Anxiety, coping in a foreign country, and life in general.

This is a bit different that usual, but I thought there is a chance this type of information could be useful to someone who might be cause in a similar situation as me, mentally, and if I can help anyone I would really like to!

Long story short, I've pretty much had anxiety my whole life, in every aspect of everything I do. I've broken down into a sobbing mess in front of my entire class at uni, and at college I used to throw up before presentations so bad I got sent home. Sometimes I cant answer the phone and I start to shake and my mouth dries up, sometimes I have put every single item back in a shop because I just can't face the cashier that day. It varies day to day, but most days there is still something.

To be honest, I think anxiety cost me a good degree, it pretty much affects everything I do or think about doing in my life. Some days I can probably pass as pretty normal, I can force myself through things, like generally when I've had a customer-facing job, it almost feels like I zone-out to get me through the day, my 'work character' I guess. But after a long day pretending everything doesn't make me shake I would go home and cry or something.

Maybe this is all irrelevant, why am I blabbering about this? Well, obviously I flew half around the world to a foreign country by myself, to live with a family I never met before who mostly speak a language I am faaaaar from fluent in, and that in itself is a pretty anxiety riddled experience. 

BUT I think this whole thing has actually helped me a lot.

I mean, it's completely down to my exact situation. This could have easily gone the other way for me emotionally if I wasn't with a perfect family with a perfect job, and two cute poodles to pet whenever I feel stressed. So, I wouldn't say this is the best thing to do for everyone, but for me it just happened to be.

It's strangely relaxing, if I struggle to talk to someone new, it's shrugged off as a language barrier, and Japanese people generally become more patient with me, slowly helping me form sentences and not getting frustrated because I didn't know what to say. Often they will also just throw out every single English word they know to try and finish the conversation, and that's strangely comforting. Half of my anxiety is getting stressed because of how people react to me being anxious about something, and my experience with people in Japan is that they want to help.

I don't really think my anxiety will ever leave me, maybe that's because at the moment I just can't imagine doing things worry-free, but I suspect I will learn to live with things eventually instead of eliminating them completely. But my point is, coming to Japan was a huge risk which ended up (probably) in my favour. I've gained a lot of confidence being here alone, maybe I still haven't really made a lot of friends, that kind of close social interaction still makes me too anxious and eludes me, but apart from that various parts of my personality have greatly improved and I just hope this feeling continues when I return to England in a couple of months. 

Sorry for this much more personal ramble, as I said at the start maybe sharing this kind of experience might make people consider doing something different and scary to help themselves overall! Who knows...
  
I have a LOT of posts queued up to write about a whole lot of different things, so normal viewing should resume shortly, either way thanks for reading my anxious waffle, please feel free to ask me any questions, and for now, またね〜 From Osaka!

 

Japanese Diary - A brief recap!

Okay, we are absolutely going to gloss over the fact that I haven't posted in too long and I'm just going to pick up where I left of by filling in the massive gap with a wonderful recap of all the things worth noting in between! (Shhhh just go along with it)

So, where did I last leave off? Sometime in September I think (uhhhh)! Since then, I've done a ton of stuff, my mum and sister Tamla came to visit me and we went to Nara and Disneyland and a load of other stuff, I finally went to Kyoto, went to pet expo, I took a JLPT exam, I actually went home for Christmas (but still managed to do some cool things!), my friend Alex came back with me from England and we spent New Year together, I've visited a ton of temples and shrines, I baked a lot, a POKEMON GYM opened nearby, I bought a lot (I dress way cuter now) and pretty much the list of things goes on.

I swear, this will just be a brief post and then I will bombard with loads of extra posts about each major event individually until I've made up for my lazy absence! So with that, lets go!

Okay, so, to start off, in October I had the wonderful pleasure of being visited by my mum and oldest little sister Tamla for 10 days! It was a very jam-packed week and a bit to be honest, we managed to fit so much in and were completely exhausted by the end of it, but it was their first time visiting Japan and we had so much fun! I'm going to be writing about the week in it's own post I think, there is just toooo much to fit in to here, and it includes two days in Tokyo and Tokyo Disneyland, a day in Nara, a trip to the top of the Umeda Sky Tower, and more!

In November I FINALLY after being here SO LONG made it to Kyoto for a day trip! I went with a Japanese friend, my teachers daughter Erika, as she goes to Kyoto University and could show me around! We spent time around Gion and the shrines and gardens, and then we to the Kyoto University School Festival to have a look around! I ate some chameleon yakisoba, made by the science clubs food stall (It changed colour when you added lemon juice! it was amazing!) and we wandered around various university club exhibitions, including the calligraphy, origami and pokemon club, and held a cute lizard in some sort of science related club room, and there was traditional Japanese dancing to watch too, it was all pretty busy. After that we went wandering round a few of the shops near Gion and found the KitKat Chocolatory store. Now, anyone who knows me knows how much I love kitkats so this was pretty much heaven for me!

In November I also went to pet expo with my host family and the dogs! It was a pretty incredible experience, a huge convention hall filled with people and their pets, sooooo many cute dogs, almost all wearing clothes, some wearing sunglasses, there was a goat on a lead and a stall from a company that organises pet weddings, complete with cake!

Another thing I did with my host family was visit Tanzan Jinja, a shrine on a mountain nearby, to view the momiji, or the autumn leaves. It was a rainy day, but it was actually breathtakingly beautiful to see so many colours in the leaves, and I took so many photographs! My personal reccomendation is for everyone to visit Japan in the Autumn, it is really the best season to see Japan in all its beauty, without the heat of summer, or the price of spring!

Behold, my expert photography skills

December started off with me pretty immediately taking the JLPT at level N5. Exams are scary, but I revised hard and still have no idea if I passed, the results should be coming out next week!

I then spent half of the month back in England, Christmas is a pretty important time to spend together in my family and there is absolutely no way I could have coped not seeing them all over Christmas! I also got to spend some lovely time with my boyfriend, Jason, long distance relationships are hard but not impossible, but it did feel so much better to be together again! I also got to enjoy my AMAZING Christmas present from him, which was tickets to the Pokemon Symphonic Evolutions orchestral concert in London! There was something truly magical about listening to all of the music from the pokemon games being played in a theatre by the London philharmonic, especially when it ended with a sing-a-long of 'I want to be the very best'! But overall I had a pretty typical Christmas surrounded by my family, it was really great!

The end of December, when I returned to Osaka, I was joined by my cool friend Alex 'The Blue Girl'. As my host family were going away for a few days over new year and didn't want me to be lonely, they said I could invite a friend to stay if I wanted to, and then we proceeded to cram as much activity into every single possible minute that we could whilst she was here! We did Nara, Kyoto, soooooo much shopping, went to Expo City, we stayed overnight in a buddhist temple on top of a mountain, on new years ever we went for midnight at Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, we went to an owl cafe, literally just so much that its getting its own blog post!!!

So yeah, maybe I have had a lot going on the last few months but that still doesn't excuse me from my lack of posting. ごめんなさいいいいい！

Okay, that was a not so brief catch up, but more detailed accounts of some things will be following... sometime I guess, but for now, またね〜 From Osaka!