april showers will bring may flowers

It's my second month in Tokyo.

It's so hard to believe, because so much has happened.
To be exact, a lot of the unexpected has happened.
Too many discoveries about this culture which I thought I knew so well,
and too many realizations about who I really am as a person- and how much I need to change.

It feels like a whole year already.
The days crawl by at an unbelievably slow rate, but the week tends to fly by.
I had this problem in New Zealand, but I wouldn't imagine it would still stick with me while I'm in Tokyo, Japan.
If everything is so crowded and busy all the time, shouldn't time follow suit?
Apparently not.

I've done more than I thought I would do in my first month in Tokyo.

I've visited Disney Sea for the second time in my life,
but I didn't buy the whole bloody theme park as I attempted to do two years ago.
Its refreshing to know that I don't blow my money away on some random pencil with a huge Mickey Mouse bobble head attached to it,
but it's also very distressing.
I should be squealing, and jumping for joy at the sickening money leeching ways of Disney,
but I've grown immune.
Immune to the cute, immune to the foreign.

I've discovered that living in someone else' home is very different,
and when family squabbles take place, you end up wishing that the ground will swallow you whole...
When you feel like you are a burden as opposed to a blessing,
and when you are the sole cause of tension,
the terrible awkward feeling in your gut is worse than death itself.
A house is not a home,
and home is really where the heart is.

I haven't conquered the Japanese public transportation system...yet.
People still push me around, and I am still late for school at times.
The bus is still more expensive than the train,
and my biological clock is not yet developed enough to tell me to wake up when its my turn to get off at a particular stop.

I've discovered that my English is getting worse.
I'm slowly starting to forget adjectives and adverbs.
I'm gradually starting to feel like I don't have a national language,
and I can just speak a bit of English, a bit of Japanese, and a bit of Chinese.


I'm frustrated by the irony in Japan.
Japan is reputed to be an extremely clean country,
but ironically they don't provide bins at every nook and cranny.
The train stations are void of rubbish bins, and so are the bus stands.
In fact, there are absolutely no bins along the street.
Where do these people deposit their waste?!
It really puzzles me.

I realize that there are some things in Japan that I will love,
and I have yet to explore and enjoy.
Curfews are restricting, and so is obligation.
The start of May begins with a week's worth of holiday,
but my host mom has made me feel extremely obligated to dismiss any other plans I may have,
and spend this "Golden Week" babysitting her daughter, watching The Little Mermaid in Japanese,
and walking two sausage dogs to the park and back every morning at 8AM.

There is no such thing as sleeping in here in Japan.
When I informed my family that I used to sleep till 12PM during vacation,
they said that this type of behavior is intolerable in Japan.
It's apparently on the same scale of unacceptable as crossing your legs.
Interesting.

I have to get up at 7:30 every morning on holidays,
and 5AM on a normal day.
Yay. No proper sleep for an entire year.
I cannot possibly wait.
Oh well, I shouldn't complain.
I catch up on my sleep at school anyway. 

I realize now that I lie quite a bit.
Not to anyone, but to myself.
I tell myself I'm fine, I tell myself that I'm "over it",
but I'm in all sincerity, still very much back at square one,
and not moving on from where I was a year ago.

I also regret ever fighting with the ones I love over the silly little things in life.
I regret, and I continue to regret,
for time is the one thing you cannot turn back,
and I wish that I could, day, after day, after day.

I remember all the things I used to take for advantage,
and my coming to Japan has taught me to never do so again.
I take my parents and my brother for advantage all the time,
but I guess you do that when you know that their love is the only love here on earth that is unconditional...
I miss them so much, and I never thought I'd miss my brother being his annoying sarcastic self,
but I am dying for someone to tell me that I just got "lawyered", and tease me about if the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy really involves someone dying yet again.

 Koko, if you are reading this,

you have to sleep on the couch for the first month I'm back in New Zealand.

I am raiding your computer.

I also miss all my friends at Rangitoto College.

The amount of days I was absent?

GAH. WHY!

I am so stupid for skipping school as I did last year as a result of overwhelming Design assignments.
I hope my friends are doing better than I am right now.
7th Form is free, and nothing like the high school system here in Japan.
(thank God.)

I miss my unlimited internet,
and my unlimited ability to utilize it.


I feel disconnected from the world,
and when I only found out about the volcano incident totally screwing up with the flight schedules in Europe approximately a whole week after it happened,
I totally flipped out.
A week after is not acceptable,
and neither is watching Disney Channel in Japanese as opposed to watching the news, or some random, crappy Japanese Television Show.


April Showers will bring May Flowers.
Oh God, I freaking hope so.
April has always been a rather cursed month.
Hitler was born in April,
and the Titanic sunk in April.
Stalin also invaded some random country in April,
and some holocaust also occured in April,
so maybe the bad things this month was a very long and cruel prank on my being.

I'm hoping that the fact I get to sleep in for two and a half extra hours in the first week of May will determine my happiness for the rest of the month.
I'm hoping I accomplish lots this month, and my Japanese won't suck even more than it does now.
Maybe I'l make new friends, and grow closer in the friendships I've made so far.

I don't think its ever possible to stop culture shocking.
After I've been here a month, I've realized that there are many things that are so bizarre,
one cannot possibly start to accept it, or respect it either.
Culture shock experiences are getting more and more frequent now,
but I'm also getting used to being culture shocked.
I've accepted the fact that feeling like an alien is really the life I will have to lead while I'm here in Japan.
They don't call it the "Alien Registration Card" for nothing...

When people ask me how I'm doing,
I really don't know how to answer.
"Fine" would be a blatant lie,
but so would "terrible". 

I don't know how I'm doing.
I'm not doing great,
but I'm not doing terrible either.
I'm just living this foreign life,
taking a step at a time,
trying to carpe diem my ass off as planned before,
but failing miserably at the same time.

I think I need some good pizza that doesn't cost the earth,
and bread that doesn't look paper white and taste like glue.

All my love always,

April