2 years in Japan [explicit version]

So, I’ve been in Japan for 2 years as of March 28th. Two years is a decent chunk of time. Not enough to have learned to speak Japanese anything like fluently, in fact, I’ve learned just enough Japanese to confuse the hell out of your average Japanese person. I am still effectively illiterate in this country, because the Japanese have dispensed with their efficient alphabet in lieu of a confusing, monstrously complex, Chinese pictographic system called kanji, which westerners take as good ideas for tattoo’s, which of course they are not. Westerners often pick kanji/words that “look” cute, or “sound” profound. I have put those two words in quotation because of their impossibly subjective nature. Would you get POWERFUL tattooed on you? How about WISE, or EVIL, in English? That would look pretty silly, huh? No, how about the kanji for Dogu? That’s Japanese for TOOL, and I think it’s appropriate because there’s no Japanese equivalent for COMPLETE FUCKING DOUCHEBAG ON STILTS, which, I think you will agree, is a terrible shame, because it would no doubt “look” pretty cool. I have friends with such tattoos, and they’re going to end up in the category of barbed wire tattoos. Sorry, for you.

So what has two years in this country taught me? Well, a number of things actually. Not least of which is that I now hate this country and cannot wait to leave as soon as possible.

Hate is a strong word though. I use it with confidence, often, but that hate is a very general phenomenon known to all who have been somewhere more than long enough to realize that most other places might be better, or, at the very least different. That’s my chief problem with Japan. Familiarity breeds contempt in spades when your overseas, in a culture other than Western, surrounded by racism, and, worst of all, other fucking white people (mwuah ha ha ha). More on that in a moment. The problem is one of novelty, and more to the point, it’s absence. I, like you, am novelty’s whore. I need it like a junkie needs new veins. When I got to this country it was like I showed up at Disneyland on crack-laced acid. EVERYTHING was a curiosity worthy of several seconds of my notice. I was, in short, in heaven.

But that was two years ago.

These days I walk the streets like I was fucking Edmond from the Count of Monte Cristo, cursing, out loud mind you, all who cross my path. I have never instructed so many people, of so many backgrounds and age groups to “get the fuck out of my way”, “wake the fuck up”, “look where you’re fucking going you stupid bat eating cunt mouthed sack of aborted pit bull fetuses” (okay, that last one I’ve never used). I yell at everyone, all the time, except for cops, who are so few and far between, seeing one is like a major event, to be avoided. They stop you, ask you for ID, arrest you when you don’t have it, and put you in detention centers that have captured the attention of human rights groups. BUT, if you’re white and have blue eyes, they don’t do shit. Weird, that.

The point is, I want out. I wanna leave, fucking today, right now. But I can’t. Thanks to this economy, I have to stay. But boo fucking hoo, right? I mean, I have a job, sort of, I have an apartment, I have a girlfriend, and I have food. I’ve got it pretty god damn sweet, right? Well, so what. Who the fuck gives a moments notice to what they have? I’m more interested in what I don’t have, which is a plane ticket (business class!) out of this monkey fisting insane asylum, a sweet ass high paying job in Melbourne doing fuck all, a bong filled with melted glacier water from the last ice age packed with sticky crystal dealer stash weed, TV in English, a fucking pizza, a cool ocean breeze playing on my sleepy face, and an English language magazine lying, unread, by my side. In short, I want everything I can’t have here.

But international moves require extraordinary moves on your part. You can’t just do that shit, because the governments of other countries, and the people that elect them hate your job stealing, culture-altering ass. Fuck you, foreigner. Moving back to the states is out of the question. That would mean returning to a shitty credit rating, student loans, a worthless job (if I’m really lucky), $15 trillion (that’s 12 zeroes, I counted) of national and personal debt, and no car? Who in their right goddamn mind would call these options? When I left, the thought of never returning occurred to me almost instantaneously. And so, moving to Australia, getting married, getting my teaching creds, having kids, now seems like some unbelievable privilege. It is, and I’m gonna do it, because all the stupid people are reproducing, and the idiots of the future will need enemies, and if my progeny can fill that role, then all the eating I’ve been doing is justifiable, if only to me. I have found the reset button (I hope), in a way. All those lies we were told about how we got everything our parents didn’t (like a country that was unfucked up), and how bright our futures (that were financed into the fucking ground thank you baby boomer mother fuckers) were can evaporate into a mist of “who fucking cares?” I have left the building, and from outside, that shit looks like project housing painted gold.

BUT, about those fucking white people.

There are 2 kinds of gaijin (foreign devils). Douche bags, and everyone else. The douche bags outnumber everyone else. They’re the dudes who can’t get laid back home, so they come over here, and make out like they were R. Kelly lightly powdered in Spanish Fly. They know more about Japanese culture than Japanese people do, and secretly, they wish they weren’t white, and hate their whit skin. All of which is fine. We all have our crosses to bear. It’s just that they're insufferable. I lived with one when I first got here, and all I wanted to do was throw him off of our 7th story balcony into a vat of acid full of robot piranha with teeth made out of crystallized HIV. I fucking HATE that guy, and his constant smell of B.O. and mildew.

But why do I hate Japan? I guess I don’t. I don’t hate the people. They’re just people, doing the exact same shit everyone else on the planet is doing. I don’t hate the country. A country is just a convention, an idea, an illusion. Though Japan is a terribly ugly place, at least 98% of what I’ve seen, it must be said, that’s no reason to hate a place. It has its charms. What does that leave? Oh, me. I hate me? Damn, that demands some exploration. I don’t hate me, but I hate my situation, which is really just my attitude anyway. My situation is that I am illiterate, and ignorant in a country that relies upon extremely subtle interplays of propriety, obedience, and reciprocation. I am tolerated, but only just. I will never fit in completely, and I have no problem with that, but at the same time it acts as a constant force that pushes me out. Why would I want to stay? And if I don’t want to stay, and the people here don’t want me to stay either, I wonder how these complex issues and feelings would manifest themselves in my bahaviour and attitude (which I have control over). I might write a blog about it. One that is just a little too long.