On Tokyo blues and having a phone as a boyfriend

It's happened, silent readers. I'm currently on day two in the busiest city in the world, currently perched on the bed at the place we're renting, writing after a busy day of errand running around Tokyo. I'm finally here. It's so many things at once - busy, humid, loud, stressful, cool, sad... I don't know what to think of it, really. I can't really be any kind of reasonable in this matter. I'm confused as all hell. These past few weeks have been kinda awful, filled with fun things like not being able to sleep and crying on an almost daily basis, and I'm still not sure this is what I want to do, but here I am, and I'm going to try to make the best out of this. I fought to get here, now I need to make sure that I can make something out of all those years of effort.

Monday morning, the Philosopher drove me to the airport, stopping to pick up my parents at my sister's house. The Philosopher and I have been pretty much inseparable for the past month, trying to squeeze every little last bit out of the time we had together, and yet feeling like we've been cheated by the world, like we deserved more and deserved it now. I moved in with him for the last week, but really I've been living at his for way longer than that. I've never really wanted to live with someone since the Idiot Ex and I broke up, but this felt amazing. Of course, happiness had an expiration date, and that date was May 26th. Picking up my parents was supposed to be a quick affair, due to his seminar later that day, but my parents decided that we hadn't decided on our meeting time at all, and instead came like an hour later. "We'll make the plane anyway, it doesn't matter," mom said as ways of (non-existant) apology. If we'd known that there was an hour to spare, there would have been so much more time for cuddling at home, without my sister's mother-in-law chatting our ears off. Sad people should be allowed to be sad alone, without an audience. No such luck. I was bawling by the time we'd reached the airport, and that only stopped for brief stretches, while I clung to the Philosopher like some sort of drowning animal until we had to go through security and he had to go home. It sucked.

You know things are bad when you empathize with a crying cartoon character with a lemon for a head.

My parents' complete disregard for time continued at the stop-over in Helsinki, where they spent forever browsing gift shops and drinking coffee while I nervously kept glancing at the clock. "Stop fidgeting, we've got all the time in the world," dad said mere seconds before there was an personal announcement over the PA that we should get to the gate ASAP. They played it off and joked to the flight attendants about it, but shit like that is just so embarrassing to me. People are trying to do their jobs - it's really rude to not at least try to not make it needlessly difficult. I don't think they mean to though, but at the same time I don't think it would hurt them to try to not be very last minute about everything. I think they'd feel less stressed about stuff too, in the long run.

I spent a large portion of the plane ride over listening to sad music and sobbing into the airplane blanket, while trying to watch the second Hobbit movie, which ultimately failed due to it being boring as shit. I tried to watch Her for the ump-teenth time, but as with all airlines that boast of having hundreds of movies to choose from: for some reason there was always something wrong 'right now' with the file, and thus it was unavailable for the full flight, as were most other things I was interested in watching. It didn't matter much though. Things were kinda shit, and they proceeded to be kind of shit once we reached Tokyo (where the three of us were interviewed by a tv crew on why we were in Japan, literally the first thing that happened when we stepped into the arrival halls. It was weird). The train ride to where we're staying was just all kinds of horrible anxiety. I had hardly slept, with the sleeping pills that the Philosopher gave me having pretty much no effect at all, and I hadn't eaten, and I was horribly sad and homesick to death. If I could've, I would've turned around and gotten on the first plane back home. I couldn't really give myself a good reason as to why I'd gotten up and left the best thing that ever happened to me.

Pictured: The one thing so far stopping 2014 from being the worst year in existance, and Gilbert the knitted cat.

Dragging myself out of bed and to a noodle joint made it feel slightly more bearable though, and today I've been keeping busy fixing all this shit that needs to be done before signing my work contract on Monday. I had to register the address of the place we're staying at now, which makes me nervous as I haven't really talked to the lady we're renting from about that. It's only until I find an apartment of my own, so like another week to ten days, but still, it's awkward. I just don't know what else I could've done. Every time I've filled out the information I've felt kinda guilty about it. "It's only temporary," everyone says, but that doesn't stop it from feeling a little inappropriate and kinda weird.

Speaking of inappropriate and kinda weird, I don't think my parents are cut out for Tokyo life. They walk at a snail's pace, get in the way of Japanese people when they're on their way somewhere, bow too deeply or for too long, causing everyone (myself included) to feel awkward as all hell... Dad keeps saying 'flied lice' and doesn't understand how offensive it is, even if I doubt that anyone understands him. Mom keeps pestering me to ask people if she can take their picture. I probably do a million things that seem awkward to the average Japanese people, but it's different when you're watching it happen, like some sort of slow trainwreck that you can't tear your eyes from. It makes me feel responsible for them, and it causes me to stress for no real reason.

I like Tokyo. I really do. Walking around today, I felt like I could really carve out a little place for myself in this city. I do feel a bit separated from the rest of the world though. I've been having nightmares for weeks due to stress, and last night I had one again (about Stephen Fry reading a poem and rolling all of his rs, because for some reason my brain found that seriously intimidating). I woke up feeling perplexed and uncomfortable. I wanted the Philosopher there to hug and then fall asleep again, but when he wasn't there and the realization came that he's not just 'I'll see him in a week or two'-away but actually more like 'I won't see him for months'-away, I felt really lonely and horribly sad instead. "I'll be here to comfort you anyway," he told me when I went online to tell him about it and get some kind of reassurance . "I'm where your phone is."

So that's my initial update for my new Tokyo life. Now that I've gotten a power cord for my laptop (since I in the heat of packing and stress accidentally threw away my old one), I'll be able to update on more of a daily basis. I think I'll need to, personally, just to vent my brain a bit. So many things are happening all at once, and everything feels kinda... I don't know, undecided and insecure. It probably will for another few weeks, at least until I'm settled at work, with an apartment of my own, and preferably some sort of direction in life. I've always wanted one of those, they seem kinda neat.