As of late…

Howdy Howdy

A little more than one month has passed for me since coming to Osaka. I’ve started working a couple part-time jobs. But money is still a problem. You know, since I don’t really have any yet. I plan on moving out from my friend’s place as soon as I can get a month’s worth of rent money together. Hopefully that can be Friday.

Due to this little problem, and other issues, things have still been okay, but a bit stressful. To be honest, I feel the pangs of loneliness more often lately. I went to a concert the other week (Deerhoof, band from America, Japanese singer, weird, but awesome) thinking maybe I could talk to some people there. Meet some like-minded friends. But that didn’t exactly turn out at all. I spent the concert stationed at a high standing table, amongst a few other people who had gone to the concert by themselves. I wanted to try talking to them, but I couldn’t figure out what to say. How I could start talking to them without seeming like some creep. And doing all this is Japanese was kind of daunting too I suppose.

So, the bands (Urichipangoon opened for Deerhoof) played and were awesome. It was great. And then I managed to start talking to the girl standing beside me, about Deerhoof and bands of a similar ilk, ’cause I didn’t have any friends into Deerhoof and I especially didn’t have any Japanese friends who were into Deerhoof or the other music I’m into. But it was apparent that she just wanted to go home, so our conversation kind of awkwardly fell apart and she jetted. So, yeah. Haha.

No big deal, at least I tried I guess.

Everytime a friend asks me about what I’m doing here in Japan, there comes the question of will I go back to Canada after the year or will I stay in Japan any longer than it. And the answer to that: I have no idea. It’s a question that I consider every day. I don’t want to though. I tell myself that I should worry about that later on in the year when I have a good chunk of living here experience, and can make a better decision. But still, the debate is endless in my mind. There are a few important factors that will obviously go into this decision and are factors that directly influence/determine my quality/enjoyment of life:
(in no particular order)
Work
Music
Vegetarianism
People

For work, I need to do something I can enjoy to some degree. I don’t want a job-job. I crave variety in my life, so i’m not sure how my working life will turn out. I like teaching English itself, but it could depend on how I end up doing that. English school? High school? Privately? I don’t know.

Music is something that is essential to my life. For the first while after coming to Japan, I had no musical output at all. I didn’t write/record anything, didn’t sing at all, play guitar, etc.. I actually started feeling depressed because of it. So, I’m kind of assured now, that in some capacity I will be doing music in life. The other day, I met up with a friend I met at the university I did an exchange at 2 years ago (Poole Gakuin) and we went to a music studio (a rehearsal space) and we switched off between guitar and drums and just jammed for a couple hours. It was fun. Although maybe it was a little harder for me to get into it because I was terribly tired, sore and I was dealing with a cold wrapping it’s hands around my brain. I’m not sure whether we really click musically, but it was good doing music anyway. And I think we’ll probably do it again, maybe with another person or two.

Vegetarianism. It’s no secret that I haven’t been exactly vegetarian here, since I’ve made the concession of eating fish and other seafood. It’s beginning to get to me a little though. Some stuff is alright, I can stomach it fine. But other stuff is just disgusting to me. And if it’s disgusting to me, I find it to also be kind of wasteful. I mean, I eat it so that I’m not being rude to the people being so kind as to offer it to me. But Ideally, I wouldn’t be eating it. I panicked a little at first about this, but then I realized I’ll be moving out soon and will be making my own meals, thus, I’ll be able to be a lot more vegetarian. It can be quite stressful to spend so much time acting in ways that go against pretty fundamental (and almost religious) beliefs. So, once I’m living on my own, I’ll make my own meals and that’ll be better for me.

People. Of course I miss my family and friends back home. The internet, however, does in fact make it easier to keep in touch pretty well. Holy Skype! I started using Skype a bit lately. I feel like I’m in the future. I have friends in both Canada and Japan, so that by itself wouldn’t seem to pull in one direction or the other. But in Japan, I don’t really have any friends that I can connect or relate to about music and/or vegetarianism. I think this is a big source of my feelings of loneliness lately. So, the mission becomes to meet some music friends (to play with, or even just people who like the same kind of music as me) and it’d be really cool to meet some vegetarians here (they are quite few and far between, but there are a few). I think this will be pretty hard, but I’ll have to try.

That’s it for now. Keep in touch.