonde me gets her heart broken and spends six months in a bedsit, crying. The blonde me cares whether boys think she`s pretty or not. The brunette me doesn`t. That little box of hair dye - the one that cuts the old Holly off at the root, the one that sticks a finger up at every boy who has ever told me they were `proud` of me for knowing the answer to a general knowledge question - doesn`t just dye my hair; it colours my opinion of myself, no matter how wrong and stereotyped that opinion is. And the scissors that have made me look like a boy have simultaneously cut off all the curly, fluffy bits of me that begged so badly to be looked after and protected and never really were.

I`m in a new part of Japan, and it`s a completely fresh start for me; a chance to stretch my limbs, and laugh again, and joke again, and swear again, and be somebody stronger, and less vulnerable. But it`s my hair colour, and not my location, that has made me feel like I can truly start again. Because it doesn`t matter that the change is nonsense and all in my head, and on my head, and around my head. It doesn`t matter that I`m living up to every stereotype that has ever been written. It just matters that there has been a change. And that the past - as well as every single person who has used my hair to press my abilities and passions into the far less scary shape of cuteness - has been finally, totally, permanently (it says so on the packet) removed, destroyed and cut off.

And it is staying that way.

Getting Rid of Holly

"Tralalala," my dad sang at me this morning, parading into my room in his stripy, multicoloured 'Joseph' dressing gown and enthusiastically offering me a cup of 'that green rubbish you brought back with you'. "My Getting Holly Back Out Of the Country Plan starts today."
"Don't," my mum muttered weepily from under the duvet where she had crawled in next to me while I was still too asleep to put up enough of a protest (I've spent the majority of time in England waking up to find a shadowy figure sitting on the edge of my bed, stroking my hair and whispering 'it's just me, darling. Just checking. Go back to sleep.').
"What shirt do you think I should wear to get rid of my daughter?" dad asked nobody in particular, disappearing out of the room and coming back in with a blue stripy shirt and a pink one. "I think the pink one is more cheerful, and therefore more appropriate given the circumstances."
"Mark," my mum said even more weepily. "Stop it. I'm trying to pretend that she's not leaving."
"Oh, but she is leaving," dad said even more jubilantly. "Definitely leaving. I've seen the flight confirmation. So what do you think: pink or blue?"
"My baby," mum said in a choked voice, nuzzling my shoulder. Dad took one look around my bedroom, and grinned even harder.
"Eight months it took us, to get this room looking like a boutique hotel. New floors, new furniture, fluffy rug, priceless art. It's taken you eight days to make it look like a bedsit again." His smile widened. "And now you're leaving again. And we can clean it all up again."
"I'd rather have my baby back with all her mess than all the tidy bedrooms in the world," my mum whispered huskily from the other side of my bed.
"I bloody wouldn't," my dad said. "Do you know how hard it was to sand into those corners?"
"It will be nice to know where all the household cutlery is at any one time," mum admitted, picking two spoons and a fork up from the top of my fireplace and peering at them in confusion.
I peered over my green tea, not convinced by any of it in the slightest. Dad's just excited that he can visit me in August in Miyazaki and learn to surf.
"You'll miss me," I said complacently. "I know you will."
Dad looked at me thoughtfully for a couple of seconds, and then smiled.
"Pink," he said. "I think pink. The Getting Rid of Holly plan deserves a pink shirt."

As much as I am going to miss my family, I'm prone to agree with him. I'm pretty excited about my next adventure, now. Maybe I should be wearing a pink shirt too.