Relationship Update

Don’t call me the boy/girl who cried wolf but I just wanted to tell you that my boyfriend is going to nursery school!

On another note, just as I posted my Miss Independent post, The Cut published a wonderful piece called 25 Famous Women on Being Alone. You can check out the full article HERE or just read my favourites below:

(Illustrations by Mitsuie Yusaku)

People sometimes seem surprised when I say this, because I’m a pretty friendly person. This is one of the greatest misconceptions about introversion. We are not anti-social; we’re differently social. I can’t live without my family and close friends, but I also crave solitude. I feel incredibly lucky that my work as a writer affords me hours a day alone with my laptop. I also have a lot of other introvert characteristics, like thinking before I speak, disliking conflict, and concentrating easily … introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward. In our culture, snails are not considered valiant animals — we are constantly exhorting people to ‘come out of their shells’ — but there’s a lot to be said for taking your home with you wherever you go. (Susan Cain)

I think alone time is good to know how to be alone with your own thoughts. I think it just helps you kind of be a better, more grounded person … and also I feel like it builds a sense of self confidence and a sureness that you know that you can venture out into experiences without the crutch of other people. Like, you’re not doing it because you feel lonely or isolated, but because it generates a new kind of experience. (Carrie Brownstein)

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. (Cheryl Strayed)

I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel. (Audrey Hepburn)

The precious part of my day is when I’m alone. When everybody goes home and (son) Sean’s asleep and I’m just watching the night lights out of my window or something. I like silence, you see. I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it’s all right to be alone. (Yoko Ono)

Osaka Somewhere

Guys, I said I was gonna blog less, not not at all! I mean, I blogged every single freakin’ day for two entire years. So now, only 3-4 times a week, if that’s okay with you (hehe).

Japanese grapes are like no other. Really, some of them sell for thousands and thousands of dollars! The purple ones (similar to these) are usually peeled. I can still remember the first time I saw my colleague, a 50-something year old carefully peeling her bunch of grapes as if they were bananas or apples. My mind was, and still is, blown. Also peeled by Japanese: pears, apples, the inner skin of all citrus fruit and figs.

I volunteered as a security guard in Haifa, Israel once where we used the code 10-68 for inappropriate behaviour. Nowadays, even though 5 or 6 years have passed, every time I see something “inappropriate” I think 10-68! Funny how some details stay with you.

It’s not all green-smoothies and health-foods. You know it’s a bad day when you find yourself sitting inside a Mos Burger at 9.25 on a Saturday night alone. Biting into the flesh of a dead animal as a second dinner – after having already eaten a big plate of cold left-overs plus two cream buns. Which, is the reason you’re out at all, you know, to convince yourself you’ve killed some of em kilojoules. Listening to Adele through stepped-on-broken headphones while using the restaurant’s feedback pad to write ex-lovers depressing love notes.
“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.” -John Burroughs
100 yen vending machines are popular because they only require 1 coin.

Singledom has a completely new meaning when you’re with the flu. These are freshly squeezed orange and carrot juice – my attempt at mothering myself with my real mama so far.

Would have been a completely vegan meal if not for the fish flakes atop the tofu. Of course, still delicious. I am really going to miss soba. Both soba and tofu are my favorite Japanese foods.

Often I have to remind myself that being single and living alone has its benefits too. I swear, except for the time I ate my feelings through a Mos Burger and fries combo, there hasn’t been a night where my dinner hasn’t been muesli and fruit.

PS I have had some recent fame, you can check it out HERE also, my latest Savvy article, HERE.

A Speck Of Dust Inside A Giant’s Eye: Osaka At Night

I went to the most epic salad bar of my life for dinner last night and on the walk back to the station, I got lost having gone the opposite way and ended up in Shinsaibashi, Osaka’s main shopping area. I had been there before but never alone and never this late at night. When I finally arrived home after sightseeing (ahem shopping) for a while, my special friend (hehe don’t ask) asked me to describe to him my favorite sight of the night. This, with a few minor grammar adjustments is what I replied:

To be honest, I liked the look of the luxury dresses in Dolce and Gabbana but all I could think about when I looked at them was the image of the poor little staring boy recently rescued from the rubble in Syria. How can one nation and some people be so filthy rich (myself included) when others not only have nothing but live everyday in fear of their life?

I enjoyed walking through the busy city with my headphones on playing Dido. Do you know her? Her voice is really calm. I felt like my life was a movie. In a way, it was as if I wasn’t really there but viewing it all (the people, the lights, the concrete jungle) from the outside.

Tonight, I saw the most people I have ever seen in my life. There was just so many of them. I wondered about their life and their hopes and their dreams and their struggles. What made them smile and what kept them up at night. I thought of how interesting and unique we all are and how imperfectly beautiful.

I took delight in seeing beautiful women in fashionable dresses and high heels zoom past me on road bikes. Catching just a glimpse of their attractive face with their long straight hair dancing behind them in the night lights felt like the meet cute of a romantic drama. And of course, I enjoyed the heavily cologned businessmen carrying fancy briefcases, lit cigarettes and/or vending machine coffee who flashed me an attractive smile.

Japan is a very fortunate country. I only saw one homeless person the entire night. Everyone seemed happy. Or at least, I only noticed the smiling ones. They were either family members on holiday trying not to get lost or selfie-taking loved ones or Japanese themselves out for a Friday night. Again, because everything was so busy and so full-on, I felt I wasn’t actually there but merely observing from the outside. And for the first time in my life, I enjoyed being alone really really alone after a long time of wishing I had someone.

“…Is this you saying you don’t need no man?”

Haha no. It’s me saying I can handle waiting for you.

Honesty Is Such A Lonely Word

Until right now, only my immediate family has known this. Because I live super rural with no cafes, restaurants or humans around, I usually have nothing to do in the week-day evenings. As in, really nothing. When it isn’t raining I can go for a bike ride but after the sun sets about 7pm it becomes too dangerous to stay outside (bears).

Also, using my computer isn’t  much fun. This is because I’ve been on the damn thing and on my ass all day long. Don’t get me wrong, I do teach (sometimes) but it’s usually 2-3 classes which are only about 45 minutes long. Leaving me a good 6 hours of Facebook time. Joking, I mean research. Educational stuff. As for Japanese TV, I don’t understand it much. Also, it’s really weird (to me).

So back to the thing you don’t know and my parents do, for the past 7 or so months, I have been going to bed at 8.30 and waking up at 5. This has been my mechanism to stop myself from getting even more homesick during the lonely and quiet nights. As for the mornings, I always go for an hour or two walk or bike ride which is where I take these naturey photographs.

So, there you have it. From one direction, it is definitely a somewhat lonely life (though sometimes I do get invited to stuff) but from the other, a direction I’ve chosen to peep from, I am living the life. I mean, when else can I have a Persian-style breakfast for dinner at 5pm and wake up at 5am, blending a green-smoothie on super loud? Totes not when future hubby or future babas come around. Am I right? Or am I insane?

Please None Of This BS

All I want
is to be held
so tightly
that all the sorrow,
stress and worry
have no choice
but to exit and to flee
and please please
none of this BS
about doing this solo
tackling this, just me.

She Looked at Him With Sorrowful Eyes

And though I know that
it can’t really be
still
sometimes it seems
everyone
has solved the riddle
passed the difficult level
found Wally
“X”
the difference
everyone
everyone but me.

Illustration by Yusaku Mitsuie

the truth behind living alone

As in, one house – one person. Which actually seems quite the luxury when put like that (and I guess in many ways it is, especially with the state of the world today) but it’s not all glamorous dinner parties and extravagant breakfasts (as seen on my Instagram). Several people have congratulated me on doing so well in Japan but actually, the reality is far from that. Here’s the truth about living alone: it actually sucks. The truth is and we all know it, that humans are hard-wired to connect.

Every morning I wake up to an eerie silence. No kind mother preparing breakfast, no noisy father reading the paper and no inconsiderate flatmates. Just me and myself and maybe a stink bug (but let’s not think of that). Which is all well and good for personal growth and all that jazz but as I said, in reality, it actually sucks ass.

Worse than a lonely morning though, is a lonely night. Especially when living in an apartment with paper-thin walls. Every night I hear the couple next door, talking and giggling and engaging in God knows what and you know, I’m happy that they’re happy but I’m also not. Hearing their joy while I kill time on the internet is literally like Nelson from the Simpsons pointing with his fingers inches from my face, his breath the stench of salmon and screaming his iconic: HA HA!

Then there’s the food problem. Cooking for one IS rocket science. It is incredibly difficult to cook for just one person. I usually end up cooking for 2 or more and either eating the whole thing (accidently hahoheha) to avoid spoilage and in turn putting on weight or just letting it spoil which is just shit. Also, cooking for one is not enjoyable. What’s the fun in cooking a fancy meal and eating it on your own? In fact, while I’m at it let me just say, travelling is amazing and the world is amazing and the adventures I’ve had and the places I’ve seen are unreal but deep in the fabric of my soul, I yearn to SHARE what I see, hear, eat and do with PEOPLE. In particular, my mother, my father, my sister and my brother-in-law. For one thing, I’ve lost count of the number of dishes I wished they could taste, too. Charlotte Bronte once said, “Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste,” and I couldn’t agree more (in every sense of the word).

So I actively engage in day trips and dinner parties and so on and so forth but not because my life just happens to be so. Lest we forget, there are two sides to every story; a hidden truth. A midnight fight behind the happy couple. A chocolate binge behind the acai bowl.  A lonely home behind the group photo.

oops i did it again

What is wrong with me? I’ve become obsessed with Mexican food! I blame seaweed and pickled plum. That, and living alone is hard. I mean, I like the freedom of having my own space (especially as a writer/someone who enjoys to write-not sure if I can call myself a writer yet…) but coming home, and waking up to, the silence of an unshared home is, well, lonely. So, I invite people over and serve them food which just happen to be Tacos.

Corn salsa:
2 cups cooked corn kernels
1 red capsicum (diced, small)
1/2 red onion (diced, small)
juice of half a lime
1 tsp olive oil
salt and pepper

Mix errythang together, das all.