Actually I lied.

The truth is, I’m not in Japan. I actually live in the North Pole. Yep, that’s right. The sun sets at 3:30pm and it gets earlier by 15 minutes every advancing day. The only time to get some good sunlight is in the early hours of the morning, of course that’s only if it’s not raining. By around 4pm it’s twilight and by 5pm it’s pitch black outside. Yes, feel sorry for me my days are short.

So I haven’t posted in a while. It’s because I’ve been lazy and a bit scared of what I might post, it might shock you and make you wonder if it really is Philip who’s typing all this. Anyway, I can assure you all that it is me but I have undergone some transformations – the most significant being that I am now a vampire and live in darkness.
Here’s a rundown on what’s changed apart from my skin colour and the seasons:

-My Japanese is not improving. Well my slang Japanese is almost fluent but my conversational skills are quite poor. In fact I can only talk about myself, so when people try to talk to me I just distract them by talking about things I’ve said a billion times like where I come from and when I leave and how I like Japan and stuff like that. I had to translate for a family friend here who were hosting two university students from Bangladesh. That was interesting, since we spoke three different languages and the Bangladeshis had no idea that if you touch Western people around their waist area too much they might feel uncomfortable. Still I think I did a pretty good job as a translator and I learnt that some men from Bangladesh have no inhibitions.

-School is quite fun now that an exchange student from America has arrived. For some teenage reason or another he refuses to try to learn or speak even the simplest Japanese which makes me look like a prodigious, fluent exchange student when we’re together. I love it, he uses English for everything – including thank you and sorry – and I translate for him and everyone marvels at how good my Japanese is. This was the key to making friends at my high school, I can’t believe I was getting by without an American exchange student by my side! If he’s reading this well congratulations, at least you’re literate in English! So now that I have some Japanese friends who don’t only try talking to me because I’m a gaijin I’m having an overall better school experience. I will admit that class is still very boring and I learn very little but I get to scare them by making up crazy things about Australia, watching their reactions, and then telling them it was a joke and we all fall into laughter. Cheesy isn’t it?

-I’ve had some very cultural experiences recently. Firstly I watched my older host sister’s wedding on video. It was eye-opening. If you think Japan is all slick and class then I’m afraid you couldn’t be more wrong. A Japanese wedding is more tacky than the colour ivory, and that’s saying a lot. The video was edited full with fade-ins and fade-outs, background polyphonic Bette Midler, and many an onscreen beige padded shoulder jackets. Really, I think if I had been there in person I would have suffocated in the smell of hair wax. So after watching the wedding video I got thinking about how similar a Japanese funeral would be. Luckily enough a family relative of my hosts’ died and I got to go. It was tacky, but not to the wedding extent. The funeral ceremony included pink carpets, synthesised Claire de Lune, and a plastic waterfall ornament which had a loud motor that could be heard throughout the ceremony. Anyway, this ceremony was interesting. First of all because they opened her coffin at the end, second of all because we went to the Crematorium and had lunch while her body was incinerated, and lastly because at the end we collected her bones with chopsticks and crushed them up into a little box covered with floral patterns. I managed to take a video of the chopstick part, it was very interesting. The old ladies got really excited about which bones they got to put into the box. What’s strange was that Japanese people strictly do not embrace during grief. I found that sort of oppressive actually and was really put off the whole. People were openly mourning when they opened the poor woman’s coffin and everybody stood separately expressing their grief collectively alone.

-The obsession with food is getting beyond my tolerance. They can stuff their seaweed somewhere…else, for all I care. I don’t want to hear about food any longer. My Japanese teacher who I’m late for a lesson with right now because I’m typing this drove for 10 hours across Hokkaido last weekend just to eat a “delicious meal”. Good Lord woman! Do we need to hear more about the environment to get the point across or what? Anyway, I’ll post later about my thoughts on the horrible food they eat here later on. I’m late. There’s so much more I have to say!