Enjoy the silence

Japan is a lonely place. Lonely for foreigners living here. And, just as lonely for the natives - if the proliferation of pornography and iPods are anything to go by.

School has started again, although the students are still on vacation. Unless I wish to whittle away my paid leave on nurturing greasy hair and cheese melting techniques in my pajamas while I chain-smoke episodes of Qi (though I do believe that this is a very honorable way in which to spend my life), I have to occupy myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy(crap! the y key has come lose again - an old injury from a Japanese textbook that was hurtled at my laptop)self for eight hours a day.

Conversation with the few co-workers that are at school is not really possible. OK, well, possible, yes. Painful, definitely. My smattering of Japanese just doesn't allow for it, and dialogue is usually comprised of strangled words, aching smiles and my "I have no idea what you're saying, but I'm just gonna go ahead and nod anyway" face.

Wikipedia has become my saving grace and Hellish Mistress (contraryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy to popular belief, not all ALTs are lazy louses).

So, I arrive home only to realize that I have had, at a push, five lines in today's script. Most of which was when I ran into a friend's girlfriend on my way out of the gym, and by then I was beyond conversation.

I find myself in strange territory. My previous job requirement was to do almost nothing but talk - to the point where I began to loath the sound of my own voice. Now, it's not quite sure what to do when it's called to the front. Like an indecisive politician, it gets stuck in the corridor until someone else takes over. Usually the proletariat, or very fashionable fascists.

I suspect that the Japanese are just as lonely too - trapped by their families and paper walls. So much of Freak Japan is built to escape; even if for a few squirts of time in a masturbation cubicle. The love hotels are temples to solitude with a chosen other. Alcoholism in women is increasing as housewives escape their prisons of boredom. iPods are shrines to freedom from everyone else.

To be a foreigner living in Japan is to thrust oneself into the lonely sphere of always being outside. To be Japanese is to be born into the loneliness of never being alone.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. Maybe they're all just fetish freaks polite enough to keep their J-POP to themselves.

Enjoy the silence.