skeet.: Titled down there somewhere in the middle

It's about fun.

It's why we live life. It why we do things like go bungee jumping and ride rollercoasters and jump out of planes at thirteen thousand feet... and.. and... study abroad.

It's why we leave our families and friends behind and put ourselves through thirteen hours of teary eyed flight; so that we can experience that fantastical place halfway around the globe that is supposed to be just so amazing and so wondeful and so just right. So fun.

And it is fun, because like I said, that's what life's about.

But I'm going to tell you the truth now.

It's not all that fun.

And I'm going to let it all out now.

Though it's not a contest, let's start with a comparison.

Japanese exchange students in America have a better time than American exchange students in Japan.

It's a fact that I need you to accept.

The question isn't if Japanese students in America have more fun than Americans in Japan, but rather, why?

Still with me?

This is where you have to dismiss all the stupid things that attract you to Japan, whether they are the video games or the anime or the cars or the women or whatever it is that floated your boat to start studying Japanese. Because we all know you have a stupid embarassing reason.

This isn't about all of that superficial stuff that movies about Japan are made of.

This is about what my Japan is made of.

People.

We're talking about people here. We're talking about Tokyo. Not Otaku-Paradise-Magic-Land where everything is just fucking perfect and dandy if you've got your comic book in one hand, you're J-Pop CD in the other and the TV switched on to a great J-Drama.

And I'm saying things that piss you off.

But I didn't come here for any of that bullshit. I came here for the same reason I go anywhere in the world, even if it's just the coffee shop the park or the stupid fountain behind the student union.

It's for the people.

I go for the people.

And they were a let down.

So let's get pissed.

And now let's take a trip to America.

In America, Japanese exchange students step off that plane into a new world where they can see the horizon in all of its three-hundred-and-sixty-fucking-degrees of panoramic beauty. A new place where people are begging for them.

Where American's are foaming at the mouth for them.

Ask anyone who's done it. Their cellphones don't stop ringing. The boyfriends and girlfriends come like magic, and the popularity is instant. The American's just never seem to get tired of them, even in the most rural of communities.

Their lives are beyond their wildest dreams.

The parites. The drinking. The stars in the sky. The Fourth of July.

They have a great time.

They come home to Japan changed forever.

The girls have an especially hard time, unable to adjust in school and family life. Unable to pry their minds away from that place that they went, that place...

They cry a lot.

For years they cry.

Ask them, they'll tell you.

In America, your friend's are you friends and they treat you like friends.

But now it's time to go back to Japan. Where I am.

Where I am.

Where I am the American. Where I am the one making the plans, picking up the phone and doing the begging. Where I am the one foaming at the mouth.

And though I have friends here that I treasure...

The lonliness I feel sometimes is unbearable and uncomparable to anything ever experienced back home, across the ocean.

When I hear those songs I danced to night after night last year, I want to cry.

When I think back to those city lights under the bus on my first ride in from Narita, my throat clenches in that way that says a thousand times over, "Stop thinking that thought, stop it stop it stop it..."

When I look at pictures of that dormitory... It's the same thing.

And no, this entry isn't headed down the same track as the prior two. It's not going to turn into an entry about the depression associated with coming home.

This is an entry about the people that the picture of that dormitory reminds me of. This is an entry about the people who's faces I see when I listen to that song.

This is an entry entitled "Fuck you last year, and those of you who decided that it's OK to forget your friends. Those of you who think it's OK to abandon someone who put their full trust in you. Fuck you and fuck you and fuck you again."

This is an entry to those of you who think it's OK to ignore every e-mail sent to you. Fuck you.

Like living here is some kind of joke to me.

Like what we had last year was some kind of joke.

And maybe I'm letting a bit of "rejection" get to me. Maybe that's the problem.

I don't know.

But today I came to a realization that had been building for the past three months, and I guess it boils down to the fact that I've lost a couple friends for reasons I can't comprehend.

They are only a few friends.

But I treasure everyone that I know, more than most of them realize, I think.

They are gone now.

They won't respond to me.

I'm dead to them.

But I can't take their photos off my wall.

So like I said, it's about fun, and most Japanese people could give a shit if foreigners have fun. Let me tell you.

I should probably stick to skydiving.

So now it's time for you to disagree with me