Missing Cheese Curds and Conversation

Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don't mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.
-T.S. Elliot

I’ve never been a big drinker. This has always caused some small amount of friction in the past. It’s easy to be friends with people who might prefer basketball while you like tennis, but it’s always been a challenge to be friends with people whose main leisurely activity is drinking. After turning 21, I fell into a very comfortable routine of hanging out in a bar to chat, having philosophical conversations or sharing life experiences, sipping my one or two favorite drinks (I have been craving cheese curbs and a Bloody Mary like you would not believe.)

Well I’ve hit a dead wall in Japan. I find myself suffering from what I will refer to as Responsibility Syndrome. RS, as it’s casually called, is usually a dormant disease, but has been known to cause large amounts of guilt and regret in sufferers. A few weeks ago, there was a large prefecture JET party that unsurprisingly featured alcohol on a Saturday night. It just so happened to fall on the weekend of one of my school’s Sports Days. Friday was my city’s speech contest… Saturday was treated like a regular school day… and Sunday promised to go from sunup to sundown, with set up and take down and all that. I could have stayed out all night. I could have drank enough to be more than buzzed. I could have taken the last train home. Instead, I had one drink, and was snuggled into bed at the very reasonable hour of midnight.

Most weekends I go somewhere. While relaxing, it’s just too darn depressing to stay locked up in my apartment all weekend. But when I go somewhere well within striking distance, I am always home at reasonable hours, and I get the suggested 8 hours of sleep. I rarely drink, because I am exhausted enough from the school week without the possibility of a hangover, well, hanging over my head. I’m amazed… and confounded… at how often other people can get away, and how often they can party.

Drinking in Japan is one of those urban legends that perpetuates through the Gaijin mythos. If you can hold your alcohol-and more notably, can’t hold your alcohol and don’t mind-Japan is an amazing place. All you can drink specials for $30! Karoke bars, beer gardens! It’s a schmoregusboard of drunken possibilities. But for the light weight, it just doesn’t make economic sense. Being placed specifically where I am, and suffering from RS, it doesn’t make practical sense either. I have yet to find someone who enjoys my preferred drinking habits-one or two drinks and lively, but personal, conversation.

Honestly, I’m having a rough time making friends. Or, I should say, a large amount of friends. I’ve never been a popular person. When I go somewhere, 9 times out of 10, I go alone. I am not destitute, not yet. But I am, at times, incredibly frustrated. I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to demand, why, why are we left out?

I mean, it’s hard not to feel lonely. If I had a penny for every time I heard “Oh my kids just love me!” or “Oh I’m so popular at school” or “My other teachers never want to stop talking to me, isn’t that SO annoying!” I can barely get my kids to wave hi to me. They certainly don’t cluster outside the teacher’s door waiting for my glowing, charismatic self. I just feel so alienated-not from Japanese people, but from other JETs! Where are the JETs like me, who go to work, who do their job, but aren’t loved, aren’t worshipped? Where are the JETs who are lonely, where are the JETs who don’t have their cell phones always ringing with invitations? I can’t be the only one.

....Can I?