Be Humanware

Let’s face it; my life is a rich tapestry of experience and diversity, and it is about bloody time I make good use of my extensive knowledge (!!!).  Seating uncomfortably on the tatami floor, the weaving shaping what is left of my bottom, I can’t help but wonder what has become of my sorry self after a year where nothing looks, tastes, smells or more importantly behaves the same. 

Earlier on today I was actually talking to a friend about what to write on the last note of my stay in Japan. I had a few ideas, all but too diverse to be put together into something reader-friendly… So let’s just travel back in time, and appreciate what can only be described as an evolution.

Everything started by a brutal shock, in 2005. As I sat at my desk, crashed by the gravity of what I was reading on my screen, I realised my life would take an unpredictable turn. Pixels were teaming up, forming words and sentences stating that, no, I would not go back to France after the final exams. I was actually rejected by what at the time I still considered my country. Needless to say that this feeling vanished as quickly as Sandra and I, arms up into the air and screaming at a glass-breaking level from the top of her stairs when the rat on the ground floor started to wiggle, but I’m wandering from the topic. Instead, I would go to London, to study a field that was as promising future-wise as it wasn’t fun-wise; business. I also had to choose a language I would start from scratches with, so I opted for something remote, exotic, with an aftertaste of adventure; Japanese. I didn’t know anything about the related culture, apart the clichéd preconceptions people are usually drooling over. I just felt like I needed to get away for a while.

After a year and a half, I finally got to leave Europe. Nagoya, first, where I also started this blog. The change of scenery was fresh, I had the impression to rediscover basis that I thought I got unstable to begin with. You see, I didn’t particularly enjoy my time in France; for 16 years, all my hopes were aiming at the sky, secretly craving for somewhere far and fundamentally different. I had this snide impression not to belong in the midst of kids that I found inadequate, futile and cruelly plain. The adults were merely kids who physically grew up, and were just the same way, only sneakier. The future appeared gloomier with every day passing by, and were it not for Austria, I wouldn’t probably be there to vouch for how good this country was to me, but I’m wandering again.

In Nagoya, I was on my own. I literally couldn’t suss out what people were saying or what was displayed anywhere; pathetically hopeless, and quite frustrating. Time flew by, and slowly I started deciphering how the language worked, and yet the culture stayed stubbornly unreachable. Unlike the undeniable bound between a western language and its culture, the Japanese language does NOT enable you to get a grasp of the culture, and that really ought to be the first thing one should be warned of before sailing off to Humanware land.

I don’t want to impress upon you a sense of disdain towards the country, because what Japan was founded on is just fascinating, so I won’t elaborate on the reasons of my… grudge against it. Suffices to say that Japan seems to be the opposite of India; the more you stay in Japan, the less you’ll get attached to the country. The spotless politeness, the extreme tidiness that blind you by their intensity will eventually fade away into what Japanese people are really like; an alienated and emotionally suppressed people that is blithely unaware of what is around.

I could spend hours talking to you about the numeral facets that are so irritating and baffling to me, but I’d do it individually when I see you guys. In the end, this experience reinforced what I’ve always stood for, and that is all I expected, come to think of it. See you in Europe, you lot!!!