24 hour bug

I write this after emerging from a 19 hour sleep. And amazingly, despite feeling a bit groggy and a little weak at the knees I think I might be able to get through my final two days of classes and finish this semester still standing. Having been struck down by illness yesterday I got a chance to catch up on collecting some thoughts, dissecting my life and realising that I have been in Tokyo for three months now. No doubt my weekly test tomorrow will suffer, but now, wrapped in three blankets and nibbling water biscuits while sipping water I am feeling like this is exactly what I needed to do: miss a day of school and a goodbye reception speeech making session in favour of 24 hours in my new futon. I think the body is remarkable at making sure you listen to what it needs sometimes.

Curled up here I cannot help but contemplate just how quickly time has raced by and flung me into three months of the grinding intensity of language school, new impressions and a whole new lifestyle. I have been spat out at the other end feeling a bit giddy from it all, and still unsure of what to make of it. I feel slightly lost as to what it is that I'm doing in Tokyo and where I want to be at the end of it all. I wrote to a friend a while ago that I wanted my life to be a patch work of experiences that didn't fit together neatly in some logical, straightforward direction. I like the diversity of being undefinable and flexible in who or what I am. But every once in a while, particuarly in the climate I now find myself, it doesn't seem acceptable to live with so many question marks. Do we need to have some set design of where we're going? I feel a combination of inadequacy at my japanese language skills, and total incomprehension as to where I want to be at the end of these 20months. It's this wierd rediscovery or self I suppose, that happens whenever you start over in a new place. There are no preconceived ideas of who you are, and so, you freshly discover yourself, at the same time as the new people around you discover you. It is interesting to do this in a climate that is severely lacking many of the things that I used to think were vital to my life; discussions about politics, or gender, theatre rehearsals, creativity. What is left when those things are absent is some strange half creature, a becky without certain pillars that once made her who she was. And so maybe she alters and adapts to compensate for an absence of those things. But sometimes it just feels like loss.