Love-Hate Relationship

I've been thinking about my last post. What it really comes down to, for me, is a mixture of things but, primarily my relationship with Japan and the Japanese people is a love-hate relationship. I'm sure many, if not all, foreigners living in their non-native country feel this from time to time.

I love how safe I feel here. I love having my own apartment. I love my job (most of the time and apart from the politics) and I have some great friends (Japanese and Gaijin) here. The food is great. The drink is great. The karaoke is fucking fantastic. The culture (when I can be arsed to go and see / experience it) is awesome. The spring and autumn are beautiful. The bilingual news is fucking hilarious. My local DVD shop has DVD's for 50 yen (25 pence) every other weekend. Some of my students are awesome, some are very amusing, some are boring, but you can't have it all. Most Japanese people will go out of their way to help you.

But, but, but.... there is also a long list of things that wind me up and really annoy me, and sometimes I can't see the wood for the trees.

However, today was a cool day so I just wanted to clarify it's not all bad. Today one of the little 5-year olds I used to teach, came running out of her class at the end of the lesson with another teacher, saw me, and ran up and hugged me. That was SO sweet. Then she drew me a picture.

After work, I went out drinking with most of my adult students from the day. It was totally fun and they are lovely people, which is why I asked them to come.

I also happened to try horse sashimi (raw horse) tonight for the first time. I was curious. It was a lot tougher than beef but not too bad. Neeeiiiiggggghhhhh! (Also had a kahlua banana drink, a couple of mango-shochu drinks and a couple of kiwi-shochu drinks).

And of course, there are two more teaching days before a ten day Golden Week break. YAY!!!

(Oh, and as a special treat, I'm in the process of (finally) sorting out the Vietnam photos).