After two days at the Tokyo
orientation, I travelled with the other Osaka-based teachers by bullet train to
Osaka itself. One of the members of the group was an Australian who took great
delight in loudly saying coarse things about girls who walked by, knowing that
they (probably) couldn’t understand what he was saying. He also described – at
length – to the other males in the group how easy it was for Western guys to
pick up Japanese girls. Any queries about how fulfilling that would be, knowing
that many of these girls would only be interested in us because we were white,
were laughingly dismissed.
Of course, it’s hard to feel like
some kind of Western sex god when you’re constantly dripping with sweat and
your face looks like it’s about to explode. Every day the temperature has been
well into the thirties and extremely humid – apparently Osaka is the hottest
part of Japan at the moment. If you’re shivering down there in Dunedin and
thinking ‘hey, that sounds kind of nice’, then believe me: it isn’t. I’d take
the icy embrace of the North East Valley over this any day. Seriously, I can
barely even think in this weather: my brain is slowly turning to mush, which
makes writing a coherent column a little tricky. I’ve accepted that things will
be a little nasty for a while, although for some reason I was still offended
when I woke up on Sunday morning and found it was just as hot as Saturday – I
guess subconsciously I felt entitled to a day off from the exhausting heat.
Luckily my apartment has an air
conditioning unit, which makes things bearable. That’s about all it has, though
– apart from that, the place was completely bare when I arrived. You never
truly appreciate curtains until they’re gone, especially when you have a light
that flashes outside your window all night and the sun comes up at five in the
motherfucking morning. Thankfully another Kiwi in the area is about to leave
Fuse, so I’m looking to buy pretty much every piece of furniture he has.
As I look out my apartment
window, it’s hard to believe that this place will actually be my home for the
next year or so. There’s so much bizarre English everywhere that I don’t know
where to start. There’s so much bizarre everything
that I don’t know where to start. There’s the PA system on the main street
which plays creepy, carnival-style music. There’s the department store which
has a jingle so infuriatingly catchy that it has even infiltrated my dreams.
Last night I ate at a restaurant that was run by the Yakuza. The Yakuza! In fact, there is so much to
take in that my brain has just kind of switched off and accepted it, rather
than trying to frantically process all this new information. Once I get settled
in and begin to understand things a little better, I hope to give you some
poignant insight on life as a foreigner in Japan. That, and some hilarious
English.
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