Highs and Lows

The sky is deep, the sky is dark.

The light of stars is so damn stark.

When I look up, I fill with fear.

If all we have is what lies here,

this lonely world, this troubled place,

then cold dead stars and empty space...

Well, I see no reason to persevere,

no reason to laugh, or shed a tear,

no reason to sleep or ever to wake,

no promises to keep, and none to make.

And so at night I still raise my eyes

to study the clear but mysterious skies

that arch above us, as cold as stone.

Is there a God, or are we alone?

- from The Book of Counted Sorrows

It's hard facing up to depression in Japan.  Often you can see it coming but feel powerless to stop it.  It usually rears its ugly head after a string of negative experiences and it can be difficult to pull out of once it grips you.  Unfortunately, it's not uncommon to feel down once every couple of months here.

Generally speaking, life in Japan can be very isolating for someone with weak Nihongo (Japanese language) skills.  Sure I can speak English well, but many of the Japanese people around me cannot and of course, I am largely unable to communicate with anyone in their native tongue, often finding myself at a lonely impasse.  In my prefecture there live about 70 other JET Programme teachers (hailing from countries such as the US, New Zealand, Jamaica, Canada, England, Ireland etc) scattered throughout the countryside.  Some of them live as close as a 5-minute drive from me, while to reach the houses of many others it can take anywhere between one and five hours.  When these people are your only source of English-language social communication (excluding skype calls home) it can be difficult to face up to the distances between us.

Though finding someone to talk to here is also a hard task.  Of those 70 people, there are many that you won't get along with or would be better suited to the term "acquaintance"and of the friends maybe only one or two that you can truly open up to about anything.  When things go wrong in this community, it becomes even harder to find a supportive shoulder as politics or gossip or misunderstandings often ensue...

So when the world starts to look blue, who do you turn to and what can you do?

Sometimes in an attempt to stave off depression, I will spend more time talking with my friends and family back home.  Sometimes I exercise a little in the evenings and other times I try to go to bed early.  Sometimes I'll cancel weeks of social obligations and just spend my weekends at home, in bed, watching movies in my underpants.

The bleak side of this is that depression and homesickness are constantly hovering.  It doesn't take much to send you into a bad place when you are essentially living alone in a foreign country.  It takes a lot of work and effort sometimes to stay happy in Japan.  And sometimes living a highlight reel is the only (albeit expensive) way to maintain perkiness!