i've semi-moved to livejournal because it has a lovely 'friends only/private' option. so it's not that i'm writing less, i'm just not really posting it here.

i'm also back from japan.

bea hasn't left yet either due to certain circumstances. things feel so 'the same' even when you've been gone for a whole week.

i miss osaka already, i think i want to live there when i grow up.

'when i grow up' - i find that i still keep using this phrase even though i've sort of lost the right to use it already, since you more or less should stop saying it unless it goes along the lines of 'when i grow up i want to be fireman/president/vet' and at this age i can't say i want to be those things anymore.

what do i want to be, anyway? chalene says i want to be an artist, but then it just sounds like a job. it just sounds like a 'word', as though that's going to explain everything when there are so many things to it. i think i might end up being A Waitress In A Cafe (because i actually quite like it, despite the sometimes unfair management and irritating customers) while i try to figure out what i should do.

but i can't take forever to figure that out, because i just don't have enough time. it's comforting to read about Ang Lee and how he said he spent 6 years in agony and rejection (and how they now feel like 6 weeks because of his success with brokeback mountain), and think 'there's hope for me yet. i'm only 19. maybe i'll magically have it all figured out by the time i graduate'.

but i realize in life (i only realize this on the most basic level, because i'm unable to accept it emotionally) that you spend your WHOLE life basically, figuring out what you want to do with your life - because that's what life is. so in the end you don't really ever KNOW because you spend your whole life TRYING to know! and that's enough, or at least it should be.

but i don't want to just try. i want to know. but we all want a lot of things that aren't possible.

i think there's always a point in time when you do know, it just doesn't happen at the very end of the road like we expect it to. life is pretty anticlimactic, in that sense.

anyway, japan is astounding. it's like the truman show - you somehow feel like everything is staged, that it's some giant imaginary town where things go exactly as planned all the time. people are always so painfully polite and graceful and bashful that i feel like an obnoxious, clumsy, foreign oaf. they laugh with their hands over their mouths, even the young punk-style boys hold open the elevator doors for your family, the goths with their black lipstick and multiple piercings act in a most docile manner, they all apologize profusely if they should so much as accidentally brush past you ... countless things. they also have very bizarre advertisements which my brother and i would spend nights watching and giggling at (because there were hardly any watchable english channels).

but i really love how the place works. though i don't know how i'd be able to survive there (i'd feel embarrassed at my messiness and clumsiness every single day) or get a job doing anything there because they're all so neat and precise and PERFECT!

it's almost to the point of being robotic but it really does fascinate me to no end. i'm just so amazed at how a whole nation can live that way. the crime rate is extremely low, with 3.4 crimes per 10,000 people in Osaka, and Osaka's already got the highest crime rate in all of Japan. it's just astoundingly orderly and even a little disturbing.

it's like utopia. that's the word. i was scrounging around in my pocket for a word to give japan and now i've got it - utopia. which has negative connotations what with the likes of huxley and orwell and atwood, but i think it's creepily apt.

they have very interesting clothes. i bought quite a lot of things because they just looked so ME. their clothes are so ME. another reason to live there forever. their food basements are also mindbogglingly wonderful. bright shiny happy food and fluorescent cake cases everywhere - perfect melons and grapes and cherries which lead into buttery biscuits and perfectly frosted strawberry cakes and wonderfully chilled macaroons and if you walk some more you find yourself amongst beautifully marbled steaks and gorgeous arrays of sashimi-type fish.

in japan the mantra seems to be - 'anything you can do, i can do better'. they've imported NYC, Parisian and Belgian bakery/pastry chains in their foodbasements and behind a glass counter the Japanese patissiers and bakers are frosting the cakes and desserts perfectly without even breaking a sweat or making any mistakes (they can't afford to in public view). and then there are the Chinese dimsum stalls where the Japanese chef is sealing the meat buns so gracefully as if reversing flower petals into a bud.

perfection, perfection, perfection. i'm so entranced by it all i could stare at them forever.

oh, i absolutely loved the crepes there. they wrap them up into this neat ice cream cone thing - basically it's like a crepe cone! why don't we have those here? and the fresh green tea ice cream, not the overly-sugarfied junk we get from haagen dazs. i bought fig bread to bring to work but i doubt i'll be eating it. we did a lot of walking, but still i must now go on a diet.

+ posted by M @ 2:46 AM