I am not American: Part 132

What I find the most upsetting about living in Japan is how often I get mistaken for an American at school. I understand that there are only three Canadian students in my entire school, and besides the one Russian guy, all the other white kids are American. I understand that I am a minority. But still.

Somehow teachers never seem to forget about the Malaysians, Vietnamese, and Thai students at my school, and there are so few of them as well. Despite the fact that the Malaysian students usually just speak Chinese with the Chinese kids would make you think that the teachers would mix them up too.

But they don't. Somehow the Canadians are the only ones who get forgotten. Is it because I'm white and speak English. Is that it?

Grouping me together with the Americans is like me grouping Japanese and Korean people together. It's exactly the same thing. They kind of look alike, and their culture is sort of similar, right?

Except that Japan and Korea are a world apart. Japanese people and Korean people look so different from each other. Their languages sounds completely different. Their customs are different. Their people are different.

So why is it so hard for my teachers to understand how ignorant it is for them to ask me about America? I've never lived their in my fucking life. I can't tell you how X, Y or Z is in the US. I can barely tell you how it's like in Canada.

Canadians and Americans might look alike on the surface. We might speak the same language. But we're not the same. We have different customs, different cultures, different histories.

So next time you ask me what life is like in America, be ready for me to ask you what it's like in Korea, because you clearly won't understand how I feel otherwise.

Caged

They say that time heals all wounds, but I'm really not sure about that. The more time passes, the more you analyze and reanalyze a situation, until you've analyzed it to death and you realize how much you were hurt. And it hurts more. And you grow more angry and bitter, and you begin to hate.

I think about my ex-boyfriend a lot. And it's killing me. And I don't mean think of in a longing-way. No, I pinpoint him as the route of all my emotional problems these days. It probably isn't fair of me to do that, but it can't be helped.

The thing is that I am constantly reminding myself of the fact that I can't have things that normal people have. And that constantly reminds me of him. Because he was the one who made me realize that my shortcomings make me undesirable as a person. Worthless, even.

So whenever I feel worthless, I think of him. Whenever I feel like I will never amount to anything, I think of him.

Because they are linked in my mind.

I want him to go away. I want my problems to go away. I want to go to bed and wake up and be fresh and new and free.

南極大陸

I swear, I can't watch an episode of 南極大陸 (Nankyoku Tairiku, Antarctica) without crying. I don't think I've ever cried so much during a drama series... and we're still only at episode four...

That being said, I guess it's a good thing that I keep missing it on TV and watching it online instead. It'd be really fucking awkward for me to be bawling in the kitchen around quasi-strangers lol.

I can't get over how much I'm enjoying it either. For a series that, on the surface, looked like it was was going to be pretty boring (a bunch of men in snow suits hanging out with a bunch of dogs in Antarctica), it's actually really fucking interesting. And, you know, the fact that my dearest hubby, Kimura Takuya, plays the main role is a major plus.

Talking about Hubby, he's starting to look a little old in this drama. I guess the snow suit and toque have something to do with it. But when his face is printed on the cover of the many magazines in the conbinis, he still looks gorgeous, so it's all good.

Stress Stress Stress

Application forms are not only a pain in the ass, but I'm pretty sure I'm actually allergic to them.

Or at least I have some sort of application-form phobia. Who knows. All I know is that if I amount to nothing in life, it'll be because I had a nervous breakdown in front of a half-completed application form for something uberly important, didn't make the deadline, and was royally screwed as a result of this.

All this to say, I'm in hyper-stressed mode, cause all the shit has a tendency of hitting the fan at the same time. But I guess it can't be helped, so I'll do what I can, right? And if that means binge-eating chocolate and other equally bad-for-my-health foods, then so be it!

Inside

I had been thinking about earthquakes all day.

Not that a day goes by without thinking about them, mind you. Not a day goes by that I don't feel my body shake, even though the ground stands still.

But lately they had seemed to have disappeared. And perhaps, because in my mind, we were due to have one any time soon, I was lead to think of them all day.

Earlier today, as I mindlessly browsed Facebook for hours while waiting for packages to arrive, a friend of mine mentioned a National Geographic documentary about the March 11th quake, and how she couldn't watch more than seven minutes of it. So I looked it up myself. I only got through five.

I don't know why I looked it up. Maybe curiosity. Maybe a sort of deranged nostalgia. I couldn't remember the feeling of an earthquake. Everything just felt so distant. So far. But as I watched what seemed like hours of footage squeezed into the several hundred seconds of video I actually watched, I felt entirely tense. I had goosebumps. I had tears in my eyes. And I couldn't look away.

I could have probably watched the whole thing. But I saw the state I was already in, and figured that mentally, emotionally, and probably physically as well, I probably shouldn't put myself through this right now. Not now.

The day passed by, and I kept thinking of everything. Of how life has changed. How I have changed since March. And how incomprehensible all this is to those who weren't here.

In my mind, this is the most significant uchi/soto relationship.

Tonight, as I sat in my nearly pitch-black room, the light bulb to my only lamp dead and currently un-changeable, the ground began to shake again. After weeks of calm, the chaos returned.

This is what separates us.