(no subject)
in case anyone was following my progress with baited breath, you can all breathe a sigh of collective relief. i am better. i feel myself again. i am able to feel caffeine coursing through my veins like real energy again, i have regained my appetite, my body is no longer convulsed with foreign, ugly elements of pain and worry. last week i think my body was rather than a sausage on a hook; raw and full of odds and ends, a jumble of bits that didn't belong, and running through it a giant spike of pain. to carry on the odd metaphor, these few days i have been more like a japanese meal, balanced in taste, texture, colour. i concur with astrid that these past two days i have felt in love with the world again, which is a darn sight more welcome than wanting to punch everything into oblivion. only three days ago i was treading the streets with a strong desire to hit everyone in the back of the head, or kick their spindly stilettoes from under them (more likely in shinjuku and shibuya), yet a complete lack of appetite and subsequent low blood sugar (fortunately) prevented me from fulfilling this desire.
now, i dread going back to work, as this two week break has given me pause to all the myriad things there are to do, see, taste and experience in tokyo... all the amateur anthropological analysis i could wreak on the city, when instead i have to go and sit in an office instead. when you're inside the hamster wheel of neat routine- wake up, make lunchbox, work, teach english, cycle, swim, food shopping, one day off a week, laundry, keep on pushing, no thinking- there is no space for reflection or want, just the need to get from one day to the next. now that i can finally think straight and observe things in clear autumnal light- rather than have them tainted with my sour pain- i want even more time off, time to discover where i'm at, what i'm doing, where i am. i realise i am very much still 'outside' the city, far more outside than any anthropologist ought to be, far more detached from the trends and currents that course faster than dasher, dancer, prancer, vixen, comet, cupid, donner, blitzen (what great names to give to your kids, should you ever have a litter of eight) through the city. but return i shall, if only to re-immerse myself in the japanese-speaking world, to learn yet more about refugees and the united nations and the state of the world from a japanese perspective.
yet taking time off has also made me realise how relatively useless i am in this internship, how little i do, how little i contribute. like most jobs, i think, it makes little difference whether there's four or five people in the office. someone said to me recently (a british guy who works at bloomberg) that he thinks there should be enough staff so that when two people are off sick, the rest can just about manage; i kind of disagree. it would be nice, in an ideal world, but if all are present, doesn't that mean that those two people are kind of redundant? call me old-fashioned, but i like the idea that each person is so essential to the functioning of the company or organisation that their absence hurts. in japan more than ever i notice how many people are employed to carry out a simplistic task. how many people does it take to change a lightbulb in japan? seemingly, even more than your budget will allow. hordes of people seem to gather around holes in the road, only to wave on pedestrians along the make-shift walkway. yes, construction workers are notoriously powered by tea, biscuits and general laziness, but in entirely empty shops it's not unusual to find about five or seven workers; see up-market patisseries, bakeries, clothes shops, anywhere in fact. the consumer is king, so there are many to serve. tokyo has so many fucking people; i've started to wonder how the amazing number of shops and restaurants survive, given the competition; i have come to the conclusion that a) there's a fucking load of people here, and b) the japanese like spending, and i have no idea how they are rated as the top savers in the world. maybe outside of tokyo. but anyway; my role at the UN is really pretty minimal, and perhaps it should be, seeing as i'm only an intern... but i would like to feel useful, like a linchpin. i think back to the film office space and the management consultants' assessment of who was essential and who was not; how many would pass such tests in japan? or anywhere, for that matter?
question number four-hundred-and-forty-two; what am i going to do when this internship ends? who will employ me and will it be for good reason? will i have to leave the japan i am learning to love? fingers crossed not. although the newspapers tell me that asian markets are diving as much as others, at least people still seem to be employing and spending here and not talking about eating spam and carrot peelings (see the times, the guardian for details and recipes...)
in other news, i got my certificate of eligibility and handed it into immigration today. with hope, i should get my self-addressed postcard in a couple of weeks summoning me to the immigration office again to accept my work visa, without having to leave the country. in retrospect it will have been surprisingly easy to do this. and in my current state i have another three months from now before i will be forced out of the country. woo! only a month til my sister and mother come out... currently planning the itinerary for their visit, mostly around where and what we'll eat, and getting excited about it. although when my mother implies that they'll never be out of my sight i get a bit scared and hope that it won't be QUITE as intense as that for ten whole bloody days.
today i got a meal ticket from murphy for a free meal in a top hotel in shinagawa, one of the places i teach english. he organised the american karate team's stay here last week for the world championships, and has a stack of tickets left over. in order to avoid being 'found out' as an imposter, i pretended not to speak japanese, which i found incredibly strange and frustrating. it gave me an odd insight into how it must be if you don't; i didn't like it much. i ate my sushi lunch on the 38th floor with a heavenly sight over tokyo, blue skies raining down on all the grey blocks and skyscrapers of this monstrously gigantic city, finding an odd peace in raw tuna and sesame-dressing salad. it's only the second time i've had (good) sushi while being in japan, twice being mediocre conveyor-belt stuff. sushi is not as ubiquitous or as popular everyone abroad thinks when they think of japanese food...
i wish it was closer so you guys could all come and see what i was talking about.
now, i dread going back to work, as this two week break has given me pause to all the myriad things there are to do, see, taste and experience in tokyo... all the amateur anthropological analysis i could wreak on the city, when instead i have to go and sit in an office instead. when you're inside the hamster wheel of neat routine- wake up, make lunchbox, work, teach english, cycle, swim, food shopping, one day off a week, laundry, keep on pushing, no thinking- there is no space for reflection or want, just the need to get from one day to the next. now that i can finally think straight and observe things in clear autumnal light- rather than have them tainted with my sour pain- i want even more time off, time to discover where i'm at, what i'm doing, where i am. i realise i am very much still 'outside' the city, far more outside than any anthropologist ought to be, far more detached from the trends and currents that course faster than dasher, dancer, prancer, vixen, comet, cupid, donner, blitzen (what great names to give to your kids, should you ever have a litter of eight) through the city. but return i shall, if only to re-immerse myself in the japanese-speaking world, to learn yet more about refugees and the united nations and the state of the world from a japanese perspective.
yet taking time off has also made me realise how relatively useless i am in this internship, how little i do, how little i contribute. like most jobs, i think, it makes little difference whether there's four or five people in the office. someone said to me recently (a british guy who works at bloomberg) that he thinks there should be enough staff so that when two people are off sick, the rest can just about manage; i kind of disagree. it would be nice, in an ideal world, but if all are present, doesn't that mean that those two people are kind of redundant? call me old-fashioned, but i like the idea that each person is so essential to the functioning of the company or organisation that their absence hurts. in japan more than ever i notice how many people are employed to carry out a simplistic task. how many people does it take to change a lightbulb in japan? seemingly, even more than your budget will allow. hordes of people seem to gather around holes in the road, only to wave on pedestrians along the make-shift walkway. yes, construction workers are notoriously powered by tea, biscuits and general laziness, but in entirely empty shops it's not unusual to find about five or seven workers; see up-market patisseries, bakeries, clothes shops, anywhere in fact. the consumer is king, so there are many to serve. tokyo has so many fucking people; i've started to wonder how the amazing number of shops and restaurants survive, given the competition; i have come to the conclusion that a) there's a fucking load of people here, and b) the japanese like spending, and i have no idea how they are rated as the top savers in the world. maybe outside of tokyo. but anyway; my role at the UN is really pretty minimal, and perhaps it should be, seeing as i'm only an intern... but i would like to feel useful, like a linchpin. i think back to the film office space and the management consultants' assessment of who was essential and who was not; how many would pass such tests in japan? or anywhere, for that matter?
question number four-hundred-and-forty-two; what am i going to do when this internship ends? who will employ me and will it be for good reason? will i have to leave the japan i am learning to love? fingers crossed not. although the newspapers tell me that asian markets are diving as much as others, at least people still seem to be employing and spending here and not talking about eating spam and carrot peelings (see the times, the guardian for details and recipes...)
in other news, i got my certificate of eligibility and handed it into immigration today. with hope, i should get my self-addressed postcard in a couple of weeks summoning me to the immigration office again to accept my work visa, without having to leave the country. in retrospect it will have been surprisingly easy to do this. and in my current state i have another three months from now before i will be forced out of the country. woo! only a month til my sister and mother come out... currently planning the itinerary for their visit, mostly around where and what we'll eat, and getting excited about it. although when my mother implies that they'll never be out of my sight i get a bit scared and hope that it won't be QUITE as intense as that for ten whole bloody days.
today i got a meal ticket from murphy for a free meal in a top hotel in shinagawa, one of the places i teach english. he organised the american karate team's stay here last week for the world championships, and has a stack of tickets left over. in order to avoid being 'found out' as an imposter, i pretended not to speak japanese, which i found incredibly strange and frustrating. it gave me an odd insight into how it must be if you don't; i didn't like it much. i ate my sushi lunch on the 38th floor with a heavenly sight over tokyo, blue skies raining down on all the grey blocks and skyscrapers of this monstrously gigantic city, finding an odd peace in raw tuna and sesame-dressing salad. it's only the second time i've had (good) sushi while being in japan, twice being mediocre conveyor-belt stuff. sushi is not as ubiquitous or as popular everyone abroad thinks when they think of japanese food...
i wish it was closer so you guys could all come and see what i was talking about.