i woke up to the nasty realization that i had fallen asleep before the sky had barely darkened last night, and had dreamt my way solidly through 12 hours. 12 hours…! i am a sleep monster. what is wrong with my body?

tokyo had its first real summer day yesterday, with temperatures going as high as 35 degrees. in town, it was about 32 but felt like much more. i spent the day procrastinating and scrubbing and cleaning, did two loads of laundry, and felt extremely good about myself. going out for a short walk later to replenish my stock of detergents and cleaners and wipes, it took all of 5 minutes (perhaps less) before i became a jolly dripping sight. wet. oh, and red. that was all the hint i needed. for the rest of the afternoon, i luxuriated in air-conditioned comfort within the four walls of my closet with a tall jug of cold, iced tea. this stifling, stuffy heat! so reminiscent of many summers past.

the news were all about people dashing off to beaches, or, like myself, red and dripping in the city. (mj had a decent spot in the news, but doesn’t seem to have generated as much heat as i had expected. for all my knowledge of the insularity of the japanese media and society, i am rather surprised. but i am sure that if the circumstances surrounding his death had been rather more scandalous, he would have made the “specials,” with a gaggle of japanese people seated in a studio, nodding sagely over the tragedy that was his life and his death. as it is… it is all simply very sad. and i do hope he rests in peace.)  

anyway, the beaches. those images brought to mind summers back in beppu. there was an abandoned jetty there close to where i used to live, right by the bay, stretching rather far out to sea. near the jetty, on shore, was a little building of sorts, like a ticketing house, likewise abandoned, and filled with broken chairs and graffiti on the walls, like you would see in the movies. roomie and i used to come up with far-fetched conspiracy theories, but the truth - we had found out from a local – was that the luxury cruise liner that used to run from the jetty had stopped operations when the company running it folded, and no one, it appeared, had bothered to tear down the facilities.

that suited me fine. i loved to walk out to the jetty in summer, far, far out, right to the end of it. at the beginning, i used to watch my back carefully, always believing that someone would turn up unexpectedly and push me into the sea. but i never met anyone there. the homeless men much preferred the sheltered area beneath the jetty, closer to shore, so i had that entire stretch of emptiness all to myself. it was the perfect place to sing. standing there, looking out to sea, and singing, sounds a little melodramatic and too romanticist-wannabe, but you would have to live in japan to understand that unless you owned a house (not even an apartment, mind you) with walls of decent thickness, you would be hard-pressed to find a place to belt your soul out. i ran out to the jetty to warm up before performances, or when i simply wanted to sing. out loud. or, on rare occasions, when i wanted to enjoy a good cry, out loud.

i miss beppu, but i’m glad i got away. it was too much of paradise. i think there is some truth in the dictum that inspiration comes with suffering. not that i am suffering in tokyo, but seeing so much more ugliness and raw humanity spurs me to think. reflect. write. indulge in that postmodern activity of finding myself.

three years since i last saw the place. i wonder if they have finally torn down the jetty?

i woke up just before 11 this morning, and marvelled at my renewed ability to sleep. and sleep. and sleep. i have never slept like i did this past week, yet hardly have the energy to sit through those long class days. i am still barely eating, so it may be that my body is attempting to preserve energy by going into hibernation mode. that would be quite a disaster considering the two-papers-by-november fact, but i am so resigned to it all, i don’t quite wish to whine about it for a while.

lying on my bed now with my face toward the window, watching my laundry swing in the cool, unseasonal breezes, and the fresh smells of detergent entering the room in light, welcome puffs, i feel strangely at peace with tokyo for now. never mind the gastric pains, never mind my inadequacies in research; i have clean clothes, fresh bedlinen, and my closet of a bathroom scrubbed within an inch of its life.

i have been living on bread for the past couple of weeks, figuring that i may as well get the maximum amount of calories from the limited amount of food that i can stomach. i meant to pick up some jam or honey spread at the supermarket yesterday, but came across some black sesame spread instead. but before i go any further, you have to watch this.

this guy (american, i guess) reviewed the various peanut butter alternatives to be found in japan, most of which i have also tried. there was a period of time when i used to really love the “peanut cream,” which he condemned and described as tasting like “vaseline” (i have never tasted vaseline…)  i suppose he feels the same way i feel about chinese food in japan. anyhow, i got over my craze; i suppose all that gelatin does get to you after a while.

so, returning to my foray yesterday… black sesame cream! it’s all part of the same jam series as the “peanut cream.” incidentally, these are the cheapest types of jam you can get hereabouts. black sesame spread! at 100 yen! how could anyone say no?

i should have taken a picture of it. fascinating. the spread was glossy black and gel-like, just like its peanut counterpart. i had some wild delusions of that lovely sesame fragrance filling my senses (living on a very limited selection of food does that to you). imagine my shock when i realized they tasted exactly the same. peanut and black sesame. it was all rather amusing.

according to the weather reports, we enter the rainy season this week, but nobody really knows what that means since it has been pouring on and off for the past two weeks or so. i have made concrete plans (seriously concrete) to buy a fan this week.

summer!

sakura season. harbinger of spring; of a time of departures and meetings, farewells and hellos, old things and new, in japan. there is something hauntingly beautiful about these flowers. perhaps it is in their transient beauty. or simply the ghostly white-and-pinkness that speak of things both happy and sad.

unlike most people who rush to see these flowers when they are in full bloom, my favourite time of the season is when they begin to wilt, when the wind catches them and the petals start swirling all around you like flurries of snow… there is a japanese term for it – 花吹雪. such a lovely expression, hanafubuki. if you take the three characters apart, they would mean flower, blow, snow. sometimes, the japanese ability to put so much into so little blows me away. just like how they manage to say volumes with just three short lines in their haiku.

many people have been asking me what it is like to be in japan again, and i can do no more than shrug. the truth is, i cannot, as yet, feel anything. beyond the initial disappointment at the dormitory (which, after a long self-lecture on being spoilt and the realities of life, i’ve since come to accept), beyond the niggling fear commingled with anticipation at doing research again… beyond these, i feel somewhat numb. if anything, i miss home. i miss home comforts, home cooking, and family warmth. i miss the weekly rituals of singing and singing, battling new music, and laughing non-stop during dinner. i miss the people, the sights, the sounds, the smells of singapore. but that is not to say that i am depressed and homesick. how do i put this across…? well… i feel more singaporean than i ever did, more of a foreigner now than before, perhaps.

there is a word that i’ve always liked, epiphany. i wouldn’t be so vain as to say i’ve experienced one (although i’ve always wanted to, just so i could use the word!) but in the long rambles i’ve been taking every day since i arrived, i have managed to sort out certain things in my mind (the result being that i lose the way home more often than not), see them more clearly, and i think, am all the better for it. this, at least, i am grateful for – the time and opportunity, at last, to put down all work and just walk, think, sleep.

i picked up a couple of new books that i really enjoyed, but i think i will let the juices sink in a little more before i write about them.

it is just beginning to hit me that i have barely 3 weeks to get everything packed and ready to go. that sounded reasonable to me until last night, when i looked around my room and began taking stock of the colossal nature of this move. i exaggerate, i know, but i need to scare the wits out of myself so that the procrastinator has no chance to pounce. and despite sundry people assuring me that you can get everything in japan (oh don’t i know it!) there is simply something about items that you already own – that mark of ownership, of mine-ness - that makes it rather difficult to part with them. i cannot quite convince myself that the school library holds every single book that i so fondly believe i need, or that a closeted phd wannabe will only need so much clothes (certainly, i do not think i require five white shirts of varying sleeve-length and whiteness)… but i looked at the size of my dorm room and quaked inwardly. i suppose i will have to work harder to persuade the… hoarder in me (what is the antonym for minimalist anyway?) to give up these worldly thoughts and focus instead on entering that hallowed world of most-highest learning.

but it becomes a little more difficult to leave with every passing day, and i almost wish i had not put out all these little roots in the past year. home feels like home at last – i know my way around (a point of contention, i know, but i meant, at least sufficiently for my own purposes), i speak singlish, know about the little nonya, and have heard all the local grouses, those adorable oh-so-singaporean-type complaints… better yet, i actually know and feel enough to contribute to these grousing sessions if i so wish. and i bring a cardigan, water bottle, and foldable umbrella around with me. how much more singaporean can you get, right?

tokyo is fascinating and kawaii in its own way, but (whatever else anyone around me may think) i am, after all, not a japanese. i cannot strut around tokyo because i do not own it – i cannot quite rant and rail at it; i feel as if i have to submit to it passively, quietly. it is not mine to love and hate and attempt to change. singapore, on the other hand, is.

and having written all this, i feel a little resentful, all over again, about the fact that they did not consider me sufficiently qualified to teach in singapore schools. and they let non-citizens teach national education! it riles me, it does. but you can always count on family to let you down once in a while, and at the end of the day, you cannot help but love them all the more for it.

the entire scholarship application and pre-departure process is a testament to my growing ability to take things as they come without worrying overmuch. where i would previously have cried in frustration and become severely depressed, i now shrug my shoulders and focus on something more practical (or at least, more interesting), even if i cannot quite laugh about it.

the embassy appears to take delight in sending documents one at a time (quite literally, one piece of paper each time). each piece of paper seems to concretize my status as a scholarship receipient and student-to-be just a little more, and seems to swipe away just a little more doubt. it is rather amusing, at the end of the day… this… game they are playing. and yes, i say this with absolutely no sarcasm. cross my heart. the university, too, (bless their heart) assured me today that the location of the roof over my head in tokyo has been confirmed, and that i would receive news tomorrow. i am, i think, a happy girl.

so now i can commence packing, get a haircut, meet a dozen people for a dozen farewell meals (is it not funny though, that i may not even have met some of these people ever since i came back two years back? hello, and goodbye?), studiously avoid the pensive eyes of the male P.. .well… among other things. i have packed and moved, packed and moved, packed and moved so many times in the past almost-ten years that i have since lost any sense of urgency and/or fear. my mind, instead, insists on dwelling upon the unimportant things – right now, one of the most important of those unimportant things is to savour that mysterious, renowned chwee kueh at tiong bahru. i don’t even have any earthly idea where in tiong bahru i should go. it is really quite a catastrophe.

i cannot quite put into words how sick i am of translating documents about animal vaccines, but since i am more than grateful for all the money that awaits, i will not put my emotions into words after all. suffice it to say that i have mastered the art of translating something more or less accurately without quite knowing what it is trying to communicate. (there goes my professional credibility.) but isn’t one skill just as good as the other?

spam is so convincingly written these days, it’s amazing. have you ever received spam comments that sound really sincere (i like your writing! i added you to my blogroll. will be back!), and you would never really know if it were a real comment or spam… because… hell, mr. make serious income (or whoever) may really have liked my blog, no?

i’m feeling a little down today, having learnt that i still have to go through the entire research student route before taking an exam to qualify for the phd course. i feel a little cheated, because they never said so at the outset, and i went along happily believing that i could just go and start trying to be clever and all. when i look at it calmly and objectively, i believe it is all for the better – i now have a full year to really get back into (studying) shape, and to size things up before i jump into it all… but for now, i cannot quite come to grips with it. isn’t that how it always is when things turn out a little differently from what you had confidently expected?

i think i shall go for a swim. perhaps the chlorinated water will dull my senses a little, so that i can go back to all the practical business that awaits.

the wait is over! off to japan in 5 weeks or so! back to school! back to watching japanese tv!

my heart won’t stop thumping. oh dear.

i thought i really might die when i woke up this morning to an unending coughing fit, as my body worked feverishly to expel all the phlegm blocking up its airways. but the body does not give out quite as easily as i had thought (doesn’t it?). all i had needed was some good medicine and much sleep, so i gave up working and did just that.

it feels as if our brief respite in cruel heat is over before it even started. we haven’t had much rain, and the nights are warm again. those lulling breezes so reminiscent of fall are now, once again, warm puffs of air… everything in singapore seems to be pulling me back and making me homesick way before i am due to leave. yesterday, the choir sang bunga sayang, and incapitated as i was (voice-wise, that is), i listened for the first time without singing along. they sang well, and it brought up a surge of nostalgia. strange isn’t it? how one can feel homesick even at home.

i never used to really experience homesickness in all those years in japan, and i don’t want to start now. it can hamper, and i cannot let anything get in the way of what i need to achieve there.

some lead right back to where you started.

i was wandering around the financial district today and getting rather hopelessly lost, as always. that was when this post happened.

you know the movie sliding doors? i think about that sometimes. where i might have ended up if i hadn’t done a certain something in life. let’s say i had not listened to mum 15 years ago, and studied french instead of japanese. i might speak a little french now, but i don’t think i would have ever made it to france. i think i would have stayed in singapore and gone on with my studies at the school of communications and stayed in the publishing line.

or if i had cleared that writing test waaaay back in 1999, i would never have gone to japan. i might have gone to leeds, had a lot of english tea, and come back as a journalist instead.

or if i had, say, read the papers just a teeny wee bit more and passed that other test last year. i might be coming up with tv documentaries for a living now. i think i would still very much like to do that if life had turned out differently somehow.

or if the ministry of education had not decided that my japanese degree meant that i had insufficient skills in english to teach the kids here (and look! i don’t even use uppercase! how right they are!) i might be in teaching college right now, learning about pedagogy and such, and looking forward to moulding the future of our nation.

but most of all, if i hadn’t taken a series of turns and unintended crossings, i may never have met a certain person. i may never have been both happy and sad (people you love do that to you. it’s the law). i may never have returned to singapore two years back, nor may i have wanted to leave again. who knows? i might even have met sundry other people and allowed one of them to make me both happy and sad for the rest of my life. i might have been bouncing a baby on my lap as i type this.

if. such a powerful word, full of endless possibilities and dead hopes.

…blog.

this is turning out into an entire series of entries on when to blog.

it’s a very strange feeling to know that i have no work for the next four days, at least. nothing. absolutely nothing. it’s a situation i have been actively trying to avoid for months… years…? but not this week, at least. it feels good for now.

just out of nothing-to-do-ness, i started surfing around for apartments in tokyo. even having lived there for two years, the whole upfront cost of renting an apartment always hits me afresh. it’s not even the rent – just that lousy excuse for extortation they call “gift money”. (they don’t even disguise it under some other name. it’s simply a gift to the landlord, and you can kiss it goodbye forever.) i don’t hate japan, no. and i am wildly excited at the thought of being there again. but there are just things about certain places (any place in the world, for that matter) that you just find difficult to accept.

like how the hairdresser slapped my hair around last week. it just came to my mind now. i went for a haircut last week at an established hairstyling chain in singapore. they weren’t bad, really, and the hairdresser was a friendly chap (although he didn’t really seem to understand my english). perhaps they were too friendly. i felt positively man-handled. first, i got a blast of cold water to my hair, which dripped unceremoniously all over the sides of my face, but… never mind that. then later, the hairdresser, together with hairwashing-lady, stood side by side with two major hair-driers. you know, the giant, whooshing type they use in salons. and they came at me. really. each taking one side of my head, they flicked my hair violently and slapped the wet hair all over my face while waving the hair-driers around wildly the whole time. hello? i was scared. very scared. it’s a good thing the haircut turned out fine, but i don’t know if i’m ever going back there. i am used to being pampered by gentle, apologetic japanese hairdressers. this is all rather new to me.

but i only meant to say that there is something about every culture, every place, that you will somehow find fault with.

my right cheek is swollen. i wonder if my wisdom tooth is (finally) pushing through. why do i not feel any wiser than i did five years back?