ohayo gozaimasu
Having recently stayed in Singapore for a month and in Niigata for a fortnight, I am now convinced that living in Tokyo is terrible. It's too cold here, and I'm not talking about the temperature. Before I went back in August, I'd been beginning to doubt my ability to hold an interesting conversation; I'd thought that my terrible Japanese and a natural reticence were the reasons. But someone told me I was sociable in Niigata, and now I choose to think that it's not me nor my Japanese, it's just Tokyo. The cold here saps away at your willingness to connect with people. When you greet someone on the street they return you a suspicious stare; when you make casual conversation with a stranger in similar circumstances the cell phone soon comes out, and the connection is just as casually severed. It's discouraging and depressing, and it takes away my confidence in the language too.
This realization (a little late, yes) makes my plan for communal living from next year onwards all the more appealing! - living with others prevents my turning into a hikkikomori. If I have to talk everyday, with people who are more than casual acquaintances, I think I'll enjoy my life a lot more, and not feel lonely (I know what they say about loneliness and how it is something we all have to get used to, but no this is not that existential sort). I don't usually like talking about what I worry about, because it's aesthetically foul. But this had to come out, in all its foul glory, because I've been thinking that we should occasionally write for ourselves too.