The Voluntary Numbness

Today our Japanese friends have organised a welcome party for us at the university dorm, where I will stay for the next school year. With a ceremony called "Mochitsuki" they prepared "Mochi" or "Japanese Rice Cake" which is simply made by first boiling the rice and then pounding on it with a big, wooden hammer-thing until it's gum-like. It's actually not easy to make, at all! Finally they turn it into small rice balls, add some sugar and serve.

It was a bit sticky and hard to eat, but delicious. Also, I have used chopsticks for the first time in my life. All the Japanese people were like: "You never used chopsticks!?". Well, no. We've spoons and forks... and I don't enjoy inflicting pain on myself. However, I am most certain that I will spend a good deal of money to get an artistic looking set of chopsticks. They just look so cool! Though, I don't suppose I'll ever use them, like regularly. Anyway, it's been quite a welcome.

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It's almost been a week in Japan! I've met with some nice people who have finished the journey that I'm about to begin. After having spent two years, some of them hardly spoke any Japanese. I guess it depends on your objectives, but I really think that this would be a big mistake for me. And I don't want to do it. Two years seem like a long time, but it'll go by just like that. It's a matter of simple calculation, in fact. There're 104 weeks in two years. And I haven't studied any Japanese this week. So, 0×104=0! I hope I don't wait for two years to verify this result.

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I don't want to "drug" myself. I'm not sure if I'm using the right word, what I mean is not taking any medications, but living in an artificial world by means of... well, anything. I want to be able to feel and understand and live through everything, be it good or bad or exciting or scary, that happens to me. In my experience, this is a thing so hard, that only a handful of people are actually doing it. I myself can't do it. On my first couple of days here in Japan, it was so overwhelming I just plunged into a familiar and an artificial world by means of  watching some movies, rather than facing and dealing with the reality. It was too much for me, so I escaped.

People do it all the time. When they lose a loved one, in a bad marriage/work, when things aren't going well or are boring. Say it a defence mechanism, I don't care, it's escaping. And it makes our pain go in vain!

People are very creative. They would "drug" themselves with the weirdest of things. Looking from outside, it's easy to see the wrongness of it. But we all have our own "drugs" I think and we shouldn't be going around judging people, like: "How can you spend your life with this thing!? Can't you see that it's consuming you?". It's a state of trance, or a voluntary numbness, if you will, and it's really sad.

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A slightly different topic... I think I should stop covering for my bad writing by mumbling things like: "Oh, this isn't me, I'm writing this blog for writing practice only, I'd have written such things that would make you fall in love with them if only that was my intention...". I think this is me and this is how I write. I don't have a secret writer laying inside me. I just thought that I should be honest and make peace.

Anyway, sayōnara!