Ming

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.