Congrats, Fenrir. It's a nice change to make, feeling like you're capable of navigating socialization situations.
Also, clubs are terrible unless you go with the express purpose of ignoring everyone around you and dancing like your father never let you. I do wish there were venues for Jackass Dancing that didn't involve everything else that comes along with clubbing though.
Incidentally I am on like the opposite swing on Fenrir's pendulum after spending my first few years on JET doing the same. But now I basically never go out anymore, like once or twice a month, and when I do I find myself wishing I had just stayed in and recharged. I think a large part of this is just being fed up with where I'm living and in need of moving onto the next phase of my life.
I agree but since clubs almost alwayd have terrible music, concerts are better for that.
I always hate that time during parties when everybody wants to go to the club
True that. Concerts are amazing for that, though I dunno. The vibe's different. Concerts and music festivals are all about the music, while I feel like whatever enjoyment I get from clubbing comes not from the music but from dancing. Music and dancing are integral parts of both but have different weights depending on the venue, if that makes sense.
So why don't you go out anymore? Is that social alination almost every european/american feels from living in Japan catching up with you?
The short of it is basically that. The long of it, ... this is going to sound terrible but I'm pretty much done interacting with modern Japanese culture for now. There are brief, wonderful, beautiful glimpses of humanity, usually with people who feel alienated from their own culture to begin with, when I'm talking with coworkers or other young people while out on the town where I'll have a conversation where it's just two people talking about whatever like we're human beings, but the vast majority of the time when speaking to Japanese people it feels like I'm talking to someone going through a list of Bioware dialogue options.
"Oh, it's cold, isn't it.
>How do you say that in English?
>Which is colder, Japan or [insert country here, but they probably assume you're from America anyway]?
>Yeah Japan really gets cold around this time of year.
>Please don't catch a cold."
"Hello. Where are you from?
>Why did you come to Japan?
>How long will you be in Japan?
>Oh, you speak Japanese very well!
>Oh, you use chopsticks very well!
>Do you want a Japanese girlfriend?
>Please teach me English."
All of these are conversations I've had in real life. Half are conversations I've had this week, and none of them were the first time having them. There's only so many times I can be the NPC in their asinine dialogue tree before I just give up on interacting with them altogether. It would be one thing if it was just my coworkers running me through these gauntlets, but even after developing conversational competence in their language the brief (but very, very glorious and refreshing) times I can engage with people off of the beaten path of these dialogue options are so few and far inbetween that I've resigned myself to biding my time until I can briefly go home to visit my family then move on (probably to Poland, then potentially Germany? My prospects for living in new cultures is actually really exciting!... to inject some positivity into a very negative rant)
Of course, there's small talk in every language and culture, and I can't really articulate why the sort of smalltalk in Japan bothers me even more than it does in the US, and I think a large part of that is just cultural fatigue. I've spent too much time in this place and I'm losing the pleasure I used to have in small joys and finding it replaced with biting cynicism.
I wondered, briefly, if I was just tuning out socially altogether, but the last two times I went home I was more social than I ever was before I left, so there's definitely something going on with my relationship to this culture. I need to leave, so I can come back and love it again (or at least, leverage my competency in the language to sell my labor and not feel terrible about it).
But, yeah, you're basically right. It's social alienation that every capital-W Western person feels after living here for too long. Which in itself is a good growing experience for reasons I'm too drunk to articulate at the moment, mostly regarding how it feels to be part of a minority group when in the US I've only ever been part of the majority group. But yeah. That whole thing is why.
EDIT: PS Congrats Ashley on the new job, hopefully you hate it less (or it has a higher salary).
P.P.S. Super what are these mistakes with people I've never heard of before. Tell me your gossip, and also your dreams.
