Osananajimi covers such a broad age that it could quite as easily apply to primary school friends as well as to those who’ve you’ve know your entire life.

All my life I’ve been told that it’s incredibly rare to have osananajimi from such an early age. I have known how lucky I am to have such a person in my life.

Yesterday I had a rediscovery of sorts.. a revelation if you will. There is another. I met a friend yesterday that I hadn’t seen for over half a decade. It is a mystery why some friendships come and go… connections are lost and found. However, true friends will always remain true friends. However old you get, whatever changes you may go through, these people in your life will still see you as you. The sudden realisation that I had known this person for close to 20 years was just mind blowing.

Anyway, that’s really all I have to say.

In my current lifestyle where true friends are hard to come by, I really do cherish these old connections… reminders of my childhood, reminders of home

It is difficult to be so frank about such things these days – people tend to judge, misinterpret and twist things to paint a picture which is far from my intention. To me, having an osananjimi means having the deepest and most undescribable connection you can have with a person. And, it’s nothing to do with crossing lines or changing perspectives at all.

Hope that makes sense…

BBQで上司に説教されて、あの時は全然気にしてなかったんだけど、the more I think about it, the more I wonder… what the hell am I doing? Where is my life going?

I know my blog entries tend to centre around the same topics over and over again. I understand how boring and dull my life must seem to you all. I wish I could write about something more interesting. I wish I could be more positive.

I like to think I used to be an outgoing, happy kid… but to be honest, that happy self probably went into hibernation a long long time ago. 最近は本当に楽しいって思ったのは何度も歩けど、正直those happy times are so shortlived, it scares me. The moment, we 解散, all that happiness slips aways って感じ。超情けないな。

These moments of fragility are so frequent these days, it seriously adds to the never-ending stresses that I seem to create for myself. It’s a vicious circle.

In my life, I like to think that I have priorities… family, friends, work, etc, etc… but then, sometimes I think, what the hell is the point of having priorities if they don’t make me happy. Seriously, I can’t explain this.

Does being a 社会人 mean that conversation revolves around work, weekend plans, romantic happenings (if any), vacation plans… ok, I have no idea what other conversation there is, but life feels a little stale recently. I think I need a little more excitement… nothing crazy, but to be honest, I think I need something that really gets my heart racing.

You know, sometimes when you have that feeling of wanting to let your frustration out by punching something? or maybe, screaming at the top of your voice. The feeling of being trapped in this shell, self created or imposed by the environment I’m in, it’s tiring.

Honestly, I do not regret for a single minute the decision to come over here. I just want to be able to show that my life is just as great, if not better, than everybody that remained in London. At the moment, the only reason for my life being better is, I’m in Tokyo, you lot aren’t. But seriously, that’s shallow… The screaming I want to do… I don’t want it to be about frustration, stresses, etc.. I want it to be about my fantastic life… the awesome things I’m doing…

I’d hoped the past week would kick start something, change something… all the events I went to, all the people I met up with, everything… and nothing. Meeting up with new friends, friends from work, uni friends, old friends from 5-10 years ago…. all of it was fantastic! I really did enjoy seeing everyone. Catching up, shooting the breeze, whatever. I hate to say this, but I want more.

Unsatisfactory.

In Other News

In other news, I bought a new laptop. After 5 years of serving me extremely well, my laptop finally died. Over the years, I’ve made some adjustments like, adding new RAM, remapping my keyboard to work around broken keys, putting up with a dodgy sound system, living with an extremely noisy, most likely loose, fan…. and the final straw… the screen losing all brightness – not completely dark but, so dark that you can just about see the outline of a window.

Anyway, I bought the new studio xps 13. It’s snazzy, yes. But I still miss my old laptop. I mean, after 5 years, I had it set up near perfectly. Shortcuts, applications, settings, etc. I have to redo all of that.

I previously spoke up having near everything backed up online. Admittedly, I started that as I forsaw the day that my laptop would die. However, getting my new laptop I was faced with a difficult choice. After near 4 years working, studying and living on Ubuntu… was I going to install it on my new laptop or not? I mean, study is no more – work is at work, and living? well, living is just the internet, email and the occasional editing of some document. I don’t play games on my laptop these days… programming is mainly limited to work… I’m going to try migrating back to Windows. A heavily modified Windows environment obviously. Trying to integrate as much of the best features of linux into Windows is going to a mighty difficult task, but it’s a challenge I’m going to attempt to tackle. To be honest, being such a new computer, I reckon Ubuntu would still have a few quirks it would need to sort out… plus, the latest release has been full of bugs. In a few months time, either I would have successfully migrated to the cloud, or I’ll be installing the next release of Ubuntu, or maybe 7?

Either way, it looks like it’ll take me a few weeks to get used to this new machine.

Anyway, to all the geeks out there, I’d just like to say…

svn-ing your entire computer has its challenges and is frustrating at times, but it can be worthwhile. Admittedly, it’s near impossible to have compatibility with Windows and Linux on the same repository, plus, I have yet to successfully test this out across multiple machines, but it’s a lot easier than the stupid network drive set up. The damn thing keeps losing connection every time I try to bloody copy a large file and it’s too damn laggy to stream media off!

Finally…

I’m currently in the middle of watching the Robocop: Prime Directives mini tv series. It’s メチャ懐かしい！ I think I’m turning to the past more and more often these days…. so not good.

In similar news… I was talking with a friend about actresses that are our types… we couldn’t really name any recent ones *shock* we realised that we’re old enough to have lived through more than one ‘era’ … are we from the Bullock, Kidman, Aniston, Ryan, Roberts era? Does that era include Portman, Johannson, Jolie, etc? Either way, to have lived through more than one era for anything, be it movies, tv series, politics, music… that is a scary thought!

I had a bit of a shopping spree last week. Kind of retail therapy but not really, as it wasn’t very theraputic… I bought 4 new games:

1. No More Heroes (Wii)
2. Wii Sport Resort (Wii)
3. Pikmin 2 (Wii)
4. InFamous (PS3)

I have yet to play anything other than 1. but I’m really looking forward to inviting some friends round to test out the Motion Plus thing on Resort. Will most likely blog about it once I do. But yeah, No More Heroes is turning out to be pretty interesting.. will review that too soon!

Anyway, last words…

Who the hell reads my blog these days anyway?

Last night was a somewhat depressing night in watching tv and sitting infront of my computer. I guess the usual pattern wouldn’t involve going out or anything and quietly spending it with family, but seeing so many couples out and about it was quite a shock to my system. So much so that I woke up with a slight temperature and a severe headache!

Anyway, I felt a bit better in the afternoon, but actually spending a day at the office on Christmas day was very bizarre. It was definitely very quiet but it felt so much like a normal day. Even with all the Christmas lights and all that, as there were so many people out and about, it felt a bit surreal.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to spend a second night sitting at home alone, as I went for an impromptu drinking session with a few work colleagues/friends. Despite all the bad points about the Japanese style Christmas, I had a fantastic and unique Christmas evening! I was totally smiling all the way home! Bad points? Well, firstly there’s no Christmas Turkey! Secondly, it’s not a national holiday (nor is my birthday but we’ll get to that). Thirdly, it’s a couples day rather than a family day. But yeah, so thankful that I have good friends like those I went out for a drink with tonight!

Actually, this Christmas is the first occasion that I won’t get pressies or open them with family. Having said that my mum left a present when she visited. But yeah, tomorrow will no doubt also be a low key day; it’s my birthday and all as well!

My mum told me that I should probably get used to this kind of low key Christmas/Birthday as I turn into a fully fledged adult but I’ll definitely miss those family gatherings.

I also feel slightly guilty that I haven’t sent any Christmas cards this season. Usually I’d write to a few people but this year I’ve been ultra lazy. Then again, I can’t really fix that now that Christmas day is nearly over.

My birthday is less than an hour!!!!!

So, I’ve been thinking lately how to increase my social network.

Back in London it seemed really easy to expand my network of friends; I guess being in university, living and growing up in the same city made it a non-problem. Here in Japan, it’s an entirely different matter. I’d like to be able to make more friends outside of work too. It’s all nice and well networking at work but you have to ask yourself whether you want to hang out with work people all the time.

I guess there’s also a secondary thing behind the networking; it’s not just a matter of finding friends, it’s more than that. I’m not quite there yet but in a few years time I’ll be in a situation where I’d want to settle down and I’d want to know the person a bit beforehand, right?

Anyway, not quite sure what the point of this entry is. Networking is tiring but necessary. It’s also difficult to go from the networking/acquaintance status to friends. I mean, really good lifetime friends are really hard to come by. It makes me wonder how I managed to accumulate the ones I have already. Actually, one of them is pretty easy, but yeah…. socialising requires effort.

At work, I’ve somehow managed to become “the organiser” guy. It’s actually pretty good for the networking thing but as I said, the next step may be difficult and being the organiser could be a negative.

Ah well, I guess this is what starting afresh in a new country means.

So, graduation week has come and gone, with me now firmly sitting back in my Tokyo apartment ruefully reminiscing the days gone by. A 2 week break would have been a lot more relaxing but unfortunately I don’t have the accrued days this year to do that.

Anyway, I can’t change the fact that I’m back; nor the fact that the weather in Tokyo seems just as bad as it was in London, except + a few degrees of warmth. It’s cold enough for me to wear a jumper. Then again, that could be because my body clock is screwed up and it can’t keep itself warm.

Graduation Day

Graduation day started off bright and early with an effort to beat the undoubted queues for collecting the gown and getting the official photographs taken. Unfortunately I misjudged the willingness of people to arrive early and found that after arriving at 8:30am, I was done by 9, leaving me with 2 hours to spare before the actual ceremony started!

It was fine though – it gave me a chance to speak to the multitude of friends and acquaintances that I ran across. Despite it only being two months since I had left the country, in some cases it had been a lot longer since I had seen them last. Now, I’m wondering when I’ll see some of these people again.

The ceremony itself was a somewhat dull affair with the Rector giving a slightly politically toned opening speech regarding the economy, research funding, university admissions and so forth. The speech was followed by a somewhat drawn out naming of each graduand as they walked up on stage to be officially turn in to a graduate with a handshake. There was approximately 1000 people graduating in the morning ceremony, with an equally large number in the afternoon ceremony. Thankfully, I was called up quite early on so any nervousness I may have had evaporated and I could “concentrate” on the magnificent day.

Post-ceremony was much the same as pre-ceremony with a lot of mingling and talking to various people. Photographs being taken and stories being swapped. Drinking featured throughout the day with the champagne reception and then a trip to our old haunt, the student Union.

The day did not creep into the night as much as some had envisaged with many people heading off with their families for dinner. A lot of us were too tired for them to return and the night to continue… another time perhaps?

Friday

Friday was a two part affair with the early afternoon spent with a couple of school friends down at the East India Club. We were all suited up, which was a slightly bizarre feeling considering we were just there to play snooker.

Anyway, the afternoon soon turned into evening, where I ran across London to meet up with my Japanese uni friends. One of them had never had fish and chips before so I insisted I take her to eat some. We went to George’s, which was not exactly the closest place but I vaguely remembered it being pretty good. I hope everyone wasn’t too annoyed by the long walk to and from the eating establishment! The food was soon chased down by drinks at first, one of my favourite pubs on Portobello Road and then a trip cross town to the Sports Cafe. Despite being semi-aware that my flight was the next day, I thoroughly enjoyed the night out although I should probably have been more restrained in the amount I drank.

The Flight

There was a couple of school groups on the flight back to Tokyo. They weren’t loud or annoying so they didn’t bother me too much. I was curious though… the distances these kids go now for school trips is unbelievable! The furthest I think I went with my school was Western Europe on a history trip!

Talking of trips. I went to see Blood Brothers, a musical tragedy, where over half the audience in the lower stalls were school kids! Lucky them! I do remember going to see Oliver! when I was at school though – we went to see one of our friends in that.

Parting Thoughts

Now that I may back in Tokyo – with the daunting prospect of heading in to work tomorrow. I can’t help compare the two great cities of East and West. Here are a few small things I’ve noticed:

Escalators: stand on the right, walk on the left vs. stand on the left, walk on the right
Toilet seats: A cold toilet seat really does wake you up in the morning, no heated seats in London!
Night Bus: 24hr system of London is superior to the lack of night time transport in Tokyo.
Culture: London has museums, theatres and history which can not be matched in Tokyo
Food: Tokyo has great food. In London, you have to pay a premium for that kind of luxury.
Smoking: Tokyo should really introduce the smoking ban, it makes a huge difference on a night out!
Friends: my social network in London will be difficult to surpass out here in Tokyo but I really do need to give it a shot!
Parents: they never do stop lecturing you and giving obvious advice whatever age you are!

So, the graduation photos are up on FB, with others to follow shortly. Now, to recover from jet lag as quickly as possible so this week is not too hellish!

Having been back in London, my hometown as it were, for the past few days, I feel that I haven’t missed it as much as I thought I would. Yes, there are so many things in London that’s been nice to see or experience again but if I were asked whether I enjoy London or Tokyo more, I really would not be able to say London with 100% confidence anymore. I have changed.

The weather has been a lot colder than I expected it to be. Admittedly, if I had thought about it rationally, I would have realised that 10-15 degrees is mighty cold! Anyway, that plus the rain has put a bit of a dampener on my return!

Having said all that, the one thing I have missed are my friends. Having spent so many years over here it is difficult to replace those social circles or even come anywhere close to matching them in the short few months I’ve lived in Japan. I await the day I have the same level of friends in Tokyo as I do in London.

Anyway, yesterday I popped in to the London office to sync up with the guys over here. It was a strange affair as personally, I’d be the last person I’d want to send on a mission like this. I am the least knowledgeable, least experienced and lowest on the organisational hierarchy. I just hope I have all the information people have asked for and I haven’t let the team down!

However, I did allow myself to dream somewhat, imagining myself as the official go-between for Tokyo and London. Getting the occasional holiday+business trip back to London! It’s nice to be recognised in some way I guess.

On a similar note, I’ve been asked to be the organiser for the L + N new-grad get together. Responsibility can be rewarding at times.

Anyway, you may wonder why I’m online blogging at this time of day; I’m actually wondering myself why I’m here and not out! I seem to have grouped together all my get-togethers meaning my evenings are busy but my daytimes are sooooo empty! Hmm… may be I should sort something out.

Tomorrow is the graduation! Hopefully it won’t be too boring to sit there for hours but very exciting!

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this quote I uncovered, it even has the date I apparently uttered these words! It is refreshingly youthful, energetic and light-hearted, reminding me of my school days!

“I wish people would stop comin online, it gives me no pleasure in blocking them” – 29/5/2003

I seem to have let Twitter overrun my blogging for the past couple of weeks. It’s just so easy to send a short snapshot of my current state than a long winded emotional splurge on the ups and downs of my life.

I went out with a few friends tonight to Trader Vic’s tonight. Tonight really would be the last time I’d see them (until October). I said at the end that I wasn’t at all emotional about the whole goodbye thing but as soon as I started walking down the street, the emotion just washed over me. The entire journey home I felt utterly lost and confused. I’ve been asked so many times whether I’m looking forward to leaving… and every time I can never say “yes”. There is just too much I’m leaving behind to make it a comfortable farewell.

I think I’m more scared than anything else. The fear of the unknown. The fear of leaving everything familiar behind. I really do not know what I should be feeling right now.

The Break

I’m back from Las Vegas. I guess you knew that as I’m sure you all use Facebook. The question to ask seems to be “how was it?” or “how much did you lose/win?”. At the start of the holiday I didn’t really know why I’d decided to tag along. I wasn’t really in the frame of mind to gamble any money, nor was I excited about being across the other side of the world. Las Vegas didn’t seem like the place to unwind and relax. I still don’t think it is.

I adjusted to the strange pace of life after a couple of days and I started to enjoy my time there. After a mini blip with the jet lag and air conditioning screwing up my body for a day, I played my first whirl of slots and the Mojito Magic started. I still had my moments, the hot weather, the ice cold mojitos and the pool-side tanning, washed away my stresses.

There aren’t really many highlights to talk about; I’m not saying the trip was rubbish, far from it. I’m saying, we did some walking, talking, swimming, drinking, eating and gambling. I guess the one thing worth mentioning is the Penn and Teller show at the Rio – thoroughly entertaining. Although some of the tricks were not that impressive, it still was a nice night out.

Although there were a few frustrating moments, some minor disagreements, some frayed tempers, those moments complement the many wonderful memories of my week in Las Vegas. I’m not sure when or if I’ll ever return to that strange city but I had a great time.

O, I only lost around 20 dollars

Last night was billed by IC as the biggest Summer Ball in London. For me, the Summer Ball was probably the last night I’d see many of my friends. Since receiving the confirmation email for my flight to Japan I’ve felt somewhat unsettled. Unsettled, neither in a good or bad way. Just unsure as to how to feel about all of this. Even though I live for this life changing moments and cherish them deeply when they do happen, it’s never easy to actually go through one; not that I’ve lived a turbulent lifestyle.

On the contrary, I probably have had one of the least turbulent lifestyles imaginable. Looking back over the years, I suppose the major events of my life would include:

• going to Japan for a term and living in Hokkaido when I was 9 or 10
• starting DC life
• ending DC life
• the world tour
• starting uni
• the 6 month summer of last year

and now, ending uni. But, it’s not just ending university. It’s ending the educational part of my life. It’s leaving the London life behind. It’s starting from scratch. It’s scary.

Less than 2 months to go until I leave for Tokyo. Less than a month of experiencing London. Less than a week of the student life.

I always feel terrible, absolutely awful afterwards. As well as the expected gaping hole in my life, the feelings always have more than a hint of annoyance at myself. So many things go through my head, so many things that want to be said and so many things that need to be said. Yet they remain unspoken. How can something so wonderful, so warm and so important be this complicated.

Last night I had the Plain White T’s song “Friends Don’t Let Friends Dial Drunk” playing in my head. It’s a great song and there are some good lines in it…one in particular, my mind kept screaming at me. The line got a bit morphed but the jist of it was there. It cut me up and knifed me a million times before I fell asleep.

Anyway, as most of you know I had a party on Saturday. It wasn’t quite one of those parties which turn into everlasting memories that I had built it up to be but I had a fantastic time. So many of my old school friends turned up that I wasn’t expecting. It definitely boosts the confidence when so many friends turn up. You feel loved. But yeah, due to my craziness and idiocy I ended up staying awake for around 40 hours but yeah… more later