I am bottling up too much stress and frustration lately. I am really on the edge. Seriously, one word, one small motion and I think Iight go insane.

Work is really not as satisfying as it used to be; my Omikuji from the new year and my life don’t seem to match. I do not feel lucky and I do not feel that sticking this out will do any good for me.

My soul and body are overflowing with stress and fatigue. I don’t know if it’s just my state of mind but my heart is going it’s own way. Maybe it’s delusional, and it’s more likely just a channel for my messed up life but these precious rays of light are keeping me going. Small distractions are keeping me grounded.

Valentines is coming up soon. I said that I wished it would hurry up and be March, but in all honesty I just want to be able to enjoy the day without negative emotions – resentment, loneliness and sadness.

Anyway, tonight I had dinner with some friends – Chinese hot pot. It was actually really tasty! It had all sorts of mushrooms, cabbage, herbs and spices. A welcome and much needed distraction from life.

My head is too full.

The escape to ME cannot come sooner. Only a month. I await miracles.

Still dreaming… Scratch that. make that a nightmare.

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?

I feel incredibly lost and confused. I wouldn’t say depressed or sad and I don’t really want to put a negative spin on this feeling but it is a complicated mirage of feelings.

Anything and anyone can be misunderstood or misinterpreted and that is definitely the last thing I want.

I went to Hong Kong for a weekend and returned feeling incredibly refreshed but within a few days work stress had returned to critical levels and to add to all the mess in my head, everyone is cross examining my life. To be honest, I really like that people are taking an interest in me, but it has made me consider my situation a lot. Thinking can be incredibly tiring sometimes.

I have walked through a million scenarios over the past god knows how long but the frustrating thing is that none of the scenarios lead anywhere helpful.

I know how it looks. I know how it really is – on my side at least. I know what I want. I just don’t know how to tie all those things together and make it happen.

I realised a few days back that I should be more honest with myself and others. Even after realising how guarded I am over this stuff, it is so difficult to just come out and be open about such things.

I’m not sure what else to say. Some people may say I’m still young. Some people may say that I’m still so pure, innocent or even naive. Sometimes I just wish that someone would just sort things out for me. I seem to be missing some guts.

why why why why why why why why

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.

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 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