6 months

6 months and one day ago, I arrived in hot, muggy Tokyo.

The humidity suffocated me, but not as much as the endless, rigid social rules. Earthquakes shook the buildings from side to side and I thought: wow, if this building collapsed and I got buried under the rubble, no one in Tokyo would know or care and my family might not even hear about it for days. This thought added to my already utter sense of loneliness. The air conditioned buildings aggravated my cold and made it last for over a month. I came down with a dreadful bout of food poisoning after eating raw chicken livers (the menu listed them under the "grilled" section). On my very first day, I was put on a deal that required me to work past midnight almost every day of the week. I couldn't understand what anyone was saying. The mannerisms and actions of Tokyo-ites confounded me. The city and its people were utterly foreign to me and despite having an old friend from college who was a Tokyo-life veteran to help me adjust, I felt like a solitary alien in a very foreign planet.

When I think about those first few weeks in Tokyo, the overwhelming emotion that floods my memory is how ALONE I felt. And I couldn't help but think that at least to me, loneliness was the utter depth of misery. Humans were made to interact with others: to love, to laugh, to break bread and drink wine together, to argue, to cry, to celebrate, to comfort, to commiserate, to share, to live. I couldn't remember the last time I had felt so sad and alone. In fact, I don't think there was a time that I felt as sad and alone as I did when I first arrived in Tokyo.

I went through a rollercoaster of emotions during the last six months: from feeling alone to being perplexed by the foreign ways of the Japanese to loving the convenience, safety and cleanness of the city to being annoyed and frustrated by the oppressiveness to trying to have a better attitude to trying to fit in to saying "oh fuck it, I don't give a shit, I'm just going to do whatever I want" to trying to keep myself busy in order to forget my unhappiness, and pretty much every emotion in between.

But 6 months in, I feel...acceptance. By which I mean, on an emotional/psychological/mental level, I've finally accepted that 1) I'm living in Tokyo, 2) this is just the way things are in Tokyo, 3) it's ok to hate certain aspects of Tokyo but I should try to enjoy the things I like about this city, 4) I'm only going to be here for a short, finite period of time so I shouldn't waste my time hating it so much and instead spend my time exploring everything it has to offer. And whether it's because I've finally reached the acceptance phase or whether this place is actually starting to grow on me, I don't know, but I don't feel miserable here anymore. In fact, sometimes I actually feel...happy. Surprise surprise.

I love Tokyo's winter so far. I love that it's cold and crisp yet sunny. I love the way it feels to step out into the crisp, chilly morning (albeit in a warm puffy jacket) and take in the clean, fresh air. I love walking everywhere. I love that there is an absolutely endless array of good to excellent restaurants in this city that I will never be able to get through during my stay here. I love how Japanese chefs have refined Italian cuisine to a cleaner version that is not as heavy/greasy as Italian food elsewhere. I love that sushi is not an extravagance or special meal here, but rather one of my defaults. I love how clean the streets are, how devoid of litter. I love how safe it is to walk around pretty much anywhere, anytime. I love the weekday lunch specials that include a meal, tiny dessert and coffee for only 1000 yen (~$10). I love that Japanese people are so perplexingly strange sometimes (sometimes I hate this fact about them, but sometimes I love it because it's so amusing when you realize that all the weird stereotypes you've heard about the Japanese are absolutely based on truth - not to say that ALL Japanese people are weird or perverted, but that there is a sizeable enough population of people who are that justify the stereotypes). I love the funny "do it at home" subway signs.

Do I love living in Tokyo? No. It would even be a stretch to say that I like living in Tokyo, although I do like certain things about living in Tokyo. But 6 months in, I don't mind living in Tokyo anymore. And that in and of itself - I've come a long way.