I wish I had more time to write long blog entries for this thing, even if only a handful of people read them. I don’t know why but it feels like I do way too many things all the time, basically since I moved to Tokyo. I don’t know how to stop – start turning down invitations, I guess, but I always want to do everything and I have a lot of friends I want to see regularly. I also over-commit myself, especially when I’m drunk. Like, I’m participating in a fashion show this weekend mostly for the experience but it’s a big time commitment and I could have been relaxing at home after a week where I had something to do every single night…
Getting a boyfriend hasn’t helped either – not that I’m not enjoying myself or that I don’t like him, of course! Quite the opposite, I’m having fun with a new experience and just sort of seeing how things go. He’s Japanese and we’ll call him Mitsu. But I think I realized right after I planned first dates with him and another (British) guy that “Wait, I don’t have the time to be dating, what am I doing focusing energy on this?” But in the end I liked talking to him and we clicked in person (as for British guy, we had a good date and had a lot in common but I didn’t feel a spark), and when he asked me to be his girlfriend a month ago I said yes. I don’t regret the decision but it’s just another thing to fit into my schedule…
I still like my job but parts of it are starting to bug me. I guess mostly it’s just certain other people – some of them really rub me the wrong way. The annoying “sou sou sou” IT guy still bugs me (although it turns out “sou sou sou” is actually office-appropriate, but it’s still irritating when he does it), so do a few Japanese women who seem really fake, and one scheduler in my department is super irritating. I also really hate the way the office is laid out. There’s only one entry/exit door everyone uses and there are a million bottlenecks, narrow hallways, and corners and you nearly run into people like at least 10 times a day, leading to tons of awkward “Sorry, sumimasen” moments where everyone ducks their head and looks humble (a Japanese behavior mannerism that really bothers me coming from some of the more passive women in the office, I just want to shake them). The desks in my department are closely bunched together and if you roll your chair back you’ll hit the chair of the person behind you. One guy always, ALWAYS manages to smack his protruding gut on the back of my chair whenever he goes past it. The women’s restroom is the worst though – two stalls and ONE sink for 35 women, most of whom want to brush their teeth after lunch. I wish we’d move to a bigger office, I’m seriously so sick of this. Overall it’s a good job and a good place to work, but little things here and there bug me.
My house is also becoming an issue. Over the summer a British girl moved in. Her room was across from mine and didn’t share a wall so she didn’t bother me too much, except when she’d take her laptop to the kitchen downstairs and leave the door open while talking loudly on Skype to friends back in the UK at 11 p.m. our time – when I was trying to sleep. Then I moved to a room that DID share a wall with hers and she began to annoy me more – her alarm in the morning would go off about five times, all before I needed to get up, and her boyfriend was over a lot staying over and making dinner with her in the kitchen (he was always really nice though). So I wasn’t sad when she said she was going to move out and into an apartment with the boyfriend, but a few weeks before she moved out her friend, another British citizen, moved in. And he also wasn’t the most considerate – for one, he ate all my eggs. I bought a pack of 10, and I hadn’t touched it before all the eggs but one had magically disappeared. My name was written on the container, which had been enough in the past with my other three (Japanese) roommates. After I noticed a couple eggs missing, I put a rubber band around the container to further deter theft. IT DIDN’T WORK. HE KEPT EATING THEM. I don’t know for sure it was him but if my other roommates never did this and it happens right after he moves in, I think the evidence is clear. Anyway, I wasn’t thrilled with him, but then it got worse. A couple weeks ago, HIS friend (also British) moved in. I guess this guy came from his own apartment because he brought a bunch of kitchen stuff. The problem is that he hasn’t made ANY effort to adjust his behavior from living on his own to living in a shared house. He plays TV episodes and sports commentary loudly in his room on the weekends, he plays techno music late at night, he and the other guy chat to each other across the hall from their room starting at 11 p.m. on weeknights, and these walls are THIN so you really can’t do this sort of thing without quickly annoying everyone around you, only they never thought to consider that. There’s also issues with unwashed dishes and not locking the front door after coming home. Anyway, I’m so fucking sick of these British assholes. I’ve complained to our share company twice and so have some of my other roommates, and actually this week on weeknights they were pretty subdued, but I also found out one guy went home to the UK so it could just be that the other guy doesn’t have anyone to talk to. I really hope though that these bad habits have been nipped in the bud. I also made a fake quiet hours sign ‘from’ my sharehouse company and hung it upstairs and downstairs so I hope that helps too. I’m moving out in April but I wish it was sooner if this sort of shit is going to keep up…
translatory in tokyo 